The Stories of Eva Luna

Amadeo Peralta, the son of a shady criminal family, reluctantly agrees to marry a wealthy but plain young woman to bolster his family’s reputation. Not long before the wedding, he finds himself in Agua Santa for business. There, he hears a simple but clear melody floating through the air. Peralta follows it to a 15-year-old girl sitting in her parents’ garden and singing with her psaltery. After watching her for a while, he calls out to her and grabs her arm when she gets close, crooning compliments and promises in her ear. Flattered and confused, the girl follows him to his car, where they have sex. Her name is Hortensia.

A week later, Hortensia appears at Peralta’s house in a yellow dress, psaltery in tow, telling Peralta she loves him. Peralta decides to keep her in the cellar of an abandoned sugar mill, a wet and dark basement. He provides her with sacks of food but nothing else, and her dress rots on her pale, twisted body. For a few weeks Peralta enjoys intense sex with Hortensia, but he soon mostly forgets about her and only visits her now and then. He hires an Indigenous woman to feed Hortensia and keep her locked up. The woman never pities Hortensia because she seems somehow content with her circumstances, stunted in her childhood development and accustomed to living underground. Hortensia remains in her cell for 47 years and becomes twisted and monstrous, barely recognizable as a human woman.

Meanwhile, Peralta becomes an immensely powerful politician. Although he refuses to impregnate Hortensia when she begs him to, he sires a large family of sons with his wife and makes connections with other important men. Rumors of human rights violations under his authority—including the imprisonment of a woman in the sugar mill—spread, but no one seems willing to do anything about them. But one day, a group of boys plays by the abandoned sugar mill, and they hear horrible, unnatural music coming from the ground. They run home and tell the town about the music and the trapdoor in the ground they can’t open, and the townspeople can’t ignore the issue any longer.

Before a crowd of townspeople, the police and firemen rescue Hortensia. Pale, rotting, and weak, Hortensia is only recognizable as human because of the psaltery she’s still clutching. Footage of Hortensia’s rescue plays on the news and outrage sweeps the country, mixing with guilt for not acting on suspicion sooner. At first, Hortensia is afraid of the above-ground world, but nuns care for her and keep her tied to her bed until she agrees to live as a human again. Peralta’s political enemies seize the moment of outrage and overthrow him, putting him in prison for life. Hortensia visits him every day with food. Then, she sits and sings along with her psaltery, “moans of agony” that no one can bear to hear. The sound haunts Peralta even as he slowly loses his memory and forgets why he’s in so much pain. The rest of his life is spent underground.