“I’m talking about diseases that are killing this entire plantation. In fact, all the region is infected!”
“What?” I sprang up. “How come you’re here getting drunk instead of doing something about it?”
“What am I supposed to do? There is no cure for either disease. Everybody knows that once the escoba de bruja and the monilla appear, a plantation is doomed. It’s a good thing your father didn’t live to see this.”
I shook my head, my mouth dry as a bone. “Surely, there’s something we can do about it. Bring another technician. Get help. I’ll go back to Spain, to France, and find someone.”
I was frantic, pacing the room back and forth. Martin blocked my way and squeezed my shoulders with his hands.
“Stop. There is nothing you or anybody else can do. These diseases are well known to wipe out entire regions. Don’t you think that if there was a cure, I would’ve done something about it? I would’ve traveled to every corner of the world to find a solution, but there’s nothing. Every landowner knows this and lives in terror of these diseases. I’m telling you. This is the end of the cacao bonanza for this entire country.”
I slapped his chest with my hands, tears trickling. “You brought this on! Out of jealousy! Because you wanted the plantation for yourself! This is all your fault.”
He let me hit him, and then, when I was exhausted, when the tears were so abundant that I could no longer see the sadness in his eyes, I took a step back.
“I need to get out of here,” I said, turning around.
He called my name, but I left the house before he could say anything else. I left knowing that he was right, that I’d lost everything before I ever had it.
CHAPTER 44
I didn’t want to believe Martin. I walked around the plantation for hours. I talked to every worker I could find and demanded that he show me the disease up close. My former informant, Don Pepe, pulled out a cacao pod and showed me the white, moldy spots spreading all over the fruit. I looked around me: leaves were withering, pods were filling with fungus, the entire region was rotting, like my family.
No, I couldn’t accept this. My father didn’t abandon us, he didn’t work for twenty-five years, so fungi would wipe it all away. On my way to my neighbor’s house, I encountered dozens of workers walking toward Vinces along the dirt road, their heads lowered, their feet dragging. They carried with them all of their belongings.
Don Fernando del Río confirmed that everything Martin had said was true. He also seemed anxious, but in a different way than Martin. Instead of drinking, he was pacing his living room like a madman. He was still wearing his night robe and he would twitch and talk to himself. Any minute now, he would lose his mind and would have to be admitted to an asylum. I tried to calm him, asked him to sit down, to have a valeriana tea for his nerves, but he barely listened, he kept repeating something about the witches’-broom, and calling it a curse, he went as far as blaming Soledad, the town’s curandera, who at Angélica’s request must have done something to the plants.
Yes, that was his explanation for things. Those women were witches and they’d cursed the entire region. When there was nothing else I could do or say to calm him, I left his house and went home.
The hacienda felt lonelier than ever. Prior to leaving the house, my sisters had apparently fired Rosita, the cook. But little did I care now about food or housekeeping. I collapsed on the sofa, watching the bottle of aguardiente on the coffee table and Martin’s empty glass. I hugged my knees and gently rocked back and forth until the night closed in.
CHAPTER 45
This was, perhaps, the hardest visit of my life. I stood in front of the sky-blue door for a few minutes. It was impossible not to compare the grandeur of the hacienda with the humble house that now stood in front of me; a house where, according to the rumors in town, my sisters were now living.
I rang the doorbell. A part of me understood that they might not open the door. After all, the last time they’d seen me—that horrible day at the hacienda where I’d disposed of my disguise—I’d left on less than amicable terms, one might even call them downright hostile.
The movement of the door startled me. So did the face in front of me.
I’d expected to see Catalina, even Angélica, but in front of me stood Alberto. It took me a moment to recognize him. He had shed off his cassock and was wearing gray trousers, a buttoned-up shirt, and suspenders. He looked so young.
I didn’t know what to expect from him. An insult? A sarcastic remark about the doomed plantation we’d fought over?