They’d made fun of Inés for this reason when she was a child, all those snide children chittering about her. Even the schoolteacher had smirked when she looked at Inés the first day of class and wondered, in a loud voice, if she’d sprouted from the ground like a cabbage that she did not have two surnames.
Bartolo’s family wouldn’t want to print wedding banns announcingto the world that he was marrying a bastard, Inés Inclán, the fatherless shame of the Incláns. Even before her aunt went blabbering to Sarita Novo and told her—and therefore the entire town—that Salvador had seduced her, they looked at her with cautious eyes.
Besides, she had nothing to offer, nothing but herself, and that was not enough. At least, not when other girls in town had parents who owned a butcher shop, like Gertrudis.
She didn’t care about Bartolo. He was a silly boy. But she detested the idea of withering inside this house, which was what her aunt wanted. If only she might save enough cash to move to the city.
In her mind, Inés counted the money she possessed. The count came awfully short. She’d never be able to leave. She’d be mummified within these walls.
She remembered her grandfather and the way he used to slam his cane against the floor to attract attention, and she pictured Perla doing the same thing to her when she was an old woman. And when Perla died, what then? Inés would have the house. That crumbling, dark, desiccated house was the “reward” her aunt dangled before Inés.
She did not want it. It was a mausoleum, a palace for the dead.
Her thoughts flew back to Salvador, to those few moments of happiness that she’d enjoyed at his side. The secretive kisses, the late nights of muffled lovemaking. Aunt Perla ruined that for her. Aunt Perla wouldn’t allow Inés even the smallest comfort.
She clutched the teacup with both hands. She had the mad desire to crush it, to make her hands bleed against sharp ceramic shards. She finished her tea and washed the cup.
—
In the morning Perla took Ulises out for a walk, to show him the town square. To parade him, like a trophy won at the fair. To have the townspeople gawk in admiration at the stranger. Cándido would be peeved, no doubt.
Meanwhile, Inés went to Ulises’s room to change the sheets. Freshlinens every two days, her aunt had said. Their lodgers got fresh linens every week, but Ulises was special. She stripped the sheets from the bed and contemplated the room.
His cologne and his shaving implements sat upon the vanity, sparkling in the morning sun. Again, she wondered about this man who’d waltzed into their guesthouse with pricey trinkets and beautiful clothes. She remembered that Cándido wanted information on him. Not that she needed to humor him. She could simply pocket his money.
But Professor Nepomuceno was wrong. She wasn’t Aphrodite or Athena. Inés was Pandora, wishing to peek into the box, and she was curious about the newcomer. She opened a drawer, looking at the shirts Ulises had folded and placed there, approving of the tailoring and the fine details on display.
His matching luggage, tucked in a corner, was of excellent quality. He wasn’t a boy dragging a suitcase with a broken handle, like Salvador had been the day he walked into the guesthouse. Where did he come from? It seemed to her Ulises could only be a fiction, a man who had emerged from a movie reel, this Errol Flynn look-alike, this stranger who could share the screen with Joan Fontaine and Susana Guízar.
She opened the smallest of the suitcases, admiring the blue silk lining. Her fingers slid across the fabric. Without intending it, with the desire to luxuriate in the feeling of the silk, she discovered an oddity.
Inés frowned. The stitching on one corner had been sewn with a clumsy hand and was coming undone. She poked at it and peeled it back.
She thought she’d find money, a paranoid man’s fortune. Instead, she pulled out letters, tied together with a piece of string. She sat on the floor and undid the knot, looking at the postmarks. Some of the letters were from her aunt, but most were from other women. She read a couple of them.
She also found a copy ofConmovedor,a magazine of the kind that had lonely hearts ads at the back of it—the kind her aunt had bought onseveral occasions, pretending she was not interested in that section. A couple of corners were turned, marking pages. Several ads had been circled with a red pen. Quickly she grabbed another letter, and another, going through their contents.
Enclosed are the hundred pesos you requested, my dear. I hope your business venture is going well and that soon we might meet. I long to hold you in my arms,said one of the letters.
Inés laughed. Then, fearful that she might attract attention, she pressed a hand against her mouth. But it was funny! Aunt Perla was practically purring with delight because she had a new suitor, and he was a phony. Wait until she told her…
Inés dropped her hand, thinking hard. She heard the shuffling gait of Rita, coming up the stairs with her bucket to mop the hallways.
Inés stuffed the letters and the magazine back inside the suitcase and tucked it back in the corner. She quickly made the bed and lugged the old bedsheets downstairs.
—
All afternoon she tried not to stare at the man sitting across the table from her. For once her gaze was respectfully on the napkin on her lap, as her aunt commanded. Rita passed around the empanadas and the cups of coffee. Inés toyed with a crumb, but her nerves made it impossible to eat properly. She feared her aunt might comment on this, but Perla was busy smiling and chatting with the other people around the table.
Busy performing for him,Inés thought. Meals were never this congenial at the guesthouse. If Inés had failed to finish the laundry or not made the beds to the satisfaction of her aunt, Perla was quick to chide her in front of everyone else.
It’s too bad Inés was distracted and didn’t launder the sheets,she might say.Tomorrow she will get to it, won’t you?
Seldom, too, were Inés’s chores up to the standards of her demanding aunt. Rita and Estrella and Fito were also the recipients of cruel barbs, but Perla reserved her most poisonous words for Inés.Scrounger,she said when she was particularly furious, as if Inés were eating all the rice and beans and eggs in the kitchen, as if she didn’t toil with Estrella in the garden behind the house or assist with the upkeep of the rooms.
I hate this miserable place,Inés thought.I hate these miserable people.
“The problem, Mr. Linares, is that every year the festival of San Fidel de las Cumbres becomes rowdier,” Eduviges was saying. “It used to be a church celebration, now it resembles a common town fair, practically acarnival.”
