Eva Luna (3 page)

Disquieted, the Professor, followed by Consuelo, departed. He was never to know why or by whom he had been summoned. As he left the Palace, he was muttering that he would never understand these tropical peoples and the best thing he could do would be to return to the beloved city of his birth, where the laws of logic and urbanity were in full sway—and which he should never have left.

The Minister of War took charge of the government without knowing exactly what he should do; he had always been under the thumb of El Benefactor and did not remember having taken a single initiative in all his career. These were uncertain times. The people refused to believe that the President for Life was actually dead; they thought that the old man displayed on the bier fit for a pharaoh was a hoax, another of that sorcerer's tricks to trap his critics. People locked themselves in their houses, afraid to stick a foot out the door, until the
guardia
broke down the doors, turned the occupants out by brute force, and lined them up to pay their
last respects to the Supreme Leader, who was already beginning to stink in state among the virgin wax candles and lilies flown in from Florida. When they saw that various dignitaries of the Church in their finest ceremonial robes were presiding over the pomp of the funeral, the populace were finally assured that the tyrant's immortality was only a myth, and came out to celebrate. The country awakened from its long siesta, and in a matter of hours the cloud of depression and fatigue that had weighed over it dissipated. People began to dream of a timid liberty. They shouted, danced, threw stones, broke windows, and even sacked some of the mansions of the favorites of the regime; and they burned the long black Packard in which El Benefactor always rode, its unmistakable klaxon spreading fear as he passed. Then the Minister of War rose above the confusion, installed himself in the Presidential Seat, gave instructions to deflate high spirits with gunfire, and at once addressed the people over the radio, announcing a new order. Little by little, calm was restored. The jails were emptied of political prisoners to leave space for those still arriving, and a more progressive government was set in motion that promised to bring the nation into the twentieth century—not a far-fetched idea, considering that it was already three decades behind. In that political desert the first parties began to emerge, a Parliament was organized, and there was a renaissance of ideas and projects.

The day they buried the lawyer, his most cherished mummy, Professor Jones was so enraged he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. At the urging of the authorities, who did not want to be burdened with the visible dead of the previous regime, the family of the celebrated martyr of tyranny provided him with a grandiose funeral, in spite of the widespread impression, created by his still-excellent state of pres
ervation, that they were burying him alive. Jones left no stone unturned in trying to prevent his work of art from ending up in a mausoleum, but to no avail. He stood with outstretched arms at the gates of the cemetery, trying to block the passage of the black hearse transporting the silver-riveted mahogany coffin, but the coachman drove straight ahead, and if the doctor had not stepped aside he would have been flattened without a moment's hesitation. As the niche was sealed, the embalmer was felled by apoplexy, half his body rigid, the other half trembling convulsively. With that burial, the most conclusive evidence that the Professor's formula could thwart the process of decomposition for an indefinite period disappeared forever behind a marble tombstone.

*  *  *

Those were the only major events of the years Consuelo served in the house of Professor Jones. For her, the difference between dictatorship and democracy was occasionally being able to attend a Carlos Gardel movie—formerly forbidden to women—and, following her employer's attack of apoplexy, having to care for the invalid as if he were a baby. Their routine was monotonously unvarying, until the July day the gardener was bitten by a viper. He was a tall, strong Indian, smooth-featured but with a secretive, taciturn expression. Consuelo had never exchanged more than ten words with him, in spite of the fact that he helped her with the cadavers, the cancer patients, and the idiots. He would pick up a patient as if he were a feather pillow, sling him over his shoulder, and lope up the stairs to the laboratory without a trace of curiosity.

“A
surucucú
just bit the gardener,” Consuelo announced to Professor Jones.

“As soon as he dies, bring him to me,” the scientist enunciated through twisted lips, immediately preparing to create an indigenous mummy posed as if pruning the Malabar plums, and then install him as a garden ornament. By this time the Professor was quite elderly and was beginning to have artistic delusions; he dreamed of representing all the trades, thus forming his personal museum of human statues.

For the first time in her entire silent existence, Consuelo disobeyed an order and took the initiative. With the help of the cook, she dragged the Indian to his room in the back patio and laid him on his straw pallet; she was determined to save him, because it seemed shameful to think of him transfigured into an ornament to satisfy her employer's whim—and also because once or twice she had felt an indescribable nervousness as she watched the man's large, dark, strong hands tending the plants with such singular delicacy. She cleaned his wound with soap and water, made two deep cuts with the knife used for cutting up chicken, and slowly and patiently sucked out the poisoned blood, spitting it into a receptacle. Between every mouthful she rinsed her mouth with vinegar, so she herself would not die. Then she wrapped him in turpentine-soaked cloths, purged him with herbal teas, applied spiderwebs to the wound, and allowed the cook to light candles to the saints—although she herself had little faith in that recourse. When the victim began to pass blood in his urine, she spirited the Sándalo Sol from the Professor's cabinet, a heretofore infallible remedy for discharges of the urinary tract; but in spite of her painstaking care, the leg began to turn gangrenous and the man, lucid, silent, not once complaining, began to die. However, Consuelo became aware that notwithstanding pain, fear of death, and shortness of breath, the gardener responded with ardent
enthusiasm when she rubbed his body or soothed him with poultices. That unexpected erection so moved her mature virgin's heart that when he held her arm and gazed at her entreatingly, she realized that the moment had come for her to justify the name Consuelo and console this man in his misfortune. Furthermore, she reflected that in all her thirty-some years of existence she had never known pleasure, and had not sought it, believing that it was something reserved for actors in the movies. She resolved to give herself pleasure, for once, and at the same time offer herself to the victim in the hope that he would pass contented to the other world.

I knew my mother so well that I can imagine the ceremony that followed, although she never told me the details. She had no false modesty, and always answered my questions forthrightly, but at any mention of her Indian, she would abruptly fall silent, adrift in pleasant memories.

She removed her cotton outer garment, her linen petticoat and underpants, and pulled the pins from the hair she wore in the large bun required by her employer. The long strands fell loose over her body, and, thus robed in her finest attribute, gently, with infinite care, she straddled the dying man, trying not to exacerbate his agony. She did not know exactly what to do next, because she had absolutely no experience in such tasks, but what she lacked in knowledge she made up for in instinct and good will. The muscles beneath the man's dark skin tensed, and she had the sensation of galloping upon a great, majestic animal. Whispering newly invented words, and drying his sweat with a cloth, she eased herself to the exact position, and then moved cautiously, like a young wife accustomed to making love to an elderly husband. Soon he tumbled her over and embraced her with the
urgency dictated by the proximity of death; even the shadows in the corners were transformed by their brief joy. And that is how I was conceived, on my father's deathbed.

But, contrary to the hopes of Professor Jones and the French scientists at the serpentarium, all of whom wanted his body for their experiments, the gardener did not die. Against all logic he began to improve; his temperature went down, his breathing became normal, and he asked for food. Consuelo realized that without intending it she had discovered an antidote for poisonous snakebites, and continued to administer it with tenderness and enthusiasm as often as requested, until the patient was once again on his feet. Soon afterward, the Indian came to tell her goodbye; she made no attempt to detain him. They held hands for a minute or two, kissed each other with a certain sadness, and then she removed her gold nugget, its cord worn thin from wear, and hung it around the neck of her only lover as a remembrance of their shared cantering. He went away grateful, and almost well. My mother says he left smiling.

Consuelo displayed no emotion. She continued to work as she always had, ignoring the nausea, the heaviness in her legs, and the colored spots that clouded her vision, never mentioning the extraordinary medicament she had employed to save the dying man. She did not tell it even when her belly began to swell, nor when Professor Jones called her in to give her a purgative, believing that she was bloated as the result of a digestive disorder; nor did she tell it when, in her appointed time, she gave birth. She bore the pain for thirteen hours, continuing with her chores, and when she could stand it no longer she went to her room, prepared to live that moment, the most important in her life, to the fullest. She brushed her hair, hastily braided it, and tied it with
a new ribbon. She removed her clothing, washed herself from head to foot, then placed a clean sheet on the floor and squatted on it in a position she had seen in a book on Eskimo customs. Bathed in sweat, with a rag in her mouth to choke back her moans, she strained to bring into the world the stubborn creature still clinging inside her. She was no longer young, and it was not an easy task, but scrubbing floors on her hands and knees, carrying loads up steep stairs, and washing clothes till midnight had given her firm muscles, and finally the baby began to emerge. First she saw two minuscule feet kicking feebly as if attempting the first steps of an arduous journey. She took a deep breath and, with a last moan, felt something tearing in the center of her body as an alien mass slipped from between her thighs. She was shaken to her soul with relief. There I lay, tangled in a bluish cord, which she carefully removed from around my neck to allow me to breathe. At that moment the door opened; the cook had noticed her absence, guessed what was happening, and had come to help. She found my mother naked, with me on her belly, still joined to her by a pulsing cord.

“Bad luck, it's a girl,” said the impromptu midwife after she had tied and cut the umbilical cord and was holding me in her arms.

“But she came feet first, and that's a sign of good luck,” my mother smiled as soon as she could speak.

“She seems strong, and she has good lungs. If you want, I can be the godmother.”

“I hadn't planned to christen her,” Consuelo replied, but when she saw the other woman cross herself, scandalized, she did not want to offend her. “All right, a little holy water never hurt anyone, and—who knows?—it might even do some good. Her name will be Eva, so she will love life.”

“And her last name?”

“None. Her father's name isn't important.”

“Everybody needs a last name. Only a dog can run around with one name.”

“Her father belonged to the Luna tribe, the Children of the Moon. Let it be Luna, then. Eva Luna. Give her to me, please, godmother. I want to see if she's whole.”

Sitting in the pool of my birth, her bones as weak as cotton wool, dripping with sweat, Consuelo examined my body for any ominous sign transmitted by the venom and, discovering no abnormality, breathed a deep sigh of relief.

*  *  *

I do not have fangs, or reptilian scales—at least no visible ones. The somewhat unusual circumstances of my conception had, instead, only positive consequences: these were unfailing good health and the rebelliousness that, although somewhat slow to evidence itself, in the end saved me from the life of humiliations to which I was undoubtedly destined. From my father I inherited stamina; he must have been very strong to fight off the serpent's venom for so many days and to give pleasure to a woman when he was so near death. Everything else I owe to my mother. When I was four, I had one of those diseases that leave little pockmarks all over the body, but she healed me, tying my hands to keep me from scratching myself, coating my body with sheep's tallow, and shielding me from natural light for one hundred and eighty days. During that period, she also brewed squash blossoms to rid me of parasites, and fern root to flush out the tapeworm. I have been healthy and sound ever since. I have no marks on my skin, only a few cigarette burns, and I expect to
be free of wrinkles in my old age because the effect of sheep's tallow is everlasting.

My mother was a silent person, able to camouflage herself against the furniture or to disappear in the design of a rug. She never made the slightest commotion; it was almost as if she were not there. In the privacy of the room we shared, however, she was transformed. When she talked about the past, or told her stories, the room filled with light; the walls dissolved to reveal incredible landscapes, palaces crowded with unimaginable objects, faraway countries that she invented or borrowed from the Professor's library. She placed at my feet the treasures of the Orient, the moon, and beyond. She reduced me to the size of an ant so I could experience the universe from that smallness; she gave me wings to see it from the heavens; she gave me the tail of a fish so I would know the depths of the sea. When she was telling a story, her characters peopled my world, and some of them became so familiar that still today, so many years later, I can describe the clothing they wore and the tone of their voice. She maintained intact her memories of her childhood in the Mission; she retained all the anecdotes she had heard and those she had learned in her readings. She manufactured the substance of her own dreams, and from those materials constructed a world for me. Words are free, she used to say, and she appropriated them; they were all hers. She sowed in my mind the idea that reality is not only what we see on the surface; it has a magical dimension as well and, if we so desire, it is legitimate to enhance it and color it to make our journey through life less trying. The characters she summoned to the enchanted world of her stories are the only clear memories I have of my first years; the rest existed in a kind of mist where the household servants, the aged Professor prostrate in his
bicycle-wheeled armchair, and the string of patients and cadavers he attended in spite of his infirmity, all blended together. Children annoyed Professor Jones, but he was usually lost in his own thoughts, and when he ran into me in some corner of the house, he scarcely saw me. I was a little afraid of him because I did not know whether the old man had fabricated the mummies or whether they had engendered him; they all seemed to belong to the same parchment-skinned family. His presence had no effect on me because we lived in different worlds. I roamed through the kitchen, the patios, the servants' quarters, the garden, and when I followed my mother to the other parts of the house, I moved very quietly so the Professor would think I was a prolongation of her shadow. The house had so many different smells that I could go around with my eyes closed and guess where I was: aromas of food, clothing, coal, medicines, books, and dankness fused with the characters from the stories, enriching those years.