The Miniature Wife: and Other Stories

Juan Manuel Gonzales: A Meritorious Life

GONZALES, JUAN MANUEL (1804–1848). Innkeeper, forger. Place of birth: Delicias, Mexico. Don Rafael, who owned land in what is now the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, had a son, Hernando. As the story goes, Hernando was in love, but his love, for Gabriela, the daughter of his wet nurse, was forbidden by his father. When Don Rafael discovered that Hernando and Gabriela were still meeting, in secret, and that their affections had only grown stronger despite his wishes, he sent Gabriela to Mexico City, where he enrolled her in a school for nurses, and in exchange for her agreement to end her foolish affair with his son, Don Rafael agreed to pay for her schooling as well as a room he acquired for her at an all-girls’ boardinghouse. In addition to this, Don Rafael provided Gabriela with a stipend equal to fifty dollars a week.

Hernando, struck dumb by how quickly Gabriela acquiesced, refused to leave his father’s house for two weeks after Gabriela went away. He canceled all appointments with his friends and instructed the house staff not to allow anyone, but for the unlikely Gabriela, entrance onto the large estate.

Then, one hot summer afternoon, Hernando, who had that day moved no farther a distance than that between his bed and the chaise lounge set beneath his bedroom window, was surprised to see in that bedroom window the face of a faithful servant and friend. At first startled and then quickly angered (for had he not given specific instructions?), Hernando at once decided to shove the intruder, push him out of the window and off the wall, so that he would fall and perhaps break his legs. As he grabbed the man’s shirt, ready to give him a strong shove, the servant pulled from his person a carefully folded letter and shook it in Hernando’s face, saying, “Please, Don Hernando, please, I have instructions from Gabriela.” Quickly, then, Hernando pulled the young man inside, grabbed the letter, and read it and read it again and read it for a third time before once looking up at the servant who had delivered it, at which point he said, “You may leave.”

As per the letter’s instructions, Hernando approached the innkeeper, Señor Juan Gonzales, hired by Don Rafael to run the inn in order to pay off a debt, and informed him that letters would soon arrive, sometimes many in just one day. Gonzales was to keep these letters, and every Sunday after the eight o’clock Mass, he, Don Hernando, would come to the inn for breakfast and Señor Gonzales would slip the letters to him, hidden wrapped with the tortillas. Señor Gonzales was not, under any circumstances, to hand the letters to anyone else.

For three months, Gabriela mailed all letters for Hernando to the innkeeper. Don Rafael, at first glad to see his son had finally given up his foolishness, quickly grew suspicious of Hernando’s Sunday visits to his innkeeper, Señor Gonzales. When confronted, Señor Gonzales, easily intimidated, told Don Rafael that, yes, Hernando received letters, though Señor Gonzales claimed not to know from whom. Don Rafael instructed Señor Gonzales to set aside one of the letters to be handed over after Hernando had retrieved the others. Unable to disobey Don Rafael, yet unwilling to betray the young Hernando, Señor Gonzales took the first letter to arrive on Monday, hesitated only a moment before opening it, and set himself the task of copying it over and over again, doing so for the full week, meticulously tracing each letter until he had finally mastered Gabriela’s hand. And then, Saturday night, Gonzales forged a letter from Gabriela, claiming that she no longer loved Hernando, that she had met another man, a doctor, and that she wished to never see him again. He sealed this fake letter into an envelope and marked the envelope with a small X in the top right hand corner.

Anxious about the deception, however, Señor Gonzales, by mistake, gave the forged letter to Hernando, and accidentally passed one of the real letters, one that had arrived just the day before, to Don Rafael, only realizing his mistake as Don Rafael, after opening the letter, handed the unmarked envelope back to Señor Gonzales.

“Aha!” exclaimed Don Rafael. “It is just as I suspected. It is a letter from Gabriela. And also as I suspected, she has finally broken his heart, has left him for another man, a doctor.”