“Never. God would not commit such an error.”
The ladies nod their agreement, with solemn and grateful smiles; Geraldina opens her mouth, as if she wanted to say something and changed her mind.
Chepe arrives with the curuba juice; he leaves me a steaming cup of coffee. Geraldina sighs tumultuously — as if at the peak of lovemaking — and asks for an ashtray. It is a miracle, this presence; it is a potion; Geraldina is a remedy: now I feel no burning in my knee, the tiredness in my feet disappears, I could run.
I spy on her from here: without resting on the back of her chair, knees together but calves apart, very slowly, delicately, she removes her sandals, leans her body even further: revealing her neck, which is like a mast; the children greet their curuba juice voluptuously: their lips slurp, noisily, thirstily, while the night shines around them and I raise my cup and pretend to sip my coffee; Geraldina, naked the morning before, is dressed this evening: a vaporous little lavender frock undresses her another way, or undresses her more, you might say; she redeems me dressed or with her nakedness, if she is naked her other nakedness, the last glimpse of her sex, if only her remotest fold opening as she walks, all the dancing in her back, heart beating solemnly in her chest, in the shape of her bottom, her soul; I ask nothing more of life than this possibility to see this woman without her knowing that I’m looking at her, to see this woman when she knows I’m looking, but to see her: my only explanation for staying alive. She leans back in the chair, lifts one leg over the other and lights a cigarette, only she and I know that I am looking at her, and meanwhile my former pupils go on with their prattle, what are they saying? Impossible to listen, the children finish their curuba juice, ask permission to order more and disappear hand in hand into the shop, I know they do not want ever to return, that if it were up to them they would flee hand in hand to the furthest night of time, now again Geraldina uncrosses her legs, leans toward me, imperceptible, studies me, just for one second her eyes like a veiled warning touch me and confirm that I am definitely still looking at her, perhaps she is startled by such disproportionate, monstrous frankness, that someone, I, at my age, but what to do? All of her is the most intimate desire because I look at her, I admire her, the same as the rest of them look at her, admire her, much younger than me, the little boys — yes, she shouts, and I hear her, she wants to be looked at, admired, pursued, caught, turned over, bitten and licked, killed, revived and killed again for generations.
Again I hear the ladies’ voices. Geraldina has let out a little cry of sincere astonishment. For an instant her knees part, looking yellow under the street lights; her thighs, scarcely concealed by her short summer dress, appear. I take the last sip of my coffee: I distinguish, without managing to hide the fact, in the depths of Geraldina, the bulging little triangle, but the dazzle is spoiled by my ears, which struggle to confirm my former pupils’ words; they clamor about the horrible discovery of the corpse of a newborn this morning, at the rubbish dump, are they really saying that?
Yes, they repeat: “They killed a newborn baby girl,” and cross themselves. “Chopped into pieces. God help us.”
Geraldina bites her lips.
“They could have left her at the church door, alive,” she moans — what a beautifully candid voice — and asks of the heavens: “Why kill her?”
That is how they are talking, and, suddenly one of my pupils — Rosita Viterbo? — who I never noticed watching me watch Geraldina (surely because my wife is right and I no longer manage the discretion of years gone by: am I drooling? God, I shout wordlessly at myself: Rosita Viterbo, saw me suffering at the vision of the two open thighs showing infinity inside), Rosita stroking her cheek with one finger and addressing me with mild sarcasm, says:
“And what do you think, profesor?”
“It’s not the first time,” I manage to say. “Not in this town, nor in the country.”
“I’m sure it’s not,” says Rosita. “Nor in the world. That we already know.”
“Many children, as I recall, have been killed by their mothers after birth; and they always alleged the same thing: it was to save them from the world’s misery.”
“That’s horrible what you say, profesor,” Ana Cuenco rebels. “How despicable, and I beg your pardon, but that does not explain, much less justify, the death of any newborn baby.”
“I never claimed it justified it,” I defend myself and I see that Geraldina has closed her knees again; she stubs the cigarette out on the dirt floor, ignoring the ashtray, runs her two long hands over her hair, which she wears up today, and exhales listlessly, surely appalled by the conversation, or weary?
“What a world,” she says.
The children, her children, come back to her, one on each side, as if protecting her, without knowing exactly what from. Geraldina pays Chepe and stands up stricken, as if under an enormous weight — the inexplicable conscience of an inexplicable country, I say to myself a burden of a little less than two hundred years which nonetheless does not keep her from stretching her whole body, lifting her breasts beneath her dress, sketching an uncertain smile, as if licking her lips.
“But let’s go to Hortensia’s,” she pleads with a wail. “It’s dark already.”
And Rosita Viterbo, my one-time pupil, watches me in a distracted way.
“Aren’t you coming, profesor?”
“I’ll come later,” I say.
~ ~ ~
In short, I did not go to call on Hortensia Galindo this year.
I said goodbye to Chepe and turned at the next corner, on the way to Mauricio Rey’s house. I have confused the streets and come out at the edge of town, darker and darker, strewn with filth and rubbish — some old, some new a sort of cliff which I peer over: it must be thirty years since I’ve been out here. What is it, what sparkles down there like a silver ribbon? The river. It used to rage all through the hellish summer, and it was a torrent. In this mountain town there is no sea, but there was a river. Today, desiccated by a pallid heat, it is a little meandering thread. That was another time when we used to go to the most abundant bends in its waters, in the middle of summer, not only to fish: naked and immersed up to their necks the girls smiled, whispered, floated, blurred, in the clear water. But later they sprang out more real and furtive, on tiptoes, looking from one side to the other, taking big steep jumps while they dried off and dressed, quickly, looking carefully every once in a while through the trees. Soon they relaxed, believing the world around them slept: only the song of a small owl, the song of my chest high up in an orange tree, the heart of every adolescent boy in town watching them. Because there were trees for all.
There is no sign of a moon, occasionally a street light, there is no living shadow in the streets, the gathering at Hortensia Galindo’s house is quite an event, as if the war had arrived in the plaza, in the school, at your door, when the whole town hides.
To get to Rey’s house I have to return to Chepe’s and from there restart the route as if the past could be restarted. I have to remember: the house was the last one along a dirt road, near an abandoned guitar workshop: then came the cliff. The sleepy-looking girl who opens the door tells me that Mauricio is sick in bed, that he cannot see anyone.
“Who is it?” Mauricio Rey’s voice comes from inside.
“It’s me.”
“Profesor, what an unexpected pleasure! Will miracles never cease? You know the way here.”
Whose is this girl? I seem to see her and not see her.