The Stories of Eva Luna

“Two Words” is a story about a woman named Belisa Crepusculario. Belisa travels the country “selling words” to make money. For her customers, she recites poetry, writes love letters, invents insults, and carries news from town to town. Some of her skills are more fantastic: She can improve people’s dreams, tell them a word that will chase off sadness, and give people words that are private to them.

Belisa is born into an uneducated family and does not encounter written language until she is 12. She sees a newspaper and asks someone about the strange markings on the page. She becomes fascinated with the power and strangeness of words.

When Belisa is 19 or 20, there is a civil war. The leader of the rebel forces, the Colonel, seeks her out. He sends his employee, “El Mulato,” to kidnap Belisa. (This character’s name is a racist slur in English used to indicate that a person is biracial.) “El Mulato” treats Belisa very harshly. Angry, injured, and traumatized, Belisa demands an explanation. She learns that the Colonel has heard about her work and wants her to write a speech for him so that he can run for president and won’t be judged solely by his violent reputation.

When Belisa meets the Colonel, she is drawn to him. She observes his fierce loneliness and wonders at his soft voice. She agrees to help him, writing him a moving speech. He does not know how to read, so she reads it aloud for him to memorize. Then, she gives him two “secret words,” whispering them in his ear, telling him that they are his alone. The Colonel is struck by Belisa’s mysterious allure.

While escorting her back to the village, “El Mulato” tries to touch Belisa. She stops him with “an avalanche of words” (10), and he believes she has cursed him.

The speech is a great success. As the Colonel campaigns, the public is impressed by the thoughtfulness of his speech and his transformation from Colonel to Candidate.

The Colonel, however, is in a feverish state, obsessed with the two words Belisa gave him and the memory of her alluring scent and looks. “El Mulato” finds Belisa again, demanding that she come with him and free the Colonel from her curse. She comes willingly. When they see each other, instead of “giving back” the words, the Colonel approaches Belisa to take her hand. The two secret words are never revealed.

Elena Mejías is the main character of “Wicked Girl.” When the story opens, she is an unremarkable 11-year-old who works in the boardinghouse run by her mother. Her mother is a strict woman, enforcing rules in the boardinghouse that are “more fitting for a seminary than a hotel” (14). Elena spies on their guests at her mother’s behest.

One day, a man named Juan José Bernal arrives to stay at the boardinghouse. He’s a traveling singer known as “The Nightingale.” Despite his non-traditional lifestyle and his Casanova-esque vibes, Elena’s mother makes an exception and lets him stay because she is charmed by him. Bernal is a demanding guest, asking for special food and sleeping all day so that everyone else in the house must move around quietly.

Elena observes his interest in her mother and sees a change in her mother as well; she begins wearing perfume and makeup and laughs loudly at Bernal’s stories. Elena wonders what her mother sees in him until one Sunday when he plays his guitar for the hotel guests. She and all the guests are moved by his music and the festive spirit that it brings.

After that night, Elena sees Bernal differently. She notices his strong body and handsome features, things she overlooked before. She becomes preoccupied with thoughts of Bernal, distracted by daydreams of him during school and then anxiously waiting on him at the boardinghouse. When he’s not around, she tries on his clothes and uses his comb and his toothbrush. She’s consumed with a desire to be near him.

While Elena is looking out the window one afternoon, she sees Bernal touch her mother’s hip. The girl is shocked by and jealous of this intimacy, and she starts spying on her mother. One night, after Elena has been in Bernal’s room trying on his clothes, she hears a sound from her mother’s bedroom and realizes that he’s in there with her. She peeks into the room and sees the two of them having sex. She watches in fascination, hoping to learn what “formula” her mother uses to seduce Bernal.

Elena sinks into a week-long sadness. Her mother, thinking it might be a sign that she is entering puberty, tells her about menstruation. Elena doesn’t believe such things will happen to her.

After a week, Elena makes up an excuse to leave school early. Back home at the boardinghouse, she undresses down to her underwear and climbs into bed with the still-sleeping Bernal. She kisses and touches him. With his eyes still closed, he wraps his arms around her and mutters her mother’s name. Once she is on top of him, he realizes something is different and opens his eyes. Bernal shouts at Elena, calling her a “wicked girl” once he sees that it is not his lover but rather her daughter in bed with him.

The story jumps forward seven years, which Elena has spent away from home at a religious school and then in college. After graduating, she gets a job at a bank in the capital city. Bernal, in the meantime, marries Elena’s mother. They run the boardinghouse for a few more years before selling it and retiring to a cottage in the country.

Bernal never travels with Elena’s mother when she goes to the city to see her daughter. He avoids Elena because she has become a sexual obsession for him over the years; he thinks of her when he is in bed with his wife. Bernal buys children’s underwear to pleasure himself with and watches school children from a distance. He is ashamed of his behavior and keeps it a secret.

Elena is 26 before she visits Bernal and her mother at their home. She brings her boyfriend with her on the visit. Bernal is nervous to see Elena, studying himself in the mirror and practicing what he might say to her. He is shocked to find that, instead of the passionate girl who climbed into bed with him, Elena is shy.

When they have a moment alone, Bernal tells Elena that he’s sorry he yelled at her all those years ago. He begs her forgiveness, confessing that he has harbored an intense passion for her that he hopes her forgiveness will alleviate. Elena is speechless, having forgotten the encounter altogether.

Eva Luna met Clarisa when Eva was a teenager and worked as a servant in a brothel run by a woman called La Señora. La Señora is one of the many people who call on Clarisa for her abilities as a healer and for her spiritual advice. The locals consider Clarisa to be something of a saint; she is known for her acts of charity, even toward people who aren’t interested in her help or her idea of spiritual redemption.

Clarisa grew up in a conservative and wealthy household. She marries a judge when she is quite young. Soon after they are married, the couple has two children, both of whom have intellectual disabilities. The judge retreats into his work, neglecting his family and leaving Clarisa to find the money and time to support herself, her children, and her charity efforts. The judge locks himself in his office every day, forbidding anyone to interrupt him.

One night, a man breaks into their home and threatens Clarisa with a knife. She offers to give him some money so that he does not commit the sin of becoming a thief. They remain friends until Clarisa’s death 10 years later.

The narrator recounts Clarisa’s persuasiveness with the wealthy and the influential, whom she asks to support her charity. She develops a relationship with one congressman in particular, Diego Cienfuegos. It is later revealed that Diego is the father of Clarisa’s third and fourth children.

Despite the midwife’s predictions, Clarisa is confident that her younger children will not be born with the same disabilities as their older siblings. Once they are adults, her younger sons help care for their siblings. The two older children die as adults when they accidentally lock themselves in a bathroom with a leaking gas pipe.

When Clarisa is about 80 (Eve does not know her exact age), the Pope comes to visit the city where she lives. At that point, she is weak and in poor health, but she wants to see the Pope in person because she does not trust what she sees on TV. She asks Eva to take her. In the crowd gathered to see the Pope, there is a group of male protesters dressed like nuns, carrying posters advocating for the rights to abortion, sexual freedom, and divorce. Clarisa is shocked, telling Eva that she “no longer understands the world” (36).

Upon arriving home after seeing the Pope, Clarisa knocks on her husband’s door. When he yells at her for disturbing him, she apologizes and calmly tells him that she is going to die on Friday. She calls her sons to tell them the same. Clarisa asks Eva to call a priest, saying that she needs to atone for not meeting her husband’s sexual needs. Eva sees two lumps on Clarisa’s shoulders and imagines them to be the buds of angel wings.

Many people from the community come to visit Eva on her deathbed, including La Señora and the thief who broke into her home years before. Congressman Diego Cienfuegos visits, and Eva notices the resemblance between him and Clarisa’s two younger sons. Clarisa confirms that he is their father, saying that sleeping with him wasn’t a sin but an effort to “help God balance the scales of destiny” (40). Clarisa dies that night; the doctor says the cause is cancer. Eva thinks astonishment about the changing world killed Clarisa.

“Toad’s Mouth” takes place on the southernmost tip of South America. At the headquarters for a British-run company called Sheepbreeders Limited, the superintendent and his wife live in a large, English-style home while the native Spanish-speaking drovers—workers who drive livestock—live in deteriorating barracks nearby.

The main character of the story, Hermelinda, is the only young woman for miles around other than the superintendent’s British wife. Hermelinda makes her living running a tavern where she sells bootleg liquor, hosts card and dice games, and performs sex work. Hermelinda is an energetic, beautiful, affectionate woman. She leverages her energy and creativity to make a fortune off the Sheepbreeders Limited workers by inventing games in which the men compete for the prize of spending the night with her.

Hermelinda’s games are unconventional and sexually charged. In one game, the men take off their pants and, blindfolded, compete to be the first to catch and hold on to Hermelinda. They try to grab her while she swings, undressed, on a swing hung from the ceiling. The story is titled for the most popular of Hermelinda’s games, Toad’s Mouth. In this game, Hermelinda lies on the floor, hikes up her skirts, and spreads her legs. The players stand behind a chalk line and take turns throwing coins at her. The goal is to land the coin in her vagina. Very few people have won this game.

One night, a man named Pablo arrives at Hermelinda’s bar. Pablo is from Asturias, Spain. He is a small, wiry smuggler with a tough reputation. He comes all the way to Hermelinda’s bar because he is lonely and has heard stories about her. The moment he sees her, Pablo decides that he wants to spend his life with her.

Pablo doesn’t play any of the other games; instead, he drinks and waits for Toad’s Mouth. He wins and urgently pulls Hermelinda away from the other men to collect his prize. They don't emerge until noon the next day. Hermelinda is dressed for riding, and much to the surprise and disappointment of the other men, she rides away with Pablo.

Attempting to keep company morale high—and not really understanding the nature of Hermelinda’s games—the management buys swings and a giant ceramic toad to place in the bar. These items wind up in the yard at the superintendent’s house.