A Change of Skin (45 page)

“What, Ligeia?”

“I asked why don't you answer me?”

He leaned against the door, exhausted.

“What is it you want me to say?”

“Shit,” you said from the other side of the door. “Don't you know the only thing that ever bothers me? When you start with someone new, you break away from the someone old.”

“What in God's name are you talking about? Don't you have Franz? Your affair with him is newer still. Than what is left of our old affair, Ligeia, the remnant that hangs on holding itself intact still for some reason, God knows why.”

“My problem is to be young. That's the new, the undiscovered.”

“Let me in.”

“No. If you come in here, we won't be able to talk. That's my problem, Javier. Franz … Franz is merely looking for something he has lost a long time. That's what I think, at least. And I'm looking for the love you stopped giving me. Isabel is the only danger. She's the only one who can mean the future, not the past. And you, when you used to love me, what did you want from me?”

“You know what I wanted, Ligeia.”

“I have nothing now. I gave up everything for you. Neither parents nor brother nor anything. If you leave me, I have no country to go home to. I gave up everything.”

“Why, Ligeia? Why?”

“Because I loved you!”

“You loved me. Are you so sure of that? Wasn't it perhaps that you had to have someone, maybe anyone, to take you away from your family and your country, to take you to other lands that you had distorted and colored with that crazy romantic imagination of yours, made into realms of sun and happiness? You and Franz understand each other precisely because you are both Northerners. All of you from the North are always running away from your fog, your Holy Scriptures, puritanism, order. From death. Toward the sun, toward us who live under the sun, toward the south…”

“I loved you! I loved your dream!”

“And now you feel that a fraud has been played upon you?”

“What a word. I only wish I could hold in my loss and my pain, Javier. Javier, what happened, what happened? I loved you and you loved me…”

“You were a princess with the lust of a bull. You made love like a lioness giving birth. And you made me into a sterile ruin. I didn't marry a woman. I married a tigress. A tigress in her imagination, in her words, in her constant demands, in her cunt…”

“Javier, Javier, not now. Don't say words that aren't really your own. Don't play games, not now…”

“You know the old king who too late learned to distrust the words of women and to see them as they really are: the daughters of gods in their breasts, of Satan himself in their loins.”

“Javier. You promised. You promised.”

“Shut up. Open the door. Look at me.”

“No. We won't be able to talk.”

Javier pushed against the door and you did not resist. You stared at each other, both nearly naked. Javier took you by the arm and pushed you roughly into the bedroom.

“There's your sulfur pit. Burning, stinking. Consuming itself and whoever touches it.” He pushed you down on the bed. He took three drawers from the bureau one after the other and threw them on the floor. “Okay, Ligeia. Let's go! Let's roll!” His clothing was strewn around the room. You got up from the bed as he went on: “Men heaped on women, women on beasts, beasts on other men, all endlessly fucking, a chain of nose to ass from which none can free himself. Like dogs in the street.”

You were already standing in front of the wardrobe mirror, looking at yourself, lifting your breasts in your hands, studying your face.

“We tie ourselves to each other so that we can destroy each other. To rob each of us of his solitary identity.”

You turned your back on the mirror and against your back felt the coolness of the glass. You felt your tiredness.

“That isn't what I wanted,” Javier said. Very slowly he began to kick the drawers, crushing in their flimsy ends and backs. “But you wanted it and you achieved it.”

You spread your arms in front of the mirror as if to protect it.

“Don't blame me, Javier.” You were thinking and wanted to go on thinking. “Don't blame me for what Mexico has done to you, not I.”

Javier picked a shirt up from the floor and stared at you unbelievingly.

“It's Mexico, Javier. You've said it yourself. You know it.”

He began to rip the shirt. “No,” he laughed. “Not Mexico. You. I.”

Mexico is a mask, you were thinking, quoting words that Javier had written somewhere, sometime, maybe only on a scrap of paper that he had thrown away. Unless you understand that, it makes no sense. A place of exile for aliens, no one's home. Here we are prisoners. Prisoners and in love with the mask. If the mask broke, light would blind us. We come here seeking refuge.

You huddled against the cold mirror and said nothing. Javier slowly walked near you. He touched your shoulders and you guessed his intention.

“Don't you realize…” he began.

“No,” you interrupted loudly. “It isn't true about the fog and the sun. I didn't come here looking for that.”

“Don't you realize how ridiculous it is?” he went on. He squeezed you against him.

“Not in search of the sun, but the sun as a mask. That's different, Javier.”

You were in his arms, your neck bent backward, your eyes closed.

“Why did we do today what we did in Falaraki twenty years ago? How absurd. What are we looking for today? We're too old for that now, Ligeia.”

“Javier! Don't leave me!”

“Too old, Ligeia. Just plain middle-aged. We have no right to want now what we wanted when we were twenty-five. Or to need what we needed then. You've made us act like fools, Ligeia. We have no right, neither to the actions nor to the words…”

You clung to him.

“Don't leave me for Isabel!”

He pushed you away.

“A tired and sterile ruin. And you did it.”

He went to the night table and with a sweep of his hand brushed the tray off onto the floor. The bottle of tequila smashed. From the broken glass rose that bitter smell. You moved from the wardrobe mirror.

“I? I? When I gave you my love only so long as you wanted it?”

Now you too looked toward the mirror with horror and hatred. You began to pick up the bits of the broken bottle. Javier was pulling the sheets from the bed.

“You, you, Ligeia. Your sex robbed me of the years I needed. You made me believe that there was something more important than my writing. That it was more important to make love with you, to deny myself for your sake. And there you were with your skirt always up and your legs always spread and we would be young only once and there would be time, there would be time, more than enough when the young years were behind us and we would retire like a couple of Yankees with pensions. You, you!”

You threw the broken bottle at the wardrobe mirror. The silvered glass fell. You ran and picked up pieces, looked at your face reflected in those fragments.

“From the very beginning you wanted anything except that I should work! You were a bitch always in heat, always smelling of it, showing yourself to me without shame at all hours, asking for it…”

“But you wanted it too!”

You dropped the sliver of glass you held between your hands.

“And if you had loved me, you could have stopped it at any time if you had really wanted to…”

“I? I? Who was it that said he had to have sex to write?”

He threw the crumpled sheets on the bed and lay down on them. You sat beside him.

“You talk about your sterility, Javier. Look at mine. Barren, childless, because of you.”

“Shut up. You promised…”

“You couldn't have a child in the house. It would disturb you too much.”

“Don't lie. You yourself…”

“I'm a woman, Javier. There's no more brutal word. And a barren woman.”

“You wanted the abortion. Not me. You yourself decided to go to the doctor. You asked me for the five hundred pesos.”

You laughed. “Five hundred pesos! Almost enough for dinner at the Ambassadeurs! Less than enough for a new refrigerator! Miser, stingy, you dirty vomiting skinflint!”

“Don't yell. It was…”

“And where are the books that a child would prevent you from writing? Where are they?”

“No, Ligeia,” Javier said. He went into the bathroom and turned on the light. “You didn't want the child. You would lose your figure, your youth. The big belly. The swollen tits. It was your decision and only yours. You're lying.”

You bit your fist.

“Ligeia! What the hell have you done with my tranquilizers?”

“What did you do with my collection of pebbles?” you shouted back.

He came out of the bathroom with the empty bottle and looked at you.

“I gave your bloody pebbles to Elena. You know that.”

“No. You didn't.”

“All right. I threw them into the sea. I gave them back to the sea.”

Strengthlessly he dropped the bottle and it bounced on the unpainted wooden floor. You sat up and crossed your legs and lit a cigarette.

“You are my lord and master, Javier. Give me one good reason to go on living.”

He shook his head.

“One good reason, master. You bastard who is playing with Isabel's youth simply to poison it. Who excuses his failures by blaming me. And we both know that even in failure we could be a man and woman who could support each other, lean on and love each other. Oh, you're vile, vile, shit!”

“Stop yelling. They'll hear you all over the hotel.”

“Let them hear! Let them hear how love can be lost and what kind of hatred comes to replace it!”

He crossed his arms and smiled. “My princess with the emotions of a bull.”

Resting your hands against the mattress, you said softly, almost secretly, “And it's not true. We could have made it work. We could have.”

“No, Ligeia.”

“You're right. No.”

“Then shut up and let things be as they are.”

He began to collect his clothing from the floor.

“No, I won't shut up! I want to hurt you! I'll feel better!”

“God. All you have left now is your pride.”

“Pride? When I crawl to you begging pity, begging you not to leave me? Javier! Promise me that you won't leave me for her!”

You stretched out your arms and he, on his haunches, went on gathering up his clothes.

“So you want a promise now. But I don't know myself, Ligeia. There have been too many promises. Promise to love you, to make you happy. To live with you and write. Promise not to let myself be defeated. Promise not to mention the real reasons for anything.”

You rolled off the bed and fell on him and pulled him down to the floor.

“Coward! Coward!”

“No,” he panted. “No more promises. I'll just let things happen.”

You began to kiss him furiously, to touch him without noticing that it was his skin you were caressing. As if he were merely another body that happened to be present.

“You're already making plans with her. You're going to take an apartment. Little by little she's been laying her trap. And now you're caught in it! You know you are, unless you lie to yourself. And you don't want to lose face now. That's all.”

He struggled against you, pushed you away, as if he were afraid of you.

“Then stop complaining, old woman. If I should leave you today, you ought to feel contented. You've taken a damn sight more than you've given. I took you from a miserable home where you were being destroyed. I took you out into a world you would never have known. And if you gave up something, at least you got my love in return. What more did you want?”

You held him, refused to let him go.

“You're insulting me now. Stop it, Javier. You'll tempt me to hurt you really. To say something that won't be nice.”

You were fondling his penis, trying to arouse him, but there was no strength in you and he smiled because there was none in him either.

“Don't try to tell me that the life of exile I've lived with you has been good. Don't say that on the day you leave me for another woman. Don't make me remember that my time with you has been borrowed time. Think of my brother, murdered. Think of my father in his lonely hotel room. Of my mother locked up in an asylum cursing me for having abandoned my race to be your wife.”

There was a secret game in your words now, although neither of you were aware of it. You had agreed to prove that each of you was helpless. Neither of you quite knew what you were saying.

“My race … God … To be a Jew.”

Javier touched you in the crotch and nothing happened.

“The word I heard all my childhood. Jew, Jew. The only word that still ties me to my dead brother and my crazy mother. Becky used to say it during meals, breaking into the conversation, and then begin to moan, almost to lose control of herself. She would get up and walk away trembling. Desperate. They … because of the way life has always been for us, Javier, the life of Jews, they taught me that the only way is to demand, to insist, and to doubt. That even when we're trampled on, locked up in concentration camps, thrown into exile, our salvation is to go on demanding, demanding, refusing to be content, and doubting.”

“Be quiet, Ligeia. You're babbling.”

“Demand and doubt. That's the way I am. And that was where I made the mistake with you. I made you fail by asking too much of you, demanding more than…”

“Leave me alone! Shut up!”

“That you should write more and better than you could write. That you should love me more than you could love me.”

“Shut up! And take your hand away!”

“And even if you hadn't failed, I would have doubted your success and you and myself, everything. I can't believe blindfolded. I have to do things, to test things and be sure. I have to believe without believing.”