Whispers in Asunción

Asunción del Paraguay, year of our Lord 1778

Fernanda contemplates the split beam while the rain invades the gallery.

«There are storms that only break the roofs.
Others begin by breaking the hearts of those who live beneath them.»

The rain had begun before dawn, when the city was still a dark mass stretched out beside the river and the cathedral bells had not yet called for the first mass. It did not arrive with a clamour, but with a stubborn patience: first a few scattered drops on the tiles, then a continuous murmur, and finally that grey curtain that seemed to have descended to erase the paths, the orchards and even the towers of Asunción.

In the governor's house, the water found every defect that the sun had spent months hiding.

It seeped through the joints of the tiles, ran under the eaves, filled the terracotta gutters and fell in thick streams into the inner courtyard. The orange trees, laden with dark and shiny leaves, shivered under the storm. The wellhead overflowed. In the galleries, the flagstones gave off an earthy smell that mingled with the smoke from the kitchen, the wax of spent candles and the sour scent of walls limewashed by the humidity.

Fernanda knew that house better than anyone.

She had arrived when she was almost a child, before the current governor took office, and since then she had seen the birth, illness, marriage and death of everyone who had lived under that roof. She knew which step of the staircase creaked when someone tried to go up without being heard. She knew which lock needed a sharp tap and which window opened on its own when the wind blew from the river. She even knew that the third board of the eastern corridor warped during long rains, even though the master carpenter swore it was impossible.

That was why she stopped.

She was carrying a basket of sheets against her hip and a candle protected between her fingers when she heard the first sound.

It was no more than a brief groan, almost delicate, as if the house had sighed in its sleep.

Fernanda raised her head.

—What new misfortune...?

The second creak was clearer. Sharp. Deep.

The old lapacho beam that spanned the main corridor split before her eyes. A black line appeared in the wood, thin at first, and advanced slowly until it became an irregular crack. From the ceiling fell a rain of dust, dry bits of straw and a small spider that disappeared under the wardrobe. Then came the first drop.

It fell onto the flagstones with a ridiculously small sound.

Ploc.

Fernanda remained motionless.

Ploc.

Another drop descended through the crack. Then a third. In a matter of seconds, a thread of water began to slide down the blackened beam, pooled at the end of a rusty nail and fell directly onto the pile of clean sheets.

Fernanda looked at the stain spreading over the linen.

—Holy Mary, Mother of God!

The basket hit the floor. The sheets spilled across the gallery.

—Clara! —she shouted with a voice that pierced through doors, bedrooms and kitchens—. Clara Chope! If you don't appear before I count to three, I swear by the Virgin of the Assumption that I will go and find you myself!

A peal of thunder answered from the river.

In the kitchen, a spoon was heard falling. A young maid poked her head out and immediately withdrew it. Two boys carrying firewood stood petrified by the door.

Fernanda pointed at the beam as if it were responsible for a personal betrayal.

—Do you see? —she said—. There you have what happens when men claim a house can wait. «It will hold for another summer, Fernanda». «It is nothing more than a stain, Fernanda». «Do not bother the Lord Governor with matters of tiles, Fernanda». Well, now let the Lord Governor come and sleep under this.

The crack creaked again.

The boys took a step back.

—Buckets! —she ordered—. Or do you intend to catch the water with your hands?

The house woke up all at once. There were races through the corridors, slamming doors, repeated orders and the sound of copper vessels being pulled from the pantry. Fernanda moved amongst them all with her chin high, her white cap slightly crooked and a bunch of keys clattering against her skirt. Every new leak was received as an offence. Every puddle provoked a reprimand.

Clara finally appeared from the service passage. She was nineteen years old and had her black hair gathered in a plait that fell over one shoulder. Her sleeves were rolled up and she had flour on her right cheek. She had been helping to prepare the bread when she heard the shouting.

—Did you call me, Doña Fernanda?

—No, child. I was shouting your name to test the acoustics of the house.

Clara lowered her eyes, though a shadow of a smile trembled on her lips.

Fernanda saw it and became even more irritated.

—Look up.

Clara obeyed. A drop fell on her forehead.

—The beam has split.

—I can see the beam has split —replied Fernanda—. I also see that the water is coming in, that the sheets are ruined and that everyone in this house has decided to become useless on the same day. What I don't see is Fulgencio.

—Fulgencio doesn't live here.

—That is why you are going to find him.

Fernanda stepped closer until she was almost nose to nose with her.

—Go to his workshop. If he is not there, ask at the Vera house. If he is not there either, look for him in the port tavern, for by this hour he will have already found an excuse to drink. And tell him to bring tools, ropes and two men who know how to tell a hammer from a spoon.

Clara looked towards the courtyard, where the rain was falling so thick that the entrance arch could barely be seen.

—Now?

—No, when the sun comes out and another generation is born. Of course now.

—Doña Fernanda, in this weather...

—In this weather the house is falling apart. Put on your cloak.

There was a hardness in the housekeeper's voice that made Clara straighten her back. But Fernanda, before turning away, took a thicker woollen cloak from the rack than those of the servants and handed it to her without looking at her.

—And do not cross by the wharf street —she added—. The mud is up to your knees. Go through the square and do not stop to talk to anyone.

It was her way of worrying.

Clara knew it.

—Yes, Doña Fernanda.

—And Clara.

The young woman turned back.

—If Fulgencio intends to charge double because of the rain, tell him that I myself will remind him how much he paid for that crooked table he tried to sell us as French.

Clara left smiling.

The storm snatched the smile away as soon as she crossed the portal.

Asunción appeared disfigured under the water. The red earth streets had turned into thick rivers; cart wheels left deep ruts and animals moved with heads bowed, twitching their ears. The limewashed houses seemed whiter under the dark sky, and from their roofs fell cascades that forced one to walk pressed against the walls.

Clara gathered her skirts with one hand and held her cloak with the other.

Despite Fernanda's order, she could not help but stop for a moment under the arcades of the square. Half the city had taken refuge there. Indigenous women covered their baskets of cassava, oranges and medicinal herbs with mats. A merchant argued with a soldier over some soaked sacks of yerba mate. Two Dominican friars crossed the square lifting their habits, and a barefoot boy ran after a hen that had escaped from the market.

The air smelled of mud, wet leather, smoke and river.

Clara knew every corner of that city. She had been born in a humble dwelling near the northern orchards, the daughter of a Guaraní woman who cured fevers with barks and a man she barely remembered. As a child she had carried water, sold fruit and cleaned other people's courtyards. The governor's house, with its high ceilings, mirrors brought from Europe and crockery marked with crests, had at first seemed like a world apart from her own.

Until she met María Ignacia.

The memory produced a sensation of warmth that not even the rain managed to extinguish.

María Ignacia had taught her to recognise the letters hidden in prayer books. First her name. Then simple words. Later, in secret, verses that they both read by a window when Fernanda pretended not to see them. In exchange, Clara had taught her the Guaraní names of the trees, how to distinguish the clouds that brought storms and how to listen to the murmur of the city from the kitchens, where the news was always known before it reached the governor's office.

That friendship should not have existed.

That was why it was so precious.

Clara resumed her path. As she passed the side stables she heard a sharp whinny and then a voice protesting with delicate indignation.

—Don't push me, you ungrateful creature! I have spoken to you with more sweetness than to any Christian in this house!

Nelson Cuy appeared at the stable door holding the reins of a chestnut mare. He was tall and thin, with dark hair plastered to his forehead by the rain. He wore a linen shirt too clean for a stable boy, a neckerchief and an offended expression that made Clara laugh despite the urgency.

—A mare is beating you —she said.

—She isn't beating me. She's performing a drama because she heard the thunder.

The mare pulled at him again.

Nelson gave a small jump to avoid a puddle.

—And because she has a dreadful character. Like another lady we both know.

From inside the house came Fernanda's voice.

—Nelson!

His eyes widened.

—See? She has the ears of the devil.

—She heard you because you're shouting.

—I don't shout, I project my voice.

Clara shook her head.

—I'm going to find Fulgencio. A beam has split.

Nelson looked towards the gallery and whistled.

—That explains the racket. I thought Doña Fernanda had discovered who ate the honey pastries.

Clara looked at him with suspicion.

—It was you.

—You can't prove it.

The mare pulled again and Nelson, with an unexpectedly firm gesture, led her inside. His lightness was deceptive: he knew animals better than anyone and could master a nervous horse with barely a word.

—Be careful —he told Clara—. The stream is rising. And if you see Fulgencio, tell him not to let Fernanda scare him. Sometimes she barks more than she bites.

—You tell him that.

Nelson paled.

—I'm not a fool either.

Clara continued on her way while he returned to the stables humming a love song he had heard from some Portuguese musicians. His appearance had lasted barely a few minutes, but it left behind a lightness that accompanied her to the corner.

On the upper floor of the mansion, María Ignacia had not heard half of the commotion.

The rain hammered against the shutters of her room and isolated the outside world under a constant murmur. She remained seated at a dark wood desk, with a blanket over her shoulders and a small lamp lit even though it was already mid-morning.

Her room was the only room in the house that Fernanda allowed to remain in a certain state of disarray. There were open books beside the bed, dried flowers between the pages of a missal and silk ribbons on a silver tray. On the chest of drawers rested a portrait of her mother: a woman with a serene face, large eyes and white hands crossed on her lap.

María Ignacia looked at the portrait before opening her diary.

She always did.

The notebook had green leather covers and a brass clasp. Her mother had given it to her when she turned twelve, with the promise that a woman must reserve a corner of her soul that belonged neither to her father, nor to her husband, nor to her confessor.

She had not understood those words then.

Now she understood them only too well.

She dipped her pen in the inkwell and waited. The ink pooled at the tip, shiny and dark. Outside, thunder rolled. She began to write.

«Mother:

Today it is raining again like the day we said goodbye to you. I do not know if heaven keeps a memory of our losses, but there are mornings when everything seems determined to return them to me. The smell of the damp walls, the bell for the first mass, even the scent of the jasmines that Clara leaves beside your portrait... everything leads me back to you.»

She stopped.

Her fingers tightened around the pen.

Since her father had spoken to her of Don Rodrigo de Alvarenga, words had been piling up in her chest without finding an outlet. The man's name appeared in every conversation. At the table. During visits. In the letters that arrived from the interior. He was an owner of lands, cattle, yerba mate warehouses and vessels that traded downriver. Twice a widower. Respected by the Cabildo. Fifty-eight years old.

María Ignacia was twenty-one.

She wrote again.

«Father says that Don Rodrigo is an honourable man. He repeats it as if honour were enough to share a bed, a table and all the days that God might choose to grant me. He says he will be able to protect me when he is gone. He says the city is cruel to lone women. He says so many things, mother, and none of them answer the only question I dare ask myself: how can a daughter obey without disappearing?»

The tip of the pen trembled.

A drop fell onto the paper. María Ignacia hurried to blot it with her sleeve, but the ink had already spread. It looked like a small wound.

—I do not want to marry him —she whispered.

Saying it aloud frightened her.

She stood up and walked to the window. She opened the shutter just a crack. A damp gust entered the room and blew out the lamp. From there, part of the courtyard could be seen, the orange trees shaken by the rain and the servants running with buckets. In the gallery, Fernanda was gesturing before an open beam.

María Ignacia almost smiled.

Her mother used to say that as long as Fernanda had the strength to be angry, the house would remain standing.

There was a soft knock at the door.

—Come in.

Clara entered breathless. She had changed her soaked cloak for a lighter one, though she still had mud on the hem of her skirt.

—I thought you had gone out —said María Ignacia.

—Fernanda is sending me to find Fulgencio.

—Then you must go before she orders my execution for distracting you.

Clara closed the door behind her.

—I only came to see you for a moment.

From under her cloak she pulled out three wet jasmines. She had protected them with her hand during the journey from the courtyard. She placed them beside the portrait.

María Ignacia looked down.

—You always find flowers, even when there is no sun.

—Flowers do not need permission from the sun.

The phrase was simple, but María Ignacia felt it contained something intended for her.

Clara saw the open diary.

—Were you writing to your mother?

—Yes.

—About Don Rodrigo?

María Ignacia nodded.

With Clara she did not need to pretend. She was not the governor's daughter nor the future wife of a powerful man. She was simply Ignacia, a young woman who missed her mother and feared the future.

—Father wants to announce the engagement before the feast of the Virgin —she said—. He thinks I don't know, but last night I heard him talking to the secretary.

Clara stepped closer.

—Perhaps he will change his mind.

—My father changes his horse more easily than his mind.

—Then you will have to speak to him.

—I already did.

—And what did he say?

María Ignacia imitated the governor's deep voice.

—«Affection comes with living together. Security is worth more than fantasies. Your mother would have understood.»

As she mentioned those last words, she lost her smile.

Clara took her hand.

—Your mother loved you.

—Precisely because of that, it hurts me that he uses her memory to convince me.

For a few seconds only the rain could be heard. María Ignacia leaned her forehead against her friend's, a gesture they had shared since they were teenagers when either of them needed courage.

—I will not allow them to send me to that house without a fight —she said at last.

Clara looked at her with concern.

—What do you plan to do?

María Ignacia opened her mouth, but before she could answer, a voice thundered from the corridor.

—Clara Chope! Fulgencio is not going to come flying no matter how much you pray!

Clara closed her eyes.

—I must go.

—Go. And come back as soon as you can.

—I will come back.

At the door she turned.

—Ignacia.

—Yes?

—Flowers don't ask permission to grow either.

María Ignacia remained motionless after she left.

Then she went back to the desk and wrote those words at the bottom of the page.

Clara found Fulgencio in the place Fernanda had predicted: the tavern near the port.

He was not drunk, though he held a cup of aguardiente in his hands and was arguing with a man about the price of some cedar boards. He was broad-shouldered, with a grizzled beard and enormous hands, marked by old cuts. When he saw Clara soaked at the door, he stopped talking.

—What is happening at the big house?

—A beam has split.

Fulgencio sighed like someone receiving news of a long-foretold death.

—The one in the main corridor?

—Yes.

—I told the governor it needed changing.

—Fernanda says to come immediately.

The carpenter drank the rest of his aguardiente.

—Is she very angry?

Clara thought of the wet sheets, the buckets and the crooked cap.

—Very.

Fulgencio left a coin on the table.

—Then we shall go through the back door.

They returned under a somewhat less intense rain. Fulgencio carried a toolbox and was accompanied by two assistants. When they arrived, Fernanda was waiting for them in the gallery with her arms crossed.

—What diligence —she said—. If you had taken a little longer, you could have come to rebuild the house from the foundations.

Fulgencio took off his hat.

—Good morning, Doña Fernanda.

—They are not.

The carpenter examined the beam. He tapped the wood with his knuckles, inserted a narrow blade into the crack and asked for a ladder. For several minutes no one spoke. Even Fernanda kept silent.

—The rain has finished opening it —he said—, but the damage comes from before.

—That is what I have been saying for months.

—The wood is defeated from within. We will have to prop it up today and replace part of the piece when the roof dries.

—Will it fall?

Fulgencio looked up.

—Not if we do what I say.

—And if not?

—Then I would take care not to sleep beneath it.

Fernanda glared at him.

The assistants began to place props. The hammering echoed throughout the house, mingling with the water still falling from the eaves. The servants removed furniture, spread out cloths and lit braziers to dry the corridor.

The governor appeared near midday.

Don Alonso Álvarez de Toledo was a man of fifty, tall, with grey hair at his temples and an authority that did not need to raise its voice. He was still wearing the blue coat he used for receiving the members of the Cabildo. He looked at the beam, the buckets and Fernanda's expression.

—Is it serious?

—No —she replied—. Only the roof of the house where your daughter sleeps has split.

—Ignacia's room is on the other side.

—The roof does not consult the plans before falling.

The governor suppressed a smile.

—Fulgencio, take charge. Let nothing be lacking.

—That will cost money —warned the carpenter.

—Everything costs money.

Fernanda muttered something about how some things cost more for having been ignored. Don Alonso pretended not to hear her and went up the stairs.

María Ignacia heard his footsteps before he knocked.

She closed the diary and slid the key into the small clasp. Her father entered without waiting for an answer. For a moment, seeing him against the grey light of the corridor, she felt the old affection he always awakened in her: she remembered his hands holding her when she learned to ride, the stories he told her as a child, the way he sat by her bed during fevers.

He was not a cruel man.

That made everything more difficult.

—Fernanda claims the house threatens to bury us —he said.

—Fernanda believes every difficulty is a personal conspiracy.

—And yet, she is almost always right.

Don Alonso approached the window.

—I wanted to speak with you.

María Ignacia felt her heart sink.

—About Don Rodrigo?

Her father looked at her, surprised.

—The walls of this house are thin.

—And Fernanda says I read too much.

—It is no matter for jokes.

—Not for me either.

Don Alonso remained silent. Outside, a hammer struck the beam with a regular rhythm.

—Don Rodrigo will come to dinner in three days —he said finally—. I want you to receive him with consideration.

—I am always considerate.

—I want you to look at him without prejudice.

María Ignacia took a deep breath.

—He is thirty-seven years older than me.

—He has properties, influence and a respected name.

—I did not ask about his properties.

—Not every marriage is born of a romantic outburst.

—Was yours?

The question hung between them.

Don Alonso turned his gaze away towards the portrait of his wife.

—I loved your mother —he said in a low voice—. More than you can understand.

—Then understand why I do not want to give my life to a man I do not love.

—I understand that you are young and that you believe the world will be indulgent with you.

—I do not believe that.

—When I am gone, you will need protection.

—I will need freedom.

Don Alonso turned back. In his eyes there was pain, but also that hardness that María Ignacia knew well.

—Freedom is a beautiful word for someone who has never had to pay its price.

—Perhaps I should allow myself to find out how much it costs.

The hammer stopped.

For a moment the whole house seemed to hold its breath.

Don Alonso took the back of a chair, as if he needed to support himself.

—Your mother would have wanted to see you safe.

María Ignacia paled.

—Do not use her memory to force me.

—Ignacia...

—Please.

The governor looked at her for a long time. Then he nodded once.

—We will speak when you have calmed down.

—I am calm.

—That is precisely what worries me.

He left without saying goodbye.

María Ignacia waited until his footsteps disappeared. Only then did she open the diary and add one last line.

«Mother, today I have spoken as I would have wanted to speak to you. I do not know if I have been brave or ungrateful.»

The afternoon faded slowly. The rain became finer and finally ceased. Over Asunción remained a yellowish light that made the puddles and the orange leaves shine. From the river came the distant sound of a ship's horn, followed by the bells for vespers.

Fulgencio finished securing the props. Before leaving, he examined the crack again.

—It will hold tonight —he said.

Fernanda did not seem satisfied.

—And tomorrow?

—Tomorrow as well, if God does not dispose otherwise.

—God has more important matters. I pay you for this.

Fulgencio smiled and gathered his tools.

Nelson appeared with a lamp, inspected the buckets and commented that the gallery looked like the deck of a ship. Fernanda ordered him to be quiet and bring more firewood. Clara returned to María Ignacia's room with a cup of hot infusion. Neither spoke of the governor. It was not necessary.

When night fell, Fernanda went through the house closing doors and windows. She checked the bolts twice, blew out the candles in the dining room and left a lamp beside the props. She stopped under the beam.

The crack seemed darker by the light of the flame.

Fernanda rested a hand on the wood.

—Don't you dare —she murmured—. This house has endured too many things to come down for a bit of water.

A slight sound came from inside the beam.

It was not a creak.

It was something like a rustle.

Fernanda brought the lamp closer. Between the split wood she discerned a fragment of dark cloth, caught in the hollow. She inserted two fingers and pulled carefully.

A small leather pouch appeared, hardened by the years.

Fernanda looked towards both ends of the gallery. There was no one.

She tucked it under her apron.

Then she blew out the lamp.

That night, everyone believed that the storm had only opened a beam.

No one imagined that it had also opened the past.