Carlos Fuentes - A Change of Skin

“Oh, no,” you groaned. “Is there a hotel?”

“There’s a hotel,” Javier said. “It’s not too good, but…”

“Look,” said Franz, showing broken wires. “Someone cut the wires from the distributor head.”

“Sure,” you said dryly. You crossed your arms and leaned against the door of the car. “What do you expect? It’s that mania for destruction. Someone just got angry at your little car.”

“A patient from the asylum,” Isabel laughed. She finished her drink and walked toward the store to return the bottle.

“I’ll go to the gas station and call the AMA and arrange for towing,” said Franz. “But first let’s get out the suitcases.”

“Javier, do something, for God’s sake,” you said, your arms crossed. “Help him with the bags.”

* * *

Δ You woke up and turned over in bed.

“Oh, you’re back now?”

“What do you mean, back? I haven’t gone anywhere.”

“What time is it?”

“Going on ten. Let’s get something to eat.”

“What for? Besides, it will upset your stomach.”

“Well, my stomach isn’t my fault. It’s not my fault that we live seven thousand meters straight up, with eagles and snakes.”

“Hold it, Javier, hold it. I haven’t said a word.”

“Do me a favor, Ligeia. Get me my medicine and a glass of water.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Just acidity, that’s all.”

“Don’t hog the whole sheet. You always do that.”

“Well, what does Franz say? Will the car be ready in the morning?”

“How should I know? I haven’t seen Franz. Wouldn’t your stomach feel better if you ate something? Acidity is worse on an empty stomach.”

“The medicine will trick them.”

“Trick who?”

“The damned juices in my stomach.”

“Come on, Javier. Get up, let’s do something.”

“What, for example?”

“Well … did you bring the dominoes?”

“Yes. They’re there in the suitcase.”

You got up and opened the suitcase.

“I laugh when I remember how you used to eat when you were younger. God, nothing bothered you.”

Javier’s eyes said nothing. You felt for the box of dominoes. “When you were just a kid, old man. In New York. When we met at City College and fell in love.” You found the box and shook it. You looked around the room and finally emptied the box out on the night table.

“Remember the black olives? The big black olives? Remember where we ate them?”

“I remember that we drank a very dry white wine and that we were sitting facing the wharf.”

“What was the name of the town? I bet you don’t remember.”

“And I remember that we ate a red fish.”

“Aren’t you going to get up and play dominoes?”

“Put them on the bed.”

You looked at Javier and sighed and shoved the dominoes on to the bed.

“Bring my pen, Ligeia. It’s in my coat pocket. And we’ll need a piece of paper.”

“No.”

“We have to keep score.”

“No. Let whoever wins win and that’s enough.”

“All right.” Javier mixed the dominoes on the bed.

“The black olives were from Kalamatis. Kalamatis, Javier.”

“Take your pieces.”

“How many do you take when just two are playing?”

“Seven. You know perfectly well that you always take seven. Go on. Open with the sixes.”

“I don’t have it.”

“Neither do I. I’ll open with the fives.”

“I’m hungry. I’d like some black olives from Kalamatis. You knew the name very well. Why did you pretend you couldn’t remember?”

“I didn’t remember. And names are of no importance.”

“What does matter, if names don’t?”

“I’ve told you before, Ligeia. The things that come back to you only now and then and unexpectedly. Go on and play.”

You played mechanically, trying to remember things you didn’t remember often, objects of terra cotta, alabaster, marble, ivory. You remembered pigeons, bulls, fish, monkeys, sheep, turtledoves, owls, deer, lions, a man carrying a dead goat around his neck.

“Take it.”

And many urns for the serpents. Yes, above all the serpent, the lion, and the bull. The three of them together.

“I was remembering things today, Javier. At Xochicalco and again later when we were at the river.”

“Damn, you’ve ruined my double-six.”

“Two-six. I can run it alone. Double-six. Six-five. There, I’m out.”

“I’ll mix them again.”

“Careful. One of them is under the sheet.”

“Yes. Ligeia.”

“What?”

“You’ve forgotten something.”

“What?”

“My medicine and a glass of water.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll go get them now.”

“And something else.”

“What?”

“I wasn’t there, Ligeia. I wasn’t there.”

Why did you insist on saying that he was too there and that he must recall the names of the white wine and the black olives? You went into the bathroom and turned on the light. All that he needed to know he could learn from looking at pictures in a book or reading a travel guide, couldn’t he? You looked among the medicines for the bottle of Maalox. That would be enough to tell him that the palace of Minos rises above olive orchards on a pale rocky mountain. You found the bottle and turned on the faucet to fill the glass. In the midst of cypress trees, ravines, vines, laurel shrubs. The water came out brown with rust and you emptied the glass. That all day long crickets can be heard, that at Knossos the earth is reddish and the bulls painted on the walls are the same color. You turned off the light and stopped just inside the door. That there are vineyards all around and in the palace storerooms are great many-handled urns that were used to store grain. That the entire palace is a beehive of rooms, cloisters, archives, shops, halls, bedrooms, sunken baths. You went back into the bedroom. Javier had just finished mixing the dominoes again. And a stage for theater.

“Here, Javier. But you can’t drink this water.”

“That’s all right. I can take the medicine straight.”

“What were you saying to yourself just now?”

“Nothing. Well … that the only thing living there was a pen where a single pig rooted and scared away the hens and then scratched himself against the stones of the wall.”

“So you were there.”

“No, Ligeia.”

“And you were on Herakleion, too. And on Rhodes. And at Falaraki on the beach. Falaraki, Javier, Falaraki, don’t you remember? You have to remember…”

“I have the double-six.”

“Look, how long did we stay at Falaraki?”

“I don’t know. Just as long as you please. We were never there in the first place. Go on and play.”

“We stayed in a white cottage half buried in the sand. With narrow little windows. White with plaster. Yes, and it had … I don’t know. Forgive me, Javier.”

Javier gathered up his dominoes. He deliberately tipped over those that you were holding upright.

“Javier, I told you…”

“Look, what I remember is a building black from coal smoke, a house where your mother served matzo balls and passed bitter gossip along to your brother and your father never understood anything that was happening, and if you want to remember something, remember that and not that silly cottage beside the sea.”

You jumped up from the bed. “What difference does it make to you? You weren’t there.”

“And I wasn’t in Greece, either.”

“But I was.”

You paced back and forth between the end of the bed and the wardrobe, thinking. That you had arrived at Falaraki in darkness, in a little boat that had brought you from the pier at Rhodes. And when you reached Falaraki, all you could see was the black loin of the mountain. The captain offered you glasses of ouzo with water and the boat rocked heavily. And since that moment you have always understood that Greece has always lived beside the sea because the sea is its promise, the mirage that never vanishes, a second earth visible all day to the eyes of those who would like to abandon their real earth, flat and dry, where only olive trees flourish and everything else, hyacinth, oleander, lilies, hibiscus, is a perfume, an intoxication, an alchemy created to reply to the sea’s beauty and give men a reason to remain on land. You thought that you asked Javier to write it down for you. But he …