Like Water for Chocolate Page 11

  The best way to eradicate them is to mix a glass of alcohol, half an ounce of spirits of turpentine, and half an ounce of powdered camphor. Rub this preparation everywhere there are bedbugs, and they will disappear completely.

  Withdrawing to the kitchen, Tita began putting the pots and pans away. She still wasn’t sleepy, and it was better to spend the time this way than tossing and turning in her bed. She felt a mass of conflicting emotions and the best way to put some order in her thoughts was to start by putting some order in the kitchen. She took a huge earthenware pot and put it away in what was now the storage room, formerly the dark room. After Mama Elena’s death they saw that no one was thinking of using it as a place to bathe, since they all preferred to use the shower, so to put it to some use they turned it into a storeroom for kitchen utensils.

  In one hand she was carrying the pot, in the other, an oil lamp. She pushed her way into the storeroom, trying not to trip on all the things that stood in her path, the many cooking pans that were kept there because they were not often used. The light from the lamp helped a little, but not enough—it didn’t reveal the shadow that slipped silently into the room behind her and shut the door.

  Sensing another’s presence, Tita spun around; the light clearly revealed the figure of Pedro, barring the door.

  “Pedro! What are you doing here?”

  Without answering, Pedro went to her, extinguished the lamp, pulled her to a brass bed that had once belonged to her sister Gertrudis, and throwing himself upon her, caused her to lose her virginity and learn of true love.

  In her bedroom, Rosaura was trying to put her daughter to sleep, but the baby was crying uncontrollably. She was walking her all around the room, but it wasn’t working. As she walked past the window, she saw a strange glow coming from the dark room. Plumes of phosphorescent colors were ascending to the sky like delicate Bengal lights. As many cries of alarm as she gave, calling for Tita and Pedro to come see, the only answer she got was from Chencha, who was looking for a set of sheets. Beholding this remarkable sight, Chencha was struck dumb with surprise for the first time in her life; not a single sound escaped her lips. Esperanza, who was always keenly aware of what went on around her, stopped her crying. Chencha knelt and crossed herself and offered up a prayer.

  “Most holy Virgin, who’s up in heaven, gather up the soul of my mistriss Elena an’ let her stop wandering among the shades in pulgatory!”

  “What are you saying, Chencha, what are you talking about?”

  “What else can it be, can’t you see it’s a ghost of the dead! Dead and still walking, paying for some unsettled score! I don’t think it’s no joke, I’m never going nowhere near it!”

  “Me neither.”

  If poor Mama Elena had known that even after she was dead her presence was enough to inspire terror—and that this fear of encountering her is what provided Tita and Pedro the perfect opportunity to profane her favorite place with impunity, rolling voluptuously on Gertrudis’s bed—she would have died another hundred times over.

  TO BE CONTINUED . . .

  Next month’s recipe:

  Chocolate and Three Kings’ Day Bread

  CHAPTER NINE

  September

  Chocolate and Three

  Kings’ Day Bread

  INGREDIENTS FOR

  THE CHOCOLATE:

  2 pounds Soconusco chocolate beans

  2 pounds Maracaibo chocolate beans

  2 pounds Caracas chocolate beans

  4 to 6 pounds sugar, to taste

  PREPARATION:

  The first step is to toast the chocolate beans. It’s good to use a metal pan rather than an earthenware griddle since the pores of the griddle soak up the oil the beans give off. It’s very important to pay attention to this sort of detail, since the goodness of the chocolate depends on three things, namely: that the chocolate beans used are good and without defect, that you mix several different types of beans to make the chocolate, and, finally, the amount of toasting.

  It’s advisable to toast the cocoa beans just until the moment they begin to give off oil. If they are removed from the heat before then, they will make a discolored and disagreeable-looking chocolate, which will be indigestible besides. On the other hand, if they are left on the heat too long, most of the beans will be burned, which will make the chocolate bitter and acrid.

  Tita extracted just half a teaspoon of this oil to mix with sweet almond oil for an excellent lip ointment. Her lips always chapped every winter, no matter what precautions she took. When she was a child, this caused her considerable discomfort; whenever she laughed the fleshy part of her lips would crack open and bleed, producing a sharp pain. In time she grew resigned to this. Now that she didn’t have a lot of reasons to laugh, it no longer concerned her. She could wait patiently for spring for the cracks to disappear. The only reason she was making the pomade was that some guests were coming to the house tonight to share the Kings’ Day bread.

  It was for vanity that she wanted her lips to look soft and shiny for the party, not because she expected to laugh very much. The suspicion that she was pregnant hardly brought a laugh to her lips! This possibility had not occurred to her as she consummated her love with Pedro. She still hadn’t told him. She planned to do so tonight, but she didn’t know how. What would Pedro’s reaction be? And the solution to this huge problem? She had no idea.

  She would rather not torment herself, would rather turn her mind toward more trivial matters like the preparation of a good lip balm. For that there’s nothing like cocoa butter. But before starting to prepare it, she had to have the chocolate ready.

  When the cocoa beans are done being toasted, as described above, they are cleaned using a hair sieve to separate the hull from the bean. Beneath the metate in which the chocolate is to be ground place a flat pan containing a hot fire; once the stone is warm, begin grinding the chocolate. Mix the chocolate with the sugar, pounding it with a mallet and grinding the two together. Then divide the mixture into chunks. The chunks are shaped by hand into tablets, square or round, according to your preference, and set out to air. The dividing points can be marked with the tip of a knife if you wish.

  While Tita was forming the squares, she mourned for the Three Kings’ days of her childhood, when she didn’t have such serious problems. Her biggest worry then was that the Magi never brought her what she asked for, but instead what Mama Elena thought best for her. It was some years before she learned the reason she had received the longed-for gift on one occasion; Nacha had saved up her wages for a long time to buy her the “little movie” she had seen in the display window of a store. It was called a little movie, because it was an apparatus for projecting images on the wall using a petroleum lamp as a light source, producing an effect like a movie; but its real name was “zoetrope.” What joy she felt seeing it next to her stocking when she got up in the morning. How she and her sisters enjoyed the many afternoons spent watching the sequence of images drawn on strips of glass, which pictured different situations that were so entertaining. Those happy days when Nacha was with her seemed so distant now. Nacha! The smells: her noodle soup, her chilaquiles, her champurrado, her molcajete sauce, her bread with cream, all were far away in a distant past. They could never be surpassed, her seasoning, her atole drinks, her teas, her laugh, her herbal remedies, the way she braided her hair and tucked Tita in at night, took care of her when she was sick, and cooked what she craved and whipped the chocolate! If she could bring back a single moment from that time, a little of the happiness from those days, she could prepare the Kings’ Day bread with the same enthusiasm she had felt then! If only she could eat the bread afterward with her sisters, laughing and joking, just like old times, when she and Rosaura had not had to compete for the love of a man, before she knew that she would not be allowed to wed, that Gertrudis would run away from home and work in a brothel, and when she still believed that if she found the doll in the bread, all her wishes would miraculously come true, literally, everything she had wi
shed for. Life had taught her that it was not that easy; there are few prepared to fulfill their desires whatever the cost, and the right to determine the course of one’s own life would take more effort than she had imagined. That battle she had to fight alone, and it weighed on her. If she could only have her sister Gertrudis by her side! But it seemed more likely that a corpse would come back to life than that Gertrudis would come back home.

  No one had gone for news of her since Nicholas had taken her clothes to the brothel. Putting those memories to rest along with the squares of chocolate she had just finished, Tita began the Three Kings’ Day bread at last.

  INGREDIENTS:

  30 grams fresh yeast

  1 1/4 kilos flour

  8 eggs

  1 tablespoon salt

  2 tablespoons orange-blossom water

  1 1/2 cups milk

  300 grams sugar

  300 grams butter

  250 grams candied fruit

  1 porcelain doll

  PREPARATION:

  Break up the yeast in 1/4 kilo of flour using your hands or a fork and adding 1/2 cup of warm milk a little at a time. When the ingredients are well blended, knead briefly, form into a ball, and let rest, until the dough grows to double its size.

  Just as Tita was putting the dough to rest, Rosaura made her appearance in the kitchen. She came to ask Tita’s help in carrying out the diet John had prescribed for her. For some weeks now, she had been having serious digestive problems, she suffered from flatulence and bad breath. Rosaura felt so distressed by these upheavals that she had determined that she and Pedro should sleep in separate bedrooms. That reduced her suffering slightly; she could pass gas as she pleased. John had recommended that she abstain from such foods as root and leafy vegetables, and that she perform some active physical labor. This last was made difficult by her excessive bulk. There was no explaining the way she had gotten so fat after her return to the ranch, since she was still eating the same as always. It took an enormous effort for her to set her voluminous, gelatinous body in motion. All these ills carried with them an infinity of problems, the worst being that every day Pedro moved farther and farther away from her. She couldn’t blame him; even she couldn’t stand the foul smell. She couldn’t take any more.

  It was the first time Rosaura had plucked up her courage and discussed these topics with Tita. She confessed she had not approached her before because of the jealousy she felt. She had thought that there was an amorous relationship between Tita and Pedro, concealed, hidden by outward appearances. Now that she saw how much John loved her, and how soon she would be married to him, she had realized the absurdity of continuing to harbor this type of suspicion. She was sure there was still time to establish good relations between them. To tell the truth, until now the Rosaura-Tita relationship had been like water in boiling oil! With tears in her eyes, she begged Tita not to harbor bad feelings about her marriage to Pedro. She asked Tita’s advice how to save it. As if Tita was the one to dispense that kind of advice! With difficulty, Rosaura reported that it had been several months since Pedro had approached her with amorous intentions. He practically avoided her. That alone didn’t worry her too much; Pedro had never been disposed to sexual excess. It wasn’t just that, it was his attitude—in it she detected his frank rejection of her.

  And she could put her finger on just when it started, since she remembered perfectly. It was the night the ghost of Mama Elena first appeared. She was awake, waiting for Pedro to return from his walk. When he returned, he paid almost no attention to her story of the ghost, as if he was hardly there. During the night she had tried to embrace him, but he was either asleep or pretending to be, and he didn’t respond to her advances. Later she had heard him weeping quietly; then she had pretended not to hear.

  She felt sure that her fatness, her flatulence, and her foul breath were driving Pedro farther away every day, and she couldn’t see a solution. So now she was asking Tita’s help. She needed help as never before; she had no one else to turn to. Every day the situation grew more serious. She didn’t know how she would react to what “they” would say if Pedro left her, she couldn’t stand it. Her only consolation was that at least she had her daughter Esperanza, who was obliged to stay with her forever.

  Until that point all was going well, since what Rosaura said had produced pangs in Tita’s conscience, but when she heard for the second time what Esperanza’s fate was to be, she had to make a supreme effort not to shout at her sister that it was the sickest idea she had heard in her life. She couldn’t begin a discussion between them right now that would spoil the good impulse she felt to forgive Rosaura for how she had harmed her. Instead of voicing her thoughts, Tita promised her sister that she would prepare a special diet to help her lose weight. She kindly supplied her with a family remedy against bad breath: “Bad breath originates in the stomach and several causes contribute to it. To eliminate it, start by gargling salt water mixed with a few drops of powdered camphor vinegar, sniffing the mixture up into the nostrils at the same time. In addition, chew mint leaves constantly. By itself, the regimen proposed here, when followed rigorously, can purify the foulest breath.”

  Rosaura was infinitely grateful for her sister’s help and quickly went out to the garden to pick some mint leaves, asking for Tita’s absolute discretion in this delicate matter. But Tita was distraught. What had she done! How could she make up for the harm she’d done to Rosaura, to Pedro, to herself, to John? How could she face him when she saw him in a few days, when he returned from his trip? John, the person to whom she owed nothing but thanks; John, who had brought her back to her senses; John, who had shown her the way to freedom.

  John, his peace, serenity, reason. Truly, he did not deserve this! What could she tell him, what could she do? For the moment, the best thing she could do was to continue preparing the Kings’ Day bread, since the leavened dough she had left to rest while she talked with Rosaura was now ready for the next step.

  Use a kilo of flour to form a well on the table. Place all the ingredients in the center of this well and begin kneading, starting in the center and gradually adding a little of the flour from the well until all the flour has been incorporated. When the leavened dough has risen to twice its size, combine it with this other dough, blending them perfectly, until the dough comes off your hands easily. Use a scraper to remove any dough that has stuck to the table, so that it can be blended in as well. Place the dough in a deep container that has been greased. Cover with a napkin and wait for it to rise until it has doubled in size yet again. Take into account the fact that it takes approximately two hours for the dough to double in size and that it has to rise three times before it is put into the oven.

  As Tita was putting the napkin over the container where she had set the dough to rest, a strong gust of wind banged the kitchen door wide open, causing an icy blast to invade the room. The napkin flew into the air and an icy shiver ran down Tita’s spine. She turned around and was stunned to find herself face to face with Mama Elena, who was giving her a fierce look.

  “I told you many times not to go near Pedro. Why did you do it?”

  “I tried, Mami . . . but . . .”

  “But nothing! What you have done has no name! You have forgotten all morality, respect, and good behavior. You are worthless, a good-for-nothing who doesn’t respect even yourself. You have blackened the name of my entire family, from my ancestors down to this cursed baby you carry in your belly!”

  “No! My baby isn’t cursed?’

  “Yes, it is! I curse it! It and you, forever!”

  “No, please!”

  Chencha’s entrance into the kitchen caused Mama Elena to spin on her heels and go out the same door by which she had entered.

  “Close the door, child. Can’t you feel how cold it is? Lately you’ve seemed so up in the air. What is bothering you?”

  Nothing. Except she had missed a period and thought she was pregnant; and she had to tell John when he came back to marry her to cancel the wedd
ing, and she had to leave the ranch if she wanted to have her baby without problems, and she had to give up Pedro forever, since she couldn’t go on hurting Rosaura.

  That was all! But she couldn’t say that to Chencha. She was such a gossip that if Tita told her, the next day the whole village would know. She preferred to give her no answer and change the subject without more ado, much as Chencha did to her when she was caught out on some weak point.

  “How awful! The dough is already rising over the pan. Let me finish the bread, or tomorrow night will catch us and we still won’t be done.”

  The dough wasn’t yet over the top of the pan where she’d put it to rest, but it was an ideal pretext to divert Chencha’s attention onto another topic.

  When the dough has doubled in size for the second time, remove it from the container, place it on the table, and form it into a strip. If you wish, you may place some bits of candied fruit in the middle. If not, just the porcelain doll, placed at random. Roll up the strip, joining one edge to the other. Place the bread seam down on a greased and floured baking sheet. Form a ring with the dough, leaving enough space between the ring and the edge of the baking sheet, since the dough still has to double in size one more time. Meanwhile, light the oven to maintain a comfortable temperature in the kitchen until the bread finishes rising.

  Before placing the porcelain doll in the bread, Tita looked at it for a long time. Traditionally, on the night of the sixth of January, the bread is sliced and the person who finds the doll hidden inside it is required to hold a celebration on the second of February, Candlemas day, when the Baby Jesus is removed from the Nativity scene. Ever since they were very young, this tradition had been converted into a sort of competition between her and her sisters. The one lucky enough to find the doll was considered lucky indeed. That night, with the doll clasped tightly in her two hands, she could make any wish she wanted.