“There are?” he said, suddenly excited. “If I could find a ship in port, to take me—”
“Not unless you could pay for it.”
“How much?”
“More than nothing, which is all you have. And all I have.”
“How am I supposed to get the money? I can’t do anything!” His hand struck the blackened frame. “Tamates! I can’t do anything…it’s never going to come back. Let’s go.” He started abruptly back toward the road.
When they returned to the cottage, he took the leather hat and stood before the broken mirror on the wall. He began to unwrap the bandages that covered his head. As he pulled the final clinging strips away from his skin, she saw his hands drop, nerveless, to his sides; the streamer of bandage fluttered down. She saw his face in the mirror: the half-healed scar that gaped along his cheek and scalp, the stunned revulsion in his eyes.
“Cristoval.” she whispered, “it was worse, before. It will be much better, in time. Much better…” She met his eyes in the mirror, eyes as gray as sorrow.
He looked away; went to the door, and out, wordlessly.
She sat weaving, waiting, through the hot autumn afternoon, but he did not return. She watched the cloth grow as she passed the shuttle back, and back again, through the taut threads; thinking how much it had grown, in so short a time, because the stranger had come into her life. She went down to the river, but he was not there; she bathed, and washed her hair. Suppertime came, and passed. Dog sat in the doorway, whining into the twilight. Hungry for broiled fish, she drank water and ate dry bread…He would fell the dead orange tree, he had said, before it fell on her house ... he would build her a palmleaf canopy in the yard to shade her while she cooked. A fence of adobe bricks ... a henhouse ... a shower ... a real bed. A life for a life…
She blew out the candle, lay down on her pallet of straw and in the darkness remembered the feel of his body against her, the touch of his hands. He had gone out into the desert; he would walk toward the unreachable mountains, trying to go home. And he would lie down at last and die, alone, and the buzzards would pick his bones. She heard the tolling of the midnight bells: Pitiless and unforgiving, they mocked her, and named her. Amanda, Amanda. . . .
“Amanda?” The door rattled; Dog leaped to his feet, barking joyfully. “Amanda? Will you let me in?”
She ran to the door, wrapped in her blanket, her hair streaming. She unbolted it, threw it open; the light of the full moon struck her face. Cristoval’s shadowed eyes looked long on her, in silence. At last he stepped forward, into the house. She lit a candle as he bolted the door, brought him bread and a pitcher of water. He drank deeply, sighed. She sat across from him at the table, covering her face with a corner of her blanket, but feeling no embarrassment. She didn’t ask where he had been, he didn’t tell her; he kept his face slightly averted, hiding his scar.
“Amanda—” He finished the bread, drank again. “Tell me why you’re not married.”
She started. “What, now?”
“Yes, now. Please.”
“I have no dowry,” she said simply, hoping he would understand that much and let it go. “No man would take me.”
An unreadable expression crossed his face. “But your father must be a wealthy man, he owns all these fields—why does he treat you like this; why do you live in this hovel?”
She reddened. “He’s very generous to let me live here! I defied him, and he disowned me. He didn’t have to give me anything; I would have been like you. But he lets me stay in this cottage, and glean in his fields. I suppose he would have been ashamed to watch his daughter become a beggar or a whore.”
“Why did you disobey him? What did you do?”
“I wouldn’t marry the man chosen for me. He was a good man; but I thought—I thought I was in love…” She tasted bitterness, remembering the red-haired girl she had once been: who sat with her embroidery for hours at the window, gazing out over the bay, who wept with unconsolable loss, for her heart had been stolen, and she had not had the strength to follow it; who found that the staid ritual of life in Sanpedro was suffocating her, and her dreams were dying. He said he would come back…and she had believed him, and vowed that she would wait for him.
But her father had known none of that, thinking only that his spindly, homely daughter longed to marry any man; that it was high time to get her a husband, to make order out of her girlish maiden’s fancies. And when he had told her of the match, she had run sobbing from the room and sworn that she would never marry. Her father raged, her mother scolded, her sisters wept and pleaded. But she sat as still and unreachable as her aged grandmother, who rocked endlessly by the fire, blind with cataracts, and deaf: who had had hair of flame, like her own, once, in youth…
And at last her father had given her an ultimatum, and in her childish vanity she had spurned the marriage, and he had disowned her. He had given her dowry to Teresa, ungainly of body but fair of heart, and for Teresa he had chosen well—a man who desired her for her soul, and not for her riches.
“And so I came to live here, and learned what it is to be poor. My vanity starved to death, long ago. But by then it was too late.” She glanced down at the rough hand holding the blanket edge. “There is no end to my sin, no end to my punishment, now.” Her hand slid down, taking the blanket with it; Cristoval looked at her strangely. She pulled it back up, defensive. “I am still a virgin; my marriage sheets would not dishonor my husband. But I don’t have a maiden’s soul ...” She felt her words fading. “In my mind, lying alone at night, I have sinned, and sinned. ...” She reddened again, remembering her thoughts this night. “Sweet Angel; I’m so tired!” Her voice shook. “I would gladly have married, a hundred times over, by now! But what man would have me now?”
She heard Cristoval draw a long breath. “I would have you. Amanda…will you marry me?”
Her blush deepened with anger. “You! Do you think I don’t know why you’re asking me? I may be just a woman, but I’m not such a fool that I can’t see what you’ve been trying to do to me. You’ve smiled, and wheedled, and tried to make me depend on you, so that when you were well I wouldn’t make you leave. And so you’d even marry me, to save yourself?”
“Well, what the hell’s wrong with that?” His scarred hand knotted on the table. “You just told me you’d marry anybody, to save yourself from the hardship, and the loneliness. Why is it wrong for me to want the same thing? I don’t want to die a friendless beggar in this self-righteous hell, either! I’m not asking you to love me—I don’t love you. I want to marry you to save myself, because there’s no other way I can; that’s all. If you accept, take me out of your own need. I’ll be a good husband to you. I’ll carry my share of the weight. Together, maybe we could even make a decent life for ourselves.” He glanced down, turned his face squarely to her in the light. “God knows I’m not much to look at, now, Amanda. But…but in the dark—”
She studied his face, her eyes catching only once on the scar, used to it from dressing his wound. Apart from it his face was pleasant, almost handsome now with familiarity, under the short, sun-faded hair. He was no more than thirty, perhaps no older than herself: He was strong and, behind the strangeness of his peculiar habits, somehow gentle. She did not think he would beat her. And— “And I’m not…much to look at, either, now; I know.” She sighed. “Love is not a right to demand in marriage. Love is a reward. Yes, then, Cristoval; I will be your wife. Tomorrow we will go to see my father.” Her shoulders sagged; pulling the blanket close around her, she rose and went to her bed.