Daniel Sada - Almost Never

“I’m very happy you’ve come, but I can’t see you now. I am not presentable. Come tomorrow at the same time, if you can.”

Once this blarney was over, she turned on her heel and ran away. Her mother was waiting with her hands on her waist as if to say: Well done! He was left standing with outstretched arms: the bouquet of lilies: void, useless, tomorrow another one. Bah! the amorous proposal snapped back as if it had been stretched out too far, and now, yes, the discordant giggles from afar embellished the retreat of the gallant, whose dandyism had done him no good. Laughter like barbs. Each step a gasp. Shame flaming from the lilies he still carried. As for the suitcase, what more can be said about it. Of course, the suitor longed to hide the bouquet under his jacket, but that would embarrass him even more. Circular then spiraling resilience. He refused to rid himself of that pleasant prodigy (throwing it — where?) because it would be proof of a frustration that tomorrow, at five in the afternoon, would be turned on its head, and, with a sharp pang, he wondered if the bouquet, especially because his aunt had given it to him, had brought him bad luck. When he arrived, she hugged him. She said nothing. She divined the course of events (rejection resulting from the surprise) and … A cry, meek, from her — of course! while he, with a knot in his throat, let her caress his disheveled head. Interior scene, so warm, in the kitchen rather than the grocery store, where the señora prepared café con leche; there was also a basket full of rolls, those familiar conchas, plomos, and pelonas for him to savor slowly. Bites as pauses. Words, all difficult and somewhat virile, rows of sweet relief. There must have been few: his: so-called sputum; though hers …

“I warned you, that’s how women from Sacramento are, but I think it’s worth your while to be patient.”

“You know what, Auntie, I don’t want to hear about it anymore. Renata and I agreed to see each other tomorrow. Now I want to be alone. I want to take a walk through town, climb a hill, I don’t know, watch the sunset, and then see what stars come out at night; I think it will do me good to look at the moon for a good long while. I want to think, understand, because I am starting to despair.”

“Do whatever you want. I’m going to give you a copy of the key to the house, and as you know, you can come back whenever you feel like it.”

The moon. The scrublands. The gray and luminous hills. The desert ground to sleep on, as he had done days before, the suitcase: O pillow! O companion! Resolve. Apathy. Desire. But first, to dress appropriately: a short-sleeved shirt for wandering around, a T-shirt, in fact, a trifle bought just in case, or just because. In Monclova he had also bought a new suitcase for his new clothes, which, without a second thought, he had left at Doña Zulema’s house. And where to next? Wheresoever to gird himself, to build up resistance against his circumstantial sorrow, but alone, absorb some kind of new and suggestive blessedness. So he ambled, dined in a tavern — a mendacious plate — then resumed his deliberate aimlessness. No dearth of onlookers watched him depart: hie to the hills, to hell with it all! The moon: light from a waning crescent (no trace of a path), and onward he trudged, trying to find his way. He wished that the night would silence all sounds then awaken his grief and sorrow with a tenuous tinkling. One footstep after another along the path to purification. It was not long before he found a small rise. There he sat. The sparse and far-off lights of Sacramento were also his own sparse flashes, already embossed upon the darkness. Drifting distances; he, extraneous: a fleeing spirit unable to glimpse a center or a refuge along the edges or a place beyond. His ideas failed to flow, but his soul … what weight? Barely any: a formless mass that would never be shaped. A hefty mass of flesh, a medley of legs, breasts, asses, and two faces: Renata’s and Mireya’s: heaven and hell, sanctity and sin, eternal and circumstantial, ruthless struggle and mere toy, but only one really deep intersection, an arid depth, and therein the absurd. If Demetrio kept thinking, he’d turn bright red and break out in tears, because any and every choice might prove fatal. Be that as it may, he had now firmly settled into the enigma of true love, love that placed the most impossible obstacles in the way, and to what end: to reach a cloud? the peak of a mountain? a star? Desire submerged in another desire and hence legions and thereby diminished, until ultimately it wouldn’t know what it was or could be.

There perchance to sleep, sunk in abstractions.

May sleep fix without twisting the purpose.

May sleep strip Renata naked.

To see that saint naked. See her begging for sex.

If only!

Okay, okay, let’s say that happened, that sleep brought him something of the sort. Maybe not the beauty’s full nudity, but how about a sacred hand, offered forth: take hold! pa-leeze take hold! Renata ordered him in a quite implausibly beseeching tone: take hold, my love! And he did so as if it were a phantasmagoric piece of flesh. The more caresses offered the more doubts arose, the more improbable ripening, all for the worst … the entwined hands started to rot. When Demetrio awoke he stood up at attention like a soldier and quickly made his way back to Sacramento.

Maybe Doña Zulema wouldn’t notice his arrival. Not a chance. She, so understanding, wouldn’t dream of daring to ask him where he had spent the night. Surely on a bench in the plaza, or in some vacant lot, or in the hills, or — who knows! In fact, she remained resolutely silent: upon seeing him arrive she gave him a hug and that was all. He did not offer excuses, nor did he explain anything (it was nine in the morning). Though it is true that during the embrace he gave her a few very nice strokes on her head, her arms, her back, and:

“Do you want some breakfast?”

“No, I’m not hungry.”

“What are your plans till this afternoon?”

“I want to be alone.”

Alone. To waste time. Demetrio shut himself up in a room jam-packed with statuettes and pictures of saints. Such a moral, recriminating menace: and: what he did was turn all their backs to him. They deserved it! or didn’t they? Their ignorance versus … let’s see … Our lover’s levels of abstract thinking never went very far. Never, definitely, did they take a definite tack. Hence ensued the compensatory masturbation. Action rather than reflection. He fully savored the act and upon feeling the smudge of semen on his fingers he said to himself: I’m becoming a chaos … but I don’t care. He wiped himself off with a corner of the quilt: disgusting! and he rested — now, finally — and smiled, what a sin onanism was, how peculiar! A sin that consumes itself. Futile fount and for that very reason, extraordinary … and grotesque, and devoid of mystery! which is why later — once again? Thrice Doña Zulema knocked on the door, but only the last time did she ask him the following (take note of the respect, the not-opening, the not-being-offensive):

“Are you going to stay in there? Don’t you want to eat something?”

“No, I’m perfectly fine. Leave me alone!”

He masturbated twice more, though, to tell the truth, these were not as pleasurable as the first. Then, at about three in the afternoon, Demetrio went out. He felt like washing with bucketfuls galore. His aunt filled up four, that was all she had. The nephew, however, remained a long time in the washroom and she took on the task of inspecting, by stealth, the other room. She saw the saints with their backs turned — what now? perversity behind closed doors? really? Her nephew, happy or unhappy, naked … perhaps … but … whatever’s wrong with that? And, making a modest inference, she mused that masturbation … let’s see, let’s see … is natural for a man, as long as he doesn’t take advantage of the privilege — what else could she conclude? Then — oh, darn! — the evidence: the soiled quilt; a whitish stain, which, when looked at up close — oh!: in it Doña Zulema saw the seed of children, grandnephews, but also of less-than-well-corresponded love, or despair, or spiritual sorrow, or — damn! why such a fuss. Three stains on the quilt, that is, three masturbations and — how disgusting! (already said) especially after making up the bed with new sheets and a new quilt. Be that as it may, no reproaches, no obsessing. What’s more, she did not inspect the suitcases. She could have opened them, for both were closed with only a metal clasp, but …