The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Fifth Annual Collection

I remember the guava compote incident clearly. We were on our way to a  Rosario Ferre cocktail party at the mayor's house because he'd finally made you an offer on the sale of the hacienda, which you had nostalgically named “The Sundowns,” and the people of the town had rebaptized “Curly Cunt Downs, ” in revenge for your aristocratic airs. At first you were offended and turned him down, but when the mayor suggested he would restore the house as a historic landmark, where the mementos of the sugar-cane-growing aristocracy would be preserved for future generations, you promised to think about it. The decision finally came when I managed to persuade you, after hours of endless arguments under our bed’s threadbare canopy, that we couldn’t go on living in that huge house, with no electricity, no hot water, and no adequate toilet facilities; and where one had to move one’s bowels on an antique French Provincial latrine, which had been a gift to your grandfather from King Alphonse XII. That’s why I was wearing that awful dress the day of Rosaura’s petty tantrum. I had managed to cut it from our brocade living-room curtains, just as Vivien Leigh had done in Gone With the Wind, and its gaudy frills and garish flounces were admittedly in the worst of taste. But I knew that was the only way to impress the mayor’s high-flown wife and cater to her boorish, aristocratic longings. The mayor finally bought the house, with all the family antiques and objets d’art, but not to turn it into a museum, as you had so innocently believed, but to enjoy it himself as his opulent country house.

Rosa stood up horrified and stared at the blood-colored streaks of syrup that trickled slowly down her skirt, until they reached the silk embossed buckles of her shoes. She was trembling with rage, and at first couldn’t get a single word out. When her soul finally came back to her body, she began calling Rosaura names, accusing her shrilly of living in a storybook world, while she, Rosa, worked her fingers to the bone in order to keep them all fed. Those damned books were to blame for the girl’s shiftlessness, and as they were also undeniable proof of Don Lorenzo’s preference for Rosaura, and of the fact that he held his daughter in higher esteem than his wife, she had no choice but to leave him. Unless, of course, Rosaura agreed to get rid of all her books, which should immediately be collected in a heap in the backyard, where they would be set on fire.

Maybe it’s the smoking candles, maybe it’s the heavy scent of all those myrtles Rosaura heaped on the coffin, but I’m feeling dizzier. I can’t stop my hands from trembling and my palms are moist with sweat. The story has begun to fester in some remote corner of my mind, poisoning me with its dregs of resentment. As soon as she ended her speech, Rosa went deathly pale and fell forward to the floor in a heap. Terrified at his wife’s fainting spell, Don Lorenzo knelt down beside her and begged her in a faltering voice not to leave him. He promised he’d do everything she’d asked for, if only she’d stay and forgive him. Pacified by his promises, Rosa opened her eyes and smiled at her husband. As a token of goodwill at their reconciliation, she allowed Rosaura to keep her books and promised she wouldn’t burn them.