Read Online The Aguero Sisters by Cristina Garcia - Free Book Online Page B

thee; and of that which is fixed by destiny, and how small a part of it thou art
.”
    Mamá soothed Papá’s fever with cold cloths and held his hands for hours, as if trying to transmit through her fingertips her own vitality. She made Papá
caldo gallego
and gave him
black Spanish olives to suck. Slowly, his health improved, although he was never the same again
.
    On his first day back to the cigar factory, Papá’s step was plodding and faltering, and I was certain he could not walk the entire mile to the outskirts of town. I accompanied him, bracing his elbow. Friends greeted him along the way, ignoring the sweat that rolled from beneath his hat, and this seemed to encourage him
.
    When at last we arrived at the factory and Papá, with great difficulty, climbed the three steps to his platform, the room erupted with hoarse cheers. “¡A-güe-ro! ¡A-güe-ro!” the workers chanted, clapping and stamping their feet to the rhythm of our name
.
    â€œ
Please
, hijo.”
My father finally turned to me, his voice barely audible. He raised his palm to the crowd, and the room became silent, suffused with smoke and the sweet smell of cedar. “Read for me today
.”
    He handed me a heavy book, its red leather faded, its spine broken from so many readings, and I took his place at the lectern. I turned to the first page. The smoky air made my eyes water. Words scattered before me like a frightened school of fish
.
    The workers strained toward me. My voice was small, hesitant. Down below, a paper fan fluttered. I reached the second paragraph and stopped
.
    â€œ
Go on, Ignacio,” my father whispered
.
    â€œ
There was a king with a large jaw, and a queen with a plain face, on the throne of England; there was a king with a large jaw, and a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes that things in general were settled forever
.”

SPRING MIGRATION

HAVANA
MARCH 1991
    I
t is the time
of the spring migration. Reina Agüero opens the French doors of her father’s study and steps onto the small square of balcony three stories above the pavement. She searches the sky for the slightest hint of morning but finds none. The moon is still firmly in charge. At this hour, the trade winds clear the air of the day’s rude accretions, and it is good to breathe.
    Reina cranes her neck to the left, toward the dark moving silhouettes of treetops sheltering the dead in Colón Cemetery, toward the ancient poinciana guarding her mother’s grave. Then she looks to the right, past the floating procession of wrought-iron balconies, past the slow-changing colors of traffic lights directing the rhythm of cars on the Paseo Aranguren. If she listens closely, Reina can hear a car sputtering down the Avenida de los Presidentes. Isn’t someone, she thinks, always trying to escape?
    The street is deserted except for a light in the old mansion on the corner. It is a building of associations now, for poets and painters, sculptors and ceramists. Its walls are optimistically lacquered with murals. Is it forgetfulness or necessity, Reina speculates, that keeps the light burning?
    Pepín Beltrán is asleep on her bed, snoring loudly as he always does after they make love. Although he insists that he is aroused as ever by the discordant new landscape of her skin, Reina has noticed that Pepín lingers longest by his own dermal donation, stitched in the glossy hollow of her back. Most of Reina’s nutmeg color is gone, replaced by a confusion of shades and textures. A few patches of her skin are so pink and elastic, so perfectly hairless, they look like a newborn pig’s.
    At the hospital in Santiago de Cuba, doctors from around the country came to admire her exceptional recovery, the thickly puckered rind of her behind. But after a while, their prurience disgusted Reina, and she