sure that she felt pleasure too. He explored her slowly, learning by heart the smoky scent of her body and her clothes, which had been washed with ash and pressed with a coal-filled iron. He learned the texture of her straight, dark hair, of her skin that was soft in the most hidden places and rough and callused everywhere else, of her fresh lips, her tranquil sex, and her broad belly. He desired her calmly, initiating her into the most secret and most ancient of sciences. He was probably happy that night and the few nights after as the two of them cavorted like two puppies in the huge wrought-iron bed that had belonged to the first Trueba and was now somewhat wobbly, although it still withstood the thrusts of love.
Pancha GarcÃaâs breasts swelled and her hips filled out. Esteban Truebaâs ill humor lifted for a while, and he took a certain interest in his tenants. He went to visit them in their wretched huts. In the shadows of one of them he came upon a box filled with newspaper, in which a newborn baby and a puppy lay in a shared sleep. In another he saw an old woman who had been slowly dying for the past four years, whose shoulder blades were jutting through the open wounds in her back. In a courtyard, moored to a post, he saw a teenaged idiot with a rope around his neck, drooling and babbling incoherently as he stood there naked, with a mule-sized penis that he beat incessantly against the ground. For the first time in his life, he realized that the worst abandonment of Tres MarÃas was not that of land and animals but of the people, who had lived unprotected ever since his father had gambled away his motherâs dowry and inheritance. He decided it was time to bring a bit of civilization to this outpost hidden halfway between the mountains and the sea.
*Â Â *Â Â *
A fever of activity commenced that shook Tres MarÃas from its stupor. Esteban Trueba put people to work as they had never worked in their whole lives. Anxious to rescue in the course of a few months what had lain in ruins for years, the patrón hired every man, woman, old person, and child who could stand on his own two feet. He had a granary built, as well as larders for storing food in winter. He had horse meat salted and pork smoked, and set the women to making fruit preserves. He modernized the dairy, which was just an old shed filled with flies and manure, and forced the cows to produce enough milk to meet his needs. He began construction of a six-room schoolhouse, because he aspired to the day when all the children and adults of Tres MarÃas would know how to read, write, and do simple arithmetic, even though he was not in favor of their acquiring any additional learning, for fear they would fill their minds with ideas unsuited to their station and condition. Nonetheless, he was unable to obtain a teacher willing to work in such a remote area and, faced with the difficulty of luring the children to school with promises of lashings and caramels when he tried to teach them to read himself, he finally gave up his dream and relegated the school to other uses. His sister Férula sent him all the books he asked for from the city. They were practical texts, from which he learned to give injections by pricking himself in the leg, and to build a crystal radio set. He spent his first profits on rough cloth, a sewing machine, a box of homeopathic pills with an instruction booklet, an encyclopedia, and a shipment of readers, notebooks, and pencils. He cherished the idea of setting up a dining hall where every child would receive one full-course meal a day, so that they would grow up strong and healthy and be able to start work at a tender age, but he realized it was crazy to expect the children to arrive from all ends of the property just for a plate of food, so he transformed the project into a sewing workshop. Pancha GarcÃa was chosen to decipher the mysteries of the sewing machine. At first she thought it was an instrument of
Pancha GarcÃaâs breasts swelled and her hips filled out. Esteban Truebaâs ill humor lifted for a while, and he took a certain interest in his tenants. He went to visit them in their wretched huts. In the shadows of one of them he came upon a box filled with newspaper, in which a newborn baby and a puppy lay in a shared sleep. In another he saw an old woman who had been slowly dying for the past four years, whose shoulder blades were jutting through the open wounds in her back. In a courtyard, moored to a post, he saw a teenaged idiot with a rope around his neck, drooling and babbling incoherently as he stood there naked, with a mule-sized penis that he beat incessantly against the ground. For the first time in his life, he realized that the worst abandonment of Tres MarÃas was not that of land and animals but of the people, who had lived unprotected ever since his father had gambled away his motherâs dowry and inheritance. He decided it was time to bring a bit of civilization to this outpost hidden halfway between the mountains and the sea.
*Â Â *Â Â *
A fever of activity commenced that shook Tres MarÃas from its stupor. Esteban Trueba put people to work as they had never worked in their whole lives. Anxious to rescue in the course of a few months what had lain in ruins for years, the patrón hired every man, woman, old person, and child who could stand on his own two feet. He had a granary built, as well as larders for storing food in winter. He had horse meat salted and pork smoked, and set the women to making fruit preserves. He modernized the dairy, which was just an old shed filled with flies and manure, and forced the cows to produce enough milk to meet his needs. He began construction of a six-room schoolhouse, because he aspired to the day when all the children and adults of Tres MarÃas would know how to read, write, and do simple arithmetic, even though he was not in favor of their acquiring any additional learning, for fear they would fill their minds with ideas unsuited to their station and condition. Nonetheless, he was unable to obtain a teacher willing to work in such a remote area and, faced with the difficulty of luring the children to school with promises of lashings and caramels when he tried to teach them to read himself, he finally gave up his dream and relegated the school to other uses. His sister Férula sent him all the books he asked for from the city. They were practical texts, from which he learned to give injections by pricking himself in the leg, and to build a crystal radio set. He spent his first profits on rough cloth, a sewing machine, a box of homeopathic pills with an instruction booklet, an encyclopedia, and a shipment of readers, notebooks, and pencils. He cherished the idea of setting up a dining hall where every child would receive one full-course meal a day, so that they would grow up strong and healthy and be able to start work at a tender age, but he realized it was crazy to expect the children to arrive from all ends of the property just for a plate of food, so he transformed the project into a sewing workshop. Pancha GarcÃa was chosen to decipher the mysteries of the sewing machine. At first she thought it was an instrument of
Similar Books
