The Spanish Daughter(88)

I grasped the doorknob; mostly because I didn’t want Martin to see the involuntary tremor in my hands and how his presence affected me.

“Please come in,” I said, leading the way across the foyer.

He followed me in silence.

“I went looking for you at the warehouse this morning,” I said, sitting down. “But nobody was there.” I studied his muted expression. “Look, I understand if you don’t want to work here anymore. I can find someone else, but I was hoping we can put our differences behind us. I need people who know and understand the business. I’m not a fool to believe that I can run this plantation on my own.”

When I was done speaking, he approached the sideboard.

“May I?” he asked, opening the cabinet and grabbing a bottle of aguardiente.

I nodded.

He took out two glasses and filled them. Then, he handed me one. He sat in front of me and gulped his drink at once. I took a cautious sip of mine before speaking.

“I understand you might be . . . frustrated with what’s happened,” I started. “With your father, with the inheritance, well, with everything, but the truth is I need you here, and I want to make you a business proposition.”

“No.”

“I’ll raise your salary.”

He shook his head.

“I had no idea you disliked me this much.”

“It’s not you,” he said, staring at his glass.

Angélica, then. He was this distraught because she’d left.

“Well, I’m sorry if my arrival here has posed an inconvenience for your complicated relationship with Angélica.” I wasn’t proud of the bitterness in my tone.

“It’s over.”

“It can’t be over if you’re this troubled about it.”

“I don’t mean my relationship with her. This is over.”

Did he mean us?

I fingered my string of black pearls, my sole ornament. “I know that.”

He banged the armrest and stood up, dragging the chair’s legs back, making an unbearable screeching sound.

“I mean this plantation! It’s over!”

“I’m sorry you feel that way.”

“It’s not about you, woman! The plantation is dead. Yesterday, we got confirmation from a technician from Guayaquil that there are traces of witches’-broom and frosty pod rot in most of the plants!”

“What are you talking about?”

“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.