Susanna and the Purple Martins

When Susanna Marín reached the edge of puberty, she began to emanate a curious fragrance—a warm, flowery scent that drew bees and other winged creatures to hover above her head in a gentle, perpetual swarm. Her mother, Doña Celestina, was convinced it must be a matter of hygiene, and so she scrubbed the girl often and with determination, using such an abundance of soap that the whole house smelled faintly of almonds for hours afterwards. Yet the fragrance persisted, as if it rose not from her skin but from some deeper, more ungovernable source.

As if this were not strange enough, Susanna soon developed delicate sprouts of pale-green lichen along her forearms—the kind that grew only in the purest, most untouched air.

Doña Celestina had been widowed young and lived with her daughter in modest circumstances, surviving on her skill with a needle and a patient list of customers. Their poverty showed most clearly in Susanna’s wardrobe, which consisted almost entirely of worn garments sent by distant relatives. The hems were tired, the colours long since leached away by years of washing. The only extravagant thing she owned was a white fur coat that had once belonged to Jacinta Flor de Loto, the mysterious woman who had mesmerised the town with the beauty of her voice. Even now, the fur’s satin lining held a faint trace of cinnamon from Jacinta’s hand-rolled cigarettes, mingled with a whisper of the damp season it had endured. Susanna wore it eagerly during the colder months, as though it might lend her a little of the vanished woman’s beauty and self-possession.