Bianca

Translated from the Bolivian by John Dutton

A hacienda on a hill near the City of Silver. The Lady leans on the veranda. Steam rises from the rainforest. She wants a child.

The Lord, the Don, is always away, and the years are flying. Time is crushing her dream, evaporating her joy before it can blossom.

The Lady is in her dream. Her eyes see nothing. A crow alights on the wooden railing. In her mind the baby is in her arms. She hears its cries. The bird takes flight, wheels, swoops toward her. Its beak pierces her breast like a needle. Drops of blood fall onto her white lace, filling its spaces. The vision fades, her vision returns. The crimson pattern grows bigger. She sees the lips of her child against pure white skin. And hair like black feathers.

When the Lord returns she’s ready for him. Sweat mingles, she welcomes his love. Fruitful, she cradles his life as it grows inside her.

But before she ripens fully the girl is born. Skin as white as her mother’s lace, hair as black as the crow’s feathers and lips as red as the blood that gushes from the Lady. The midwife seeks wisdom in her almanac. Water is helpless, everyone is helpless. The Lady suckles the infant with her seeping strength. Her smile breaks and she dies.

The midwife names the baby in her own language. The heartbroken Lord averts his eyes from Bianca’s snow white skin. He departs the cruel bed, the laughing hacienda. His sorrow falls without mercy upon his miners, who shirk batons and bullets from the men on horses.

Sixteen rainy seasons. Sixteen dry seasons. The Lord’s bitterness has made him a stooped curse, a gnarled, chopped root. A new Lady, Dolorosa, stalks the hacienda’s hallways like a queen. Bianca mucks with the servants. No tears. Things must be done. No cries. Things give the days their rhythm. The deeper the dirt and the stronger the stench, the more Bianca whistles. And the more this new Lady clenches fists and teeth.

Dolorosa moons at the mirror. She sees the accelerating stars through the reflected window. Her rage framed by the gilded oval. She stares at her face and she knows. She knows she’s fading. She knows Bianca’s blood-red lips will soon receive their first passion. Her own lips purse. Her powdered cheeks fleck and crack. Hair shrouds her sour-milk eyes. Bianca is the one the sky loves the most. Bianca’s beauty blinds the new Lady. Bianca must be eclipsed forever.

The woodsman is summoned. A man with a scarred neck and earthen eyes. He thinks in trajectories and targets. The beating of wings and the beating of hearts are his to still forever. Dolorosa places a hand on his shoulder, whispers in his ear. She needs him. She has a task for him in the forest. She hisses Bianca’s name and the woodsman lowers his eyes.

The new Lady accosts young Bianca with news of an errand: the blue-gilled mushrooms that grow in the shade of the cinchona tree must be gathered for the Lord’s welcome feast. The woodsman will accompany her, watch for jaguars and anacondas, stay by her side.

The heat is yet to rise. Bianca wraps a shawl and lines a basket with linen. A knock on the door of the woodsman’s lodge and it opens before her knuckles can rap a second time. He avoids her eyes, strides forth without hesitation, and they enter the forest.

The cinchona trees grow where the soil is rocky, at the mountain’s feet where the mines begin. Dolorosa knows this. She knows that Bianca will be far from rescue when the assassination occurs. Gleeful in anticipation, the Queen-Lady parades before her mirror in dresses and tiaras, humming a spiteful melody.

Bianca stumbles over root and vine as the trees close in. Her protector draws his machete and clears the way. The morning slips by, the canopy thins, and as sweat dampens Bianca’s blouse she spies the trees where the blue-gilled mushrooms grow.

She leaves his side. The woodsman loads and cocks his musket in practiced silence. Bianca stoops at the base of a trunk. The barrel lowered, the assassin takes a step, squeezes the trigger. Powder ignites, a frog leaps and Bianca’s sharp breath makes her head jerk backward as the lead pierces the bark. The woodsman begins to reload and prime his weapon. Bianca knows she can run away or toward him. The adrenaline that speeds her heart focuses her thought. By the time he raises the musket her breath is upon the hand that steadies the barrel. Her eyes captures his own long enough to fracture their steel. A muscle twitches on his temple. She holds his gaze, places her hand on the muzzle. He remembers to breathe. Bianca’s years have taught her nothing about men. But her flesh knows what to do.

He has been long without a woman and has no defense. Her lips are warm, warmer than his throat, warmer than his gut. Her fingertips on his scarred neck loosen sinews but tighten spine. He is not accustomed to closing his eyes in the heart of the jungle but Bianca tears him away, uproots him, cleaves him from the earth beneath his feet. He does close his eyes. Nothing else matters.

A screech overhead brings the world back to life. He staggers back, eyes darting, ears perked, nostrils flared. Bianca puts her hand to her chest. He turns and never looks back. As the woodsman’s stooped form recedes into the rainforest Bianca knows she cannot hope to return.

The woodsman must bring proof or the new Lady will look upon him with a skeptical sneer. He trudges back, fixated on the rhythm of his llama-skin boots. The sun is high. His mind drifts. Then it snaps back into focus and he knows. He knows what he must do. No one will notice a llama missing from the herd. A slaughter that would have been performed for food will be a sacrifice to preserve Bianca’s life.

Satisfied at the sight of the llama’s bloody heart, Dolorosa smirks and feels victory rise in her chest. But still it isn’t enough. Only the taste of Bianca’s flesh will seal her tomb forever. The cook does her bidding, prepares the organ that was rent from the warm carcass and roasts it slowly until the moon reigns once again.

The platter makes the new Lady’s saliva flow, but the taste is too familiar. Not the bitterness she craves or the pleasure she expects when her molars crush the muscle. Something is awry. The meal consumed, Dolorosa addresses the mirror anew. The answer she receives kindles her ire until its flames engulf the hacienda. She breathes in the heat from the air that burns with her rage, opens her husband’s cabinet of antiques and relics. From a serpentine scabbard protrudes an onyx-ornamented handle. Dolorosa pulls out the dagger that three centuries before slew the chieftain while armored soldiers secured his limbs. She summons the woodsman. Eyes lowered, he enters the hall, knowing that she knows. She demands penitence. He kneels at her feet. She plunges the dagger between his shoulder blades. His last breath escapes, his body curled in the womb of death.

Bianca follows the base of the mountain, imagining not where she might find succor or shelter. The sun moves to the mount’s opposite slope. The shade begins to needle at the pit of her stomach. Beyond an outcrop she spies the mine entrance and makes her way toward it. Yawning blackness and stale air. Curiosity beckons her, but instinct wards her off. She walks closer. As trepidation slows her step, she notices something. A path leads away from the mine, into an unknown section of forest. A route somewhere. The chill of the mountain’s mouth makes her shudder. She turns onto the path.

Deep in the bowels of the mountain a cramped cave filled with seven small men wearing battered helmets. Coughing, chewing the coca leaf, spitting silica-veined phlegm on muddy mine floor. A grunt with every hack of the pickax. A wheeze with every heave of the shovel. Gas lamp flames flicker next to close walls, illuminating sacks of ore, rotten timbers, coiled ropes and winches. Knotted, worn umbilical cords disappear up the dark shaft.

They chew the leaf, their skin fading to blue. The miners’ sickness punches them over and over in the solar plexus. One sneezes, then returns his attention to a crevice. Another slouches through a puddle, legs heavy, eyes tired. A rake-thin boy, barely thirteen, pushes an empty trolley in silence, watched by an older, fatter miner wearing wire-rimmed glasses. Another miner removes his helmet and wipes his forehead with a dusty sleeve. He reaches into a satchel and pulls out a clear, flat bottle. Grimy cork twisted out by stubby fingers, a swig, then the bottle neck superficially cleansed with the same dusty sleeve. The miner swallows, squeezes his eyes shut and laughs. Another snatches the bottle angrily with a hand and a scarred stump. He drinks too, then offers the alcohol to a willowy youth with a red bandana. The youth shyly refuses.

Rodrigo, the older miner, checks a pocket watch and signals the end of the shift. Tools are downed, empty lunch tins scooped up by chafed hands. Shuffling feet carve a last trail through the rock dust, past rice bags filled with explosive powder, a box of blasting caps and a battered guitar leaning drunkenly against the jagged rock. The welcoming tomb disgorges them for another day.

A squat house on the edge of the jungle. Bianca approaches its mud walls warily. The glassless windows gawp at her from under the rough thatch. A heavy door of raw wood draws her in, its iron knocker a stiff index finger beckoning her. Fashioned in the form of a horned man with a briar-patch beard and muscular chest, the knocker was once painted red. Now only a few flecks remain, like spattered blood from a recent kill. The horns are a ring through its head, a hinge fixed to the wood. Bianca grasps the figure’s torso and swings it upward, letting it fall with a hollow tock. She waits, lifts the heavy latch. There is no lock. The door creaks open, she creeps inside.

Bare, almost barren, the room’s skewed table crouches in the center, surrounded by low stools. Bianca surveys the counter and basin, splintered fruit crates housing potatoes, rutabaga and onions at one end of the room, a shabby little bed at the other. An inner arch leads Bianca through to a second space with three wider beds shrouded in threadbare grey blankets of coarse alpaca wool. She sits on one. Fatigue embraces her, pulling her head down to the thin, yellowed pillow. Her leaden eyelids close.

When they open again, she starts, gasps, and scuttles backward, pressed against the wall. The seven miners are surrounding the bed. Pedro and Luis cough in unison. Emilio, the man with the stump, is angry, threatened. He wants her gone. Iago sees a devil’s emissary. Camilio watches her like a hawk. Rodrigo calms them, makes an introduction to Bianca, and requests her name in return. Her voice seems to soften the mood of the dusty crew. She recounts her life in the hacienda, her flight from her father’s wife. They listen, entranced. The boy, Xavier, sniffs back a tear. Rodrigo nods sagely and requests a moment alone with his men. Bianca nods. They bow and let her pass.

The miners agree to give her refuge. She has no plan. She knows not how long she will need a haven. But they ask for nothing. Unable to seduce them like the woodsman, she has charmed them, brought sunlight to their stunted darkness. And the days pass. And the meager food is shared. And the bed in the first room is hers.

Yet Bianca is not safe. The mirror has focused the Dolorosa’s hatred, expanded her vision to beyond the forest. Spies are sent out. News of the house on the edge of the forest is gobbled up greedily. The tiny miners are shielding the one she despises. She schemes, she dreams. She calls her maids and a disguise is tailored. A fan-seller. They make fans of red silk, blue silk, yellow silk, all trimmed with black lace and dusted with a powdered poison. One waft of a fan near the face would be fatal. When the sky is heavy with humidity and the earth seared by the midsummer sun, the new Lady will visit Bianca. Maniacal, impatient, she Lady retraces the path through the forest with her spy and awaits the day.

That day comes. July burns, Dolorosa delights. She dons her costume, gathers the basket of fans, deadly dust in every fold. As she leaves the cool hacienda she curses the heat. Sweat trickles down her neck. The lush forest turns air into haze. She stumbles on roots, catches on thorns. But she penetrates the verdant overgrowth through to the mountain. Heartened, she quickens her pace. The sun is lower than she’d hoped when the house comes into view.

The new Lady pulls down her veil. She raps a tarantella on the door. Bianca opens timidly but relaxes when she sees the stooped fan seller. Dolorosa remains silent, raises a gloved palm and proffers the basket. Bianca smiles sweetly, blows her hair off her beaded forehead, peruses the contents of the basket. She presses three tin coins into the fan seller’s hand. It spasms like a claw, triumph coursing through its veins. Bianca takes a red fan from the basket, nods a thank you. The fire in the new Lady’s eyes almost scorches the veil. Bianca unties the ribbon holding the fan closed. Dolorosa backs away. A cough. Another cough. Bianca looks up. The miners are returning. One of them starts to whistle a melody, its notes weaving a thread of unity among laborers. The fan-seller melts into the forest.

Bianca releases the ribbon. The miners arrive at the door. The shift went well, their mood is bright. They laugh at Bianca’s new fan and snatch it from her grasp before she opens it. The boy takes a linen kerchief and wafts it in her face. Another kneels and blows her feet to cool them. Another takes the fan and dances a furious flamenco to a new tune. Bianca laughs. He fans himself. Specks of poison dust are drawn in with each whirling breath. He sneezes and coughs, bent double, until his face is purple. But his lungs are protected by the silica layer that is killing him with glacial suffocation. The fan is dropped to the dirt. His comrades help him into the house and fetch water. Bianca forgets the fan.

The Hacienda welcomes the new Lady, borne home to her nest of thorns on wings of victory. Her maids bathe the sweat from her flesh. In a nightdress of violet cotton she consults the mirror. The answer it gives is unfavorable. Her mouth thins and hardens. The crease on her forehead spreads. Her fists clench with rage. She knows Bianca has not succumbed to the trick of the fan.

While Bianca sleeps soundly, Dolorosa rocks in a chair, staring at a maroon spider as it swathes a captured fly in a shroud of gossamer. A new ruse grows like a spore, blots her fury. Three days later she returns to the house at an earlier hour. She wears a brown wig, a new costume, has a satchel of satin-hemmed veils slung over a shoulder.

She finds Bianca in the miners’ garden, tending to the seedlings. Warning Bianca to veil her face from the sun and preserve her porcelain skin, Dolorosa glides toward her. Bianca stands, wiping her brow with a soil-stained forearm. The new Lady produces a veil from the bag, tends it for approval, then offers to secure it on Bianca’s head. Trusting, she turns her back on the veil-seller. The veil has a satin tie. With the speed of a viper darting toward prey, Dolorosa slips the veil below Bianca’s chin, grips the tie around her neck and pulls the lace noose tight. Bianca splutters, grapples, but cannot release the tie from her sinewy clutch. Bianca’s breath halts. Dolorosa’s muscles burn. She throws back her head in dominant ecstasy. Eyes closed by the blazing sun, mouth gaping, she is blind to the thrush flying above. It loses its grip on the worm plucked as food for its fledglings. The worm falls wriggling into her throat. She chokes and releases the veil. Bianca stumbles forward, scrambles away across the field. Dolorosa thrashes, her wig skews. Bianca breathlessly reaches the house. She sees the flailing figure, recognizes her father’s wife and bolts the door.

The miners return exhausted. Bianca decides to spare them the worry, keeps the encounter with the new Lady to herself. They are generous, they have a grace beyond received refinement. They are good. They do not deserve more fear than the pit of dust and darkness already infects them with.

Fury overwhelms the new Lady. She prays to a somber angel, but her faith is splintered. Her boot taps the tiles. Another trick is needed. She addresses the mirror. It reflects a polished apple in a carved jacaranda wood bowl. The She turns, her eyes narrow to single thought: make it pregnant with poison. Make it give birth to death. But the new disguise must be impenetrable, hypnotic. It must assuage suspicion, engender trust. It must cradle Bianca tight, weave her helplessly in the strands of its lethal loom.

The new Lady takes a gilded carriage to the city of silver. The finest auburn wig. A cloak of satin. And, from a sidestreet sorceress, a mask that molds to her skin, smoothes her rancid wrinkles, conjures a sugared smile where lips were cracked. The shift is complete. Tenderness where the tenebrous lurked. Charm where chastisement spat. Generous gentility where jealousy slithered.

She waits not one day. She knows she will return to the hacienda like a jaguar bearing the carcass of a newly weaned vicuña to nourish its cub. But her cub is the rage, its nourishment Bianca’s last breath.

Dolorosa carries her apples in a linen sling embroidered with red roses. The day is fresh. The path is clear. Her journey is like an arrow seeking the heart. As she approaches the house she skips like a maiden. The knock on the door is light. The sun bathes her in a halo. This time the world has turned and Bianca shall perish.

A cautious opening. A wary welcome. But the disguise shimmers away the distrust. The new Lady’s head tilts: an apple for a penny? A simple siren song. Bianca’s hand searches for the coin, her fingers walking the bank of the river of death. The apple-seller holds out the fruit, shining like a ruby. Bianca’s mouth waters. One hand, one coin passed into another hand. One hand, one apple passed from another hand. Dolorosa invites her to taste. Bianca holds the fulsome fruit to her lips, breaths in its purity. A simple last smile, one bite, then an ocean of venom.

Bianca drops to her knees. The Lady’s head tilts more to an evil angle. Bianca stops breathing. And still the heart beats. And still the blood flows. But the lungs, the lungs. Bianca grasps the door frame. Her nails break in the wood. Her eyes flash upward, meet the new Lady’s limpid gaze. A feline with jaw fastened on throat, listening for a stilled pulse. Bianca falls to the threshold. Dolorosa puts her moist lips to Bianca’s nostrils. Detecting no breath, she withdraws, stretching her arms like a condor, regal in her supremacy.

A far whistle reaches her ears. No matter. Let the fool miners come. Let them rail, let them wail. Dolorosa closes Bianca’s eyes with the toe of her boot then seeps back into the forest.

As the miners draw near there’s a shout. They drop tools and bags. They run. They stumble. They stand aghast, coughing and sobbing. The elder crouches, placing a calloused finger on Bianca’s milk-white neck. An eternity of hope. His brow uncreases. She lives! Slow like the sap of the palo santo, her pulse still murmurs.

They carry her to the bed, administer cinchona. Pedro coughs his tears to the floor as his trembling arms lift her to his sobbing chest. Iago looks to the heavens. Camilio bites his lip and feels nothing when his teeth pierce the skin. Xavier stares in silence, then Rodrigo clasps him to his chest before the wail can begin. Emilio turns away, the anger flushing his face. Luis fiddles with the buttons on his jacket.

Rodrigo looks down at the ground, sees a crust of bread spilling out from a bag dropped in haste. He remembers. The loaf that was left in the deepest part of the mine. That they found months later, dry, yes, but it had grown no mold. They had brought it back to their cottage, added seven drops of water, pouched it in leather. When the sun rose, it had softened, was miraculously edible. This was the miracle Bianca needed. Stall death, wait for a cure.

He speaks gravely: this is the only way. Iago finds blasphemy in his words: the Lord has spoken, they shall not dispute his wish. Xavier sobs and sniffles. Emilio cannot bear to leave her alone. Silence, but for the jungle insects, snickering at the miners. Pedro coughs, bent double. He mutters, splutters. He gets the words out. He will stay with her. His lungs are finished. He has not long to live. He will be her guardian, tend the light in the dark cavern until his own spirit fails. There is agreement. In silent sorrow, they lift the board from Pedro’s bed. They secure Bianca to this living pall using strips cut from his toolbag.

A moonlit march to the gaping mouth of the mine. As they descend, the hollow air is disturbed only by coughing, scuffling and curses of bitter anger. The blackest pit reached, they lower her to the cold rock floor. One by one, they kiss her forehead, utter a whispered prayer. Pedro sits, draws his knees to his hollow chest, quietly accepting their reverence. His comrades place lamps beside Bianca’s motionless head. Forced and formal, Rodrigo announces their departure, leads them away from the flickering vigil.

Days pass. The lamps burn the thin pit air. Pedro’s coughing stops. Barely conscious, he rests his head on the cave floor beside Bianca’s. They each breathe the other’s last breath.

Her heart waits, then beats, then stops. Bianca’s final swoon makes time stand still, her mind now free to dance with joy, to tell a tale of deliverance. She sees herself, clothed in white satin, lying still in a crystal casket before a house in a clearing. Prism rainbows color her dress. At sunset, seven miners approach through a path in the jungle. A taller figure follows. The miners surround the casket, their faces desperate with hope. The figure leans over the casket, stricken speechless by her beauty. It is the foreman, now a prince, the commander of a conquistador ship. He removes his plumed hat, opens the casket and kisses Bianca’s blood red lips. Her eyes flutter open. She coughs. She smiles. Her savior smiles back and lifts her to his chest. The miners rejoice.

The hacienda. The mirror. Dolorosa knows Bianca is dead. Convulsed with triumph, she smashes the glass with a golden goblet. A spinning shard severs her jugular. She collapses, choking, to the white tile floor. Crimson blood oozes. Black lace twitches. A crow perched at the open window eyes her life ebb away. It spreads its wings, prepares to feast.

The pit. Bianca drifts down the dark river of death in a dream ever after.