Carlos Fuentes - Constancia and Other Stories for Virgins

12

Exhausted, you wake up enveloped in a dripping skin; that is the first thing you notice, and your first question is whether it is your skin or that of some wet animal protecting you from the attack of another animal. That is what your sense of touch tells you. Your sense of smell detects the heavy fragrance of dried flowers, flowers that have withered and died.

Your soaked skin; the dry odor. The trembling of a pack of hounds that passed and pissed on you.

It tastes of gall; you spit it out and the spoon that the toothless nun forces between your gritted teeth falls out. You also smell the patched, urine-drenched, sweaty clothes of the group of nuns who surround you and take care of you; they buzz around like a cloud of bees in a hive, and you search in vain for the woman with the moles on her temples — she is the one you are looking for — but you hear instead — now you can hear it — a soft step approaching you, but the nuns, hearing that same step, seem to want to block out the voice that is getting closer, so they begin to talk animatedly, in no particular order, but keeping to a common theme: I left my house dressed as a man to keep my father from raping me, I begged my brother to kill me to avoid marriage to an old lecher, I threw myself on the soldier’s sword and told him this is the only thing of yours that will penetrate me, they tore out my teeth, they gouged out my eyes, they cut off my breasts, so that I wouldn’t fornicate, so that I’d be worthy of heaven, to preserve my sanctity, blind, toothless, mutilated, but chaste, brides of Our Lord Jesus Christ and mothers of the Baby Jesus and servants of the Holy Virgin …

Then comes a voice from within the circle of women, laughing.

He comes forward, still laughing, exclaiming: —Leave me alone with my father!

You see a familiar figure approaching, holding one hand up as if in blessing, but all the while smirking possessively; the other hand holds a curse, he has a whip, which he raises (still blessing with the other hand) to lash at the nuns, who moan and fly away like frightened bats.

When he kneels in front of you, you recognize the child who yesterday, a few hours ago, or perhaps only a few minutes, leapt, glowing, over the excavations on the construction site, who walked in circles around the convent patio holding the woman’s hand, who ate in the refectory, who pricked his finger with a thorn …

You recognize his bloodstained tunic, but it seems shorter; you recognize his artificially waved hair, but it is not as blond, it’s darker; you recognize his blue eyes, but they are smaller, it’s just his makeup that seems to enlarge them; you recognize his sweet lips, but they are surrounded by the first traces of a nascent down, and when the boy raises his arm to stroke your forehead, he gives off the concentrated odor of armpits and damp hair like a nest waiting for birds to take shelter there; a burrow, you decide as he embraces you and kisses your lips and you are savagely assaulted by the memory of other touches both near and far, because you felt this same touch yesterday, last night, or a second ago, when the woman with the moles on her temples and the face of perpetual dusk kissed you and thanked you and told you …

— Thank you, says the grown boy.

Standing close to you, mild, fair, stinking of goat and shit and sweat and fried bread, a boy of the people, a farmhand or a laborer, he tells you that he and his mother are grateful for what you’ve done, and what’s done is done … but now he offers you his hand to help you up, you shake off your drowsiness and try to hurry, we don’t have much time, says the young man, who is strangely old, older every minute, there is never enough time, it’s August and your son will be born in December — thank you — and in January they’ll circumcise him, you know? and in April they’ll kill him, and in May they’ll celebrate him, recalling his death, putting wooden crosses over all the construction sites, you should know this, José María, you should be getting to work, come with me into the corral and the shed …

You take his hand with its black nails and follow him through the empty refectory and the already sunny patio, you hurry through the clean, dry bathroom, its stained-glass windows no longer steamy, its porcelain frogs dry and rough, no longer suffused with the warm moisture of last night … You and the aging boy go through the gallery of the house — the convent, the retreat, the maternity ward?

The stained-glass windows with twining floral patterns, the sideboards built into the wall, the bronze ornaments and the crystal drops, the mirrors, are suddenly behind you. The boy opens a door, the light is blinding, you cross another patio, and you have arrived at a shed full of hammers, boards, nails, files, saws, with a strong smell of sawdust.

Inside, sitting on a cane chair, surrounded by baskets of eggs and handkerchiefs, corncobs and embroidery, the woman with the face of dusk — her face even more shadowy, covered by a blue veil that hides the moles on her temples, which look less like flesh than like parts of the veil — she looks at you and smiles, but she doesn’t put down the gold-trimmed tunic she’s sewing.

— Thank you, she repeats, letting out a seam, and she gestures to you, inviting you to come into the workroom, pointing out the boards, the nails, and then makes an impatient gesture, telling both the boy and you that you should set to work.

He knows what he is supposed to do; he sits on the ground by the woman’s side, takes the thorns, and begins to weave them into a crown.

But you don’t know; she looks at you impatiently; she gets herself under control and again smiles sweetly.

— It’s necessary to work. You will have to get used to it, she tells you in her gentlest voice, it kills time …

— If you like your time dead! — the irrepressible boy laughs, sitting by the side of the seamstress.

She gives him a light smack; he pricks his finger with a thorn; he cries; he brings his bloody finger to his mouth and whines, but this time she does not make a sorrowful face, she has lost the look of despair that he knew …

— It doesn’t matter, says the woman, it doesn’t matter anymore. Now we will have him with us forever, and every year, when you die, my child, he will come back to make me a child to take your place, in December you’ll be ready for the manger, my child, in April for the cross, and in May …

She looks up, between her appeal and its answer, to see you better:

— Isn’t that so, José María?

— No, I’m not José María, I am Carlos María. José María is my brother, he stayed above, he chose not to accompany me …

First a thrush flies overhead, and its wings make a sound like metal in the hollow sky. Then the woman with the twilight face opens her mouth, the sweetness leaves first her lips and then her eyes, she looks at the boy who is sucking the blood from the finger he pricked with the thorn, and she raises her hands to her head again, her look of anguish returns, she whimpers, we’ve been deceived, we have been sent the wrong one, and the boy says it doesn’t matter, Mother, taking her arm in his bloodstained hand, whoever he is, he has done what you wanted, the new child will arrive in December, don’t worry, the child will die, Mother, and I’ll be able to go on living, I’ll grow old finally, Mother, isn’t that what you want, look, I’m growing and I won’t be killed in April, I will grow old, Mother, I will grow old with you, the child will take my place … Mother, it doesn’t matter who fucks you as long as I’m reborn!

He embraces her and she looks at you without comprehension, as if her entire life depended on certain ceremonies that by being repeated had become in equal part wisdom and folly, and you try to say something to explain the inexplicable, you manage to mumble no, your brother, José María — I—was not deceived, I chose to remain because I was in love with a woman named Catarina and, as I could not have her, I wanted instead to possess her wedding dress, her …