Daniel Sada - One Out of Two

“Yes, I agree.”

“So, I’ll leave tomorrow.”

“Fine by me.”

For the moment there was nothing left for them to do but switch off the lights and get into bed and good night. Happiness? Anguish? Irreproachable maturity?

Darkness, interior ruminations, a lively flame: left lit: by both: possibly for very different reasons. And it trembles if the sighs of nearby words bend it and make it flicker. If it spoke: what would it say? To merely illuminate such a confined space expresses enough. It is perpetual resolve that speaks by blinking, and only rarely, if ever, lets itself be caressed, and abruptly returns to its own shape when left alone: then remains, immaculate.

Because here the silences crown that flame as queen: a lone reality surrounded by myriad mysteries, lively plenitude requiring a fixed gaze, yes, Constitución’s, who has yet to fall asleep, whereas the other is already deliriously dreaming.

Dream and gaze are leisure and faith. Throbbing terror, anticipation that conjures paths and precipices. Everything is halved. It’s comforting to look back, whereas the future might be diffuse. And those eyes wide open: what hopes do they hold? Desires lasting but an instant, and under the circumstances merely melancholic: what began then ended: that sameness that can be no longer because the Devil has come to settle down right smack in between them, disguised as a magician, and how to get rid of him now? With words? The other half leaving forever and the Devil playing the role of the one who lost: is that a solution? Though if one half chooses what best suits her, any imprecision becomes whimsy or destiny; to seek wholeness, to wish to preserve it, maybe that’s just faith that hasn’t anywhere much to go.

Or does it?

Constitución needed light. Yes and no were both dissembling.

Because the flame — given to dalliance — flickers when it feels that someone within its illuminated sphere cannot find a simple and conclusive idea.

At that moment, however, the fiancée wanted to go to the dining room, switch on the electric light, and serenely count beans: the good and the bad: how many?: in order to likewise sort her thoughts, but just as she was about to begin, she stopped. Convinced the act was futile, she understood that right there in her bed, in the semidarkness, she could find the remedy that would allow her to sleep like her other half. In other words, she didn’t need beans to see sense, or light, or any damn thing at all.

Constitución decided to think about her fiancé, Oscar, her rancher and dreamer. His conversation. His life: like a predictably preterit respite: happiness admitted for stretches and much-too-subtle dissatisfaction. His spirit of struggle limited to surveying what is closest at hand. In him, there’s no emancipation, no adventure. Would the man be worth it? She cannot imagine how the weaning of she-goats and the raising of swine can so fully occupy his lucid thoughts. In the meantime, the lively flame seemed to smile, as if to ask sardonically: and what about you? Your sewing: what’s that? Your identity: what can it presume?

Such well-delineated lives, where longing is neither an ascent nor an earthly fire. Lives in purgatory, which are, after all, what others think they are, and if that makes sense then let that sense continue, culminate, so many lives draw together and so many move apart. To seek similarities: what for? there are loads of them in some way or other.

And the fiancée thought about life with her future husband, who, for example, during all those Sunday outings had never once asked her how her business was going. Only at the very beginning were there a few questions, but this was just to get a general overview; the man certainly would never agree to let her work on her own or God forbid earn more than he! Horrors! Cruel humiliation! On the contrary, soon, indeed, he would reveal his own sinister plan, pull the rug out from under his splendid spouse by selling off her dressmaking business and using the profits to buy his truck or maybe that restaurant of his, serving tacos de carnitas: smack in the middle of the desert, though next to some highway; that’s right: where his wife, joined to him in holy matrimony, would oversee a bevy of girls. A life of despairingly small chores. A life up to her neck in soups and reheatings, in cooking and cleaning up messes. A life in an apron. And the man: lord and master, who will strut his stuff and stroke his long black mustache, black like her image of him in profile or looking at him head-on. Not to mention the children and the family hearth. Would this be the reward for kisses that would continue for who knows how much longer?

No!

Wide awake, the fiancée thought it better to snuff out that light, that despicable candle, whose flame was a mockery, a terrifying and mendacious burn. She rises swiftly — it was midnight or even later — and angrily blows it out.

Darkness and the end.

“Gloria! Gloria, for heaven’s sake, are you still asleep?”

“What? … Huh?” answered drowsily she who was dreaming of sibylline locales in savory company.

“Wake up, woman! I want to turn this thing around.”

“Ahh … At this hour? … Ugh! Why don’t you tell me about it tomorrow?”

“It’s urgent, you have to hear me out!”

The other half, the good one, shifted sleepily in bed, pulled up the blanket, then said:

“Tomorrow is Monday … Mmm … We’ll talk tomorrow.”

“I’d rather talk now than work tomorrow.”

“Oh! … I was having such a lovely dream … Don’t ruin it for me … Mmm … bye-bye!”

There was nothing for the wide-awake one to do but go and switch on the bedroom light, but she didn’t stop there, she poked her twin in the ribs, though playfully, until Gloria finally rubbed her eyes and sat up in bed.

“Let’s celebrate!”

“Celebrate what?”

“Do you remember that a long time ago we agreed that what was yours was mine and vice versa, that our sameness must be safeguarded?”

“Yes … How could I forget what keeps us together?”

“Oh, please, don’t you see, I regret trying to break our bond.”

Gloria stood up without saying a word, then walked to the bathroom to wash her face and quickly comb her hair. She returned, still half asleep, mumbling under her breath, she also adept at non sequiturs.

“It’s past one, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know, I have no interest in looking at a watch.”

“Aren’t you cold?”

“No, and I don’t plan to be … But tell me: what’s wrong with you?”

“How can you ask? You forced me to wake up.”

“Forgive me, my darling sister! But … the wedding …”

“I know what you’re going to say.”

“What I’m going to say is that there isn’t going to be any wedding …”

“What?”

And with this “what?” she upended the foolish promise of a rosy future that only ever belonged to the realm of the imagination, to the many-flavored kisses that sublimate in order to distort, and to those soft beginnings that gradually harden. Because in the long run, love would cease to be what dreams dictate and turn instead into insipid bread, intrepid monotony, and in the end and forevermore: subjugated love.

The natural ease of recent days would anyway peter out all on its own, because the effusive man, once satisfied and settled down, would set aside the maelstrom of affection to make room for more pressing concerns of money and work, of hardships and obligations, such as: the goats hanging from the roof grating, and the pigs, too: the stakebed truck, the huge restaurant, and then love would become inferred. In fact, and here’s the worst part: it would no longer be possible to sew: to consider it a business: good heavens, no! because it would be unbecoming for the so-called better halves to compete with each other.