The Familiar

Luzia cooperates with Santángel but wonders about him. She dreams she is walking through an orange grove holding someone’s hand. The cook Águeda calls Santángel El Alacrán, “the scorpion,” and says he made a bargain with the devil for eternal life. She says Luzia’s work is of the devil and Luzia throws the cook’s cap into the fire, challenging her to say Luzia’s milagritos are from God. Luzia says, “One must never expect miracles, but one can hope for them all the same” (91).

Her aunt is in Luzia’s room, pretending she is a stranger who has taken an interest in Luzia. She offers to take both women to the warehouse to get new gowns, and Valentina, though she thinks of the devil tempting Eve, goes, along with Marius and Haulit’s confessor.

At the warehouse they see Teoda Halcón, Luzia’s rival in the torneo. She has visions and is referred to as the Holy Child. Luzia says she wants her dress to be armor. She sees Don Marius’s suspicion of the tailor, Perucho, who is a foreigner.

Luzia is taught how to behave in rich company, but until she sees a new scullion in the kitchen, Juana, she feels she’s been rehearsing for a play that might not open. Santángel wants Luzia to succeed so he can be free, but he is also learning more about her, such as that she cannot multiply gold or jewels. She has a watchful gaze and he suspects she has Jewish ancestry, which will work against her. She will be scrutinized for her faith. Víctor has a linajista (genealogist) make up an ancestry for her. Instead of fearing the devil, Santángel tells Luzia to fear men.

Santángel produces pomegranate seeds for Luzia’s lesson. She feels the words forming in her head, gathering momentum as she makes a vine grow. Then Santángel breaks the stalk and asks Luzia if she can heal it. She does, and Luzia feels giddy about pleasing him.

Víctor intrudes, demanding a more impressive miracle. He has his bodyguard, El Peñaco, start breaking Santángel’s fingers and challenges Luzia to fix him. Luzia panics and remembers what people keep saying of her: “Who knows what you might do?” (110). Filled with hate, wishing she were elsewhere, she shouts the words, then screams in pain.

The bodyguard disappears and Santángel sees Luzia fall to the floor, gushing blood from her split tongue. He holds her and tells her to sing to heal herself. He knows the song she hums; it reminds him of an orange grove in bloom. He picks up Luzia and carries her over the pieces of El Peñaco scattered across the floor while Víctor, Don Marius, and Valentina cower. Santángel understands what happened with Luzia’s magic, though she doesn’t.

Luzia sleeps in Valentina’s bed while others clean up her room, including the pomegranate tree that grew out of control. Santángel feels he is a monster for putting Luzia in Víctor’s power, knowing the man is greedy and ruthless.

Luzia wakes and goes to her room to clean herself. She wonders when the woman in the neighboring house will ever play her harp. She looks through Santángel’s satchel and sees a book in French and some letters, one in Latin describing the astrological sign that Pérez was born under.

Hualit brings a new gown and reminds Luzia not to use her name in front of others. She tells Luzia some of what she did to gain Víctor’s notice and says Luzia must please Víctor and Pérez. Luzia asks what happened with the spell, but Hualit doesn’t know. She corresponds with a rabbi and practices Judaism in secret. Luzia asks about the refranes and Hualit says, “We don’t need to understand where that power comes from, only that it is yours to wield” (122). She suggests that when Luzia wins, they can escape to Salonika.

Santángel returns for her lessons, and Luzia is pleased to have his focus on her. He brings a pomegranate from her tree and talks about the many different representations of the fruit. Luzia asks what happened, and he suggests that her magic was trying to offer her escape. He tells her of sages who could use talismans to transport themselves to different places, but sometimes broke the stone in the attempt. Luzia feels guilty for killing a man but also realizes, “she had liked being frightening” (127). She is tired of “her trembling turnip’s life” (127). She tells Santángel to turn his back while she eats the pomegranate.

The new gowns arrive, and Valentina treasures hers. She tries not to think about finding the bodyguard’s body in pieces in her house. They dress Luzia in her new black gown, which makes her look austere and eerie. Hualit takes off Luzia’s cap and they consider cutting her hair. Luzia likes her hair and considers it a connection to her mother as well as a mark of her ethnicity: “Hair that had survived the destruction of the temple, the Roman legions, the long road to Morocco, that had endured conquest, and conversion” (133). Santángel also says not to cut it. The narrator then wonders, if they had cut Luzia’s hair that day, if more than one of them would have returned to the shabby house on Calle de Dos Santos.