Of Love and Shadows Read Free

Irene. She did not like to hear her little girl criticized; still, she had to admit that in this case the mother was right. As much as Beatriz, Rosa longed to see Irene in a filmy veil and virginal flowers, leaving the church on the arm of Captain Gustavo Morante, walking between two rows of raised sabers; but her knowledge of the world—acquired through soap operas on radio and television—had taught her that it was everyone’s lot to suffer in this life and to bear many trials and tribulations before reaching the happy ending.
    â€œIt’s best to leave her alone. A cicada born will sing to its last morn. Irene won’t live a long life, anyway—you can see that in her eyes.”
    â€œRosa, my God! What kind of foolishness is that?”
    Irene entered the kitchen amid a whirlwind of full cotton skirts and flying hair. She kissed both women on the cheeks and opened the refrigerator door and poked around inside. Her mother was on the verge of delivering an impromptu lecture, but in a flash of lucidity realized that any word from her would be useless, because that young woman with the finger smudges on her left breast was as remote from her as someone from another planet.
    â€œSpring’s here, Rosa. The forget-me-nots will be blooming soon,” Irene said with a wink of complicity Rosa had no difficulty interpreting; both of them had been thinking of the baby-that-fell-through-the-skylight.
    â€œWhat are you up to?” Beatriz asked.
    â€œI have to go out on a story, Mama. I’m going to interview a kind of saint. They say she works miracles.”
    â€œWhat kind of miracles?”
    â€œShe removes warts, cures insomnia and hiccups, comforts the forlorn, and makes it rain,” Irene laughed.
    Beatriz sighed, with no sign of appreciating her daughter’s humor. Rosa returned to her task of chopping carrots and suffering along with the radio soap opera, muttering that when live saints are at work, dead saints will shirk. Irene left to change her clothes and look for her tape recorder as she waited for Francisco Leal, the photographer who always went along with her on assignments.
    *  *  *
    Digna Ranquileo looked at the fields and noticed the signs that announced the change of seasons.
    â€œSoon the animals will be in heat and Hipólito will be off with the circus,” she muttered between prayers.
    She had the habit of talking with God. That day, as she performed her breakfast chores, she lost herself in long prayers and confessions. Her children often told her that people laughed at her for that evangelical fixation. Couldn’t she do it silently, and without moving her lips? She paid no attention to them. She felt the Saviour as a physical presence in her life, nearer and more helpful than her husband, whom she saw only during the winter. She tried not to ask too many favors of the Lord, because she had learned that celestial beings are bored by too many requests. She limited herself to seeking counsel in her endless doubts and pardon for her own and others’ sins, giving thanks in passing for any small benefactions: the rain stopped, Jacinto’s fever is gone, the tomatoes are ripe. Nevertheless, for several weeks now, she had been regularly and insistently importuning the Redeemer with prayers for Evangelina.
    â€œHeal her,” she prayed that morning as she poked the kitchen fire and arranged four bricks to hold the grill above the burning wood. “Heal her, God, before they carry her off to the asylum.”
    Never, not even in the face of the parade of supplicants praying for miracles, did she believe that her daughter’s attacks were symptoms of saintliness. She believed even less in possession, which was what her garrulous women friends were convinced of after seeing a movie in town about exorcism, in which foaming at the mouth and rolled-back eyes were signs of Satan. Her common sense, her contact with nature, and her long