Chapter 6: Cati Padilla

Chapter 6: Cati Padilla

            If you were to ask a sufficiently elder Managuan, such as my father’s father, or my mother’s mother, virtually anyone who had lived in that Old City, never numbering more than two-hundred-thousand inhabitants—what we now call the historical center, near the lake—who was the most beautiful woman who ever lived, they would invariably answer “Leslie Bekker.” But if you were to ask a younger one such as my father—or one of my uncles, or one of my uncles’ cousins, or even one of my uncle’s cousins chauffers’ brothers, or even me for that matter—if you were to ask that very same question, the response would not vary: “Pues la Cati, of course!”

            Caterina Gurdián Vivas came onto this earth in December during ’52 by a marriage between two of the most influential families in Nicaragua, one family from Leon, and the other from Granada. Yet she was born and raised in Managua, chosen by her parents because it was a promising place, but more so because it stood equidistant to each of their respective towns, both previous capitals of the nation.

During the night of her funeral, my uncle spoke to me about her. “She was the most coveted girl in Managua, of the best, most refined persons, but she never went steady with anyone, she would only agree to go on dates here and there, which frustrated everyone. She was very timid and intelligent. And a reader, too! Like your grandfather, but not that much. She took an interest in the lives of others. Almost too much. When we came back from exile, your aunts found her tiring, when they used to find her delightful. She refused to speak of anything quotidian.”

“Ay! What a gorgeous little creature, that Cati! And not a bad bone in her body, either. The sweetest woman that ever lived,” my aunts would later exclaim. “It’s a terrible sin that none of us could help her. No one knew! She was always so reclusive.”

Cati and her parents went to Costa Rica during the exile. She studied Hispanic literature at a university in San José, for the most part keeping to herself and her books. She found no reason to seek new friendships because she had yet not known loneliness or boredom. She felt at ease only when she was alone. In her solitude she would undergo all the emotions one would experience actually living. During those eight years of exile she lived vicariously through literature, as intensely as if it was in reality she herself who the authors were describing and her that had been loved and betrayed in the romances she read. She made no distinction between the death of a character in her books and the death of a relative abroad; she mourned them with equal fervor.  

She met J. Padilla in Madrid on vacation. He happened to be there on account of a new exposition from a Catalan artist who was rising steadily in fame. As unofficial ambassador to Europe, Padilla was contacted by her parents, and they dined in what he proclaimed to be “the oldest restaurant in the world” near Plaza Mayor. It was the first time she had tasted both lamb and love in her life, her real life. She was enthralled by Padilla’s electric personality and knowledge, by his culture and erudition. Needless to say, she did not return with her parents to San José, a city where she felt she did not belong.

 She flew to Paris with Padilla sojourning in his fantastic flat in the Latin Quarter for three months until they received the news: Nicaragua was safe again. Padilla, who had been hiding an engagement ring adorned with a huge sapphire for several weeks, proposed to her that very evening. Toasting with champagne, they embraced over the glimmering lights of the city. From Padilla’s window, the starry night sky was indistinguishable from the dark city alight with fairies, the heavens and the earth had become one before their eyes. For Caterina, overwhelmed with joyful tears, the proposal meant that each evening which followed this one would bring an equal degree of happiness as long as she was with her one and only love. “Yes,” she cried “yes, I will love you until death. I will marry you.” And Padilla, satisfied with the result of this ritual which he had practiced several times beforehand, kissed her on the lips and jubilantly exclaimed “Vámonos! Let’s go rebuild our homeland.”

They were married in the Church of San Ramón the same year I was born, but my parents, being caught up in Miami, could not attend the ceremony. The church received a generous donation from Padilla. It was remodeled and expanded under the instruction of Father Hammond, who had been assigned that post by higher orders years prior due to its insignificance. Enchanted by the idea of New Managua, Padilla bought up all the adjacent plots of land, measuring nearly ten manzanas and began constructing his Versailles, ordering a wide avenue to be paved, and owing to his readiness to reach the stars, had them lined with eucalyptus trees because he was told that they grew the tallest and quickest.      

Before Consuelita was born, Cati and her “Chepito” went on several vacations to what they perceived to be exotic lands, Thailand, India, South Africa, and Kenya, the latter being where they had spent their honeymoon. There, J. Padilla took to hunting and purchased a small arsenal of firearms. In their mansion at the peak of San Ramón they raised game, rabbits, deer, and wild boar so he could continue his newly acquired hobby. They hosted lavish parties for each new arriving exile. A new centrifugal force sprang from their ever increasing happiness and their home and company rapidly became the nucleus of New Managua.

Once San Ramón was thoroughly populated however, and most of the exiles had returned home, life in New Managua began to slow down by the weight of habit. In order to fend off the dreaded ennui as he called it, Padilla opened up an art gallery in the new “downtown” of the city which had expanded as if under the panicked planning of the industrious leafcutter ants.  After the last rainfall of the rainy season has past, these insects abandon their central colony which has been ruined by the heavy rains, and immediately set out to create new paths and tunnels in any area that proves propitious at that moment, mindless of the inferiority of these new constructions with those of the past. Managua had become horizontal, large, and suburban, and its inhabitants had quintupled, the city harboring more than a million souls by the time of my arrival. The diaspora was over.

By the time we moved into our home in San Ramón on the main avenue which Padilla, as proprietor, had reserved for my parents, he had already begun to be unfaithful to Cati. He kept several mistresses throughout the city, his only prerequisite their relative obscurity in society. It was common knowledge he frequented the many brothels and strip clubs which had emerged in the new commercial areas, always under the pretense of entertaining some American or Taiwanese businessmen. Yet no one mentioned it in public, and it is likely that Cati was completely unaware of her husband’s dual life for years. She was preoccupied with raising Consuelita and seemed reasonably content with her situation, unwittingly living under a web of lies which to her seemed perfectly normal. It was her contention, for example, that Poker Night every Monday would end at three or four in the morning, when in reality the event invariably reached its conclusion at one, in consideration for all the other players besides Padilla who worked for a living and had to be up at eight.

The luxurious parties at his mansion continued, however, through less frequently. Cati and Chepe Padilla retained their position as prime hosts for a good while, at least until they commenced to fight and argue in public. Cati was well aware that her husband did not love her as before, but this apparent lack of reciprocation resulted inversely in her wanting to possess him with greater intensity, and so, she became increasingly stern, doing all in her power to regain her husband’s affections. In the opacity of dark brown eyes she found an enigma which she could not discern, making her increasingly determined to decipher it.

During their grand soirées, Cati prompted by the fear that her loneliness would grow until she was entirely unwanted, would spy on J. Padilla, analyzing his every gesture and facial expression. On one particular evening Cati discovered an excessive elation upon his countenance while he was in the presence of three American women, the wife and daughters of an art collector. Infuriated by what she perceived to be an overt display of infidelity, she fiercely pulled on the hair of the prettiest of them as if taking her on a leash, and violently provoking her husband asked: “You want me to take her upstairs so you can get this over with now, so the entire world won’t have to witness you make a fool of me?”

As J. Padilla’s and his wife’s private life started to become more public, attending their dinner parties became less desirable. Managuan society thoroughly enjoyed discussing their precarious relationship in secret, but to be physically present during their outbursts made people feel uncomfortable; scandals are enjoyable only in relation to our non-involvement in them. But it was not until that Monday when I had been scarcely able to sleep after my mother had left me, that Cati finally recognized her marriage was unsalvageable, that she had made a colossal mistake which could never be unmade, she had fallen in love, and married, a man who loved only himself.

That evening she had discovered that Poker Night ended much earlier than she had thought by spying on our house. She locked J. Padilla out of their home, offering their security guard thousands of córdobas in vain, if he would just not let his own jefe inside. In the hysteria ensuing  her discovery of her husband’s duplicity, Cati had to content herself with barring her bedroom door and going out onto the roof, crying unintelligibly towards a populace which, if not asleep, at least feigned sleep. She reprimanded everyone and no one for her unfortunate fate, shouting nonsensically from the top of her palace until she was trembling with anxiety. Exhausted, she crawled back into her bedroom. And yet, the story of Cati Padilla does not end there, but it does, however, end on that upcoming weekend during the festivities of San Ramón, on that Saturday night when…