When I last left off Narcisco was sneaking into Soledad's room. His father lays helpless watching each night as his son sneaks into the kitchen through the maids quarters. He wonders if his wife knows that their son is doing this or if she is just turning a blind eye. After months go by Soledad's stomach starts to swell and it is obvious she is pregnant. The thing that confused me is that between the time Narcisco is hurt during the war and is sneaking into Soledad's room is actually a 7 year span. I think maybe it was a peek into what was next to come, but it honestly had me confused at first. The book jumps around a lot from character to decades often, but I picked it back up quickly. When the book started back on the chapter on Narcisco, he was living in Chicago with Uncle Old. He lives there for 7 years and during that time he becomes a womanizer. He goes to all the bars and does the Charleston dance, which is supposed to be forbidden. He falls in love with a night singer named Tompi. Her stage name is Josephine. She is half black and Cherokee Indian. He wants to marry her. He sends a letter home and tells his family of her heritage. He tells them that he plans to marry her. This is the news that makes Senor Reyes have a stroke that everyone thinks killed him. He reads the note while sitting at the table reading and has a massive stroke.
They wash Senor Reyes and lay him in a casket in the living room for family and friends to view. During these times bodies were not embalmed and the body was put out for a day or so for viewing. Regina Reyes sends an urgent message to her son that his father is dead and to come home. Narcisco asks Tompi to wait for him while he is gone and she says she will cry everyday until he sends for her. He later finds out from a friend that the same day he leaves to go to his fathers funeral, Josephine is on a train with her company traveling to another state to marry a man with the last name of Baker. She divorces him and goes on to perform in New York and Paris and well, we know the rest. Narcisco is devastated when he hears the news, but now back to Mexico where his fathers funeral is being held. Before Narcisco arrives, the viewing has begun. While a niece bends over to kiss the cheek of her dead uncle she shrieks. Everyone thinks she is a great child who must have loved him best, but then she yells that he is breathing. The doctor is summoned and it is true. Senor Reyes is indeed alive, but he cant not move the left side of his body and his speech is slurred. He is still able to write and play music with his right hand and if people took notice they would have seen how much life was left in him by his piano playing.
Once Narcisco is home he finds that his father is not dead and that the woman he planned to marry has run off with another. One day he takes notice of Soledad. He wonders how he did not notice her perfectly shaped back side and her perky chest. He thinks of her as a way to get over Tompi and decides he wants to show her a thing or two he learned back in Chicago. This is where the last chapter left off. Now, Senor Reyes watches helplessly as his son sneaks through the kitchen into Soledad's room each night. He notices the swelling of her belly and watches this for months, unable to speak. When Narcisco decides he wants to go back to Chicago his mother turns a blind eye to Soledads stomach and throws him a going away party. This is the first and final time Senor Reyes speaks with his new condition. In front of a huge party crowd he grabs Soledad and screams at his son "We are not dogs!" Narcisco then finally notices Soledad, standing so frail with her swollen belly and realizes what his father means. No bells rang when they married, but Soledad was very happy.
Narcisco moves Soledad south with him while he works, but she stays in Oaxaca while he goes south to the jungle to work. She has an awful pregnancy. She never sleeps and always aches. She is worried her husband is having an affair and has dreams of him with women. She has right to worry. While he is in the jungle he falls for a woman named Exalatcion. She is considered a witch who sells potions and wears live iguanas tied in a crown around her head. He first goes to her when he gets an infection in his eye and he beds her. While he is there so tells him that she likes to have fun with him but it means more when you are in love. Over the next few months he is obsessed with her and pesters her until she lets him in the house. He falls in love with her and she laughs at him. She reminds him that he is married and she has no feelings for him. This makes him want her more. One day they go to a carnival and take a picture and she befriends one of the ladies in the carnival. The next morning with out word she leaves with the carnival. Never to be heard from again. Narcisco is devastated and when he goes home to visit his wife he is annoyed by her. He cant stand how big she is from her pregnancy and how emotional she is. He treats her awful and she knows what he has done without him saying a word. Weeks later he gives her a picture with the other half cut out. He tells her it is friend that he works with, but the neighbor boy asks Soledad who the woman is sitting next to her husband. She is filled with rage and screams at the child that there is no woman, but then she notices what the child did, shoes off to the right that belong to a woman.She then notices a scarf and runs into the square in a panic. She faints and when she wakes up in calmed by a vendor she has befriended while living there. She calms herself, goes back to the hotel and later that night goes into labor.
No comments:
Post a Comment