She no longer paid attention even to her friend Christ, or to Aspirina, who anxiously followed her everywhere; nor to the conversations of las mujeres on the patio, which she as a girl had followed as if hypnotized and without missing a single word.
“ ‘Run along, girl! Go play, adult problems aren’t to be heard by tender ears,’ that’s how we had to shoo her away, but later came a time when she wouldn’t join us even when we especially invited her.”
One day in May her state of stupefaction reached such a point that she threw to the pigs, instead of potato peels, the rose petals they had prepared for the passing of the Virgin in the procession.
“That’s what you call throwing pearls before swine,” joked the others. “If you continue in this manner, you’re going to end up throwing potato peels to the Virgin.”
Only her hair seemed to keep her company during that period of isolated adolescence when she could spend the entire day bringing out its shine with a brush and arranging it into all kinds of styles: crazy woman, a Phrygian cap, Medusa, ragpicker, Policarpa Salavarrieta, or Ophelia drowned in the well, based on the characters that Machuca described in her stories.
“Her hair purred like a contented cat when she brushed it,” Olga recalls.
Sometimes she would steal a cigarette and smoke it in front of the mirror, breathing deeply and practicing slow gestures, elegant ways of lighting the match or exhaling the smoke, walking around in tight skirts and sitting with her legs crossed.
“What are you dreaming about, girl?”
“I’d like to have a herd of elephants and to see snow, and for my father to be a king so I could smoke cigarettes in the salons of his palace.”
One torrential afternoon, Todos los Santos announced it was time for her to start working: señor Manrique had already been summoned, he had been informed that he would be meeting a young girl recently arrived from Japan who had not yet mastered the Spanish language, and he had shown himself to be in agreement with everything. Sayonara said all right, that it was all right by her, and Todos los Santos set about preparing the proper costume as must be done for amor de café, where illusion, theater, and duplicity predominate.
“Hadn’t señor Manriquito seen the girl?” I ask.
“Many times. But since adults often look at children without seeing them, he had seen her scurrying around without ever really noticing her.”
So the name, the client, and the date had already been chosen and now they needed to physically transform the girl into Sayonara, or rather into an authentic Japanese woman, or more precisely into a fake Japanese woman but superior to an authentic one. In a glorified junk store called El Pequeño Paris, the madrina bought a black silk skirt, long and tubular, with a deep slit rising to mid-thigh. Then she marched twenty yards down Calle Caliente under the shade of her parasol to reach the Bazar Libanés.
“Let me see that Japanese blouse,” she asked Chalela the Turk, indicating a red satin top with a gold dragon embroidered on the back that was being displayed on a mannequin.
“That blouse is Chinese, not Japanese,” Chalela the Turk advised her.
“What’s the difference?”
“The Japanese lost the war.”
“Too bad for them…”
“Too bad.”
“Good thing you told me. Then show me another one just like it, but in another color.”
“I only have red and white left.”
“White, then.”
“But the white one is Chinese too…”
“Yes, but at least it’s discreet. You wouldn’t go around in red if your country had lost the war.”
“Very well, then,” said Chalela the Turk, and he wrapped the white blouse without understanding anything.
They brushed the girl’s hair back, tied it in a ponytail, and yanked so tight they made her cry.
“Loosen it a little, madrina,” asked the girl.
“That wouldn’t do. This way it pulls your eyes and they really look Oriental.”
Tana loaned her some cultivated pearl earrings, they duly hung the violet lightbulb that certified her Japanese nationality, and Olguita brought a reliquary that contained fragments of a martyr’s bones, assuring her that it protected young girls their first time.
“There have already been other times,” said the girl, which she had never mentioned before.
“It doesn’t matter, keep the reliquary; it’ll protect you anyway,” answered Olga, kneeling at Sayonara’s feet as she adjusted the hem of her skirt.
When señor Manrique was at the door fantasizing over the delights that the date promised, Todos los Santos took her disciple aside to deliver the final piece of advice.
“Never, never let yourself be tempted by an offer of matrimony from any of your clients. Don’t forget that the pleasures of amor de café aren’t the same as the pleasures of the home. Señor Manriquito, I leave you with my adopted daughter,” she went on to say. “Daughter, this is Señor Manrique, treat him with affection, he is a good man.”
When the old man was alone with the quiet, slender girl who had been assigned to him, he glimpsed such rapturous faraway places in her dark glances and high cheekbones, and perceived such warm apple and cinnamon well-being in her skin, that he didn’t know what else to do but to propose matrimony.
“No, thank you,” she responded with the silky voice, the good manners, and the discernment she had been taught.
Todos los Santos slept in the kitchen that night and before dawn entered the bedroom, making her way through the air saturated with the scent of intimacy. Sayonara was no longer there and señor Manrique slept in the beatific placidity of satisfied dreams, naked, soft, and white like cottage cheese. His usual blue suit waited for him neatly at the ready on a chair, rigid and carefully laid out to allow its owner to resume his human form when he put it on again. The madrina made a silent inspection of the room and then rushed out to the patio like a madwoman, shouting to Sayonara. The girl, now without her goddess disguise, was disheveled and barefoot, bucket in hand, feeding the pigs.
“Sayonara, come here!”
“Yes, madrina?”
“Where is the fountain pen?”
“What fountain pen?”
“What do you think? Señor Manrique’s gold fountain pen…”
“I haven’t seen it.”
“He always wears it in the pocket of his jacket and now it’s not there.”
“Maybe he lost it, who knows?”
“You listen carefully to what I am going to say. For fifteen years señor Manrique has been coming to La Catunga with his gold fountain pen, for fifteen years he has fallen asleep in any of these houses, for fifteen years he has left without losing anything. Right this minute you will go, without waking him, and leave the pen where he had it. Being a puta is a profession, but being an evil puta is filth. If I haven’t been able to make you understand that, then I’ve wasted my time with you.”
The sun burned bright, radios were already chattering, and the heat was mature when señor Manrique, rejuvenated by the cistern, gave Todos los Santos the agreed upon sum and said good-bye, stamping a kiss on her fingers; she saw in his face an expression as clear as a medal of merit, which she had never seen before.
“You look magnificent today, señor,” she said, probing the terrain.
“Not to boast, señora, but last night I devoted myself completely to the mission you bestowed upon me, and I believe that my performance as initiator and guide in matters of love was favorable. Of course, I don’t imagine that a girl so young could have taken a fancy to me…”