25

STRETCHED SLEEPILY ALONG A NARROW peninsula, and isolated from the rest of Cuba by injurious roads and a raw and monumental natural world, Baracoa was its own little island. The humble homeland of sailors, fishermen, and smugglers, life there had revolved around the sea since time immemorial. More a village than a city, every imaginable item was peddled on its four paltry streets, especially on the one called Mercaderes. Anchored at its modest port, their flags prudently lowered, a Colombian pirate brig might sit alongside a Baltimore clipper, an ailing Haitian schooner and a trade ship from Jamaica or Martinique or Curaçao. They bought leather, honey, wax, precious woods, coffee, and tobacco, as well as cassava bread, dried coconut, salted fish, ham, and lard for the return journey; they sold fabric, ceramics, costume jewelry, iron objects, pins, books and paper, knives and hunting muskets, rum, wine and, from time to time, a handful of slaves. Although slave trafficking was prohibited by royal decree and severely punishable, almost everyone in the city was involved in it in one way or another. This state of affairs was made possible by the fact that both civil and ecclesiastical authorities looked the other way. There was no jail, properly speaking, and the clergy not only tolerated smuggling—a cause for excommunication in other eras—but also went so far as to permit the existence of a cult founded on the discovery, amid the wild foliage of the forest, of a few pieces of wood in the shape of a cross. Not to mention that they did nothing whatsoever to prevent the mixing of Christianity with the witchcraft and superstitions brought over by the blacks, which, to me, seemed to take matters a little too far. In any case, the European race was in the minority there. Of every ten inhabitants, three could call themselves white, another three were Negro, and the rest were slaves. As money was scarce, old and new coins of various nations exchanged hands; the same pocket might hold a napoleon and a louis d’or, a dollar and a Dutch florin, an old piece of eight, perhaps some infamous pirate’s plunder alongside a Peruvian silver macuquina piece. As for copper coins, everything was accepted, no matter where it might have come from; Mexico or Portugal, it was all the same. Obviously, Spanish was spoken there, a singsong Spanish peppered with archaisms that would have delighted Christopher. But there was also a fair amount of French spoken, especially among the older people. Having fled the revolution in Saint-Domingue, thousands of settlers and their families had ended up in Baracoa. Some had continued on to Louisiana or Canada; others opted to stay in the area, and they’d established coffee plantations in the region’s most protected valleys. Given how steep the landscape was, they grew so little in the way of sugarcane that three rickety mills were sufficient to grind what was produced. Some even spoke a bit of broken English, not only because it was conducive to business; certain shady individuals from Jamaica and Florida had landed there as well—fugitives from justice, deserters, hucksters, charlatans—living off the gambling dens and clandestine prostitutes they brought over from Haiti or Cartagena to work for a season. It was a mulatto from Savannah named Wilson, accused of seducing a white woman, who gave me my first lessons in English in exchange for my having removed two stones from his gall bladder.

I didn’t make much money, what one might call hard cash, through my profession. And not because I lacked clients, but rather because of the general poverty of most of the population. Suffice to say that the public offices that were sold for thousands of reales in Havana could be gotten here at bargain prices—a position as a high constable in the capital cost more than three hundred thousand reales; in Baracoa, it could be had for five hundred. Not even the merchants, primarily Spaniards and foreigners, had carriages; what was more, since very few people could buy and maintain horses, it was not uncommon to see the local ladies, dressed in their finest ball gowns and shaded by parasols, parading by atop the very same oxen that had pulled the plows that morning. In any event, four months after I’d opened my practice in a little hut on the main street, I was already living comfortably on the outskirts of town. In exchange for a monthly rent of fifteen reales (or its equivalent in copper), I had at my disposal a wood and brick house with two little dirt-floored huts attached, like wings, on either side. Since I received most payments for my services in kind, I had already accumulated a noisy rooster, a sty with a dozen suckling pigs, a decent horse, two goats, each with her kid, and a black and growling mastiff to intimidate the wild dogs that sometimes came down from the mountains on moonless nights to raid whatever they could find. My pantry overflowed with fruit, coconuts and bananas, yams, pumpkins, cassava bread, and ears of corn. Twice a month, on the second and fourth Fridays, I opened my practice to the truly destitute. Not seeing any reason to leave, for the time being, a place where I felt so needed and welcomed, I had a frame made for my Woman and hired as servants a black woman named Felipa and her niece Norberta, who, in addition to seeing to the domestic chores, also took charge of the growing demands of my barnyard.

It was true what I’d been told when I first arrived: Baracoa had its own climate. While on the rest of the island the dry season prevailed, in Baracoa it was the rainy season, or, better put, the torrential downpour season. Since this was the most unhealthful of the seasons, my first months there were exhausting: dozens of cases of every possible kind of fever—including typhoid—filled the hospital and one of the huts attached to my house. As if that weren’t enough, there were no leeches to be had there. “Maybe in Guantánamo,” guessed Areces, the only apothecary I’d been able to find. Except it had been impossible to get to Guantánamo for weeks. Even in good weather, many found the barriers that nature had imposed in the region insurmountable. Suffice to say that not even the riders who delivered the mail attempted to make it to Baracoa, obliging anyone interested in sending a letter to do so by boat to Santiago de Cuba. That city was about seventy leagues from Baracoa, but traveling there by land was an undertaking worthy of La Condamine or Humbolt. I’ll explain: as much as it rained, the rain fell only on the north slope of the high mountain range at the base of which the village, the corrals, the work yards, and the coffee plantations were situated. The low and heavy storm clouds that blew out of the northeast would explode in torrents of water upon crashing into the mountainside, permitting very few to cross over to the other side of the mountain. And so, anyone wishing to travel south (in the direction of Guantánamo, Santiago de Cuba, el Cobre, el Caney, los Tiguabos) had to first open a route through dense vegetation—the road would be washed out after just one week of rain—while scaling craggy heights of hundreds of meters; further on, negotiate the prickly, cramped pine forests, the deep ravines and dangerous mountain ridges, then descend through a vast desert-like terrain, defended by cacti and walls of spiky vegetation that sank into a basin of arid earth and suffocating air that gave out in the direction of Guantánamo, or continue westward through a long valley until coming upon a trail across a formidable mountain range, beyond which lay, at the foot of a sort of stone amphitheater, the city and port of Santiago de Cuba.

Not that this isolation was uncomfortable for me. I had decided to stay there until I knew, definitively, what arrangement my lawyers had come to with the descendants of the Viscount La Muraille. Despite my precise instructions, I was afraid of losing my forest, which was, for me, the most important thing I had left. Also, over the years, the people of Baracoa had learned to entertain themselves without any help from the rest of the island. Not only did they perform, in the old style, the Creole dances of Saint-Domingue, accompanied by drums and songs sung by “French” Negroes (as slaves from that island were called), but they had also introduced innovations to the local music. Adding to this the tunes the sailors continually brought from ports all over the Caribbean, including from terra firma, it becomes easy to image the huge variety of music and dances there were—so numerous that I’ve forgotten their bizarre names. Due to my position as protomedico and a certain affection I’d inspired among the locals, I received constant invitations to attend the jubilant parties with which they celebrated baptisms, birthdays, weddings, or the saint day of one Virgin or another believed to perform miracles. Music was made simply: plucking strings, blowing into earthenware jugs, shaking and scratching gourds and beating irons and goatskin drums. Nevertheless, as I felt a bit out of place amid these gatherings, my most favored pastime was exploring that picturesque region. Sometime I went to the west, to the abundant river that flowed beneath a gorgeous vault of intertwined foliage; at others I went east, descending half a dozen terraced headlands, all the way to the easternmost point of the entire island—a place called Maisí. It was there I first saw an iguana, a strange-looking lizard whose meat, which I never dared to sample, was highly coveted by the locals. Most frequently on my excursions I would wander through the cool and tangled jungle that began to creep up the mountainside just beyond my barnyard. The trees that Robledo had pointed out to me in Vuelta Abajo grew there, among many others; ferns and parasitic plants of all varieties abounded, among them the sumptuous orchid. There was ripe fruit within arm’s reach, especially cherimoya, guava, and cashew, whose delicious nut was eaten roasted. Adhered to the trunks of palms and coconut trees, to the cedars and guásimas, were the most brightly colored snails imaginable, tiny toys painted with green, blue, red, black, and yellow stripes. Some Sundays, when I was able to set off early in the morning, I would make it quite far up the mountainside. There I found the caves that the primitive inhabitants of Cuba had used as homes. It was still possible to scrape the earth and find their bones and stone tools, which I quickly began collecting. Arriving home with some little idol or earthenware fragment, both Felipa and Norberta would make the sign of the cross over them and utter strange prayers. According to them, that part of the mountain was haunted, and it was not uncommon to see the spirits of the Indians moving amid the trees like tremulous blue flames.

I’ve related this, not because I fancy myself a naturalist or an explorer, but to illustrate that my time in that land of rugged solitude, where the only wealth that existed was that of the Natural Kingdom, was far from undesirable. In truth, I had found there, on the other side of the ocean, a silence and peace similar to what I had in my forest. For a time I was sincerely happy, and that state of placidity, conducive to remembering my dear Maryse, could have gone on for God only knows how long. Except that on one of my excursions, sitting under the dome of a ceiba tree eating wild guavas, I saw the slim figure of Fairy Godmother pass by, singing and crowned in orchids. It wasn’t as it always had been, the product of my imagination; it was a Fairy Godmother of flesh and blood, walking in the real world, her step light, almost transparent, as though she were floating above the moss and ferns, with the same woman’s body with which she’d appeared before me, a year ago, in my room in Havana. Perplexed, I found myself unable to immediately stand up and follow her. When I did manage to rise, I could no longer find her. I called out to her in vain until the sun went down.

You’ll have noticed that I have a somewhat obsessive temperament. And so, like the fly fallen in a cup of milk, that vision upset my tranquility. Impatiently, I would tend to the last patients of the afternoon and, not even going into the house first, I would turn my horse toward the steep spot of ferns and orchids where she had crossed my path before vanishing into the thicket. On one occasion, dusk already falling, I heard her laugh amid the final twittering of the birds. Like a mad woman, parting the dense foliage of the creeping vines, I cast about looking for her. In deep darkness, I finally left the place, with my face and hands scratched by thorns and the fear that I’d fallen under some sort of bewitchment. Nevertheless, I kept looking for her, but the days went by and neither one nor the other Fairy Godmother, the imaginary or the real, answered my call.

Meanwhile, a ship from Santiago de Cuba delivered a remittance of seven thousand reales from the mortgage on my house in Paris, my order of laudanum and Peruvian powders, and news of the consecutive deaths of the Queen Consort Maria Isabel, the Queen Mother Maria Luisa, and the abdicated King Charles IV. Given the inconvenience of celebrating three separate funeral rites, the authorities decided to commemorate the departed royals in one grand event that would include eulogies and prayers by the local rector and two priests, a public procession of the Holy Cross of la Parra, and speeches delivered by the mayor and the constable from a platform hung with black silk serge, followed by a recitation of laudatory poems to be read by their actual authors. As an officer of the Protomedicato and the town council physician, I was invited to sit on the platform alongside the provincial officer of the Holy Brotherhood. It had been declared a day of mourning until six in the evening, and the plaza was surrounded by stands selling printed verses of remembrance and all manner of sweets and refreshments. The place, inundated with people, horses, and ox-carts, looked like a festival. Suddenly, surveying the scene once again from the platform, I saw, clear as day, the figure of Fairy Godmother standing out in sharp relief from the crowd. She was sitting atop a donkey, and an acquaintance of mine, a man named Chicoy, the youngest and poorest scribe in Baracoa, was holding the reins. She was wearing the crown of orchids she’d had on in the mountains. I jumped up from my stool and, slipping through the crowd without taking my eyes off her, I contrived to come up alongside her. As our eyes met, I realized that mine had played a bad trick on me. That thin fifteen-year-old girl, with her black eyes, ivory complexion, bare feet and mended dress, was not my fairy. To be sure, she did resemble her, so much so that, if my old friend had had a sister, it could well have been her.

“Doctor Faber!” Chicoy greeted me. “How wonderful it all looks! We are fortunate that it hasn’t rained.”

“Quite so,” I responded.

“Allow me to give you some verses that I’ve composed for the occasion,” he said, handing me a sheet. “They’ve been quite popular, though I find them a bit dithyrambic.”

“Thank you.”

Seeing my gaze return to the girl, he said: “Doña Juana de León, a distant cousin.”

“At your service, sir. Call me Juanita; that’s what everyone calls me,” she said from atop the donkey. Her voice, low and murmuring, was nothing like Fairy Godmother’s. Yet suddenly the expression in her eyes changed and I felt the damp and mysterious gaze of the mistress of the forest travel my body from head to toe. Confused and speechless, I extended my hand, inviting her to dismount. She took it and slid off the side of the donkey. Immediately, as though she’d known me for years, she took my arm and began walking and whispering: “How long I’ve waited for you! I’ve dreamed of you since I was a little girl. I dreamed that you looked just as you do and that you came from the other side of the sea. I’ve done nothing but think of you since I saw you in the mountains. I was about to return to the Castle of the Orchids to see if I could find you again. If I didn’t do it, it was only so that we could be formally introduced, as good manners require. What would you have thought of me?”

Entranced by her words, I scarcely managed to stammer: “I’ve been looking for you in the mountains. Once I heard you laughing. I thought you were a fairy.”

“It must have been an Indian spirit. Sometimes they come down to the place where we saw each other. There are no fairies in Baracoa. I don’t think there are anywhere in Cuba. Here we have only the spirits of the dead, lloronas, water mothers, and güijes.”

“Then how do you know about fairies?”

“My cousin Chicoy lends me books. He’s almost as poor as I am, but he’s a member of the poetry circle and he borrows them from his friends.”

“What are water mothers and güijes?”

“You don’t want to know.”

Our conversation was taking place in an alley near the plaza where, the hours of mourning officially over, the garrison musicians had begun to play marches.

“I haven’t seen you at the dances,” I said.

“I don’t go out much,” she replied evasively. “I should go back now. My cousin will be worried.”

“May I pay you a visit at your house?” I asked, hoping to initiate a relationship.

“No. Not at my house. We can meet in the mountains, in the place where the orchids are. I’ll go there on Sunday, though I can’t tell you what time.”

And again I felt the gaze of Fairy Godmother. (Yes, I’ve already said it, Fairy Godmother is, and always has been, a product of my imagination. But both her form and her name come out of an illustrated edition of Cinderella that Françoise used to read to me in the clearing. For years I took her for a real being, although from a different world. She was my closest friend and, while the gardener’s daughters gathered blackberries and mushrooms, I would stretch out on the grass and talk to her without moving my lips. It wasn’t until my days of sorrow in Foix that I realized that she was the very frontier of my own self.)

When I took her hand, I found it hot.

“You have a fever.”

“It’s nothing,” she said, her mouth forming a grimace.

“Do you feel ill?”

“It’s nothing,” she repeated, and left me at a run.

The day after the homage to the royals, my need to know more about her led me to visit Chicoy in the dilapidated hut that served as both his home and office.

“She’s an orphan. Her mother died in childbirth and she lived in the mountains with her father until she was ten. A strange man. He never worked for anybody. He spent years and years searching for the Treasure of Monsiú.”

“What is that?” I interrupted.

“A rich old man’s treasure. A Frenchman. He came from the United States when I was a child, must have been twenty years ago now. He brought a barrel filled with silver spoons that were inventoried by the customs house. He started to build a coffee plantation in the mountains, but at that time there were Cimarron slaves in Toa, not far from here, and they killed him with machetes before he ever revealed the place where he’d buried the spoons. If you’ll forgive the question, what is making you laugh, sir?”

“The many turns the world takes,” I said, wishing that Maryse were alive to laugh with me.

“Many turns, so very true,” said Chicoy, unaware that the name Monsiú was not unknown to me. “Well, my cousin Juanita suddenly found herself alone in the mountains. Fortunately, her great Aunt Asunción took her in. They live in the lower part of the city and are very poor, more so than me even, which is saying something. Obviously, I can’t help them much. Sometimes I give them a bit of sugar, coffee, and cassava bread, also some fish or meat that I take from my own pantry. I feel sorry for them, especially Juanita. Occasionally on a Sunday I take her to the mountains on my donkey. She feels more at ease there than in the house. Sometimes she gathers flowers for her parents’ graves.”

“Her health is not good,” I said. “Yesterday she had a fever.”

“I’ve found her worse lately,” agreed Chicoy. “Her father died of consumption. I’ve told her to go see you on the poor people’s day. I’d even come with her. But she doesn’t want to.”

“You should continue to insist,” I said, as though I weren’t planning to go to see her on Sunday. “Bring her to my office as soon as possible. Don’t worry. I won’t charge you.”

The day of our meeting arrived at last and, unable to contain myself, I saddled my horse at dawn. I waited for her all morning amid the orchids. I was too restless to keep still: I’d sit down on a rock, stand up, walk among the trees, and return to my horse all over again. I made up my mind that she wasn’t coming, but when I checked the time I was surprised to see that it was just past midday. I would wait for her until sunset. I wanted nothing from her. I would be content just having her near me, listening to the low murmur of her voice, feeling her bewitching gaze spread over me. When I heard her singing off to my right, I went to meet her. As always, she was barefoot and, as I took her hands, I asked myself how she could walk on that rough terrain without hurting her feet.

“I can’t stay,” she whispered with her head lowered. “My cousin is waiting for me in the Palace of the Snails and I must get back right away. He says he has some papers to copy before tomorrow.”

“The Palace of the Snails?”

“It’s over there,” she said, pointing in the direction she’d come. “If you look closely, you’ll see that there are always snails stuck to the tree trunks. When I was a little girl, I named many places in the mountains. We lived near here. If I weren’t in such a hurry, I’d take you to see what’s left of my house. A hill of guano, that’s what’s left,” she said, laughing. “Now let’s pick some flowers. My cousin should see me return with some.”

“Your hands are hot. Do you feel all right?”

“It’s nothing,” she said, disentangling her hands from mine.

“You should come to my office. I would like to examine you.”

“I don’t want you to see me as a sick person,” she said, furrowing her brow.

“But you might be,” I said, and I yanked the stem of an orchid and put it in the neckline of her dress. She looked at me and asked flirtatiously: “Am I pretty or ugly?”

“Beautiful. You are very beautiful. You look like a flower,” I said, blushing.

“An orchid?”

“The most beautiful of all.”

“Then here,” she said, and, standing on her tiptoes, she kissed me.

I hugged her and held her against my body. We stayed like that for a while, in silence, and I could feel her in my nipples.

“I need to go now,” she said suddenly, sliding out of my arms. Then she looked at me for a few seconds with that gaze of hers, and started off running toward the vine thicket without saying goodbye.

There they were, she and Chicoy, waiting for me outside my door, along with half a dozen patients bearing chickens in cages. When I invited her in, she whispered: “I had to see you.” I made her sit down and I took her pulse and her temperature; then, I pressed my ear against her warm back, which trembled at the contact. As soon as I head her breathe deeply and cough, I knew that she was the victim of consumption, or tuberculosis, the new name for that slow but inexorable ailment.

“You are ill,” I told her, with Chicoy now present. “You need rest. Above all, a good diet.”

“I can’t do any of that. My aunt is very old and I do all the washing, ironing, sweeping, and whatever cooking there may be. She’s in charge of sewing and mending the torn clothing that people bring to us. That’s what we live on. What she earns is barely enough for us to eat like birds.”

I looked at Chicoy in search of some solution, but he shrugged his shoulders, telling me with that gesture that there was nothing, or very little, that he could do.

The cries of pain from an old man that had been brought to me on a stretcher forced me to show them to the door of my tiny exam room.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I told them as we said goodbye.

That night I realized that I was in love—that strange unease that causes one to tremble inside and to feel weak, to remember the first kiss over and over again, every slightest detail of that meeting of lips, the small gestures, the inflection of the voice, the gaze. But how could we continue our romance without my reveling my true identity? If I was sure of anything, it was her sexual inclinations. Then, how to tell her that I was as much a woman as she? And not only that: even if my imposture didn’t bother her and she were capable of loving me as a woman, what assurances would I have that she would remain silent, that she would hide my secret? Flustered by so much thinking and my failure to see any solution to the problems I posed to myself, I moved on to considering her state of health. There was no question that her illness would kill her. But it would do so little by little, and long periods of remission were not uncommon. Further, there were cases, when the body is assisted by the proper treatment, in which the pulmonary lesions cured themselves. But, clearly, in her case—her body’s fragility, the physical labor, the poor diet—the end could be upon her in two or three years. I had more than enough food, so I could certainly offer her everything that she might want to eat. As for keeping her at rest, the best thing would be to invite her and her aunt to live in my house for a while. They could stay in one of the huts, and Felipa and Norberta could take charge of their chores. What was more, in my house she would enjoy the good mountain air.

She received my proposition with a shy smile, and Chicoy with a hug of gratitude. That very afternoon, however, an old woman burst into my office, ignoring everyone waiting outside my door. She was ancient, her face so furrowed with wrinkles that it looked like a crumpled up ball of paper. It was Doña Asunción, Juanita’s aunt.

“I’ve come to clarify the situation between us,” she said determinedly, as soon as she’d taken a seat. “I appreciate your good intentions, but you will understand that if we move into your house we will become the target of gossip for the entire town. They’ll say terrible things about Juanita, and they’ll accuse me of prostituting her. Our misery, which, heaven knows, is great, should not mislead you: we are poor but decent. We’ve never given any cause for foolishness or gossip.”

“I don’t doubt it. However—”

“And don’t think we are ignorant, sir. I myself, with all the work I’ve always had, taught Juanita to read and write. I have educated her, sir. When I took her in, she was like a little mountain animal. Furthermore, and certainly you will have taken note of this already, we have not a drop of African blood. My great-great-grandfather was the grand-nephew of Don Pedro de León, second mayor of Baracoa and pacifier of the Indians. Surely you’ve heard of Chief Guamá?”

“I’ve heard a bit, but this is about your niece’s health. About her life, even. Believe me that I don’t exaggerate,” I said, taken by surprise at the lack of rationality in her judgment.

“And what is death compared to honor? Nothing, sir. Absolutely nothing. People are born and they die, lives come and go, but the honor of noble blood endures in memory,” she said, suffocating on the vehemence with which she uttered those words. “You are a foreigner and you are unfamiliar with our customs. Otherwise, you would know that no woman in our country with an ounce of self-respect would ever go to live in the home of a single man.”

“There are other women in the house,” I protested.

“Two black women, and one of them, Norberta, has quite a reputation. Her mother’s mother came from Santa Marta to work a season, and she was lucky enough to take up with the Negro Miguel, a knife and scissors grinder who spent the few reales he earned on whiskey. Of course, Don Prudencio, the parish priest at the time, convinced them to marry. But Nievecita, Norberta’s mother, is the fruit of concubinage. I’m saying this, and I’ve never slandered anyone.”

Since the nonsense I was hearing showed no signs of abating and my office was full of children with diarrhea, I tried to put an end to the discussion with a new offer.

“As you wish, Doña Asunción. In any case, please know that I am committed to helping your niece get well. We doctors also have our honor and it would be a failure of the principles of my profession if, capable of saving her life, I allowed her to die without lifting a finger.”

“What are you insinuating, sir? That you’ll support Juanita and me? We’d die first! We support ourselves! Who do you think you are?” she shouted in my face, and stood up. “You are speaking with a person of illustrious lineage!”

I let her go, my mouth hanging open in surprise. She limped a little and, watching her through the window as she laboriously climbed the hill of my steep street, I felt sorry for her. It appeared that modern times had not yet arrived in Baracoa. But, in that case, what to do?

Determined to clear things up with Chicoy, I went to see him in his hut. I found him in shirtsleeves, composing verses.

“Forgive me for not receiving you in my jacket, Doctor Faber. Doña Asunción is mending it.”

“It’s precisely her that I’ve come to discuss,” I said, and I related the retails of our conversation.

“Oh, Doctor!” he sighed, after hearing my complaints. “That’s how life is in these mountains. I understand you perfectly. Thanks to my reading, I have some education, and I know that here we live as though it were still the times of the Crusades. What can I tell you? I also feel myself a victim of backwardness and poverty. My spirit is not lofty, but at least it flies above those of most people in this city. And yet, here you have me, with a donkey for a steed, copying documents for an ochavo a page, when I’m not writing letters for illiterates and rhymes for the love struck. To judge by the little I earn, I will never be able to pay the four hundred reales it costs to become a public scribe,” he lamented, chewing the end of his quill. “I can’t think of any solution at the moment. Doña Asunción is stubborn. Neither I, nor anyone, could make her change her mind. I am sorry for my cousin Juanita, who is also a martyr, although without knowing it. Do you think she’ll die soon?”

“In a year or two if things go on the way they are.”

“What a pity! Isn’t there some kind of medicine that could save her?”

“No. Only rest and a good diet.”

“There are Negroes here who use herbs to make cures.”

“Pure superstition. No herb will prolong her life.”

“Then there’s nothing to be done,” he said, dipping his quill into the inkwell.

“I have an idea. I have a barnyard. I could make sure you get goat’s milk, pork, chickens, anything she needs. And you could give these things to Doña Asunción as though they were gifts from you. What do you think? Naturally, I’d pay you for your services.”

Chicoy picked up the quill and began to chew on it again.

“I could take a few things to them,” he said. “Not a lot. They know I’m poor. But I’ll be completely honest with you. My cousin has confessed to me that she’s in love with you. She commissioned the very love sonnet I’m composing right now. If you wait a little, I’ll finish it. I only have four verses left.”

“For me?” I asked, moved.

“She thinks that her love might be returned. At least she harbors hope. Anyway, forgive me for butting in to your affairs, but, assuming that Juanita is correct in terms of your feelings, is there something standing in the way of your asking her hand in marriage? Don’t answer me now, I beg of you. Think about it after you’ve read our sonnet. I say ‘ours’ because, while the meter and rhyme are mine, the ideas are hers. But I should warn you that, even were you to ask Doña Asunción for my cousin’s hand, you cannot count on her consent. You are a foreigner, and French, which makes matters worse. Of course, I’ll do whatever I can to ensure that the marriage occurs, but it won’t be easy to convince Doña Asunción that you aren’t in support of Napoleon Bonaparte’s return, since here, he’s considered one rung lower than the antichrist. Everyone knows that you served in his army.”

While Chicoy finished his sonnet, I thought about his proposition. Certainly, it was the most logical way to unite two beings who loved one another, as long as they were a man and a woman. But why not a woman and a woman? I tried to imagine myself married to Juanita, the joy of seeing her every day of the week, of eating and drinking and sleeping together, of roaming the forest as she pointed her finger and named her palaces and castles. Seeing Chicoy blowing on the paper to dry the ink, I decided to bet everything I had. I would confess the truth to Juanita. If she accepted me as I was, I’d propose to her.

“Here you have it,” said the scribe, and he extended his arm with a magnanimous gesture. “You’ll note my admiration for the classics.”

“Thank you, my friend,” I said, taking the paper. “As for the idea of marriage, before I can give an answer, I must speak with Juanita alone. You’ll understand that this is an important step and there are things we should discuss in private.”

“I don’t see any problem with that. I’ll bring her to your office tomorrow.”

“Not to my office,” I said, out of professional prudence. “We’ll meet on Sunday in the mountains. Where the orchids grow.”

“As you wish. I am at your disposal.”