She laughed. The piercing wail of a baby interrupted her. She cursed and rushed off, with her stockings slipping, to hide behind a screen. I heard her soothing the infant. “Poor little one, poor little one, my baby, go to sleep now, it’s all right…” while Arturo Ogarrio threw himself, naked, mouth open, onto the divan piled with cushions covered in arabesques and pillows patterned in cashmere.
— I shouldn’t kid myself. She always preferred him to me, from the beginning, that head leaned against his shoulder, those little glances, those escapades in the bathroom, the whore!
Toño
When Bernardo mistreated her, I didn’t say anything. But at night she reproached me. — Are you going to defend me or not? Are you going to defend me…? she asked several times.
Bernardo
My mother writes from Guadalajara just to tell me: she has taken the tunic, the pants, the belt off the bed. She has taken the boots off the floor. She’s put them all away, shined his boots and put everything in a trunk. They’re not needed anymore. She has seen my father. An engineer who had taken pictures of the political events and public ceremonies of recent years invited her and other members of families that had supported Don Venustiano Carranza to see a film in his house. A silent film, of course. From the dances of the turn of the century to the murder of Don Venustiano and the ascent to power of those horrible characters from Sonora and Sinaloa. No, that was not important. That didn’t interest her. But there, in a congressional ceremony in Donceles Street, behind President Carranza, was your father, Bernardo my son, your father was standing there, very serious, very handsome, very formal, protecting the president, in the very uniform that I have taken such zealous care of, your father, my son, moving, dressed up for me, my son, for me, Bernardo, he looked at me. I have seen him. You can come home.
How can I explain to my mother that I cannot compensate for the death of my father with the mobile simulacrum of the film; rather, my way of keeping him alive is to imagine him at my side always, invisible, a voice more than a presence, answering my questions, but silent in the face of those actions of mine that do not conform to his counsel, that kill him over again, with as much violence as the bullets themselves? I need a father close by me to authorize my words. The voice of my father is a secret endorsement of my own voice. But I know that with my words, even though he inspires them, I deny my father’s authority, I instill rebellion, at the same time that I try to impose obedience on my own children.
Does La Desdichada save me from family obligations? The immobile dummy could free me from the responsibilities of sex, parenthood, matrimony, releasing me to literature. Could literature be my sex, my body, my posterity? Could literature provide friendship itself? Is that why I hate Toño, who gives himself purely to life?
Toño
I hear Bernardo’s step on the stairs. He is returning; I recognize him. How can I tell him what has happened? It is my duty. Is it also my duty to tell him that she’s dangerous, at least at times, that we must be on guard? The bed is wet with urine. She doesn’t recognize me. She cowers in the corners, rejecting me. What does this woman want of me? How can I know, if she keeps so stubborn a silence? I have to tell Bernardo: I’ve tried everything. The bed is wet. She doesn’t recognize me, doesn’t recognize her Toño, her tony Toño, she called me like a child. She has wet the bed, she doesn’t recognize me. I have to prepare her pabulum, dress her, undress her, clean her, tuck her in at night, sing her lullabies … I held her, I soothed her, now you belong to me, child, now you’re mine, I said, little baby, the boogeyman … Desperately I push her away, far from me. She falls to the floor with a horrible crash of wood against wood. I rush to pick her up, to embrace her. For God’s sake, what do you want, Desdichada, unhappy one, why don’t you tell me what you want, why don’t you hold me, why don’t you let me loosen your dressing gown a little, lift up your skirts, see if what I feel, what you want is true, why not let me kiss your nipples, doll, embrace me, you can hurt me, but not him, he has to do things, you understand, Desdichada? He has to write, you mustn’t hurt him, you can’t scratch him, infect him, destroy his confidence, or wound him with your polymorphous perversity, I know your secret, doll, you’re in love with all shapes, doll, that’s your perversion, but he is pure, he is the young poet, and you and I have had the privilege of witnessing his youth, the birth of his genius, the nativity of the poet.
My brother, my friend.
Since I have known you I have realized the importance of forming an image of oneself at the moment when youth and talent meet: the sign of that meeting can manifest itself as a spark of ingenuity — and sometimes as a flash of genius. That is something you find out later (do you understand me, Desdichada, wretched one?). What the image of the young artist (you, Bernardo, coming up the stairs) tells the rest of us is that we can recapture that moment: the image reveals a vocation; if we falter, it can return to reawaken us. You remember, Bernardo? I cut out a print of the self-portrait of the young Dürer and stuck it into a corner of the mirror: to my friend, the young poet, who is going to write what I will never be able to write. Perhaps you understood. You didn’t say anything. Like you, I write, but I am afraid of my potential to call forth darkness. If creation is absolute, it will reveal good, but also evil. That must be the price of creation: if we are free, we are free both to create and to destroy. If we don’t want to be responsible to God for what we are and do, we must make ourselves responsible, don’t you agree, Bernardo? Don’t you agree, unhappy woman, Desdichada?
You believe that she has the right to impose herself between us, to destroy our friendship, bewitch you, turn you from your vocation, deliver you unto evil, frustrate your monogamous romanticism, initiate you in her voracious, perverse love of all shapes? I don’t know what you think. I have seen her up close. I have observed her changes of mood, of time, of taste, of age; she is tender one minute and violent the next; she comes to life at certain hours, she seems near death at others; she is enamored of metamorphosis, not of the inalterable form of a statue or a poem. Bernardo, my friend, my poet: let her go, your fascination with her is unhealthy for you, you must fix your words in a form to transmit them to others: they must return them to flux, instability, uncertainty; you can’t be expected to give form to loose and common words and then reanimate them as welclass="underline" that is my responsibility as your reader, not yours, my creator.
She wants you to believe the opposite: nothing should ever be fixed, everything must always be in flux, that is pleasure, liberty, diversion, art, life. Have you heard her moaning at night? Have you felt her nails on your face? Have you seen her sitting on the toilet? Have you had to clean her filth from the bed? Have you ever soothed her to sleep? Have you ever prepared her pap? Do you know what it’s like to live every day with a woman with no voice, no language? Pardon me, Bernardo: do you know what it’s like to open your hand and find there that …
Sometimes I see myself behind him in the glass, when we are in a hurry and must both shave at once. The mirror is like an abyss. It doesn’t matter that I fall in it. Not everything happens only in the mind, as you seem to think, Bernardo.