Читать книгу Wicked Weeds - Pedro Cabiya - Страница 14

BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES

Almost all of the most recent political exiles, industrialists and intellectuals who defected from Baby Doc’s regime, took refuge in Arroyo Manzano, an inviting, cool, forested little hideaway in the hills overlooking the Isabela River five or six kilometers from Cuesta Hermosa. They built grandiose mansions and created, generally speaking, a highly insular and narcissistic community composed of the crème de la crème of the mulatto social ladder of the country they had renounced.

At first they didn’t feel the need to socialize with their local counterparts. They were self-sufficient and arrogant. They lived off of ancient dues and interests; some were diplomats who made a living giving lectures sponsored by international organizations throughout the world. Others were successful international businessmen who had been able to retain their lists of clients and contacts.

Everything changed when these exiles had children and needed to send them to school. This second generation had to integrate into their host society, adopting their language and customs, thus expanding their social circles beyond the borders of the small redoubt of Arroyo Manzano.

The various and predictable social obligations incurred by the new brood forced the original fugitive group to incorporate themselves as well. The small community was infiltrated for the first time during birthday festivities to which they were compelled to invite their children’s native schoolmates and during which, for better or for worse, the distrustful exiles struck up friendships with the mothers and fathers who dropped off their children and stayed to chat.

The small community’s interactions with the external world became exponentially more complicated when their sons and daughters reached adolescence and young adulthood. For example, the illustrious families of Arroyo Manzano began to receive visits from girlfriends and boyfriends, and not always of the desired color and class. In no other place on earth are the rules of racial segregation stricter than they are in Haiti. The ignorant (the racists) will declare this a great irony.

In any event, the consternated exiles decided to take matters into their own hands and put a stop to the democratization of their progeny, which required them to cultivate the right kinds of friendships and to engender proper discernment among their children. And as they did this, they gradually shed their previous pride and discovered that, beyond their cultural and linguistic differences, they were linked to these other families through the delightful and all-powerful fraternity of money—especially the women.

They didn’t always succeed; their children’s friendships were not always to the exclusive circle’s liking. In fact, some of those friends caused a visceral displeasure—friends like me, a daughter of immigrants who shared their nationality but not their social class, which is the same as saying their skin color.

Of course, none of this mattered in the least to Valérie, who paid less attention to the circumstances and twists of fate that divided us than to those that brought us together, especially within a society that was, in and of itself, already rather exclusive towards those of us from the adjacent nation. She was a yellow-skinned mulatta with green eyes and stubbornly frizzy hair. I was an unmistakable Ethiopian. I liked being with her because of her ease and lightheartedness. Nothing stressed her out and everything made her smile. She seemed to think that showing her teeth off to everyone was a kind of universal panacea. It goes without saying that she was a boy magnet.

I tended to be more obsessive and workaholic. When I was with her I relaxed, forgot about my studies, and allowed myself the occasional indulgence in leisure; a lesson that, once learned, I never forgot, even when Valérie was no longer around. In any case, it never mattered; I always excelled beyond everyone else in all my premed courses.

The poor or mediocre students develop early on the ability to latch on to the more outstanding students as a means of survival within the university context. Timid and compulsive students almost always trade popularity for academic triumph. Seen from this perspective, our friendship was an impeccable symbiotic relationship. Although the initial reasons we were drawn together were, at first, opportunistic, in the end we were bound together by sincere affection. We were inseparable.

We always studied at her house; my neighborhood would have scared her to death. Her mother would have preferred a different best friend for her daughter, someone of considerably more noble appearance, but she appreciated my intellectual superiority and the positive influence I had on Valérie. Her name was Adeline, and she was a high-yellow Fula with ironed hair and a narrow backside. A high-assed Negress, as my mother would say—one of those who came to our country fleeing from Nevis and Virgin Gorda two centuries ago. Adeline, of course, would have taken offense at that, given that she traced her lineage, circuitously but with insufferable arrogance, back to a medieval family from Aix-en-Provence.

She couldn’t stand to be spoken to in Creole and pretended that she didn’t understand me when I did. She spoke Spanish if it was strictly necessary, but she exaggerated her accent in order to lend an exotic and snobbish air to her speech, and she used, without apparent justification, the Peninsular Spanish declensions. She was a source of fascination to her friends, high society white matrons from the capital. Spending time in the company of such a woman—black, exquisite, French, and wealthy—awoke in them a rare nostalgia, a melancholy for times they never lived through, and they imagined themselves part of an Algerian or Moroccan colonial tableau. But these are only guesses.

One evening Valérie and I were studying in the living room at her house when Adeline came in and asked us to move to the dining room table because she was expecting company. Valérie protested, not wanting to relinquish the comfort of the sofa and, especially, access to the television, without which she couldn’t concentrate. I was happy to move, since I find tables better suited for studying. Sofas make me sleepy.

Having evacuated us, Adeline covered the end tables and the coffee table with all manner of hors d’oeuvres: pâté, cheeses, grapes, cured ham, cold cuts. There were also sweets and liqueurs. She stocked the bar with ice; set out wine glasses, tumblers, and highball glasses; and finally lined up two bottles of Grey Goose, one twelve-year-old Chivas Regal, a bottle of Barbancourt Estate Reserve, and several bottles of wine that had already been uncorked to allow them to breathe. She declined all of our offers to help and warned us not to even think of touching anything.

We were halfway through an endocrinology review when Adeline’s friends, a select group of her most refined cohorts from the health club, began to arrive. Represented were the nearby and fluvial Cuesta Hermosa, the melodic Arroyo Hondo, the lively Piantini, and the distant and palatial Los Cacicazgos neighborhoods. These were followed by Bella Vista, Evaristo Morales, and Los Ríos.

Shortly thereafter, Adeline and her friends declared a quorum, officially opened the bar, attacked the trays, and got the party started. It was a boisterous group of eight. They made it impossible for us to concentrate. At first I found their conversation unbearable for its barefaced banality. It wasn’t long, however, before the same shamelessness with which they discussed every trifling detail of their lives as though it were a transcendental landmark event in the history of the universe became irresistible to me, and I began to listen with rapt fascination. Throughout the course of the evening, as they diminished considerably the bar’s provisions, their topics of conversation were the following:

Husbands

“Felipe is insufferable,” declares Cuesta Hermosa. “You ladies have no idea how many times I’ve told that man to get a new golf bag, and he simply won’t hear of it. I just die of embarrassment every time I have to go to a tournament with him. I tell him: Felipe, in these types of events winning is not the most important thing. A man like you can’t neglect his appearance. Your golf bag is super old fashioned. And do you know what he says to me?”

“What?”

“That it’s his lucky golf bag. That I should forget about it, he’s never going to get rid of it.”

“What you need to do,” recommends Evaristo Morales, “is throw it away. Take out all the clubs and put them in a new bag. Throw the old one in the trash.”

“Oh!” complains Arroyo Hondo. “If only mine were like yours and even took an interest in golf. But what can you do? These days he’s all caught up in another blessed charity to help I don’t know which nuns who have I don’t know what foundation. I swear . . . It’s as though he’s forgotten he has children of his own! Tell me, at the rate he’s going, what will be left for those boys to inherit? And in any case, you give the poor the things they need and what do they do? They sell it all. And the women popping out baby after baby. There’s no help for them. The poor love being poor.”

Children

“And who is Estefanía dating these days?” asks Bella Vista.

“Jan Luis,” replies Los Cacicazgos, “the eldest son of the Menicuccis who own the Formosa Supermarkets.”

“Jan Luis?” wonders Piantini. “But doesn’t he have Down syndrome?”

“That’s just gossip,” chides Cacicazgos. “You know how people are. It was those rumors that broke them up the first time. . . . Okay, the boy does look odd, and he may have a speech impediment and a learning disability, but he comes from a good family and, most importantly, he’s completely in love with my daughter. I told her the same thing. But no, no matter how much I tried to talk some sense into her, the little fool could not be dissuaded: she did not want to be a “retard’s” girlfriend. I left her alone, because love can’t be forced—until I found out that she’d been seen with a boy from Alma Rosa, perish the thought. I picked up the phone and called Jan Luis, I did. I stuck my nose in where it wasn’t my business, but isn’t that why we’re mothers? I told him that if he really loved my daughter that he should come to her birthday party that Friday. It worked wonders. The boy arrived with a brand new BMW, a pink bow on the hood. Ah, such a nice touch. . . . They made up then and there and I told her to thank the Lord for sending her a man who loves her so much, because not even her father, in his entire life, has ever given me such a gift. I even gave them permission to take it for a spin—with the chauffeur, of course, because Estefanía doesn’t have her license and the boy is forbidden to go anywhere near a steering wheel. . . .

Daily Life

“Today I needed to go to Prin to exchange a little dress I bought for Paola’s baby, but, really, who can find the time?”

“The same thing happened to me, darling. I mean, imagine: I leave the house first thing to go to the gym, then stop off to pick up my evening gown from the cleaners. From there to Zara to see if I can find a belt to go with the shoes Sandrita brought me from Miami. By then it’s two o’clock, I’ve got an armload of packages, and just ask me if I found the darned belt. And the 27 de Febrero in such gridlock that, if I didn’t have Henry, the chauffeur, I’d have left the Mercedes right there in the middle of the road and walked home. Needless to say, I’m dead tired by the time I get through the front door.”

Many other topics were discussed, but one thing led to the next until they all ended up discussing something about which they were of a single mind:

Maids

“They’re all worthless.”

“They’re all thieves.”

“It’s so difficult to find a good one!”

“And when you do, it’s so difficult to keep her!”

“So true. They’re so proud that the littlest thing offends them.”

“I’ve had good luck hiring evangelicals and Adventists. Although, of course, they won’t lift a finger on Saturdays.”

“Even the saintliest ones bring men into the house.”

“And if she doesn’t steal from you, then the men she brings in do.”

“If I were to tell you . . .”

“And my God, how they eat!”

“The bad part about the ones that stay with you for a long time is that, bit by bit, they gain your trust and then they start to ask for favors and raises and loans. . . . I trade them all in for new ones at the end of each year.”

“I had one that would try on my clothes. I discovered it purely by chance. Obviously, I had to burn everything in the closet. That same day I went to Miami to go shopping. You know how it is, one calamity after another.”

“Oh, but I had one who tried to steal my husband. She’d make herself up every morning. Braided her hair, makeup, nails, tight little dress, like she was going to a party. And with that man, who’s a tiger. . . . I said to him: No, in my house, the prettiest one is me. I sent her packing right then and there.”

“I had one that started every day drunk.”

“I walked in on one masturbating.”

“My God in heaven! Where?”

“In her room—but tell me, is it, or is it not, my house?”

“Some of them stink.”

“Well, to me they all stink.”

“And what about the flood of children?”

“They have their first ones at thirteen or fourteen. . . .”

“Such ignorance!”

“I had one who couldn’t even write her numbers.”

“But, darling, I had one who signed her name with an X.”

“And those names they have. . . .”

“So stupid.”

“So ridiculous.”

“Sugeidy.”

Laughter.

“Primores.”

Laughter.

“Leididí.”

More laughter.

“Gracieusse!” said Adeline, giving a firm, curt clap. Her friends started laughing, buoyed along by the mood of the moment, but suddenly their laughter turned into shrieks of terror. Several dropped their glasses, which shattered as they hit the floor. The unanticipated screams served as prologue to an aghast silence.

We couldn’t see what had happened from where we were sitting, so we got up and peeped in. We couldn’t immediately identify the cause of the terror. We were entranced by the panicked ladies: petrified in various postures of fright, some covering their mouths with both hands.

But then we saw what they had seen.

It was a Congo so dark her skin glinted bluely. Her hair was a disaster, spiky and unkempt, as if she’d just had the restraints from an electroshock session removed. She was very short, with long arms and an abject face. She was barefoot and covered her nakedness with a scant yellow skirt and an old pink blouse. Both were far too small for her, as though a little girl had transformed into a woman overnight—as though she had never taken off the outfit someone had once dressed her in as a child. But the most terrible thing about her appearance was her eyes: blanched orbs that rolled in perpetual circles inside lidless sockets.

“Ladies,” said Adeline, “allow me to introduce Gracieusse.”

It was clear that some of the ladies were about to bolt. If they were unable to do so just at that moment it was because they were unsure as to which route to the door they could take without tripping over Adeline and Gracieusse.

“Your reaction is perfectly normal,” Adeline continued, undaunted. “I’ve invited you all to my home under a suspicion, which I’ve been able to confirm this evening listening to you talk: not a single one of you is satisfied with your domestic help, nor do you harbor any hope that the situation might improve in the future. I can solve your problem.”

The authority with which Adeline made her appeal relaxed the mood, although just slightly. Even the most cowardly among them considered staying to listen to what possible explanation Adeline might offer for having placed them in such a terrifying situation. Those who’d covered their mouths with their hands had not yet removed them.

“I’ll cut to the chase,” said Adeline in a serious tone accompanied by two concise claps of her hands, which had the effect of bringing Gracieusse instantly to her side. “Gracieusse doesn’t eat or sleep. It’s a good idea, however, to give her a bit of water now and then, once or twice per week, along with a handful of unsalted nuts. It’s important that she never taste salt.”

On the majority of faces the grimaces of consternation disappeared and were replaced by expressions of curiosity. Hands guarding mouths were withdrawn.

“Gracieusse does exactly as she’s told,” continued Adeline, “to the letter, even if the order she’s been given jeopardizes her own . . . existence. She doesn’t know how to differentiate. Of course, one must take precautions. After all, the smartest thing to do is to protect one’s investment.”

Cuesta Hermosa raised her glass of wine and took a sip. Piantini, Bella Vista, and Arroyo Hondo spread pâté on slices of bread. Los Ríos ate a grape. All eyes were on Adeline. No one dared ignore her presentation.

“Gracieusse has no sex drive. She has no idea what money is, and it doesn’t interest her. Gracieusse, in fact, doesn’t want anything, doesn’t know anything, doesn’t feel anything. Her sole purpose in life is to do what she’s told.”

Evaristo Morales, among those who’d screamed the loudest, stood up and approached Gracieusse, who, absently and acquiescently, allowed herself to be inspected.

“Boys and girls like Gracieusse come with their ears sealed with wax and a blindfold over their eyes. When they’re delivered these seals are broken. The voice of the first person who speaks in their presence will be, henceforth, like the voice of God. Their face, the face of their lord and master.”

“Do they come any taller?” asked Arroyo Hondo. “My ceilings are so high.”

“I can get them in any size you want.”

“Can their hair be done up?” asked Evaristo Morales. “Can they be dressed in other clothes?”

“Of course. I keep Gracieusse like this because she works in the washhouse out in the courtyard. It would be a waste of time and money to fix her up.”

“How much?” said Piantini, who’d taken out her checkbook and awaited an answer, pen aloft.

It was difficult to understand what was said in the chaos of the ensuing hour and a half. Adeline registered the orders of her friends (who continually interrupted one another with childish desperation) in a notebook and stored their payments in a shoebox. She made out an invoice and receipt for each transaction. That night Adeline collected several hundred thousand dollars, issued in cash and check. Bella Vista asked twice if she could pay by credit card. The response was in the negative both times. One of the ladies had the nerve to ask where she got them. Adeline replied that her husband and his associates were in charge of that—that the less she knew about it, the better. Before bidding them good night, Adeline reminded them that she’d offer compensation for discrete referrals that resulted in sales. She did not specify the percentage she’d pay.

I was dumbstruck. Only later did I realize that I’d been witness to a kind of macabre Tupperware party. Valérie had gone back to studying as soon as she’d realized what was going on. I went back to the table and stared at her in such a way that she couldn’t fail to notice my agitation. I needed to share it. She felt it, too, but not for the same reasons.

“Oh, I know, I know,” was her only comment. “Such a shame. . . . She’s always thinking about business.”

I arranged to have lunch with Valérie the next day, but she didn’t show up. Later, I learned that shortly after I’d left that night, her father, the retired Colonel Simònides Myrthil, had come home and hacked her and Adeline to death with a machete.