Constancia and Other Stories for Virgins (13 page)

I say yes with my most, well,
gentlemanly
smile. She serves me the tea. It doesn't steam. I take a sip and spit it out involuntarily. It's cider, a lukewarm apple drink, unexpected, repugnant. She looks at me with her hazel eyes very round, not sure whether to smile or take offense. I didn't know what to say. I saw her there with the teapot in her hand, spilling out of her Hollywood vamp costume, bending over to expose her breasts while she pours the tea: the freckled, deceitful, heavily powdered breasts of my cousin Sonsoles, who looks at me with a question on her face, asking if I don't want to play with her. But I only see a pale face, long and narrow, without artifice, almost unpainted, nunlike, protected from the sun and air for five hundred years—since the fall of Granada!—and now showing up, like a pale conventual ghost, in the century of the swimsuit, tennis, and suntan lotion.

—A little tea, sir?

She probably has a dollhouse in her bedroom. Then Aunt Fernandita arrives, what a surprise, stay for dinner, spend the night, Bernardito, Feliciano had to go to Veracruz to fill out the papers on some imported goods, he won't be back until Thursday, stay with us, boy, come on, why not, it's what your mother would want.

Toño

Bernardo hasn't come back. I think of him; I hadn't imagined that his absence would bother me so much. I miss him. I ask myself why, what is it that binds us? I look at her sleeping, her eyes always open but languid. There is no other mannequin like her; who can have given her this singular expression?

Since childhood, our literary vocation has earned us nothing but scorn. Or disapproval. Or pity. I don't know what he is going to write. Nor what I am going to write. But our friendship derives from others' saying: They're crazy, they want to be writers. How can it be? Here, in this country that's now wide open, anything you want, easy money, easy power, anyone can make it to the top … What binds us is that Lázaro Cárdenas is president and he brings a moment of moral seriousness to politics. We feel that Cárdenas values power and money less than justice and work. He wants to get things done, and when I see his Indian face in the newspaper, I sense that's his one great anxiety: so little time! Then the crooks, the bullies, the murderers will be back. It's inevitable. It's wonderful, Bernardo, that we grew up under the power of a serious man, a decent man. If power can be ethical, then why can't two young men be writers, if that's what they want?

(They're crazy: they hear music without instruments, the music of time, bands in the night. They feed the woman soup. She drinks it, mute and grateful. How can Bernardo be so sensitive in everything and so brutal to a sick woman who only needs a little care, attention, tenderness?)

Bernardo

I ran into Arturo Ogarrio in the hall at school and he thanked me for the other night's dinner. He asked if he could go with me, where was I headed? That morning I had gotten a check from my mother, who lives in Guadalajara, at Aunt Fernandita's house, where I'm staying until the tempest with Toño passes over.

I intend to blow it on books. Ogarrio takes my arm, stopping me; he asks me to take a moment to admire the symmetry of the colonial patio, the arches, the porticoes of the old school of San Ildefonso; he complains about Orozco's murals, those violent caricatures that disrupt the harmony of the cloister with their parade of oligarchs, their beggars, their Liberty in chains, their deformed prostitutes, and their cross-eyed Pancreator. I ask him if he prefers the hideous stained-glass window in the stairway, a hopeful salute to progress: salvation through Industry and Commerce, in full color. He says that is not the problem, the problem is that the building represents harmony and Orozco's violent fresco represents discord. That's what I like, that Orozco doesn't go along with the consensus, that he tells the priests and politicians and ideologues that things are not going to turn out well—just the opposite of Diego Rivera, who keeps on saying that this time, yes, things will turn out all right for us. No.

We ventured into the Porrúa Brothers Bookstore. The employees, walled in behind glass counters, their arms crossed, block the path of the presumed client and reader. Their brown jackets, their black ties, their false black elbow-length sleeves make a single statement:
They shall not pass.

—Surely it was easier to acquire that mannequin in a shop—said Arturo quietly—than it is to acquire a book here.

I placed my check on the counter and on top of the check my student ID. I asked for the
Romancero Gitano
of Lorca, Andreyev's
Sashka Yegulev,
Ortega's
Revolt of the Masses,
and the review
Letras de México,
where I had published, hidden toward the back, a little poem.

—Unless, as Ventura says, you ran the risk of stealing her …

—She's flesh and blood. The other night she wasn't feeling well. That's all. Look—I said quickly—I'll give you this Ortega book; you know it?

—No, you can't, said the clerk. You have to cash the check in a bank and pay in cash; checks are not accepted here, or money orders, or anything of the sort, said the employee with the black sleeves and coffee-colored jacket, assiduously reclaiming the books one by one:

—Above all, young man, we do not extend credit.

—Toño has been looking for the Andreyev novel for a long time. He wanted to give it to her. It's the story of a young rebel. And an anarchist, besides. I turned to face him. —She is flesh and blood.

—I know—said Ogarrio with his usual seriousness. —Come with me.

Toño

I think she's feeling better, thanks to my care. Bernardo has stayed away for several nights and hasn't helped me. I spend hours watching over her, ministering to her complaints, to her needs. I understand her: in her condition, she needs all sorts of attention. It's Bernardo's fault she feels bad: he should have been here helping me, instead of hiding in the tower of his resentment. Thank God, she's better. I look at her face, so thin and sweet.

… I feel an overwhelming fatigue in the morning, as I've never felt before.

I dream that I'm talking with her. But she only talks to herself. When I talk, she doesn't listen. She talks over my head, or around me, to some other person who is above or behind me, someone I can't see. It makes me sick with grief. I believe in someone who doesn't exist. Then she caresses me. She does believe in me.

I wake up with a big scratch on my face. I raise my hand to my wounded cheek, I see the blood on my fingers. I look at her, awake, sitting in bed, motionless, looking at me. Does she smile? I take her left hand, roughly: it lacks the ring finger.

Bernardo

He said that I shouldn't be wasting my time with virginal fiancées or with whores. Much less with mannequins! He laughed, undressing.

I knew it as soon as I entered the room on the Plaza Miravalle, full of Chinese screens and mirrors in gilded frames, divans heaped with soft cushions and Persian carpets, smelling of lost churches and distant cities; nothing in Mexico City smelled like this apartment where she appeared from behind some curtains, identical to him, but with a woman's body, pale and slim, almost without breasts but with luxuriant pubic hair, as if the dark profundity of her sex made up for the plainness of her adolescent body: from afar she smelled of almonds and unknown soaps. She walked toward me, her long hair hanging loose, her heavy eyes ringed with dark circles, her lips painted deep red to disguise their thinness: her mouth was two red lines, just like his. Naked except for black stockings that she held up, poor thing, with her hands, with difficulty, practically scratching her thighs.

—Arturo, please …

She could have been his twin. He smiled and said no, they were not brother and sister, they had searched for a long time before finding each other. The penumbra she brought with her. He had asked his father: Don't throw out the old furniture, what you don't sell give to me. Without the furniture, perhaps, the room would not be what I see now: an enchanted cave in the middle of Plaza Miravalle, near the Salamanca ice-cream parlor, where we used to go for delicious lemon ices …

—Perhaps all this attracts her: the curtains, the rug, the furniture …

—The penumbra—I said.

—Yes, the penumbra, too. It's not easy to produce this exact light. It's not easy to conjure up another person who not only resembles you physically but wants
to be
like you, even wants to be
you.
Frankly, I wouldn't want to be
like
her, but I would like
to be
her, do you understand? That's why we've been searching until we found each other. By force of attraction, but also by force of repulsion.

—Arturo, please, my garters. You promised.

—Poor thing!

He told me that she made love with someone else only if he was present, if he participated. He was taking off his dark gray jacket, his black tie, his stiff collar. He dropped the collar button into a black lacquer box. She looked at him fascinated, forgetting about her garters. She let her stockings fall to her ankles. Then she looked at me and laughed.

—Arturo, this fellow loves another. She laughed, taking my hand in hers, sweaty, an unexpectedly nervous hand for that woman the color of a waning moon, carrier no doubt of the infirmity of the romantic century: she looked like one of Ruelas's tubercular sketches, and I thought of La Desdichada and a line from the
Romancero
of Lorca that I hadn't been able to buy this morning, which describes the Andalusian dancer as
paralyzed by the moon:
—Arturo, look at him, he's afraid, he's one of those who love only one woman, I know them, I know them! They're looking for that one woman and that gives them license to sleep with them all, the swine, because they're looking for just that one. See: he's a decent boy!

She laughed. The piercing wail of a baby interrupted her. She cursed and rushed off, with her stockings slipping, to hide behind a screen. I heard her soothing the infant. “Poor little one, poor little one, my baby, go to sleep now, it's all right…” while Arturo Ogarrio threw himself, naked, mouth open, onto the divan piled with cushions covered in arabesques and pillows patterned in cashmere.

—I shouldn't kid myself. She always preferred him to me, from the beginning, that head leaned against his shoulder, those little glances, those escapades in the bathroom, the whore!

Toño

When Bernardo mistreated her, I didn't say anything. But at night she reproached me.—Are you going to defend me or not? Are you going to defend me…? she asked several times.

Bernardo

My mother writes from Guadalajara just to tell me: she has taken the tunic, the pants, the belt off the bed. She has taken the boots off the floor. She's put them all away, shined his boots and put everything in a trunk. They're not needed anymore. She has seen my father. An engineer who had taken pictures of the political events and public ceremonies of recent years invited her and other members of families that had supported Don Venustiano Carranza to see a film in his house. A silent film, of course. From the dances of the turn of the century to the murder of Don Venustiano and the ascent to power of those horrible characters from Sonora and Sinaloa. No, that was not important. That didn't interest her. But there, in a congressional ceremony in Donceles Street, behind President Carranza, was your father, Bernardo my son, your father was standing there, very serious, very handsome, very formal, protecting the president, in the very uniform that I have taken such zealous care of, your father, my son, moving, dressed up for me, my son, for me, Bernardo, he looked at me. I have seen him. You can come home.

How can I explain to my mother that I cannot compensate for the death of my father with the mobile simulacrum of the film; rather, my way of keeping him alive is to imagine him at my side always, invisible, a voice more than a presence, answering my questions, but silent in the face of those actions of mine that do not conform to his counsel, that kill him over again, with as much violence as the bullets themselves? I need a father close by me to authorize my words. The voice of my father is a secret endorsement of my own voice. But I know that with my words, even though he inspires them, I deny my father's authority, I instill rebellion, at the same time that I try to impose obedience on my own children.

Does La Desdichada save me from family obligations? The immobile dummy could free me from the responsibilities of sex, parenthood, matrimony, releasing me to literature. Could literature be my sex, my body, my posterity? Could literature provide friendship itself? Is that why I hate Toño, who gives himself purely to life?

Toño

I hear Bernardo's step on the stairs. He is returning; I recognize him. How can I tell him what has happened? It is my duty. Is it also my duty to tell him that she's dangerous, at least at times, that we must be on guard? The bed is wet with urine. She doesn't recognize me. She cowers in the corners, rejecting me. What does this woman want of me? How can I know, if she keeps so stubborn a silence? I have to tell Bernardo: I've tried everything. The bed is wet. She doesn't recognize me, doesn't recognize her Toño, her tony Toño, she called me like a child. She has wet the bed, she doesn't recognize me. I have to prepare her pabulum, dress her, undress her, clean her, tuck her in at night, sing her lullabies … I held her, I soothed her, now you belong to me, child, now you're mine, I said, little baby, the boogeyman … Desperately I push her away, far from me. She falls to the floor with a horrible crash of wood against wood. I rush to pick her up, to embrace her. For God's sake, what do you want, Desdichada, unhappy one, why don't you tell me what you want, why don't you hold me, why don't you let me loosen your dressing gown a little, lift up your skirts, see if what I feel, what you want is true, why not let me kiss your nipples, doll, embrace me, you can hurt me, but not him, he has to do things, you understand, Desdichada? He has to write, you mustn't hurt him, you can't scratch him, infect him, destroy his confidence, or wound him with your polymorphous perversity, I know your secret, doll, you're in love with all shapes, doll, that's your perversion, but he is pure, he is the young poet, and you and I have had the privilege of witnessing his youth, the birth of his genius, the nativity of the poet.