The House of the Indiano
Now the road reached the top of the long ridge and turned left and Veronica could see the deep narrow valley—Barranco de la Virgen—which was spread out south and north below her. What is called a barranco here on Grand Canary Island can range from a rocky ravine to a verdant valley, running from the central mountains down to the coast. In the north-central region of this volcanic island, Barranco de la Virgen cuts into the high plateau between the villages of Fontanales and Valleseco. At the head of this barranco lay the slumbering hamlet of Valsendero, its white buildings covered over by the bright boughs of chestnut trees. Veronica pulled over to the verge, stopped the car, opened the door, and stepped out onto the reddish-brown soil.
Looking at this rich reddish-brown soil, Veronica realized she had forgotten to stop at Teror. She had driven right past that town without thinking, practically without seeing it, and she had not remembered that she had to stop to buy the newspaper.
“Oh,” she murmured, “I still feel sleepy.”
Veronica had felt sleepy when the phone rang that morning. She had been in the kitchen preparing breakfast and the smell of toasting bread had turned her thoughts to the oven in the house at Los Nogales, their farm near Valsendero. The last time Veronica had been at the farmhouse, she had noticed that the inside of the old wood-burning oven was wet. The recent winds and rains must have dislodged some roof tiles. Veronica had made a mental note to remind Leoncio, the stonemason who was restoring the farmhouse, to have a look at it. That had been on her mind as she shuffled like a sleep-walker into the den and picked up the phone. She had been startled to hear Leoncio’s
hoarse voice:
“Good morning! Did I wake you up?”
“No, I was already awake...almost. Good morning, Leoncio...is something wrong?”
“Are you coming up to the farm today?”
That had surprised Veronica. Leoncio was a craftsman of the old school, not given to answering a client’s question with another question. For the past five weeks, he had been restoring the old farmhouse. Like many other craftsmen of his generation, he was a man of few words but he was always amiable and above all, polite. Veronica had seen that Leoncio was obviously a skilled craftsman so she trusted him to resolve any small difficulties according to his own criteria; he rarely bothered her with details.
Veronica was usually forthright in conversation; without thinking, she had answered him by repeating her question: “We were thinking about it...is something wrong?”
“No, nothing in particular...just that a week has passed since you last came up here. Before I continue, I wanted you to have a look.”
His hoarse voice had sounded strange to her; it had a guarded tone, as if he was afraid of being overheard.
“We’ll go up when we’ve finished breakfast, Leoncio.”
“See you soon then.”
He had hung up without saying goodbye—which had also surprised her.
“I still feel sleepy...I have too many things on my mind,” Veronica had thought as she went back to the kitchen. Nevertheless, Leoncio was right. She never let so much time pass without going up to the farm, especially when there was some work going on.
She had buttered the toast, which was cold. This day, in the middle of the month of May, had dawned cloudy and cold. So far this month, day after day of cold and drizzle had discouraged many people from flocking to Las Canteras Beach in Las Palmas, the capital city.
“Everything is changing,” she had said to herself, “even the weather.”
She’d been startled once more when, behind her, she heard her
husband’s voice:
“Yes...it’s a grey day.”
She had turned and looked at him. He was still wearing pyjamas. “I’m glad you’re up,” she’d said in her forthright manner. “Leoncio just phoned. We have to go up to the farm.”
“I remember you said something about that...” he had replied. He had paused, combing his hair back with the fingers of his right hand, then looked out the window at the sky. “But you know, when it’s cloudy on the coast, Los Nogales will be shrouded in mist and drizzle...is something wrong?”
“He wants us to have a look at the work before he continues. That’s what he said.”
“Well, he is a good worker. If it is only to have a look...you can take care of it. I don’t feel up to going out in this weather.”
She had sat down at the table. She had looked up at him:
“Sit down and have your breakfast. You will feel better. There is always the possibility that the weather will lift. The sun will burn off the mist.”
“No,” he had said, pulling out a chair and sitting down. He had put his elbows on the table, resting his unshaven cheeks between the palms of both hands. He had looked down at the buttered toast and the mug of milky coffee: “I really don’t feel up to it.”
“Have your breakfast,” she’d said.
“I’m sure you can take care of it,” he’d said, looking at her. “Where’s the newspaper?”
“Alberto—I haven’t had time to go out. We will stop at Teror to buy one.”
As it turned out, the weather had lifted and the sun had burnt off the mists by the time Veronica arrived, alone, at Valleseco. Then the grey morning and her spirits had brightened: “Sunbeams would now be filtering down through the leaves and limbs of the chestnut and walnut trees...weather like this created an unreal atmosphere—almost phantasmagoric—like the enchanted forests of fairy tales...” she had
thought.
It had been, of course, impossible for her not to go. Veronica had felt as if some invisible strings of inherited remorse had settled on her conscience, binding it up, pulling her towards the mists of Valsendero, and the house of the Indiano. It seemed as if her conscience had become the collective conscience of the descendants of Don Bartolomé, her husband’s great-grandfather. He was known as el Indiano de Oro: he had emigrated to the West Indies in his youth, come back to Grand Canary Island with a fortune in gold and, a hundred and fifty years ago, had the rambling stone house built at Los Nogales.
So she had driven past Teror, forgetting to stop to buy the newspaper, continued on to the outskirts of Valleseco, taking the narrow road surrounding La Laguna under a leafy canopy of eucalyptus, pine, and plane-trees. These tall old plane-trees, with their straight trunks covered in whitish bark and their hanging fruit swaying in the breezes, always delighted her whenever she drove into the roundabout at the village square and took the turnoff just there, on the right, which would take her to the hamlet of Valsendero.
At last, the sun had won its battle with the clouds. Flashes of sunlight were playing amongst the branches of the trees as Veronica had driven on to Valsendero. She usually took around ten minutes to drive this stretch of road. That morning it had taken her almost thirty minutes because she had stopped to admire the greenery of the countryside. After a winter and a spring of constant alternation between drizzle and sunshine, the countryside had resembled a hopeful landscape painting. The sight of the little rainbows formed by the last shreds of the mists as they scurried away from the rays of the sun, and the Mayflowers in splendid bloom had been a feast for her eyes.
This stretch of road was where Veronica would take her daily stroll during the months of July to September. On foot, it took a little more than an hour. She enjoyed walking under the shade of the trees, listening to the Huapango of the Mexican composer De la Fuente, or the lilting music of Jobim through her Walkman earphones. Thismusic helped her maintain the rhythm of the pace. Nevertheless, sometimes she stopped at the brambles growing by the edge of the asphalt and spent a few minutes picking the wild blackberries she liked so much.
Veronica couldn’t avoid remembering her first stroll through this countryside some thirty-five years before. It was the day that her husband, then her fiancé, had invited her for the first time to visit the farm where his family spent the summer. At that time, this stretch was a dirt road which didn’t quite reach the farmhouse. There was then, and still is today, a cobblestone path from the road which crossed the watercourse over a little bridge and led to the front door of the farmhouse. On that occasion, Veronica had admired the groves of chestnut, walnut, and fig trees which abounded in this area.
What had really impressed her, and left a magical and unforgettable image in her mind, was the farmhouse. In her young eyes, this big rambling house looked like some story-book manor house. The stone and wood construction of this old farmhouse had remained practically intact after more than a century, retaining all the charm of the old rural family homes on the island. Its lovely lines gave it an elegant bearing; the house of the Indiano gave the impression that it had been built without skimping on the expenses.
* * *
Now, looking down into the deep narrow valley—Barranco de la Virgen—which was spread out south and north below her, Veronica could see the small farms extending along both sides of the barranco. A lot of these fields lay fallow, although at their edges, many fruit trees still stood and they were in blossom. And many of the handsome old farmhouses were practically in ruins. Scattered across the terraces and slopes, small trees and bushes, among them authentic examples of autochthonous flora, were being choked out by the invasion of the undergrowth which nobody bothered to clear out. And there was a similar situation at the bottom of the ravine. She could barely see the watercourse through the impenetrable jungle which had formed down there over the past few years.
“I wonder,” she muttered, “what the people responsible for taking care of the treasure that this valley represented were thinking about?”
Valsendero, in effect, was slumbering away. Only a few of the farms in this area, in spite of its moist fertility, showed signs of cultivation. Except for a few families who lived here all year round, this charming hamlet, like many others on the island, had been converted into a weekend retreat for the owners of the small farms and cottages.
Most of them had moved to blocks of flats in the capital, or to the urban sprawl of bungalows in the tourist zones which had sprung up in what had once been a desert in the south of the island. Nevertheless, the cool misty air of this hamlet, like a charm, brought many of them back here week after week. They came back to see family and friends, they said. They also came here to get away from the noise and pollution of the urbanized areas of the island.
Nowadays, many locals worked under the plastic of the intensive farming which had taken over many agricultural areas on the island. They came back to Valsendero because the refreshing cool air here cleansed their skin and lungs of the desert dust and the residue of the excessive pesticides which were always present under the plastic of the so-called greenhouses—greenhouses which had been put up as offerings to the god of increased productivity, whose products were increasingly less flavourful and less nutritious.
With a sigh, Veronica opened the car door again, sat down, and kicked her shoes together to shake off the reddish-brown dirt. She closed the door, started the car, and drove down into the deep narrow valley. Veronica did not feel sleepy now. She parked off the road opposite the farm, looked across the fields to the western slope of the valley and the great walnut trees which gave Los Nogales its name; the iron gate at the entrance was open.
This wasn’t Manderly, but still, Veronica had planted rhododendron shrubs at the entrance. This was a small tribute to one of the first novels she had read long ago in her adolescence. The rhododendrons were also a tribute to England, where she had first seen these lustrousevergreen shrubs whose branches loaded up with clusters of flowers when April arrived.
Before planting them, a neighbour had tried to dissuade Veronica, alleging that these shrubs would not survive in this area. But Veronica had been sure that if there were anyplace on the island where rhododendrons would take root, that place would be Valsendero. And so it was. Nowadays, the neighbours admired the abundant clusters of flowers. These pink and purple flowers brought back pleasant memories which renewed her spirits every spring.
Veronica walked over the bridge crossing the watercourse and started along the cobblestone path across the fields. On her right, at the edge of the watercourse, the pear trees and the apple trees were in blossom and the bees were buzzing around like guests at a garden party.
In front of her, opposite the entrance, she saw the dairy barn, which had arched doors. With its massive columns and long manger made of stone from the quarry at Arucas, and a ceiling spanned by numerous rustic timber beams supporting the roof of heavy wooden shingles, it foretold the solid construction of the farmhouse.
The front door opened and Leoncio came out, walking with long strides down the path. In spite of the smile which straightened his neat pencil-thin moustache, he looked worried. Leoncio greeted Veronica by broadening that smile and shaking the four fingers of her extended hand with his large, callused right hand, which was capable of lifting big slabs of stone as if they were pieces on a draughts board.
“Hello Leoncio, how are you?”
“Keeping busy, ma’am,” he replied in his hoarse voice.
“What’s the weather been like up here?”
“Drizzly, most of the week. The sun wanted to come out yesterday, but was not up to it until today.”
“And your family?”
“All of them managing, up to now.”
“How are the repairs going?” Veronica asked as she crossed the cobblestone patio to the front door, which led into the corridor and the veranda which separated the kitchen and its oven from the rest of the house.
“Going well,” he said, “although...”
“What is it that worries you?” she asked, beginning to feel worried herself.
“Nothing. Nothing in particular but...please ma’am, come this way. I will show you.”
Veronica followed him into the corridor, their footsteps echoing off the floor, which was made of solid resounding wooden planks. They walked towards the end of the corridor. Leoncio stopped in front of the second door on the left. Pushing on one leaf of this double door, he showed her that it was difficult to open.
“It is jammed,” he said. “I do not want to force it. I will have to plane a bit off the floor so it can open properly.”
“How did it get jammed, Leoncio?”
“A strange thing occurred yesterday, when I was downstairs working on a window. The wall seemed to give slightly. That jammed the door.”
“But that’s dangerous!”
“You have no need to worry. There is no danger because after I propped up the window, I reinforced the lintel with concrete. Now you could not knock it down on purpose. I just wanted you to know why this door is jammed. On that, you can rest easy. Please ma’am, follow me downstairs so you can see what I did.”
When they were downstairs, Veronica could see that what he had explained was true. Going back up the flagstone stairs to the veranda as they returned to the upper floor, Leoncio, who was apparently relieved now, began to speak about the incredible width of the walls in this old house, and the enormous stones which had been used to construct these solid walls, bound together with simple clay.
“It is amazing to see how people worked back in those days,” he said.
Coming from him, a master stonemason, Veronica was surprised.
“I thought you had seen many of these old houses from the sameperiod.”
“Yes, I have seen many, and I have worked on a few, but none of them were like this one. An entire caravan of pack animals would have been needed to bring all those stones up the barranco from Arucas. You must keep in mind, there was no asphalt road at that time, only a cobblestone pack trail. Each animal would have been able to manage only two or three finished stones. That had to cost a lot of money.”
“So it did,” she replied. “Don Bartolomé, the person who had this house built could afford it. He didn’t spend his youth in Cuba in vain. He converted the sweat of his brow into gold. That’s why they gave him the nickname el Indiano de Oro.”
“Is that so,” he said as his eyes opened up wide, “and why did they give him that nickname?”
“Because, on his return from Cuba, when they were offloading his luggage from the ship at the dock in Las Palmas, a chest full of gold fell into the water. Fortunately, divers from the harbour master managed to pull it out.”
Leoncio’s mouth fell open in astonishment. Then, with obvious effort, he closed his mouth, held it shut and swallowed, wrinkling his neat moustache. He pursed up his lips as he thought about what el Indiano must have felt when his chest full of gold coins sank into the sea. He grinned as he envisioned the divers bringing up the gold.
“And how many years did you say he spent working in Cuba?”
“Twenty.” replied Veronica and then, anticipating his next question, she added, “He left here when he was eighteen.”
“A mere boy...” he said in a hoarse whisper, as if he were talking to himself.
Veronica wondered, considering his explanation about the jammed door, his amazement about the wide solid walls, and his reactions during their conversation today, if Leoncio had experienced some extraordinary phenomenon here, similar to the one she remembered having in this same house. Veronica had experienced that phenomenon twelve years ago, but she could still pick up the threads
of the memory...
At that time, her husband’s parents, both eighty-four years old, had been abed five years, very ill. Her husband, their only child, had all his time occupied in looking after them and attending to his job. Veronica, who helped organize the household chores for his elderly parents, also had a job and three children to attend to, although two of them had been away at university then. During those five years, this house had remained completely closed up. For sixty years before that, it had only been opened once a year, for a month during the summer; this probably saved it from any remodelling which might have spoiled its original charm.
One day, with the idea of clearing away the atmosphere of illness she had to breathe every day, and to raise her own low spirits, Veronica had phoned her close friend María and invited her to go for a drive up to the farm. Her friend had accepted the invitation willingly.
It was winter. When they arrived at Valsendero, the misty cold was absolutely arctic. Although they had worn adequate warm clothing, they felt far from comfortable. The house which loomed up before Veronica’s eyes was a sorrowful sight: the paint was peeling, the walls were mottled with mildew and moss. She had simply felt like crying. Veronica felt so dispirited that she began to wonder if it had been a good idea to come for a drive up here. Before she could decide to go back to the car, the man who was the tenant farmer then came over and handed her the keys—large old latchkeys, heavy and cold in her hands.
Nevertheless, as Veronica opened the door to the interior corridor, she felt enveloped in warmth, as if some warm arms had embraced her frozen body. It seemed that the whole house, coming to life, was extending a warm welcome, wrapping around Veronica and protecting her from the cold. Bewildered, she had turned, staring at her friend:
“María, am I going crazy, or is it really warm in this house?”
“You’re not going crazy. It is cosy in here—and I cannot understand it,” María had replied, holding out her hands, palms up, in a gesture of wonderment.
They had looked through all the rooms, where it seemed as if time had stood still. Although a lot of the original pieces of furniture had been the objects of parcelling out from generation to generation, there were still enough left in the high-ceilinged rooms for the old house to retain the nineteenth-century air it had always had. The ornate iron beds were still there, including the four-poster with the canopy which so many people admired when they saw it, together with the mahogany wardrobe and night tables.
While María was enjoying a stroll around the cobblestone patios surrounding the house, Veronica sat in the wicker rocking chair basking in the warmth which continued to comfort her. The to-and-fro motion had sent her thoughts back to the fair-haired boy who had emigrated to Cuba looking for a future—a future he would not have been able to construct in a household where everything had to be shared out to ten children. She had thought of the many sacrifices, the loneliness, the longing, which he must have had to endure. And now, even though it was involuntary, his beautifully built house was not being lived in—abandoned in oblivion and neglect.
At that moment, Veronica had vowed to return, in kind, the warmth she had felt as a welcome from this house; she made a promise to herself to restore the warmth which nobody had been able to generate in this house for more than sixty years...
Leoncio’s voice untangled her from the threads of her memory.
“Speaking of wide solid walls…” he was saying, peering at her in a peculiar way, “I want to show you something quite odd. Please ma’am, come this way.”
Veronica followed him, her mind not yet disconnected from her voyage back into time. Leoncio turned to his right, crossing the flagstone floor of the veranda, walked along the resounding wooden planks past the jammed door to the end of the corridor and stopped at the open door of the next room, which was a spare room with a loft. Leoncio reached up, placed a callused hand on the wall above this door, turned, and peered at her in a peculiar way again.
“Here,” he said, patting the wall with his palm, “there is a defect.”
“What type of defect?”
“If you examine the walls, and tap them, you will see that they are completely solid. All of them...except the part above this door.”
“And the other doors...are they the same?”
“Oh no,” he replied, “and that is strange, because this wall is all flush.”
“Is that a load-bearing wall above the door?”
“No, it is just a partition wall.”
“Nevertheless, it has the same width,” Veronica said, looking at the doorjamb.
“As far as I can see, back in those days, building was done that way...and speaking of building, I must continue, for I want to finish by Saturday. Are you going to stay all day?”
“I’m going to putter around the patios for a while. Carry on with your work, Leoncio. What time do you finish today?”
“At three o’clock...and it is already noon,” he said, looking at his watch.
They went up the corridor to the front door. She stood there as Leoncio walked with long strides down the path to the dairy barn. He started placing a cobblestone platform around the drinking trough. She went into the spacious kitchen where the old cast iron stove still stood in one corner and there was a large glazed earthenware bowl built into the stone counter. Dough for the bread of four generations had been kneaded in it. Veronica glanced at the wood-burning oven, remembering that she had to mention it to Leoncio.
She looked through the cupboards, trying to find something for lunch, finally deciding to prepare an omelette with potatoes, onions, red bell peppers and the last chunks of a spicy cured sausage. When she finished cooking it, she slid it out onto a plate and left it on the long table to cool.
Then she went out to the patios where she cut an armful of pure white calla lilies and perfumed roses to take home. Her husband, whose memory had been flagging recently, took great pleasure in the bouquets of flowers which came from the farm. On various occasions she had surprised him contemplating, sometimes rearranging, these bouquets when they were in vases, placed throughout the house. He was always proud that there were fresh cut flowers in his home all year, without the necessity of buying them at a florist shop. Veronica went back to the kitchen, filled the sink with water, and gently placed the stems of the flowers in it.
Veronica went outside again to check on the bulbs she had planted under a walnut tree last December. Along the way, she cut bunches of fragrant rosemary and lavender to hang in the corridor in order to dissipate the smell of cement and varnish. Back in the kitchen, Veronica sat down and ate the juicy omelette. Then she went out to say goodbye to Leoncio.
Returning to the house, Veronica locked the front door with the large latchkey and went into the master bedroom. She stretched out on the old canopied bed. She turned on the television to see the news. Then she leafed through some month-old magazines.
Veronica felt a bit tired and drowsy. Listlessly, she looked around the bedroom. On the wall to her right there was a large picture of the Holy Family, embroidered entirely in silk, except for the faces. This was an exquisite piece of needlework, made by her husband’s grandmother, the daughter of el Indiano de Oro. On the opposite wall there was another Holy Family, but this one was a lithograph. A fair-haired baby Jesus looked out from this picture, smiling.
Vaguely, she wondered if her husband’s mother, whose son was her only child, might have seen an image of her own family in these pictures. Her gaze wandered up to the ceiling with its pattern of brown beams and white plaster. Her gaze came to rest on the white crown of the canopy above the bed.
Suddenly—she sensed a glittering in the corridor—as if something was ablaze. The source of this glittering seemed to be at the end of the corridor, just at the door of the spare room with a loft. Veronica tried to run to the end of the corridor but somehow, as sometimes happens in dreams, she simply could not move her legs. She felt paralysed, stuck to a spot in the corridor in front of the master bedroom door.
Veronica’s anguish increased with every moment, fearing a fire in a house with so much wood that could go up in flames like a torch. She tried to turn and rush out to the front patio where there was a water hose—but she just couldn’t move her legs—she was paralysed with fear.
“Help! Help!” she shouted, hoping a neighbour would hear her. But, of course, nobody could hear her. She could feel her heart beating violently and her ears ringing—immediately—she remembered the phone. Grabbing the receiver off the wall where it was hanging, she put it to her ear—but couldn’t hear the dial tone. Her shaking fingers pushed down on the switch again and again. Nothing—the line was dead. Veronica felt tears in her eyes—squeezed them shut—then opened them wide.
Veronica was gazing up at the crown of the canopy above, ablaze with sunlight. Slanting sunbeams from the late afternoon sun were streaming in through the open window, flooding the room with brightness. She sat up on the old bed. Her bare feet didn’t reach the floor; she couldn’t feel her legs. Sweat plastered her hair to her temples. Her hands were shaking as she crossed her arms and gripped her shoulders. She put her chin on her forearm, started rocking sideways and whispering in a singsong voice:
“Veronica, Veronica, never, never, never go to sleep like that, after lunch like that.”
She breathed deeply several times, in rhythm with the rocking. She began to calm down and breathe normally. Veronica had intense dreams like this occasionally and was used to recovering from them and rationalizing them. Contemplating the sunbeams slanting into the room now, she was able to gaze with pleasure at the gleaming tones of amber reflecting from the ceiling beams. Grinning with delight at the image forming in her mind, she thought:
“It’s like those legendary temples in the films, where a sunbeam suddenly breaks through the misty motes, slanting in through a specific opening at a precise moment of the day, creating a moment of revelation. And here in this sun-drenched room right now, this feels like a special moment of grace.”
When that magical moment passed, she got up, went out to the corridor, and walked down to the far end. She went into the spare room and checked to see if the window had been left open. It was open—which was why it had been the source of the glittering. She recalled Leoncio’s words: “Here,” he had said, patting the wall with his palm, “there is a defect.”
Veronica felt overwhelmed by curiosity. She recollected the events of the day: Leoncio’s strange way of speaking on the phone, her conjuring up all those visions of the past, brooding over el Indiano de Oro and his beautifully built house, and now, having that vivid dream.
She grabbed the old wooden ladder which was used to climb up to the loft, dragged it over to the doorway, and leaned it against the wall. She climbed up, patted the wall at different places with her palm, and found that one part sounded hollow. She knocked on that part with her knuckles—it definitely sounded hollow.
Her mind started racing and her heart began to beat violently for the second time today. Veronica breathed deeply, trying to calm down. She went down the ladder slowly, walked out to the kitchen, got a glass of cold water and sat down to think over what she had to do. Veronica didn’t take long to decide.
She rushed out to the dairy barn to look for a mattock among Leoncio’s tools. She found two. She chose the sharper one. Up to now, Veronica had not stopped to think what her husband and children might say when she told them about the calamity she might be about to cause. “I’ll deal with that later,” she muttered, walking briskly back to the house.
Carefully, because the ladder was slightly unstable on the uneven floor, Veronica climbed up and knocked on the wall with her knuckles, in order to determine the centre of the hollow place. She swung the pointed end of the mattock at this spot. Shattered pieces of plaster fell to the floor, echoing all along the corridor.
She kept swinging the point of the mattock at this spot until she had opened a hole which was just big enough to put her hand through—but
she didn’t—afraid of finding a nest full of field mice, which abounded in the countryside. Sweat trickled down her face and arms. “What an absurd fear,” she thought, “these walls must be hermetic.”
She started swinging the mattock again, the ladder swaying with every swing. By now, the sun had traversed west, beyond Fontanales, and the loft was in shadows. The sweat cooled her body and she felt an uncanny serenity, in contrast to the excitement she had felt at first. Veronica realized that she would need the torch which was kept in the kitchen in order to see into the hole. She reached out and put the mattock on the floorboards of the loft.
Veronica went down the ladder calmly, walked to the kitchen, took the torch out of the drawer, returned to the loft, and climbed up the ladder. She reached out, put the torch on the floorboards of the loft and picked up the mattock. Swinging it again, using the cutting edge, she enlarged the hole to about the size of a large dinner plate. Veronica put the mattock down and picked up the torch. She switched it on and thrust the beam of light into the hole.
First, she saw two large angular stones supporting each other at their narrower ends, forming a triangle with the vertex at the top. As her eyes adjusted to the shadowy light she noticed smaller stones bound to these large stones with dark clay. She lowered the beam of light to the bottom of the cavity.
At the base of the stone triangle she saw a rectangular object about the size of a family Bible. Veronica reached in and touched it. She felt it give under the pressure of her fingers—she pulled her hand out brusquely. Veronica looked at her fingers—they were covered with a fine reddish-brown dust. Shivers run up and down her spine. Veronica hesitated a moment before putting her hand back in the hole—but she did it.
Cautiously, Veronica poked at the object with the tips of her fingers—it felt like something hard which was wrapped in some softer material. She tried to pick it up with the one hand but she couldn’t. Her hand and wrist were quite tired from swinging the mattock. Veronica reckoned that she would have to enlarge the hole to about the
size of a wash-basin in order to put both hands into the hole and pull out the object. She put the torch on the floorboards of the loft and picked up the mattock.
She started swinging it again and kept on cutting until the hole was big enough. Now, with neither haste nor hesitation, Veronica picked up the torch, went down the ladder and put the mattock and the torch on the floor.
Veronica moved the ladder a bit, trying to place it in a stable position, but it was still shaky. So she went to the master bedroom, brought the month-old magazines and propped up one of the legs—there—she was ready.
Veronica climbed the ladder. She put both hands into the dark hole, her forearms brushing the cracked plaster. She grasped the two shorter sides of the object. She had to push and pull a bit to dislodge it from the bottom of the cavity but then it came free and she put both hands under it and slowly lifted and pulled it out through the hole. The object smelled of soil—just soil.
With a feeling of reverence, rung by rung, she went down the ladder. It seemed to take an eternity to put both feet on the floor. With solemn steps, as one who is entrusted to carry the vessel holding the Host for veneration at Mass, she carried the object to the kitchen. Veronica deposited the object on the polished stone counter.
She went to get a brush from under the sink and started brushing off the reddish-brown dust of the dried clay. Her brisk brushing began to uncover some rather coarse cloth and as she continued Veronica could see the warp and woof of what had to be a linen sheet of the type which women used to weave in the country homes of the nineteenth century.
When the object was relatively clean, Veronica started turning it over and over, unwrapping it, and as it turned she could hear something tumbling inside something else. The last turn of coarse cloth came off to reveal an old but well-preserved wooden box.
Her fingertips traced over the words impressed on the wood: Monte Cristo Nº 1. Looking at the corner edges, she saw the dovetail joints.
This looked like the wooden cigar boxes she had often seen as a child. Veronica lifted the lid and looked inside.
“I can’t believe it,” she gasped.
She was looking at three bulky leather pouches. She picked one up, hefting it on her palm and—yes—it was what her intuition had told her. This pouch had a feel and weight similar to the pouch which she and her husband had taken to the bank after the death of his parents. It was securely tied with a rawhide thong; nevertheless, her fingers worked with a dexterity of their own to open it quickly. Looking inside, Veronica saw a golden glimmering.
Picking up the pouch, she slowly poured the contents onto her left hand. Gold coins piled up on her palm—three fell off, clinking onto the counter. She picked one up and gazed at the golden disk covering her ring finger, middle finger, and forefinger: the royal coat of arms of Spain, with a crown on top, was surrounded by the necklace of the Order of the Golden Fleece. She turned it over: she looked at the soft silky surface of the profile of a man facing to the right. At the top, in a semicircle from his flowing locks to his aquiline nose, she read: CAROL * III * D * G * HISP * ET IND * R * and below the bust of this Spanish king, she saw the date: 1773. The bust of his son and successor, Carlos IV, appeared on the second coin, and Fernando VII was on the third.
Veronica remembered similar coins in the pouch she and her husband had taken to the bank. She put the coins back into the pouch and opened the other two. They also contained gold coins, although these were of smaller size and from different countries. As she was about to put the pouches into the box, she noticed a sheet of yellowed paper covering the bottom. She picked it up, unfolded it, and read the flowing handwriting: For my descendants. —Bartolomé.
“El Indiano de Oro,” she whispered. In the next moment, Veronica was aware of her fingers tingling, gripping the edge of the cold counter. She couldn’t remember putting down the yellowed piece of paper...she had no idea of how long she had been standing here, trying to assimilate everything that had happened since lunch—flashes
of words, images, thoughts, sparked across her brain. Suddenly she started shivering—an intense icy feeling flowed from her fingertips to her toes. Trembling, she put the piece of paper and the three pouches into the wooden box, picked it up together with the cloth, and put them on the long table.
Returning to the counter, she opened the jars where she kept dried camomile and linden, and prepared an infusion. Waiting for it to brew, she sat at the table, staring hypnotically at the old box.
Up to now, Veronica had not stopped to think what her family might say when she told them how she had found this box. “I’ll deal with that later,” she had said when she had started. “Now is later...” she sighed. Veronica sat there brooding over what attitude her family would take when she related the events of this day to them.
As for her husband, she hoped he would not be in low spirits when she arrived home. After the long illness and death of his parents, he had become progressively feeble, both physically and mentally. The loss of one’s parents is difficult for anyone, but it must be devastating for an only child.
Veronica still remembered the pain of losing her own father, who had been the most inspiring, affectionate, and tender man she had ever known. He had praised the little stories she wrote and illustrated with crayon drawings, when she was a little girl. He had encouraged her to learn English, and then study literature in England. When he died, Veronica understood the forlorn significance of the word orphan, even though she was then an adult woman with a family of her own.
She had often reflected on the suffering which sensitive persons had to endure when they lost a parent. At the time her husband’s parents died, he had to cope with the responsibility of a promotion at the office, and the necessity of planning for retirement already in sight; all this occurring at the same time had weakened his sensitive nature. And now, his flagging memory—which often put him in fits of frustration. She would have to be careful about stirring up memories of old family stories.
And her sons—their reaction worried her more. Both were quite
temperamental, although they were good sons, and never showed immoderate ambitions. No matter how much they argued with her, they usually managed to adapt themselves to circumstances and always gave priority to affection and respect.
“And Ester, my daughter,” she wondered, “How will Ester react to the news? Probably with calmness...with interest.”
Taking the last sip of the infusion, she put the mug on the table next to the cigar box and sighed, “I just can’t imagine what will happen when I tell the story of finding this box.”
Turning her attention to the clay-stained cloth in which this box had been wrapped, Veronica rubbed a corner of it between thumb and forefinger. Yes, its texture felt like the texture of the linen sheets she kept in the trunk standing in the corridor. Veronica kept them like some valuable treasure, for they had been woven on the loom in this house by the hands of various women of the first generations.
Years ago, snooping about the loft, she had come across the reeds, the combs which were used for separating the warp-threads. Veronica felt moved by the thought that her hands were holding the tangible evidence of the work done by those long-gone members of the family, ancestors none of her children knew.
She stood up and extended the folded sheet, smoothing it out on the table with the palms of both hands. Placing the box at one end and turning it over and over, Veronica re-wrapped the box, the pouches tumbling inside again.
Veronica glanced at her watch. It was time to go—but first—she would have to call the children and ask them to come home at suppertime. She went out to the corridor and picked up the phone, listening for a few moments to the dial tone, deciding whom to call first.
She called her daughter and asked her if she was thinking of going out: her answer was negative.
Then she called her elder son Alberto, who used the nickname Bertín. When she asked him to come home tonight, his reaction was:
“So—what’s going on now, mom?”
“Do you think that’s any way to answer your mother?”
“Here we go again,” he grumbled.
“I would like all of us to get together because I have something to tell you.”
“Is this another one of those family reunions that ends up meaning nothing?”
“Don’t be rude, mi niño, Veronica said affectionately, using this traditional Canarian term for a child or dear person, trying to soften the tone of the conversation.
“Come on mom! Do you think I’m just sitting here twiddling my thumbs? Tell me what’s going on.”
“I have found something at the farm that I want to show you.”
“So what is it?”
“You’ll know tonight—I have to call your brother now—bye-bye.” She quickly pushed down on the switch, cutting off the conversation before he got entangled and started an argument.
Leandro, her younger son, reacted more or less along the same line:
“But mom—do you ever stop to consider other people?”
“Never...” she responded sweetly, holding on to her temper.
“You know how loaded down with work I am for my thesis project—now you make me go over there at that late hour—for some nonsense, I’m sure.”
“Mind your manners son, if it wasn’t in your interest, I wouldn’t ask you to come.”
“And what’s wrong now,” he asked, a bit anxiously, “is dad all right?”
“I just spoke to your sister,” Veronica replied, “she didn’t say he wasn’t well.”
“So then?”
“I want to show you something I found at Los Nogales, so make sure you come over. Now I have to leave you—it’s getting late.
“Mom!”
“See you later—have to go—no time to argue,” she replied rapidly, pushing down on the switch, breaking the connection.
Veronica glanced at her watch. She knew they would arrive at suppertime—in a bad mood because she had taken them away from their respective routines—but she had hopes that the story she was going to tell them would deactivate their negative energy. Veronica went through the house, making sure all the windows and doors were closed; she left the kitchen for last.
Veronica put the wrapped box in a plastic supermarket bag and gathered up the flowers, then went out to the car. Starting the engine, she went down the road some fifty metres as she usually did, turned around and came back up the road, driving slowly past Los Nogales, taking a last look at the farmhouse, the patios full of flowers, the plum trees, and the poinsettias.
She put on a CD: Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony flooded the inside of the car and overflowed out through the open windows. The music of the orchestra made her realize that today she had not paid any attention to the dozens of birds, especially the blackbirds, which lived in the trees on the farm.
These blackbirds nested in the pohutukawa tree her mother-in-law had planted when her first granddaughter was born. This tree was in blossom from November to April, when most other trees were dormant. Then, its fiery crimson flowers, and the scarlet poinsettias, were the only notes of warmth and colour amongst the denuded trees.
In that pohutukawa tree, those blackbirds had formed an orchestra which played a continuous concert from morning to night for her, but driving slowly past the farmhouse now she couldn’t hear it and then she was shifting gears and taking the curve to the left around Valsendero and accelerating and climbing up the flank of the long ridge and turning right at the top towards Valleseco.
Approaching the town of Teror, Veronica decided she had time to stop to buy some sweets. Her husband, as well as her children, all had a sweet tooth. If any of them went up to Valsendero they would rarely return without paying “the sweets toll,” carrying on a tradition started by their grandfather and continued by their father.
The sweets might make up for the forgotten newspaper—therewasn’t much sense in buying the newspaper this late in the day. Hopefully, her husband would be more interested in the news she was bringing.
* * *
Then she was home again. What a day this had been! It was night now, the porch light cast bushy shadows into the front garden. Only the two dogs were there to greet her, wriggling and whimpering, sniffing impatiently at the things she carried in her hands. She got through the front door and put everything on the side table in the hall, then went into the den and looked at the telephone. A note was propped up against it: Papa has gone out to take a walk around the block. I’ve gone to the supermarket. —E. Veronica glanced at her watch. She had a few more minutes to think. During the drive from Teror, the music and the gathering twilight had absorbed her attention.
Nevertheless, she realized that her mind had rejected the idea of beating around the bush. Thinking it over now, Veronica knew she had to face up to it, recount her story in a forthright manner and hope it wouldn’t bring out any strange reactions.
Her daughter got home first. Veronica felt she should give Ester some advance notice, although she didn’t unwrap the box and show it to her. She just wanted to relieve the tension a bit and get Ester’s opinion on how she should tell her father the story. Now, Veronica realized she hadn’t calculated all the implications of the discovery.
Ester couldn’t believe her ears—eyes opening in astonishment she asked:
“Do you mean to tell me that you have been standing at the top of an old ladder that dances around more than Barishnikov—and you knocked down a wall?”
“Well, yes, something like that,” replied Veronica, beginning to comprehend her daughter’s line of reasoning.
“Mom—you’ve gone crazy!”
“Could be...but how do you think your father is going to take it?”
More relaxed now, her daughter replied in the vein of the paternal side of the family: “With the big drop in the stock market this
week...jumping for joy!”
“Ester!” exclaimed Veronica—but she understood her daughter only wanted her to stop worrying—Ester was always so considerate.
Just then her husband, beaming, came in through the front door, followed by his two sons. Veronica could see that the boys were in a bad mood—but they wouldn’t say anything in front of their father. They all went into the dining-room and sat around the mahogany table, where Veronica had placed the box, still in its cloth wrapping, and next to it, a big tray with all the sweets laid out on it. The boys glanced at the clay-stained piece of sheet with a look bordering on disgust and ignored the tray of sweets. Bertín started tapping his fingertips on the table-top, looking at her in silence. Leandro, who was holding his jaws tight—trying to contain his impatience—finally broke the silence:
“What are we waiting for?”
Veronica stood up, and as she slowly unwound the coarse-woven cloth, turn by turn, she outlined her story in a forthright manner. As her narration advanced, she saw young faces flushing and then turning pale as their eyes and mouths opened and closed in gestures of astonishment and incredibility. Then came the hysterical-sounding laughter which often accompanies strong emotional states. They looked at one another as if to reassure themselves that they were not imagining some incredible dream. Throughout all this, their father looked on with an inscrutable expression on his face.
Then Veronica was spreading the gold coins out on the table and they were all staring at them in silence, obviously overcome by the dazzling display. Suddenly, Ester stood up and raised both hands, palms out, as if she were surrendering to the astonishing array:
“Wow!” she exclaimed—then started laughing again.
“This,” said Leandro in a faltering voice, reaching out and picking up one of the eighteenth-century coins, “this is like the ones that dad has.”
Bertín gulped. Then, leaning forward and peering at that surprising sum of coins, he asked: “How many are there?”
“I still haven’t counted them,” said Veronica, glancing at her husband, who looked impassive. There was no sign of surprise on his face. His eyelids were lowered but she could see that his eyes were gleaming with a far-away searching look.
“Papa,” she said (she had called him “Papa” since the children were born; she only used his name when they were quarrelling), “what do you have to say about all this? You don’t seem to be impressed.”
“Well, of course I’m impressed, but...I knew it.”
Veronica sat down suddenly. She and the children stared at him—stupefied.
“You knew it?” asked Veronica, her voice rising almost to a scream.
“Yes.” said Alberto in a clipped tone, looking down at the table-top.
This confession left Veronica and the children perplexed.
“And did your father also know about it?” asked Veronica, because, in all their years of marriage, she had never heard any of his family mention a single word about this—not even her mother-in-law, as talkative as she was.
“I have no idea,” he replied impassively.
“So...who told you?” she asked, really perplexed now.
“My grandmother told me,” replied Alberto, nodding his head in affirmation, as if he had found what he was seeking with that far-away look. “She told me one afternoon during the summer when we were at Los Nogales. My parents, I remember, had gone to see the doctor in Valleseco, so my grandmother and I were alone at the farm. There weren’t any children my age to play with around there, so she used to tell me stories to entertain me. That afternoon, I remember, she had something to do in that room with the loft. I think she was going to weave something. I had to sit there and keep her company. Afterwards, she pointed up at the wall over the door...”
“There,” said my grandmother, “there is a buried treasure for you, hidden away for when you are grown up...if you behave well.”
They all looked at him. They couldn’t think of anything to say. Finally, Ester asked: “But—how is it that you have never told us?”
“Oh well,” he said, smiling for the first time, “I just forgot about it. I was just a little boy. I thought it was another of my grandmother’s stories. I remember now...”
His wife and children looked around the table at one another—big smiles broke out on their faces. Alberto looked at his family and smiled timidly. A moment passed—he grinned and then chuckled. The entire family threw back their heads, laughing together.
When the laughter subsided, Veronica reached into the cigar box, picked up the yellowed sheet of paper, and handed it to Ester. She unfolded it, looked at it, then passed it on to her brothers. When their father, holding the paper up in front of him with both hands, read the message from el Indiano de Oro, tears brimmed up in his eyes. Ester reached out quickly, picked up the tray of sweets and placed it in front of her father.
“Hey dad! We completely forgot about these sweets.”
Alberto looked at his daughter and smiled with glistening eyes, carefully folded the paper and placed it on the table. He gazed at the sweets for a few moments, chose one, then passed on the tray. The sweets started disappearing under eager hands. This was accompanied by a little chatter and then, after a brief discussion, they agreed to deposit the cigar box just as it had been found, with the three pouches of gold coins and the yellowed sheet of paper, in the bank with the other gold coins. They all seemed relaxed now—soon they were laughing and chatting away, everybody speaking at the same time—about everything except gold coins.
Veronica remembered hearing her in-laws say that the fortune Don Bartolomé had left—including the gold coins—had been parcelled out equally to his heirs. Now, this surprising turn in the story intrigued her. She wondered what motive had made that good gentleman hide that box in such a place—it seemed childish, like some treasure island story told by a mere boy...
Veronica suddenly thought of Leoncio: “The mattock—I took one of his tools without asking permission—made a mess of that wall—all that plaster on the floor—and that oven.”
“I’ll phone him first thing tomorrow morning,” she muttered, “right now I have just enough energy for one thing.”
Everybody stopped speaking at the same time. Veronica stood up, put the folded sheet of paper in the box, placed the three pouches of gold coins on top of the paper, and closed the lid. Then she carefully folded the clay-stained piece of sheet, and started walking towards the door leading to the stairs. Everybody was staring at her.
“Where are you going now?” Bertín asked.
“Downstairs.” Veronica replied.
“So—you make us come over here—now you take off. Always the same thing!”
“I have something very important to do,” she said, holding on to the doorknob.
“And what’s so important right now?” Leandro called out.
“I have to get this story down on paper before I forget it.”
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