Carlos Fuentes - Constancia and Other Stories for Virgins

All he did was repeat that the eleven of them, no, the ten, would go together and help one another.

Ha, laughed Madreselva, surprised by his embrace but not rejecting it, you will go together and sleep together and walk together and fight together and keep each other warm, first you were eleven, now you are ten, one day you will be five, and in the end one man will be left, alone, with the bull.

No, that’s not what we want, we’re going to be different, Ma.

Sure, boy, that’s right. But when you’re alone, remember me. Remember what I tell you: on Sundays you are going to see yourself face to face with the bull, then you’ll be saved from your solitude.

She pulled away from the boy and finished dressing, telling him: You are stubbornness itself, you will let the bull kill you to keep from wielding your cape, from luring the bull away from you.

When a matador dies of old age, in bed, does he die in peace? Rubén watched her put on her jacket.

Who knows?

I will remember you, Ma. But what is going to become of you?

I am ready to leave this town. I am going, too.

Where did you come from, Ma?

Look, said the dry, cracked woman with cucumbers on her temples, with her unruly hair hanging over her brow and a black cigarette between her yellow fingers, look, she said after a while, let’s just go without asking questions; things may be bad someplace else, but they’ve got to be better than here. I took care of you, boy, I gave you a profession; now just leave. Don’t ask me any more questions.

You talk as if you saved me from something, Ma.

Here you have no choice — he looked into her eyes, the eyes of his false mother — here you have to obey, there are too many people with nothing here, serving too few people with much, there are too many people here, and so they are used like cattle; you cannot be chaste that way, Rubén, when you’re one of that abundant, docile herd, when they call you and tell you to do this or that, you do it or you are punished or you are driven out, there’s no alternative. What they call sexual liberty really exists only in the fields, only in poor, lonely regions full of servants and cows. You obey. You must. There is no one to turn to. You are a servant, you are used, you are meat, you become part of a lie. The masters do whatever they want with you, for you are their servant, always, but especially when there are no other servants around to see what the masters do with you.

She smiled and gave Rubén a pat on the rump. It was the most intimate and loving gesture of her life. As far as he traveled, Rubén still would feel that hard and loving hand on his backside, far from the burnt sunflowers and the goatbells sounded by the wind of the Levant, leaving behind the superb firs and horses of Andalusia, which are white at birth but which Rubén Oliva found to be black on his return. Now he was going far away, to the salt flats and estuaries, the landscapes of electric towers and the mountains of garbage.

Saturday

— Don Francisco de Goya y Lucientes!

— What are you doing in Cádiz?

— Looking for my head, friend.

— Why, what happened?

— Are you blind? Can’t you see it’s missing?

— I did think something was odd.

— But don’t dodge the question, what happened?

— I don’t know. Who knows what becomes of your body after you’re dead?

— So how do you know you don’t have a head?

— I died in Bordeaux in April of 1826.

— So far away!

— So sad!

— You couldn’t know. Those were dangerous times. The absolutists came to Madrid and persecuted every liberal they saw. They called themselves the Hundred Thousand Sons of San Luis. I only called myself Francisco de Goya …

— Y Lost Census …

— The kids stopped writing “deaf man” on the wall of my estate — instead, the absolutists wrote “Francophile.” So I fled to France. I was seventy-eight years old when I was exiled to Bordeaux.

— So far from Spain.

— Why did you have to paint the French, Paco.

— Why did you have to paint guerrillas, Francisco.

— Why did you have to paint for the court, Lost Senses.

— But what happened to your head, son, lopped off that way?

— I don’t remember.

— So where did they bury you, Paco?

— First in Bordeaux, where I died at age eighty-two. Then I was exhumed; they were going to send me back to Spain in 1899, but when the Spanish consul opened the coffin, he saw my skeleton didn’t have a head. He sent a wind message to the Spanish government …

— It’s called a telegraph, Paco, a telegraph …

— We didn’t have those in my day. Anyway, the message read: SKELETON GOYA NO HEAD: AWAIT INSTRUCTIONS.

— And what did the government say? Come on, Paco, don’t leave us hanging, you always were such a …

— SEND GOYA, HEAD OR NO HEAD. I was exhumed five times, friends, from Bordeaux to Madrid and from San Isidro, where I painted the festivals, to San Antonio de la Florida, where I painted frescoes, five burials, and the boxes they put me in kept getting smaller every time, every time I had fewer bones and they were more brittle, every time I left more dust behind, so that now I’m about to disappear completely. My head foretold my destiny: it just disappeared a little before the rest.

— Who knows, my friend? France was filthy with mad phrenologists, crazy for science. Who knows, maybe you ended up a measure of genius — what a joke! — like a barometer or a shoehorn.

— Or maybe an inkwell for some other genius.

— Who knows? That was a century in love with death, the romantic nineteenth. The next century, yours, consummated that desire. I’d rather go headless than have to witness your time, the age of death.

— What are you saying, Paco? We’re lolling in the lap of luxury here.

— Don’t interrupt, Uncle Corujo.

— Hey, aren’t we all part of the gang here, Aunt Mezuca? What’s wrong with a little gossip?

— And who said anything about being part of the gang, you stunted old fool?

— It’s okay, part of the gang, old wives’ tales, old men’s chatter, call it anything you like, what are you going to do here in Cádiz, where the streets are so narrow, and hotter than in Ecija, and lovers can touch fingers from one window to the next …

— And have to listen to the chatter of gossipmongers like you, Uncle Soleche …

— Shut your mouth, you old hen …

— Don Francisco was saying …

— Thanks for the respect, son. A lot of times we dead ones don’t even get that. I just wanted to say that my case is not unique. Science takes absolute liberties with death. Maybe scientists are the last animists. The soul has gone, to heaven or hell, and the remains are just vile matter. That’s how the French phrenologists must have seen me. I don’t know whether I prefer the sacred fetishism of Spain or the soulless, anemic Cartesianism of France.

— The eyes of St. Lucy.

— The tits of St. Agatha.

— The teeth of St. Apollonia.

— The arm of St. Theresa in Tormes.

— And that of Alvaro Obregón in San Angel.

— And where is the leg of Santa Anna?

— The blood of San Pantaleón in Madrid, which dries up in bad times.

— Yes, in England, my skull might have been the inkwell of some romantic poet.

— Did what happened to you, Paco, happen to anyone else?

— Of course. Speaking of England, poor Laurence Sterne, with whom I often chat, because his books are something like written premonitions of my Caprichos, though less biting, and …

— You’re digressing, Paco …

— Sorry. My friend Sterne says that digression is the sun of life. Digression is the root of his writing, because it attacks the authority of the center, he says, it rebels against the tyranny of form, and …