The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Fifth Annual Collection
- Автор: Датлоу Эллен, Виндлинг Терри
- Год: 1992
- Язык: английский
- Год: St.Martin’s Press
- Жанр: Ужасы
Электронная книга - «The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Fifth Annual Collection». Краткое содержание книги:
Don Lorenzo sold his house and his land and moved to town with his family. The change did Rosaura good. She soon looked rosy-cheeked and made new friends, with whom she strolled in the parks and squares of the town. For the first time in her life she lost interest in her storybooks, and when her father made her his usual birthday gift a few months later, she left it half read and forgotten on the parlor table. Don Lorenzo, on the other hand, became more and more bereaved, his heart torn to pieces by the loss of his canefields.
Rosa, in her workshop, took on several seamstresses to help her out and now had more customers than ever before. Her shop took up the whole first floor of the house, and her clientele became more exclusive. She no longer had to cope with the infernal din of the chicken coop and the pigpen, which in the old days had adjoined her workshop and cheapened its atmosphere, making elegant conversation impossible. As these ladies, however, took forever to pay their bills, and Rosa couldn’t resist keeping a number of the lavish couturier models for herself, the business went deeper and deeper into debt.
It was around that time that she began to nag Lorenzo constantly about his will. “If you were to pass away today, I’d have to work till I was old and gray just to pay off our business debts,” she told him one night with tears in her eyes, before putting out the light on their bedside table. “Even if you sold half your estate, we couldn’t even begin to pay them.” And when she saw that he remained silent, his gray head slumped on his chest, and refused to disinherit his daughter for her sake, she began to heap insults on Rosaura, accusing her of not earning her keep and of living in a storybook world, while she had to sew her fingers to the bone in order to feed them all. Then, before turning her back to put out the light, she told him that, because he obviously loved his daughter more than anyone else in the world, she had no choice but to leave him.
I feel curiously numb, indifferent to what I’m reading. A sudden chill hangs in the air; I’ve begun to shiver and I feel a bit dizzy. It’s as though this wake will never end; they’ll never come to take away the coffin so the gossipmongers can finally go home. Compared to my clients’ sneers, the innuendos of this strange tale barely made me flinch; they bounce off me like harmless needles. After all, I’ve a clear conscience. I was a good wife to Lorenzo and a good mother to Rosaura. That’s the only thing that matters. It’s true I insisted on our moving to town, and it did us a lot of good. It’s true I insisted he make me the sole executrix of his estate, but that was because I felt I was better fit to administer it than Rosaura while she’s still a minor, because she lives with her head in the clouds. But I never threatened to leave him, that’s a treacherous lie. The family finances were going from bad to worse and each day we were closer to bankruptcy, but Lorenzo didn’t seem to care. He’d always been capricious and whimsical, and he picked precisely that difficult time in our lives to sit down and write a book about the patriots of our island’s independence struggle.
From morning till night he’d go on scribbling page after page about our lost identity, tragically maimed by the “invasion” of 1898, when the truth was that our islanders welcomed the Marines with open arms. It’s true that, as Lorenzo wrote in his book, for almost a hundred years we’ve lived on the verge of civil war, but the only ones who want independence on this island are the romantic and the rich; the ruined landowners who still dream of the past as of a paradise lost; the frustrated, small-town writers; the bitter politicians with a thirst for power and monumental ambitions. The poor of this island have always been for commonwealth or statehood, because they’d rather be dead than squashed once again under the patent leather boot of the bourgeoisie. Each country knows which leg it limps on, and our people know that the rich of this land have always been a plague of vultures. And today they’re still doing it; those families are still trying to scalp the land, calling themselves pro-American and friends of the Yankees to keep their goodwill, when deep down they wish they’d leave, so they would graze once again on the poor man’s empty guts.
On Rosaura’s next birthday, Don Lorenzo gave his daughter the usual book of stories. Rosaura, for her part, decided to cook her father’s favorite guava compote for him, following one of her mother’s old recipes. As she stirred the bubbling, bloodlike syrup on the stove, the compote’s aroma gradually filled the house. At that moment Rosaura felt so happy, she thought she saw her mother waft in and out of the window several times, on a guava-colored cloud. That evening, Don Lorenzo was in a cheerful mood as he sat down to dinner. He ate with more relish than usual, and after dinner he gave Rosaura her book of short stories, with her initials elegantly monogrammed in gold, and bound in gleaming doe-heart’s skin. Ignoring his wife’s furrowed brow, he browsed with his daughter through the exquisite volume, whose thick gold-leaf edges and elegant bindings shone brightly on the lace tablecloth. Sitting stiffly, Rosa looked on in silence, an icy smile playing on her lips. She was dressed in her most luxurious opulent lace gown, as she and Don Lorenzo were to attend a formal dinner at the mayor’s mansion that evening. She was trying hard to keep her patience with Rosaura because she was convinced that being angry made even the most beautifully dressed woman look ugly.
Don Lorenzo then began to humor his wife, trying to bring her out of her dark mood. He held the book out to her, so she might also enjoy its lavish illustrations of kings and queens, all sumptuously dressed in brocade robes. “They could very well inspire some of your fashionable designs for the incoming season, my dear. Although it would probably take a few more bolts of silk to cover your fullness than it took to cover theirs, I wouldn’t mind footing the bill because you’re a lovable, squeezable woman, and not a stuck-up, storybook doll,” he teased her, as he covertly pinched her behind.
Poor Lorenzo, you truly did love me. You had a wonderful sense of humor, and your jokes always made me laugh until my eyes teared. Unyielding and distant, Rosa found the joke in poor taste and showed no interest at all in the book’s illustrations. When father and daughter were finally done admiring them, Rosaura got up from her place and went to the kitchen to fetch the guava compote, which had been spreading its delightful perfume through the house all day. As she approached the table, however, she tripped and dropped the silver serving dish, spattering her stepmother’s skirt.
I knew something had been bothering me for a while, and now I finally know what it is. The guava compote incident took place years ago, when we still lived in the country and Rosaura was almost a child. The small-town writer is lying again; he’s shamelessly and knowingly altered the order of events. He gives the impression the scene he’s retelling took place recently, that it actually took place only three months ago, but it’s been almost six years since Lorenzo sold the farm. Anyone would think Rosaura was still a girl, when in fact she’s a grown woman. She takes after her mother more and more; she fiddles away her time daydreaming, refuses to make herself useful, and lives off the honest sweat of those of us who work.