Conquistadora - Esmeralda Santiago [116]
He sensed that Ana, too, was afraid, but not of the supernatural; she feared what lay beyond Los Gemelos. She’d crossed an ocean, sailed around an island, ridden for hours through forest and cane to come here, but she now confined her activities to a circle no larger than a couple of kilometers in any direction, its center firmly set on the casona. Severo wanted to expand her world, to give her a bird’s-eye view of Los Gemelos and its perimeter, bounded on the north by the gentle mounds of the Cordillera Central and on the south by the placid waters of the Caribbean Sea.
Soon after Inocente’s murder, he’d begun construction of the house on the hill, built from blocks made on-site from a mixture of cement, lime, and the orange clay harvested on the riverbank. The thick walls would keep it cool against the harsh sun, the rooms refreshed by the breezes coming from the ocean or dipping toward the valley from the mountains. Severo imagined the house as an aerie for Ana, whom he compared to a pitirre, the solemn gray kingbird common in Puerto Rico. There was a saying among Puerto Ricans—“cada guaraguao tiene su pitirre”—that alluded to how the much smaller pitirre was unafraid of, and sometimes even attacked, the larger, aggressive guaraguao, the red-tailed hawk. Like the pitirre, Ana was patient and dared to challenge authority, even though she was small in stature and a woman. Severo didn’t know how she convinced don Eugenio not to sell Los Gemelos, but he admired that she stood up to him and led him to believe that he was in control of her actions.
As soon as don Eugenio left, Ana set up Miguel’s old room as her study. She spent mornings making notes, entering numbers into ledgers, and writing letters, the humpbacked child at her feet. She sent a monthly report to Mr. Worthy, don Eugenio’s norteamericano representing matters concerning Los Gemelos.
Following Ramón’s death, Severo worried that what he’d worked so hard to build would crash down with the sweep of a pen across a document. Luis had his eye on Los Gemelos from the beginning, and had encouraged Ramón’s and Inocente’s vices to accelerate their dissolution. However, he hadn’t counted on Ana’s attachment to the plantation. He hadn’t known, or understood, that it was Ana who brought Ramón and Inocente here, not the other way around.
When he told Ana about Ingenio Diana, Severo had been considering it for her for some time. The owners hired him to keep an eye on their property, so he was the first to learn that they might sell. Severo would have bought it, but he wanted to know whether Ana had any resources other than what don Eugenio provided. He now understood that she wasn’t completely at her father-in-law’s mercy. She was crafty and smarter than don Eugenio and his two sons combined.
While Ana showed no desire to go anywhere, Severo would do whatever it took to keep her at Hacienda los Gemelos, not only because don Eugenio had charged him to do so but also because he needed her near. In Spain, he couldn’t have aspired to marry a lady with her education, pedigree, and money. Here she was within reach.
He negotiated the purchase of Ingenio Diana for a fair price. It helped that the owners lived in Spain. A flurry of correspondence between Ana and her father resulted in a smooth financial transaction, while Severo made sure that the ingenio, abandoned for six years, was ready to press cane on February 2, 1850, Día de la Candelaria—Candlemas.
A POET AND HIS MUSE—SAN JUAN
From the first days of their arrival in San Juan in September 1844, Eugenio had trouble getting used to the within-doors world of business management. He disliked paperwork, regular hours, and the collaborative nature of running a business after a lifetime in the unchallenged command of men and beasts on terra firma. He couldn’t imagine ever being the capable manager that his brother Rodrigo had been, and with his sons dead, there was no one else to take over the business.