The House of the Spirits: Chapter 5 Summary & Analysis

Blanca’s childhood passes without major incident. She spends summers at Tres María and goes to a convent school during the year like all the other girls. Nana gets Blanca ready for school each morning and warns her not to be misled by the nuns—they lure the prettiest girls to the convent, where they are forced to spend their lives baking and taking care of old folks. Each school day begins with mass, and Blanca sits miserable, tortured by “nausea, guilt, and boredom.” At Tres Marías, where Clara says the “real Blanca” emerges, Blanca is tan and happy.

Summer comes early, and Clara and Esteban decide to go to Tres Marías two weeks early to escape the heat. When they arrive, Blanca immediately goes to find Pedro Tercero, but she doesn’t have any luck. She wanders the property calling his name, and when she can’t find him, Blanca goes back to the main house and cries. Nana instantly knows the reason behind Blanca’s tears and is overjoyed. “It’s about time!” Nana yells. “You’re too old to be playing with that flea-ridden brat.” Clara finds her daughter crying in bed, and, suspecting love is culprit, quietly sits and caresses Blanca’s hair until she calms down.

Blanca wakes at dawn and goes downstairs. The house is dark and quiet, so she slips out the door and goes down to the river, where she spent many summers with Pedro Tercero. Pedro Tercero is there, and he quietly motions for Blanca to come closer; he wants to show her something. Down by the river, in a small clearing on the hillside, is a lovely bay mare birthing a calf. Blanca watches in wonder, and then tells Pedro Tercero that she is going to marry him and that they will live together at Tres Marías. He looks at her with “his sad old man’s look” and shakes his head. Blanca is innocent, but Pedro already knows “his place in the world.”

Pedro Tercero and Blanca spend the summer “awakening as man and woman.” They spend hours in homemade beds of leaves kissing and touching, and they stop holding hands and showing affection in front of others as to not draw suspicion to this new phase in their relationship. Nana is relieved that Blanca doesn’t seem interested in Pedro Tercero anymore, but Clara begins to watch them more closely. When the time comes for Blanca to go back to the big house on the corner, she spends the afternoon saying goodbye to Pedro Tercero, kissing and swearing eternal love.

Back at the big house on the corner, everyone sits down to dinner at the table, and just as Esteban begins to carve the meat, Férula walks in. No one has seen her for six years. Jaime and Nicolás are home from school—a fact, Esteban interrupts, that is important because their life away from Clara’s spiritualist lifestyle makes their testimony more valuable. Férula is clearly older, but she is still perfectly dressed and ironed, and her keys still hang from her waist. Without speaking, Férula approaches Clara. Clara stands up, and Férula kisses her on forehead. Férula turns and leaves; the only sound breaking the silence is her keys gently clinking as she walks.

Clara immediately announces that Férula is dead and insists Esteban take her to Férula’s priest, so they can find her. Esteban agrees, knowing he has little choice, and takes Clara to the parish near the tenements. Clara tells the priest that Férula is dead and that he must take them to her, but he doesn’t believe it. He saw Férula just the other day, and she was fine. Clara insists, so the priest finally agrees to take them to Férula’s tenement home. He goes inside alone and finds Férula dead in her bed, where she has clearly been for several hours. Clara insists the men leave her alone, and she quietly and tenderly performs the rites of the dead.

As Clara washes and dresses Férula, she tells her how much they all miss her, and she says that no one has ever loved her as much as Férula did. She stays late into the night, until Esteban finally drags her away. He is irate thinking that his sister still has the power to make him feel guilty, even in death. “Go to hell, bitch!” Esteban thinks, and asks Clara why Férula insisted on living in such squalor when she had plenty of money. “Because she didn’t have anything else,” Clara says quietly.

Since the age of 10, Pedro Tercero has known more than the teacher at Tres Marías, and he has been going to the school in town ever since, leaving each morning at five o’clock just to get there in time. He has read all of Marcos’s books, as well as political pamphlets from local union organizers and Father José Dulce María, who teaches Pedro Tercero all about the guitar. Pedro Tercero writes songs about unions and strength; he believes that if the hens can overcome the fox, humans can do the same. Esteban doesn’t trust Pedro Tercero and keeps a close eye on him. That summer, Esteban whips Pedro Tercero in front of Pedro Segundo for giving the other peasants ideas of Sundays off and minimum wage.

For the first time ever, Blanca doesn’t run to meet Pedro Tercero the moment she arrives at Tres Marías; however, that night when Blanca goes to bed, she locks her door and slips out the window. She meets Pedro Tercero near the river, and they spend the night having sex. Every night after that, Blanca sneaks out her window to meet Pedro, and Clara can sense a change in Blanca’s aura. Three years pass in much the same way—summers at Tres Marías, winters at the big house on the corner—until the year of the big earthquake.

Clara wakes one night after a terrible premonition and announces there is going to be a huge earthquake. She tells Esteban that 10,000 people will be killed and runs to Blanca’s room to warn her. The door, however, is locked, and when Blanca doesn’t answer, Clara goes outside and finds the window wide open. Blanca has gone to meet Pedro Tercero, just as she does every night. Suddenly, the ground begins to shake violently, and the earth opens with a fierce growl. Clara is knocked from her feet, and as she crawls to the house yelling Blanca’s name, she sees Esteban standing in the doorway. Then, the entire house collapses, burying Esteban in a massive pile of rubble.

After the earthquake—the strongest ever in the nation’s history—the peasants begin to excavate Esteban from the rubble, convinced he is dead. Clara, on the other hand, knows he is alive and is frantic to get him out. Blanca and Pedro Tercero appear unharmed and help to dig Esteban from the destroyed house. They finally reach him, but he has too many broken bones to be counted. Pedro Segundo says they must get him to a doctor, but old Pedro says Esteban won’t survive the trip. Old Pedro, blind and nearly deaf, takes to carefully setting each of Esteban’s broken bones, praying to the healing saints and the Virgin Mary. When he is finished, Esteban’s bones are so neatly joined that the doctors in town can’t believe it. “I wouldn’t have even tried,” Dr. Cuevas says.

After the earthquake, a huge tsunami hits the country and thousands are killed. The military must take control of the chaos, and they shoot anyone who steals or breaks the law. Due to another world war, most other places are too busy to notice what the weather is doing in South America, but much-needed supplies still arrive from foreign countries. However, the food, medicine, and blankets disappear in “the mysterious labyrinths of various bureaucracies,” and they are still available for purchase years later. Meanwhile, as Esteban recovers from his injuries, he grows more and more disagreeable.

The big house on the corner survived the earthquake without major damage, except for Nana, who died in her bed the same night. In the chaos, she is not given a proper funeral and is buried without any of the children she raised in attendance. At Tres Marías, Pedro Segundo is again made foreman, and the peasants quickly take to burying the dead and rebuilding the hacienda. Pedro Tercero can’t understand why his father works so hard for a rich man, but Pedro Segundo tells his son that is the way it is, and he can’t change the world. “Yes, you can, Papa,” Pedro Tercero says. 

The main house at Tres Marías is rebuilt exactly as before, except hot water is added to the bathrooms and a new kerosene stove is put in the kitchen, which all the cooks hate and refuse to use. Clara works closely with Pedro Segundo, taking charge of the hacienda, and she also serves as Esteban’s nurse. Clara comes to fear Esteban’s outbursts and soon grows to hate him. She is exhausted, but each night she shares a quiet cup of tea with Pedro Segundo, who cherishes the strange, mystic woman about as much as he hates Esteban. Clara soon receives a call that Blanca is sick at school, and, fearing tuberculosis, she goes to pick her up.

When Clara arrives at Blanca’s school, the nuns tell her that Blanca has been seen by the doctor and doesn’t have tuberculosis, but they prefer she leave all the same. Clara and Blanca go to the big house on the corner, and find it in complete disarray since Nana’s death, so they decide to dismiss the servants and close the house. They cover the furniture with sheets and release the caged birds in the courtyard, letting them all fly to freedom. Blanca looks at her mother and comments on how she has changed. Clara says it is the world, not her, that has changed.

Clara arranges for Nana to be transferred to the del Valle family tomb, which is where Nana always wanted to be buried, and returns to Tres Marías with Blanca. When they arrive, Esteban is up in a chair, ordering the completion of the new main house. For the first time in Blanca’s life, she watches as her mother serves dinner. Esteban talks through the meal, and Blanca remembers very little, except for the part when Esteban tells them that he fired Pedro Tercero for spreading communist ideas among the peasants.

Blanca does not let Pedro Tercero’s absence upset her, and she continues to go to the river each night. She knows Pedro will soon get word of her return and come to her, and just as she suspects, he arrives on the fifth night. They make love passionately, and Blanca confesses that she made herself sick with banana peels and blotting paper to fake her fever and drank ground chalk to develop a cough so the nuns would think she had tuberculosis. She had to be with him, she tells Pedro Tercero, and he holds her close. Pedro tells Blanca about workers in Europe and the United States who have rights and governments that don’t steal supplies meant for disaster victims.

Pedro Tercero explains that the peasants on Tres Marías won’t organize a revolt because they are afraid of Esteban. He tells Blanca that the peasants hate her father, and Blanca understands—she hates and fears her father, too. She reminds Pedro Tercero of the socialist who distributed pamphlets and organized peasants a few years back. He was beaten to death and hanged at the crossroads in town, so everyone could see what happens to socialists who rile up the workers. “They could kill you,” Blanca says to Pedro Tercero, and he hugs her, holding her close and professing his love. 

Blanca manages to stay at Tres Marías and away from school by convincing everyone she has a sickly constitution. She makes herself sick with hot brine and green plums, and she soon gains a reputation for poor health. Old Pedro, who believes the best treatment for anything is busy hands, gives Blanca a ball of clay to make kitchen crockery, and she soon creates an entire miniature world of people and animals. Esteban thinks the hobby is a waste of time, but Clara tries to find a use for it and encourages Blanca to make crèches for their Christmas manger. Blanca begins to make strange hybrid animals, not unlike the animals of Rosa’s tablecloth, and her crèches become a tourist attraction.  

Pedro Tercero’s visits to Blanca become less frequent, but she still waits for him, like the peasants on nearby haciendas, who all consider Pedro a hero. He sneaks back to Tres Marías as often as he can, dressed as a preacher or a pagan, but Blanca always knows him by his eyes. Pedro Segundo suspects that his son is disobeying Esteban’s order to stay away from the hacienda, and he is torn between his role as a father and his responsibilities at Tres Marías. He only talks of his son at home, where he secretly tells his family how proud he is of Pedro Tercero. Whenever Pedro Segundo hears the other peasants whistling songs about hens and foxes, he smiles to himself. Pedro Tercero’s song is more subversive than any pamphlet could ever be.