Carlos Fuentes - A Change of Skin

You read until the sun dropped below the branches of the trees and struck your face. You closed the book. In the glare and shadow of the sun, the buildings that surrounded the plaza had lost all detail and become shapes and farther off you could see the smoke plumes of the Retiro train station and the haze leading down to the docks along the brownish Río de la Plata, as opaque as the skin of a lizard despite the setting sun. You looked at your watch. It would soon be five. You got up and nodded goodbye to the boy and he rose to his feet for a moment and you walked off toward Santa Fe. A record shop detained you for a moment. Noches del Palais de Glace … dream … ya no estás … se me encoge el corazón …

The little tearoom was air-conditioned. You seated yourself on green velvet before a table of gray marble with mahogany legs where a service for two was already laid out, cups, small plates, sugar bowl, silver spoons and forks. You ordered tea and paté sandwiches and took your Chesterfields from your purse. The waiter came with the flame of his lighter. You breathed in slowly, your eyes closed, without looking around you, without paying attention to the quiet conversations of the no-longer-young ladies who were habituées of the tearoom. You held your cigarette between your fingers and studied the ring of saliva that you always left on a cigarette when you smoked: Javier had told you that it looked very ugly. Five-ten. Your tea was served and you said that you didn’t need cream. You unwrapped two lumps of sugar and let them drop into the cup with a noise that was surprisingly loud. You squeezed lemon juice and watched it begin to dissolve the sugar, and you waited before pouring the tea. You waited. After only two or three puffs you put out your cigarette. A string trio was playing something by Lehar,

“Maybe it was the Merry Widow Waltz…” and finally you took the teapot and poured your cup. You sipped the tea slowly. When it was all gone, you took the silver fork and began to plow furrows and construct four-lane highways across the white tablecloth. Straight lines, then circles, then crosses. Again. Still again, imagining that the tablecloth was a snow-covered landscape seen from the air. Then you beat jerky time to the waltz, moving the fork back and forth and destroying the fields and roads you had made. You lit another cigarette and let it hang from your lips while you went on making lines with the fork. Five-twenty. The waiter coughed beside your elbow and you looked up and smiled at him and with your hand concealed the marks you had made on the tablecloth. The waiter asked if you were expecting someone to join you. You didn’t answer. You looked away from his angular face, his graying hair somewhat darkened by the brilliantine that pasted it down. His high thin eyebrows, his aquiline nose, his lips pressed firmly together to conceal, no doubt, a black denture.

Without looking at the waiter again, you snuffed out your cigarette. You picked up your white kid gloves and caressed them, smelled them, lifted them to your lips. You began to toy with them. Empty white gloves. You spread them out finger by finger. You rubbed one against the other. You made them dance together, thumb to thumb. You hung them from the points of your fingers. You squeezed them in your fist to wad them against the open palm of the other hand. Five thirty-five. You laid your gloves on your purse again. The waiter was holding his lighter for you. You moved your Chesterfield into the small flame without looking at him.

“Don’t you care for the sandwiches, Señora?”

You looked down at the little damp sandwiches. Rye bread, paté. The waiter suddenly half bowed and said good afternoon and moved to the chair opposite you and pulled it back.

“Yes, it’s clear that it’s a small world.”

Larraín smiled, wrinkling his nose. With a gesture of his right hand he invited himself to sit down as the waiter brushed the chair off with a napkin and held it for him. You blushed.

“No … I’m late already. Waiter, my check, please.”

They stood before you in confusion while you went on blushing. The minutes would pass while the waiter went for the check and brought it and then went to get your change.

“Sit down, Larraín, and keep the table if you want to.”

Larraín sat with his insufferable air of knowing all the secrets of your life, of having surprised you in some act of abandoned vice. He arched an eyebrow, as if expecting an explanation.

“He sat in front of me, Javier, and I refused to let him suspect that I had been there forty minutes waiting for you.”

The waiter brought the check. Larraín pursed his lips and lifted an index finger and took his billfold from the inside pocket of his coat. You got up. You said neither goodbye nor thanks. You simply walked out. Santa Fe, filled with tall young women with long legs and flaming cheeks, beautiful young women, the women of Buenos Aires …

“And I knew them: servants, maids, clerks in shops and offices, performers…”

There was still sunlight. You stopped in front of the record shop again. Me dejaste en la palmera, me afanaste … You felt the sticky heat.

“You had told me, ‘At five, but I’m not sure I will make it. Maybe I will. In any case, wait for me there. But I’m not sure. I have so many things to do today. If I’m not there by five-fifteen, don’t wait any longer.’”

Pickpockets. You. Your mother, your father. You walked along Santa Fe and on to the apartment building on Quintana. The doorman greeted you with his Polish accent. The lobby smelled of gardenias. Javier was not in the apartment. You lay down on the sofa and let your shoes slip off.

“Oh, shit, Javier! Shit, shit, shit!”

You stood and in your stockinged feet went into the bedroom and opened the closet and stood there touching Javier’s clothing, the jackets, the trousers, the orderly shirts, smelling the soap that he had placed among his handkerchiefs.

* * *

Δ Franz braked, at the same time accelerating the engine to shift down. You heard the gears, Isabel, the growl and then the smooth even whir. You were staring at the rearview mirror, trying to see Franz. For a moment he glanced up and saw your green eyes looking at him. Then your head moved out of sight and was replaced by the swift, receding landscape. High Oriental straw roofs topping huts of woven reeds. Copper-colored faces, wide, the flat cheekbones pushed out and the eyes buried and slightly slanted. You moved your head near Javier’s and in his ear whispered: “Tell me again. I want to hear it again.”

“It isn’t original with me,” Javier said, whispering also. “It’s a classic. To take the body of a woman and to enjoy sex with her is proof enough of possession for a modest man, but another, with a thirst for possession more suspicious and ambitious, understands the doubtful and merely apparent nature of physical union and demands more convincing evidence, insisting that the woman must not only give herself to him but in doing so renounce for his sake everything that she possesses or would like to possess. But still a third type is not even satisfied by that. He asks himself dubiously whether the woman in renouncing everything for his sake has not done it because she has an illusory image of him, is mistaken about him. He demands that she know him truly, deeply, and completely. So in order to be loved, he discloses himself to her. Only then, when she is not deceived about him, can he feel that she is really his…”

* * *

Δ Yes, Dragoness, that first night in your apartment at the corner of Rin and Nazas you talked like your husband. Like him and about him and to him, despite the fact that I was apparently your listener and had my stiff cat’s head buried in your pleasant fishbowl while Javier, your perfect model of a modern spouse, lay passed out on the sofa in the living room. You spoke of the Greek sea, their wine, their islands, your name, and above all, over and over, of sex …