“I don’t know if I should bring this up, but I’ve dreamed about you naked many times.”
“Me too.”
“What?”
“In many positions, as if you were posing for photographs.”
“What did you feel?”
“Look, the truth is I don’t want to talk about it. It will just confuse me. Once we get married and receive God’s blessing, then we can talk about all kinds of things related to being naked.”
The truth is, they talked about the wedding, how Demetrio would send her money for the wedding dress; how she would arrange for the bridesmaid and groomsman pairs, de lazo, de ramo, and de arras; how he would come back in April to fasten everything that needed to be fastened, to wit: fastidious formalities; but it wouldn’t be a very ostentatious wedding — would it? what for? And then came what they both dreaded: time to say good-bye. A cold good-bye indoors, in the living room. An eloquent pressing of hands, and nothing more, how awful. To also say good-bye to Doña Luisa. How polite! Everything to smooth the way, step by step. Now we’ll reveal a question Renata asked her mother on one of those days.
“Hey, Mama, why did you put our wedding off for a year?”
And the inelegant response:
“Because I want Demetrio to suffer. My goal is for him to love you even more, and to understand that a woman like you is worth a hundred of any other. Let the scoundrel pay.”
36
The first (long, celebratory) kiss after the wedding would hopefully be on Renata’s marvelous lips, those two little round sausages, ah. Then let’s imagine all the prohibitions, every detail spelled out on the train: frenetically: in blurts. We could say that it was a question of verbal regression, clamorous, on Demetrio’s part, which gave too much importance to the embrace that the green-eyed gal definitely refused to give him. He had nothing to lose — or did he? Finally Demetrio came out with something he thought Doña Telma would like to hear. I didn’t talk to you because I didn’t want to hear from Doña Zulema at all. I don’t want any advice from you, either. If that’s what you’re going to give me, not even one little bit, so I’d rather keep quiet. Whereby we see the mother listening, until she got fed up. The big guy was fed up, too. The list of restrictions was too long and irksome, but to give her opinion on anything — humph! not on her life! Rather, she stifled herself, the good lady didn’t utter so much as an ahem, and thus they traveled for hours, lulled by the train’s seeing and sawing. Until Demetrio himself, in contradiction to his fed-uppedness, asked his mother for her opinion, one, the first, because he was very frustrated, he had been going down a path full of confusion that had led him to offer her the ring. A bond forged in darkness — right? There was no retreat, because then — what manner of man would that make him! You’re trapped, all that’s left for you now is to feel fresh when you reach the peak of love. That’s what you’ve been struggling so hard for. And so, what was wrong with a kiss? one on the cheek? a small, decent kiss? a hug, too. Renata will give you everything you want, just wait. The wedding will be soon. The wedding, the culmination of a process, the vertical path, always exhausting. Now would come the ruddiness of pleasure that would never fade. In the meantime that inflated hope that helped him know how to live out the illusion. It was worth waiting for what would come, for the fulfillment bit by bit of the best of the best. Doña Telma was more prodigious than necessary; Demetrio found no way to silence her. An opinion transformed into a speech, but also a litany of ideas that were worth listening to. Philosophy of the lowlands made to sound highfalutin. Even once they’d arrived in Parras and boarded the horse-drawn carriage that would take them home, Doña Telma continued speaking with inspiration. Overflowing eloquence — to be believed?
37
This begins where Doña Telma’s speech ended. It ended when she discovered that Egipto and Gonzala were missing. A quandary, a surprise. They’d escaped, it seems, with the money, which wasn’t much. Even so, desperate screams ensued, louder and louder, there must have been vibrations everywhere, up and down the walls, and now for the part you are not going to believe: Doña Telma looked under the beds. The servants fled with all the money and of course they pinched some other things as well. The lady went to the safe, which was, as she intuited, open: her jewels! gone! Macabre emptiness, because the thieves had also taken several very beloved gold coins, as well as some valuable presses, metal scraps, and tools. Hence, the lady’s cries burst forth; she cried out with good reason, in the end, all that tremendous moaning heard by Demetrio, who came to embrace her and showed great compassion. My jewels, those two took everything I most loved. Then she said that she had already suspected they were secret lovers, and the worst part was she had nowhere to turn. Egipto was from a hamlet in some godforsaken place, and Gonzala was from another, far away. A problem to go to each hamlet, even getting there would be no cakewalk, moreover their relatives would protect their loved ones and who knows anyway if they would even know about the robbery; no, perhaps they hadn’t even gone back there. In the end, a perfect crime, irrevocable. All lost — and now what? Good thing the inheritance had been deposited at the local savings bank. Then the larger conjecture: Egipto as well as Gonzala had worked in her house for more than twenty years. They never stole a cent — why now? Because of the love they had sworn to each other?
The opportunity to do it right.
More than enough money.
They could even buy a house somewhere.
But the barbarity of this act still had a much wider reach. A major robbery, in the end. Doña Telma suggested that her son go to the pool hall to … Already Demetrio was thinking that Liborio and Zacarías were likewise two filthy thieves, or if not they would be able to give him some information about what had happened at the house. A modification, an increase in horror, because at the pool hall certain balls and cues and (to top that off) some chalk were missing. He went to check the cash register. No, or rather, empty, not a single bill or coin. More thieves, as we see, but let’s see if they had anything to do with Gonzala and Egipto? Theft here and there? Really? All on the same day — right? So maybe two separate crimes, or maybe the four had made some kind of pact — but how? There might have been a meeting, a supper, perhaps? Demetrio was already piecing together an approximation in the air: layers of mud (on top of each other), the cash all gone, and another thing, they must have done it at night. But the big guy didn’t waste more time making further conjectures but rather went out to the street and shouted at full throttle: I’ve been robbed! I’ve been robbed! They robbed my pool hall! He ran about wildly, indeed he did, going around in circles as if he were playing a game. He stood there screaming in the middle of the street, then suddenly turned south, toward his house, but not. Many passersby were watching the scene and they were moved and they approached to touch the body of the shouter to tell him to “Calm down!” and other things of that sort, but Demetrio kept on in the same vein: shouting wildly, as if he were taunting fate by spewing barbaric things such as: I’m going to hang those thieves! Their names are Liborio and Zacarías! No matter how much they tried to console him, nobody managed to calm him down, and he continued spitting out incoherent babble. With their combined forces, however, they did carry the giant, but only for half a minute, after which Demetrio violently bolted. They wanted to take him home, which was only — how many blocks away? But he told them to let him go because he would walk on his own two feet and just fine, thank you. The thing is, once he was put down (roughly) on the ground, Demetrio stopped shouting. On the contrary, he showed a curious kind of dignity as he walked away. A respectable upright man, casually straightening out his shirt and pants. It was a good thing that he had become quite sober, as was appropriate, and he stayed that way until he reached the house. A few followed him, just because. Imagine, then, the embrace between mother and son. The defeated duo, alone. Or, rather, inside the house and with the door closed. Or, rather, they cried a lot. Yes, there was a big because.