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Updated: June 21, 2025
She was, even more than to La Clavel, the servant of Santacilla; she reported, the dancer told Charles, every possible act and speech of her mistress to the Spaniards, who, in return, supplied her with a little money and a load of biting curses.
Yet, at the last, all that you heard were fairy tales the spy that was sent to Camagüey, ha!" La Clavel faced him calmly, but, Charles saw, she was pale. He was revolving a hundred impractical schemes: they had only one end, the death of Santacilla, but how that was to be brought about with safety to Cuba evaded him.
It was Tirso who excitedly called their attention to one of the new volantas in which sat La Clavel. Ceaza y Santacilla was not with her; the place at her side was occupied by the man to whom Jaime had spoken about the dancer in the Tuileries. Quintara, capturing his attention, spoke in his profoundest manner. There was a halt in the movement of carriages, and La Clavel was directly before them.
"There is one thing you can do for me," he hurried on, "and and I beg you not to refuse. The mantón that belonged to La Clavel! I described it to Pilar, and she is mad to wear it to the danzón at the Tacon Theatre. You see, it was embroidered by the Chinese, and it is appropriate for her. Think of Pilar in that shawl, Charles." "She can't have it," he answered shortly.
The dance measure in the Spanish Rhapsody grew louder and more insistent, and through it he heard the castanets of La Clavel, he saw the superb flame of her body in the brutal magnificence of the fringed mantón like Andalusia incarnate. He had a vision of the shawl itself, and, once more, seemed to feel the smooth dragging heaviness of its embroidery.
"There is La Clavel," Charles said by way of reply; "she is with Captain Santacilla, and I think, but I can't be sure, the officer Tirso tried to choke to death. What is his name de Vaca, Gaspar Arco de Vaca." "Even that," Andrés answered, "wasn't accomplished. La Clavel's engagement in Havana is over; I suppose it will be Buenos Aires next.
I stamp my heel," she stamped her heel, a clear sharp sound, and her body swept into a line passionate and tense, "and I create a people, a history." La Clavel secured the castanets lying on her dressing-table in answer to their irritable rhythmic clinking she projected, for an instant, a vision of all desire.
Put on your best clothes, with a rose in your buttonhole, and get drunk in all the cafés; tell anyone who will listen that La Clavel is more superb than Helen of the Greeks, and buy every Spanish officer you see what he may fancy."
Pilar de Lima might, possibly, depart for Peru earlier even than she hoped; boats left not infrequently for Mexico and South America the Argentine for which La Clavel had longed and she was welcome to try her mysterious arts upon the seas away from Cuba and Andrés.
Seated, it might be, quietly against the wall, outside the immediate circle about La Clavel, the officers, the Spanish grandees in Cuba for pleasure or for the supervision of their copper mines at Cobra, Charles would watch, study, Ceaza y Santacilla, finding in him the epitome of the Spain he himself hated.
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