Back to Wando Passo, David Payne [little red riding hood ebook .TXT] 📗

you, loved you deeply. When I saw him yesterday, he told me so himself. Practically the last thing he said was that he loved you better than he had his wife.”

Paloma is thoughtful over this. “There was a time, perhaps, when that was true—a few months or weeks in the beginning…. It was all so long ago. I remember it, but not how long it lasts. What I remember best is Percival sitting by the bed where we had been, reading poetry to me in English. I didn’t understand the words, but I loved the music of his voice and how his face would change. One minute he would frown, and then a smile would break, he’d hold a finger up like this as if to warn or promise what the coming line would be. It was like sunlight, niña, the way it filters through the branches of a tree…. Jarry got this from his father. And he is still beautiful.” She gazes, frowning, at the corpse. “He is still beautiful, isn’t he?”

“He is, Paloma,” Addie says with sympathy.

“But this all ended, you see.”

“When he didn’t free you…”

Paloma shakes her head. “No, it wasn’t that. We never spoke of freedom. It seems naive and foolish now, but I felt already free. I felt that, in his heart, Percival had already granted this to me, and, more than that, I felt that I had granted it to him, the same. And, by this, I mean a different, higher sort of freedom, niña, one that neither of us possessed until we found it through each other. We were equal, Percival in need like me, and we both gave and both received. And so, to speak about this other freedom, niña, to speak about the legal thing, the fact that he still held my deed, this would have felt like an embarrassment. We were here.” Paloma holds her hand at the level of her brow. “And to speak about the other…” She drops it to the level of her breast. “Do you see? It would be like church, if you were discussing your wedding with the priest, talking of your joy and future happiness in life…. To then stop and ask him, how much, Padre, is this going to cost? This would be a smallness, no? So it seemed to me.” She stops and looks away.

“Now there were others in the templo who felt differently. Percival, then, you understand was more Kimbisa than the Kimbiseros—he was on fire with Palo. And if he was sincere, they felt, this blanco, then he ought to free his woman, oughtn’t he? Demetrio, our padrino, spoke to him of it, and Percival heard him out respectfully, but then he went his way and nothing changed. Finally it was the santos who placed him under this command. It was San Luis Beltrán speaking through Andrés Petit. But, me, niña, I never asked for freedom. The only thing I ever asked for was Clarisse.”

Addie’s expression slackens. “Clarisse…”

“This is what you haven’t grasped. I asked him for my child. Clarisse was three months old, niña, three months, when she was taken from my breast.”

“But it was Villa-Urrutia, I thought. Didn’t Villa-Urrutia do that?”

“Wenceslao asked for her, but it was Percival who enforced his claim. I begged him not to give her back. What difference did it make to that old man? He only wanted her to punish us.”

“For what?”

“For what? Because he lost the game. Because Percival won. Because he wanted me, and I was gone.”

“But that wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t even by your choice.”

Paloma laughs. “What of that? Are you shocked that Wenceslao was cruel? That he was unjust? So what if he was, the Conde was still angry and someone had to pay. He couldn’t punish Percival, and who was left? So he punished me by taking the one thing I wanted most, and Percival—this man who you say loved me better than his wife—allowed it. That was what I asked him for, not freedom. What is freedom? A word. The only freedom that meant anything to me was to be a mother to my child.”

“Oh, Paloma. I didn’t see.”

“No, you didn’t see. Nor did Percival. But it is just this seeing, niña—this, to me, is what love is, the greater part of it. There is in each of us one deep, last place. To truly love another is to see him there, to see him as he sees himself, and hold him, hold his differentness in the same tender care with which you hold yourself. Had Percival seen and loved me in that way, how could he have done this? Had I been white like you, all Cuba would have risen to defend me. The ministers would have thundered from the pulpits. Armies would have marched into the field. But for a pardo slave to lose a child—this happened fifty times a day. Who was there to grieve but me? Binah was the only one.”

“I’m shocked that Percival allowed this.”

“He tried to buy her back—I give him that—but to Wenceslao, the meanness was sweeter than the price. When he refused, that was the end of it.”

“But what else could Percival have done?”

“What else? We could simply have climbed aboard the ship and sailed away with her, and what could Wenceslao have done? He would have stamped and fumed and been over it by nightfall. Would a man not do this for a woman that he loved, a husband for his wife? But, no, niña, Percival was a gentleman. To welsh on a gambling debt to another caballero? Unthinkable. So, being true to honor, he took my daughter—his own child—away from me. Would he have done this to Melissa? Never, niña. Never in a thousand years. No, if he had loved me as he said, Clarisse would have come with us to South Carolina. She’d have grown up in this house with her two brothers. She and Harlan would have looked into each other’s eyes a hundred