House on the Lagoon by Rosario Ferré

marriage. But to suggest that she had been in love with Pavel was a big leap. His father had been a difficult man; he had a vile temper and Quintín had had a hard time getting along with him as a child. But he was a generous provider and a kind parent. With time Quintín had come to understand Buenaventura better, and now that he was middle-aged, he could fully appreciate his father’s goodness. His mother and father had been happy and unhappy together, as is usually true of any marriage.
    By Chapter 8, Quintín had ceased to be amused. His mother had been a beautiful, delicate creature, both spiritually and physically, and he resented Isabel for ridiculing her. Rebecca was an accomplished poet and her literary salon had been a success in the San Juan of the twenties. When Quintín was born, she had given up her artistic career and had devoted herself to him. She hadn’t ignored Quintín, and he couldn’t remember at all having been relegated to the cellar when he was a child. Petra must have spread that vile rumor; she couldn’t stand Rebecca.
    From the moment she arrived at the house Petra had wielded an inexplicable power over Buenaventura. Being a Spaniard, he found African voodoo rites exotic. He loved to hear Petra talk about her embrujos and Quintín himself joked about her hocus-pocus with his friends at the San Juan Sports Club. But somehow those embrujos had had an effect on Buenaventura. Rebecca sensed this, and she tried to get rid of Petra, but it was useless. Petra had entrenched herself in the cellar like a monstrous spider, and from there spun a web of malicious rumor which eventually enveloped the whole family.
    By four in the morning, Quintín had finished reading Isabel’s work-in-progress. He gathered up the pages, put them back in their tan folder, and tied the purple ribbon around it. Then he hid the folder behind the dictionary. He wasn’t angry with Isabel, but he was uneasy. He didn’t want to mention the manuscript to her. But he would watch her behavior closely, very closely, during the next few weeks.

PART 3
Family Roots

9
Carmita Monfort’s Promise
    Q UINTÍN OFTEN CAME TO visit me in Ponce when we were engaged, and he used to stay at the Texas Motel. It was a square cement building with four furnished rooms where traveling salesmen stayed one or two days, and it stood right next to the gas station. Texaco was the first gas station to open in our town, and I remember the first time its red star stayed lit all night. It thrilled everyone in Ponce, and we were naïve enough to think it was a herald of progress.
    Quintín had no money then, but we were very happy; we looked forward to the day when we would get married. But we were going to have to wait a long time to see our dreams come true. Buenaventura was adamantly opposed to our marriage until Quintín had saved enough money to be completely independent; we had no idea how long it would take.
    That summer we were both on vacation, home from our respective schools up North. A warm, sweet-scented breeze blew from the cane fields near town, and as there was no air-conditioning, we often went to sleep without any clothes on. I was twenty-one and Quintín was twenty-four. I was going into my senior year at Vassar College, and Quintín had just finished his master’s degree at Columbia University. He worked all week at Mendizabal & Co., lowering codfish crates with a forklift from the transport trucks at the warehouse, in order to save enough money to board the público which brought him to Ponce on weekends.
    There was very little to do in the town. We would go for a stroll around the plaza in the evening or maybe to the movies, to an Ava Gardner or a Rock Hudson film. We said good night early by the iron gate. Around one o’clock, though, when everybody else was asleep, I would get up and walk barefoot to the garden. I would remove my nightgown and walk naked into the shrubbery. Quintín would be waiting for me, deep in the groves of