The House of Impossible Loves by Cristina López Barrio Read Free Book Online

piling up in the Caribbean. He wished the townspeople would stop calling him Padre Imperio, but no one ever remembered to call him Juan Antonio, and habit overcame his preference.
    News of Spain’s defeat and the priest’s sugar prohibition distracted the townspeople from the scandal when two more women arrived at Scarlet Manor. At the tavern, men played cards and bet on national politics and what charms these new girls might provide. All whispering in doorways stopped, the old women’s tongues silenced by the snow, the bitter desserts and coffee.
     
    Clara’s mother had always considered herself a practical woman who could make the best of a lost cause, such as the curse that tormented her family. And so, when she realized her daughter would not renounce her crazy plan for revenge, she decided to take full advantage of it. She recruited two girls from the neighboring town. Their names were Tomasa and Ludovica. They were poor but beautiful, and they were willing to work for a warm bed, three meals a day, and a few coins to spend on Sunday, their one day off a week. Their services were soon prized by the growing clientele, though not as highly as Clara’s.
    Every day coaches and carriages rumbled along the gravel road connecting nearby towns and the provincial capital. Many a traveler would stop at the brothel by chance or drawn by its increasing fame. There they would rest from their journey, spending a day of passion under the purple canopy or in the beds Clara had rescued from the attic for the new prostitutes.
    In the wee hours on the last day of the year, a girl with a deformed nose slipped into the Scarlet Manor’s kitchen without anyone noticing, entering through a door that someone had forgotten to bolt. Clara’s mother was in the parlor, which had been decorated with streamers for the holidays, serving clients as they waited their turn upstairs. She poured mulled wine and read the fortunes of those who asked, throwing the cat bones to see the fate of their crops or businesses in the coming year. The smell of wood burning in the large hearth took the chill off the wait and the prophecies. Every now and then, a long moan of victory or the creak of an old bed about to collapse came from the second floor.
    Cold and hungry, the girl with the deformed nose had taken a tomato from the garden, but its frozen flesh nearly chipped her tooth. She stole into the kitchen without a thought for any consequences beyond her own well-being. The light of two oil lamps flickered. On a table in the middle of the room she found a jug of steaming wine and several glasses. She took several gulps before her throat began to burn and the bits of frost on her eyebrows, whiskers, and chin started to melt.
    The girl could hear voices in the parlor but paid no attention; she had just spied two rabbits a client brought as payment. After biting into an onion, two cloves of garlic, and a loaf of bread, she skinned and butchered the animals, licking the blood off her fingers. She lit the iron stove, set a pot on top, and began to prepare a stew. No one noticed her presence until a delicious aroma wafted into the parlor, silencing the noise from the waiting, the wine, and the prophecies.
    Clara’s mother hurried into the kitchen, followed by a few clients whose appetites had been whetted by the magnificent smell. There they found the girl between the shadows, stirring the pot as if nothing were out of the ordinary. They startled at the sight of her. Apart from her deformed nose, the girl’s face was bruised, her eyes mad, her short, dark hair giving way to wide sideburns ending in a modest beard. The Laguna witch did not recognize her from town. She asked the girl who she was and what she was doing in that kitchen. A stream of grunts and half-words spewed from her mouth. All they could decipher was that her name was Bernarda and she was making rabbit stew. In a wretched, velvet dress and boots with holes plugged by ice, she fell to her knees,