Carlos Fuentes - Constancia and Other Stories for Virgins

— I think we’re the only ones here over thirty. The woman smiled, blinded by the light, by the bull, by Rubén Oliva’s own invisibility in that crowd: he could see the sign of the bull more clearly than he could see the woman who was talking to him.

— I can’t see you very well, said Rubén Oliva, lightly touching the woman’s shoulder, as if to move her into the light so that he could see her better, though he realized that this invisible light, this dazzling darkness, was the best light for …

— It doesn’t matter how I look, or what my name is. Don’t take the mystery out of our meeting.

He said she was right, but could she see him?

— Of course — the woman laughed — how do you think you and I have met in the middle of this youthful throng; they used to say never trust anyone over thirty; here, that’s still true.

— Maybe it always will be, for the young. At fifteen, would you trust an old man of forty … well, of thirty-nine? The man laughed.

— I’m willing to imagine that on this entire avenue there are only two people, a man and a woman, over thirty. She smiled.

Rubén Oliva said it seemed a marriage made in heaven, and she replied, in a country where for centuries people had no choice about their own marriages, where they had to obey their fathers’ arrangements, that one could experience the chance, the adventure the excitement of a casual encounter, and decide to prolong it voluntarily, to decide, man, to decide, that was truly a blessing, a wonderful thing indeed …

He couldn’t get a look at her. Each movement, hers, his, hers responding to his, his leg moving forward as if by chance to change her direction, as if making her accept the bullfighter’s will, joined the play of lights — dangling bulbs, neon constellations, errant cars like caravans in the desert, lights of the sea of Madrid, electric sunflowers of night, moonflowers of the city’s eternal undercurrent — Rubén Oliva felt unable to direct, to curb the turns of the woman, to make her yield, to snatch her image from the perpetual flight: what was she like? and she, had she seen him, did she know what he was like?

Hours later, at daybreak, in a loft on Calle Juanelo, their arms around each other in her bed, she asked him if he had not been afraid of her sexual aggression, that she was a prostitute or carried the new plagues of the dying century, and he answered no, she should realize that a man like him took life as it came; true, there were diseases less than deadly, but the only true disease, after all, was death and who could avoid that? and if nobody avoided it, then it was better to face it over and over, by choice. He explained that right away, so she would understand with whom she lay, that the worst thing the world could do to him was no worse than what he could do to himself; for example, if she gave him a fatal disease he could hasten his death, not in the cowardice of suicide, nothing like that, but by giving himself fully to his art, to a profession that justified death at any moment, welcomed and honored it: to die with honor he simply had to do his daily work, and you couldn’t say that about the lawyers, doctors, and businessmen who were the young people’s parents, and whom the young people would inevitably turn into someday — no longer slender, no longer luminous, no longer hermaphroditic, definitively fathers or mothers, potbellied and gray, for sure!

— And you weren’t curious, you never wanted to look at me before sleeping with me?

He shrugged and replied as before, it’s like looking the bull in the face, that’s the most important thing in the ring, never to lose sight of the bull’s face, but at the same time not to lose sight of the public, your cuadrilla, your rivals who are watching you, in fact, not to lose sight even of the water boy, like Gallito did once in Seville — he had to quiet the water boy when he realized his cries were distracting the bull: you have to be aware of everything, sweetheart, can I call you that? Call me what you like, call me whore, actress, consumptive, performer, call me whatever you want, but show me again what you’ve got.

He did, and distractedly registered the spare furniture in the room, almost nothing but a bed, a chest of drawers by its side, cool candles on it, cold tile floor, fresh curtains blocking out the daylight, an old-fashioned washbasin, a chamber pot his fingers touched under the bed, and dominating everything a great ornate armoire, the only luxury in the room — he looked in vain for an electric light, an outlet, a telephone; he was mixed up, then he thought he understood: he had confused luxury with novelty, with modern comfort, but was it really the same thing? Nothing was modern in this room, and the armoire with its two doors was adorned with a crest of vines, cherubs, and broken columns.

Before sleeping again in each other’s arms, he wanted to tell her what he had thought, separated from Rocío in the apartment they shared, something that Rocío didn’t understand perhaps, and perhaps not this woman either, but with her it was worth it, worth the risk of not being understood: when we die, we lose the past, that’s what we lose, not the future, as he told her …

At midday Monday, on waking again, Rubén Oliva and his lover abandoned themselves to the day, convinced that the day belonged to them, without interruption, rejoicing in their chance encounter on the nocturnal terraces of Madrid. (How many of the young people consummated a marriage of the night as they had, how many only celebrated the nuptials of the spectacle: to show oneself, see, be seen, not touch…?) They confessed that they could hardly see each other in the shifting light of the terraces, she felt the attraction, perhaps because it was Monday, moon day, day of tides, decisive dates, violent currents, overpowering attractions and impulses, she was drawn to him as though magnetized, and he couldn’t see her clearly in the whirlwind of artificial light and shade, and that is how it had to be, because she had to tell him that, now that she had seen him, he was …

He covered her mouth gently with his hand, put his lips to her ear, told the woman lying there that it didn’t matter, he confessed it wouldn’t matter to him if she was a boy, a transvestite, a whore, diseased, dying, nothing mattered to him, because what she had given him, how she had given herself to him, excited him, attracted him, made him feel that every time was the first time, that every repeated act was the beginning of a night of love, so that each time he felt as if he hadn’t done it for a year, all of that was what …

Now she covered his mouth with a hand and said: —But I did know you. I picked you because of who you were, not because you were unknown to me.

The words were hardly out of the woman’s mouth when the doors of the armoire opened with a heart-stopping thump and two powerful hands, stained, dripping colors from the fingers, threw apart the panels, and a waistcoated, frock-coated body emerged, in a linen shirt and short pants, white silk stockings and country-style shoes, clogs maybe, smeared with mud and cow dung, and this creature jumped onto the bed of love, smeared the sheets with shit and mud, wrapped its hands around the woman’s face, and, without paying the slightest attention to Rubén Oliva, smeared the face of his lover with its fingers as it had just smeared the soiled sheets, and Rubén Oliva, paralyzed with astonishment, his head planted on a pillow, unable to move, never knew if those agile, irreverent fingers erased or created, composed or disfigured, while with equal speed and art, and with incredible fury, they traced on the woman’s featureless face the deformed arc of a diabolic brow or the semblance of a smile, or if they emptied out her eye sockets, turned the fine nose that Rubén had caressed into a misshapen cabbage and erased the lips that had kissed his, that had told him, I did know you, I chose you because of who you were …