For the first time, Luisa seemed to notice the expression on the lieutenant’s face. “The sergeant told me she was your aunt.”
He nodded, speechless.
“Did you love her?”
Tejada thought about all of his interactions with Doña Rosalia and all that he had heard of her from her friends and family. He thought about Luisa, a bright, curious child who had gone through nine years of hell because of a war not of her making. He thought about what the newspaper reports would say: “One of Granada’s most respected matrons, foully murdered by an orphaned girl whom she had taken into her home and to whom she had given her protection.”
“I hated her guts.”
Luisa blinked and then smiled at him, a little timidly. “Don’t feel bad,” she said perceptively. “I’m glad it’s over, really. I’m sorry about Alberto, though.”
For a moment, Tejada was confused. Then light dawned.“The pamphlet we found was yours?”
She nodded. “A friend of Mama’s told me where to get it and asked me to bring it to her the next time I came. I was going to wrap a cake in it. No one ever looks at wrappings. And then when Doña Rosalia died . . . I needed a place to hide it, so I slipped it into the back of the cabinet when I tidied up the room. I figured no one would look there.” She realized Tejada was staring at her again and added generously, “You can torture me if you like. But I won’t tell you where I got it.”
She met the lieutenant’s gaze squarely, her eyes huge and luminous with tears. There was no bravado in her voice and no fear. Merely a kind of quiet weariness. “We have other evidence against Cordero,” Tejada said quietly. “If we need more information, we’ll interrogate him.”
He had expected thanks, but she did not thank him. It did not occur to him that he had just told her that Alberto Cordero would be tortured in her stead. Still, she smiled a little, emboldened enough to make a request. “Do you think they’ll let me see Mama again before the sentencing?”
He hesitated, unwilling to make a promise he might be unable to keep, and her smile faltered and disappeared. “Do you think . . . ?” she began, and her voice wobbled. “Do you think I could write her a letter? Just to explain. So she doesn’t worry about me anymore.”
“Of course.” Tejada had a sudden vision of how a woman in prison would react to the news of her daughter’s death. He shuddered. He had done guard duty often enough to dread the low howls of the bereaved that kept both prisoners and guards awake at three in the morning. Sometimes the prisoners were more brutal in suppressing those howls than the guards, and he had never blamed them. They were not a healthy thing to listen to at night.
“And maybe to Aurelia, too?” Luisa asked, her voice reminding him almost unbearably of Toño’s. “I never got to say good-bye to her before. I never thanked her. And she was like another mother to me.”
He nodded, and Luisa retreated to the pantry, returning a moment later with a tablet and pencil. “It’ll just take a minute.”
“Take as much time as you like.”
She wrote standing up, leaning over the table, and forming the words carefully, sometimes scratching out a phrase and rewriting it. He watched her and felt words welling up inside him:
No one
knows we’ve spoken, and no one can guess what you’ve said. Suppose we
forget the whole thing. You’re young, you have your whole life ahead of you. You dreamed the whole thing. Dreamed this conversation. I’ll interview
Fulgencio when he comes in and then go back to the post, none the wiser.
He was never sure later whether he kept silent out of the honest belief that Doña Rosalia’s murderer could not be allowed to get away, or out of caution. The guardias and María José were aware that he had talked to Luisa. It was only a matter of time before someone else figured out the trick with the wine, and when they did, all the evidence pointed to her. He never knew whether he kept silent because he believed there was no point in postponing the inevitable or because he feared that if someone else tumbled to her guilt they would also deduce his complicity. She wrote for nearly forty minutes and finally folded the two notes in half. As she looked up, the words of pardon rose once more in the lieutenant’s mouth, but before he could speak, she said quietly, “Aurelia’s address is up in my room. Can I go and get it?”
He nodded, dizzy with relief. “I’ll wait here for you.” Then, in case she had not understood, he added gently, “Take as long as you need to find it.”
She smiled slightly and went without a word of farewell, leaving the letters she had written on the table behind her. For a moment he willed her to pick the door to the alley behind the house, hoping she would understand that he would follow only slowly and clumsily. But she moved with firm footsteps toward the door that led to the interior of the house. He frowned, nervous, hoping she would remember that there were guards posted outside the front of the house.
But not at the back
, he thought.
And even if she leaves calmly through the front, like nothing’s happening,
there’s a chance they won’t stop her
.
To give her time, he picked up the letters and unfolded them. As he had expected, the recipient’s address was neatly written in the upper corner of each. The first one was simple, barely more than a few lines:
Dear Mama Aurelia,
I’m sorry I couldn’t write before, but they wouldn’t let us at the orphanage, and then the lady I worked for wouldn’t allow it. I’m afraid I won’t be able to write again, but I wanted to tell you that I miss you and remember you, and that I love you. Thank you for everything. Tell Diana I love her and missed her a lot and that I hope she grows up to be a scientist just like she planned. Much, much love,
Luisa
The second one was even shorter:
Dear Mama,
I’m sorry. I know you told me to be brave, but I couldn’t stand it anymore. I’m really sorry I can’t come next Sunday like I promised, but last time you told me that anything was better than thinking of me in prison. So just remember that I won’t ever be in prison anymore. Please don’t be disappointed in me. I love you.
Luisa
The lieutenant smiled to himself. She was a gallant child to write so optimistically of never being in prison, but if she could make it to the mountains, the maquis would take her in. She was unlikely to live to old age with them, but at least she would die fighting. He wondered, with some concern, if she would make it to the mountains.
He put both letters in his pocket and then stepped out into the courtyard and walked toward the gate. It was already dark outside, and the wind blew cold as he opened the door to the street. Pinpoints of light shone in windows of the house opposite, and the guardias on duty were black shadows, with their cloaks whirling around them. One of the shadowy figures moved toward him, and he was about to salute and tell the man that all was well when a scream ripped across the courtyard. He froze. “
Luisa!
” The second scream had words in it.
Tejada’s arm, already raised in friendly salute, frantically waved the oncoming guardia toward him. The man broke into a run. The lieutenant turned and sprinted back into the courtyard, bursting into the kitchen and through the door Luisa had taken earlier, the guardia he had signaled pounding at his heels. Tejada blindly followed the sounds of hysteria along the corridor, cursing himself for an idiot. How could he have been so stupid as to misread the notes? The girl’s obvious intention? The cries were coming from the top of the house, and panic and anger at himself propelled the lieutenant up several flights of stairs at a run.
“Luisa! Luisa! Holy Mother of God, Luisita!” María José was cradling the girl, sobbing, when they finally reached the maids’ room.
“Should I get a doctor, sir?” The guardia asked, breathless.
Tejada looked at the angle of Luisa’s neck. Perhaps María José had unintentionally jarred it when she had tried to cut the girl down from the attic rafter. Perhaps not. He doubted it would have made a difference. “No,” he said, his mouth dry. “Get a priest.”
T
he entire Tejada family went to the station to see the lieutenant and his wife off. All of them were in very good humor. Juan Andrés was pleased to take a morning off work and go strolling with his wife. His children, equally pleased by the idea of missing school for the morning, were exceptionally gracious to their little cousin. The children’s mothers were both so relieved by their imminent parting that they managed to be quite cordial to each other. Doña Consuela enjoyed looking at the traveling dresses of the women setting off on journeys. Don Andrés Tejada León was perhaps happiest of all. He had spent the preceding evening at the casino, regaling his acquaintances with the story of his son’s solution to the Ordoñez murder. The newspapers had printed an abbreviated version, saying that a deranged servant had confessed to murdering her benefactress and then committed suicide. But, as Don Andrés proudly pointed out whenever he was given the opportunity, the girl would never have confessed without the expert questioning of his son. “He’s clever, my Carlito,” Andrés had boasted. “Hardheaded, mind you, and damn irritating sometimes, but a smart boy. A good head on his shoulders. It’s why I sent for him when I first suspected Aunt Rosalia had been murdered. I knew he wouldn’t take any nonsense from anyone.”
The only unsmiling member of the group was the lieutenant. He anxiously superintended the stowing of the luggage and then shifted from foot to foot, muttering that they needed to get on board as his family gave their final embraces and good wishes. He was inclined to snap at Toño, who was retrieved from a large luggage locker by an obliging porter. When he finally shepherded Elena and Toño onto the train, his entire family followed, except for his mother, who declined to risk crushing her clothing in the narrow passages. Juan Andrés good-naturedly shared the children’s delight in the compartment and helped them to swarm over the tiny space. His wife urged Elena to write. The lieutenant found himself pushed up against the door of the compartment next to his father, who was wringing his hand and congratulating him again. To his disgust, the train was delayed, so his father’s approbation went on for a long time. The din and his feeling of claustrophobia were nearly unbearable, and he began to wonder if the whistle would ever blow.
Finally, the porters shooed all nonpassengers off the train. Tejada submitted to a last handshake and embrace and pat on the back, and then he was alone in the compartment with Elena and Toño and the whistle sounded and the train crawled northward. He sank into a window seat and stared at the dry golden landscape without seeing it. The train chugged past fields where only the stalks remained after harvesting and dirty stone villages, their church spires dark against the azure sky, and then climbed into barren, bandit-infested hills. Forty minutes north of Granada the train jerked to a halt at a railroad crossing. They were near a small town, and the tracks ran beside a cemetery. The graveyard was filled with peasants, taking flowers and candles to the graves, under the supervision of a black-robed priest. Tejada blinked at the sight, wondering for a moment if it was a funeral. Then he remembered: it was All Saints’ Day, the day of the dead. He watched the mourners. None of them looked up at the train’s windows. They were probably used to trains stopping there.
He remembered Sergeant Rivas’s anguished face two nights earlier, when he had returned to the post to make his report. “She was distraught, right?” the sergeant had said. “A priest will certify that?”
“Clearly insane,” Tejada had answered vehemently, clutching at a straw of comfort. “I can explain to the Father.”
“You think he’ll approve Christian burial?”
“He’d better!”
Rivas had said nothing but had looked at the lieutenant with cold, reproachful eyes. The priest had not challenged him either. But behind their respectful, “Just as you say, Lieutenant,” he had heard the unspoken criticism: You drove her to the edge. Why did you leave her alone then? He wondered if anyone would bring flowers to Luisa’s grave in a year’s time.
“Grr-owl!” A stuffed lion butted Tejada in the chest, interrupting his reverie.
“For goodness’ sake, Toño, can’t you be a little careful with that thing!”
Toño snatched back the stuffed animal and looked up at his father with wounded eyes. “Drigo just wanted to play,” he said, subdued.
“Well, have him play somewhere else!” Tejada snapped, hating himself as he saw the child shrink away.
Elena picked up Toño and Rodrigo. “Why’s Papa mad?” Toño asked, his voice choked with unshed tears.
Elena sighed. “Papa’s not really mad, sweetheart. He’s just sad right now.”
“Why’s he sad then?”
“Because . . .” Elena cast a pleading look at her husband. He avoided her eyes. “Because his job in Granada didn’t end the way he thought it would.”
Toño said, “Don’t be sad, Papa. I heard Grandpa say you did an amazing job.”
The lieutenant snorted. “Yes. Thanks to me, he’s a much richer man. And Tío Felipe won’t get a penny of his mother’s money.” He saw that Toño looked puzzled as well as unhappy and he ruffled the boy’s hair. “Never mind, Toño. I’m glad to be here, just the three of us again.”