The Stories of Eva Luna

Amadeo Peralta’s father is a corrupt businessman. He demands that his sons make connections with “old-line families” to help the family’s business efforts. Amadeo gets engaged to a wealthy girl whom he does not know or love.

Just before his wedding, Amadeo travels through some small rural towns on a business trip. One of those towns is Agua Santa. He’s walking down the street when he hears alluring music. He sees a 15-year-old girl, Hortensia, playing a psaltery, a stringed instrument like a small harp that was common in pre-19th century Europe.

Amadeo is attracted to Hortensia and convinces her to walk with him by speaking seductive words in a sweet tone. She has an intellectual disability and does not understand much of what he is saying but is soothed by the gentleness of his voice. Hortensia gets into Amadeo’s car, and he drives her outside of town. They have sex in the car, and Amadeo forgets about the encounter soon after. He barely recognizes Hortensia the next week when she shows up at his house, more than 80 miles from Agua Santa.

Amadeo is annoyed by Hortensia’s arrival so soon before his wedding. Still, he finds her attractive and enjoys the utter submission that she shows him. He decides to hide her in the cellar of an old sugar mill. The cellar is large but dark and empty. She has a straw mattress to sleep on but little else. For the first few weeks, he spends a lot of time with her. They are lost in passionate intimacy until Amadeo grows bored of sneaking away to see her. Amadeo promises Hortensia riches and jewels, which he never brings. His visits grow more sporadic.

After he forgets about Hortensia for more than a week and she nearly dies, Amadeo hires a woman to clean the cellar and check on her. She is the only other person with a key to the padlock on the door.

Hortensia spends years in the cellar. Her legs become disfigured. She turns into “a subterranean creature” with poor eyesight but a sharp sense of smell and hearing (70). She hallucinates. She continues to play the psaltery, although she forgets the songs she knew and now plays melancholy, haunting music. Meanwhile, Amadeo is building a life as a wealthy, corrupt businessman and politician. There are rumors that he is keeping a woman prisoner somewhere, but no one acts on it for many years.

Playing in the ruins of the sugar mill, which is said to be haunted, three young boys hear Hortensia’s music and find the trapdoor that leads to the cellar. They can’t open it, but they hear panting on the other side and rush home, terrified. The townspeople investigate and discover Hortensia.

Amadeo, now in his 80s, is unapologetic about his actions. He’s a rich man and a politician; he’s accustomed to doing what he wants and is surprised to be questioned about a past decision. The story makes national news, and there is a great public outcry. With this ammunition, Amadeo’s political rivals investigate his other misdeeds, and he ends up in prison.

Hortensia is moved to a shelter run by nuns. She cooks lunch for Amadeo every day and carries it to the prison. She then sits on the street outside his cell window and plays the psaltery. Aging and losing his memory, Amadeo gradually forgets the outside world and becomes accustomed to the darkness of an underground cell.

Horacio Fortunato, a 46-year-old circus performer, is the third-generation owner of the family business, the Fortunato Circus. Fortunato is creative and romantic but is not interested in marriage or serious relationships after a lifetime of watching his father experience divorce after divorce. Horacio likes to look elegant, but his tastes in clothes lean toward the dramatic rather than understated classiness.

Horacio is in a restaurant with friends when he sees Patricia Zimmerman walking in with her husband. Patricia is refined, haughty, severe-looking, and unlike the women Horacio usually spends his time with. He’s immediately smitten and plans to “steal” her from her husband.

Horacio sends extravagant gifts to her—bouquets of orchids, imported tulips, even an expensive necklace from Patricia’s husband’s jewelry store—but Patricia sends them all back, horrified by his attention. After all else fails, Horacio asks his grandfather for advice. His grandfather tells him to give Patricia something she doesn’t already have. He suggests making her laugh.

Horacio asks a female friend to return the necklace that he bought from Patricia’s husband; the plan is for her to seduce Patricia’s husband under the guise of returning the necklace. It works. By the end of the week, Patricia’s husband is on vacation with his new lover.

While Patricia’s husband is away, Horacio stages a grand circus performance for Patricia in her backyard. She is surprised and displeased at first but ends up laughing with joy and awe at the performance.

At age 10, Maurizia Rugieri is a wonderful piano player. After wowing the crowd at a piano recital, she shocks her proud parents by announcing that she’ll never play the piano again; she wants to be an opera singer. Her parents enroll her in lessons, but her voice is unimpressive.

At 19, Maurizia marries Ezio Longo, who owns a construction company. Despite his rough, simple demeanor, Ezio is a tender man who loves his wife dearly. He struggles to express his love. Maurizia does not help; she confuses her husband with dramatic outbursts and often claims to be sick with strange ailments.

Ezio builds a sprawling mansion with an amphitheater for Maurizia so she can sing for their guests. Maurizia becomes pregnant, and Ezio is so happy that it hurts. However, he can’t help but feel that something terrible will happen to break this joy.

After their son is born, Maurizia meets a medical student while she is riding the streetcar. The man, Leonardo Gómez, attracts her attention because he is whistling a tune from the opera Tosca. Leonardo and Maurizia begin an affair, although they only meet in public places. The pair hold hands and exchange notes, signing their names as the names of characters from the opera, Tosca and Mario.

Ezio, overjoyed at becoming a father and busy with work, doesn’t notice anything amiss with his wife until a neighbor calls his attention to her frequent streetcar rides. He follows Maurizia to a tearoom and sees her with Leonardo. He beats up Leonardo, then takes his wife’s arm and escorts her to the car. He locks Maurizia in the house, but she doesn’t try to leave, preferring to skip meals and stay in her room, crying.

After a few days, Ezio tries talking to his wife. He asks her to give their marriage another chance. She is not receptive to his pleas and refuses food for two more days. Finally, Ezio tells her that she can go away with Leonardo but that she will never see their son again.

Maurizia goes to Leonardo’s boardinghouse, only to find that he has taken a position as the doctor at a remote oil field and left town a few days ago. She sets out to follow him. The journey is very long and takes her “through a huge expanse of precipitous, savage territory” (95). Upon arriving, she finds a small settlement with few women; most of the staff have families in the city and travel to visit them every few months. Maurizia is a rare sight in her fashionable, elaborate clothing.

Maurizia is determined to live a life worthy of an operatic heroine. She does so mostly in her imagination, attributing countless romantic features to Leonardo that he doesn’t exhibit in real life. She joins him in the small hospital and learns to help nurse his patients. Maurizia puts an optimistic, story-worthy spin on her new living conditions. She succeeds in reimagining the rustic setting, her loneliness, and her boredom. The only feeling that she can’t imagine away is her longing for her son, so she ignores it.

After 10 years, Leonardo is no longer healthy enough to live in the rough conditions of the oil camp. They move to Agua Santa, where, Maurizia is quick to make her love story with Leonardo into a legend. She stops nursing his patients, and instead starts a parish choir, performing opera solos and holding discussions afterward to explore the characters’ motivations. Leonardo and Maurizia are known in town by their nicknames, Tosca and Mario. They become beloved members of the community.

Leonardo dies after many years in Agua Santa. Maurizia stays in the town, performing her role of mourning widow with as much dedication as she performed her role of besotted lover.

After some time, a new highway is built through town. The building project is managed by Ezio’s construction company, and he and his son visit Agua Santa to inspect the work. Maurizia, now 58, can’t resist the chance to see—and perhaps speak to—her son, who is now 28. She dresses in her finest and goes to the tavern where they’re having lunch.

Maurizia admires her son and her ex-husband. They look happy and are affectionate with each other, clearly close. Maurizia decides not to say anything to them and leaves the tavern unnoticed.

“Walimai” is narrated in first person by a character of the same name. Walimai is an Indigenous person and a member of an unspecified tribe. He reflects on the importance of names in his culture, giving the listener (presumably Eva Luna) permission to use his name because she is “like [his] own daughter” (102).

White people arrive and push Walimai’s people off their land, forcing them to move further into the jungle to continue their traditional way of life. He grows up in a big family with many siblings. They live in an open-walled home and sleep in hammocks. Walimai loves the freedom of his youth and says that he put off getting married because he likes the lifestyle of being a bachelor and hunting to provide food for his extended family.

One day, some white men come into the village. Walimai is disappointed that they hunt with guns, which requires little skill. They are dressed in stinking clothes and want to claim the land and its resources. Walimai and his friends think that the white men must be belligerent and irrational for arriving and making such unreasonable demands. Still, the tribe shows the men hospitality for a while. Once it is clear that the men are going to continue with their demands and general destruction of the land, the tribe kills them and moves deeper into the forest to establish a new village.

A year later, Walimai is captured by white soldiers while he’s hunting. He is forced to work with other captives, collecting rubber sap from trees. After two weeks of captivity, Walimai is given a cup of liquor and a pass to visit the women’s tent. He dumps out the liquor and enters the tent, where he sees a woman who is from the same tribe as Walimai’s mother. She’s chained up and has been abused and raped. Walimai speaks to her in her own language, but she is too weak to answer. She meets his eyes with a look of desperation, and he understands that she wants to die. He cuts the woman with his poisoned dagger, knowing that he will have to pay for this act because killing a woman is taboo. He is taking on a great spiritual burden to save her. She offers a weak smile of thanks and whispers her name to him. Then, she dies.

Walimai feels the woman’s spirit leave her body and enter his. He lights a fire to burn her body and then climbs the fence of the camp, fleeing his captivity. He moves slowly, burdened by the weight of her spirit. He walks for a month, wanting to take her spirit deep into the jungle. Walimai thinks of his body as hers as well; he does what he can to make her comfortable. They trade stories about their childhoods.

Once he has found a satisfactorily remote place in the jungle, Walimai begins a traditional fast; warriors who have killed someone fast for 10 days to weaken the spirit of the dead so that it will let go and travel “to the land of souls” (108). Even though he has come to love the woman and doesn’t want to part with her, he fasts so that her spirit can be free. After a few days, Walimai feels the woman’s spirit take little trips outside his body before returning. Finally, she leaves, and he begins the journey back to his village.