The Distant Marvels Read Online Free PDF Page B

I’m not sure why I’m taking such liberties with Susana, who is a stranger to me. Perhaps she reminds me of my Beatríz.
    â€œEvery birthday’s a gift. I suddenly want to be old. I want to be as old as you,” she says. Her cheeks redden. “Perdó­name,” she says, chastened.
    â€œI am old!” I say. “I wish you old age, Susana, and time for the years to knit, then unknit themselves.” Her eyes fill with tears, and she wipes them away roughly. I close my eyes against my own foolish sentimentality. Such language! Time unknitting!
    â€œTell me more about the cigar factory,” she says after a moment. “What else did the cigar rollers like to hear you read?”
    I don’t answer right away. It feels as if Susana is very far away, suddenly. I tune my ears to the storm, and it is raging now, the rain pounding the roof of Casa Velázquez like rocks being thrown from heaven. I tug at my housedress, flattening the wrinkled fabric with my hand as I listen. I’m still wearing slippers. My sensible black shoes are in my house in Maisí. Are they still where I left them, under my bed, or are they floating in the middle of the room? Perhaps they are already at the bottom of the sea.
    â€œSometimes,” I tell Susana at last, “I would only pretend to read to the cigar rollers. There I would sit, high in my lector’s chair, five feet over the heads of the men, with a worn copy of something or other on my lap. Maybe a Jules Verne novel, or a copy of Cervantes, or some such thing. I would say, ‘Now, I’d like to read a story from a not-so-famous writer. Perhaps you’ve heard of—’ then I’d give them a false name, ‘Carla Carvajál. She is stupendous!’ I’d rave, and the men would nod, never looking up from their tobacco leaf, or their fat, brown fingers. Then I’d pretend to read from this so-called Carla Carvajál, but what I was really doing was telling my own stories, true stories, about my life.” I say all of this in a rush. It is the first time I’ve ever told this to anyone. Not even Ada knows the extent of my vanity, for that is what I think I was doing—indulging my vanity.
    â€œAnd they believed you?” Susana asks, incredulous. I nod slowly, my eyes closed. I can see them, sighing at all the right moments, wiping tears from their cheeks as I pretended to read, making sure to flip the pages of the book in my lap every so often, allowing my eyes to scan back and forth.
    They would tell me that Carla Carvajál was a maravilla. “A woman, too!” they would exclaim, and I would smile at them and say, “It’s a wonder the world hasn’t heard of her yet.” The men would nod, their teeth gripping new cigars.
    I notice that someone has brought in a pitcher of lemonade and some sugar cookies while we have been chatting. Susana sees them, too, and she’s up quickly, filling a plate with the treats, and clutching two full cups, which she holds deftly in one hand.
    â€œSustenance at last,” she says, then, gulps down her drink. “They say that tumors love sugar. That they eat it up and grow larger.” Susana shrugs, her eyes growing wet, and takes a monstrous bite out of a cookie. “You’ll have to tell me one of the stories,” she says, her mouth full.
    I drink the lemonade in sips, in between pauses, as I tell her the story of my birth, of the mermaid that appeared to my mother, claiming me. I tell her that my parents were rebels, and how my father fought in all three wars of independence. I tell her of my connection to this house. I tell her about vengeance, and the tragic life of slaves, and a story about pirate’s gold.

6.
Of Golden Opportunities Missed
    L ulu always said Agustín’s rage was inherited. An inherited rage! My mother suspected its source was an old family story about pirates and hidden gold.
    Inconsolada, my