Carlos Fuentes - Constancia and Other Stories for Virgins

I wake up with a big scratch on my face. I raise my hand to my wounded cheek, I see the blood on my fingers. I look at her, awake, sitting in bed, motionless, looking at me. Does she smile? I take her left hand, roughly: it lacks the ring finger.

Bernardo

He said that I shouldn’t be wasting my time with virginal fiancées or with whores. Much less with mannequins! He laughed, undressing.

I knew it as soon as I entered the room on the Plaza Miravalle, full of Chinese screens and mirrors in gilded frames, divans heaped with soft cushions and Persian carpets, smelling of lost churches and distant cities; nothing in Mexico City smelled like this apartment where she appeared from behind some curtains, identical to him, but with a woman’s body, pale and slim, almost without breasts but with luxuriant pubic hair, as if the dark profundity of her sex made up for the plainness of her adolescent body: from afar she smelled of almonds and unknown soaps. She walked toward me, her long hair hanging loose, her heavy eyes ringed with dark circles, her lips painted deep red to disguise their thinness: her mouth was two red lines, just like his. Naked except for black stockings that she held up, poor thing, with her hands, with difficulty, practically scratching her thighs.

— Arturo, please …

She could have been his twin. He smiled and said no, they were not brother and sister, they had searched for a long time before finding each other. The penumbra she brought with her. He had asked his father: Don’t throw out the old furniture, what you don’t sell give to me. Without the furniture, perhaps, the room would not be what I see now: an enchanted cave in the middle of Plaza Miravalle, near the Salamanca ice-cream parlor, where we used to go for delicious lemon ices …

— Perhaps all this attracts her: the curtains, the rug, the furniture …

— The penumbra — I said.

— Yes, the penumbra, too. It’s not easy to produce this exact light. It’s not easy to conjure up another person who not only resembles you physically but wants to be like you, even wants to be you. Frankly, I wouldn’t want to be like her, but I would like to be her, do you understand? That’s why we’ve been searching until we found each other. By force of attraction, but also by force of repulsion.

— Arturo, please, my garters. You promised.

— Poor thing!

He told me that she made love with someone else only if he was present, if he participated. He was taking off his dark gray jacket, his black tie, his stiff collar. He dropped the collar button into a black lacquer box. She looked at him fascinated, forgetting about her garters. She let her stockings fall to her ankles. Then she looked at me and laughed.

— Arturo, this fellow loves another. She laughed, taking my hand in hers, sweaty, an unexpectedly nervous hand for that woman the color of a waning moon, carrier no doubt of the infirmity of the romantic century: she looked like one of Ruelas’s tubercular sketches, and I thought of La Desdichada and a line from the Romancero of Lorca that I hadn’t been able to buy this morning, which describes the Andalusian dancer as paralyzed by the moon: —Arturo, look at him, he’s afraid, he’s one of those who love only one woman, I know them, I know them! They’re looking for that one woman and that gives them license to sleep with them all, the swine, because they’re looking for just that one. See: he’s a decent boy!

She laughed. The piercing wail of a baby interrupted her. She cursed and rushed off, with her stockings slipping, to hide behind a screen. I heard her soothing the infant. “Poor little one, poor little one, my baby, go to sleep now, it’s all right…” while Arturo Ogarrio threw himself, naked, mouth open, onto the divan piled with cushions covered in arabesques and pillows patterned in cashmere.

— I shouldn’t kid myself. She always preferred him to me, from the beginning, that head leaned against his shoulder, those little glances, those escapades in the bathroom, the whore!

Toño

When Bernardo mistreated her, I didn’t say anything. But at night she reproached me. — Are you going to defend me or not? Are you going to defend me…? she asked several times.

Bernardo

My mother writes from Guadalajara just to tell me: she has taken the tunic, the pants, the belt off the bed. She has taken the boots off the floor. She’s put them all away, shined his boots and put everything in a trunk. They’re not needed anymore. She has seen my father. An engineer who had taken pictures of the political events and public ceremonies of recent years invited her and other members of families that had supported Don Venustiano Carranza to see a film in his house. A silent film, of course. From the dances of the turn of the century to the murder of Don Venustiano and the ascent to power of those horrible characters from Sonora and Sinaloa. No, that was not important. That didn’t interest her. But there, in a congressional ceremony in Donceles Street, behind President Carranza, was your father, Bernardo my son, your father was standing there, very serious, very handsome, very formal, protecting the president, in the very uniform that I have taken such zealous care of, your father, my son, moving, dressed up for me, my son, for me, Bernardo, he looked at me. I have seen him. You can come home.

How can I explain to my mother that I cannot compensate for the death of my father with the mobile simulacrum of the film; rather, my way of keeping him alive is to imagine him at my side always, invisible, a voice more than a presence, answering my questions, but silent in the face of those actions of mine that do not conform to his counsel, that kill him over again, with as much violence as the bullets themselves? I need a father close by me to authorize my words. The voice of my father is a secret endorsement of my own voice. But I know that with my words, even though he inspires them, I deny my father’s authority, I instill rebellion, at the same time that I try to impose obedience on my own children.

Does La Desdichada save me from family obligations? The immobile dummy could free me from the responsibilities of sex, parenthood, matrimony, releasing me to literature. Could literature be my sex, my body, my posterity? Could literature provide friendship itself? Is that why I hate Toño, who gives himself purely to life?

Toño

I hear Bernardo’s step on the stairs. He is returning; I recognize him. How can I tell him what has happened? It is my duty. Is it also my duty to tell him that she’s dangerous, at least at times, that we must be on guard? The bed is wet with urine. She doesn’t recognize me. She cowers in the corners, rejecting me. What does this woman want of me? How can I know, if she keeps so stubborn a silence? I have to tell Bernardo: I’ve tried everything. The bed is wet. She doesn’t recognize me, doesn’t recognize her Toño, her tony Toño, she called me like a child. She has wet the bed, she doesn’t recognize me. I have to prepare her pabulum, dress her, undress her, clean her, tuck her in at night, sing her lullabies … I held her, I soothed her, now you belong to me, child, now you’re mine, I said, little baby, the boogeyman … Desperately I push her away, far from me. She falls to the floor with a horrible crash of wood against wood. I rush to pick her up, to embrace her. For God’s sake, what do you want, Desdichada, unhappy one, why don’t you tell me what you want, why don’t you hold me, why don’t you let me loosen your dressing gown a little, lift up your skirts, see if what I feel, what you want is true, why not let me kiss your nipples, doll, embrace me, you can hurt me, but not him, he has to do things, you understand, Desdichada? He has to write, you mustn’t hurt him, you can’t scratch him, infect him, destroy his confidence, or wound him with your polymorphous perversity, I know your secret, doll, you’re in love with all shapes, doll, that’s your perversion, but he is pure, he is the young poet, and you and I have had the privilege of witnessing his youth, the birth of his genius, the nativity of the poet.