Carlos Fuentes - The Years With Laura Diaz

“You fell asleep, honey.”

“The landscape frightened me, Juan Francisco.”

“You missed the pines in the high forests.”

“Ah, that’s why it smells so good.”

“Don’t think everything here is just bald plains. Look, I’m from Tabasco, I miss the tropics as much as you, but now I couldn’t live without these highlands, without the capital.”

When she asked him why, Juan Francisco changed his tone of voice, falsified it, perhaps made it a bit high-flown in order to talk about Mexico City, the very center of the country, its heart, you might say, the Aztec city, the colonial city, the modern city one on top of the other.

“Like a layer cake,” laughed Laura.

Juan Francisco didn’t laugh. Laura went on making comparisons. “Like one of those food trays that would be brought up to Mrs. Aznar, your heroine, my love.”

Juan Francisco became even more serious.

“I’m sorry. I’m just joking.”

“Laura, weren’t you ever curious about seeing Armonía Aznar?”

“I was just a girl.”

“You were already in your teens.”

“It’s probably that my childhood impression lasted, Juan Francisco. Sometimes, no matter how old you are, you’re still frightened by the ghost stories you were told when you were little.”

“Forget all that stuff, Laura. You’re not the little girl of the family anymore. You’re at the side of a man fighting seriously.”

“I know, Juan Francisco. I respect that.”

“I need your support. Your logic, not your fantasy.”

“I’ll try not to let you down, my love. I respect you greatly. You know that.”

“Begin by asking yourself why you never rebelled against your family, why you never went up to the attic to see Armonía Aznar.”

“It’s that I was afraid, Juan Francisco. I tell you, I was just a little girl.”

“You missed the chance to meet a great woman.”

“Forgive me, my love.”

“You must forgive me.” Juan Francisco hugged her and kissed a nervously clenched fist. “I’ll take care of educating you about reality. You’ve lived for too long in infantile fantasies.”

Orlando was no fantasy, she wanted to tell him, knowing she’d never dare mention the disturbing blond young man. Orlando, who was a seducer, wanted to meet me in the attic, and that’s why I never went up there; besides, Mrs. Aznar wanted to be respected, she asked for that.

“She herself gave orders that she not be bothered. Who was I to disobey?”

“In other words, you didn’t have the nerve.”

“No, there are lots of things I don’t have the nerve to do.” Laura smiled, making a face of false repentance. “With you I would have the nerve. You’ll teach me, won’t you?”

He smiled and kissed her with the passion he’d been giving her since their wedding night, which they spent on the Interoceanic train. He was a big, vigorous, and loving man, with none of the mystery that had surrounded her other imminent love, Orlando Ximénez, but without his aura of evil, either. Next to the curly-haired blond of the San Cayetano ball, Juan Francisco was plainness itself, an open, almost primitive being in his direct sensual appetite. And because of that Laura was loving him more and more, as if her husband confirmed the first impression the young woman had felt in the Xalapa Casino when she met him. Juan Francisco the lover was as magnificent as Juan Francisco the orator, the politician, the labor leader.

(I don’t know anything else, I don’t know anything more, I can’t compare, but I can enjoy and I do enjoy, the truth is I enjoy myself in bed with this huge man, this male devoid of subtleties and perfumes like Orlando, Juan Francisco, mine.)

“You’re going to have to break the habit of calling me ‘sweetheart’ or ‘darling’ in public.”

“Yes, darling. Sorry. Why?”

“We’re in the company of comrades. We’re in the struggle. You just can’t do that.”

“Isn’t there any love among your comrades?”

“It isn’t serious, Laura. Enough.”

“I’m sorry. With you, next to you, for me everything is love. Even the union movement.” She laughed, as she always laughed, caressing her man’s long, hairy ear. She’d actually say that: “You’re my man and I’m your little wife, my love is macho but I mustn’t call him ‘darling.’”

“You always call me ‘girl,’ you’ve never called me ‘darling.’ and I respect you, I know it’s your natural way of speaking, just as it’s natural for me to call you …”

“ Darling …”

He kissed her, but she was left with an uneasy, guilty feeling, as if, very secretly, the two of them had said something unrepeatable, fundamental, which they might one day either be happy about or deeply regret. That possibility was postponed indefinitely by the certainty that the two of them really didn’t know each other. Everything was a surprise. For both of them. Each expected that little by little they would reveal themselves to each other. Was that a consolation? The immediate reason for her misgivings, the one that registered in her head, was that her husband was reproaching her for not having had the courage to climb the stairs and knock at Armonía Aznar’s door. Juan Francisco’s presence and his own history abolished her motive and turned it into a pretext. Mrs. Aznar herself had requested isolation and respect. Laura had that excuse, but the excuse concealed a secret: Orlando, a subject not be mentioned. Laura was left with guilt, a vague, diffuse guilt which she could not defend, transforming it, she suddenly realized, into a motive for identifying with her husband, making it a motive for solidarity with the struggle instead of an obstacle between the two of them, a distancing — she didn’t know what to call it and attributed everything, in the end, to her inexperience.

“Don’t call me ‘darling’ in public.”

“Don’t worry … darling.” The young bride laughed and tossed a pillow at the tousled, hairy head of her sleepy husband, naked, dark, powerful, smiling now with his strong teeth, wide as an Indian frieze. Like kernels of white corn, said Laura in order not to deify her husband, “wow, you’ve got teeth like kernels of white corn,” Juan Francisco was the novelty of her life, the beginning of another history, far from her family, from Veracruz, from memory.

“I hope you’re not choosing him just because he’s different,” warned Aunt María de la O.

“Who’s more different than you, Auntie, and whom do I love more than I love you?”

Niece and aunt joyfully hugged and kissed each other, and now, near Juan Francisco’s face while they made love, Laura would feel his attractive darkness, his irresistible difference. Love was like satiating herself with brown sugar or getting drunk on that cinnamon perfume people from the tropics inherit, as if all of them had been conceived in a wild garden amid mangos, papayas, and vanilla. Which is what she thought about in bed with her husband, mangos, papayas, and vanilla, unable not to, thinking it again and again, understanding that in thinking these things she was paying less attention to what she was doing but also prolonging it, fearing at the same time that Juan Francisco might notice her distraction and take it for indifference and confuse the passion of their united bodies in bed with a comparison unfavorable for him, even though he’d proven that Laura was a virgin, that he was the first. Would he suspect that it wasn’t being first that was disturbing him but being another, one more, the second, the third, who knows? — the fourth — in the succession of his wife’s loves?

“You never tell me about your boyfriends.”

“You never tell me about your girlfriends.”

Juan Francisco’s eyes, his movements, the shrugging of his shoulders meant: We machos are different. Why didn’t he say so directly, openly?