—Poor, señor, but proud.
He looked over my shoulder, waved. I followed his look. Marco Aurelio in his white shirt and his black pants was rubbing his chin, resting against the door of the house. I got up, thanked the old man, brushed the dirt from my rear, and walked toward Marco Aurelio. I knew that, from then on, it would be nothing but loafers for me.
6
That night I had a terrifying dream that those people would stay here forever, renewing themselves again and again, generation after generation, without concern for any one individual destiny, least of all that of a little half-elegant lawyer: the canny dandy of Las Lomas de Chapultepec. They could hold out until I died. But I still couldn’t understand how my death would avenge that of Dimas Palmero, who languished in preventive custody, waiting for the Mexican judicial tortoise to summon him to justice. Listen close. I said tortoise, not torture. That could take years, didn’t I know it. If they observed the law limiting the amount of time a man can be detained before being tried, Mexico would stop being what it always has been: a reign of influence, whim, and injustice. So I tell you, and you, like it or not, you have to listen. If I’m the prisoner of Las Lomas, you’re the prisoners of my telephones—you listen to me.
Don’t imagine I haven’t thought of all the ways I could make this my link to the outside, my Ariadne’s thread, my vox humana. I have a videotape I often watch, given the circumstances: poor Barbara Stanwyck lying paralyzed in bed, listening to the footsteps of the murderer climbing the stairs to kill her and take control of her millions (will it be her husband? suspense!), and she is trying to call the police and the telephone is out of order, a voice answering, sorry, wrong number … What a thriller! —La voix humaine, a French girlfriend told me … But this was not a Universal picture, only a modest Huaraches Films production, or some such totally asshole thing. All right, I know that I speak to you to take my mind off things for a while; don’t think, however, that I have ever stopped plotting my escape. It would be so easy, I tell myself, to go on strike, stop using my phones to make money, neglect my bank accounts, stop talking to you, to my public auditors, my stockbrokers … My immediate conclusion: these people wouldn’t give a fuck about my poverty. They are not here to take my cash. If I didn’t feed them, they would feed me. I suspect that this Morelos operation functions as efficiently as a Japanese assembly line. If I became poor, they would come to my assistance!
You are free as I was once, and you will understand when I say that, come what may, one doesn’t easily resign oneself to giving up one’s liberty just like that. Very well: they have sworn to kill me if I denounce them. But what if I managed to escape, hide, set the authorities on them from afar? Don’t try it, Don Nico, said my recovered jailer, Marco Aurelio, we are many, we will find you; he laughed: there are branches of the family in Los Angeles, in Texas, in Chicago, even in Paris and London, where rich Mexican señoras take their Agripinas, their Rudecindas, and their Dalmacias to work abroad … It wouldn’t surprise me to see some guy in a big sombrero get off a jumbo jet at Charles de Gaulle Airport and chop me to bits in the middle of Paris, laughing wickedly, brandishing the machete that dangles eternally from him like a spare penis. How I hated Marco Aurelio! How dare one of these cheap nacos talk so familiarly about General de Gaulle! That’s instant communications for you!
They knew my intentions. I took advantage of one of my parties to put on the overcoat and hat of a friend, without his noticing, and while everyone was drinking the last bottle of Taittinger (the pretext for the party) and eating exquisite canapés prepared by the block-shaped fat woman of the kitchen, Doña Lupe (a genius, that woman!), with the hat pulled down over my ears and my lapels turned up, I slipped through the door, which was open that night (and every night: you must realize that my jailers no longer imagined that I would escape, what for? if my life was the same as ever!—me inside with my parties and my telephones; they outside, invisible: as always!). As I say, they no longer locked the door. But I disguised myself and slipped through the door because I didn’t want to accept a sentence of confinement imposed by others. I did so without caring about success or failure. The door, freedom, the street, the jumbo to Paris, even if I was met there by Rudecinda, the cousin of Marco Aurelio, rolling pin in hand …
—You forgot to tie your shoes, Don Nico, said Marco Aurelio, holding high a tray heaped with canapés, looking at my feet, and blocking the way to the front door.
I laughed, sighed, took off the overcoat and the hat, returned to my guests.
I tried it several times, I wouldn’t give up, to keep my self-respect. But one time I couldn’t get beyond the garden, because the children, instinctively, surrounded me, forming a circle, and sang a play song to me. Another time, escaping at night by the balcony, I was hanging by my fingernails when I heard a group at my feet serenading me: it was my birthday and I had forgotten! Many happy returns, Don Nico, these are the years of your life that…! I was in despair: fifty springtimes in these circumstances! In desperation I resorted to Montecristo’s strategy: I feigned death, lying very stiff in my bed; not to give up, as I say, to touch all the bases. Marco Aurelio poured a bucket of cold water on me and I cried out, and he just stood there, saying: Don Nico, when you die on me, I’ll be the first to let you know, you can be sure. Will you cry for me, Marco Aurelio, you bastard? I was incensed! I thought first of poisoning my immediate jailers, the valet Marco Aurelio, the cubic cook, the Karloff car man; but not only did I suspect that others would rush in to replace them, I also feared (inconsistent of me!) that while the lawsuit against the miserable Dimas Palmero dragged on indefinitely, an action against me for poisoning my servants would be thunderous, scandalous, trumpeted in the press: Heartless Millionaire Poisons Faithful Servants! From time to time, a few fat morsels must be cast to the (nearly starved) sharks of justice … Besides, when I entered the kitchen, Doña Lupe was so kind to me: Do sit down, Don Nico, do you know what I’m fixing today? Can you smell it? Don’t you like your cheese and squash? Or would you rather have what we’re fixing ourselves, chilaquilitos in green sauce? This made my mouth water and made life seem bearable. The chauffeur and the boy sat down to eat with Doña Lupe and me, they told me stories, they were quite amusing, they made me remember, remember her …
So why didn’t I explain my situation to the girls who passed through my parties and my bed? What would they think of such a thing? Can you imagine the ridicule, the incredulity? So just leave when you want to, Nicolás, who’s going to stop you? But they’ll kill me, baby. Then I’m going to save you, I’m going to inform the police. Then they’ll kill you along with me, my love. Or would you rather live on the run, afraid for your life? Of course I never told them a thing, nor did they suspect anything. I was famous as a recluse. And they came to console me for the death of Lala. Into my arms, goddesses, for life is short, but the night is long.
7
I saw her. I tell you I saw her yesterday, in the garden.
8
I called a friend of mine, an influential man in the District Attorney’s office: What do you know about the case of my servant, Dimas Palmero? My friend stopped laughing and said: Whatever you want, Nicolás, is how we’ll handle it. You understand: if you like, we’ll keep him locked up without a trial until Judgment Day; if you prefer, we’ll move up the court date and try him tomorrow; if what you want is to see him free, that can be arranged, and, look, Nicolás, why play dumb, there are people who disappear, who just simply disappear. Whatever you like, I repeat.
Whatever I liked. I was on the point of saying no, this Dimas or Dimass or Dimwit or whatever he’s called isn’t the real problem, I’m the prisoner, listen, call my lawyer, have the house surrounded, make a big fuss, kill these bastards …
I thanked my friend for his offer and hung up without indicating a preference. What for? I buried my head in my pillow. There is nothing left of Lala, not even the aroma. I racked my brains thinking: What should I do? What solution have I overlooked? What possibilities
have I left in the inkwell? I had an inspiration; I decided to speed things up. I went down to the kitchen. It was the hour when Marco Aurelio, Doña Lupe, and the chauffeur with the face of the former president ate. The smell of pork in purslane came up the rococo stairway, stronger than the scent, ever fainter, of Lala—Eduardita, as they called her. I went down berating myself furiously: What was I thinking? Why this terrible helplessness? Why did I think only of myself, not of her, who was the victim, after all? I deserved what had happened to me; I was the prisoner of Las Lomas even before all this happened, I was imprisoned by my own habits, my comfortable life, my easy business deals, my even easier loves. But also—I said when my bare feet touched the cold tile of the living room—I was bound by a sort of devotion and respect for my lovers: I didn’t ask questions, I didn’t check out their stories:—I have no past, Nico, my life commenced the moment we met, and I might whistle a tune as my only comment, but that was all.
The three were sitting comfortably eating their lunch.
—May I? I inquired cordially.
Doña Lupe got up to prepare something for me. The two men didn’t budge, although Marco Aurelio waved for me to sit down. The presidential double merely looked at me, without blinking, from the imperturbable depths of his baggy eyes.
—Thank you. I came down just to ask a question. It occurred to me that what is important to you is not to keep me imprisoned here but to free Dimas. That’s right, isn’t it?
The cook served me an aromatic dish of pork with purslane, and I began to eat, looking at them. I had said the same thing that they had always said to me: You leave here the day our brother Dimas Palmero gets out of jail. Why now these little looks exchanged between them, this air of uncertainty, if I had only repeated what we all knew: the unwritten rule of our covenant? Give me statutory law; down with common law, which is subject to all sorts of interpretations and depends too much on the ethics and good sense of the people. But these peasants from Morelos must be, like me, inheritors of Roman law, where all that counts is what is written, not what is done or not done, even if it violates the letter of the law. The law, sirs, is august, and supersedes all exceptions. These people’s lands always had depended on a statute, a royal decree; and now I felt that my life also was going to depend on a written contract. I looked at the looks of my jailers as they looked at each other.
—Tell me if you are willing to put this in writing: The day that Dimas Palmero gets out of the pen, Nicolás Sarmiento goes free from Las Lomas. Agreed?
I began to lose confidence; they didn’t answer; they looked at each other, suspicious, tight-lipped, let me tell you, the faces of all three marked with a feline wariness; but hadn’t I merely asked them to confirm in writing what they had always said! Why this unforeseen suspicion all of a sudden?
—We’ve been thinking, Don Nico, said Marco Aurelio finally, and we have reached the conclusion that you could quickly arrange for our brother Dimas Palmero to be freed; then we let you go; but you could still play us a trick and have the law spread its net over Dimas again. —And over us, too, said the cook, not even sighing.
—That game has been played on us plenty, said the pale, baggy-eyed chauffeur gloomily, arranging his hair with his five-fingered comb.
—Come on, come on, the cook emphatically exhorted the electric stove, atavistically airing it with her hands and lips, as if it were a charcoal brazier. The old idiot!
—So what we’re willing to write down, Don Nico, is that you’ll be freed when you confess to the murder of Eduardita, so that our brother cannot be judged for a crime committed by another.
I won’t give them the pleasure of spitting out the pork (anyway, it’s quite tasty), or of spilling my glass of fermented pineapple juice, which, quite complacently, the cook has just set in front of my nose. I’m going to give them a lesson in cool, even though my head is spinning like a carousel.
—That was not our original agreement. We’ve been shut up together here more than three months. Our accord is now binding, as they say.
—Nobody ever respected any agreement with us, the cook quickly replied, waving her hands furiously, as though they were straw fans, in front of the electric burner.
—Nobody, said the chauffeur sepulchrally. All they do is send us to hell.
And I was going to pay for all the centuries of injustice toward the people of Morelos? I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The simple truth was, I didn’t know what to say. I was too busy taking in my new situation. I pushed my plate aside and left the kitchen without saying a word. I climbed the stairs with the sensation that my body was a sick friend I was following with great difficulty. I sat down in the bathroom and there I remained, sleeping. But even my dreams betrayed me. I dreamed that they were right. Damn! They were right.
9
And it is you who wake me, with a furious ringing, a buzz of alarm, calling me on the phone, questioning me urgently, sympathizing with me: Why don’t I ask them about her? About whom? I say, playing the fool. About Lala, la Eduarda, la Eduardita, as they called her, la Lala, la … Why? She’s the key to the whole business! You’re completely in the dark: what was behind that scene between Lala and Dimas by the pool? Who was Lala? Have all these people besieged you because of her, or him, or both of them? Why not find out? Fool!
Both of them. I laughed, fell back to sleep, sitting on the toilet in the bathroom, with my pajama bottoms rolled down around my ankles, in a stupor: both of them, you said, without realizing that I can’t bear to imagine, much less to pursue the thought, of her with another—she with another, that thought I cannot bear, and you laugh at me, I hear your laughter on the telephone line, you say goodbye, you accuse me, you ask when I got so delicate and sentimental? You, Nicolás Sarmiento, who have had dozens of women just as dozens of women have had you, both you and they members of a city and a society that abandoned all that colonialcatholiccantabrian hypocrisy a few generations ago and cheerfully dedicated themselves to fucking anyone, you who know perfectly well that your dames come to you from others and go from you to others, just as they know that you weren’t a monk before you knew them, nor will you become one after leaving them: you, Nicolás Sarmiento, the Don Juan of venture capital, are going to tell us now that you can’t bear the thought of your Lala in the arms of Dimas Palmero? Why? It turns your stomach to think that she slept with a servant? Could it be that your horror is more social than sexual? Tell us! Wake up!
I tell you I saw her in the garden.
I got up slowly from the bathroom, I pulled up my pajamas, I didn’t have to tie them, they closed with a snap, thank God, I’m hopeless for daily life, I’m only good at making money and making love; does that justify a life?
I look at the garden from the window of my bedroom.
Tell me if you don’t see her, standing, with her long braids, a knee slightly bent, looking toward the barranca, surprised to be caught between the city and nature, unable to tell where one begins and the other ends, or which imitates the other: the barranca doesn’t smell of the mountains, it smells of the buried city and the city no longer smells of city but of infirm nature: she longs for the country, looking toward the barranca, now Doña Lupe goes out for air, approaches the girl, puts a hand on her shoulder, and says: Don’t be sad, you mustn’t, you’re in the city now and the city can be ugly and hard, but so can the country, the country is at least as violent as the city, I could tell you stories, Eduarda …
I’ll say it straight out. There is only one redeeming thing in my life and that is the respect I’ve shown my women. You can condemn me as egotistical, or frivolous, or condescending, or manipulating, or unable to tie my shoes. The one thing you can’t accuse me of is sticking my nose where it doesn’t belong. I think that’s all that has saved me. I think that’s why women have loved me: I don’t ask for explanations, I don’t check out their pasts. No one can check the past of anyone in a society as fluid as ours. Where are you from? What do you do? Who were your mama and papa? Each of our questions c
an be a wound that doesn’t heal. A wound that keeps us from loving or being loved. Everything betrays us: the body sends us one signal and an expression reveals another, words turn against themselves, the mind cons us, death deceives death … Beware!
10
I saw Lala that afternoon in the garden, when she was nobody, when she was someone else, when she looked dreamily over a barranca, when she was still a virgin. I saw her and realized that she had a past and that I loved her. These, then, were her people. This, then, was all that remained of her, her family, her people, her land, her nostalgia. Dimas Palmero, was he her lover or her brother, either one longing for revenge? Marco Aurelio, was he really the brother of Dimas or, perhaps, of Eduardita? What was her relationship to the cook Doña Lupe, the baggy-eyed chauffeur, the shabby old patriarch?
I dressed. I went down to the living room. I went out to the garden. There was no longer any reason to bar my way. We all knew the rules, the contract. One day we would sit down to write it out and formalize it. I walked among the running children, took a piece of jerky without asking permission, a plump red-cheeked woman smiled at me, I waved cordially to the old man, the old man looked up and caught my eye, he put out his hand for me to help him up, he looked at me with an incredible intensity, as if only he could see that second body of mine, my sleepy companion struggling behind me through life.
I helped the old man up and he took my arm with a grip as firm as his gaze, and said: “I will grow old but never die. You understand.” He led me to the edge of the property. The girl was still standing there, and Doña Lupe put her arms around her, enveloping her shoulders in her huge embrace. We went over to her, and Marco Aurelio, too, half whistling, half smoking. We were a curious quintet, that night in Las Lomas de Chapultepec, far from their land, Morelos, the country, the cane fields, the rice fields, the blue sculpted mountains cut off at the top, secret, where it is said the immortal guerrilla Zapata still rides his white horse …
Constancia and Other Stories for Virgins Page 15