Caminos Read online

  “How else can I think of it?” Pilar said without looking up from her pile of pods. “You’re going to America, and we’ll be here.”

  “That’s true. But when you say I’m ‘leaving’ you, that makes it sound like it’s against you, and it’s not.”

  Pilar plunked another chestnut into the sack.

  “I’ve married Antonio,” Mercedes said, “as your mother married your father. But his work is in America, so I have to go there to be with him. I wish so much that I could stay here, but I can’t right now.”

  Pilar shrugged her shoulders and shucked another chestnut. “Do you love Antonio more than you do us?” she asked eventually.

  “Oh, of course, not, Pilar.” Mercedes put her hand on the girl’s back and nudged her around to face her. “I love you and your brothers and your parents more than any other people on this Earth. You especially. If I have a daughter, I want her to be just like you.”

  Mercedes was not exaggerating or saying this only to comfort her niece. She loved Antonio Ribas, but it was different. Their relationship contained an element of necessity. They were like two castaways washed up on a beach who had only each other for building a new life. With her brother and his family, Mercedes felt only unconditional, abiding love and acceptance. It was not possible, she imagined, that she could love and care about her own daughter any more deeply than she did Pilar.

  “But you have me!” Pilar said. She threw the chestnut burr in her hand to the ground. “We have each other. Why do you have to leave and go have a daughter and live on the other side of the ocean?” Tears filling her eyes, Pilar cried: “I’ll never see you again!” She jumped up and started running into the woods.

  “Pilar! Pilar!” Mercedes shouted, leaping to her feet and taking after her. She quickly overtook her niece. “Pilar, stop!” she said, more sharply than she intended, when the girl kept flailing and trying to escape Mercedes’ grasp.

  Pilar was not listening. The suffocating panic had seized her. The repressed frustration and fear, now uncoiled, overwhelmed her consciousness. The more Mercedes tried to restrain her, the harder she struggled and the louder she squealed. It was like trying to subdue a terrified deer.

  Mercedes finally took Pilar by the shoulders, pushed her to the ground and lay on top of her. Pilar kicked and beat the ground and her aunt with her fists. But Mercedes pressed herself more firmly on Pilar’s slender body, limiting as much of her movement as possible. She said softly, over and over: “Come back, my sweet girl. Come back, my sweet girl. Come back, my sweet girl.”

  Slowly, Pilar began to relax. The crazed look faded from her eyes. She lay still with Mercedes in the dry leaves on the forest floor, breathing deeply.

  “There, there, my sweet girl,” Mercedes said. She released Pilar’s shoulders and stroked her hair. “It’s okay. You’re safe.”

  Pilar had been tumbling into these fits with greater frequency and severity over the past two years. Mercedes was the only person who could calm her and bring her back. As they lay quietly on the ground, Mercedes wondered what would happen when the storm came over Pilar, and she was no longer here.

  María knew her only daughter was troubled, but she was so swamped by her work on the farm and tending to the other children— a fourth had come the year before—that she did not have the time or patience Pilar needed. And empathy for what he saw as a weakness of character was not among Antonio González Conde’s many admirable qualities. He possessed a surfeit of compassion for his sister because she had been treated so poorly. But he could not comprehend why his daughter was so often glum and difficult, when all she had known was affection.

  That left Mercedes as Pilar’s only anchor. It had loomed over her decision about whether to marry Antonio Ribas and go to the United States. She believed that the move would not be permanent, that they would return one day to Spain. But when? For how many years would she stay over there? And how could fragile Pilar manage alone? In the end, Mercedes’ need for a family of her own trumped the responsibility she felt for her niece, but just barely.

  Once, during one of their long walks along the coastal bluffs, Antonio Ribas had led Mercedes down a steep trail, through thick tufts of straw-coloured grass and thorn bushes, to a little cove. There were hundreds of similar spots along the ragged Asturian coast, but this one had seemed to call out to him the first time he saw it from high up on the trail.

  Antonio told Mercedes it was one of his favourite places to sit and think, surrounded on three sides by the towering crags and with the ceaseless churning of the surf at his feet. As each wave receded, the tumbling beach stones rattled like marbles being rolled down a hill in a tin.

  Antonio had gone down to the water’s edge and examined the stones. He dug around, picked one up, looked at it, discarded it, picked up another. Over and over. After several minutes, he returned to where Mercedes was sitting. He handed her a smooth, thin oblong stone about three-quarters of an inch long. It was black with a narrow vein of white running around its center from side to side. She had never been without it since. Every time she squeezed it tightly in her hand, she immediately felt a sense of calm and peace fill her chest, as if some vast, universal spirit was flwing into her from the stone.

  Mercedes sat up beside Pilar and reached into the pocket of her dress. She withdrew the pebble and gave it to the girl. “This stone has great power, Pilar. Whenever I think that I can’t go on, I hold it, and it gives me strength. You keep it.” It pained Mercedes to give it away, but she believed her niece would need the talisman more than she. “Keep it with you all the time. When you feel yourself sliding into that terrible place, or feel the dark fog coming over you, take it out and squeeze it tight in your hand, and think of me and how much I love you.”

  Pilar took the black stone and looked at it closely. “Where does it come from?” she asked.

  “From the sea. Many centuries of being tumbled by the waves wore it smooth and round. And just like you, there’s no other in the world exactly like it.”

  Pilar clasped the stone in her fist as she threw her arms around Mercedes’ neck and hugged her tightly. “Thank you, Aunt Mercedes. Thank you. I’ll always carry it with me, and I’ll give it back to you when you come home.”

  “Yes,” Mercedes said. “You do that. You keep it safe for me, and one day, I promise, I’ll come and get it from you.”

  Mercedes stood and pulled Pilar up from the ground. She whirled her around by the wrists until the girl was laughing uncontrollably. Setting Pilar on her feet, Mercedes said: “Now, we still have room in that bag for at least another half-kilo of chestnuts!”

  “Chestnuts!” Pilar howled as they ran, hand in hand, back down the hill to the pile of prickly pods.

  * * *

  Mercedes had no money to pay her passage to the United States. Her husband Antonio could almost cover it if he sent her all his savings and borrowed the remainder from his friend. But she did not want to begin their life together that way. The only meagre asset she owned was her quarter interest in the farm.

  Mercedes asked her brother Antonio if he would buy her out. He agreed, reluctantly. He was uncomfortable with the idea of his sister selling her patrimony, even if it was to him. After they had signed the documents, and he gave her the cash, Antonio said: “You should consider this an interest-free loan, with your land as collateral. When you come back, if you wish to return here and make your home with Antonio on Las Cepas, I will sell it back to you for exactly this amount.”

  With all her belongings packed in a leather suitcase her brother bought her for a wedding gift, Mercedes began her journey to her new life across the Atlantic: a rickety train along the coast to A Coruña; an old side-wheel steamer from A Coruña to Liverpool; Liverpool to Ellis Island aboard the White Star liner Adriatic. She arrived in New York Harbor on November 14, 1914. Mercedes had never been so happy, and so sad, in her life.

  * * *

  Clarksburg

  24 December 1914

  My dear brother a
nd sister-in-law,

  I have arrived safe and sound and am happier than I can say to be spending this first Christmas with Antonio. Still, as I sit here in our little apartment waiting for him to return from work, my head is full of images from my thirteen Christmases with you at Las Cepas. I miss you and the children fiercely.

  I am not certain how I can balance these competing feelings of elation and loss. They sweep over me in succession. One hour I feel that I can sprout wings and soar. The next, I feel as if I am lying under a slab of stone and cannot lift an arm without great effort. Somehow I will manage it, and I am sure it will improve after I have been here for a while.

  What a journey! After banging along in the train for two days to A Coruña, it was a relief to be rocking gently on the sea as I sailed up to England. The weather was perfect, and I was even able to go out on the deck to sit in the sun and gaze at the endless expanse of blue water. I was not as afraid as I expected to be, because it was just so intoxicatingly beautiful.

  The Atlantic crossing was not as nice, and I was thankful that my first experience at sea had been so pleasant. We were packed in like livestock on a busy day at Carbayedo, down in the bowels of the ship, and on two of the days and nights the ship was heaved and tossed by awful storms. I spent a lot of time on my knees with my rosary, wondering if I would set foot on land again. It reminded me of the stories you often told us, Antonio, about your passages to Cuba. I pray that when we come back, we will have clear skies the whole way.

  It took a full day for me to get processed through Ellis Island. The crowds for Semana Santa in Avilés are nothing compared to the throngs of people disgorging from the ships and filling the yards and quays and the cavernous hall where we were questioned by the immigration agents. I had never felt so small and insignificant or as far away from everything I knew and loved.

  And then, New York. It still does not seem real. I do not know how people live there, like ants in a hill or bees in a hive. But it also vibrates with strength and vitality, a giant engine driving an immensely powerful land. I am glad I could see it, but more glad I could leave. Clarksburg is bigger than Avilés, but it feels like a four-house village after New York. Much more to my liking.

  Antonio took me down to Graselli last week to see the house he is buying for us. It is only about 20 minutes away on the streetcar. I am happy we will have our own home, and it is a nice, new little house. The town is smoky like Arnao, with the smelter at its center, but it is full of Asturians and Gallegos. That makes me both less homesick and more so. An Avilesino named Daniel—he says he knows you, Antonio—has even opened a place called Belmonte’s Café modeled on Café Colon in Avilés, right down to the big iron frog out front for the ring-toss game.

  I will close for now. I did not expect to write so much when I sat down here, and I have to get back to preparing our Christmas dinner! Kisses and hugs to you both and the children, dear Pilar especially. I will eagerly await a letter from you about all that is happening there.

  Mercedes González Conde

  Chapter 12

  Anmoore, West Virginia

  February 1915

  There were no eucalyptus trees in the woods around Anmoore—as the town of Grasselli had recently been renamed—nor any twelfth-century churches in the town with clanging ancient bells and costumed penitents. It was all clapboard houses and shops, none more than 30 years old, nor any apparently constructed to last for longer than a single lifetime. The acrid smoke of the zinc furnaces hung constantly in the air. None of that mattered to Mercedes.

  “Okay, ma’am, a half-step closer to your husband, and chin up,” the photographer instructed Mercedes. He had grown up in Gijón, the big port city fifteen miles to the east of Avilés. With the steady influx of immigrants, his photography studio in Clarksburg was thriving more than he had dreamt possible. The photographer came around from behind the camera, pulled Antonio’s hands from his trouser pockets and squared Antonio’s shoulders. “There, sir, hold that pose, please.” Antonio and Mercedes stood perfectly still as the photographer crossed back to the camera perched atop its heavy tripod, and his ever-smiling face disappeared behind the large wooden box. “Ahhh, perfect,” he cooed. “You look like their majesties.”

  Click. The aperture in the large lens on the front of the camera snapped open, paused for a long second, and then slammed shut. “Please hold your poses,” the photographer ordered as he carefully withdrew the photo plate and inserted a fresh one. “Photograph once for disaster, twice for perfection my dear father, God bless his soul, always told me,” he said with a hearty chuckle.

  Click. The photographer reappeared, still smiling, from beneath the black cloth which covered the back of the camera. He smoothed his silvery shock of hair. “Okay, okay, very good, I believe you will have a lovely portrait. Just lovely.”

  Mercedes and Antonio continued to stand as stiff as sentinels on the intricately patterned Arabian carpet in the cramped studio. It was the first photo either had taken in their lives. “You can move!” the photographer exclaimed.

  Antonio tugged at his shirt collar and then shoved his hands back in his pockets. Mercedes smiled giddily, released from the forced seriousness of a proper studio portrait. “You think it will be nice?” she asked the photographer.

  He gently pressed her on the back, urging her toward the door— he had four other couples waiting outside—and said: “Absolutely perfect, I assure you. You’ll be delighted you chose to memorialize this moment with me.”

  They paused on the sidewalk outside the studio in the unusually warm and sunny February afternoon, and Antonio grumbled to Mercedes as he rolled a cigarette, “For what he’s charging, that picture should sing and dance on command.”

  “Oh, Antonio, don’t be so Gallego for once,” she said, giggling. “We didn’t have a real wedding, so we should indulge ourselves a little for our portrait.”

  “Hmph,” Antonio grunted, though the truth was that he always did whatever necessary to give Mercedes anything she wanted. He had worked overtime for a month to afford this trip to the photographer.

  “Oh, I can’t wait ‘til it’s ready!” she said. “I know exactly where I will hang it in the parlour. In our parlour!” Mercedes luxuriated in hearing herself say it. “Our parlour,” she repeated, squeezing his arm which was interlocked with hers as they strolled toward the streetcar stop. “I still can’t believe we have our own parlour.”

  Antonio half grinned. “And kitchen, two bedrooms and bathroom,” he added.

  “Yes!” Mercedes said so loudly and enthusiastically that a greybearded man in a top hat and expensive suit passing them from the opposite direction jerked up his walking stick reflexively and whipped his head to look at them, as if Mercedes had reached out and smacked him on the shoulder.

  She composed herself and said as casually as possible: “And it’s good you bought the two-bedroom house instead of the smaller one, because we’ll be needing that other room soon.”

  “Is somebody already coming to visit?” Antonio asked.

  “Well, you could put it that way. But it will be a long visit,” she said.

  Antonio stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, cocked his head and looked Mercedes in the face. “What exactly are you talking about? Who’s coming?”

  Mercedes smiled radiantly. “Our baby, Antonio. Our baby!”

  Antonio remained dumbstruck for the entire streetcar ride back to Anmoore. Mercedes sat, beaming. He stood above her, his knees pressed against hers in the crowded car. He stared out the big window as Clarksburg slipped by. First the storefronts with their plate glass windows and striped awnings, then the joyless brick tenements, then the small clapboard houses like theirs, then the soot covered steel mills and glass factories, then a bit of green countryside, and then their hamlet of Anmoore.

  Antonio’s reaction to Mercedes’ announcement surprised him. No distress. No tightness in his stomach. No slithering coldness in his veins. He had proposed to Mercedes not because he felt any less an
gst about children, despite his improved financial condition, but because he missed her so much that he could not stand being separated from her any longer. All through those months since she had arrived, he always felt a deep ambivalence about their marriage and the children who would inevitably come: they desired each other physically, and acted on it with a frequency that would be expected by two people who have discovered sex for the first time in their thirties.

  Antonio was not rapturously happy about the revelation, but he was okay. That alone felt like a miracle to him. “Oh, Mercedes,” he said as they stepped to the pavement from the streetcar, “what wonderful news.”

  Mercedes had been terrified to tell him, and his reaction so far had not been particularly reassuring, but she was so ecstatic about it—especially after she had said it aloud to Antonio—that she felt only a tinge of the old darkness. “You know, you can’t be that surprised about it.” She blushed.

  Antonio laughed heartily, a rare occurrence, and took her hand in his. “Yes, well, I suppose you’re right about that.”

  * * *

  Their little house was furnished mostly with hand-me-downs from Antonio’s coworkers who had been friends of Antonio González Conde. They never seemed to sit on the tufted settee. Mercedes preferred the richly carved, high backed Castilian-style chair with the burgundy velvet cushions. Antonio always plopped down in the well used overstuffed armchair.

  After dinner in the kitchen, at the wooden table and chairs Antonio was proud to have purchased himself, they had taken their usual spots and listened to the evening Spanish-language news broadcast on the radio.

  “Primero must feel like a prophet,” Antonio said as he reached over and turned off the radio. The war was flaming higher and wider every week. Today, the German government had announced it would begin a naval blockade of Great Britain. “Even I can see where that can lead,” Antonio said.