Chapter 7 Isabel

                                            
 

After the fall of Céspedes in battle in 1874, the war between Spaniards and separatists dragged on for four more years, to the point that the Cuban economy collapsed and there were more than 200,000 victims. In Spain, things were no better - the Third Carlist War had no end either.

For Mariano, the fall of Céspedes, along with the disappearance of Felipe, was a hard blow. That year and the four that followed were the blackest of his life. He felt his lack of friends because he didn't see much of Miguel and the captain, who at that time began to make new, safer, and more profitable routes to Colombia and Venezuela.

He was dissatisfied with the lack of success in his search for work in the commercial field, but he was very grateful to pharmacist Jose Sarrá and continued to work in his pharmacy until José, after his wife fell ill, moved permanently to Catalonia at the end of 1876. José knew that it was a bad time to embark, and Josep, one of his nephews and Jose’s business partner, with whom he had always been very close, was starting to act strangely, but he could not leave his sick wife alone in Barcelona. At the port, Mariano became emotional saying goodbye to the person who had helped him the most to flee Spain and settle in Havana. He had to try hard not to cry.

“To return, to return, I want to do it soon. But I don't want to go into a black hole and not be able to get out of it,” Mariano told himself. He returned home with his head down. Without Mr. Sarrá, he felt even more helpless, but he cheered himself up thinking that he still had Maria, and he began to write her a letter. As he started to write, tears started to form and he let off steam by telling her of his anxieties. When he said good-bye, he promised her that as soon as he had a good job he would help her leave the Valls mansion.

Mariano also wrote a letter to his mother that day, but avoided telling her about the disastrous events on the island. Writing helped him to calm down. Then he stared at the fountain pen his father gave him on his sixteenth birthday, and thought of the words he had said to him as he gave him that precious gift. "You are already a man, and soon you are going to take over my businesses. You will be the one who runs the José Defaus Ballesté Grains and Seeds Society. Remember that good businessmen always carry a good pen with them.”

In the weeks that followed, Mariano waited impatiently for the postman to deliver a letter. However, since the political situation worsened, the letters were long overdue. One day, he received two letters from his mother, several months after he had received the last one.

From the moment Maria's letters stopped reaching him, Mariano's face was downcast and melancholy. He had idealized Maria, the shy girl he had briefly met on the ship, but only in the last days of the voyage were the adventures of their uprooted lives recounted under the stars.

In the first letters he did not dare to ask her to marry him, but letter after letter he prepared the ground. In the last one, he asked, but received no reply.

During those long months, he didn't leave the house much and when he did, he couldn't relate to other women. On the other hand, Pablo, Pepe, and Pedro led an unbridled life. Every night they got drunk and spent everything they earned in the brothels. The first time the three brothers told Mariano that they were never going to get married, he thought they were joking. But he soon realized that they were serious.

One night, he went out for a glass of rum with them. Pedro immediately got involved with the prettiest girl in the place. Pablo, the older brother, started dancing with a woman of about fifty years but of striking beauty. Pepe, the reserved one, was chatty that night and it seemed that he was not in a hurry to find a girl. They sat down at a table in the back of the room and Pepe told him the story of his family.

“The three of us grew up on our own as our father was in jail for a long time. He was arrested in the late 1930s for his progressive ideas. My brother Pedro was not even a year old, and Pablo and I were also young. My mother and grandmother carried on as best they could, but the store was losing customers every day and they were getting desperate. We went through a lot of hardships, but what made us suffer the most was living without our father. We grew up among sacks of potatoes, lentils, and chickpeas. The store was our home and the three of us started helping our mother. My father came home when the three of us were older. After several years, when things in the store were improving, he was arrested again, during La Gloriosa, the revolution that dethroned Queen Elizabeth II, but he was only in jail for a short time. Our father was idealistic and believed in revolution, but he was very impulsive. None of us three brothers are like him - we are not interested in politics. We don't want to get married and have children so that they suffer as we have. That's why we like to have fun and spend everything we earn in taverns and on women.”

“By staying together, you can help each other. You seem very close,” Mariano told him.

“Of course, we help each other with everything.”

This made Mariano feel even more lonely and helpless. Mr. Sarrá, Miguel, and Felipe, his friends from the new world, were far away. “Well, I’m not alone! The three brothers are trying to get me out of the house. In their own way, they are helping me,” he said, trying to cheer himself up.

However, he felt a strange uneasiness, as if he were dizzy even though he had drunk very little. He got up while Pedro was sitting down again at the table. Mariano left the brothers and hurried across the threshold of the tavern door. “Mariano, stay a while longer! The best is yet to come,” Pedro shouted at him. Mariano ran home and went to bed, but it was hard for him to fall asleep, wondering obsessively why Maria still didn't answer him.

The months went by, and Mariano was increasingly dissatisfied with the life he was leading. However, one night he let himself be convinced by the three shopkeepers to go partying with them. "This time I won't let you escape!" said Pedro.

They entered a tavern full of people, where they danced to Caribbean tunes played by two black musicians. A mulatto woman asked Mariano for a dance. She was pretty, but not as flashy as the other women who moved insinuatingly. She wore her hair in a bun, wore a simple dress, and had a captivating smile. She taught Mariano dance steps that he didn't know. He let himself be carried away by this attractive girl. The two drank too much and ended up half-drunk on a bunk bed in a boarding house in the port. It was the first time Mariano had slept with a stranger and he felt guilty, as if he had committed a bad or unjust action.

Isabel, the girl who lay beside him, was the maid of a Spanish dressmaker. She then told him that in the evenings she went dancing in the slums of the port to earn some money that she sent to her aunt. The men tipped her, but that night she wouldn't accept a coin from Mariano. From then on, he often went to see her dance. She still didn't want him to pay her anything, but Mariano brought her gifts such as delicacies or household goods and products from the pharmacy that she almost always sold on the black market of the port.

One evening, while they were walking, Isabel told Mariano that she was the daughter of Awelia, a slave who arrived from Africa at the age of ten. "It horrifies me to think that a few human beings uprooted thousands of Africans from their land, took away their freedom, and treated them so cruelly," Mariano replied, thinking of Felipe. “And the bad thing is that they still do it, it hurts me to think that all the blacks and mulattoes who live on the island are either slaves or descended from them. I'm ashamed to have been born in the same land as slaveholders," Mariano told her sadly.

“My mother, as you can imagine, went through the pains of hell, but her bravery saved her life. She was caught by slavers, taken to Cuba, and sold to a Spanish landowner who owned a huge sugar cane plantation. My mother, Awelia, who was immediately re-named Amelia, had never seen so many people working together, nor so many vast tracts of cultivated land, bordered by rows of trees. They gave her a machete to cut reeds from dawn to dusk. The slaves sang so as not to die of pain, because in addition to being forced to work like animals, they were treated with whips. Amelia did not despair and she tried to adapt to the regimen of that prison. The women in her barracks at first welcomed her with suspicion, but they soon realized that shel was good at taking care of children who fell ill, and that little Amelia watched and learned any task very quickly without question. Listening to the foremen, she learned Spanish. In a few months, my mother suddenly grew up. At the age of fifteen she became pregnant, and she never knew who the father of her daughter was, because she was raped several times by the foremen of the plantation. Thanks to two women from her hut, she managed to give birth to me and, after asking permission from the owners, she gave me to Rogelia, a kind woman who went to the farm to predict the future of the owners. Every month, the fortune teller brought me, so that I could spend some time with my real mother.  The plantation owners agreed that Rogelia would raise me, but she would remain their property and when she could work she would have to return to the farm. Those were the deals. My mother, Amelia, managed to get me registered under the name Isabel.”

“One day, my mother, Amelia, rescued a baby who was drowning in a ditch. The babysitter had left him on the side of the irrigation canal while she bathed. The seven-month-old boy, who was very lively, turned over and fell into the water. Amelia, returning to the barracks, exhausted after a hellish day, found the nanny walking and approached her to play with the child. On that occasion she was very quick to save the baby, and no one knew how she did it.” 

 “As a reward to Amelia, the owner gave freedom to her daughter, Isabel, after Rogelia raised the girl. Amelia was happy that she had obtained her daughter’s freedom, the thing she longed for most. I inherited my mother's beauty and strength of character. My mother advised me not to wear low-cut dresses, not only so as to not attract white men, but also young slaves who sometimes could not contain their sexual urges and violently harassed female slaves.”

“It didn't help me to dress modestly. One afternoon I was raped by one of the foremen, one of the men who had also assaulted Amelia. I did not tell my mother so that she would not be embarrassed, and save her the pain, but I promised myself that sooner or later I would take revenge on the evil man, which I was never able to do.”

“A few months later, the owners of the hacienda sent me to Havana, to the home of a cousin of theirs, a dressmaker. I cleaned, cooked, and took care of the shopping. The dressmaker gave me food and a bed and sometimes I would receive a few coins. My mother was very proud of me, the fact that I was the maid of a Spaniard was a very big social leap, but she never knew that I danced in taverns, she wouldn't have liked that. She died of a mysterious fever a few years later, in the hacienda barracks where she had lived most of her life,” Isabel said sadly.

“My parents, they wouldn't like to know that I'm dating you either,” Mariano told her.

“Why, because I am mulatta?”

“No, that's not why, it's because I haven't been honest with you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I have hidden from you that I am engaged to another woman, to Maria, a Catalan girl I met on the boat. She was, and still is, the maid of a rich lady, Mrs. Valls. We talked, and I promised her that I would get her off the farm and marry her.”

“Even though it took you so long to tell me, I appreciate that now you've been honest. Many of the men I've dated have used me, and when they've had enough of me, they've stood me up without explanation.”

"Isabel, I'm so sorry, I wish I wasn't engaged to someone else," Mariano told her.

 “Don't worry about me. In a few days I'm leaving the city.”

“Why? Are you leaving the dressmaker without letting her know? Where are you going to go?”

“I've been thinking about going to Santa Clara, where my aunt Rogelia lives, to take care of her. She raised me, and I owe it to her. I was embarrassed to tell you. Don't worry about the dressmaker, the other day she told me that she is going to close the workshop and return to Spain.”

“Isabel, you are very brave, and I admire you. You have been, and continue to be, very valuable to me. I don't want to lose you.”

“We will stay in touch. I'll find someone to write my letters to you. I was also embarrassed to tell you that I am completely illiterate.”

"I'll write to you, too," Mariano whispered, kissing her for the last time.