Carlos Fuentes - The Years With Laura Diaz

“Carmen,” observed Orlando, resigned, “leave well enough alone. Imagine, if Dostoyevsky had psychoanalyzed himself he might not have written The Idiot.”

“Mr. Orlando,” murmured Carmen Cortina, “I only invite people with high IQs, never an idiot! God forbid!” She gasped, but she still managed to introduce Pimpinela de Ovando, an aristocrat fallen on hard times, and Gloria Iturbe, suspected of being a spy for Germany’s Chancellor Franz von Papen, the things people say! but everything, my dears, is so international nowadays, that no one even bothers to mention the sins of La Malinche!

Carmen Cortina’s verbal cascades multiplied into similar cataracts in the mouths of all her guests, except the cadaverous black-and-white painter (“I’ve eliminated everything superfluous from my paintings”), who was the one who supplied Orlando’s famous dictum: “Some Mexicans look well only in their coffins,” words mumbled a moment before the introduction of the Minister of Education in the current government, which gave the hostess and her protégé the painter from Veracruz the chance to unveil the painting, which they did together, raising the excitement and the scandal of the party to a fever pitch when what everyone saw was the true image of the actress who’d played in Poppy: You Won’t Be Alone Anymore in all her splendid nakedness, stretched out on a blue sofa that emphasized the whiteness of her skin and the absence of hair, the one vain, the other coy, united by the art of the painter in a sublime expression of spiritual totality, as if nudity were the habit this nun wore, inclined as she was to flagellation as a superior form of fornication, eager to sacrifice her pleasure for the sake of something more than modesty, or, as Orlando summed it up, “Look, Laura, it’s like the title of that novel from the last century: Nun, Wife, Virgin, and Martyr. ”

“It’s the portrait of my soul,” Andrea Negrete said to the Minister of Education.

“Well, your soul has hair on it,” he retorted, his sharp eye having noticed that the painter hadn’t shaved Doña Andrea’s pubis but had painted her pubic hair white, just like the hair around the actress’s temples.

At that, the party crested, after which the waters, as we say, became calm. Voices dropped to a whisper of shock, of damnation or admiration. It was impossible to know what people thought of Tizoc’s art or Andrea’s audacity. The Minister said goodbye with an impudent expression on his face and a whispered comment to Carmen, “You told me this would be a cultural event.”

“It’s like Goya’s Maja, Mr. Minister. One day I’ll introduce you, it’s the Duchess of Alba, a great friend of mine.”

“Duchess of Tarts,” said the member of Ortiz Rubio’s cabinet.

“Oh, how I’d love to see the members of all the members in all the cabinets,” said the little sailor boy wearing the KISS ME cap.

“Goodbye.” The Minister nodded his head when the sailor in short pants inflated a balloon with BLOW JOB written on it and let it float to the ceiling.

“This is over,” said the merry mini-Popeye. “Where do we go from here?”

“The Leda,” called out Mary Pickford.

“The Candles,” suggested the painter with halitosis.

“The Crouchers,” sighed the critic in white.

“How ridiculous,” intoned his sister.

“The Rio Rosa,” chimed in the Italian woman.

“El Salon México,” decreed the Englishman of la main gauche.

“Mexico beautiful and beloved,” yawned the extremely tall Englishwoman.

“Mexico little Africa,” growled a society columnist.

“I’m getting a highball,” said Orlando to Laura.

“We have the same name.” A very beautiful woman smiled at Laura as she sat down on a sofa and tried to adjust the lamp next to it. She laughed. “After a certain age, a woman depends on light.”

“You are very young,” said Laura with provincial courtesy.

“We must be the same age, a trifle over thirty, right?”

Laura D az nodded and wordlessly accepted the invitation to join the ash-blond woman on the sofa, who arranged a pillow next to her with one hand as she picked up her glass of whiskey with the other.

“Laura Rivière.”

“Laura Díaz.”

“Yes, Orlando told me.”

“Then you know each other?”

“He’s an interesting man. But with no hair. I keep telling him to shave his head completely. Then he wouldn’t be merely interesting but dangerous.”

“Shall I confess something? He’s always made me afraid.”

“Let’s speak as friends, please. Me too. Know why? Let me tell you. There never was a first time.”

“No.”

“I wasn’t asking you, my dear. I was affirming it. I wouldn’t have the nerve with him.”

“Me either.”

“But you should. I’ve never seen a look like the one he aims at you. Besides, I swear it’s more dangerous to close doors than to open them.” Laura Rivière caressed her neck, adorned with brilliant stones. “Did you know? Ever since I separated from my husband, I’ve kept an antique shop. Come see me some time.”

“I live with Elizabeth.”

“Not forever, correct?”

“Correct.”

“What are you going to do with yourself?”

“I don’t know. That’s my dilemma.”

“I’d advise you not to postpone the impossible, dear namesake. It’s better to make things over as you please, in your own time. Take a chance. Look, here comes your friend Elizabeth.”

Laura looked around her: No one was left, even Carmen Cortina had gone to greener pastures with her court. Where? To listen to mariachis at the Tenampa? To hire a show with a cast of whores at the Bandit Woman? To drink rum in votive lamps under a sagging roof? To dance to the music of Luis Arcaraz’s orchestra in the new Hotel Reforma? To listen to Juan Arvizu, the Tenor with the Voice of Silk, in the old Hotel Regis?

Laura Rivière fixed her hair so it covered half her face, and Elizabeth Garc a-Dupont, ex-wife of Caraza, told Laura Díaz, ex-wife of López Greene, “I’m really, really sorry, honey, but I’ve got something set up for tonight at home, you know what I mean, even good girls need to let their hair down sometimes, ha-ha, just this once, but I’ve taken care of you, I booked you a room at the Hotel Regis, here’s the key, go on over and call me in the morning.”

She wasn’t surprised, when she opened the hotel-room door, to find Orlando Ximénez naked, a towel wrapped around his waist. She was immediately surprised that she could like another man, not that another man could like her, that was something she took for granted, her mirror didn’t simply reflect her image back to her but prolonged it through a shadow of beauty, a speaking phantom that gave her courage — as in this exact moment — to go beyond herself, to go through the mirror like Alice, only to discover that every mirror has another mirror behind it and every reflection of Laura D az has another image patiently waiting for her to stretch out her hand, touch it, and feel it flee to the next destiny.

She looked down at Orlando naked on the bed and would have wanted to ask him, How many destinies do we have?

He was waiting for her, and she imagined an infinite masculine variety, the same variety men imagine in women but women are forbidden to express publicly, only in the most secret intimacy: I like more than one man, I like several men, because I’m a woman, not because I’m a slut.