Flight of the Swan by Rosario Ferré Page A

like a recluse in the upstairs rooms of the governor’s mansion and never came downstairs to any of the parties because she had a neurotic fear of the tropics. She lived in terror of being stricken with TB, typhoid fever, or malaria, all of which were rampant in Puerto Rico—especially among the poor. Whenever she went out, Mrs. Yager wore white cotton gloves to the elbows and a veil covering her face so as not to pick up germs. The situation didn’t help the governor, who was a snob who seldom mixed with anyone.

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    T WO DAYS LATER JUAN Anduce joined Madame’s troupe. The company needed to be replenished with new toe shoes, so on the second day after our arrival Dandré had put an ad in the paper asking for a cobbler to come to the Hotel Malatrassi, and three of them turned up. Juan didn’t speak any Russian, but he spoke English quite well, and Dandré picked him. Juan had large, coarse fingers, but he had a magician’s touch with shoes. Madame herself taught him how to block the dancers’ toe shoes, dipping them in rosin in order to strengthen them before shaping them into cylindrical molds of paste, then upholstering them in pink silk and sewing ribbons on them. He was so successful an apprentice that Madame used to say to me, “Thanks to Juan, our company literally dances on clouds.” She broke in a new pair of slippers at every rehearsal, and during a performance sometimes used up to three pairs.
    Juan and I immediately became friends and he invited me to visit his workshop, La Nueva Suela, which was on Calle San Sebastian, near the Plaza del Mercado. It was a shed where he had a charcoal stove, a hand basin, and a shower—everything crowded into one room. The shoe repair was two blocks away from La Casa de las Medias y los Botones, and the first time I visited Juan I asked him why that store was always so full of people. I had just passed it on my way over and was surprised to see a crowd already at the door when it was still early.
    Juan looked at me, a curious expression on his face. “That’s something you only understand when you live on an island, my duck. Sanjuaneros are always giving carnivals and costume balls and dressing up as something or other, because they’re always trying to get away.”
    “From what?” I asked innocently.
    “From themselves,” Juan answered with a wink.
    Another time, Juan told me the story of Diamantino Márquez. There was very little to do in San Juan and I visited him almost every other day; el chisme —good old-fashioned gossip—kept us entertained. One afternoon I was watching him block the toe shoes and spread the silk covers on them when he told me about El Delfín.
    “Diamantino’s father,” Juan said, “was one of the most powerful political figures on the island. Don Eduardo Márquez was the island’s prime minister, and he would have been the island’s president if the Americans hadn’t landed at Guánica. His son, with his magnificent mane of dark hair, was looked upon by many as El Delfín, the rightful heir to the throne on which the American governor now sits.
    “A year after the Americans arrived, General Brooke banished Don Eduardo from San Juan. He’d struggled enough, trying to wrest independence from the Spaniards for years. Now he was too tired to start all over again with the Americans. He felt he’d been made the laughingstock of the island.
    “Don Eduardo sold his tobacco plantation and went to live in New York with his family. Ten years later he got sick and had very little money left. He sailed back to Puerto Rico, and Don Pedro Batistini, a millionaire hacendado and the Liberal Party’s vice president, welcomed him with open arms. He offered him his mansion in Miramar, and Don Eduardo moved in with his family. It was a grand gesture, although Don Pedro could well afford it: he owned the most profitable sugar mill in the north: central Dos Ríos, near the town of Arecibo.
    “To have Don Eduardo Márquez convalesce at home offered