Carlos Fuentes - A Change of Skin

“If you people bother her, we won’t eat in your restaurant. Never again.”

The fat couple stare at you and then at each other. They put their heads together. They shrug their shoulders finally and invite the carabiniere to step inside for a glass of Lindos wine. Elena laughs and laughs and offers you a fig and you feel yourself the mistress of Falaraki.

“Soy la dueña!” you say to Javier. “I’m the mistress, the lady of the manor!”

“Mitzvah,” Javier laughs. “A good deed every day. Oh, the spirit of the Boy Scout.”

“Soy la dueña!” you repeat.

To become baroque for a little, Dragoness. Falaraki is a beach rimmed with the pebbles that follow the line of the coast. While Javier sits at the table in the cabin and writes, you walk the beach gathering pebbles. You have nothing to do except love your husband and wade along the beach, sometimes diving, stretching your fingers for those small polished stones. When still wet they are brilliant, like mirrors, you can even see your face in them. For hours you sit on the beach sorting out your pebbles and giving them names. You call them the hemispheres of the hours of the sea. You say that the pebbles of the coast of Rhodes are like the island’s sternest sons and you think that some secret depth of the sea gave them their watery colors long ago so that those colors would never be lost. Some are red, some ocher, some white, green, yellow, black, but not these colors as they are seen on land; no, different, new, like the polished shield-shaped stone you hold now: all grays unite in it, the veins are of transparent white, the nerves of silver, the arteries of duller tin. Some of the stones are like sculpted eggs, some are tablets of mustard, some are half-moons, and all have been polished and smoothed by the friction of water and sand. They are valueless, but the treasures of the island’s poor. Children adorn their sand castles with them. Fishermen’s wives string them into necklaces. But away from the water, the pebbles lose their brilliance and become opaque and in the end forget their origin. So say the women of Rhodes, and they are right.

You never know which pebble to choose. There are so many and when they lie on the soft sand where the beach enters the sea they are all beautiful. They are of the sea and of the land also, and when brought ashore they become like the land. But within the sea they reproduce all its lights and shadows, all its colors. They are the gentle teeth of the sea fastened in the land to allow the sea to hold itself to the land, and without them the sea would be different, a different world, faith, dream, the promise of a different millennium. You sit on the beach entire hours fingering your pebbles, staring at them. You have found every color except blue.

You sort your pebbles out. You know that each of them will change color as the sun moves. Noon’s yellow becomes orange as the afternoon lengthens, is red at twilight, beneath the moon is violet, a fusion of red and blue. But not beyond that: a clear and unmixed blue never appears. It is there, that blue, buried within the tight concentric circles of the little pebble, you believe. And every day the pebble must withstand the attack of the sun, which would like to force the blue out into sight. The pebble allows itself to be overcome and transformed, from yellow through orange to violet, then to white at dawn and at noon back to yellow again. But only darkness is permitted to see the secret blue.

So much for your pebble hunting, Elizabeth. You were young and idle in those days and it was indeed an innocent enough pastime, harmless, in a vague way poetic. Now I must quote you a classic: What you say to me is not true but nevertheless, simply because you say it, it reveals your being.

Okay, Dragoness?

Okay.

* * *

Δ You had changed clothes, Isabel, and now were wearing tight black stretch pants and an open-throated white blouse. Your breasts danced as you whirled on your toes, frowning with dissatisfaction and concentration, biting the nail of your little finger, with your long hair loose and your feet bare. A João Gilberto recording.

“No, damn it, that’s not how it goes.”

You moved your right leg forward and whirled again. You placed your arms in the pose of a Hindu goddess and bit your fingernail.

“Watch me now. Tell me if I get it right this time.”

“But, Isabel…”

“I know you can’t dance, Proffy. But you can give an opinion, can’t you? Sing out, darling. Look, the trick of the bossa nova is to hold the rhythm of the samba against the cross rhythm of the jazz. Like this, see?”

You whirled again, laughing. You walked toward Javier, who was lying on the bed smoking and watching you. You smiled and half narrowed your eyes.

… não pode ser, não pode ser …

You fell on Javier’s chest and kissed his forehead.

“Proffy, I love you.”

Then you hopped up again and ran to your open bottle of Coke and belted it down. Javier placed his notebook on his knees and chewed the eraser of his pencil. You went near him again and caressed — yes, Pussycat, caressed —his thinning hair.

“Like the way I’ve fixed up my room?”

“Of course I like it. It’s amazing. You should see ours.”

“What do you mean, ‘ours’?”

“Mine and Elizabeth’s, across the corridor. There were even two snails on the wall.”

“Where is she now?”

“She’s taking a nap. It looks as if you’ve been here for days.”

“That’s the record player, Proffy. Have phonograph, can travel. And Coke for those who think young. What are you writing?”

“Oh, just some thoughts I want to remember.”

“Like maybe the day we met?”

“It does seem a long time ago.”

“Four months, Proffy, darling. You had just flunked me in Classical Literature. I told you I didn’t care, because now I could take it over and have you for my proffy again.”

“And I asked you out to dinner. Immediately.”

“From sheer narcissism, sweetheart. I built you up.”

“You did that, all right, just by being with me. Maybe that’s why I teach, to keep in touch with kids who are kind enough to build me up sometimes.”

“Don’t lie, Proffy. I had you hanging on the ropes.”

“Well,” Javier smiled, “you were quite a discovery. And it continued in the taxi and in the restaurant you picked out. The discovery of the two halves of your face, one half angel, the other demon. Your face framed by your straight dark hair.”

“Keep going, darling. You’re doing great.”

“Your green eyes. The eyes of a child, without malice, when your mouth is in repose. Brilliant and cold eyes when your mouth laughs so innocently and you talk about the simplicities of your life as a well-reared young lady.”

“Well-reared? Hah! A discovery?” You got up and turned the record. Once more you began to dance, smiling. “You know, someone told me once that he liked me so much he was afraid to come near me. Really! And for a whole year, until you flunked me and I spoke to you, I was just another of your students. I wasn’t even a rabbit to trap. And at home no one ever made any fuss about my looks. God, no! Now, darling, watch this step. Then you told me I was beautiful and you turned me on. You’re still a lively old Proffy.”

“Still lively? Thanks.”

“You’re very welcome, darling. My man of distinction whose hair has begun to gray, though you know, you are getting to be a bit bald. I like your complexion, too. That paleness.”

“So you attend the university only to observe the good looks of fortyish professors.”

“No, darling, I go to splash in culture. That’s you too.” You balanced on your toes and laughed. “Really, when you talk, my wheels begin to go around. I get ideas. Imagine! And it’s relaxing, too. As if I were floating. What it comes down to is that I like you. Just that.”