House on the Lagoon Read Online Free Page A

absolutely no racial restrictions on who could apply to the recently founded State University in Río Piedras, which was paid for with American dollars. The warm tropical breezes, the swaying palm trees, the waves which sighed and gave way to festoons of foam on the beach—everything on the island contributed to the loosening up of old Spanish customs, and eventually people forgot about the Bloodline Books.
    A balmy climate can be a dangerous seductress, Rebecca used to say to Quintín, and before long the sons of the well-to-do began to eye the bare arms and shoulders of the beautiful mulatto girls, who, following the American custom, went everywhere unaccompanied and worked where they pleased. The beauty of the quadroons, which until then was a hidden treasure, was suddenly discovered by the young men of “good families,” and there was a veritable epidemic of racially mixed liaisons on the island.
    A few well-to-do families, those who were really wealthy, like the Mendizabals, stubbornly kept to the old Spanish ways and countered the loosening up of mores with an even stricter code of behavior for their children. They urged them to be extremely careful of their friends and advised them to ask for last names, so their parents could check on pedigrees.
    These families were also influenced by our new American citizenship, but in a very different manner. Rebecca often told Quintín how in the past many of their friends’ families had traveled by steamer to Europe for the holidays, and only a few had ever set foot in the United States. Most were born in the Old Country and still had relatives there; others owned property which had belonged to their ancestors; some even cherished the dream of returning one day, though in the end few did so.
    Once they became American citizens, rich families traveled often to the United States and began to send their children to first-class universities on the East Coast. Reaching the mainland at that time involved a complicated voyage by ship and train; airplane travel wasn’t commercialized until the end of the twenties. Pan American Clippers, which were amphibious at the time, would land in San Juan Bay, fly from there to Port-au-Prince, and then on to Santiago de Cuba and Miami. Before the Pan Am Clipper, one booked a steamship from San Juan to Jacksonville and there boarded a Pullman coach on the Florida railroad line to Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, or New York. As trains had coal engines and no showers, it didn’t matter how light the color of your skin was. By the time you arrived at your destination, you were black as soot from head to toe.
    It was during these trips to the United States that well-to-do families began to realize some surprising facts which reaffirmed their belief that the old ways were still the best, and that it was important their children abide by them. When they boarded the train at Jacksonville, for example, they learned that black passengers couldn’t travel in the same Pullman coaches as whites. As long as the train traveled through the South, Negroes had to use a different bathroom and go to a different restaurant car. This was an alarming discovery and at first these families were so amazed they couldn’t believe their eyes. It would never have happened in their country, they thought, where everyone could eat or make water in the same place. The concept of equality under law, which the new democratic regime supposedly had brought to the island and which they had so earnestly embraced because they wanted to be good American citizens, was interpreted very differently on the mainland.
    The situation caused Puerto Rican visitors considerable distress. Even though they were Caucasians, their skin was never as white as that of the Americans milling around them; it had a light olive tint to it, which made them suspect in the eyes of the conductor when they were about to board the first-class coaches to New Orleans, for example, or in those of the concierge