The Mortifications Read Online Free Page B

crop, going so far as to outline the ever-shifting agricultural outlook for the week—the leaves will swell in this sun, the dirt will dry in this heat, the humidity will thicken the stalks, et cetera. At the same time he would comment on the tenderness of the brisket or the flexibility of the asparagus or the merlot’s bouquet. Ulises had trouble associating him with his father, who seemed to dwell only in abstractions, in faith and politics. He decided it was the absence of Uxbal in Willems that Soledad found captivating. She was in love with the void.
    —
    But then, on a late November evening, Willems revealed himself at dinner. As was the custom, Isabel said grace before the meal, and the others, despite being essentially agnostic, humored her, bowing their heads and waiting out the lengthy benediction. Ulises, sore in the neck from a day of tilling, looked up to see Willems mumbling under his breath. The Dutchman was praying, something Ulises had never expected from a man who routinely put his nose in the mud, and the moment Isabel whispered,
Amen,
he turned to Willems and asked, What are you praying for?
    Willems looked caught in a lie, or, at least, embarrassed. He glanced at Soledad, who shrugged. The man sighed. Turning to Ulises, he said, The tobacco.
    My grandfather had indentured servants, Willems confessed, former slaves and Indians, and they built our farms on the smaller islands of the West Indies. One on Cuba, also. They’re the ones who picked our leaves and rolled our cigars. There was a cholera outbreak on one of the islands. According to my father, the servants would go out into the fields healthy and strong but return glassy-eyed and sluggish. A day came when twenty men and three children died in the fields. My father tried to persuade my grandfather to do something, to lug in fresh water, to clean the bunkhouses, to isolate the ill, but he refused. It was time for the harvest, and he simply imported more men, more Indians, some Chinese. The city health inspector quickly learned of my grandfather’s negligence, shut down his farms, and burned all his tobacco fields along with the bodies of the dead. My father broke ties with the family and started his own tobacco company, but he would only make cigarettes. He said cigars were tainted. He said he had dreams, and in the dreams when he smoked cigars, the souls of the dead would seep out of them and haunt him for the rest of his life. I think they did anyway. My grandfather, at least, went mad. He died alone in a poorhouse. So this will sound ridiculous, but I sometimes worry that the fogs from my cigars are the souls of good people, and I say a little benediction for them.
    But you’re not afraid of ghosts, are you? Ulises asked.
    I’ve inherited my father’s fear, Willems said, but also my grandfather’s constitution. I’ve yet to have my father’s dreams, but I also don’t want to ignore the dead. He paused. I know, he said. It’s all ludicrous.
    A man divided, Ulises thought, and the pain of the division was clear on Willems’s face. Ulises had never seen him so uncomfortable, and it was obvious that Willems couldn’t reconcile his patriarchal past with his pragmatic present: he was the most careful man on the farm, and when he touched his seeds or smelled his dirt, it was with reverence. Ulises had assumed the affection was for the product itself, the finished Colorados and Obscuros, but in reality it was for what
might
be there, what was
possibly
buried in the soil. But the logic was irregular. Yes, the Dutchman was his father’s son, but these fields were not the Antilles.
    Poor man, Soledad said, and her sincerity prompted a memory of Uxbal for Ulises: his father splitting their tomato harvest in two, one half for the church and one half for the family. Ulises recognized that Soledad now looked at Willems similarly. Uxbal grew tomatoes for his family
and
his revolution, and Willems grew tobacco, rolled cigars, for his livelihood
and
for