“It’s been nearly a month. I deserve an explanation,” says Sister Hortensia.
The infant wiggles under Puri’s grasp. She returns her attention to the little boy. He’s a diaper fighter. His short legs are rolls of pink fat. He’s jousting with them and enjoying every minute of it. It makes Puri laugh.
“Purificación!”
Puri stiffens at the sound of her name. She quickly pins the diaper and lifts the baby from the changing table. Worn from combat, he rests his tiny head on Puri’s shoulder.
She smiles and turns to Sister Hortensia. “He’s tired himself out.”
“Put the child down and come at once.”
Puri doesn’t want to put the child down. She wants him to rest upon her shoulder, to feel comfort, safety, and love after the diaper fight. She fears if she puts him down he might develop the trauma of loneliness the doctors describe. But she does as Sister Hortensia instructs. Her first duty is to follow orders.
Puri leans over Clover’s bassinet. The girl immediately responds to her, eyes wide and mouth curving into a smile.
“See, that’s lovely,” notes Sister Hortensia.
“She’s beautiful. Well, they’re all beautiful,” says Puri quickly. They’re not supposed to have favorites. The doctor nods and exits.
“Apparently not beautiful enough. The priest in San Sebastián informs me that there has been a change,” says Sister Hortensia.
“Oh no,” says Puri. “They’re not going to adopt her?”
Puri attempts to conceal her distress. Clover is a special girl who must have a special life. To live amidst the velvet-green mountains of San Sebastián, looking out upon the churning cobalt sea, this is the plan.
And then Puri remembers.
She recalls the article and her parents’ hushed conversation in the kitchen. The floppy Basque beret versus the jaunty military beret. The reported sign, illegally posted on a wall in San Sebastián, that says, PLEASE REMEMBER, THIS IS NOT SPAIN.
The Basque people are an indigenous population with their own language and heritage. El Caudillo wants to unite everyone as Spaniards so the Basque language has been banned and some of their schools have been turned into jails.
Is this the reason Clover is no longer going to San Sebastián? Confused while eavesdropping and even more confused now, Puri wonders. Why is it all so complicated?
“Purificación!” scolds Sister Hortensia. “Stop daydreaming. We’ll need different photos. Have them focus on facial portraits this time.” She points to Clover, swaddled in a pink blanket. “See, like that she’s perfect.”
Sister Hortensia sighs and exits the room.
What does she mean, like that? Puri wonders.
25
Ringing.
It comes in intervals. It begins, stops, then begins again. Daniel’s eyes flutter. His body feels nailed to the bed, his limbs too heavy to lift. Just as his eyelids close, the shrill sound resumes. Drunken with sleep, he stumbles from the bed to the sitting room of the suite. Daylight peeks through the heavy drapes covering the sheers. He locates the phone and lifts the receiver.
“Daniel? Is that you, cariño?” His mother’s voice peals as shrill as the ringing.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’ve been calling and calling.”
“I’ve been sleeping.”
“It’s already midday,” she announces. “You must still be on Texas time.”
“Or maybe I’m more Spanish than we realized.”
“I called the front desk. They said that my telegram arrived.”
“I have it. I’ll go get it.”
“No, no,” says his mother. “It’s business, well, of the womanly sort. I know how you hate that kind of thing.”
She laughs. The fake laugh. The nervous laugh.
“You don’t need to open it, dear. There’s a cable office downstairs in the hotel. Take it there and have them forward it to me at the Hotel Alhambra in Valencia.”
Daniel yawns, looking back toward the bed. Fatigue pulls harder than curiosity.
“Did you hear me, Daniel? You don’t need to open it. I’ll be here waiting.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll send it. Goodbye.” He stares at the bed. It beckons. Her voice is still chirping through the handset as he hangs up the phone.
* * *
More ringing.
Daniel looks from the pillow to the clock. He’s been asleep for two more hours. Anticipating his mother’s reprimand, he doesn’t answer the phone. Instead, he heads for the shower but stops midway. He sees the telegram on the table and recalls the urgency in his mother’s voice, along with Ana’s desire to deliver it.
It felt like it might be important, said Ana.
You don’t need to open it, his mother insisted.
Daniel retrieves his camera. He snaps a picture of the telegram on the side table, the stormed bed looming in the background. He sets down his camera and picks up the telegram.
And then he opens it.
26
Miedo. Fear.
It lingers in the blood. Of that, Rafa is sure.
He arrives at el matadero, the cavernous slaughterhouse, and changes into his issued work clothes: white pants; white shirt; white apron; and wooden clogs. The same clothes are worn for the entire workweek. On the sixth day, employees bring their uniform, stiff and rank with decay, home to wash.
Each Sunday, Rafa rises with the sun. He carries the galvanized tub to the well. Using castile soap and lemons, he scrubs at the scents and smears of blood, feces, and innards living in the clothes. He watches the remnants of death seep from the fabric into the water. When he is finished, the tub is a bath of muddy chestnut, the clothes closer to their original selves, and the apron a pale shade of dead blood that smells like citrus.
Fuga says there is good death and bad death. Fear brings bad death, it leaches into the organs and skin. Butchers claim it affects the product. Good death, peaceful or unaware, quickly separates the Holy Ghost from the suitcase of skin holding the bones.
The cemetery is full of bones. At first Rafa was afraid of them. Most are sealed in coffins, but there are mass pits with the poor and the older pits with the Protestants. The cemetery and slaughterhouse require Rafa to face his fear of death. That’s why he endures them. “You see, by facing fear, I am cleansing myself, straining my past of the horror that infects me,” he tells Fuga.