Constancia and Other Stories for Virgins

by Carlos Fuentes

  She would be the hostess. La Desdichada is receiving guests, and she will receive them in her robe, like a grand French courtesan, like a geisha, like a great English lady in her castle, taking advantage of her privilege of eccentricity to act freely.

  Bernardo

  Who sent these dried flowers an hour before dinner?

  Who could it be?

  Toño

  Not many people came to the dinner. Well, fine, not many people would fit in our apartment, but Bernardo and I felt that a huge party with lots of people, the kind that’s usually given in Mexico (there are so many solitudes to overcome: more than in other places), might give the event an orgiastic tone. Secretly, I would have liked to have seen La Desdichada lost in a restless, even a mean crowd: I nourished the fantasy that, surrounded by a mass of indifferent bodies, hers would cease to be so: moved about, handled, passed from hand to hand, a party animal, she would go on being a mannequin but nobody would know: she would be just like everyone else.

  Everyone would greet her, ask her name, what she did, wish her well, and quickly move on to chat with the next person, convinced that she had replied to his questions, how spiritual, how clever!

  —My name is La Desdichada. I am a professional model. I’m not paid for my work.

  The fact is, only three men accepted our invitation. You had to be curious to accept an invitation like ours on Monday night, at the beginning of the school week. It didn’t surprise us that two of our guests were fellows from aristocratic families whose fortunes had been reduced in those years of tumult and confusion. Nothing lasts longer than half a century in Mexico, except the poor and the priests. Bernardo’s family, which was very influential when the Liberals were in power back in the nineteenth century, does not have an ounce of influence today, and the families of Ventura del Castillo and Arturo Ogarrio, who obtained their power under the Porfirio Díaz dictatorship, had now lost theirs as well. The violent history of Mexico is a great leveler. The person who’s on top one day shows up the next, not on the heights, but in the flats: the mid-level middle-class plateau composed mainly of the impoverished remnants of short-lived aristocracies. Ventura del Castillo, self-proclaimed “new poor,” was more afraid of being middle-class than he was of being poor. The way he escaped was by being eccentric. He was the school clown, something his appearance helped him in. At twenty, he was fat and prim, with a tuft of hair over his lip, red cheeks, and the eyes of a lovesick sheep behind a ubiquitous monocle. His role-playing allowed him to rise above the humiliating aspects of his social decline; his exaggerated style, instead of making him a laughingstock at school, earned him a startled respect; he rejected the melodrama of the fallen family; with less justification he accepted the idea, still in vogue, of the “fallen woman,” and, no doubt, when he walked into our apartment, that’s what he thought Bernardo and I were exhibiting: a cheap Nana, taken from one of the red-light nightclubs that everyone, aristocrat or not, then frequented. Ventura had his commentary ready and the presence of La Desdichada gave him license to say:

  —Melodrama is simply comedy without humor.

  Our friend was not disturbed by La Desdichada’s appearance, wrapped in her Chinese dressing gown, her unchanging painted face giving her a rather Orozcoan look (Expressionist, we called it then), but it carried his innate sense of the grotesque to new heights. Wherever he went, Ventura became the festive center of attention, eating his monocle at dinner. Everyone suspected that his eyeglass was made of gelatin; when he swallowed it, he made such an outrageous noise that everyone ended up laughing, repelled and pained, until the wag ended his joke by rinsing his mouth with beer and eating, as a sort of dessert, the flower eternally in his buttonhole—a daisy, no less.

  For all that, the encounter between Ventura del Castillo and La Desdichada resulted in a sort of unexpected standoff: we were confronting him with someone who was vastly more eccentric than he was. He looked at her and asked us with his eyes, Is she a dummy, or is she a splendid actress? Is she La Duse with an expressionless face? Bernardo and I looked at each other. We didn’t know if Ventura was going to see us, and not La Desdichada, as the eccentrics of the affair, challenging our fat friend’s supremacy.

  —Such rakes you chaps are! laughed the lad, who affected the verbal mannerisms of Madrid.

  —She’s a paralytic for sure!

  Arturo Ogarrio, by contrast, wasn’t as lighthearted about his family’s decline. Having to study with the masses at San Ildefonso Prep annoyed him; he never resigned himself to losing his chance to enroll at Sandhurst in England, as two preceding generations of his family had done. His bitterness showed in his face. He saw everything that took place in this world of “reality” with a kind of poisonous clarity.

  —What we left behind was a fantasy—he told me once, as if I were the cause of the Mexican Revolution and he—noblesse oblige—had to thank me for opening his eyes.

  Severely dressed, all in dark gray, with a waistcoat, stiff collar, and black tie, bearing the grief of a lost time, Arturo Ogarrio had no trouble seeing what was going on: it was a gag, a wooden dummy presiding over a dinner of prep students where a pair of friends with literary inclinations were throwing down the gauntlet to the imagination of Arturo Ogarrio, new citizen of the republic of reality.

  —Are you going to join our game? Yes or no?

  His face was extremely pale, thin, without lips, but with the brilliant eyes of the frustrated aesthete, frustrated because he identified art with leisure, and since he didn’t have the one, he couldn’t conceive of having the other. He refused to be a dilettante; perhaps that is all we offered him: a breach of quotidian reality, an unimportant aesthetic diversion. He was almost contemptuous of us. I considered that something I could interpret as his refusal of concessions, like his rejection of dilettantism. He would not take sides—reality or fantasy. He would judge matters on their own merits and respond to the initiatives of the others. He crossed his arms and watched us with a severe smile.

  The third guest, Teófilo Sánchez, was the school’s professional bohemian: poet and painter, singer of traditional melodies. He must have seen old engravings or recent films, or simply have heard somewhere that the painter wears a floppy hat and a cape, and the poet long hair and florid neckwear. To be different, Teófilo chose to wear a railroad engineer’s shirt without a tie, and a short jacket, and he went about with his head uncovered (in that age of the obligatory hat, his head appeared offensively naked, it was practically shaved, in a cut that at that time was associated with German schools or the lowest class of army recruits). His careless features, resembling a loaf of rye before it’s put in the oven, his lively raisin eyes, the spontaneous abundance of his poetic language, seemed a commentary on Ventura’s remark, which I had rewarded with a sour smile a moment before: Melodrama is comedy without humor.

  Was that remark directed at me, since I was still writing little chronicles of the fait-divers of the capital and the minor poetry, unquestionably vulgar, of the popular dance hall, the tart, and the pimp, the couples of the barrio, jealousy and betrayal, abandoned gardens and sleepless nights? Don’t overlook the classical statues in the gardens and the forgotten idols in the basements, Bernardo commented very seriously. Ventura laughed at Teófilo because Teófilo wanted to provoke laughter. Arturo saw Teófilo as what Teófilo was and would be: a youthful curiosity, but a disappointment as an older man.

  What was the bard of bohemia going to do, once we each sat down with our cuba libres, but improvise some awful verses on the subject of our lady, sitting there wordlessly? We saw Arturo’s grimace of disdain and Ventura took advantage of Teófilo’s sigh to laugh good-naturedly and say that this donna immobile would be the best Tancredo at a bullfight. Too bad that woman, inventor of the art of bullfighting in Crete (who continued to delight circus audiences as écuyère), is not able to play the central role in the modern bullring. The man who plays the Tancredo—the fat, rosy-cheeked Ventura began his imitation, first licking his rosebud lips and then ano
inting a finger with saliva and dramatically running it over his eyebrows—is put in the center of the ring—so—and doesn’t budge for anything—so—because his life depends on it. His future movement depends on his present immobility—he stood stock-still in front of La Desdichada—as the gate opens—so—and the bull—so—is released and seeks movement, the bull is attracted by the movement of the other, and there is Tancredo, unmoving, and the bull doesn’t know what to do, he awaits a movement, an excuse to ape and attack it: Ventura del Castillo motionless before La Desdichada, who is sitting between Bernardo and me, Arturo standing, watching what is going on with the most correct cynicism, Teófilo confused, his words starting to burst out, his inspiration starting to perish: his hands in front of him, his pose and his speech suspended by Ventura’s frozen act, the perfect Tancredo, rigid in the center of the ring, defying the fierce bull of the imagination.

  Our friend had been converted into the mirror image of the wooden dummy. Bernardo was sitting on La Desdichada’s right and I on the mannequin’s left. Silence, immobility.

  Then we heard a sigh and we all turned to look at her. Her head fell to the side, onto my shoulder. Bernardo stood up trembling, he looked at her huddled there, resting on my shoulder—so—and took her by the shoulders—so—so—and shook her, I didn’t know what to do, Teófilo babbled something, and Ventura was true to his game. The bull was attacking and he, how could he move? It would be suicide, caramba!

  I defended La Desdichada, I told Bernardo to calm down.

  —You’re hurting her, you prick!

  Arturo Ogarrio let his arms drop and said: Let’s go, I think we are intruding on the private lives of these people.

  —Good night, madam, he said to La Desdichada, who was being held up with one arm supported by Bernardo, the other by me. —Thank you for your exquisite hospitality. I hope to repay it one of these days.

  Toño and Bernardo

  How would you prefer to die? Do you see yourself crucified? Tell me if you would like to die like Him. Would you dare? Would you ask for a death like His?

  Bernardo

  I watched La Desdichada for hours, taking advantage of the heavy sleep Toño fell into after dinner.

  She had returned, still in her Chinese dressing gown, to her place at the head of the table; I studied her in silence.

  Her sculptor had given her a face of classic features, a straight nose and nicely spaced eyes, not as round as those of most mannequins of the time, who looked like caricatures, especially since they were usually given fan-shaped eyelashes. The black eyes of La Desdichada, on the other hand, were melancholy: the lengthened lids, like a lizard’s, gave her that quality. In contrast, the mannequin’s mouth, tiny, tight, and painted to look like a ribbon, could be that of any store-window dummy. Her chin, again, was different, a little prognathous, like that of a Spanish princess. She also had a long neck, perfect for those old garments that buttoned to the ear, as the poet López Velarde wrote. La Desdichada had, in fact, a neck for all ages: childish nakedness, then silk mufflers, finally pearl chokers.

  I say “her sculptor,” knowing that this face is neither artistic nor human because it is a mold, repeated a thousand times and distributed in shops all over the world. They say that store mannequins are the same in Mexico and Japan, in black Africa and the Arab world. The model is Occidental and everyone accepts it. Nobody had seen, in 1936, a Chinese or black mannequin. While they always stay within the classic mold, there are differences: some mannequins laugh and others don’t. La Desdichada does not smile; her wooden face is an enigma. But that is only because I am disposed to see it that way, I admit. I see what I want to see and I want to see it because I am reading and translating a poem by Gérard de Nerval in which grief and joy are like fugitive statues, words whose perfection is in the immobility of the statue and the awareness that such paralysis is ultimately also its imperfection: its undoing. La Desdichada is not perfect: she lacks a finger and I don’t know if it was cut off purposely or if it was an accident. Mannequins do not move, but are moved rather carelessly.

  Bernardo and Toño

  He throws me a challenge: Do you dare take her out on the street, on your arm? Take her to dine at Sanborns, how about that? Test your social status, let them see you in a theater, a church, a reception, with La Desdichada at your side, mute, her gaze fixed, without even a smile, what would they say of you? Expose yourself to ridicule for her. I wouldn’t count on it, friend: you wouldn’t do anything of the sort. You only want to keep her here at home, for you alone if possible (do you think that I don’t know how to read your glances, your looks of violent impotence?); otherwise, the three of us together. Whereas I will take her out. I’ll take her out for a stroll. You’ll see. As soon as she recovers from your abuse, I’ll show her off everywhere, she is so alive, I mean, she seems alive, just look, our friends were almost fooled, they greeted her, they said goodbye to her. Is it only a game? Then let the game continue, because if enough people play it, it will cease to be one, and then, then maybe everyone will see her as a living woman, and then, then, what if the miracle occurs and she really comes to life? Let me give that chance to this … to our woman, that’s right, our woman. I’m going to give her that chance. I think then she can be mine alone. What if she comes to life and says: I prefer you, because you had faith in me, and not the other, you took me out and he was embarrassed, you took me to a party and he was afraid of being laughed at.

  Toño

  She whispered in my ear, in a rasping tone: How would you like to die? Do you see yourself with a crown of thorns? Don’t cover your ears. Do you long to possess me and are you unable to think of a death that will make me adore you? Then I will tell you what I will do with you, Toño, tony Toño!

  Bernardo

  La Desdichada had a very bad night. She groaned dreadfully. I had to watch her closely.

  Toño

  I see my face in the mirror, on waking. It is scratched. I rush to look at her. We spent the night together, I explored her minutely, like a real lover. I didn’t leave a centimeter of her body unexamined. But when I saw my own wound I went back for another look, to discover what I saw last night and then forgot. La Desdichada has two invisible furrows in her painted cheeks. No tears flow over these hidden wounds, repaired rather carelessly by the mannequin maker. But something flowed down that surface once.

  Bernardo

  I remembered that I didn’t ask him to buy her or bring her here, I only asked him to look at her, that was all, it wasn’t my idea to bring her here, it was his, but that doesn’t mean you have the right of possession, I saw her first, I don’t know what I’m saying, it doesn’t matter, she must prefer me to my friend, she has to prefer me, I’m better-looking than you, I’m a better writer than you, I’m … Don’t threaten me, you bastard! Don’t raise your hand to me! I know how to defend myself, don’t forget that, you know that perfectly well, asshole! I’m not maimed, I’m not wooden, I’m not …

  —You’re a child, Bernardo. But your perversity is part of your poetic charm. Beware of old age! To be puerile and senile at the same time: avoid that! Try to age gracefully—if you can.

  —And what about you, asshole?

  —Don’t worry. I’ll die before you do.

  Bernardo and Toño

  When I was carrying her, she whispered to me secretly: Look at me. Think of me, naked. Think of all the clothes I have left behind, every place I’ve lived. A shawl here, a skirt there, combs and pins, brooches and crinolines, gorgets and gloves, satin slippers, evening dresses of taffeta and lamé, daytime clothes of silk and linen, riding boots, straw hats and felt hats, fur stoles and lizard-skin belts, pearl and emerald teardrops, diamonds strung on white gold, perfumes of sandalwood and lavender, eyebrow pencils, lipstick, baptismal clothes, wedding gowns, mourning clothes: be capable of dressing me, my love, cover my naked body, chipped, broken: I want nine rings of moonstone, Bernardo (you said to me in your most secret voice); will you bring them to me? you won’t let m
e die of cold, will you be able to steal these things?, she laughed suddenly, because you don’t have a dime, right, you’re just a poor poet without a pot to piss in, she laughed like crazy and I dropped her, Toño ran over to us furious, you’re hopeless, he said, you’re an ass, even though she’s only a mannequin, why did you have me get her if you’re going to mistreat her this way? You’re a hopeless bastard, a shithead forever, how could anyone put up with you, much less make any sense of you!

  —She wants to dress luxuriously.

  —Find her a millionaire to keep her and take her on his yacht.

  Toño

  We haven’t spoken for several days. We have allowed the tension of the other night to solidify, turn bitter, because we don’t want to say the word: jealousy. I am a coward. There is something more important than our ridiculous passions. I should have had the courage to tell you, Bernardo, she is a very delicate woman and she can’t be treated that way. I have had to put her down in my bed and the shaking of her hands is awful. She can’t live and sleep standing up, like a horse. Quick. I’ve fixed her some chicken soup and rice. She thanks me with her ancient look. How ashamed you must be of your reaction the day of the party. Your tantrums are pretty ridiculous. Now you leave us alone all the time and sometimes don’t come home to sleep. Then she and I hear the music of a mariachi in the distance, coming through the open window. We can’t tell where the sounds are coming from. But perhaps the most mysterious activity of Mexico City is playing the guitar alone the whole night long. La Desdichada sleeps, sleeps by my side.

  Bernardo

  My mother told me that if I ever needed the warmth of a home, I could visit my Spanish cousin Fernandita, who had a nice little house in Colonia del Valle. I would have to be discreet, Mother said. Cousin Fernandita is small and sweet, but her husband is a terror who takes revenge at home for his twelve hours a day behind a counter of imported wines, olive oil, and La Mancha cheeses. The house smells of it, though cleaner: when you walk in, you feel as if someone just ran water, soap, and a broom over every corner of that pastel-colored stucco Mediterranean villa set in a grove of pines in the Valley of Anáhuac.