You can’t save yourself from the world, Álvaro. Don’t you realize that?
You’re the one who doesn’t understand that you protect me from the immensity of the world and reduce it down to this corner.
I think you owe that to me.
What?
Understanding at least a corner of the world.
I don’t want anyone to think you’re married to me out of loyalty and habit. I want to know and I want you to know that you’re here against your will. That you can’t escape this house. Dammit, not even this bedroom. Prisoner.
Then why did you tell Leo on the phone that I’m here because I want to be?
How do you dare to call that bum here?
Well, Álvaro, life follows its course. I mean, beyond these four walls.
Look at them carefully. What they’re like.
Yellow. A dirty, stained yellow. Full of white shadows where photographs used to be.
You’d call them lies. Photos of your childhood, your first communion, our engagement, fucking rowing on Chapultepec, fucking holding Madero’s hand, fucking honeymoon in Nautla, fucking skiing on Tequesquitengo Lake. .
A flooded valley, Álvaro. You can see a sunken church at the bottom of the lake. You ski past, and your feet brush against the dome.
Tequesquitengo.
The cross, the cross.
The cross where Our Lord Jesus Christ died, of course.
Yes, the instrument of execution. The cross or the electric chair or the gibbet or the wall. Ways to dispatch us to the next world without a God who comes down to save us. The cross. I laugh at the cross and at fiction. The cross is fiction. We might as well worship an electric chair. We might as well place a gibbet on the altar. We might as well carry a guillotine in a procession. We might as well distribute wafers with cyanide during Mass. Ite vita est.
CORDELIA THINKS and sometimes says (above all to Leo, less to Álvaro) that at first along with resignation there was affection, even a little respect, but as the arguments increased, she felt the temptation to hatred. She didn’t want to embitter her life. She felt acidity rising from the pit of her stomach and became irritated with herself. Affection, respect, resignation were better for the spirit. But Leo you understand that a woman can feel herself at the crossroads (Álvaro makes puns about the cross the fiction) because she didn’t obtain the total love that only came (well) for a time. Now the blood flows in my veins like cold water and I ask myself, I ask my husband, why don’t you leave if you hate me so much? why don’t you go and live alone?
DO YOU KNOW what irritates me most about you?
Tell me, Álvaro.
Your well-bred voice. Your voice that’s so well bred. And do you know what I can’t stand about you? Intimacy. Intimacy with you annoys me. Long story short.
The truth is, Leo, what attracted me was his appearance. Not him. Then I found out what he really was like. Too late, my friend. Then his appearance changed.
Why does he hold on to you?
Because only my eyes remember the way he was when he was young.
Don’t sacrifice yourself anymore, Cordelia.
Do you see me as sacrificed? Don’t think that. Do you see resignation in my eyes? You don’t, do you? I’m calm. Do you know why?
No. Tell me.
I believe — that is, I imagine — that he knows more about what will come than about what’s already happened.
Are you sure? He or you?
Both of us. I’m still with him because there’s nobody left but me who remembers his youth and his promise. Only I have his eyes of yesterday in my eyes of today.
I NEED TO SLEEP with the window open. Close it. I need fresh air. It smells like a circus in here. I’ll get pneumonia. Close it. Look at what a disaster the bathroom is. Why don’t you keep your makeup someplace else? Why don’t you clean the sink after you shave look at the dirty soap look at your hairs look at my brush full of your bleached hairs hang the towel up to dry spread it out don’t leave it like that just thrown down put a mat beside the bathtub don’t get the floor all wet yesterday I slipped and almost broke my neck why do you use so much toilet paper? don’t you prefer to wipe your silky, high-handed ass with Kleenex? don’t use my razors anymore to shave under your arms you leave them full of hair but I only use the one you’ve already thrown away why don’t you remove the hair permanently and stop bothering me why did you rearrange my shirts? to make your life easier blue ones here white ones there short-sleeve shirts on one side sport shirts in the back because you wear them less often ah! do you want me to classify your panties your bras your panty hose because you can arrange my closet but I can’t arrange yours right? why? because that’s private Álvaro and I have nothing private, Cordelia? it’s different it’s different.
WE’RE NOT THE SAME you’re right I have everything hanging on the outside you keep everything in those aromatic crannies, you’re full of folds and more folds Cordelia and you know you smell like a fish market that’s what you smell like a rotten red snapper that’s how I feel when I make love to you that I’m fucking a dead fish left on the beach for a week a man shows himself he shows everything a woman hides everything she arranges everything in little quilted boxes but a woman disarranges your soul roll up your socks slowly bottom to top don’t yank them don’t put your shoes on before your trousers be careful not to stain your tie at the cleaners they ruin ties ties have their virginity too why were you messing with my tube of toothpaste? because it’s very ugly to squeeze it from the top ah yes well I’m going to squeeze the tube from the top just to fuck up your little esthetic manias and give me the remote it’s not mine I want to watch the news with Adriana Pérez Cañedo well Chespirito is on at the same time and I’d rather see Chilindrina where did you leave the Reforma? I threw it out why? I already read it and what about me? don’t I have the right to read it, Álvaro? you don’t understand anything, Cordelia, women are bovine creatures they graze and have calves and give milk, that’s all and they don’t know what’s going on in the world and don’t care. .
AND YOU, ÁLVARO, don’t urinate outside the bowl just look at the drops you’ve left on the floor. .
ÁLVARO was obsessed with presenting himself as the éminence grise of powerful figures, he would come home full of himself and tell me:
“I proposed to the secretary. .”
“I suggested to the subsecretary. .”
“I made the senior official see. .”
“The secretary’s secretary, thanks to me. .”
YOU STAY WITH ME because there’s nobody left but me who remembers your youthful beauty. Only I have your young eyes in my old ones.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? Was there a cause of all causes? What was first, what came later? Desire or jealousy? Ecstasy or disillusion? Misunderstandings or explanations? Suspicions or gossip? Desires or jealousy? Longing or disgust? Plenitude or rejection?
WHERE WERE YOU all afternoon? I’ve been waiting for you. You know I desire you in an untimely way.
Yes, you say I’m an untimely woman.
That’s why I want you to be here when I desire you.
I’m sorry to disillusion you.
Bah, a man can’t lose his illusions if he doesn’t have any.
I don’t understand you.
There are too many explanations.
That’s true. Never complain. Never explain.
Not knowing where you are causes me tremendous anguish.
But I’m always at your side, you know that, my presence is in your imagination, in your desire, you always say that, I’m a prisoner in your head, I never leave there. .