Back to Wando Passo by David Payne (books to improve english txt) 📕

Spanish style. Constructed of fondant and royal icing, it features an arched arcade at street level that supports balconies above and fronts upon a boulevard. There are several small black carriages—the sort Habaneros call quitrines—with licorice wheels and horses and postilions—realistically contrived with field boots, quirts, and beaver top hats—of colored marzipan. Across the street is a park with gravel paths of nonpareils, grass of shredded, bright green coconut, and palms whose trunks are sticks of cinnamon.

“Colonel Lay of New Orleans, Addie,” Harlan answers as he dips the sterling ladle. “He’s the proprietor of the Santa Isabel, a hotel in Havana, the hotel in Havana, I should say…. His rum punch is famous. Besides himself, I am the only man in the Northern Hemisphere who knows the formula. And did he give it to me from the goodness of his heart?”

“Nooo!” say several of his youthful protégés, like good Episcopalians, anticipating the lay part of the responsive reading.

“He did not, madam,” confirms the groom, their priest. “I won it from him at el monte, which is a blood sport as played by Colonel Lay. And I tell you truly, Addie, I do not exaggerate, that gentleman wept tears, large tears of blood, in fact, like Jesus Christ upon the cross, as he wrote down the ingredients and measures. I keep it with me always, here, next to my heart together with the gift you gave me.” With two fingers and a thumb, Harlan actually parts his coat, but either this is in jest, or he’s forgotten to wear the miniature she presented him, with her image—in tempera upon ivory—in one oval of the locket, closing face-to-face with his upon a fragile golden hinge. “But, come now, drink up! You must set an example for these effeminate, fainthearted children.”

“It is…very strong,” she says.

“Strong?”

“A bit like breathing fire.”

“Yes, yes…Better…” He stirs the air beneath his chin, as though to summon lyricism.

“Rum-scented fire,” she arrives at now, “with a mist of orange peel.”

“Ha ha, boys, is she game?” he says. “I told you she was game. Those oranges are the little bitter ones that Father grows around the house. They make an excellent marmalade as well. But, look, you’ve had the last of it,” he says, glancing in the bowl. “We must make another batch. Where’s Clarisse? Well, damn her, never mind. Come, Addie, will you go with me to the storehouse? We’ll fetch the rum ourselves.” He leans close to whisper. “We’ll steal a moment to ourselves.” And, then, in his plangent public voice, offering an arm: “Come, shall we have a little tour about the grounds?

“Thank God!” He mops his brow as they stroll off. “I thought I’d never get you to myself.” In the shade of the allée, he turns and takes her hands. “How are you, Addie?”

“I am well.”

“And your trip? Were you terrified?”

“Exhilarated, rather, though I confess it without pride.”

He smiles. “Then I am proud for you. And the party—are you pleased?”

She hesitates, but it is brief. “It’s thoroughly original, my dear.”

“Yes, original,” he says, with a face as suddenly sour as his father’s oranges. Reaching in his coat for a cigar, he bites off the end and spits. “I’m not sure our friends know what to make of it. They catch the reek of garlic and smile and wave away the tray. I should have known better than to entrust it to Clarisse. Damn it all, though, we had a terrible row here early in the week.”

“You and she?”

“No, the whole damned lot of us,” he says, puffing as he lights. “You saw how Jarry was with me?”

“Yes?” she answers, not quite sure.

He nods, waving out his match. “He and Paloma are still furious. Father hasn’t spoken to me since or deigned to budge out of the house today. I thought Clarisse was angry, too, but then she came to me all smiles and said she wanted to bury the ax and throw this party. I said yes to keep the peace.”

“But, Harlan, truly, though, it’s quite remarkable. That cake!”

“Yes, the cake. Do you know what I asked her for? For Sumter. And this is what I get, the Plaza de Armas in Havana.”

“So that is what it is.”

He nods. “The building is Tacón’s, the opera house.”

“But it’s lovely, Harlan. I’ve never seen the like.”

“But, damn it all, I wanted Sumter. I wanted to remind you of that night.”

“But I don’t need to be reminded. I remember every detail perfectly.”

He concedes a tentative smile. “So you’re happy?”

“I am happy.”

“You are fine?”

“I am.”

“May I kiss you?”

She laughs. “Certainly not! Not here, where everyone can see.”

“To the storehouse then!”

“But, wait,” she says as they pass the kitchen house, a log-and-daub-walled building with smoke boiling from the two great fieldstone chimneys on the gable ends. Outdoors, under the attached shed roof, a line of women in headkerchiefs, arm-deep in suds, are creating an enormous clatter as they wash the plate and crystal in a six-foot wooden trough. “Perhaps I should peek in and pay them my respects.”

“No, Addie,” Harlan says. “You’ll meet them soon enough. I want to speak to you about this matter first. I meant to wait, but, damn it, it’s plaguing me. We’ll go to the storehouse. It’s more private there.”

And now, with a slight heaviness upon their mood, they proceed south along the sandy road that parallels the river, past the gardener, Peter, who is placing woodpile manure on the black raspberry vines. The kitchen plot is enormous—eight hundred feet by eighty or eighty-five—and Peter’s boy is dressing out the rows of strawberries. There are at least three varieties that Addie can see, including the tiny ones called fragole Alpine, which she tasted once in Italy with Blanche and has not had since. A short distance from the house, they enter a cluster of buildings that surrounds the great shake-sided rice barn like a village in New England might surround its church. The carpenter’s and wheelwright’s shops are here, and in the forge, the ringing of