A Beautiful Young Woman

by Julián López

  I felt like a pot-bellied monster wearing bloomers with worn-out elastic in plain view of the whole world. I felt like I had a clown’s face painted over my own somber expression with wax crayons.

  “He’s overwhelmed,” said Elvira, excusing me to her half-dressed friends. “That’s why he’s looking around all scared with eyes like dinner plates.”

  Deep inside I forced myself to practice speeches of euphoric gratitude, of uncontrollable enthusiasm, I tried to push myself toward a childhood without deceit, without suspicions, but the truth is that I didn’t want to be there. I was worried about my mother.

  Then it occurred to me to take everything in carefully in case I ever met again with my friend Santi. That made it interesting once more and I took note of everything in silence so I could tell my friend about my adventures in the Riestra Club with the Titans. Perhaps my friend would be enchanted by these characters, perhaps my stories would give him ideas about a possible future, far from the woolen clothes made by his mother, far from the moving target of his sister. Perhaps my chronicle of the Riestra Club would restore him to his rightful place—Santi the marvelous respirator, a superhuman blessed with extraordinary aim, capable of inhaling unimaginable quantities of oxygen and hitting every target with his stones.

  —

  After that everything became a film of colors that passed so quickly that everything seemed white, and that dampened my enthusiasm for commentary for my friend with the breathing troubles. Meanwhile Elvira, who was entranced, looked back and forth between the ring and her friends, the big men, and it seemed she didn’t know how to behave with me, how to enthuse me. Her body swayed gently from side to side as if each impulse to suggest some way I could become involved was countered by another that made her hesitate and resist any attempt. The most titanic struggle took place inside me: I wanted to be someone else, I didn’t want to be there, I didn’t want to see the flaccid buttocks of those fallen strongmen. I didn’t want to hear any more shouting or loud noises, no more horror, no more reproaches for everything I knew and kept to myself.

  I was worried about my mother, about Christmas, about the lady coming from the swamps up north and her bestiary of clipped wings.

  When the fights had finished—I suppose the referee was won over by the mixture of sweat and makeup pouring down the faces of the Titans—they started with those speeches where one of the giant men dedicated all the effort of the event to the children’s happiness. I suppose we never shared the same observational techniques because in my field study—everything I had seen throughout the spectacle in the ring—the majority of the children bawled at their mothers or organized their own wrestling matches among the seats in the audience.

  Then everything began to fade away, and the smiles fell away, while someone began to sweep up and others stacked the long wooden benches. A whisper escaped Elvira’s lips; I thought she was going to ask me to sing “Madre del alma mía.” One of the girls from the secretaries’ office heard and put her arm around Elvira’s waist, nodding to me and saying, “Why don’t you come back to the office and have a couple of matés before you run off with that cutie pie?”

  Elvira took me by the hand, and I felt like Lili’s suitcase when she steels herself to take the path of loneliness. Something in the air had changed.

  We went to the office, and the girls surrounded us. While one prepared a maté, holding the silver thermos and adding spoonfuls of sugar, others competed for a spot by my side. Suddenly Elvira said that it was best to leave straightaway, we had to wait for the 44 and she didn’t want it to get dark on us.

  “Won’t you sing us a waltz?” asked one of the girls. Elvira smiled, took me by the hand again, and began to say farewell to each of the secretaries. I approved of her decision, and I made up for my prior pretensions of Delifrú by placing a full kiss on each of the rosy cheeks in that office at the Riestra Club.

  —

  Something was strange when we got out into the street. Elvira squeezed my hand tighter and quickened her pace. We had to walk a few blocks to the bus stop, and along the avenue silence reigned. Elvira looked behind her while she sped up again, then I wanted to see if something was following us, and she walked faster still. To keep from stumbling I had to concentrate on what was in front of me. When we had almost reached the corner we stopped suddenly; a convoy of cars and huge green trucks turned the corner quickly and occupied the avenue. Elvira crouched down and picked me up in her arms. We were terrified by the proximity of the convoy. The air itself seemed to scratch at our faces. The backs of the trucks were filled with soldiers whose rifles seemed to be at half-mast: they weren’t pointing them, but they weren’t at rest either. They sped by and looked out at us with serious expressions, their faces unmoving and their eyes frozen just like the sights on their rifles. We were in firing distance of those weapons that multiplied among the soldiers and the trucks. I remembered Santi again, his calm brow and his hunched shoulders, his measured movements that took him to the edge of the pool.

  Elvira’s body shook gently. Suddenly she began to gasp, trying to hide her trembling. She squeezed me tight and I could hear the air going in and out of her mouth in anxious gasps, and I could smell what was behind her perfume. It was a blue smell, a metallic smell. A smell I knew well, a smell my mother brought home with her after her outings.

  Elvira lent us her telephone. I had never smelled that odor on her.

  She let out a gasp that in the end she couldn’t contain: her legs trembled and she seemed wet, her eyes filled with water and her hair seemed to open up. The convoy finished passing, and, behind them, a few police cars followed. It had seemed like an endless parade.

  “They’re heading toward the south,” said Elvira.

  “What’s in the south?” I asked, and then straightaway I added, “I want to see my mama.”

  The world seemed to have been emptied of cars. After the roaring of the green trucks the city blocks were like a model of empty streets and sidewalks, of closed doors.

  Elvira began to run with me in her arms, crying silently. Just as we arrived at the bus stop, a 44 pulled up. Elvira began to shout and was nearly struck by the nose of the blue and red bus.

  “Hey, what’s wrong, ma’am? You look like you’ve seen the devil himself!” said the bus driver while we were still in the doorway, and some of the passengers burst out laughing.

  When we got back, we saw that the door to our house wasn’t closed properly. From underneath the door came a few rays of dim light, and from Elvira’s apartment there was the incessant ringing of the telephone.

  “Luckily Ñatita is deaf,” she said as we climbed the stairs to the hallway leading to our apartments.

  My mother was a very beautiful young woman, but when we opened the door we found her in a ball on the couch, her face hidden between her knees, the shutters completely closed, without any of the slats left open for air. The dim light came from the noiseless television. My mother didn’t seem to hear us, and Elvira hurried over to pull the cord that would open the shutters.

  “Don’t open them,” said my mother in a firm but dispirited voice, shaking her head between the cave of her knees. She was pale.

  “Go to your room,” she ordered, looking at me for a moment as if trying to smile.

  “I’m going to see how Ñatita is doing, and then I’ll be back. Do you have anything to eat? The boy must be hungry.”

  I went to my room and left the door ajar.

  I heard my mother, alone in the living room, crying in fits that just left a deeper silence. I turned on my lamp. The blue light of the television scared me. I heard Elvira return.

  “I brought you this. All I ask is that you return the tray and the napkin, they’re part of a set you know, and I don’t want to lose them.” Our neighbor spoke to my mother, and I waited on the edge of my bed for her to come into the room. Elvira came in. On the tray, underneath the napkin, there was a slice of her apple cake with walnuts and icing sugar. Elvira approached me carefully, he
r eyes wide. What could she be afraid of?

  She left the tray on the nightstand next to the lamp; she seemed unable to give it directly to me or to encourage me to eat the cake right then.

  “I couldn’t do it,” whispered my mother to herself.

  Elvira turned around and left the room. Meanwhile, the darkness seeping out of the television traced strange images on her legs.

  “Do you want me to bring Ñatita over here, so she can keep you company?”

  I don’t know if she didn’t wait for my answer or if she thought she heard me or if she thought there was nothing to say. She walked out of my room and left the door open. In the mirror of the open door I saw the reflection of the television and one end of the sofa where my mother was sitting and where Elvira surely sat also.

  The pale blue screen showed indecipherable movements, perhaps because I was seeing the images in reverse or perhaps because I couldn’t concentrate. Everything seemed confused, and neither the apple nor the icing sugar held any relevance for me. Everything was a single, poorly illuminated thing.

  I don’t know if my mother started to mumble again, if I heard her say, “I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t.”

  There were letters on the screen, but I saw everything in the mirror, and I couldn’t read the words. Now the images were calm. It was a wall with the letters below. I remembered Uncle Rodolfo. I remembered how he would turn serious, stroking his mustache and talking to me. I remember when he told me that I had to study hard, that I had to be curious and that I should never lose my cheer. I remember when he gave me a rectangle of red glass and a notebook, when he showed me how to place the glass in the middle of a page, with a picture on one side and the other blank so I could trace the reflection.

  I got up to look for the notebook and the glass. I got out a pencil, and I wrote down with difficulty the letters that the television reflected in the mirror. I knew that there were languages that were written backward—my uncle had shown me. Poor kids, imagine having to learn to write backward and understanding everything in reverse.

  There were sixteen letters. Suddenly the light came on in the kitchen, and I heard the sound of water and the kettle, the door of the pantry and the tin with the tea bags, the sound of the teaspoon being placed on the saucer, and the door to the cupboard where we kept the sugar bowl. The fridge door. When we were at home, my mother liked black tea, the water very hot but not boiling, with a big spoonful of sugar and a streak of cold milk.

  There were sixteen letters on one side of the notebook, and then I used the red glass.

  Elvira was present in the sounds coming from the kitchen as she made the tea, but I couldn’t hear her voice or the shuffling of her slippers. Now I heard the water hitting the bottom of the teacup and the torrent that inundated the tea bag and caused the leaves to swell. Now it was the spoonful of sugar, falling into the teacup like a disappearing sand dune. Now the sound of the teaspoon touching the depths of the cup and scraping the sides of the porcelain.

  I started copying on the blank page. There were sixteen letters.

  Elvira passed through the reflection in the mirror carrying a tray with the steaming cup of tea and set it down on the table. She switched on the lamp next to the sofa, the one my mother used to read her books in the evenings. She turned off the television, and the shadow of our Christmas tree flashed in the reflection of the mirror. Suddenly I had an overwhelming desire for it to be tomorrow, suddenly I had an immense faith that although it was the most scandalous lie in the history of the West, Christmas would fill us with happiness, and we would laugh about Swiss cotton tulle and all the horrible decorations we had made for our little tree.

  —

  I finished copying out the last letter. There were sixteen. I placed the piece of glass in the middle of the paper, with my eyes still on the side where I had written the letters, and everything on the other side was stained red.

  “Mama, don’t worry. Tomorrow is Christmas.”

  “Yes, my son, tomorrow is Christmas. Now get into bed because it’s time to sleep. I’ll come and give you a kiss later.”

  “I’m hungry, Ma.”

  “Eat the cake Elvira brought you. I know you’ll like it. Then I’ll bring you a glass of water later.”

  “Ma, can I read for a while?”

  I ate a few mouthfuls of cake and fell asleep. That night I dreamed we were on our balcony, and there was a parade of men walking over to the other side from where we were. I saw the heads of the men marching in silence, and although I couldn’t see her, I knew my mother was behind me. It seemed strange to me that we were on the balcony, but I held on to the handrail and tried to stay alert in case the moldings or the ceiling started to fall in. At one point I thought I saw a head of red hair amongthe crowd—everyone marching had dark hair—but I caught sight of a head of red hair just as it turned around to look at me. I began to get upset, and I turned around for a look of reassurance in my mother’s eyes, and I saw nothing. I was alone on the balcony. I turned back around, and I began to yell out to those half-closed eyes that had tried to recognize me, to that head of hair that was about to be extinguished. My mouth opened to say “Papa,” but the noise of the marching drowned out my shouting. I shouted louder and louder, clinging on to the handrailing of the balcony as bigger and bigger pieces of the ceiling and the walls began to rain down on me. Fixed on that red hair in the crowd, I yelled in silence, clinging to the railing, and although I couldn’t see her, my mother grabbed me from behind and pulled me back until I let go and we went back into the house. I yelled louder and louder, and she pulled harder and harder. Meanwhile, the balcony was falling around us in ruins, and I began to hear my own desperate plea: “Mama, let me gooooooo!”

  The first thing I did when I woke up that morning was run to the bathroom and look at my hair in the mirror. Then I remembered that it was Christmas Eve. I brushed my teeth and splashed cold water on my face, which was unusual for me, but I wanted to greet this important day with my most respectable rituals. I walked along on tiptoes so as not to wake my mother, and when I reached the kitchen, I found her there standing with her back to me in front of a pile of toast, the last pieces warming in the toaster.

  “Look what I’ve made for you,” she said, smiling as she lifted the breadbasket to show me.

  Thinly sliced toast was a real treat in our house, and for my mother to greet me with a whole basketful was a sure sign of happiness. This meant we would take a long breakfast together, chatting about places I had never been that she had traveled to once with someone or another, sending back postcards.

  Siberia without desolation. Chapultepec without volcanoes. Spain without sons of bitches. The Grand Canyon in Colorado with Navajo princesses and young men with arrows and eagles and red semen. The world was a planet suspended in the fascinated eyes of that beautiful young woman who ran her hands through her hair like a rudder that ignored all distance and led us anywhere on the planet. A breakfast of toast with butter and dulce de leche was a seminar on the devotion to curiosity, a training camp in Libya to strengthen the muscles underneath the muscles, the abdominals behind every intention, the aim at a single moving target. It was the pleasure of being alive, a gentle happiness free from the threat of the imminent.

  Elvira’s voice drew us back in from our wanderings, but it wasn’t a tango she was singing, or a waltz. From the hallway we could hear the overblown sounds of a reunion as it made its way up the stairs. It was like the sound of chickens clucking, vowels of happiness and consonants of nostalgia, a broody and scandalous music.

  I ran to open the door because I wanted to meet our neighbor’s sister, and above all I wanted to see those wingless birds, but my mother held me back before I could even make it out of the kitchen. She motioned for me to be silent with her finger, and with a cheeky smile on her face she led me over to the door so we could listen in to what the sisters were saying. My mother sat down on the ground and leaned back against the door in a single, beautifully choreographed movemen
t. I stood there looking at her and she stretched out an arm to me, inviting me to sit in the hollow between her legs, leaning my back against her chest and placing my head in the space between her neck and her shoulder.

  I tried to comfort myself, to play my part perfectly in this choreography, to be pliant and natural and to unwind myself and coil back up into her like the perfect dance partner whose work serves only to showcase the prima donna. Every bone in every joint of my hand, my pelvis, my hips, my ankles, the mobile strength of my feet, and finally my ischium; I’m not sure if I was as good as Nureyev or Astaire but I knew that I was efficient, that I arrived wholesome and gracious on that promised lap. Sitting in my mother’s hollow, embraced by that beautiful young woman’s legs, caressed by her hands as soft as peapods, at the mercy of the sweet and slippery aroma of her black hair, so terrifyingly close to the moist skin of her neck, in the unprecedented event of doing something that was not allowed, something that my mother usually would object to: listening in on other people.

  I don’t think I can recall any of this, but from that moment I do have a single memory of the warmth, the lightness, and the closeness of a living body. I think I understood that I needed to relax for this to happen, and, at the same time, take note of everything and treasure it, so that if the time came, I would be able to tell myself this whole story, in the moments when my doubts were heightened.

  I didn’t dare open my mouth, but I could barely contain my anxiety to ask her if she felt the same, if my body was palpitating too, if I was emitting heat, if I was just as alive as her. But I didn’t dare open my mouth in case my question shortened the duration of that embrace, in case my anxiety to know just how alive she was diminished her. How long did that matchless embrace last, and how did we return to the routine dance of the course of the day?