Conquistadora - Esmeralda Santiago [134]
She tried to rouse him again, her fingers playing with the coarse hair on his belly. “Right now, it’s more important to put our resources into Los Gemelos, mi amor. A new casona is a distraction when we have so much to do. You have made me so happy in every way possible. You anticipate my every need. And the house is beautiful. But really, it’s not as important to me as—”
He took her without words, forcefully, and for the first time in the year they’d been married, he climaxed inside her.
The next morning, a Sunday, Severo awoke earlier than usual. The boards creaked with every step and made him feel heavy, ungainly.
He took pride in being the first person awake at Los Gemelos. He was usually on horseback before dawn, regardless of weather. By the time the foremen led the workers to their stations, he would have done a circuit of the fields so that at the end of the day he could gauge how much was accomplished.
On Sundays, however, Severo let himself be seen by his tenants. He allowed campesinos to build bohíos on the boundaries of his lands. It was an inducement for jornaleros, and he expected them to work for him during the zafra. He garnered their wages to make sure they paid their rent. During el tiempo muerto, it was important to visit them lest they forget whose land they occupied, and that they must make it yield enough to pay their rent in the form of labor, produce, or cash, or find another place to live, another plot to farm.
He had no patience with lazy campesinos, the ones who spent more time on fighting cocks and cards than on agriculture. He was sorry for their women, whose only relief from hard work and worry was an untimely death, frequently as they sent forth yet another offspring destined for hopelessness and misery. If they were widowed and showed some grit, Severo sometimes forgave a portion of their dead husband’s debts so long as the widows didn’t neglect their duty to the land. That was why many of his tenants were women with children, some of them his. He kept a record of his unions and his bastards, but didn’t otherwise single them out in any way lest they get it into their heads that they were entitled to anything they didn’t earn.
There was one exception, however. Consuelo Soldevida was not technically a tenant. She lived on his land beyond Ana’s circuit. He provided for her as well as he provided for Ana, except that Consuelo’s needs were simpler, her expectations lower.
Before marrying Ana, he’d lived with Consuelo, but when Ana accepted his proposal, he moved to his house by the river. During the three months of their engagement, he appeared at Consuelo’s gate on Sunday afternoons after his rounds, but he hadn’t been to see her since his marriage.
Over the eight years they’d known each other, Consuelo’s body had changed, its contours a frequent delight. Some days she was soft and round, other days her arms and legs felt muscular, her buttocks and belly hard. She’d been pregnant several times but hadn’t presented him a child, claiming miscarriages and stillbirths. Before he married Ana, he would’ve legitimized a daughter or son from Consuelo, he told her, but she’d been unable to deliver a healthy infant.
Much of his wealth went to Spain, where he enriched the lives of his mother and father, his six sisters and brothers, and their families. His father and brothers no longer toiled over a cobbling bench. His mother wore custom-made frocks with plenty of lace and had a maid to clean her house and a cook to prepare meals. His brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews ate well every day, thanks to his industry. Even Padre Antonio, who taught him to read and write and drilled Latin into him, benefited from Severo’s good fortune in the New World. A niche in the church was now the Fuentes Arosemeno chapel, its Jesus on the cross surrounded by the three