The House of Impossible Loves by Cristina López Barrio

mocking her misfortune. She hated the place that had given her hope only to tear it away. Clara forbade her mother, Bernarda, and the other prostitutes from tending to that garden. She ordered that the breach in the stone wall, where the Andalusian had passed, be sealed and built a barricade of wheelbarrows under the arch at the entrance, condemning stray dogs to a fragrant death or a back scraped raw if they dared escape through the path of thorns. That rose garden would die bitter, dry, and abandoned.
    That night, Clara vomited pollen, was tormented by nightmares of cologne and salve, used to soothe wounds. Her agitation finally abated under a cloak as black as a cassock, and she fell into a dreamless sleep.
    Padre Imperio arrived at Scarlet Manor precisely on time, riding his mule, his priest’s collar in crisp contrast to his face lined by wrinkles acquired in the tropics. Clara spied him from her bedroom window as he marched over the daisies. She told her mother to send him away with the excuse that she was unwell. I haven’t got time for salvation, Clara thought, only for revenge. She began to brush her hair as she watched the old woman give the priest her message; rather than leave, he sat on the stone bench under the chestnut tree and stroked the violet cover of a book Clara sensed was sacred.
    “That man is as stubborn as his mule! He says he’s not leaving.”
    “So I see.”
    Unable to squeeze her breasts and belly into her own dresses, Clara wore one of her mother’s. The birds sang too loudly for her liking, the sky was too blue, the breeze too soft. Padre Imperio stood when he saw her approach.
    “You do know you’re in the garden of a brothel?”
    “I’m in a garden blessed by nature, and therefore blessed by God’s generosity.” Padre Imperio shivered, as he did whenever he looked into Clara’s eyes, wondering whether the fires of hell might burn behind them.
    She sat on one end of the bench, he on the other, a stone arm between them preventing any contact.
    “I’d like to read you a passage from the Bible that will explain why I’m here and what I want to tell you.” The violet cover stuck to his sweaty fingers.
    “Someone once told me about your sermons, said I should go hear them. What were they about?”
    Padre Imperio set the Bible down. He inhaled the morning air in that garden that seemed to lean back, ready to listen, and began to speak of a far-off island called Cuba, where soldiers went to defend the glory of the empire. Clara looked at the ground, at the wildflowers swirling at her feet, but as the story wore on, she glanced at the priest, then turned her whole body and looked straight at him. She had never noticed his lips before; they were thin, a star-shaped scar in one corner. Dressed in a soldier’s uniform, a priest’s collar at his grimy throat and nothing but faith in his heart, Padre Imperio had marched with a battalion of men through swamps where rebels hid, where ceiba and palm trees harbored enemies and, in the distance, a beach. The priest’s eyes were no longer black but tinged Caribbean blue. There was gunfire and death; the first soldiers fell in the yard at Scarlet Manor, blood splattering the cobblestones and daisies, gunpowder and granules of pollen filling the air, crocodiles crawling out from behind the chestnut tree, holy water splashing from a canteen onto the priest’s boots, Clara’s feet, and the forehead of a fallen soldier. It was an ambush. Midday beat down on Scarlet Manor. Padre Imperio loosened his collar, and Clara Laguna saw the scar slashing right across his throat.
    “I’ll come another day to read biblical parables.” He picked up the holy book and got to his feet, his mouth dry. His mule, tied to the gate, was getting restless.
    “Come as long as they let you.”
    “Or until you repent and come listen to my sermons where they should be heard, in church.”
    “You obey God, I my revenge.”
    “You’re still so young, and with