The Spanish Daughter(75)

It was driving me crazy.

I missed the old, unrestrained Martin, and I told him so. He sat back with an amused smile.

“All right, I’ll throw an hijo de puta here and there if it pleases you.”

I laughed.

“I was getting exhausted with having to watch everything I say or do anyway,” he said, and ordered two more puros.

When the prostitutes came, Martin told them we didn’t need their services tonight. I was grateful for being spared the sight of that woman sitting on Martin’s lap and kissing him. The two of them gave us a baffled look and hesitantly left. As they walked away, Carmela whispered something into her friend’s ear.

Martin and I talked for a long time. He wanted to know everything about my childhood in Spain, about the scarce memories of my father, about how my mother and I had survived all those years without a husband and a father. I told him my father used to send us money, plus my mother had a small inheritance from my grandfather, who’d been a merchant of fabrics. I also told Martin about my grandmother, María Purificación García, and how she’d invented a cacao roasting machine in 1847, which could also be used for coffee beans. He was extremely interested in this invention. He borrowed a fountain pen and ink from the barman and asked me to draw the contraption on a napkin.

“Where is it?” he said after I was done drawing and explaining how the roaster worked.

“I left it with my former assistant, La Cordobesa. It’s the only thing I have left in Spain.”

He said I should send for it “once this was all over.” That was the only time he mentioned my precarious situation.

After we’d finished an entire bottle of aguardiente, Martin wanted to know about my husband. I loosened my tie.

“My mother and Cristóbal’s mother were childhood friends. Ours was an arranged marriage.”

“Did you love him?”

“Of course I did, though I don’t think I was ever in love with him.” I nestled my drink, remembering. “I’d seen Cristóbal throughout the years, but was only properly introduced to him during a tea at his mother’s house after he had just graduated from the Universidad de Sevilla. I was only nineteen years old and he was the only person I’d ever known with a university title. I was impressed by his scholarly achievements, by his good looks, but I really didn’t have time to get to know him. From our sporadic encounters, I could tell he was a quiet and gentle man, and I liked that. I needed a stabilizing presence in those years when I was cross all the time and only wanted to find the next ship that would take me to see my father. But my mother would scream that I would only leave over her dead body, which is ironic because that’s exactly what happened,” I said, finishing my drink. “I’ve always thought that the reason she pushed my relationship with Cristóbal was to keep me in Spain.”

“Did you ever regret marrying him?”

“Not really. We had a good life together. At the beginning of our marriage, he worked as a schoolteacher and at his father’s bookstore on weekends, but that had all changed when his father died and I convinced him to turn the bookstore into a chocolate shop.”

“So, it was your idea.”

I nodded. “He would do anything to please me. How could I ever regret being with someone like that?”

To my chagrin, my eyes filled with tears. I never cried in public. Worse, I was crying in front of Martin, of all people. I wiped my tears with a napkin, looking around to make sure nobody was watching.

“If I hadn’t convinced him to come here,” I said, “he would still be alive.”

“You don’t know that. So many things could’ve gone wrong if you’d stayed in Spain. He could’ve slipped in the tub and injured his head or rolled down some stairs, or he could’ve caught the consumption. You never know what’s going to happen. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t follow your dreams for fear that something bad might happen. You did what was right. You followed your heart, and he could’ve always said no.”

I could tell he wanted to hold my hand, to offer some comfort, but he didn’t make a move. He just stared at me for a long time, and his eyes, expressive and warm, told me he couldn’t have had anything to do with the plot to kill me.

I pressed the palm of my hand against my warm cheek.

“Tell me about your chocolate shop,” he said.

I told him how my grandmother had taught me the chocolate-making process with patience and determination; how I’d improved some of her recipes and made them my own; how I’d decorated the shop and even got a latrine in the back for our customers. From time to time, our hands accidentally touched. I recoiled as if his fingers were flames. As much as I liked his proximity, I had an image, a reputation to maintain. And so did he.

“So what did you do for fun?” he said.

“For fun? What do you mean?”

“What else did you do besides work?”

I was quiet for a moment.

“Well, my work was fun. I did what I loved.”

“Yes, but there’s more to life than work, even if it’s fun, right?”

I folded the napkin with my drawing into a tiny square. “What do you do for fun?”

“Well, you’ve seen my life. I come here, I fish, occasionally I go on long walks, I read.”