“Father will insist on it.”
“He may insist, but I will not participate in a farce.”
“He’ll beat you bloody.”
“Then he will. But I will not marry Norberto Bustillo.”
Her sister’s firm, recalcitrant words are as painful as a spike to the head. The agony of losing Norberto mingles with the utter horror of witnessing such disrespect. They are, after all, Incláns, and an Inclán should not behave this way.
“You will shame us if you disobey our father. Half the city must already know Norberto intends to marry you,” Perla says, and the idea of gossip angers her; her tears are dried by blazing rage. “We will go to Puerco Ahogado on Friday. We will go there and you may repeat these inanities to our parents, for I have no desire to hear a single other word.”
—
During the next two days silence reigns in the house. Perla does not cry again, there is no point. She prepares for the trip back home, moving like an automaton and remaining quiet. Encarnación’s eyes are red from weeping, but she does not speak either. Each sister remains apart, where once they would have shared all woes.
Friday arrives and Encarnación is nowhere to be found. She must have slipped out early in the morning. Aunt Crésida and Perla are frantic, trying to determine the whereabouts of the girl. Then a boy knocks at their door with a couple of letters between his hands. One is addressed to their aunt, the other to Perla.
The letters are brief and contain the same message: Encarnación has run away with Rómulo. Do not look for her. Forgive her.
After the initial stunning revelation Aunt Crésida telegrams their father, then she heads out of the house and asks Perla to remain there, should Encarnación return. Perla does not think her sister will come back, but she nods all the same. The life has been drained from her body. She sits listless in the living room, watching a fly buzz around and land on the marble bust of Socrates.
The shame,she thinks.The utter shame of this.
Her aunt returns a few hours later. Her brow is sweaty, her lips tremble. She has gone around the city, discreetly trying to see if she might locate Encarnación. But the girl has fled Veracruz. Not on the train, she was not at the station, but by other means.
The next day, Perla’s father comes storming through the door, like a hound baying for blood. He yells at Crésida, then focuses his ire on Perla.
“How could this have happened! You should have been keeping watch over your sister!”
“We were together at all times,” Perla protests.
“Clearly not. Now we are ruined!”
She has been steeling herself for the mockery of a greeting that she will receive in Puerco Ahogado, trying to calm herself, but she cannot help but reply in anger to her father, she who has never dared to speak in anything but the humblest tone to her parents. “Iam ruined.Iwill be the joke of the entire town!” she yells.
Her father greets these words with a laugh. There is a bitterness that strains his voice, which threatens to break as if he were a teenage boy.
“If that were the only consequence, I would consider myself satisfied,” he says. “We’ve lost everything. I’ve borrowed a great deal of money; my one chance of survival was to merge my company with Bustillo’s. No such thing will happen now. You think you will be the joke of the town? Imagine how Norberto feels. He has fled the city and is headed for Xalapa. The Bustillos will never forgive us this humiliation. We are thoroughly ruined.”
Perla sits down and remains intensely still as her aunt breaks into tears and her father buries his head in his hands.
8
Inés headed to the grocer’sbright and early, before her aunt rolled out of bed or their lodgers were served their breakfast. Her shopping could have waited until later, but she wanted to step out of the house. To think.
She’d been bold when she approached Ulises, but now she began to doubt herself, wondering if she could go through with their plan. She wanted the chance to breathe fresh air and contemplate her actions.
She’d seldom dwelled on the concept of hell, but now she paused to think about sin and evil, though curiously she did not feel like she was bad. Was criminality this simple? Did you make up your mind about it and then go on with your life? She wondered if she might ask Ulises about this, then thought better ofit. He might think her weak and not at all suited to the task if she questioned him.
At the grocer’s entrance three old men were complaining about the price of goods. “It’s the damn war,” one of them said. “Everything is scarce. And what do we have to do with that? Nothing. It’s not our fight.”
“The corn crops have been bad. We can’t blame no one but the wind and rain for that.”
“It’s the speculators,” said the third man. “It’s shameful what they’re doing.”
“Not our fight,” repeated the first man.
When they noticed Inés, they nodded in recognition. One of them was Filomeno Gallegos, who grew lemons and oranges and who had lost an ear during the Revolution. He smiled at Inés and doffed his hat, pressing it against his chest. “Miss Inés, if I could have a quick word with you?” he asked, and pulled her aside while the other men kept lamenting the prices of goods.
