Carlos Fuentes - Constancia and Other Stories for Virgins

Rubén Oliva had wanted to explain something else to the Englishman, that his love for his land’s setting and for the landscape of the town itself brought both joy and sadness: joy because they grew along with him, sadness because someday they would remain there without him, he would not see them anymore. For Rubén, this sentiment was the most important, the most insistent of all, present in him, in his body and mind, whenever he observed the landscape or loved a woman, or, loving the world and a woman, wasn’t sure whether keeping them alive or killing them would gain him victory. Would that be a crime or a tribute? Who best to kill, the woman or the bull, he or death itself? What’s that? What are you talking about? Why do you always mutter everything between your teeth, you want me to believe I’m going deaf? Ah, now look, I’ve cut myself opening this can! Stop distracting me, Rubén, or you won’t get dinner!

It was morning in the fields. Rubén went closer and then paused, studying everything he could see, touching everything he could touch, examining as closely as he could everything of which one day his fingers would miss the touch. Touching, seeing, the rows of bent poplars, seemingly paired like a corps de ballet or a troop of toy soldiers, trees that had witnessed merciless winds, leaning but not fallen, bent by winter storms; opening all his senses to the white flower and dry fruit of lemon mint, to the smell of squeezed lemons and sliced oranges, to the black purple of wild plum and the faint scent of quince, lemon mint, lily, and verbena: he had lain among their shoots since childhood, the trees and flowers of Andalusia were the visible memory of his childhood; now he expected them to wash away all his ills and closed his eyes in an act of thanks because he knew that when he opened them he would be compensated for his dream by the sight of almonds, diamonds caught in a web of sky, and by the scent of muscadine.

But above the vast geometry of the landscape, duplicating the curves and arcs of the Andalusian horizon in its flight, a restless bird with a scythe-like body reminded him of what his Godmother Madreselva, his false, his substitute mother, the childless progenitor, the protector of Rubén’s adolescence and that of the other orphan children like him, had told him long ago: Rubén, study the flight of the swallow, which never tires, feeds in flight, sleeps in flight, makes love in flight; watch its long wings like sharp lances of death. If you want to be an apprentice in the ring, you must be like the swallow, cast away your land and adopt no other, though many may welcome you, nomad bird, bird of the steppes — so his Godmother Madreselva had whispered in the boy’s ear.

And she had warned him against the basic dangers: beware the thorny contact of the thistle, don’t be seduced by its blue leaves, never drink the narcotic and purgative sap of those prickly leaves. Bitter cress, sawtooth nettles, yellow basil, and green pear, they all beckoned to him — to love, use, contemplate, smell, touch, partake of them — and he, in his youth, never felt that he abused what he shared, whether it was the pleasure of contemplation or the equally blessed pleasure of touching, uprooting, trampling, eating, cutting the fruits and flowers, of carrying them to his mama, or, after she died, to his Godmother Madreselva, who gathered together all the children in the town of Aranda, or, when she died, to his sweetheart, and if she died, why, he’d carry them to the Virgin, because even when all our women have died, the Virgin always remains.

— See that the holy thistle doesn’t purge you, Rubén.

Instead, he sought the tracks of winters past.

He sought the snows of January as he sought the memory of his childhood in the village, for when he became a man he always compared his childhood with snow. This had never impressed Rocío, or, indeed, anyone else. These were things that were his, only his, that nobody else understood. Andalusia was his intimacy. And this was the ardent summer, without the memory of the winds of January.

He had spent the morning walking through the fields and composing in his mind a song to the wormwood and the swallows, but his poetic flight was interrupted by practical observations; he was surprised, for example, to see the cows lying down, as though forecasting rain, creating their own dry space, warning the unwary pilgrim that the morning, which had begun so blue and fresh a few hours ago, was turning threatening, turning into a day of accumulating clouds and heavy heat … He raised his eyes and met the image of the black bull of Osborne brandy, waiting for him at the entrance to his village.

A breeze blew from the Levant, and the clouds disappeared.

He arrived at the hotel and smelled wax candles, lacquer dishrags, and soap, a different soap, not the soap that is never put in the hotel baths.

He had written to Rocío, trying to make sense of their situation to return to the first days of their love: was that really impossible, as he felt in his heart? and he had tried to explain — would this, too, be futile? — what returning home meant to him, touching and smelling and cutting and eating its fruits and flowers — would she understand? — and he summoned his courage and put his tongue to the gummed flap of the envelope, and the Englishman, who suddenly, out of breath, stopped playing his music-hall ditties and began to ask, sitting with him in the bar, where it was shady at the hottest hour of the day, if he had looked in the shop windows of these little towns where everything was old, none of it was attractive, it was all covered with dust, the signs were from another era, as if the world hadn’t undergone a revolution in advertising, he knew because he had worked his whole life in publicity, now he was retired, nothing to do but take care of his garden and his dog, but before … He accompanied his commentary with a commercial jingle played on his harmonica, his eyes bright — and he let out a laugh, wasn’t he right, these people live in the past, the sweets in the shops seemed to have been there for twenty years, the clothes in the store windows were out of style, the mannequins were ancient, their wigs were full of lice, and had he noticed the mustaches painted on the male dummies, and how moth-eaten the stuffed female breasts and mannequins were, and the cult of miracles, the saints, the images, papist idolatry everywhere…?

Now he played a Protestant hymn on his harmonica and Rubén Oliva was going to tell him that it was true, nothing had changed, not the sweets, the hats, the mannequins, or the holy images in the shops, why should it, when everyone knew exactly what was sold in the shops, and …

Mr. Newton interrupted him: —Do you know that nobody here will marry a woman who isn’t a virgin?

— Well …

— Do you know that nobody shaves after dinner for fear of ruining his digestion, and nobody invites anyone to dine the way they should, in their houses at civilized hours, but instead they go out for coffee after dining, at one in the morning?

— Well …

— Look, in a palace in Seville I measured the quantity of spit on the floor, which has turned into crusts of stone over the years, centuries of phlegm, marble oysters, sir, revealing the arrogance of those who always depended on legions of slaves to clean up their filth; where would this country be without servants? And another thing …

Without a word Rubén got up and left; the Englishman was still talking to himself. Rubén walked off without paying his part of the tab, as gentlemen ought, just so the Englishman could add to his criticism: freeloaders, ill-mannered brutes.

The town was waking from its siesta.

The heat had not let up, and Rubén followed his own counsel, walking the back streets, sheltered in the shade, rediscovering what he had known since childhood, that all the narrow lanes of this town communicated with one another, feeding into a single narrow entryway. Two- and three-story houses, of varying sizes, beaten down by time, cured with lime like mummies wrapped in white bandages, watched over each route and prevented anyone from leaving. Some were shut up with wooden shutters; others had open balconies of yellowing plaster. Narrow passages with tile roofs and clumps of wild fig trees rising above the buildings, crowns of weeds appearing through all the cracks in the plaza. Clothes hung out to dry. Television antennas. More windows, tightly shuttered. The first denizens of the night began to appear from the upper stories, old village women, cloaked, curious, craning to see him, the outsider, the prodigal son no one knew — was there no one left who had known him as a child? he thought, and almost said, talking to himself like a deaf man.