Years With Laura Diaz, The (25 page)
Read Years With Laura Diaz, The Online
Authors: Carlos Fuentes
How could she say that to Santiago and Danton, who were going to turn, respectively, nine and eight? How could she explain herself to Mutti and her aunts? How could she tell them that all the prestige won over years of struggle had evaporated in a second because one thing had been done badly? It was better, Laura told herself in her self-imposed solitude, for Juan Francisco to go on thinking she had judged and condemned him. It didn’t matter to her, so long as he believed it was only she and no one else—not the world, not his sons, not some middle aged women hidden in a Xalapa boardinghouse and unimportant to him—who judged him. Her husband’s pride would remain intact. The wife’s sorrow would only be the wife’s.
She did not know how to say all that to the insistent Elizabeth, just as she couldn’t explain it to the family in Veracruz, to whom she wrote as if nothing had happened. The letters would arrive at Avenida Sonora, and Juan Francisco’s new maid would turn them over to Laura every week. Laura would go to her old home at midday when he wasn’t in. Laura was sure: if María de la O suspected something, she would keep quiet about it. Discretion was born with María de la O.
The invitation to the unveiling of Andrea Negrete’s portrait was irresistible because, one day before, Elizabeth had spoken about expenses with her guest.
“Don’t worry about anything, Laura. The hat, the dresses, you’ll pay me back when you can.”
“Juan Francisco’s monthly allotment to me hasn’t come yet.”
“It wouldn’t be enough!” laughed the rose-colored blonde tenderly. “You’ve got a wardrobe like Marlene’s.”
“I like pretty things. Perhaps because I don’t have, for the moment, any compensation for such an … absence, I guess I’d call it.”
“Something will come your way. Don’t upset yourself.”
The truth is that she wasn’t spending very much money. She read. She went to concerts and museums alone, to the movies and to dinner with Elizabeth. The situation that separated her from her husband was for her a period of mourning. Between them was a betrayal, a death—a dead woman. But the Chanel perfume, the little Schiaparelli hat, the suit tailored by Balenciaga … So much had changed so quickly. Fashion: How was Laura going to appear in public wearing a flapper’s short skirt like a Charleston dancer and Clara Bow hair when everyone had to dress like the new Hollywood stars? Skirts were longer, hair was wavier, busts were decked out with huge pique lapels, those who dared wore silk evening dresses sculpted to the shape of the body, like the platinum blonde Jean Harlow, and a fashionable hat was indispensable. A woman took off her hat only to sleep or play tennis. A rubber bathing cap was called for even in the swimming pool—marcelled hair had to be protected.
“Come on now, pluck up your courage.”
Before she could say hello to the hostess or admire the severe Bauhaus lines of the penthouse, decorated by Pani, or pay respects to the guest of honor, two hands covered Laura Díaz’s eyes. Then came a coquettish
“Guess who!”
(in English), and before Laura’s half-opened eye, the heavy gold ring with the initials OX.
“Guess who!”
(in English), and before Laura’s half-opened eye, the heavy gold ring with the initials OX.
For an instant, she did not want to see it. Behind Orlando Ximénez’s hands was the young man she hadn’t wanted to look at the first time she’d met him, in the dining room of the San Cayetano hacienda. Once again she smelled the English cologne, once again she heard the baritone voice raised intentionally as, it seemed, was the custom among the English. She imagined the tenuous light of the tropical terrace, and saw in her mind’s eye the chiseled profile, the straight nose, the blond curls …
She opened her eyes and recognized the upper lip, slightly recessive, and the prominent chin, a bit like the Habsburg kings’. But this time there were no curls, only a receding hairline, a mature face, and quite yellowish skin, like that of the Chinese workers on the Veracruz docks.
Orlando saw the sad shock in Laura’s eyes and said, “Orlando Ximénez. You don’t recognize me, but I recognize you. Santiago spoke of you so tenderly. I think you were—what did I tell you … ?
“His favorite virgin.”
“No longer?”
“Two sons.”
“Husband?”
“He no longer exists.”
“Did he die?”
“You figure it out.”
“And here we are, you and I, still alive. Hmm. Funny how things work out.”
Orlando looked around as if he were once again trying to find the San Cayetano balcony, the corner where they could be alone again and speak. A bittersweet wave of lost opportunity rolled across Laura’s breast, but Carmen Cortina would not allow frivolous intimacy or shameful solitude at her parties. As if she sensed a private—that is, exclusive—situation in the making, she interrupted the couple and introduced them around: to Butt del Rosal, an old aristocrat who used a monocle and whose joke was to take the lens out of his eye and, look at this, ingest it as if it were a communion wafer—it was phony, made of gelatin; then Onomástico Galán, a fat, red-faced Spaniard who went to parties in a nightshirt and matching cap with stripes and a red tassel, carrying a candle in one hand—in case there was a power failure in this disorganized and revolutionary country, which needed a good, soft dictatorship like Primo de Rivera’s in Spain; after him came a couple in sailor costumes, he with short pants and a blue cap with the words KISS ME on it and she as Mary Pickford, with a wig of big blond curls, white knee socks, patent-leather shoes, frilly panties, and a daringly short pink skirt, in addition to the requisite bow on her curly head; behind them came an art critic in an impeccable white suit and its contemptuous
corollary on his lips, which he repeated constantly: “These people are all ridiculous!”
corollary on his lips, which he repeated constantly: “These people are all ridiculous!”
He was hand in hand with his sister, a tall, beautiful statue made of confectioner’s sugar who would repeat, like some sisterly echo, “Ridiculous, we’re all ridiculous,” while an old painter with invisible, sharp, and powerful halitosis announced he was the teacher of this new artist, Tizoc, a position disputed by another painter of melancholic and disillusioned mien, famous for his funerary black-and-white paintings and for his pure-black lover and disciple, nicknamed “Xangó” by the painter, by Mexico City, and by the world, although to gild, I mean geld, I mean gild the lily, as Carmen Cortina would say, the powerful black had an Italian wife whom he introduced as the model for La Gioconda.
This whole circle was watched from a distance and with clinical disapproval by an English couple whom Carmen introduced as Felicity Smith, an extremely tall woman who could not observe what was going on without lowering her disdainful eyes, although, because she was courteous, she preferred to fix them on the distance; and a short, bearded, elegant man whom Carmen introduced as James Saxon and (sotto voce) as King George’s bastard son, who’d taken refuge in a tropical hacienda in the Huasteca area of the state of San Luis Potos
, which said
bâtard
had transformed into a
folie
worthy, as his companion Felicity pointed out, of the king of literary eccentrics William Beckford: “When you live in James’s house, you have to fight your way through orchids, cockatoos, and bamboo blinds.”
, which saidbâtard
had transformed into a
folie
worthy, as his companion Felicity pointed out, of the king of literary eccentrics William Beckford: “When you live in James’s house, you have to fight your way through orchids, cockatoos, and bamboo blinds.”
“The problem,” whispered Carmen to Orlando and Laura, “is that everyone here is in love with everyone else. Felicity’s in love with James, who is homosexual and very interested in the critic who says ‘ridiculous,’ who is mad for the black Xangó, who’s a false fag, who gives the melancholy painter satisfaction for reasons of state but who in fact has his fun with the Neapolitan, although she—the so-called Mona Lisa—has proposed converting the melancholy painter to heterosexuality, thus forming a menage à trois that would be not only pleasant but economically convenient in times of crisis, my dear, when no one, absolutely no one, will buy an easel painting and the government
is the only patron of the daubers,
quelle horreur!,
except that Mary Pickford is in love with the Italian woman, who secretly sleeps with the sailor, who is also something else, but she wants to prove to him that he’s a real man, which is true, except that Popeye knows that by passing himself off as a fag he arouses the maternal instincts of ladies who want to protect him while he takes advantage of them by surprising them, except that La Gioconda, knowing her husband is Lothar and not Mandrake the Magician, would like to see herself playing the Narda role—are you following me, dearies, don’t you read the comic strips in
El Universal?
—and try, with Xangó, to bring about the conversion to normalcy of the melancholy painter so as to integrate the trio, as I said, which threatens, as things seem to be going, to turn into a quartet, and even a quintet if we include Mary Pickford, what a mess and what a problem for a hostess who is, after all, from a proper family like my own!”
is the only patron of the daubers,
quelle horreur!,
except that Mary Pickford is in love with the Italian woman, who secretly sleeps with the sailor, who is also something else, but she wants to prove to him that he’s a real man, which is true, except that Popeye knows that by passing himself off as a fag he arouses the maternal instincts of ladies who want to protect him while he takes advantage of them by surprising them, except that La Gioconda, knowing her husband is Lothar and not Mandrake the Magician, would like to see herself playing the Narda role—are you following me, dearies, don’t you read the comic strips in
El Universal?
—and try, with Xangó, to bring about the conversion to normalcy of the melancholy painter so as to integrate the trio, as I said, which threatens, as things seem to be going, to turn into a quartet, and even a quintet if we include Mary Pickford, what a mess and what a problem for a hostess who is, after all, from a proper family like my own!”
“Carmen,” observed Orlando, resigned, “leave well enough alone. Imagine, if Dostoyevsky had psychoanalyzed himself he might not have written
The Idiot.”
The Idiot.”
“Mr. Orlando,” murmured Carmen Cortina, “I only invite people with high IQs, never an idiot! God forbid!” She gasped, but she still managed to introduce Pimpinela de Ovando, an aristocrat fallen on hard times, and Gloria Iturbe, suspected of being a spy for Germany’s Chancellor Franz von Papen, the things people say!, but everything, my dears, is so international nowadays, that no one even bothers to mention the sins of La Malinche!
Carmen Cortina’s verbal cascades multiplied into similar cataracts in the mouths of all her guests, except the cadaverous black-and-white painter (“I’ve eliminated everything superfluous from my paintings”), who was the one who supplied Orlando’s famous dictum: “Some Mexicans look well only in their coffins,” words mumbled a moment before the introduction of the Minister of Education in the current government, which gave the hostess and her protégé the painter from Veracruz the chance to unveil the painting, which they did together, raising the excitement and the scandal of the party to a fever pitch when what everyone saw was the true image of the actress who’d played in
Poppy:
You Won’t Be Alone Anymore
in all her splendid nakedness, stretched out on a blue sofa that emphasized the whiteness of her skin and the absence of hair, the one vain, the other coy, united by the art of the painter in a sublime expression of spiritual totality, as if nudity were the habit this nun wore, inclined as she was to flagellation as a superior form of fornication, eager to sacrifice her pleasure for the sake of something more than modesty, or, as Orlando summed it up, “Look, Laura, it’s like the title of that novel from the last century:
Nun, Wife, Virgin
,
and Martyr.
”
Poppy:
You Won’t Be Alone Anymore
in all her splendid nakedness, stretched out on a blue sofa that emphasized the whiteness of her skin and the absence of hair, the one vain, the other coy, united by the art of the painter in a sublime expression of spiritual totality, as if nudity were the habit this nun wore, inclined as she was to flagellation as a superior form of fornication, eager to sacrifice her pleasure for the sake of something more than modesty, or, as Orlando summed it up, “Look, Laura, it’s like the title of that novel from the last century:
Nun, Wife, Virgin
,
and Martyr.
”
“It’s the portrait of my soul,” Andrea Negrete said to the Minister of Education.
“Well, your soul has hair on it,” he retorted, his sharp eye having noticed that the painter hadn’t shaved Doña Andrea’s pubis but had painted her pubic hair white, just like the hair around the actress’s temples.
At that, the party crested, after which the waters, as we say, became calm. Voices dropped to a whisper of shock, of damnation or admiration. It was impossible to know what people thought of Tizoc’s art or Andrea’s audacity. The Minister said goodbye with an impudent expression on his face and a whispered comment to Carmen, “You told me this would be a cultural event.”
“It’s like Goya’s
Maja,
Mr. Minister. One day I’ll introduce you, it’s the Duchess of Alba, a great friend of mine.”
Maja,
Mr. Minister. One day I’ll introduce you, it’s the Duchess of Alba, a great friend of mine.”
“Duchess of Tarts,” said the member of Ortiz Rubio’s cabinet.
“Oh, how I’d love to see the members of all the members in all the cabinets,” said the little sailor boy wearing the KISS ME cap.
“Goodbye.” The Minister nodded his head when the sailor in short pants inflated a balloon with BLOW JOB written on it and let it float to the ceiling.
“This is over,” said the merry mini-Popeye. “Where do we go from here?”
“The Leda,” called out Mary Pickford.
“The Candles,” suggested the painter with halitosis.
“The Crouchers,” sighed the critic in white.
“How ridiculous,” intoned his sister.
“The Rio Rosa,” chimed in the Italian woman.
“El Salon México,” decreed the Englishman of
la main gauche.
la main gauche.
“Mexico beautiful and beloved,” yawned the extremely tall Englishwoman.
“Mexico little Africa,” growled a society columnist.
“I’m getting a highball,” said Orlando to Laura.
“We have the same name.” A very beautiful woman smiled at Laura as she sat down on a sofa and tried to adjust the lamp next to it. She laughed. “After a certain age, a woman depends on light.”
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