Our Lives Are the Rivers Page 6

  One Sunday, following noon mass, as I was leaving the cathedral with my family, I caught a glimpse of Fausto. Standing alone by the fountain in the Plaza Mayor, he looked splendid in his uniform. That afternoon, I waited with feverish anticipation to see him attend the tertulia. He did not. It was decent of him not to encourage Clemencia. The next time Fausto appeared at my father’s house, he would have to make it clear that he was there not to see Clemencia, but me.

  That night, back in the convent, the image of Fausto’s dapper figure in the plaza kept me feverishly awake. I finally fell asleep, but when I woke up the next morning, I found I was still thinking about him—and kept thinking about him when I was pretending to be praying, when I was in class, when I went to bed that night. I had visions of Fausto’s hands caressing my breasts, the two of us lying in each other’s arms for hours, kissing, murmuring passionate words to each other.

  I began to dream of becoming his wife, that is, if he really was serious about marrying me. Still, I held off answering his letters. I knew once I took that step the innocent affair would no longer be a flirtatious game. It continued to puzzle me that Fausto’s daily letters did not add anything new to my understanding of his character. The monotony of his declarations of love was deflating, but—and it pained me to admit this—his constancy was weakening my defenses.

  I COULD NO longer keep the secret from Rosita. In my room late at night, sharing my bed, I read Fausto’s letter of that day aloud to her. “Should I start answering him, Rosita? What do you think?”

  “Not yet,” Rosita said. “If he really loves you, he must suffer for you first. That’s the way it is in love. Then, when he wins you, he’ll appreciate you even more.”

  We had lost all interest in the nocturnal life in the convent—we had my own drama to entertain us. We would stay up, well past midnight, reading Fausto’s letters and talking about love. We believed that our main purpose in life was to find true love.

  “I don’t think my father will consent to Fausto courting me. It would break Clemencia’s heart. My stepmother is really keen on getting her married off before she becomes a spinster. I cannot afford to alienate my father so. I need my father’s good will. Otherwise, I’ll end up in a convent just like this one.”

  “Manuela, it sounds like you have no choice but to elope. It would be so romantic to run away with a dashing lieutenant.” Rosita sighed.

  I said nothing. I was thinking of how my mother’s mistake had ruined her life and created so much unhappiness. But what if Fausto was the great love of my life and I let him go? Another chance might never come. What if I said no to love and I became a withered, sour spinster like Aunt Ignacia?

  “I always thought that I would take control of Catahuango and then live my life the way I chose to live it, Rosita. But Father has informed me that I will not be able to collect my rightful inheritance until my aunt dies…. That could be decades from now.” I was getting upset. “My greatest fear is that my father will marry me off to a man I can neither love nor respect. Or that he will take me to Spain to live with his family. He talks often about returning to Spain to live the last years of his life. I’d rather die than live in that country, surrounded by the enemy.”

  Rosita took my hand. “Manuela, there’s a big drawback to Fausto,” she said in a kindly way, not wanting to upset me further.

  “You mean that he is a soldier in the Royal Army?”

  “Yes. Politically, he’s the enemy.”

  “I have thought about it, Rosita. And, if he really loves me, he will change for me. Maybe someday we’ll both go into battle, fighting against the Spaniards. After all, he’s a criollo like us.”

  “Maybe after you marry Fausto, he can help you take Catahuango away from your aunt. Then you can exile her…to the Amazon jungle.”

  I laughed. “That’s too close. Now, Patagonia…even better, Tierra del Fuego—that’s where she belongs!”

  “Mongolia. Or how about…Siberia?” chuckled Rosita. We started laughing and rolling on the bed, reciting the names of faraway places. When we ran out of names, I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling.

  “What is it?” Rosita asked. “Why are you so serious all of a sudden?”

  “Rosita, I’ve never kissed a man before,” I confessed. “What will I do when he tries to kiss me?”

  “First of all, you have to let him kiss you. In the meantime, you need to practice. He’ll be horribly disappointed if you don’t know how to kiss. Let me show you how it’s done.” Rosita moved closer to me under the blanket, put her arm around my shoulders, and placed her open lips against mine.

  ROSITA WAS RIGHT. I had no choice but to elope. My father would never consent to my marriage with Fausto. I determined I could not implicate anyone else in my plans. Jonotás, for the obvious reasons; Rosita, because she would be expelled from school and sent back to her family in disgrace. I also determined that it would be as hard to elope from school as it would be from a prison. Thus I would have to do it from my father’s house, on a Monday at dawn before it was time for me to return to Santa Catalina.

  I sat down to write my first letter to Fausto.

  My dear Fausto,

  Your constancy over these months is sufficient proof of the pure nature of your love. Since I know that my father will oppose our marriage, our only option is to elope and then get married. If you agree with me, meet me next Monday at four in the morning at the corner of Calle de Las Aguas and Carrera Montarraz.

  Yours,

  Manuela

  I handed the envelope containing the letter to Jonotás, making sure my intentions were hidden from her. She gave me a quizzical look when she took the thick envelope. “He keeps asking for a token from me,” I lied. “So I’m sending him a perfumed handkerchief. Maybe now he’ll leave me alone.”

  She frowned as she placed the envelope under her turban.

  THE HARDEST PART about planning the elopement was keeping it from my dearest friends. But once Jonotás took the letter, there was no turning back. I had to trust that Fausto’s intentions were honorable. It did trouble me that we had never even had a conversation. But in the novels I read, this was how if often happened. The characters loved each other at first sight, a sign of true and everlasting faithfulness, and with great secrecy found a way to be together. Whatever problems arose, we could overcome them, relying on the glory of our love.

  That Sunday, after saying good-night to Jonotás and snuffing my candle, I got up. I opened my window. In the silvery moonlight, I packed in a little trunk just the essentials for a day’s travel, and nothing else. As the hours passed, my agitation grew. What if I was making a grave mistake and my life, like my mother’s, was ruined? Yet the future my father painted for me was unacceptable, as was one more day in that asphyxiating school.

  When the bells of the cathedral struck four times, I was fully dressed and ready. A shawl covering my head, I took my chest and, in inky darkness, crept down the stairs at the back of the house that led to the servants’ entrance. I removed the crossbar, opened the door slowly, so it would not creak, then closed it just as slowly behind me. I walked on tiptoes until I saw, at the corner of Carrera Montarraz, Fausto and two horses waiting for me. I broke into a run. We kissed passionately but briefly. “Later,” Fausto said. “Later, Manuela. Now we must get away from here as fast as possible.”

  I mounted my horse, secured my trunk, and we took off at a gallop. By the time the sun came up, we were miles from Quito, heading for the slopes of the volcano Imbabura, to a farm that belonged to one of Fausto’s friends. The plan was to hide there until we could get married.

  5

  Natán

  We found out she had eloped when Jonotás went to her bedroom on Monday morning to fetch her for school. Manuela was gone. She vanished without leaving a note, without a word to anyone. Jonotás figured out that she had taken her little trunk with some toiletries and the jewels she had inherited from her mother. This was the only evidence she had eloped. Jonotás later sw
ore to me she had no knowledge of Manuela’s plan to elope. She was as surprised as I was. I believed her.

  Don Simón was not one to start wailing and carrying on about his misfortune. Instead, he immediately took steps to find out what had happened and summoned Jonotás and me to his office.

  He addressed me first. “Natán, do you know where Señorita Manuela is?”

  “No, sir,” I replied, “I do not.”

  “You have worked here long enough for me to get a sense of your character. I believe you. I sense you are incapable of getting involved in any conspiracies.”

  When he turned to Jonotás, I felt weak in the knees. If anyone knew anything it was Jonotás.

  “Jonotás,” he said in his cold inquisitor manner, “do you know where she is?”

  “No, I don’t, sir,” she said quickly.

  “I believe you knew nothing about Manuela’s plans to run away, Jonotás. But you know her better than anyone. Where could she have gone? What do you think could have happened to her?”

  Jonotás looked down at her clasped hands, and I feared for both of us. I knew that Don Simón could not sell Jonotás, because she belonged to Manuela, but she could be hired away to another family in Quito, or—worse—sent to a town far away. I had known Jonotás all my life; the idea that we might be separated terrified me. But why didn’t she have a ready answer for Don Simón? It was not like Jonotás. She always had a quick retort to everything.

  Before too long, Don Simón got the information he wanted out of Jonotás. She told him that Lieutenant Fausto D’Elhuyar had been writing to Manuela for a while, and that Manuela had fallen in love with him. I was as stunned as Don Simón.

  Don Simón blanched, and immediately sent us away. Perhaps he thought that history was being repeated, and that he was being punished, all these years later, for ruining Manuela’s mother’s life.

  IT WAS AS though Manuela had died. Worse, it was as though she had never existed. No one dared mention her name in the house, not even the servants. They spoke in whispers, and lowered their heads when dealing with the family. All the servants—under the threat of being fired—were ordered not to breathe a word of Manuela’s disappearance to anyone outside the house. The slaves, of course, were threatened with a lashing and with being sold.

  At night, on the cot we shared in our room, Jonotás and I wondered where Manuela was, and when she would send for us. We were certain that she would not abandon us in her father’s house.

  When people ask me now why Manuela did something so stupid and risked ruining her life, just as her mother had, all I can offer by way of an answer is that Manuela gave herself to the lieutenant to hurt her father, and to get away from him and his family. When she returned, she talked to me and Jonotás briefly about her elopement, without going into details. After that, for as long as I lived with her, she never spoke about it, at least not in my presence. I have no doubt that she believed the lieutenant when he told her he would marry her. But I’m not surprised she ran away. I blame it on the romantic novels she devoured, which she often read to us. She had run off with the dashing officer the way heroines did in those books. I am sure it never entered her mind that after the lovemaking was no longer new, the lieutenant would lose interest in her and send her back to her father’s house, a ruined girl, the same way it regularly happened in those books.

  THE AFFAIR WITH Fausto D’Elhuyar was short-lived. Almost a month to the day after she ran off, shortly after dawn, when the sky was still dark, there was a knock on the servants’ door. I opened it thinking it was the milkman, who came every morning at that time. Manuela stood there holding her wooden trunk. In the dark she looked like an apparition. “Manuela,” I exclaimed. “Thank God you’re back.”

  We embraced, then Manuela asked if anyone was up yet. I replied that only we servants were awake.

  “I’m going to my room,” she said. “Go get Jonotás and meet me there. Don’t tell anyone else I’ve returned.”

  At that moment there was another knock on the door. This time it actually was the milkman. I took the day’s milk from him, carried it to the kitchen, and then went to wake Jonotás up. I had to put my hand to her mouth to muffle the scream of joy when I gave her the news. On tiptoe, not wanting anyone to hear us, we went to Manuela’s room and locked the door behind us. Jonotás and Manuela embraced and cried, kissing each other’s faces, and I cried, too, seeing the two of them so happy to be reunited.

  When Manuela had calmed down, she said, “I’m sorry for running away without telling you where I was going. I didn’t want to make you my accomplices. My plan was to send for you as soon as I got married,” she paused. “That wretch took me to a friend’s hacienda, a day’s ride from Quito. At first,” she continued, anger rising in her voice, “like the idiot I am, I believed the rascal’s promises, and we were happy. Barely three weeks after we eloped, Fausto told me he had received orders from Quito. Then he added (as if I couldn’t see through his transparent lie) that it would be too risky to take me along with him to his new post before the promotion came through.”

  Fausto arranged for a party coming to Quito to bring Manuela home, and he promised to send for her as soon as he was promoted, which would be in a matter of months. “I won’t be surprised if I never hear from him again,” Manuela sneered. She was through shedding tears over Fausto. “Natán,” she said, “be an angel and bring me a cup of chocolate and a slice of buttered bread?” She turned to Jonotás. “Bring me a jar of water so I can wash myself. Don’t let anyone see you.” To the both of us she said, “When I’m ready, I will send for my father.”

  The Manuela who had fled the house just a month ago, her head and heart so full of romantic notions, no longer existed. She did not seem meek or repentant, but defiant. She had left an innocent girl and returned a hardened woman burned by love.

  6

  Fausto’s promised letters never arrived, as I suspected they would not. But even if he had written, asking me to return and marry him, I would have rejected his proposal. Before Fausto departed for Guayaquil, as the blindfold of passion was removed from my eyes, I saw him for what he was: a frivolous Don Juan, a coward who preyed on romantic girls and was, worst of all, one of the enemy—a Royalist who would never cross over to the cause of independence.

  The situation in my father’s house now became untenable. Though the family had done everything they could to maintain secrecy, the news of my elopement became common knowledge in Quito. The nuns would not accept me back in Santa Catalina, and my father was averse to sending me to Catahuango, where he could not supervise my every move.

  My bedroom became a jail cell. My stepmother and sisters looked past me as if I were not there. Whenever the family went to church or social events, I was not included. During the Sunday tertulias I was told to stay in my room until all the guests had left. The one exception was my brother. When José María came home on one of his weekend passes, he visited me in my room. His first words to me were: “What happened with Fausto doesn’t change the love I have for you, my sister. But I better not run into that scoundrel again, because—I promise you, Manuela—I’ll kill him.”

  “If you’ve really forgiven me, you’ll do no such a thing,” I told him. “Don’t ruin your life over that worthless dog.”

  Knowing that Joche had forgiven me made my humiliation bearable. Yet, for all practical purposes, my life was over. No man would marry me in Quito, where, like my mother, I had been disgraced. I would grow old and decay inside the four walls of my bedroom. My other option was to immure myself in a convent, the emotional equivalent of being buried alive. My one desperate hope was that my aunt and ailing uncle would die soon and I would come into my inheritance. That could be years from now, I knew; years in which I would have to live under my father’s roof, feeling his scorn, and that of his wife and my sisters.

  I wrote letters to Rosita at Santa Catalina and got Jonotás to deliver them. There was no reply. Obviously my letters had either been confiscated by the nun
s, or Rosita’s replies had been intercepted by my family.

  I spent my time reading history books, because my father had removed all the novels from my bedroom and burned them on the patio. When not reading, I sat by the window of my room embroidering. From it, there was a view of Cotopaxi. I looked forward to the late afternoons, when, catching the reflection of the setting sun, the volcano’s snowy summit seemed to catch on fire. It was thrilling to see it discharge its great plumes of smoke. A part of me hoped the volcano would erupt and bury Quito in lava and that would be the end of everything.

  I WAS BY THE WINDOW, reading, when a servant entered to relay that my father wanted me to meet him in his study. This was unusual. When I came in, he asked me to sit down.

  “As you know, Manuela,” he commenced, “for some time your stepmother and I have been thinking about returning to Spain. I have lived in Ecuador for almost thirty years. I am getting old, I miss my relatives, and I want to end my days back home. I see nothing but trouble brewing in the nations of the Andes. In the next years there could be bloody wars. I want to spare my family the bloodshed. I’d like your stepmother and sisters to live in peace and tranquility. However, before we can return to Spain, I need to travel to Panama to settle my affairs there. Juana and I think it would be advisable for you to accompany me. Away from Quito you might be able put everything that has happened behind you.”

  How much I resented him planning my life for me! Still, I decided it would be wise to overlook this. I was in no position to argue. And, after all, one of my dreams had been to travel and see more of the world. Furthermore, at that point I would’ve agreed to go to hell, that’s how desperate I was to get away from Quito, where I was suffocating.