Carlos Fuentes - A Change of Skin

“Emil Jannings in The Blue Angel, ” you interrupted, Dragoness, laughing. “Do you remember it? I saw it as a girl in the neighborhood movie. All of us wanted to be exactly like Marlene. What was she called?”

“Lola,” said Franz, smiling. “Lola-Lola. And he was Professor Unrat. Professor Trash. Yes, Jannings made our professors into commonplace and very ordinary mortals.”

But from his high seat in the lecture amphitheater, one of two hundred shivering students who clouded the air with the vapor of their breathing, Franz saw his professor as anything but ordinary, saw him as cold as the room, as aloof as he was distant. On the blackboard he swiftly traced calculations for a foundation. He related how Brunelleschi had climbed the vault of the Pantheon in Rome, removed some stones, and discovered the secret of the double structures sustaining each other reciprocally, and then had made his contemporaries marvel at his dome in Florence. He defended classical principles against the innovations proposed by Gropius and the Bauhaus group. To question the professor was forbidden. And he always entered with great solemnity, inclined his head briefly to the standing students, and launched off on a lecture

“… He had given over and over without changing a word for twenty or thirty years.”

With your hand you brushed at a fly that was circling your nude bodies.

“Don’t you want me to close the window, Franz?”

“No, leave it open. It’s hot.”

They had to eat lunch hurriedly because other students were waiting for the tables. Cigarette haze, smells of beer and human breath, smells made thick because the ceiling of the tavern was very low. After lunch they worked through the afternoon in a hall with high windows and dozens of inclined drawing tables. On Thursdays the tables were folded up and stacked against the wall and the hall was converted into a gymnasium and in long sweatshirts and black shorts and tennis shoes they jumped and sweated performing calisthenics, and lifted weights. They started home at five in the afternoon, walking. Despite the cold and darkness that the far-apart lampposts did not lighten, they enjoyed that long walk across a plain dotted with linden trees. Sometimes they bought roasted chestnuts at a stand mysteriously planted there far from traffic, far from people, and walked on chewing the dry sweet meat of the nuts. Spring came and their routine did not change. But now they felt freed from so many things, from their mufflers, from the bite of the cold, the need to jump up and down in one spot to keep their blood circulating, to warm their hands in front of their open mouths. A freedom one never felt in Mexico, for one never had those needs.

“Yes. I miss the change of seasons too.”

“I remember one spring. Not the year. I remember it because Ulrich got a check for his twenty-first birthday.”

A great, an enormous event. Ulrich considered the situation very seriously. One day he cut classes and went shopping and when Franz returned to their room that evening there against the wall, white as an igloo, was an electric refrigerator. Ulrich smiled a little worriedly, almost shamefaced. He scratched his head. In those days he wore his hair very short and he was very blond. His spectacles glittered as he opened the door of the refrigerator. Sausages, spare-ribs, bottles of beer, and a tall thin bottle of wine.

“What a feast, Lisbeth!”

They opened the beer, uncorked the wine, smelled the fried sausages, and ate them smeared with mustard. Hurriedly, by huge mouthfuls, gulping down great swallows of the beer. They ended dancing around the room with enormous steps while singing at the top of their voices. Ulrich did side-splitting imitations of their professors and recited parts of Schiller’s Joan of Arc, a work every German child knows by heart, and in his baritone voice sang arias from Tristan while Franz accompanied him with Isolde’s notes and, in the solos, an imitation of the orchestra. Their fun abruptly ended when they heard a fist pounding on the door very energetically. Franz opened. He looked out and saw nothing. An imperious, deep-toned voice spoke and he looked down and there was the deformed figure of a dwarf, not so tall as his navel, glaring up at him with an infuriated face. He had tight lips surrounded by a mustache, a light but carefully trimmed beard. He was wrapped in a red silk bathrobe that clearly had been custom-tailored for him, for though it was a child’s in size, it had all the details of an adult garment: blue borders embroidered with pagodas and dragons, quilted black lapels, a wide tasseled belt. The dwarf picked up the end of his belt and shook its tassels in front of his nose and in his rich deep voice, really a beautiful voice, informed Franz that they had shattered his repose. One had a right to rest. The landlady had assured him that she kept a quiet and tranquil establishment, not a madhouse. Such a lack of respect for the rights of others was unworthy of beings calling themselves civilized. It was clear that as children they had not been taught even the most elementary courtesy. Franz offered apologies and tried to hide his drunken grin. They would not do it again. He promised. They had not known that the adjoining room was occupied now. “I moved in yesterday,” said the little man. “And tomorrow I am going to move out again if this outrageous uproar doesn’t stop.” Ulrich stepped forward and hoped that their offense would be forgiven and pledged that in the future their deportment would be a model of exemplitude and ended by inviting their new neighbor to have beer with them next Saturday in the afternoon. Without a word the dwarf looked at them, his face still furious, haughtily lifted his large head and turned and went back to his room.

But the following Saturday at five in the afternoon knuckles tapped lightly on their door. He was there again, tiny in the shadows of the hall. He did not smile but his expression was amiable. He entered holding a visiting card between his gloved fingers. With solemnity he extended it to Ulrich. Franz looked over Ulrich’s shoulder and read: Urs von Schnepelbrücke. Works of Art. Dolls repaired. Their guest slowly removed his gloves. He glanced inquisitively but briefly around the room. Then he seated himself on the divan. He had to put his hands down on the cushion and raise himself with great effort but finally succeeded and his short legs danced in the air, high-button shoes and gray spats. Now that his gloves were off, they could see his paint-stained hands, as disproportionately large as his enormous head. He waited silently, looking at them, until they remembered their manners and almost in unison gave him their names. Ulrich begged pardon for not having a visiting card to offer. The dwarf nodded and said that he could see their situation at a glance. But poverty is the customary lot of students. It is almost to be expected.

They were intensely curious about their visitor’s occupation, and while Ulrich took the promised beer from the refrigerator and opened and served it, Franz asked Herr von Schnepelbrücke if he found his new quarters a good place for his work. The dwarf savored the beer a moment and then drank, foaming his mustache. He spoke firmly and precisely: “One does not seek places for one’s work. They come to one naturally. The new apartment buildings on the outskirts of the city are very ugly. Here, on the contrary, I have only to glance out my window to receive inspiration.”

“Do you paint, sir?”

He touched his beard. “No, I am merely an illustrator, not a true artist. I have no pretensions to originality. I merely reproduce on canvas. The old buildings, the old streets, so that something will remain after they have been demolished and forgotten.” He lowered his voice and hesitated, as if he were uncertain whether to honor them with his confidences.