Conquistadora - Esmeralda Santiago [129]
“Is that Guares?” she asked, with a sudden urge to cry, as if the sight of the town opened a wound healed long ago.
“Sí, that’s the steeple of the Iglesia de San Cosme y San Damián. There”—he pointed to the right—“is the dock from where we ship the sugar.”
“I didn’t realize the town was so close.”
“It only seems that way from here,” he assured her. “It’s a solid two hours on horseback, more in a cart. To the left, closer to us, is your ingenio, with the new roof on the purgery.”
The rugged steam engine, the refurbished grinders, the casa de calderas where the syrup was boiled, the purgery where the sugar was crystallized had made it possible for Hacienda los Gemelos to turn a profit for the first time in its history.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
He waited a few moments. “Up the hill to the left, those roofs over there?” Ana nodded. “Finca San Bernabé.”
“Can they see my ingenio from their house?”
“From every window and door.” He grinned.
She smiled and returned her gaze to the buildings around her casona.
“The batey looks so far away,” she said wistfully. She felt lost in the open, exposed to unseen dangers in a way she didn’t feel in the valley.
“Around us are eight flat cuerdas. Plantain and bananas grow on the slopes, breadfruit and guanábana, passion fruit.”
“But my henhouses, my gardens?”
“You’ll have enough to do managing a proper house,” he said. “You’ll have more servants, and will need to oversee the making of furnishings and the sewing of curtains and the other things a house needs.…” He trailed off, unable to conceive what else a woman like Ana was used to in a home.
She turned to the view again, to the surprisingly square cuerdas of cane, divided by shimmering canals, to her orchards, to the fenced pastures where miniature cattle and horses bent their heads to grass.
“I like working in the gardens.”
“You’ll have gardens and orchards. And even your hens and pigeons, if you like,” Severo said, but his voice was dry.
“Show me the rest,” she said, heading toward the open-roofed labyrinth.
The house was half finished, the walls no higher than her shoulders, but the rooms were laid out according to the rough plans she remembered drawing up weeks after arriving in Los Gemelos.
“I changed some things,” Severo explained as they walked around, “to account for the slope of the land.” Openings faced the expansive views, where each room would have a window and a door to the gallery that ran around three sides of the house.
“I hardly know what to say. When did you do this?”
“I can only assign workers during el tiempo muerto. We learned to make the bricks here. I’ve had poor luck finding a good mason, so it’s been trial and error all along.”
It had taken years, Ana realized, to get the enormous structure to its current half-finished state. The house was easily three times the size of the casona. José’s furniture wouldn’t look quite so imposing in these rooms, and Ana wondered if the carpenter knew this as he filled the casona with chairs, tables, and dressers.
Until this moment, Ana and Severo had hardly touched. He’d kissed her hand once, held her elbow when she walked on uneven terrain, helped her to dismount, brushed her fingers when handing her letters or the ledgers. But as she walked through the house, Ana needed to touch the man who built these rooms for her. As they turned into the gallery facing the mountains, she stood closer to Severo than ever and reached for his hand.
———
They were married on August 31, 1851, after Ana’s twenty-fifth birthday. The women decorated the rancho with festive hibiscus and bougainvillea garlands on the eaves and posts, and vases full of pink and white nardos. Her antique crucifix was again the center of an altar where Padre Xavier said Mass, baptized babies, and declared Severo Fuentes Arosemeno and Ana Larragoity Cubillas man and wife. Witnesses to their marriage were the foremen, slaves, and laborers, who then enjoyed a feast with