by Daniel Sada
/
The bus arrived in Ocampo at a quarter to three in the afternoon: a little earlier than usual: on Sundays, it normally arrives at three on the dot. The beau was riding up front: perfumed to a noxious extent and decked out in green, with his hair parted down the middle, to perfection: in his own way, he called attention to himself. He descended like a king, flowers in his left hand and a gift decorated with a curlicue bow with spikes in his right. He looked from side to side with his bullish eyes as if to say to anyone who dared deride him: “I bet you wish you were me.” Today, his ambition: to walk through those dusty streets as if treading on clouds, and yes: he briefly gave that impression, even if despite himself: he couldn’t hide his cowboy stride no matter how he spiffed himself up.
Usually, to fortify himself, he had a couple of sodas at a small grocery store, whose owner he knew and who, without being too forthcoming, always conveyed a warm welcome. This time was different:
“Welcome! You look so elegant today. What a surprise.”
“Thanks a lot.”
Without waiting for his customer to order, the chubby grocer placed two grape sodas on the counter.
“Why the suit, if I may be so bold as to ask?”
“I’m going to wed a local belle. You must know her, none other than Constitución Gamal, the seamstress. Anyway, just to be clear, we’re not getting married today, even though that’d be my preference, no, I’ve still got to bide my time, chew on my cud for a stretch, that is, what I mean is, there’ll be no wedding for several months … The important thing is, she gave me her word last week, and today is a special day for the two of us … There was, you know, a verbal commitment.” The perfumed man took a huge gulp of his soda and continued enthusiastically. “We’ve been courting for some time now, a little over a year, and to be perfectly frank with you, it was mighty hard for me to decide to ask for her hand, well, you know how it is, you have to figure out the best way to win her over. That’s why I went all the way to Monterrey to buy this suit. I want my woman to see me at my very best. Maybe next week I won’t wear it, because with all this dust it’ll get dirty.”
“Did you say it was Constitución?”
“That’s right, the one and only. Why do you ask?”
“Well, it’s just that between the twins, I never can tell which one is which.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“What, didn’t you know that Constitución has an identical twin?”
“No! She never told me that.”
“You don’t say! … There are two, exactly the same.”
“Really?”
“Cross my heart. And I’m telling you, everybody around here, no matter how hard we try, we still can’t tell them apart.”
Oscar, speechless, downed his soda in one gulp, then started coughing. Apparently, he couldn’t believe his ears. The initial surprise over, and gulping down air while shutting his nostrils—he used all the fingers on his left hand—as a cure, he looked at his watch: it was still early. In the meantime, the instructive grocer saw how upset Oscar was—he went over to the door to look outside at what was going on, then not: what good did it do? No, not at the roof, either (whence he returned with tottering steps): what about that thatch? The walls, even less: cracked and peeling, or the gift (for the moment: absurd) or the bunch of flowers that he’d left on the counter; or those disgusting cans, one still full, and the other now empty, dripping only with saliva. The grocer had no option but to close his eyes for a moment so his thoughts could settle—and feel pangs of compunction and try to find another angle: “Poor man, and there I went: really sticking my foot in it!”—whereat with a sorrowful voice that seemed to come from elsewhere, he gently uttered these words:
“I’m really surprised she didn’t tell you.”
How could Oscar possibly reply? He again consulted his watch. About thirty minutes before he would see his beloved, who … Yes, a sinister idea crossed his mind: that at some point his beloved could have been the other: and he unaware of the deception … No! Impossible! His fiancée would never do such a vile thing, and it was wrong for him to even toy with the idea. What folly! He knocked on wood, finally: the counter’s: which made the disagreeable shopkeeper prick up his ears, but anyway that dump of a store was beginning to get on our beau’s nerves.
“How much do I owe you?”
“Just two pesos.”
He paid and rushed out, as if in a hurry to collect his inheritance, or something worse, because he’d mussed his hair while scratching his pompadour parted right down the middle, all because of the unnerving as well as pithy nature of the information he’d heard. He left without saying good-bye and, in addition, without taking the flowers or the gift. He chose to ignore the shouts of the grocer behind him: “Forgive me, sir, I didn’t know you didn’t know …” Then, in a lower voice, almost braying: “Look, they must have just forgotten …!” Wretched wind, and street festivities: people who stepped out every Sunday: and whistles: anonymous, and he: like an automaton, looking constantly at his watch as he walked, though not toward the shop, but rather … Alas, it would be a new-found pleasure to sit for a few moments on one of the benches in the town square and observe the comings and goings, but calming himself down, trying to see his fiancée’s harsh reserve in a positive light.
Why?
He held on to tender hope. Her motives could not be that wicked, that perverse. He sat down without combing his hair—amid the chirping voices of the many passersby: there, as was said, by his own free will: distracted, sullen, but with just enough time to buoy up his illusions, set them on a favorable course: this wasn’t difficult though it was somewhat self-deceptive.
Maybe his fiancée—this is how he chose to understand it—had failed to mention that she had a twin sister out of fear of disappointing him, because for him to see two who are the same could create a dilemma as daft as it would be marvelous. To have and to love, magically, two identical sweethearts, and to not be able to marry either because he wouldn’t know who the real one was.
This was the reason for her great reserve, but: there was so much racket, he finally got distracted. He looked at the young and beautiful women passing jauntily by and tossing flirtatious smiles his way. Babes everywhere! But his love had alighted. Constitución, splendid and primed, waiting to stand beside him at the altar. Constitución, there, at the door as usual … And the beau consulted his watch one last time: ten minutes to four, so now he’d have to rush.
He stood up, ran his fingers through his hair, and started walking. He had the bad habit or the good fortune of always being punctual, even to a perverse extent, especially when it came to matters of love, and this time, well, don’t even mention it.
Once he was on his way, he remembered the flowers, and the gift—a handkerchief with little drawings of red hearts—: which he’d stupidly left at the grocer’s, what with his plight, his dazed state had led him here: where he needed to be to collect himself, and there was no time to return for his forgotten offerings. What a pity! But now, and focusing on restraint, he could not put aside the most obvious question. His fiancée would have to respond without ifs, ands, or buts about her sister, her twin, the one at least other people confused her with.
As he approached his destination, he saw two women standing at the door, though they still appeared blurry in the evening glare. Now facing the horror, he, too, stopped in his tracks. His eyes alone, switching back and forth, saw two women rather than one, or two sweethearts that were a dreadful optical illusion. The well-groomed man was rendered speechless, for he saw the truth of what moments before the grocer had revealed. Bloodcurdling copies!, in front of him. The nerve! Why was the secret kept from him till now? Because of his proposal? What he’d thought in the square was now visible, the sister who is not and who is, and, which one was which? So he asked with drab diffidence:
“Who is Constitución?”
“That would be me,” said one.
“Not so, I’m Co
nstitución.”
“Lies! You wish you were, but I’m the real one.”
“Don’t start in with your jokes. I am Oscar’s fiancée.”
“But last week he proposed to me.”
“Anyway, he asked both of us.”
“Don’t you get it? He asked me.”
“That’s what you think, but I’m the one he asked.”
And there they were, rattling on and on to each other, throwing poisoned darts back and forth, while Dapper Dan turned ashen with anticipation and fear. Their coarse barbs nurtured his silence, his face turned more green than yellow, then red, as they continued with their: “That’s a lie, you are not.” “I’m Constitución.” “My God, you are such a liar.” And when his choler had reached its peak: his pallor turned purplish, like an overripe fig that bursts when it falls from the tree:
“Enough! … You’re disgusting. You pair of old hags!”
And Oscar turned on his heels and stomped away in a huff, clenching his fists, and he still heard behind him the twins’ pitiless giggles. He tried to understand the hoax or the rejection as an awkward business venture gone bad. He happened to hear a question, who knows if caustic or hopeful:
“But you’ll come next Sunday, won’t you?”
A paradox if ever there was one! but for him: to turn and look back meant to see himself petrified in memory, or rather: to see in a trance all that’s twisted turned to salt: the saltiness of love set adrift, though the man was pretty darn tough, being a real rancher and all, despite the suit. What a mistake it would be to turn around! Not even tears made sense, and getting drunk in order to cry his eyes out, even less. Nor was it the right moment to let out a self-congratulatory whoop for having escaped the clutches of that traitorous pair. The good part was the opposite and absolutely cold-blooded: he could now say to himself: “The fight was well fought, but was for naught.” Yes, a range of inferences would restore his precious feelings, which were already beginning to point in new directions. And his figure was shrinking, his ridiculed figure, while behind him, the two watched him depart, feeling somehow or other—now that they’d had their fun—a certain pity, especially the real sweetheart, who, driven perhaps by perfidy or sentimentality, took two steps forward, as if still seeking some kind of communion. But no, he kept walking away: a fluke: as he’d come. Constitución trembled: a sigh escaped her and opened a path through the clouds, then thundered beyond … Gloria took her arm and pulled gently, as if with a restrained caress.
“Please, dear sister, stop watching. Let’s go home.”
/
The usual: from then on: split down the middle, bound together by loyalties that reject the nectars and passions offered by a choir of voices that don’t project very far. The universe, theirs from now on, might just as well be reduced to the stitching of seams whenever the scissors makes as straight a cut as possible. The thread is what moves forward and in the end holds the pieces together. All threads are proxies and break haphazardly or on a whim. It’s worth going back and forth because then somehow a plait is made, edges are wedded, new beginnings forged, the centers are set on fire, and it is one in two or two by now in one. To toil on the back of similitude, of simultaneity. Interior toil that might be a portrayal—probably wanting but felicitous nonetheless—whose subsequent effect would be to create something radiant and unique out of things and thoughts, and perhaps as a bonus: with a double meaning that insinuates still others.
Along with that: daily sisterhood, sewing, the mirror: hidden vanities invented in silence in order to be intentionally expressed, thus to live believing that they vanish and that to affirm them brings a truce that lasts from one minute to the next. We are two peas in a pod—they would later say—that want to be one. Hence, to continue to dress the same was already a boon, the makeup, too, the same haircut, and the same understanding. And if—moving forward to a few months hence—one of the two had an urge to go to Múzquiz out of a moment of vain faith in gradual differentiation, she’d quickly desist, or rather: the topic no longer mattered.
Also: whenever Constitución remembered Oscar, his huge restaurant, the weaning of she-goats, the fattening of swine, the lingering kisses there in the walnut grove, she would suddenly feel nostalgic and go look for that scrap of paper—the one she secretly stashed in one place after another and on which was written his address: the one in Ciudad Frontera. She did this secretly to avoid problems with her sister … Bah, in any case it never was more than an ephemeral game that flamed up and fizzled out like a dud … Then came a bitter day when she wanted to completely erase all the yesterdays. She took the blessed scrap of paper and, standing precisely in the spot where they had once burned those petulant letters from their aunt, lit a match to it. The address took flight: a warm and passing breeze, no longer worth even a peek.
Speaking of their aunt: in the last few months, no letters had come: nothing, not even one. As if the aforementioned had died, or as if she had no chance to write from heaven.
Looking back, it all boiled down to an auspicious sign that they should again come to terms with being twins who crawl into their shell.
What they’d always been: the passion to be one that never fully is: two, here, so many things. Fusion refashioned.
To dance, to laugh, and, to get drunk: why not? Perchance, to sing: music and labyrinths! … Moreover, the real: greeting their customers, then cheerfully dispatching them. Right? But the shop needed spiffing up. Decorations? What kind? In the meantime: whitewash the walls, cover them with doohickeys and photos of nearby locales they snapped with their camera: Sunday outings. And the famous sign … RESTRICT YOUR CONVERSATION TO THE BUSINESS AT HAND …, once and for all take it down and open themselves up to others, give themselves over more fully to the fabrications that come and go day in and day out; but once they did that, there was suddenly someone who boldly asked one of them point blank:
“Hey, what about that boyfriend I don’t know which one of you had? Where is he, what happened to him? Because … Nobody in town has seen him again.”
“Oh, don’t even ask … It’s too painful … He was killed a few months ago on a bus in the north. A horrible accident, very close to Múzquiz,” one of them said.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry for even asking; thing is, I didn’t know, and to tell the truth, I don’t think anybody in town does … Poor you … As far as I understood it, you were going to get married, weren’t you? … Well, my heart goes out to you. But, if I’d known sooner, I would have brought flowers.”
Death is a good excuse: a good dodge: marvelous lie or harsh reality … Otherwise, everything the same: putting pieces together with the same zeal: tendrils of perfectionism. Tailoring and dressmaking to the point of shuddering, like pretending to live in the ambiguous present believing they are one: morning, noon, and night: a circle: vicious or not: that still tries to spin: just because: however possible: as time goes by.
DANIEL SADA was born in Mexicali, Mexico, in 1953, and died in 2011, in Mexico City. Considered by many the boldest and most innovative writer in Spanish of his generation, he published eight volumes of short stories, nine novels, and three volumes of poetry. His works have been translated into English, German, French, Dutch, Finnish, Bulgarian, and Portuguese. He was the recipient of numerous prizes, including the Herralde Prize for his novel Almost Never. Just hours before he died, he was awarded Mexico’s most prestigious literary award, the National Prize for Arts and Sciences for Literature.
KATHERINE SILVER is an award-winning translator of Spanish and Latin American literature. Some of her most recent translations include works by Horacio Castellanos Moya and César Aira. She is director of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre in Canada and lives in Berkeley, California.
The text of One Out of Two is set in Arno Pro. Book design by Rachel Holscher. Composition by Bookmobile Design & Digital Publisher Services, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Manufactured by Versa Press on acid-free, 30 percent postconsumer wastepaper.