The Stories of Eva Luna

“The Schoolteacher’s Guest” is set in Agua Santa. The schoolteacher in town, Inés, is a close friend of Riad Halabí. They met years ago, the day Halabí first came to town. On that day, someone shot Inés’s son for picking a mango. Out of sympathy and revenge, Halabí gathered the townspeople the next day to throw countless mangoes through the windows of the murderer’s house. Over time, the house was full of rotting fruit and bugs.

After Inés retires from teaching, Halabí encourages her to open a hotel. One day, years later, Inés tells Halabí that she killed one of her hotel guests. When Halabí comes to see the body, Inés announces that he’s her son’s murderer.

Halabí goes from door to door, asking his neighbors to behave as if it were a holiday; they hang out in the street, play games, and cook food. The women at the brothel invite the police officers to join them for a birthday party. Then, with the main street full of celebrating people, Halabí and a few other men drive the body to the now-overgrown property where the boy was killed for stealing the mango. They bury the body and return to Inés’s hotel without incident.

When asked, Inés tells Halabí that she came to him for help because she loves him and wishes he had been the father of her child.

Abigal McGovern, the daughter of a Scottish missionary, grew up in oil fields and frontier towns. She attracted men’s attention because her red hair was very unusual in the communities where her father worked—unsuccessfully—to convert people to Christianity. Abigail learned from a young age to leverage men’s attention for her profit. She worked as a sex worker before meeting her husband, Domingo.

Domingo Toro, “the man who managed to tame her” (180), is a smuggler and hunter. The couple makes good money by selling contraband, cheating at gambling, and selling clay pots that they pretend are ancient artifacts. Abigail, given their new-found wealth, develops a taste for fancy clothes and learns to refine her speech by listening to people in nice hotels. She wants more and tries to convince Domingo to buy some property or change their name so that people will know they are rich and call them “don and doña” (181).

To earn their acceptance into polite society, Abigal decides to buy racehorses. She throws balls and purchases increasingly expensive luxury items. The Toros’ extravagance attracts the ire of student activists, who vandalize the couple’s home. Still, they are not accepted by the “old families.”

One day, Abigail is kidnapped by an extremist group that no one has heard of. Domingo offers a huge amount of money in ransom, then agrees to pay when the kidnappers demand double. They demand yet another increase, and he pays it. Abigail returns home safely, looking perfectly fine. The encounter establishes their reputation as extraordinarily rich, and the evidence of their wealth—combined with Domingo’s romantic gesture to pay any amount needed to return his wife—ensures their acceptance into fine society. They become one of the most respected families in the country.

Ana and Roberto Blaum have been married so long that they have come to resemble each other. Eva met them in the late 1960s and tells their story.

They flee Europe as a young couple because they are being persecuted for being Jewish. Before leaving Europe, Ana played the violin in an orchestra. The ship that they travel on from Europe is at sea for two years because it is denied entry by every country they try. Eventually, the boat anchors offshore, and at night, the passengers board the lifeboats and illegally sneak onto the shore. The couple is poor for many years while they work hard to find their footing in a new country.

Roberto studies medicine and becomes a doctor. Eva Luna meets Ana and Roberto when her madrina attempts to die by suicide. Under Roberto’s care, she recovers, and Eva becomes friends with the quiet, thoughtful doctor. In time, the Blaums come to treat Eva like a daughter.

Roberto becomes famous after publishing a book about people’s right to “a peaceful death” (192). This book is inspired by his years caring for terminal patients and not being able to help them die comfortably; rather, he is required to keep them “breathing at any cost” (192). He is haunted by nightmares about patients in pain as they die. Blaum’s support of assisted suicide in his book generates a public uproar, and there are heated debates.

Roberto continues to practice medicine and has a very successful career. Then, he publishes another famous book. This book shares his findings that cancer patients with the same diagnoses have different outcomes depending on whether they have a positive state of mind or “a good reason to live” (195). The public distills his book down to the conclusion that love cures cancer.

When Roberto retires, he asks for Eva’s help finding a quiet home in the country so he can write without constantly having patients and members of the press drop in on him. She finds him and Ana a cottage and looks after their affairs in the city.

After a year, Roberto calls Eva and asks her to come to the country. The house is dark and the door is unlocked when Eva arrives. She finds Ana dead on the bed, looking peaceful. On the nightstand, Eva finds Ana’s diary and a note from Roberto asking her to take care of their dog and to have them buried in the same coffin in the cemetery nearby. The note states that Ana had terminal cancer, and the couple decided to die together.

Eva rushes through the house, looking for Roberto. She finds him in his study, crying. He has a syringe prepared with the same drug he used to kill his wife, but he can’t bring himself to inject himself. He asks Eva to do it.

Gilberto, Filomena, and Miguel Boulton are siblings, descended from a British family that has lived in South America for generations. Now, in their old age, their family wealth is mostly gone.

Gilberto is a poet who went to school in England. His time there informed many of his lifelong habits; he wears tweed, drinks tea, and plays bridge. Gilberto never married, but Filomena did. She is a grandmother now and patiently cares for her brothers as well as her grandkids. Miguel is a priest who works with the poor. He has renounced his family’s wealth out of a desire to live close to the people he works with and experience life the way they do. He shelters people who are being persecuted by the government, joins in hunger strikes with revolutionaries, and has been arrested often. He is enough of a public figure that the authorities don’t dare “disappear” him.

Around Miguel’s 70th birthday, he has a hemorrhage in one of his eyes. He’s already blind in the other eye, so this issue means that he temporarily loses his vision altogether. He contacts his sister, who sends their longtime employee and chauffeur, Sebastian Canuto, to help. The family doctor recommends that Miguel see an eye doctor, but he will only agree to be treated at the public hospital. The doctor there states that the only hope is surgery, which can only be performed with specialized tools like what they have at the Military Hospital. Miguel refuses.

After some coaxing, Miguel agrees to go to a Catholic, donation-based hospital, even though it is run by a group that he doesn’t support. When the doctor there says that it would take a miracle for the surgery to restore Miguel’s vision, Filomena has an idea. She tells the doctor to prepare for surgery and marches out. They drive to the grotto of a local saint, Juana of the Lilies. She became famous after a man, lost in the mountains for weeks, survived and claimed that she came to him in a vision. The Pope has not yet awarded her official sainthood, however.

Later that week, Miguel has surgery and returns home with Filomena to recover. After a few days, they are shocked to find that Miguel can not only see out of the eye that they operated on but also out of the eye that has been blind for years. Miguel is amazed by the miracle and convinces everyone he knows to sign a petition so that the Pope will award Juana of the Lilies’ official sainthood.