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take her to the provincial capital. There she would buy everything needed to turn this property into not what her lover hoped it would be, a prosperous estate, but a magnificent brothel.
     
    Clara’s first trade was with a scrap merchant: an hour of love beneath the pines for four candelabras, one for each corner of the parlor. He became her first client, and was determined to hold tight, forever, to the kindness she’d shown him as he sat perched in his mule-drawn cart.
    Once in the city, Clara Laguna completed her parlor furnishings with two crimson silk-covered sofas, pictures of harem concubines framed in mauve tulle, a carpet depicting the scene of a hunt, and green damask curtains. All this she found in a store that sold the furniture, décor, and props no longer wanted in theater productions because they were old or out of style. The owner, a baritone who had fallen from grace, was entranced by Clara’s rustic beauty in her brown wool Sunday dress, patchwork skirt, shawl as coarse as a donkey’s fur. At first he assumed she was only there to look, drawn in by his grand window display. Her expression was as dazed as that of any peasant seeing the city for the first time: its square filled with people and taverns, its stately buildings and churches, its streets lined with shops and horse-drawn carriages, all unknown in the countryside. But when Clara, determined to have her revenge, explained what she wanted, the baritone offered excellent advice on how to turn her estate into an opulent brothel, attracting men used to yokes, plows, and scythes, as well as the bourgeois, world travelers, and hunters.
    In addition to the parlor furniture and fittings, Clara bought several negligees and Moorish outfits used in a performance of
Il Seraglio.
Their soft, supple shapes captivated her at once. Like flies and worms used to catch trout, they were the perfect bait to reel in the desire of men.
    Just when she had spent her budget, Clara became infatuated with a bed used in a production of
Othello,
for that play’s final death scene. It was a black iron four-poster with a purple canopy. Far too big to be repeatedly dismantled, it had graced the stage on only a few occasions. So insistent was Clara that she would have it, whatever the cost, the baritone traded it for her country favors. Clara had her second client on top of a trunk in the storeroom, dazzled by a
Rigoletto
aria. Her third was a lawyer the baritone recommended when Clara no longer had the money to pay for her room at the guesthouse, where she wept all night, remembering her Andalusian lover.
    The next morning Clara set off for the estate. It was not hard to find her fourth client. The young man who unloaded her purchases was easily persuaded to stay and clear the overgrowth, rake the leaves, in exchange for a few days of love and chickpea stew. The blacksmith became her fifth and final barter. In three feverish days, he made Clara a sign that looked like a funeral wreath, engraved in gold with the words WELCOME TO SCARLET MANOR . It was this local client who advertised her new business.
    “The Laguna with the flaxen eyes can be had for a few coins or a sack of rabbits at the estate her lover gave her,” the blacksmith told everyone who came to his shop and those he met at the tavern for a drink or game of cards.
    As far as Clara was concerned, her business was inaugurated the moment the sign was hung over the iron gate. Though most men could not read it, because they couldn’t read anything at all, it was a place for the birds to leave droppings, like the headstones and crosses at graves.
    Outfitted in her negligee and Moorish pants, Clara received locals who had always desired her beauty and youth and now flocked to the brothel without fear: there was no risk of a curse, as this was a simple transaction of the flesh. The men, used as they were to receiving such favors in a stable or granary, or up against a mountain pine, were stunned by the exotic aura