Of Love and Other Demons Read Online Free Page B

passementerie, the alabaster washstand and numerous bottles of perfumes and cosmetics lined in martial order on the dressing table; the portable chamber pot, the porcelain spittoon and vomitory, the entire illusory world that the old woman crippled by rheumatism had dreamed for the daughter she never had and the granddaughter she never saw.
    While the slave women resurrectedthe bedroom, the Marquis went about imposing his will on the house. He drove away the slaves dozing in the shade of the arcades, and threatened beatings and slaves’ prison for any who ever again relieved themselves in the corners or gambled in the rooms that had been closed off. These were not new decrees. They had been followed with far greater rigor when Bernarda gave the orders and Domingade Adviento carried them out, and the Marquis took public delight in his historic declaration: ‘In my house I do not say, I obey.’ But when Bernarda succumbed to the quick-sands of cacao, and Dominga de Adviento died, the slaves slipped back into the house with great stealth, first the women with their children to help in small tasks, and then the men without work, searching out the coolnessof the corridors. Terrified by the specter of ruin, Bernarda ordered them to earn their keep by begging in the streets. In one of her crises she decided to free them all except fortwo or three house servants, but the Marquis opposed the idea with an illogical argument: ‘If they are going to die of hunger, it is better for them to die here and not among strangers.’
    He did not adhere to theseeasy formulas when Sierva María was bitten by the dog. He granted certain powers to the slave who seemed to have the greatest authority and be the most trustworthy and gave him instructions so harsh they shocked even Bernarda. Just after dark, when the house was in order for the first time since the death of Dominga de Adviento, he found Sierva María in the slave shack along with half a dozen youngblack women who were sleeping in hammocks criss-crossed at different levels. He woke them all to announce the rules of the new regime.
    ‘From this day forward the girl lives in the house,’ he said. ‘And let it be known here and throughout the kingdom: she has only one family, and that family is white.’
    The girl resisted when he tried to carry her in his arms to the bedroom, and he had to makeher understand that a masculine order governed the world. Once they were in her grandmother’s room, he replaced her slave’s burlap chemise with a nightdress but could not make her say a word. Bernarda watched them from the door: the Marquis sitting on the bed and struggling with the buttons on the nightgown, which would not pass through the new buttonholes, and the girl standing in front of him andregarding him with an impassive expression. Bernarda could not restrain herself.
    ‘Why don’t you two get married?’ she mocked. And since the Marquis ignored her, she added, ‘Not a badlittle business: You could breed American-born marquises with chicken feet and sell them to the circus.’
    Something had changed in her as well. Despite the ferocity of her laughter, her face seemed less bitter, andat the bottom of her faithlessness lay a sediment of compassion that the Marquis did not see. As soon as he heard her leave, he said to the girl, ‘She is a sow.’
    He thought he detected a spark of interest. ‘Do you know what a sow is?’ he asked, eager for a reply. Sierva María did not grant him one. She allowed herself to be laid down on the bed, she allowed her head to be settled on the featherpillows, she allowed herself to be covered to the knees by the fine linen sheet fragrant with the scent of the cedar chest, and she did not bestow upon him the charity of a single glance. He felt a tremor of conscience. ‘Do you pray before you sleep?’
    The girl did not even look at him. Accustomed to a hammock, she curled into the fetal position and fell asleep without saying good night. The