Carlos Fuentes - The Crystal Frontier

Other people. Miss Amy tried to use her intelligence to penetrate those black eyes, the dark complexions and wide smiles of her maid’s friends, the Mexicans. They were impenetrable. She felt she was staring at a wall of cactus, prickly, as if each one of those beings were really a porcupine. They wounded Miss Amy’s gaze just as they would have wounded her hands if she’d touched them. They were people who cut her flesh, like a sphere one could imagine made of razor blades. There was no way to take hold of them. They were other, alien; they confirmed the old lady’s revulsion, her prejudice.

Now what were they doing? Were they hanging a pot from the arbor, then giving a child a stick, blindfolding him, and watching while he swung blindly until he hit the pot and it fell in pieces and the other children rushed to pick up candies and peanuts? What? Had someone dared to bring a portable phonograph to play raucous music, guitars and trumpets, wolf howls? Were they going to dance in her garden, hug each other in that filthy way; were they going to touch, laughing uproariously, arms around one another’s waists, caressing one another’s backs, about to laugh, cry, or something worse?

As she had promised, she appeared in the garden. She had her cane in her hand. She went straight to the second piñata and smashed it. Next, she struck the record player. To all, she shouted, Out of my house. What do you think this is? This isn’t a cheap bar, this is no bordello. Get out of here and take your blaring music and your indigestible food somewhere else. Don’t abuse my hospitality, this is my house, here we do things differently, we don’t keep hogs in the kitchen around here.

The guests all looked at Josefina. First she trembled, then she became calm, almost rigid.

“The mistress is right. This is her house. Thank you for coming. Thank you for wishing my husband good luck.”

They all left, some staring at Miss Amy angrily, others disdainfully, still others fearfully — but all with the feeling we call shame for others.

Only Josefina remained, standing tall, unchanged.

“Thank you for lending us your garden, ma’am. The party was very nice.”

“It was an abuse,” Miss Amy said through clenched teeth, disconcerted. “Too many people, too much noise, too much of everything.”

With a swing of her cane, she swept the platters from the table. The unaccustomed effort overwhelmed her. She lost her breath.

“You’re right, ma’am. Summer is coming to an end. Don’t get a chill now. Come back to the house and let me make you your afternoon tea.”

“You did it on purpose,” said a visibly annoyed Archibald as he nervously fingered the knot of his Brooks Brothers tie. “You suggested she give the party only to humiliate her in front of her friends.”

“It was an abuse. She went too far.”

“What do you want, for her to leave you like all the others? Do you want me to have you put away in an asylum?”

“You’d lose your inheritance.”

“But not my mind. You could drive anyone insane, Aunt Amy. How smart my father was not to marry you.”

“What are you saying, you ingrate?”

“I’m saying that you did this to humiliate Josefina and make her leave.”

“No, you said something else. But Josefina won’t leave. She needs the money to get her husband out of jail.”

“Not anymore. The court turned down the appeal. Josefina’s husband will stay in jail.”

“What will she do?”

“Why don’t you ask her?”

“I don’t want to talk to her. I don’t want to talk to you either. You come to my house to insult me, to remind me of things I want to forget. You’re risking your inheritance.”

“Listen to me now, Aunt Amy. I renounce my inheritance.”

“You’re cutting off your nose to spite your face. Don’t be a fool, Archibald.”

“No, really. I’ll renounce it unless you listen to me and hear the truth.”

“Your father was a coward. He wouldn’t take the final step. He didn’t ask me at the right moment. He humiliated me. He made me wait too long. I had no choice but to marry your uncle.”

“It’s that you never showed my father affection.”

“And he expected it?”

“Yes. He told me so, several times. If Amy had showed she loved me, I’d have taken the final step.”

“Why? Why didn’t he do it?” The voice and spirit of the old lady broke. “Why didn’t he show he loved me?”

“Because he was convinced you never loved anyone. He needed you to give him proof of your affection.”

“Are you telling me my life has been nothing but a huge misunderstanding?”

“No. There was no misunderstanding. My father convinced himself he’d done the right thing not asking you to marry him, Aunt Amelia. He told me that time had borne him out. You’ve never loved anyone.”

That afternoon when Josefina served tea Miss Amy, without meeting her maid’s gaze, said she was very sorry for what had happened. Josefina took the unfamiliar words calmly. “Don’t worry, ma’am. You are the owner of the house. What else is there to say?”

“No, I’m not talking about that. I mean about your husband.”

“Well, it’s not the first time there’s been a miscarriage of justice.”

“What are you going to do?”

“What, ma’am? Don’t you know?”

“No, Josefina, tell me.”

Then Josefina did raise her eyes to look directly into the faded eyes of Miss Amelia Dunbar, dazzling the old lady as if her eyes were two candles. She told her mistress that she was going to continue fighting, that when she chose Luis Maria it was forever and for everything, the good and the bad. She knew that was what they said in the marriage ceremony, but in her case it was the truth. Time passed, the bitterness was greater than the joy, but for that reason love itself got greater and greater, more certain. Luis María could spend his life in jail without doubting for a single moment that she loved him, not only the way she would if they were living together as they had at the beginning but much more, more and more, ma’am, do you understand me? Without pain, without malice, without pointless games, without pride, without arrogance, each of us given to the other.

“Will you allow me to confess something to you, Miss Amelia, without your getting angry with me? My husband has strong hands, fine, beautiful hands. He was born to carve meat. He has a marvelous touch. He always hits the mark. His hands are dark and strong, and I can’t live without them.”

That night, Miss Amy asked Josefina to help her undress and put on her nightgown. She was going to wear the woolen nightgown. The autumn air was beginning to make its presence felt. The maid helped her get into bed. She tucked her in as if she were a child. She arranged the pillows and was about to leave, wishing her good night, when Miss Amelia Ney Dunbar’s two tense, old hands took the strong, fleshy hands of Josefina. Miss Amy brought her maid’s hands to her lips, kissed them, and Josefina embraced the almost transparent body of Miss Amy, an embrace that while never repeated would last an eternity.

Don Leonardo Barroso was in the first-class section of Delta’s nonstop flight from Mexico City to New York. With him was an incredibly beautiful woman with a mane of long black shiny hair. The hair was like a frame for the striking cleft in her chin, her face’s star. Don Leonardo, in his fifties, felt proud of his female companion. Seated by the window, she was imagining herself in the irregularity, the variety, the beauty, and the distance of the landscape and the sky. Her lovers had always told her she had cloudlike eyelids and a slight storm in the shadows under her eyes. Mexican boyfriends speak in serenades.