“But the General himself? Wouldn’t he be able to . . .”
“He died sixty years ago, Señor. They’re his unfinished memoirs. They have to be completed before I die.”
“But . . .”
“I can tell you everything. You’ll learn to write in my husband’s own style. You’ll only have to arrange and read his manuscripts to become fascinated by his style . . . his clarity . . . his . . .”
“Yes, I understand.”
“Saga, Saga. Where are you? Ici, Saga!”
“Who?”
“My companion.”
“The rabbit?”
“Yes. She’ll come back.”
When you raise your eyes, which you’ve been keeping lowered, her lips are closed but you can hear her words again—“She’ll come back”—as if the old lady were pronouncing them at that instant. Her lips remain still. You look in back of you and you’re almost blinded by the gleam from the religious objects. When you look at her again you see that her eyes have opened very wide, and that they’re clear, liquid, enormous, almost the same color as the yellowish whites around them, so that only the black dots of the pupils mar that clarity. It’s lost a moment later in the heavy folds of her lowered eyelids, as if she wanted to protect that glance which is now hiding at the back of its dry cave.
“Then you’ll stay here. Your room is upstairs. It’s sunny there.”
“It might be better if I didn’t trouble you, Señora. I can go on living where I am and work on the manuscripts there.”
“My conditions are that you have to live here. There isn’t much time left.”
“I don’t know if . . .”
“Aura . . .”
The old woman moves for the first time since you entered her room. As she reaches out her hand again, you sense that agitated breathing beside you, and another hand reaches out to touch the Señora’s fingers. You look around and a girl is standing there, a girl whose whole body you can’t see because she’s standing so close to you and her arrival was so unexpected, without the slightest sound—not even these sounds that can’t be heard but are real anyway because they’re remembered immediately afterwards, because in spite of everything they’re louder than the silence that accompanies them.
“I told you she’d come back.”
“Who?”
“Aura. My companion. My niece.”
“Good afternoon.”
The girl nods and at the same instant the old lady imitates her gesture.
“This is Señor Montero. He’s going to live with us.”
You move a few steps so that the light from the candles won’t blind you. The girl keeps her eyes closed, her hands at her sides. She doesn’t look at you at first, then little by little she opens her eyes as if she were afraid of the light. Finally you can see that those eyes are sea green and that they surge, break to foam, grow calm again, then surge again like a wave. You look into them and tell yourself it isn’t true, because they’re beautiful green eyes just like all the beautiful green eyes you’ve ever known. But you can’t deceive yourself: those eyes do surge, do change, as if offering you a landscape that only you can see and desire.
“Yes. I’m going to live with you.”
II
The old woman laughs sharply and tells you that she is grateful for your kindness and that the girl will show you to your room. You’re thinking about the salary of four thousand pesos, and how the work should be pleasant because you like these jobs of careful research that don’t include physical effort or going from one place to another or meeting people you don’t want to meet. You’re thinking about this as you follow her out of the room, and you discover that you’ve got to follow her with your ears instead of your eyes: you follow the rustle of her skirt, the rustle of taffeta, and you’re anxious now to look into her eyes again. You climb the stairs behind that sound in the darkness, and you’re still unused to the obscurity. You remember it must be about six in the afternoon, and the flood of light surprises you when Aura opens the door to your bedroom—another door without a latch—and steps aside to tell you: “This is your room. We’ll expect you for supper in an hour.”
She moves away with that same faint rustle of taffeta, and you weren’t able to see her face again.
You close the door and look up at the skylight that serves as a roof. You smile when you find that the evening light is blinding compared with the darkness in the rest of the house, and smile again when you try out the mattress on the gilded metal bed. Then you glance around the room: a red wool rug, olive and gold wallpaper, an easy chair covered in red velvet, an old walnut desk with a green leather top, an old Argand lamp with its soft glow for your nights of research, and a bookshelf over the desk in reach of your hand. You walk over to the other door, and on pushing it open you discover an outmoded bathroom: a four-legged bathtub with little flowers painted on the porcelain, a blue hand basin, an old-fashioned toilet. You look at yourself in the large oval mirror on the door of the wardrobe—it’s also walnut—in the bathroom hallway. You move your heavy eyebrows and wide thick lips, and your breath fogs the mirror. You close your black eyes, and when you open them again the mirror has cleared. You stop holding your breath and run your hand through your dark, limp hair; you touch your fine profile, your lean checks; and when your breath hides your face again you’re repeating her name: “Aura.”
After smoking two cigarettes while lying on the bed, you get up, put on your jacket, and comb your hair. You push the door open and try to remember the route you followed coming up. You’d like to leave the door open so that the lamplight could guide you, but that’s impossible because the springs close it behind you. You could enjoy playing with that door, swinging it back and forth. You don’t do it. You could take the lamp down with you. You don’t do it. This house will always be in darkness, and you’ve got to learn it and relearn it by touch. You grope your way like a blind man, with your arms stretched out wide, feeling your way along the wall, and by accident you turn on the light-switch. You stop and blink in the bright middle of that long, empty hall. At the end of it you can see the bannister and the spiral staircase.
You count the stairs as you go down: another custom you’ve got to learn in Señora Llorente’s house. You take a step backward when you see the reddish eyes of the rabbit, which turns its back on you and goes hopping away.
You don’t have time to stop in the lower hallway because Aura is waiting for you at a half-open stained-glass door, with a candelabrum in her hand. You walk toward her, smiling, but you stop when you hear the painful yowling of a number of cats—yes, you stop to listen, next to Aura, to be sure that they’re cats—and then follow her to the parlor.
“It’s the cats,” Aura tells you. “There are lots of rats in this part of the city.”
You go through the parlor: furniture upholstered in faded silk; glass-fronted cabinets containing porcelain figurines, musical clocks, medals, glass balls; carpets with Persian designs; pictures of rustic scenes; green velvet curtains. Aura is dressed in green.
“Is your room comfortable?”
“Yes. But I have to get my things from the place where . . .”
“It won’t be necessary. The servant has already gone for them.”
“You shouldn’t have bothered.”
You follow her into the dining room. She places the candelabrum in the middle of the table. The room feels damp and cold. The four walls are paneled in dark wood, carved in Gothic style, with fretwork arches and large rosettes. The cats have stopped yowling. When you sit down, you notice that four places have been set. There are two large, covered plates and an old, grimy bottle.
Aura lifts the cover from one of the plates. You breathe in the pungent odor of the liver and onions she serves you, then you pick up the old bottle and fill the cut-glass goblets with that thick red liquid. Out of curiosity you try to read the label on the wine bottle, but the grime has obscured it. Aura serves you some whole broiled tomatoes from the other plate.
�
�Excuse me,” you say, looking at the two extra places, the two empty chairs, “but are you expecting someone else?”
Aura goes on serving the tomatoes. “No. Señora Consuelo feels a little ill tonight. She won’t be joining us.”
“Señora Consuelo? Your aunt?”
“Yes. She’d like you to go in and see her after supper.”
You eat in silence. You drink that thick wine, occasionally shifting your glance so that Aura won’t catch you in the hypnotized stare that you can’t control. You’d like to fix the girl’s features in your mind. Every time you look away you forget them again, and an irresistible urge forces you to look at her once more. As usual, she has her eyes lowered. While you’re searching for the pack of cigarettes in your coat pocket, you run across that big key, and remember, and say to Aura: “Ah! I forgot that one of the drawers in my desk is locked. I’ve got my papers in it.”
And she murmurs: “Then you want to go out?” She says it as a reproach.
You feel confused, and reach out your hand to her with the key dangling from one finger.
“It isn’t important. The servant can go for them tomorrow.”
But she avoids touching your hand, keeping her own hands on her lap. Finally she looks up, and once again you question your senses, blaming the wine for your bewilderment, for the dizziness brought on by those shining, clear green eyes, and you stand up after Aura does, running your hand over the wooden back of the Gothic chair, without daring to touch her bare shoulder or her motionless head.
You make an effort to control yourself, diverting your attention away from her by listening to the imperceptible movement of a door behind you—it must lead to the kitchen—or by separating the two different elements that make up the room: the compact circle of light around the candelabrum, illuminating the table and one carved wall, and the larger circle of darkness surrounding it. Finally you have the courage to go up to her, take her hand, open it, and place your key-ring in her smooth palm as a token.
She closes her hand, looks up at you, and murmurs, “Thank you.” Then she rises and walks quickly out of the room.
You sit down in Aura’s chair, stretch your legs, and light a cigarette, feeling a pleasure you’ve never felt before, one that you knew was part of you but that only now you’re experiencing fully, setting it free, bringing it out because this time you know it’ll be answered and won’t be lost . . . And Señora Consuelo is waiting for you, as Aura said. She’s waiting for you after supper . . .
You leave the dining room, and with the candelabrum in your hand you walk through the parlor and the hallway. The first door you come to is the old lady’s. You rap on it with your knuckles, but there isn’t any answer. You knock again. Then you push the door open because she’s waiting for you. You enter cautiously, murmuring: “Señora . . . Señora . . .”
She doesn’t hear you, for she’s kneeling in front of that wall of religious objects, with her head resting on her clenched fists. You see her from a distance: she’s kneeling there in her coarse woolen nightgown, with her head sunk into her narrow shoulders; she’s thin, even emaciated, like a medieval sculpture; her legs are like two sticks, and they’re inflamed with erysipelas. While you’re thinking of the continual rubbing of that rough wool against her skin, she suddenly raises her fists and strikes feebly at the air, as if she were doing battle against the images you can make out as you tiptoe closer: Christ, the Virgin, St. Sebastian, St. Lucia, the Archangel Michael, and the grinning demons in an old print, the only happy figures in that iconography of sorrow and wrath, happy because they’re jabbing their pitchforks into the flesh of the damned, pouring cauldrons of boiling water on them, violating the women, getting drunk, enjoying all the liberties forbidden to the saints. You approach that central image, which is surrounded by the tears of Our Lady of Sorrows, the blood of Our Crucified Lord, the delight of Lucifer, the anger of the Archangel, the viscera preserved in bottles of alcohol, the silver heart: Señora Consuelo, kneeling, threatens them with her fists, stammering the words you can hear as you move even closer: “Come, City of God! Gabriel, sound your trumpet! Ah, how long the world takes to die!”
She beats her breast until she collapses in front of the images and candles in a spasm of coughing. You raise her by the elbow, and as you gently help her to the bed you’re surprised at her smallness: she’s almost a little girl, bent over almost double. You realize that without your assistance she would have had to get back to bed on her hands and knees. You help her into that wide bed with its bread crumbs and old feather pillows, and cover her up, and wait until her breathing is back to normal, while the involuntary tears run down her parchment checks.
“Excuse me . . . excuse me, Señor Montero. Old ladies have nothing left but . . . the pleasures of devotion . . . Give me my handkerchief, please.”
“Señorita Aura told me . . .”
“Yes, of course. I don’t want to lose any time. We should . . . we should begin working as soon as possible. Thank you.”
“You should try to rest.”
“Thank you . . . Here . . .”
The old lady raises her hand to her collar, unbuttons it, and lowers her head to remove the frayed purple ribbon that she hands to you. It’s heavy because there’s a copper key hanging from it.
“Over in that corner . . . Open that trunk and bring me the papers at the right, on top of the others . . . They’re tied with a yellow ribbon.”
“I can’t see very well . . .”
“Ah, yes . . . it’s just that I’m so accustomed to the darkness. To my right . . . Keep going till you come to the trunk. They’ve walled us in, Señor Montero. They’ve built up all around us and blocked off the light. They’ve tried to force me to sell, but I’ll die first. This house is full of memories for us. They won’t take me out of here till I’m dead! Yes, that’s it. Thank you. You can begin reading this part. I will give you the others later. Good night, Señor Montero. Thank you. Look, the candelabrum has gone out. Light it outside the door, please. No, no, you can keep the key. I trust you.”
“Señora, there’s a rat’s nest in that corner.”
“Rats? I never go over there.”
“You should bring the cats in here.”
“The cats? What cats? Good night. I’m going to sleep. I’m very tired.”
“Good night.”
III
That same evening you read those yellow papers written in mustard-colored ink, some of them with holes where a careless ash had fallen, others heavily fly-specked. General Llorente’s French doesn’t have the merits his wife attributed to it. You tell yourself you can make considerable improvements in the style, can tighten up his rambling account of past events: his childhood on a hacienda in Oaxaca, his military studies in France, his friendship with the duc de Morny and the intimates of Napoleon III, his return to Mexico on the staff of Maximilian, the imperial ceremonies and gatherings, the battles, the defeat in 1867, his exile in France. Nothing that hasn’t been described before. As you undress you think of the old lady’s distorted notions, the value she attributes to these memoirs. You smile as you get into bed, thinking of the four thousand pesos.
You sleep soundly until a flood of light wakes you up at six in the morning: that glass roof doesn’t have any curtain. You bury your head under the pillow and try to go back to sleep. Ten minutes later you give it up and walk into the bathroom, where you find all your things neatly arranged on a table and your few clothes hanging in the wardrobe. Just as you finish shaving the early morning silence is broken by that painful, desperate yowling.
You try to find out where it’s coming from: you open the door to the hallway, but you can’t hear anything from there: those cries are coming from up above, from the skylight. You jump up on the chair, from the chair onto the desk, and by supporting yourself on the bookshelf you can reach the skylight. You open one of the windows and pull yourself up to look out at that side garden, that square of yew trees and brambles where five, six, seven cats—you can’t
count them, can’t hold yourself up there for more than a second—are all twined together, all writhing in flames and giving off a dense smoke that reeks of burnt fur. As you get down again you wonder if you really saw it: perhaps you only imagined it from those dreadful cries that continue, grow less, and finally stop.
You put on your shirt, brush off your shoes with a piece of paper, and listen to the sound of a bell that seems to run through the passageways of the house until it arrives at your door. You look out into the hallway. Aura is walking along it with a bell in her hand. She turns her head to look at you and tells you that breakfast is ready. You try to detain her but she goes down the spiral staircase, still ringing that black-painted bell as if she were trying to wake up a whole asylum, a whole boarding-school.
You follow her in your shirt-sleeves, but when you reach the downstairs hallway you can’t find her. The door of the old lady’s bedroom opens behind you and you see a hand that reaches out from behind the partly opened door, sets a chamberpot in the hallway and disappears again, closing the door.
In the dining room your breakfast is already on the table, but this time only one place has been set. You eat quickly, return to the hallway, and knock at Señora Consuelo’s door. Her sharp, weak voice tells you to come in. Nothing has changed: the perpetual shadows, the glow of the votive lights and the silver objects.
“Good morning, Señor Montero. Did you sleep well?”
“Yes. I read till quite late.”
The old lady waves her hand as if in a gesture of dismissal. “No, no, no. Don’t give me your opinion. Work on those pages and when you’ve finished I’ll give you the others.”
“Very well. Señora, would I be able to go into the garden?”
“What garden, Señor Montero?”
“The one that’s outside my room.”
“This house doesn’t have any garden. We lost our garden when they built up all around us.”
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