I sat on a stool.
“When are they coming to fetch you?”
I thought I must be in their way. They were beautiful and seemed in love.
“Woyteh, do you know whose daughter she is? Esther de la Fuente’s.”
“Really?”
Prince Woyteh opened his eyes.
“Yes,” I said.
“We admired her very much,” Cristina added.
“Thank you.”
“There are three of you, aren’t there?”
“Yes.”
“Was she good to you?”
“Very good.”
“Didn’t you resent the fact she worked? Didn’t you feel abandoned because she worked?”
As if that worried me.
“Of course not!”
“Do you see, Woyteh? Of course one can. One can have children, have a home, and have a profession.”
“Of course one can,” I said, not wanting to be contrary. I didn’t understand what she was talking about.
Fortunately the boy who opened their door came to tell the Good Angel they’d come to fetch me. “Excuse me. Thank you.” Woyteh’s hand wasn’t cold — it was a hand, a hand identical in my palm to mine. Cristina accompanied me to the door. She was radiant. She opened the door and as if it were a condition to meet before she’d allow me to leave asked me again: “Can one really?” Instead of the hurried “yes” that I answered in my desire to flee this house, if I’d had the courage I’d have answered her: “Good Angel, do you remember how you bullied me in the bathroom at school?”
I got into the car and said hello to Dad with two syllables that he reduced to one in reply. Dad didn’t add anything nor did I. Well, the syllables were nothing to him and me alone, alone in this huge car. Not even the car spoke! It drove along silently, as if it wasn’t touching the roadway.
Dad must have been very sad. I was very sad and disturbed, startled by Edna’s garden, Manuel Barragán’s icy tongue, and the conversation with the Good Angel. That’s why I broke the silence.
“Dad, let’s move houses.”
“Why?”
“So we’re less sad.”
“We would be sadder.”
We went silent again. When we went under the light from a streetlamp I made out some blisters on my small knees. I revisited them in the next pool of light. Touched my chest: it was burning. My neck was burning as well. The water in the swimming pool, the cold water in the pool had burnt my skin. On the other hand, the boy — who no doubt must have had a skin temperature of 98 degrees Fahrenheit if not more from the excitement of his adventure — had seemed cold. I went over it again and again, rocked my thoughts in the to-and-fro of the car. And so, my skin peeling, the pursuing spirits would have finished me off me that night. I needed air. I wanted to shout or cry and I spoke:
“I’m afraid at night…”
“Of what?”
“Of…” (Where could I start?) “…of Esther.” (How silly, how could I say this to him!?)
We were going down Avenida Reforma. The car hit the right side of the street. He braked and started to cry. I stroked his head and he shook it to get rid of my hand.
“How can you be afraid of Esther? She’s your Mom!” he was still crying and I didn’t know what to do. “Don’t you remember her? Would she be capable of hurting you?”
“Sorry Dad, I said something stupid.”
“Besides, why do you want to leave the house? It was Esther’s house. It’s the only thing of hers I’ve got left.”
He leant his forehead on the steering wheel and went on crying till I felt that his lament was so intense it could — like Christ’s tears — save the world.
When he finished he mopped himself with his handkerchief and took me for an ice cream at the Dairy Queen.
15
Two or three days after the visit to Edna’s, Yolanda and Vira, two of Esther’s friends, the kind who argued for hours with her over their open books, came around to take the three of us to Bellas Artes. Malena and Fina were upset by the thought of this excursion. On the other hand, I’d had an excellent time when I’d been taken before. I enjoyed the music. I remembered the last time I went with Esther and Dad, years ago.
A Concert at the Bellas Artes…a night of music…how can I capture it for you…these scraps of sentences are not all purely whimsical!..My blue corduroy suit, the rabbit’s fur brushing my chin, the shiny shoes…the whole night for us, not (as usual) merely a sleeping bag to wrap us in before sending us to sleep like chickens stuck on a spit…and then the music!..angel steps…pure beings moving effortlessly across the ground, and if they were flying it wasn’t upwards, it wasn’t to leave but to observe…they were offering pure love there!..affection without bodies…nerves without flesh…raw, painless nerves feeling…the luxury of enjoyment doesn’t destroy, drag away, snatch, transport: it keeps one seated in the stalls…and how I wanted to dance!..I thought I was dancing among them…the applause, then the excited listening to so much applause thinking everyone had felt what I felt, that finally I had communed…leaving, crossing over…walking between so many lights as on a stage, the pristine stairs inviting exciting slides, the ceiling as high as a church, but joyful…listen to the music…everyone be at the ready! Imagine yourselves in the stalls: you’ll be carried aloft by the notes to the edge of the precipice, to a flight apparently trying to self-destruct, rising up only to self-destruct…with what innocence my girlish soul surrendered to the lilt of the music on that never-to-be-forgotten night…If only they’d known how much the tiny spectator was swept up with them, in what ways, how much I remained faithful to them…loving, entirely theirs, my only body the one musician and strings granted me…oh! If only I could remember, relive the resonance of that music, how the sounds wove together, and fell pleasurably to corrupt the soul…
I was asleep when we got home. They dressed my sleeping form in my pajamas. In the night when I woke up near dawn and heard the usual noises, I measured the poverty of what drew near: their sounds weren’t sweet, weren’t harsh either, and carried no musical sign. They were sounds without a soul, unfeeling, that of themselves opened no doors, meant nothing. I was angry that what pursued me bore no resemblance to the paradise I wanted as mine, I felt ashamed at the pettiness of what was avid for me. If I’d thought then that this world was awaiting me, known that this was the world after me, I’d have cried and cried, perhaps, till my dying day, I’d never have stopped…
Thus when Yolanda and Vira came for us and asked if we wanted to go to Bellas Artes, however much I shouted please please please, my sisters won the battle. Let’s go somewhere else more fun. They took us to the cinema to see a film about men and women who lived in the future, in a modern world, who burnt the books they found because they considered them harmful. It had a hero, a heroine, an old woman who let herself be burnt by the flames in order to die with her books. From there they took us for dinner, but I didn’t want dinner, I felt sick, I didn’t know what from but I felt strange.
I asked for a dish with three scoops of ice cream, cream, and jam, and it was allowed. My sisters ate something or another and all heatedly debated the film.
16
I would like to finish my story here. The memory of a Bellas Artes concert, the aspirations I nurtured for a life of the emotions, the fantasy of having within my body a heart pumping blood and able to change its rhythm to act in step with the feeling of others, a heart that danced, able to listen, to fuse with other rhythms as it did on that occasion with the music…I’m furious I can’t stop talking to you here, because all the words I’ve been saying would have no meaning, I can’t stop because it would be like refusing to tell you how I got to this point, the whole conversation has been about communicating that to you, telling you how I got here, what called to me and when; and if I can’t guess at what called me (in fact, I don’t know), I can say how or when or at least what effect the call had on my soft flesh, how I felt my saliva dry up, my sweat cease to be, my blood turn to stone in my veins. If I’d stopped talking to you at the concert, I’d just be a nameless, overstrung girl; I’d just be my sea-blue corduroy little two-piece, my size three squeaky-clean leather shoes. If I were only that, I wouldn’t be ashamed, why or of what? I wouldn’t need to tell anyone; I wouldn’t need the somber voice I’ve used, taken hold of, to reach out to you.