Of Love and Other Demons Read Online Free Page A

Bernarda.
    ‘I’m a free man and I’m selling myself,’ he replied. And ended with a certain tone: ‘Señora.’
    ‘Marquise,’ she said.
    He made a courtier’s bow that left her breathless, andshe bought him for half of what he had aspired to. ‘Just for the pleasure of seeing him,’ as she said. In return she respected both hiscondition as a free man and the time he spent wrangling his circus bull. She moved him into a room near her own, which had once belonged to the head groom, and from the first night, naked and with her door unbolted, she waited for him, confident he would come without being invited. But she had to wait two weeks, and did not sleep in peace because of the fire in her body.
    The truth was that assoon as he learned who she was and saw the interior of the house, he re-established his slave’s reserve. But when Bernarda had stopped waiting for him and slept in a nightgown and bolted the door, he came in through the window. The air in her room, rarefied by the ammoniac odor of his sweat, woke her. She heard the heavy breathing of a minotaur searching for her in the darkness, she felt the sultryheat of his body on top of her, his hands of prey grasping the neck of her nightgown and ripping it down the middle while his husky voice intoned in her ear, ‘Whore, whore.’ From that night on, Bernarda knew there was nothing else she wanted to do for the rest of her life.
    She was mad about him. At night they would go to the dances in the slum districts, he dressed as a gentleman in a frock coatand round hat, which Bernarda bought to please him, and she in a variety of disguises at first, and then with her face unmasked. She showered him with the gold of chains, rings and bracelets and studded his teeth with diamonds. She thought she would die when she learned he took every woman who crossed his path to bed but in the end she settled for whatever was left over. It was during this timethat Dominga de Adviento walkedinto Bernarda’s bedroom at siesta, thinking she was at the sugar plantation, and found the two of them naked, making love on the floor. The slave woman stood with her hand on the latch, more confused than surprised.
    ‘Don’t just stand there like a corpse,’ Bernarda shouted. ‘Either get out or get down here with us.’
    Dominga de Adviento left with a slam of the doorthat sounded to Bernarda like a slap in the face. That night she summoned her and threatened the most atrocious punishments if she said anything about what she had seen. ‘Don’t worry, white lady,’ said the slave. ‘You can forbid whatever you like, and I’ll obey.’ And she concluded, ‘The trouble is you can’t forbid what I think.’
    If the Marquis did know anything, he was very good at pretendingnot to. After all, Sierva María was the only thing he still had in common with his wife, and he thought of Sierva María not as his daughter but as hers alone. And Bernarda did not think of the girl at all. She had put her so far out of her mind that when she returned from one of her extended stays at the sugar plantation, Bernarda mistook her for someone else because she had grown and changed somuch. She called for her, examined her, questioned her about her life, but could not get her to say a single word.
    ‘You’re just like your father,’ she said. ‘A freak.’
    Their attitudes had not changed on the day the Marquis returned from the Amor de Dios Hospital and announced to Bernarda his resolve to take up the reins of the household with a warlike hand. There was something frenetic in hisurgency that left Bernarda speechless.
    Hisfirst action was to return to the girl the bedroom that had belonged to her grandmother the Marquise, and that had been hers until Bernarda sent her to sleep with the slaves. Beneath the dust its former splendor remained intact: the imperial bed that the servants thought was gold because of the brilliance of its copper; the mosquito netting made of bridaltulle, the rich hangings of