Carlos Fuentes - A Change of Skin

“I remember her partly because I discovered, when I tried to see her face clearly, that my eyes were bad.”

Really, Dragoness? Oh, come on, now!

You had to wrinkle your eyes in order to make out her thick eyebrows, her small precise mouth with its small full lips bright with lipstick, her almond eyes, her tipped-up nose, her slightly forward chin. So one day you went to an oculist and learned that your left eye was off one diopter and a half. You thought that Javier would laugh when he came home to lunch and saw you wearing your tortoiseshell glasses. He didn’t laugh. He was shocked. He requested you, with an ill-humor that was not well concealed, not to wear the glasses on the street.

“And when I go to a movie?”

“No. Not there either.”

“And to see the girl in the window across the street better?”

He looked at you as if you had violated one of his most intimate secrets, Dragoness, and you went on sharply: Did he think that he had been the only one aware of her all these weeks? Did he believe that she was his private property? What were you supposed to look at, the bare branches of the trees, passing buses, maybe the Polish doorman? So that to see the unknown girl might be his privilege and not yours? And you understood: he would like to say to her all the words he had never dared to write and that he had spoken to you only silently. The secret, untouchable girl across the street. His in something more than just his imagination. Ship ahoy! His in the reverse of desire, his famous desire-without-desire. You laughed and put on your yellow sweater and went out on the balcony and Javier, who had not said a word, followed you. You proposed that you play games about the girl. That you try to guess her name, her education, whether she had ever been married, her hopes. She was a heroine, let her have the name of a heroine: Ulalume, Berenice, or perhaps even Ligeia? Aurelia, Myrto, Paquita of the golden eyes? Or, trying another tradition, Becky, perhaps, or Jane or Tess? And she had to have her hero: shadowy Heathcliff? Ridiculous Colonel Crawley? Frivolus de Marsay? How about Javier for the name of her hero? Or … Superman! Yes, let Superman fly to her window and discover whether she was a prostitute or a mezzo-soprano at the Maipo theater, a student of chemistry, a governess, a teacher of Yiddish. Yes, Yiddish: she was Rebecca or Sarah or Miriam, a Jewess despite her tipped-up nose, a beautiful dark Jewess, for with your new glasses you could see the drops of blue sweat on her temples, in her armpits, at the division of her breasts. A brunette Jewess, that he might have a contrasting pair: yourself the blond Saxon Jewess, Miriam the dark Eastern one, a woman of slow speech, of black prolonged orgasms, a woman who was married, who was having an affair, a virgin girl, a spinster, a widow.

“She’s America just discovered, Javier. Bullshit. Why don’t you go closer to her? There are only the sidewalk and the street between you. A bell, an elevator, and land ho! Go and get her and bring her back. Or don’t bring her back. Just tell me about her. Tell me how you make love to a woman today.”

Without a word Javier got up from the coaster and went inside. He turned his back on Miriam, and Miriam, as if an invisible signal had reached her, drew the blue curtain to dress or undress, to receive her lover, to take a nap. Neither of you went out on the balcony again. Spring came, the end of the season, the closing of the Teatro Colón, your fur coat put away with mothballs, your print dresses to be cleaned, Perón in power, Eva on the balconies of the Plaza de Mayo, slogans chanted at mass meetings, and the lindens turned green again, the foliage began to thicken, hiding your view of the building across the street.

But the leaves were not too thick to prevent you from discovering, one afternoon when you happened to look out across the balcony, that the blue curtain had disappeared. There was only a bare window, an empty room now. Empty rooms seem larger, lighter. The shadows of the furniture, the pictures on the wall, the clothing thrown over the back of a chair, had all vanished, as if by witchcraft.

* * *

Δ Speaking of witchcraft, Dragoness, you won’t believe this but it is right here in the newspaper. Mistress Jane, daughter of the wealthy burgess Robert Throckmorton, a resident of Warboys, at the age of ten is the victim of strange and violent attacks. She sneezes for half an hour and then faints with her eyes still open. Afterward her belly swells up and she cannot be persuaded to lie down. Her legs quiver, sometimes one, sometimes the other. An elderly woman of the neighborhood, Mrs. Alice Samuel, seventy, comes to visit the family and is taken into the bedroom to see the sick child. Jane cries out: “Look at the witch sitting there! Have you ever seen anyone who looked more like a witch?” Mrs. Throckmorton, a sensible woman, pays no attention, and the doctors go on treating her daughter. But two months later Jane’s four sisters — the youngest is nine, the eldest fifteen — show the same symptoms, and soon afterward seven of the Throckmorton servant girls begin to sneeze, cry, faint, shake their arms and legs, and so on. One of the physicians attending admits that they are dealing with a clear case of witchcraft and the parents bring their children face to face with their elderly neighbor, Nanny Samuel. The children burst out weeping, throw themselves on the floor in strange torments, and extend their arms beseechingly to the old woman. For a time the attacks occur only when Nanny Samuel is near. Then they begin to happen at all hours and the children insist that they feel better when Mrs. Samuel is with them. The Throckmortons thereupon take the old woman into their household, forcing her to sleep in the same room with their daughters, and the girls disturb her mightily by asking her if she cannot see the shapes that run and jump and play around them. In September of 1590 Lady Cromwell, the most distinguished lady in the county, visits the Throckmortons and when she sees Nanny Samuel declares her to be an obvious witch, knocks off her bonnet with a single blow, and orders that a lock of her hair be burned. The old woman weeps, but it is known that later Lady Cromwell begins to suffer nightmares, her health fails, and finally she dies in July of 1592. The Throckmorton daughters continue to suffer their strange attacks until Christmas of that year, when Nanny Samuel pleads with them to start behaving themselves. The attacks cease. Now Mr. and Mrs. Throckmorton have no doubts and Alice Samuel herself ceases to believe in her innocence and asks them to forgive her. At last, Pastor Dorrington persuades the old woman to confess. On the following day, however, after resting overnight, Mrs. Samuel retracts her confession. She is taken by the sheriff and put to judgment, the Throckmorton girls appearing as her accusers, once again possessed by their attacks. They insinuate that Mrs. Samuel caused the death of Lady Cromwell. Exalted by their great adventure, laughing nervously and looking at each other with malicious glee, the girls do not rest until Nanny Samuel confesses again and accepts everything with which she is charged, including carnal knowledge of the devil. When it is suggested, however, that she can escape being hanged if she will admit that she is pregnant by Satan, the old woman puts the noose around her neck herself and cries out: “I may be a witch, but I was never a whore!” And thus exits Mrs. Alice Samuel.

“I know these charms,” said Medea.

“Are you through?”

* * *

Δ “No, not yet. We closed the door. Ulrich opened the refrigerator and I nodded. We picked up the body of Herr Urs. We removed the red bedspread in which we had wrapped him and stood him up. He was wearing a very long nightgown and in life would have tripped over its tails. We straightened, with difficulty, his legs and moved his arms from their sleeping posture and tied them at his hips. His head refused to go straight and remained leaning on one shoulder, but we closed his eyes and pulled his jaw up and tied it with a handkerchief around his head. I quickly took out the cheese, the beer, and the lettuce. And Herr von Schnepelbrücke entered the refrigerator, slightly bowlegged but on the whole erect and dignified enough. We closed the refrigerator and sighed. Give me a cigarette, Lisbeth.”