Time Commences in Xibalbá

by Luis de Lión

  But there is one man in the town, under the roof of a crumbling little thatched hut, way up the road on the way out to the sticks. At the very moment she starts to think about him, he is lying there, also naked, also awake, also thinking; he has his hand on his member, stroking it, pulling down the little cap of flesh that works like a little coat for his mushroom; sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, sometimes he changes his mind and takes away his hand, pulls it back, puts it up to his nose, smells, takes in the scent of the sea on that beach that is his hand; and then goes back to his regular, nocturnal routine. On other occasions he has looked for an appropriately sized hole, in a bottle, in the backside of a goat; other times, without realizing it, dead asleep, he feels the blanket brush against him and he erupts; he wakes up and feels his underwear flooded with liquid electricity—white, cold, sticky. He is also fantasizing.

  She is thinking about him, but he isn’t thinking about her. He knows that she exists, he knows that in a certain place in the town, in the white house, there is a woman, but he isn’t thinking about her. But now that she has finished her list, she remembers him. She remembers something her folks used to tell her about the two of them. And without putting on her silk panties—the ones she used to enjoy so much when she would feel them being taken off of her slowly—she throws on a simple undershirt, a slip, and the old shawl that, as a child, she used to wrap her dolls up in—dolls that were corncobs wrapped in rags, or just sticks.

  It’s around midnight.

  Her husband is sleeping—he doesn’t notice her; or if he does notice, he is playing the fool. He does notice, because he turns over, looks at the shadow that has just finished putting on its underwear; he guesses where she’s going, but he doesn’t say anything to her; he turns back over, facing the wall, and wraps himself more snugly in the blankets; she blows out the candle, crosses the floor, opens the door to the bedroom, closes it without worrying about the noise it makes, walks across the patio, opens the door to the street, closes it, goes out onto the street, and steps into the night.

  But . . .

  It’s bullshit that that year the lightning bolts had whipped the sky so hard that its blue skin had turned black, scarred as though from a bad case of acne; and that during that whole winter, no longer able to bear its dead blood, the sky, in order to go on living up there above, had to pierce its own body and let its ooze of dead life fall onto the earth—over the whole face of the earth, in torrents, as though the clouds were huge drainage pipes that completely emptied it out; erasing the houses, the town, the roads, the fields as though they had been drawn with a pencil; sweeping away the people until there was nothing left of them but pieces of rags, a random sandal here or there, broken bones, strips of rotten meat hanging in the branches of the trees or on the edges of the canyons that had just been ripped open like wounds. And that, when the winter finished, the sky that remained was a different one, one that got so close to the earth that it almost brushed against it, clean, cloudless, stretched wide open like the eye of an Indian, brilliant, terrible like the concave glass at the bottom of a bottle that the rays of the sun plunge through like burning embers. It’s bullshit that it was at precisely midday of that summer day—at the exact moment when it all turns and starts heading back toward winter, that moment when the sun heats the earth up most and it gets directly into people’s eyes, shining straight down into the belly and setting ablaze the forest of the womb.

  It was bullshit what her folks had always told her, that it had been at that exact moment that they both were conceived. Bullshit that before they were born, they were already searching for each other, that they themselves had drawn their respective parents together so that they would make love, so that they would make them, so that they would bring them into the world. Bullshit that, while they were growing up, they would look at each other, seek each other out, want each other. She remembered. Bullshit that their parents had noticed that they couldn’t stand their aching desire anymore and that they were only waiting until they were old enough to marry them off. Bullshit because it hadn’t mattered to her when he went off to the army. Bullshit because it hadn’t mattered at all to him when he found out that she was going to get married. They looked at each other, yes; they wanted each other, sure; but like any man and woman look at each other or want each other; not like anyone special.

  But right now, if she wants him, it’s simply because she believes he’s the only one who can give her what she needs, what no one has ever given her; not because she loves him. That’s all it is; and that’s why she goes looking for him.

  But he is also waiting for her.

  —Son of a . . . ¿who is it?

  She’s already opened the door, the entrance from the street; she’s already let herself in, now she’s penetrated the patio, the hall of the little house; she’s knocked one, two, three times on the bedroom door; now her vagina is trembling. Now she believes she’s going to reach the total, definitive orgasm, the ultimate one. Now she has heard what he asked her and she answers:

  — . . . ¿who me?

  Her: her voice is familiar to him. Not that other one: its voice has to be strange to him; it must be another voice. This voice is audible; it can be heard, it sounds nice. Not the voice of the other one, the one that cuts right through the body like gonorrhea, leaving only bones, and dust.

  —Concha, ¿right?

  —Yeah, it’s me Concha. I’ve come looking for you.

  Tonight he hasn’t wanted to reach orgasm alone. He has been sliding his foreskin up and down, again and again; but then he’d just hold up right on the edge, halfway there. He was right at the point when he was about to spill the milk from his, as yet fruitless, tree when he again found himself waiting. ¿For who? ¿For her? No. He doesn’t think about her: he remembers her now that he hears her voice, but nothing more.

  The roosters start to crow.

  Somewhere a dog barks.

  Over there in the town, a baby cries.

  And he comes out of the room. He’s naked; he is like a living sun that is hoping to light up the night. No, he isn’t waiting for her.

  —Run along now.

  He is naked, she is naked; his member is tense, her vagina is trembling.

  —I mean it. Run along.

  And a chill runs through her body; she wishes she had brought all of her clothes, all of the blankets; wishes she had put on both the silk panties and wrapped a burlap sack around her, too; wishes she had put a firebrand up inside herself, to burn herself for ever, to bring cancer to her womb and die.

  —Run along now. You’re not the woman I’m waiting for.

  Yes, he’s waiting for the other one. For this one that’s here, only if she dies, then if she comes back years later, if her dust pulls itself back together, if that dust forms her bones again, if, with those bones, she walks.

  —Run along, then. That’s what you have a husband for, you shitty whore.

  And, beneath the sound of the crowing roosters, and the dog—now the dogs—that keep barking; and thinking that, in those huts she is passing, the women are cuddled up to their men, drained, satisfied, dreamless; and while somewhere in the town another kid is crying and maybe his mom wakes up, changes his wet diaper, takes her swollen tittie full of milk out of her nightshirt, puts it close
to his little mouth, and he starts to suck on it voraciously, somewhere between sleep and hunger; and while two men lie awake, one waiting ¿for whom? and the other watching the night, she goes back ¿home?

  And she pushes open the front gate, crosses the patio, pushes open the door to the altar room where the saints are, goes into the bedroom, and throws herself down on the bed. Suddenly she remembers: there’s one other man she hasn’t had. And she takes off her undershirt, her slip; she inches her way up from the bed; without making the slightest sound she crawls across the floor to the edge of his bed, slowly gets up and throws herself on top of the man who appears to be sleeping, seems to be snoring.

  But the man immediately senses that another mouth is on him, robbing him of his oxygen, and he defends himself.

  It’s a violent fight, tense; he’s shaking from suffocation, breathless, drenched in the hot sweat pouring from her face, drenched in the cold sweat pouring from his own face. He’s not a man, she thinks.

  He is also thinking the same thing she is thinking about him. And, mute and frozen, he begins to yield. Because now he feels how her hands have loosened his belt; how they’ve undone his pants; how they’re inside his underwear; and how the cold sweat is heating up on him now, electrifying him. But when he feels that she’s taking down his underwear with the other hand and taking his member and putting it between her legs, he still manages to say:

  —Concha, don’t be such a whore.

  And his words have the desired effect: she lets go of his member, and stares at him. It’s the first time she’s heard a word like that come out of his mouth. She had been frantically hot and now a chill comes over her. But she recovers right away; she says to him what she had already been thinking and what he had guessed she was thinking:

  —It’s like you’re not even a man, vos.

  She shouldn’t have said it. The little Juan, the one six inches below his waist, shrivels up, and the big Juan goes stone cold.

  —Please—she says to him, almost crying. Her words are born of need.

  Outside, again the roosters are crowing and the dogs keep barking.

  She has backed away from him, but all the while she keeps looking at him and talking to him. She waits. She thinks that something is going to happen all of a sudden. But what follows is only silence. So she throws herself onto him once more, burning him.

  And he senses that he’s not going to be able to resist anymore, that he won’t be able to stand it. And he throws her off with one shove, leaps out of bed while she’s still rolling head over heels across the room; he runs out, opens the door, keeps running; not long after, he comes back.

  —Concha, let me sleep.

  But he’s already gotten his message across. There is no need to make a show of the machete he’s got in his hand anymore. Now he doesn’t need to brandish it, to show for the first time in his life that he is capable of killing—that he is not a man of peace.

  When she sees what he has in his hand, she picks herself up from the floor, astonished; but, without saying a word, she goes out of the bedroom to the kitchen. When she gets there, she picks up the bottle of kerosene, takes off the top, and pours a little of the liquid over the dead coals; then she lights a match and lets it drop. It catches fire immediately, and, little by little, the charred wood turns the color of wounded flesh. Standing alone in front of the fire, first she lets out a sigh, then she sobs quietly. After a short while, she picks up the piece of firewood with the reddest embers burning on the other end and comes back to the room, opens the door, looks into the darkness, and stops.

  Hidden beneath the blankets, trembling like a rat, he opens his little eyes as wide as he can. He is afraid. The machete is also trembling in his hand. The blade feels sorrow that its edge is about to get all nicked up in her bones; it wishes it were some blunt tool instead. But it will have to stain itself with blood either way.

  But she just lies down on the floor, opens her legs, wields the glowing piece of firewood, and, little by little, as though it were a member, she slowly puts it up inside herself; puts it inside without a whimper.

  The smell of seared flesh fills the white house.

  After a while, as he drifts off to sleep, the stench of singed hair and scorched flesh mixes with the perfume of the flowers in the patio and spills out over the village.

  Yeah, it’s the same old shit as always in this town: the priest who comes to say mass may be a different one, but he has the same old Spaniard face; and the church bells may have been wearing themselves out for centuries, but they don’t crack; and nobody dares to say a bad word about God, or his mother, or their son. Piece of shit town: it can’t even invent a new street, or a new last name, or a new face; or even a new way to fall in love, or to get drunk, or to dress. Okay, so you’re looking for a certain house, you can go into any of them: they’re all the same. You’re looking for a certain person, but it might as well be the first woman that happens to cross your path, who you know everything about; and you could ask for another woman, but even if the one you ask for is dead, it still seems like she’s alive because the one in front of you is the same; everybody still knows everything there is to know about her and nobody has forgotten her; not even a new birth can be a new story because it’s like the life of the dead person just repeats itself in the newborn one.

  Yeah, ever since the village church—little by little, like an immobile and nameless bird that came into the world without needing to be hatched from an egg, and whose bones were born first, then its flesh, and finally its feathers until it stood there like a living fossil—slowly emerged from its foundations and, at last, got the finishing touch when it was painted as white as a Castilian pigeon, and the little thatched huts sprang up all around it like little hatchlings, nothing has ever happened in this town.

  And every once in a while, suddenly, the pealing of the bells rips through the cloth of dead air hanging over the village and rips through the hailmarymostpureconceivedwithoutsin coming from behind some coffin—as though pushing the mumbled prayer so that it swirls off in the dust.

  And, also every once in a while, suddenly, one flooded river or another, pouring down from the volcano, washes away some houses and leaves a few dead; and the people, with those same faces and those same last names, foolishly rebuild those same little thatched houses and replace the dead with some new little people.

  And, also every once in a while, suddenly, some plague—whooping cough, measles, tuberculosis, famine—takes the kids, the grownups, the old, for whom it is no longer necessary to live; but it’s natural, just like that, same as it’s always been.

  And it was to this town that you came back, vos; you, the one who left your umbilical cord buried here and took your life with you; the one who came back to die with your umbilical cord but who left the best part of your life on the other side; vos, who came back with your eyes so full of the world—that hated world, that Ladino* world, where you were the target of discrimination; vos, the one who is dying of tedium here, sprawled out on your straw bedroll nearly every day and every night, rotting from hangovers while you wait for ¿who?, ¿who are you waiting for? People knock on your door out in the street but you don’t go to see who’s there. Whoever it is, can just come on in, push through the door, walk in, come on back to ¿me?, surprise you in your waiting,
catch you with your hands in the dough: stroking your member, masturbating, cumming, coming to the end of you; vos, today is Sunday, and you are going out. You have lost hope that she’ll come ¿who? You don’t know who and that’s why you lose hope and you go out of the house and you want to leave once and for all, but you know that you could die somewhere else and you want to be buried alongside your mother, in her arms, in her arms of dust; you want to return to her womb of dust until you become, once more, her child of dust; her embryo of dust, until you are the nothing of dust with her.

  Yes, you lose hope and you want to leave town, but you don’t. Maybe you better just go out to the street.

  It’s Sunday. The bells are calling the town to mass. It’s seven in the morning. And today it doesn’t even occur to you to go get rid of your hangover. Instead a desire comes over you to go to church. No, vos, you don’t believe in what the priest says; you’re the only one who actually thinks, who realizes things are different than that. You only want to go look at the ladies.

  (He stood in the doorway of the church, there at the back, in the area where those people kneel, those who only go to church to judge the people who go all the way in. Alone, his eyes wide open, dressed in old, old clothes made of wrinkled burlap; he set about looking at all the ladies who came in, one by one, examining them, measuring the size of their tushes, calculating the firmness of their tits, imagining how sweet they might be between the legs, searching their faces for a hint of experience. However, he saw them exactly as he had always imagined them in his absence: common, run-of-the-mill, with long hair, bare feet: Indians.