Encarnita's Journey Page 6

  In her place, Don Geraldo engaged another Maria, a daughter of the innkeeper in the lower barrio. This Maria presented a sharp contrast to the ousted one, being small and round-faced with a smooth skin, something that her employer appreciated in a woman. Fewer dramas were played out in the kitchen now and the villagers missed the excitement. The new Maria kept a clean, peaceful house. Don Geraldo dubbed her White Maria, and the other, Black Maria.

  Encarnita dreamt one night about the sweet green liquid that gleamed in the light. She was holding a glass in her hand and dancing to the sound of thin, scratchy music, which she could barely hear, when a quite different noise cut across her dream, a terrible low, groaning noise, a noise filled with pain. She sat up startled, as did Pilar. It was Gabriella who was in pain.

  They struggled to save the goat but there was little they could do. She had not been herself this last while; she had been reluctant to walk up hill, had dragged her rope and at times stopped dead, refusing to go further. By the time the dawn came, she was dead. She lay on her side in the straw, eyes open, staring sightlessly. Encarnita wept.

  Their life was even more difficult now than it had been before. Gabriella had given them milk, which Pilar considered necessary for a child in order to build strong, straight bones. They could not afford another goat.

  1930

  Encarnita sat in a hollow, sheltered from the wind, studying the English book of fairy tales Don Geraldo had given her. Each story was illustrated, which was a help. She knew the tale of the ugly duckling that turns into a swan and there was Cinders, the poor girl who marries a prince in the end. Was that how Juliana’s story would turn out? Would she marry Don Geraldo and never be poor again? Encarnita lingered over the picture of Cinders stepping into a glass coach, waved off by her fairy godmother.

  It was March, and still cold. Snow lay thick on the tops of the sierras. Encarnita sat with her knees up and her skirt covering them like a tent to keep her legs and ankles warm. She rested the book against the slope of her knees.

  ‘You were far away in your head.’ She looked up, startled, to see Don Geraldo standing in front of her. ‘It’s a good feeling, isn’t it, being transported into a different world?’ He glanced around. ‘Gabriella not with you today?’

  ‘She’s dead. She was sick and we had no medicine to give her.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Encarnita! You’ll miss her. Are you going to get another one?’

  She shrugged. ‘We have no money.’

  ‘Would you like me to read you a story in English?’

  ‘Please!’

  ‘Which shall I read? Cinderella?’ He sat down and they bent their heads together over the book. ‘Once upon a time,’ he began. He read slowly and clearly and her lips moved as she silently mouthed the words with him. Finally, he read, ‘“And they lived happily ever after.” So it has a happy ending! That’s what we like about stories. Happy endings are not so easy to come by in real life. At times one thinks one is about to achieve one. And then it slips away.’

  ‘But if you have money?’

  ‘That doesn’t solve everything, Encarnita. One of the problems can be not knowing what you want.’ He was staring into space and for a moment she thought he had forgotten she was there. He turned back to her. ‘I’m going off on a journey again. To Morocco. Will you take care of Juliana for me while I’m away? My friend Paco is going to look after her, too.’

  She wondered why he could never stay long in one place. He left the following day.

  When Encarnita went looking for Juliana, White Maria said she had gone home to her mother’s house. Encarnita carried on down the hill to the Casa Narciso. The door was open. No one locked their door in the village though they’d heard that some people up in Granada did for fear of thieves. No one here had much to steal. She went inside. There was no sign of Juliana’s mother or of anyone else. Then she heard a noise. Of Juliana giggling. She was in the loft overhead. With Paco. Encarnita recognised his voice. Other noises followed, which she also recognised. She left, feeling slightly guilty that she had not done a very good job of looking after Juliana, though she knew, when she talked it over with herself, that she could not have stopped her going up to the loft with Paco. No one could stop Juliana from doing anything she wanted to do. It was soon common knowledge that she was sleeping with Paco. Pilar had a word with him. She had known him since they were children together.

  ‘You shouldn’t have betrayed Don Geraldo, Paco. He’s a decent man. He trusted you as a friend.’

  ‘I have to protect her from the village boys. If she was not with me they would all have her. Don Geraldo would like that less.’

  Pilar had no answer to that.

  Don Geraldo heard the news as soon as he arrived back in Yegen and angry scenes ensued. Juliana wept and took refuge with Pilar and Encarnita.

  ‘Why does he make such a fuss? Do you think he’s been faithful to me in Morocco? He’ll have visited the brothels, I know he will.’

  ‘It’s his pride that is wounded,’ said Pilar. ‘Everyone knows you’ve been with Paco. He sees all the young men after you and it makes him feel old. Especially since he’s beginning to lose his hair.’

  ‘And his teeth,’ said Juliana with a giggle. ‘One or two. He doesn’t like that. But I’m going to go back to him now that he’s here. We have good times together.’

  ‘You’ll have to let him see that you’re sorry, then. Otherwise he might not want you.’

  ‘He’ll want me. He says I’m better at making love than any girl he’s ever had before. He told me that sometimes he’s had trouble to make love, even with prostitutes. But not with me. He says I unblocked him.’ Juliana had perked up. She smiled and stretched and made her way slowly back up the hill to Don Geraldo’s house.

  ‘She will try to make sure she has a baby soon,’ predicted Pilar. ‘While she has the chance.’

  Don Geraldo took Juliana back but the relationship was not as it had been before. He was restless and went walking alone again more often and when he met Encarnita he took time to stop and teach her a little English and read to her.

  One day, after he had closed the book he said, ‘I’ve decided to go to London, Encarnita.’

  ‘For ever?’ Her heart was thudding. He had said it in a very final way.

  ‘No, I’ll come back sometime.’

  But not for a while, she thought sadly. Not when he says sometime. It was a word that suggested away in the distant future, or perhaps not at all.

  Before Don Geraldo left he gave Juliana his gramophone and seven hundred pesetas, which became the talk of the village. Imagine such a sum! She had known what she was doing, that girl! Don Geraldo then sent Juliana off with her mother and Paco to stay with her sister in Motril, down on the coast. They departed in good spirits, despite Paco being due to go off soon to do his Military Service.

  Don Geraldo also had two presents for Encarnita. One was a book of poems called A Child’s Garden of Verses, written by a man called Robert Louis Stevenson. The other gift was a motherless four-week old kid with soulful eyes and wobbly legs.

  ‘Do you mean she’s for me to keep?’ Encarnita could hardly find the words to thank him but wanted to do so in his own language. Thank you, thank you! She stumbled over the words and they came out in a tangle.

  ‘De nada,’ he said. ‘What will you call her?’

  Encarnita did not hesitate. ‘Cinderella. I will call her Cinderella.’

  And so Don Geraldo departed, yet again.

  His absence left a hole, as always, in the life of the village, but especially for Encarnita, who felt sad whenever she passed his house. There were no dances now and no visitors arriving for people to watch and gossip about. She would have felt even more lonely with both Don Geraldo and Juliana away if she had not had Cinderella to look after. She went once or twice to see Luisa, who lived out in the campo in a a poor, broken-down shack of a house, but her friend had little time to herself. Her mother had seven children, of which Luisa, at the age of t
en, was the eldest. She had to help look after them, to wash clothes in the stream, cook porridge, gather fuel, light the fire, and often milk the goat. Her father was a drunkard as well as lazy, except when it came to breeding children. Her mother was immensely fat and lay on a stinking couch with the newest baby clamped to her breast and the second youngest yowling beside her trying to get attention and his share of the milk. Encarnita never saw her on her feet and wondered if she was able to walk. More often than not Luisa could not come to school though she desperately wanted to. When her father saw her with a book he would strike her, throw the book across the room and call her a lazy bitch. Encarnita eyed him warily on her visits. Luisa often sported a blackened eye or a bruised cheek.

  After school, every day, Encarnita led Cinderella slowly down the path from the lower barrio into the campo where the spring flowers were blooming and the grass was lush. The kid grew gradually steadier on her legs and her body began to fill out. Pilar was looking forward to the day when she would start giving them milk. Men did not come to their house at night now that Encarnita was older, but there were times when Pilar would get up from their bed of rosemary and thyme and go out for a while. Encarnita did not let herself think about that; she lay in the half-light thinking about the little boy in the book of poems who played with toy soldiers in his bed or else she went through the Cinderella story until they all lived happily ever after and then she would go to sleep. Sometimes she stirred when her mother came back and Pilar would say, ‘It’s all right, Encarnita, it is only me. Go back to sleep.’

  When Juliana returned to Yegen, she was pregnant. Don Geraldo was the father, she was adamant about that. It had to be because of the dates. Believe that if you will, said Black Maria. When Juliana heard what she was saying she went to challenge her and they had a slanging match in the street.

  ‘Wait till you see the baby and then you’ll know!’ yelled Juliana, tossing her head. She looked extremely well. Her skin glowed and the whites of her eyes were clear. She said that word had been sent to Don Geraldo in England and he had agreed to pay her a hundred and fifty pesetas a month. He was in the money! Juliana rubbed her forefinger against her thumb. His aunt had died and he had inherited. ‘He wants his child to have the best.’

  ‘There’s no justice in this world,’ said Black Maria, who had been paid thirty pesetas a month to keep his house. She was becoming more and more resentful by the day and went about the village in an unkempt state, muttering to herself.

  ‘She will go mad,’ predicted Pilar.

  On the 7th of January 1931, Juliana gave birth to a girl in the house of her maternal grandmother. She named the child Elena, after Don Geraldo’s mother.

  The baby was bonny and fair of face. There were some in the village who were convinced that Paco was the father whereas others declared that they saw a likeness of Don Geraldo in her. Everyone wondered if he would come to see her.

  There was a mild stir in the pueblo in April, when, following an election in the country, King Alfonso XIII abdicated. Encarnita heard the mayor read out the abdication statement.

  ‘Sunday’s elections have shown me that I no longer enjoy the love of my people. I could very easily find means to support my royal powers against all comers, but I am determined to have nothing to do with setting one of my countrymen against another in a fratricidal civil war.’

  There was no great upsurge of feeling about it in Yegen. Most of the men were in favour of a republic even if political changes never did much to improve their lives. Few of the women had an opinion; they had too many other things on their mind. One or two of them were sorry for the king, in a mild way, amongst them Encarnita, whose only idea of a king came from the illustrations in her story book. She had always pictured King Alfonso wearing a crown and a red robe with an ermine collar.

  ‘Let’s hope something good comes out of it,’ said José Venegas.

  In May, they heard that there was rioting in Madrid, involving clashes between monarchists and republicans. Churches and convents were fired, not only in the capital but all over the country, as far south as Málaga, creating anxiety and alarm. No one was sure what exactly was going on. A man visiting from Granada said it was the work of anarchists who wanted to stir up trouble for the republic. Rumours about all the different factions that were operating continued to fly around. Encarnita overheard a group of the men talking in the plaza but could make little sense of what they said. The talk became heated. Two brothers, one a Falangist and the other a Socialist, almost came to blows and would have done had the other men not held them back. Pilar said it would all die down in time. There was little that ordinary men could do to change things. Life in Yegen ticked over much as before.

  Sometimes, when Encarnita called at Don Geraldo’s house, White Maria would allow her to go upstairs and sit in the granero and look at his books, as long as she first washed her hands and took care when turning the pages. Sitting in his big chair, wrapped in the stillness of the room, the world far removed, Encarnita could almost feel his presence and hear his voice talking to her.

  In the shelves, she found some books by Señora Woolf. She remembered touching her lovely soft shoes and the lady giving her a serious but not annoyed look. She laughed about that now. One day, perhaps, she would wear such soft shoes herself.

  ‘Encarnita!’ Eventually White Maria’s voice would disturb her and break the trance. ‘Your mother’s looking for you. It’s getting dark, child. You must hardly be able to see.’

  Encarnita liked the long, light evenings of summer when she could be out and about until late. Pilar, who found the heat tiresome, was glad when it was replaced by the milder days of autumn. By then, Don Geraldo had been gone for more than a year. Juliana was untroubled by his absence; she had money to spend and as many men as she wanted and the child was growing and developing as all children should, eating and crawling and trying to stand. Also, she confided to Encarnita, she was worried that Don Geraldo, if he did come back, might want to take Elena from her. In spite of her wild ways, she was fond of her child and cared well for her, keeping her as clean as it was possible to keep a child clean in a poor house without running water.

  ‘But he can’t do that!’ said Encarnita. ‘Take Elena. She’s yours.’

  ‘It was a pact, we agreed. He said if he gave me a baby I could keep her until she was weaned.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘He would take her to England where she would have a better life.’

  Encarnita was silent. It must be true that the child would have a better life in England. How could anyone deny that? She would grow up in a nice house, eat good food and wear fine shoes on her feet and clothes on her back, and go to school every day. But Juliana was her mother.

  ‘He couldn’t make you, could he?’

  Juliana sighed. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You should ask the mayor.’

  But Juliana did not, fearing that the mayor would be on the side of Don Geraldo.

  In the winter, Pilar developed a cough. It came on mostly at night and she would sit up banging her chest with the back of her hand until she had coughed up a gobbet. Encarnita saw that there were streaks of red in the phlegm and fear clutched at her heart. ‘It’s this damp house,’ said Pilar. She went to see a woman in the campo who boiled up some herbs for her. These quietened the cough a bit but it persisted right through to spring.

  The year turned and rumour had it that Don Geraldo would return in the summer, but that came to nothing. White Maria kept the house spick and span and whitewashed the outside walls so that it continued to shine amongst its drabber neighbours. Juliana was pregnant again; by her current boyfriend, Amador, or so she said.

  Pilar had a talk with her daughter who, at twelve and a half, was starting on the passage from childhood to maturity.

  ‘You must not let yourself grow up to be like Juliana, Encarnita. Going from one man to the other. She has no pride when it comes to men. It’s not good for a woman to live like that. She will c
ome to a bad end if she’s not careful.’ Pilar paused. ‘I know at times I have had to do things I would rather not do but I have tried to keep my dignity.’

  Encarnita had never heard her mother make such a long speech.

  Pilar cleared her throat and said, ‘Encarnita, there is something else I want to to say to you. About your father.’

  Encarnita caught her breath. She had often wondered who he was and had imagined him to be a prince who would come galloping into the village on a white horse to rescue them, or a sailor who sailed the seas and went to far-off lands, or an Englishman like Don Geraldo who owned two thousand books. That was her best daydream of all.

  ‘He was a gypsy from Guadix,’ said her mother. ‘You look like him. You have the same black hair and eyes. He was handsome. He was a singer who sang from the heart and a dancer who danced like an angel. His name was Gabriel.’ Two red spots burned brightly high up on Pilar’s cheeks.

  Encarnita waited, hardly daring to breathe.

  ‘I fell in love with him.’

  ‘And he?’

  ‘Fell in love with me.’

  ‘Why then —?’

  ‘Did he leave me? He was married to another.’

  Encarnita found her full voice now. ‘I shall go to Guadix and find him!’

  Pilar shook her head. ‘He was killed in a brawl.’

  Encarnita put her face in her hands and howled. Her mother comforted her and they cried together and after a while they dried their tears and sat quietly.

  ‘You must keep yourself for a good man, Encarnita,’ said her mother. ‘One who is free and will take care of you and give you a good life.’

  Encarnita looked at the scruffy boys who hung around in the plaza and who had started to call after her and she could not see any who would be capable of giving a girl a good life. Most of them had never been to school. She would never take a man who could not read and write.