House on the Lagoon Read Online Free PDF

her but opened it courteously, and other basic rules of etiquette. When dinner was over, she asked him to stop by the studio of the family photographer to have his picture taken.
    Doña Ester planned to send the photo to Angelita and Conchita, Buenaventura’s maiden aunts in Extremadura, so that they might see their nephew was doing fine, in spite of the mosquitoes and the bad drinking water. But when she came back from Rebecca’s house after the girl had rejected the fourth would-be king, the first thing Doña Ester saw in her living room was Buenaventura’s portrait on the marble-topped table, waiting to be mailed to Spain. She dropped her handbag on one of the Victorian rocking chairs, gave a deep sigh, and said to herself, “Here I am, searching all over town for a scrawny teenager for Rebecca, and the King of Hearts is sitting on my drawing-room console all the time.”
    Rebecca chose him as her official escort the next day, even before seeing him in the flesh. Buenaventura went to visit her and kissed her hand; he was a fast learner of the ways of kings. On the day of the coronation ball he escorted Rebecca to the throne with perfect decorum, and on their wedding day a month later he walked her down the aisle, her hand poised on his arm light as a heron’s wing. In his black tuxedo and silk top hat he not only looked like a patrician, he behaved like one. His courtly demeanor, the elegant way he carried himself, seemed to say: “Here is someone who did not learn the rules of etiquette yesterday, but sucked them with his mother’s milk.”

4
When Shadows Roamed the Island
    A T THE BEGINNING OF this century, our island acquired an unexpected strategic significance for the admiralty of the Third Reich. Being a history fan, Quintín was very well informed about that period of our past, and would tell me about it when we were first married. They were exciting times, and I liked to hear him talk about Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, for example, who insisted, during endless royal audiences at the court of Kaiser Wilhelm II, that Puerteriko be made a German naval base, which would secure the commercial routes to the Antilles and to the Gulf of Mexico. “If they had made El Yunque, the highest peak on the eastern coast, a nest of Krupp artillery cannons as they had planned,” Quintín said, “it would have helped them considerably in their aim to acquire greater control over the Panama Canal, which was becoming more and more important for the American fleet. An open sea lane from the Atlantic to the Pacific would have permitted them to come and go as they pleased between California and the East Coast.”
    I found the whole matter fascinating. The result of von Tripitz’s plans for the Caribbean was a German siege of the island, and in 1917, the year of Buenaventura and Rebecca’s wedding, we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by hungry sharks. German submarines were everywhere and, as they sailed in and out of the crevices of the Puerto Rico Trench, were perfectly visible when they surfaced. People made a hobby of watching them come up from the deep from the rooftops of Old San Juan, using the same binoculars they used at the horse races.
    Our strategic importance became evident, and the United States began to establish new military bases on the island, quartering thousands of American soldiers among us. Despite their presence, ships continued to sink in front of the city, taking with them to the bottom of the sea drums of gasoline, rolls of paper, bags of salt, rice, beans—all the things that began to disappear from our shops. People survived thanks to the emergency programs of the U.S. government, which sent us war rations along with the soldiers.
    San Juan merchants started to count their assets in rubber tires, gasoline drums, and pounds of salt pork, and Buenaventura Mendizabal was one of them. Every cellar in the city became a dry-goods warehouse where things that were indispensable for survival were hoarded.