NOOSES
Amonth after John Roger’s death, Javier Tomas Wolfe y Blanco Mendez was born to Bruno and Felicia. At the insistence of Vicki Clara they had brought a doctor from Veracruz to make the delivery. Old Josefina waited in the kitchen, ready to be of assistance, but although the birth was difficult no one thought to summon her. Bruno and Felicia were delighted by Javier Tomas but sick at heart when the doctor told them they could not have more children. It wasn’t that Felicia could no longer conceive—how much better, the doctor said, if that were the case— but that she had an irregularity in her womb. Another pregnancy would place her at grave risk, regardless of her youth. Abstinence was the only sure protection, but the doctor was a cosmopolitan young Creole who shared their lack of enthusiasm for that solution and knew as well as they there would be times it could not hold. With a casual frankness—We are sophisticated adults, are we not?—and with Bruno blushing no less than Felicia even as they smiled, the doctor discussed various ways other than intercourse by which they might pleasure each other. And for the inevitable occasions when coitus was simply not to be denied, he informed them of the latest English condoms, in his opinion the finest in the world. He would send them a supply from Veracruz. He warned, however, that although condoms were quite effective, they were known to fail, and he recommended the additional safeguard of withdrawal. A less satisfying climax, to be sure, he said, but a much safer one. I cannot stress strongly enough the importance of safety in this regard. The passions are pleasurable but must never be permitted to overrule reason.
Bruno wrote to Sofi and Maria Palomina with the good news of the baby’s arrival but did not tell them of the doctor’s warning, only of his pronouncement that they could not have more children and of their sadness about it, for they had wanted to have many of them. Sofi wrote back that they should consider themselves lucky to have even one child, and a healthy son, at that. There was no need to remind him of her own sad history with husbands and children. Bruno had told Felicia about it, and Sofi’s letter was of great help to them in shunning self-pity.
Javier Tomas was baptized at three months. His godparents were John Samuel and Victoria Clara. The celebration party in the compound plaza produced the first loud gaiety heard at Buenaventura since John Roger’s death. The fiesta dispelled the gloom of the last five months and the hacienda began to revive.
The baby was ten months old when Bruno and Felicia took him to Mexico City so his Grandmother Maria and Aunt Sofi could meet him—and at last meet Felicia Flor too. The two women doted on Javier Tomas and lavished Felicia with affection. It was Bruno’s first return to the capital since moving to Buenaventura, and the weeklong visit was a happy one for them all. His mother and sister several times told him he was luckier than he deserved, and he each time smiled back at them and said he knew it. Just before they left for the train to return to Buenaventura, Bruno said his wife had something to tell them, and Felicia announced she was three months pregnant. They had deliberately saved this news for a goodbye present. Maria Palomina and Sofi whooped and hugged Felicia yet again and told her over and over to be careful. Sofi shook a finger in Bruno’s face and said, You
It had happened on the night of her brother Rogelio’s wedding party. The evening of dancing and drinking had so heated their blood that when they got home they did not even get all their clothes off before they were at each other, her skirts gathered at her breasts and his trousers bunched atop the boot yet on one foot. It was the only time they did it without a prophylactic since the doctor’s warning. They afterward lay in close embrace and made effusive apologies to each other for their lack of caution. They agreed that a single instance was not a great risk but also agreed they would not take another such gamble. While alarmed by their rashness they were stirred by their abandon, by their own wild crave for each other. They joked about crossing the high wire without a net. Then two months passed without her menses and they knew.
The young doctor confirmed the consequence of their lapse. He told them that of their two choices abortion presented the lesser danger. Not to the baby it doesn’t, Felicia said, and began to cry. Bruno and the doctor exchanged glum looks. The doctor then said that he was sometimes not so assured in his opinions as he might seem. That some of his prognoses had proved wrong. That it would not astound him if everything went well. For the next five months and sixteen days Felicia Flor told Bruno daily she believed everything would be fine, that she felt strong, that she knew, just knew, she and the baby would both fare well. Bruno each time said yes, yes, of course, he felt sure of it. And for much of every night lay in a sleepless dread.
On the last night in October, Felicia went into labor and five hours later their second son—whom they had already decided to name Joaquin Felix—was born dead. And twenty minutes afterward Felicia Flor too was dead. When Bruno learned the baby had strangled on the umbilical, he had a momentary vision of the infant hanging from a gallows. Sentenced to death by his father’s brute lust. As was his mother.
Sofia Reina and Maria Palomina were stricken by the news. Only three months after completion of a year’s mourning for John Roger they again dressed in black. Six weeks later little Javier Tomas contracted an intestinal illness, then seemed to be improving, then took an abrupt turn and died. And Sofi and Maria began the mourning period all over again.
It was not until some months after Javier’s death, when he at last went to visit his mother and sister—who were shocked by his skeletal aspect—that Bruno Tomas told Sofi about the doctor’s caveat. It was late and he’d had much to drink. Amos Bentley had said good night and left for home and Maria Palomina had retired to bed. In a voice so low Sofi had to lean forward to make out what he was saying, he told of the doctor’s dire prediction and of the stupid chance he had taken for no reason but sexual urgency. I was supposed to protect her, he said, but I couldn’t protect her from my own stupid cock.
And Sofi thought, I knew it. I
She went over and sat beside him on the sofa and held him close and said that what happened was not his fault, nor Felicia’s, nor anyone’s. Things sometimes just happened and were nobody’s fault. She knew he did not believe her but she knew too she was right. How, after all, could he be at fault for a wild curse in his blood? A curse like a ready noose around the neck of every Wolfe.
NOTICIAS
DE PATRIA CHICA
On a cold Sunday afternoon a few weeks after Sofi and her mother had once again put away their mourning clothes, the lower-floor maid announced that a neatly groomed young gentleman who gave his name as Luis Charon Little Wolfe y Blanco was at the front gate and wished to see them. There followed joyous introductions between Luis Charon and his grandmother and aunt, who said he must join them for dinner. Luis grinned and said his timing had worked out as he’d hoped. He was a lean young man just turned twenty-one, poised and well-mannered, jet- haired, with eyes so dark blue they were nearly violet. His mustache was cropped in the military mode made popular by President Diaz.
Amos Bentley was present, as he always was for Sunday dinner, and was very pleased to meet the young officer. Luis had at this time been in the Rurales for more than a year. He had been promoted to captain on his reassignment from the army to the Rurales’ Eighth Corps at Aguascalientes, where he’d been an adjutant to the corps commander. Now he was in command of his own company in the Fifth Corps—the youngest commander in the Guardia—at the outskirt of the capital. He cut an urbane figure in his pinstriped suit. The Guardia uniform was strictly for duty, and the only time Sofi and Maria Palomina would ever see him in it was in parades when he and his comrades passed by on their prancing horses.
At his first bite of Sofi’s chicken enchiladas Luis Charon pronounced the dish every bit as savory as his mother had alleged. The women invited him to be their dinner guest every Sunday but the best he would be able to do was every six weeks or so. Not only did he alternate Sunday command of the detachment with another captain but there would be times when his company would be out on a mission. And too there was a young lady back at Patria Chica whom he went to see whenever he could. This last bit of information intrigued the women. Was marriage a possibility, they wanted to know. If she will have me, he said, and everyone laughed.
