Carlos Fuentes - Burnt Water

Two letters came. First, the one you sent me, telling me that Claire had had an abortion. Then the one you sent Mama announcing that you were going to marry Claire within the month. You hoped we would all be able to come to the wedding. I asked Mama to let me keep her letter with mine. I put them side by side and studied your handwriting to see if they were both written by the same person.

“It was a quick decision, Claudia. I told her it was too soon. We’re young and we have the right to live a while longer without responsibilities. Claire said that was fine. I don’t know whether she understood everything I said to her. But you do, don’t you?”

“I love this girl, I’m sure of it. She’s been good and understanding with me even though at times I’ve made her suffer; neither of you will be ashamed that I would want to make it up to her. Her father is a widower; he is an engineer and lives in Neuchâtel. He approves and will come to the wedding. I hope that you, Papa, and Claudia can be with us. When you know Claire you will love her as much as I, Mama.”

Three weeks later Claire committed suicide. One of your friends at work called us; he said that one afternoon she had asked for permission to leave the office; she had a headache; she went to an early movie and you looked for her that night, as always, in the apartment; you waited for her, and then you rushed about the city, but you couldn’t find her; she was dead in the theater, she had taken the Veronal before she went in and she had sat alone in the first row, where no one would bother her; you called Neuchâtel, you wandered through the streets and restaurants once more, and you sat in La Clémence until they closed. It was the next day before they called you from the morgue and you went to see her. Your friend told us that we ought to come for you, make you return to Mexico: you were mad with grief. I told our parents the truth. I showed them your last letter. They were stunned for a moment and then Papa said he would never allow you in the house again. He shouted that you were a criminal.

I finish my coffee and a waiter points toward where I am seated. A tall man, with the lapels of his coat turned up, nods and walks toward me. It is the first time I have seen that tanned face, the blue eyes and white hair. He asks if he may sit down and asks if I am your sister. I say yes. He says he is Claire’s father. He does not shake hands. I ask him if he wants a cup of coffee. He shakes his head and takes a pack of cigarettes from his overcoat pocket. He offers me one. I tell him I don’t smoke. He tries to smile and I put on my dark glasses. He puts his hand in his pocket again and takes out a piece of paper. He places it, folded, on the table.

“I have brought you this letter.”

I try to question him with raised eyebrows.

“It’s signed by you. It’s addressed to my daughter. It was on Juan Luis’s pillow the morning they found him dead in his apartment.”

“Oh yes, I wondered what had become of that letter. I looked for it everywhere.”

“Yes, I thought you would want to keep it.” Now he smiles as if he already knew me. “You’re very cynical. Don’t worry. Why should you? There’s nothing anyone can do now.”

He rises without saying goodbye. The blue eyes look at me with sadness and compassion. I try to smile, and I pick up the letter. The loudspeaker:

“… le départ de son vol numéro 707 … Paris, Gander, New York, et Mexico.… priés de se rendre à la porte numéro 5.”

I take my things, adjust my beret, and go down to the departure gate. I am carrying my purse and the makeup case and the boarding pass in my hands, but I manage, between the door and the steps of the airplane, to tear the letter and throw the pieces into the cold wind, into the fog that will perhaps carry them to the lake where you dived, Juan Luis, in search of a mirage.

No one believed her when she began saying that the dogs were coming closer, batty old bag, crazy old loon she was, muttering to herself all day long, what nightmares she must have; after what she’d done to her daughter she couldn’t help but have bad nights. Besides, old people’s brains get drier and drier until there’s nothing left but a shriveled little nut rattling around like a marble in their hollow heads. But Doña Manuelita is so virtuous, she doesn’t just water her own flowers, she waters all the flowers on the second floor, every morning you can see her carrying her green gasoline tin, her yellowed fingers sprinkling water over the big clay pots of geraniums lining the iron railing, every evening you see her slipping the covers over the bird cages so the canaries can sleep in quiet.

Some say, isn’t Doña Manuelita the most peaceful person you’ve ever known? What makes people say bad things about her? Old, and all alone, she never does anything out of the ordinary, never calls attention to herself. The flowerpots in the morning, the bird cages in the evening. About nine, she goes out to do her shopping at La Merced market, and on the way back she stops in the big square of the Zócalo and goes into the Cathedral to pray for a while. Then she comes back to the old palace, a tenement now, and fixes her meal. Fried beans, warmed-over tortillas, fresh tomatoes, mint and onion, shredded chilis: the odors wafting out of Señora Manuela’s kitchen are the same as those borne on the smoke from all the meals cooked over old charcoal-burning braziers. All alone, she eats, and stares at the black grate awhile, and rests, she must rest. They say she’s earned it. All those years a servant in a rich man’s house, a lifetime, you might say.

After the siesta, about dusk, she goes out again, all stooped over, her basket filled with dry tortillas, and that’s when the dogs begin to gather. It’s only natural. As she walks along she throws them the tortillas, and the dogs know it and follow her. When she can get enough together to buy a chicken, she saves the bones and throws them to the dogs as they follow her down La Moneda Street. The butcher says she shouldn’t do it, chicken bones are bad for dogs, they can choke on them, chicken bones splinter and pierce the intestines. Then all the bad-mouths say that’s proof that Doña Manuelita is an evil woman, look at that, luring the dogs just to kill them.

She returns about seven, soaked to the bone in the rainy season, her shoes gray with dust when it’s dry. That’s how everyone always thinks of her, bone-white, shrouded in dust between October and April, and between May and September a soppy mess, her shawl plastered to her head, raindrops dripping from her nose and trickling down the furrows of her eyes and cheeks and off the white hairs on her chin. She comes back from her adventures in the black blouse and flapping skirts and black stockings she always hangs out in the night air to dry. She’s the only one who dares to dry her clothes at night. What did I tell you, she’s mad as a hatter, what if it rains, then what good does it do? There’s no sun at night. And there are thieves. Never you mind. She hangs her soaked rags on the communal clotheslines that stretch in all directions across the patio of the building. I’ll let them hang in the night air, the gossips imagine Doña Manuelita saying. Because the truth is, no one’s ever heard her speak. And no one’s ever seen her sleep. Suppositions. Doña Manuela’s clothes disappear from the clothesline before anyone’s up. She’s never been seen at the washtubs, kneeling beside the other women, scrubbing, soaping, gossiping.

“She reminds me of a lonely old queen, forgotten by everyone,” little Luisito used to say before he’d been forbidden to see her, or even speak to her.

“When she’s coming up the stone staircase, I can imagine how this was a great palace, Mother, how a long time ago very powerful and wealthy gentlemen lived here.”