The House of Impossible Loves by Cristina López Barrio Page B

lessons as well.
    One October morning in 1913, Clara Laguna strode into the kitchen having decided it was time to introduce Manuela to brothel life. Her heart no longer heard the hunters’ gunshots in the hills, the bawling stags, the crashing horns, the wind stripping beech trees of leaves, or the ghostly fighting in the fog. Just as the yard at Scarlet Manor had come to a standstill in spring, Clara’s heart had come to a stop on the cobblestone drive. All it could hear was the birth and death of the daisies. By now her hair was streaked with gray and the first wrinkles etched around her yellow eyes. She appeared in a purple negligee and silk dressing gown, her flesh no longer as firm as her revenge. She searched for her daughter’s face and found it distracted by the blood of a chicken she had just finished butchering with Bernarda.
    “Shave?” the cook asked, running a hand over her freshly shaven face.
    “No. I didn’t come for you but for her.” Clara looked at her daughter. “You already know I’m your mother. Come here so I can see you better.”
    Manuela trembled in her ragged dress and refused to move. She had seen this woman flying through the parlor or up the stairs to the second floor, where Manuela was not allowed to go, her body sheathed in a jumble of transparent fabrics, her brown hair falling to her waist, her face more beautiful than that of Our Lady of Good Remedy, whose image the Galician woman slipped under her garter before and after every amorous assault.
    Bernarda pushed the girl with a grunt. Trying not to look directly at her mistress, the cook anxiously sought a glimpse of white skin she could remember later, on her own.
    “She scares me,” Manuela whispered into the cook’s chest. “She looks like a witch.”
    Not understanding, Bernarda shoved the girl toward her mother.
    “Do as you’re told!” Clara ordered, a thigh escaping from her dressing gown.
    Manuela walked toward the golden eyes that time and hate had turned to stone.
    “You’ve got your grandmother’s dark eyes and your father’s curly hair. I’ll teach you how to oil it.” She held her daughter’s chin.
    Her cold touch made the girl imagine her as a mermaid, instead of a witch.
    “As for the rest, you don’t take after anyone. Your skin is too coarse and hairy for a Laguna.” She pinched her daughter’s arms. “It’ll take some work to make you the best of all of us.”
    Clara opened her dressing gown, pulled a roll of bills out of a lace bag attached to her garter belt, and handed it to the cook.
    “You did well. My daughter is no longer your responsibility.”
    Bernarda grabbed the money. Now she had something for dessert: she would cook the bills in chocolate, savor them as she thought of the delicious thigh that appeared fleetingly a moment ago.
    “Come. Hurry up,” Clara said as she led her daughter into the parlor. “I’ve just received garters from the city that will go nicely with your hair. Your father could arrive any minute, so I want you to be prepared.”
     
    The first time Manuela Laguna tasted a man, a butter maker from Burgos, she scrubbed her skin raw with a horse brush afterward. Hiding in the stable, she scoured and scoured until her skin no longer smelled of another human. Then she ran to the rose garden, wandering its paths for the rest of the day. Clara searched for Manuela in every room, even the attic with its dusty reminders of her mother. Unable to find her, the prostitutes searched the yard, all to no avail. Manuela dug a hole along one of the back paths. Whenever she heard footsteps on grass crunchy with frost, she slipped into it, covering the opening with branches and leaves. When night fell, the Galician woman feigned it was her time of the month and prayed to Our Lady of Good Remedy that the autumn chill would not kill the girl in a flash. Meanwhile, for the first time in fifteen years, Clara hoped her Andalusian lover would not stride up the daisy-strewn drive.
    Late