“Cousin Valentina was supposed to become a nun, but she didn’t have the vocation,” remarked the cousin from Monterrey.
Jesús Aníbal thought he had found in this lengthy parade of scattered clans the way to enliven the spirit of the big old house in El Desierto, learning in passing the peculiarities of related families and creating a pedigree for himself that saved him from an incestuous relationship between the Asturians and his beloved Basque country.
And so they call Aunt Teófila from Guadalajara 09 because she complains all day on the telephone. And the Quiroz family from Veracruz spends the entire day listening to boleros on a jukebox, all of them together as if they were at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, imagine. And Aunt Gudula from San Luis Potosí swears her house is a bijou, she’s so vulgar. And Uncle Parménides from Mérida is such a kid that at night he runs past barracks so the soldiers will shout “Halt! Halt!” at him.
These anecdotes were accompanied by a chorus of laughter from the family visitors on duty.
Was this the happiness that was possible, the warmth of families, severe at times, affable at others? Was this clan passive and happy or active and unhappy? Was the family perfect because it was bored or bored because it was perfect? Or were all of them, without exception, parts of a single symbol, accepted and acceptable, of the quota of happiness we deserve, always partial but always complete because death is the absolute border, not nomadic and not muddy, and nobody is prepared to die leaving behind families that are ugly, ruined, and sad?
Jesús Aníbal responded internally to this question, telling himself that in the final analysis, he was married to the beauty of the family, and the great idea of inviting the scattered Sorolla and Quiroz kin calmed the growing hours of distance between husband and wife and encouraged hours of social coexistence that obliged them both to be on their best behavior.
“It’s fine,” said Ana Fernanda. “Let Cousin Valentina come from Michoacán. I didn’t even think of her. She’s so unattractive.” And she added, applying her makeup in front of the mirror: “I agreed to the relatives so I can show off. Understand that, Jesús Aníbal. Don’t think I’m doing it for you.”
Cousin Valentina arrived without anyone noticing her and stayed in her bedroom until it was time for supper.
“Nobody noticed her?” Ana Fernanda said sarcastically. “I’m not surprised.”
And it was true that in this fortyish cousin there was a kind of disposition not only to not be noticed but to disappear, transforming, like lizards, into a part of the tree or rock they were on. Nothing, however, precluded courtesy, and if Ana Fernanda remained seated and waited for Cousin Valentina to come over to kiss her cheek, Jesús Aníbal got to his feet, ignoring a certain acerbic expression on his wife’s face — as if the cousin didn’t deserve even the slightest show of good breeding — and welcomed Valentina, kissing her first on one cheek and then on the other, but between the two kisses, because of a movement of their heads, he kissed her lips, too.
He laughed. Not the cousin. She moved away, not blushing but with severity. In Jesús Aníbal’s sense of smell, there remained a bitter, peppery trace, redeemed by a scent of musk and the cleanliness of a soap shop.
Standing, her hands crossed at her lower abdomen, dressed all in black in a long skirt and low boots, long sleeves and an unadorned neckline, Cousin Valentina Sorolla looked at the world from an imperturbable distance. Nothing seemed to move her regular features — too regular, as if minted for a coin commemorating the Bourbons, that is, only in profile. Because in order to look to the side, Valentina had no reason to move her head, since her eyes were separated on two equal sides by her sharp commemorative profile.
Nothing in her betrayed wit, mischief, or bad temper. She was a severe mask of severe absence from the external world. Like her body, her face was thin. Skin attached to bone with no obstruction except skin struggling to fuse with bone or bone yearning to reveal itself in skin.
All her hair pulled back into a chignon, a broad forehead and deep temples, a long nose that was inquisitive despite herself — a quiver betrayed her — and a dry, lipless mouth, shut like a money box with no opening. What coin could penetrate it, what brush clean her teeth, what kiss excite her tongue?
Cousin Valentina made the round of greetings with the silence of a distant bird in the sky, and Jesús Aníbal wondered about the reason for the uneasiness he felt when he looked at her. The fact was that Valentina did not resemble any of the relatives, either Quiroz or Sorolla, who had visited them. It was clear that, as the saying goes, she “ate separately.”
Supper confirmed this. While the aunt from Veracruz, that sparkling conversationalist, narrated the chronicles of the Veracruzan carnival and the Monterreyan nephew, a fanatic about himself, recounted operations in high finance, Cousin Valentina remained silent as an uneasy Jesús Aníbal dared to embark on a conversation doomed to failure, though he certainly attempted to at least catch the eye of this peculiar relative. When he succeeded, it was he who looked away. In Valentina’s eyes, he found a prayer for respite, the look of a woman conscious of her ugliness and fearful of ridicule.
That was when a protective attraction was born in the young husband, one that no other member of a family shaped by confidence in itself, from the extremes of pious devotion (we shall go to heaven) to professional success (we shall go to the bank), seemed to need, much less request, and certainly not from gachupines who came to Mexico, according to the popular saying, in espadrilles and a Basque beret.
Jesús Aníbal laughed to himself and looked at his cousin with a complicit air. Were they the two strangers in the bosom of this family, the displaced persons, the exiles?
Who, in reality, was Valentina Sorolla? Jesús Aníbal fell asleep with the question and had disturbing dreams, sometimes physically obscene, sometimes far too spiritual, though he eventually overcame their evanescence with one certainty: His cousin appeared in all of them.
When he was awake, during the daily masculine ritual of lather and razor that for certain men is the best time for reflection and planning, the young husband thought that his wife’s beauty was evident just as his cousin’s ugliness was evident.
However, in that very contrast, Jesús Aníbal found an obvious reflection that, once it was freed, took swiftly to the air. Who tells us what thing or person is beautiful or ugly? Who determines the laws of ugliness and beauty? Is a form beautiful that cannot manifest as anything more than form but dares to present itself as spirit? On the other hand, can a form be ugly that is clearly inhabited by spirit? And what gives soul to the form except the true truth, the external manifestation of spirit, without which the most beautiful body reveals, sooner or later, that it was simple copper painted gold, while the soul of an ugly form literally transforms it into something more beautiful than any exterior profile of the individual in question.
These were ideas that were unfamiliar to Jesús Aníbal in his own mind and were perhaps the sediment of his listening to poetry every day on the Periférico route between El Desierto de los Leones and the Juárez district. It was another way of repeating Garcilaso from memory, I was born for nothing but to love you, and Góngora, all things serve lovers, and Pedro Salinas, if eyes could sense your voice, oh, how I would look at you, and Pablo Neruda, my heart looks for her and she is not with me. .
When he went down to breakfast, he looked toward the courtyard and saw Valentina walking there, head bowed, again dressed in black but with one peculiarity. She was barefoot. She stepped on the grass without shoes or stockings. Jesús Aníbal had the feeling that his strange cousin, apparently a frustrated nun, just as the cousin from Monterrey had described her, was fulfilling some penitence. Until he noticed, for the first time, a smile of pleasure on her dry lips. Then he did something unusual for him. He took off his loafers and joined Valentina on the grass. He learned the reason for doing this. The coolness of the sod granted a pleasure violated by the modest crudity of shoes. Walking barefoot in the grass is not only a pleasurable act, it is also an erotic one. The earth rose like a joyful caress from his feet to his solar plexus.