Conquistadora - Esmeralda Santiago [95]
Severo Fuentes opened the carriage door, and as Leonor stepped down, the first person she saw was an old man dressed in loose white pants, shirt, vest, and jacket. A shapeless straw hat drooped over long, stringy hair and shadowed what could be seen of his face surrounded by an unkempt beard. Neither the hat nor the shadows could hide the most vacant eyes Leonor had ever seen. It took her a moment to realize she was looking at Ramón.
“Hijo,” she cried, and threw herself upon him, but softened her hold at the sharp bones beneath his too-big clothes, her once exacting, perfumed boy now stinking of sweat and defeat. She pulled away, held him by the shoulders, looked into his blank eyes, and saw tears. “What has happened to you?” she asked before she could stop herself, and Ana, who was standing near Severo Fuentes, stepped closer with an insipid smile, as if she hadn’t heard the question.
“Lovely to see you again, doña Leonor.” Ana kissed her cheeks, then signaled to a woman next to her to present the boy, her grandson, who bleated like a frightened lamb when Leonor opened her arms toward him. Miguel buried his face in his nurse’s bosom in an attempt to be invisible.
“Ven, Miguelito,” Ana said. “Nana Inés has to go now. Meet your abuela and abuelo. Ven niño, no tengas miedo,” she cooed. The child held on to Inés, who tried to pry him away, without success.
Ramón ran his bony hands over the boy’s head, and Miguel turned around, threw himself at his father, and wrapped his arms around his neck and his legs around his waist. Leonor instinctively reached out, afraid that her son would break from the violence of such passionate love. Murmuring in the child’s ear, Ramón persuaded Miguel to turn his face so that his grandparents could get a good look at his features. To Leonor’s disappointment, he was the spitting image of Ana.
Leonor had waited so long to see her son that she couldn’t take her eyes off him the whole first afternoon and evening they were together. She barely noticed the house, its furnishings, and Ana’s demeanor. She saw only how thin Ramón was, how his eyes didn’t quite meet hers or his father’s. She noticed his sickly yellow skin, wrinkled and furrowed where the straggly beard didn’t grow. His hands had bronzed into leather, his nails were cracked, his fingertips were raw and sore, as if he’d been digging earth with bare hands. He still moved with the grace of the excellent dancer, but as if through water, deliberate and labored.
Leonor and Eugenio were installed next to Ana and Ramón’s bedroom, and Elena was assigned the one across the hall. Miguel went to stay with his nurse next to the workshop.
“We’re so sorry,” Ana said, “that the accommodations aren’t more luxurious.” Her face wrinkled into a grimace that was supposed to be an apologetic smile. “I’m afraid the work on the land means that we haven’t paid enough attention to our own comfort indoors.”
After a short siesta and an early supper, they sat on the porch. As Eugenio and Elena related the gossip they picked up on their travels, Leonor kept eyes on her son, on his newly aquiline features, the way his head bobbed as if he was agreeing with what was said but was actually listening to an internal conversation. When the bell clanged lights out, they all retired. The plain wooden slats dividing the rooms meant that Leonor was aware of every movement on the other side of the wall. There was pacing and urgent murmuring, as if Ana was trying to convince Ramón of something and he wouldn’t agree. After a few minutes, Ramón left the house. When Leonor turned to her husband, he, too, was awake, listening.
“Where could he be going at this time of night?”
“I can’t imagine.”
“We have to bring him back with us,” she said. “He’s not well.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Right away,” she insisted. “He needs a doctor.”
“I’ll speak with him in the morning,” Eugenio said into her ear. “Rest now, dear. We had a long journey.”
Ramón wandered the paths and lanes in the dark. Following no