Conquistadora - Esmeralda Santiago [188]
“¿Cómo están mis tesoros?”
Ana looked up at Severo. “Your little treasure is always hungry,” she said, feeling, and even to her ears sounding, petulant. “Your big treasure seems unable to satisfy him.”
Severo kissed her, then the baby, who was latched on to her breast but making disappointed faces.
“I’ve tried, but he needs a wet nurse.” She switched Segundo to her other breast and settled into the pillows with an exhausted sigh. “Pepita is still nursing and has a mild temperament.” She didn’t realize she’d dozed until she opened her eyes and met Severo’s, gazing with such intense desire that a blush rose to her scalp. “Severo, you know we can’t.”
“I’ve never seen you like this,” he said, nuzzling her neck, her shoulder, Segundo’s head, kissing it, stroking his son’s face, then kissing her lips, but she pulled away.
“Your attention is most flattering,” she said coyly. “And will be welcome later.”
“Está bien.” He took a few steps around the room, gathering himself before he left.
Jealousy pounded against Ana’s temples, and she was aware that even now, during the first days of his newborn child, it was possible that he’d consume his passion with another woman, but she didn’t speak a word. It didn’t make it right, but she’d accepted many things she might have challenged in other circumstances. “So long as he comes home to me,” she said to herself—the same phrase that women had whispered to themselves for centuries to excuse the same betrayal.
“Consuelo, mi consuelo,” Severo Fuentes called, and she emerged, smelling of smoke, ash, and cigar. He took her with a ferocity that astonished them both and afterward slept with his head upon her soft, fleshy bosom as she rubbed circles around his scalp.
JACOBO, YAYO, AND QUIQUE
The two men Severo had brought from San Bernabé slept in hammocks on either side of Jacobo in the men’s barracks. Their women still lived on the farm, and Yayo and Quique were anxious about them and their daughters, now at the mercy of don Luis and Santos, the overseer. Both Yayo and Quique had children and grandchildren conceived in the rapes don Luis inflicted on their women. Over the years, both men’s anger had been stifled but not smothered. Locked in barracks after lights out in Hacienda los Gemelos, they could express their anxiety over their families only in low-voiced outrage that mushroomed into frustration and finally to rebellion. At first Jacobo pretended he didn’t hear them, but pretty soon he was listening to their plans. They agreed that the best time to run away would be during the zafra, when they’d be outdoors with machetes and other tools that could be used as weapons.
Folly grows from desperation. Yayo and Quique conspired, and their passion convinced Jacobo to join them. In late 1864, the three men were not in their first youth but did have experience of the rhythm of the zafra. The coming harvest would begin on the east, northeast, and southeast fields, closest to the border with San Bernabé and the main road to Guares. Between them and the town was La Palanca, the hamlet of campesinos. Only women and children would be in the village, since the men would be working in the ingenio. They expected no challenge when going through; they might even be able to steal a couple of horses or mules for their getaway into the mountains. They didn’t think what might happen if their plan was discovered. They didn’t think of the consequences of failure. They didn’t think that the two young men who’d tried to run away from San Bernabé soon after news of the Emancipation Proclamation were whipped to death after they were caught. They didn’t think that if they were successful they’d have to hide for the rest of their lives, moving from cave to cave through the rough terrain of the central mountain range of the island, pursued by hounds, soldiers,