“Don’t be a shit, Negro. She’s my sister.”
El Negro served me more food than I could eat in two days. While I ate, Huberto Naranjo watched in silence, measuring with an expert eye the visible changes in my body—little enough, because I was slow to develop. Nevertheless, budding breasts like two lemons were poking out beneath my cotton dress, and already Naranjo was the connoisseur of women he is today; he could envision the future shape of hips and other protuberances, and draw his conclusions.
“Once you asked me to stay with you,” I said.
“That was a long time ago.”
“I’ve come to stay now.”
“We’ll talk about that later. Now eat El Negro’s dessert, it’s tasty stuff,” he replied, and a shadow clouded his face.
* * *
“You can’t stay with me. A woman can’t live on the street,” Huberto Naranjo announced about six, when not a soul was left in the bar and even the love songs on the jukebox had died. Outside, day was breaking as always: traffic was beginning to move and a few people were hurrying by.
“But it was your idea!”
“Yes, but then you were a kid.”
The logic of this reasoning escaped me completely. I felt much better prepared to face my fate now that I was a little older and thought I knew the world. Naranjo explained that it was just the opposite: because I was older, I needed even more to be protected by a man, at least while I was young; later it wouldn’t matter, because no one would be interested in me, anyway. I’m not asking you to protect me, no one is after me. I just want to go with you, I argued. He was inflexible, and he put an end to the discussion by banging his fist on the table. O.K., kid, that’s all well and good, but I don’t give a shit what you say; so shut up. As soon as the city was awake, Huberto grabbed my arm and half-dragged me to the apartment of La Señora; she lived on the sixth floor of a building on Calle República that was in better shape than others of the barrio. The door was opened by a middle-aged woman wearing a dressing gown and slippers with pompons, still muzzy with sleep and grumbling from the taste of a late night in her mouth.
“What do you want, Naranjo?”
“I’ve brought a friend to you.”
“You have a nerve getting me out of bed at this hour!”
But she invited us to come in, offered us a chair, and said she would be right back. After a long wait she returned, switching on lights as she came, and stirring the air with the flutter of her nylon negligee and the scent of overpowering perfume. I had to look twice to realize it was the same person: her eyelashes had grown, her skin looked like china, her pale, lackluster curls lay in petrified rows, her eyelids were two blue petals, her mouth a crushed cherry. But those astounding changes had not spoiled her sympathetic expression or the charm of her smile. La Señora, as everyone called her, laughed at the least excuse, wrinkling her face and rolling back her eyes, a friendly and contagious habit that won me immediately.
“Her name is Eva Luna and she’s come to live with you,” Naranjo announced.
“You’re mad, Naranjo.”
“I’ll pay.”
“Let’s see, girl. Turn around and let me look at you. I’m not in that part of the business, but—”
“She’s not come to work!” he interrupted.
“I’m not thinking of starting her now—no one would have her, not even gratis—but I can begin to teach her a few things.”
“None of that. I want you to think of her as my sister.”
“And what do I want with your sister?”
“She can keep you company, she knows how to tell stories.”
“What?”
“Tell stories.”
“What kind of stories?”
“Oh, love, war, horror—whatever you ask her.”
“Is that right!” exclaimed La Señora, observing me with kindness. “Well, whatever we do, we’ll have to fix her up a little, Huberto. Look at those elbows and knees, she has skin like an armadillo. You’ll have to learn some graces, my girl, and not sit in a chair as if you were riding a bicycle.”
“Forget all that junk, just teach her to read.”
“Read? Why? Do you want an intellectual?”
Huberto was a man of quick decisions and even at his age already believed his word was law, so he slapped a few bills in the woman’s hand, promised to come back often, and left, reeling off instructions to the accompaniment of the loud tapping of his boot heels: “Don’t even think of dyeing her hair, because you’ll have me to answer to. I don’t want her going out at night, things have gone to hell ever since they killed those students—they’re finding dead bodies every morning. Don’t get her tangled up in your affairs. Remember, she’s like my own family. Buy her some classy clothes. I’ll pay for everything. Make her drink milk, they say it’s fattening. And if you need me, leave a message at El Negro’s bar and I’ll come flying! Oh . . . and thanks, you know I’m at your service.”
He was scarcely out the door when La Señora turned toward me with her wonderful smile, circled around me, examining me, while I stood crestfallen, with downcast eyes and blazing cheeks, for until that moment I had never had reason to take inventory of my own insignificance.
“How old are you?”
“Thirteen, more or less.”
“Don’t worry, no one is born pretty, it takes patience and hard work to get that way. But it’s worth it, because if you’re pretty, all your troubles are over. To begin with, lift your head, and smile.”
“I’d rather learn to read.”
“That’s Naranjo’s foolishness. Pay no attention to him. Men are arrogant, always telling you what to do. It’s better to say yes to everything and then do whatever you please.”
La Señora had nocturnal habits: heavy drapes shielded her apartment from daylight; it was illuminated by so many colored lights that at first you thought you had walked into a circus. She showed me the leafy ferns—all plastic—decorating the corners, the bar with its assortment of bottles and glasses, the pristine kitchen without a hint of a pot, her bedroom where a Spanish doll dressed like a flamenco dancer lay on a round bed. In the bathroom, crammed with pots and jars of cosmetics, there were large rose-colored towels.
“All right, strip.”
“Uh . . .”
“Take off your clothes. Don’t worry,” La Señora laughed, “I’m just going to give you a bath.”
She ran the water in the bathtub, poured in a handful of bath salts that filled the water with fragrant foam, and I lowered myself into it, timidly at first, then with a sigh of pleasure. When I was almost asleep amid jasmine vapors and a meringue of soapsuds, La Señora reappeared to scrub me with a horsehair mitt. Then she helped me dry myself, sprinkled talcum powder under my arms, and dabbed a few drops of perfume at my neck.
“Get dressed. We’ll get something to eat and then go to the hairdresser’s,” she announced.
Along the way, people turned to stare at La Señora, fascinated by her provocative walk, her air of challenge daring even in this atmosphere of brilliant color and women who moved like toreadors. Her dress was skintight, outlining valleys and hills; jewels glittered at her neck and wrist; her skin was chalk-white—still appreciated in this sector of the city, even though among the wealthy suntans had become the fashion. After breakfast we went to the beauty shop; La Señora’s presence—boisterous greetings, perfect smile, courtesan voluptuousness—filled the room. The hairdressers hovered over us with the deference reserved for only the very best clients. Afterward, we set off happily for the arcades in the heart of the city—I with a troubadour’s mane, and she with a tortoiseshell butterfly trapped in her curls—leaving behind us a wake of patchouli and hair spray. When it was time to make our purchases, La Señora made me try on everything in the shop except trousers; in her mind, a woman in man’s clothing was as grotesque as a man in a skirt. Finally she pick
ed out outfits like those in the movies: ballet slippers, full skirts, elastic belts. My most precious acquisition was a diminutive brassière in which my ridiculous breasts bobbed like two lost plums. When she was finished with me, it was five o’clock in the afternoon, and I was transformed. I stared in the mirror but could not find myself; the glass reflected the image of a disoriented mouse.
Melesio, La Señora’s best friend, arrived at dusk.
“Who’s this?” he asked, surprised to find someone there.
“To make a long story short, let’s say she’s the sister of Huberto Naranjo.”
“You’re not planning to . . .”
“No. He left her here to keep me company.”
“Just what you need!”
But after a few minutes he had adopted me, and both of us were playing with the doll and listening to rock ’n’ roll records—an extraordinary discovery for someone accustomed to the salsas, boleros, and rancheras of the kitchen radio. That night for the first time I tasted cream-filled pastries and rum with pineapple juice, the basic diet in that house. Later, La Señora and Melesio went off to their respective jobs, leaving me on the round bed hugging the Spanish doll, lulled to sleep by the frenetic rock rhythm, and with the absolute certainty that it had been one of the happiest days of my life.
* * *
Melesio tweezed his facial hairs, then ran ether-soaked cotton over his face, so his skin was the texture of silk; he took pains with his long-fingered, slender hands, and every night brushed his hair one hundred times. He was tall, with strong bones, but he moved with such delicacy that he gave the impression of being fragile. He never talked about his family and it would be years later, during his time in the penal colony on Santa María, that La Señora learned anything about his past. His father had been a bear of a man who had emigrated from Sicily and who every time he found his son playing with his sister’s toys gave him a beating accompanied by cries of Ricchione! Pederasta! Mascalzone! His mother dutifully cooked the ritual pasta but stood her ground like a tigress when the father tried to force his son to kick a ball, box, drink, or, later, go to whorehouses. When she was alone with her son, she tried to find out what his true feelings were, but Melesio’s only explanation was that there was a woman inside him and she could not get used to the male body in which she was trapped as surely as if she were in a straitjacket. That was all he ever said, and later when psychiatrists addled his brain with their questions, his answer was always the same: I am not homosexual, I am a woman. This body is a mistake. Nothing more, nothing less. He left home as soon as he could convince his mamma that it would be worse to stay and die at the hands of his own father. After working at several jobs, he ended up teaching Italian in a language institute where they paid very little but the schedule was convenient. Once a month he met his mother in the park, handed her an envelope with twenty percent of his earnings, whatever they were, and soothed her with lies about fictitious courses in architecture. His father’s name never crossed their lips, and after a year his mother began wearing widow’s weeds; although the bear remained in perfect health, she had killed him in her heart. Melesio got by for a while, but only rarely did he have enough money, and there were days when he kept on his feet with coffee alone. It was at that point that he met La Señora, and from the moment of their meeting his life took a turn for the better. He had grown up in a climate of tragic opera, and the musical-comedy tone of his new friend was balm for the wounds he had suffered at home and continued to suffer every day in the street because of his effeminate behavior. They were not lovers. For her, sex was nothing but the mainstay of her business, and at her age she had no energy to waste on that kind of nonsense; for Melesio, intimacy with a woman was out of the question. With uncommon wisdom they established from the beginning a relationship devoid of jealousy, possessiveness, rudeness, and other disadvantages of carnal love. She was twenty years older than he, but in spite of that difference—perhaps even because of it—they had a splendid friendship.
“I heard about a job that would be just right for you. Would you like to sing in a bar?” La Señora asked one day.
“I don’t know . . . I’ve never done it.”
“No one would recognize you, you’d be masquerading as a woman. It’s a cabaret for transvestites, but don’t worry about that—they’re decent people and they pay well. The work’s easy, you’ll see . . .”
“Even you think I’m one of those!”
“Don’t take offense. Singing there doesn’t mean anything. It’s just like any other job,” replied La Señora, whose good sense reduced everything to a practical level.
With some difficulty she succeeded in overcoming Melesio’s prejudices, and convinced him of the advantages of the offer. At first he was shocked by the atmosphere of the place, but with his first performance he discovered he not only had a woman inside him, but an actress as well. He had a talent for music and theater unrevealed until then, and his act, which began as an opening number in the program, ended with star billing. He began to live a double life, by day the sober schoolteacher and by night a fantastic creation smothered in feathers and rhinestones. His finances prospered; he was able to buy his mother presents, move to a decent room, eat and dress respectably. He would have been happy had he not been invaded by uncontrollable distress every time he thought of his genitals. He suffered when he looked at himself naked in the mirror, or demonstrated—quite against his will—that he functioned like a normal man. He was tormented by a recurrent obsession: he imagined a self-mutilation with a pair of pruning shears; a single contraction of his biceps and zap! the hated appendage fell to the floor like a bloody snake.
He moved into a rented room in the Jewish district on the far side of the city, but every evening before work he took time to visit La Señora. He arrived about dusk, when the red and green and blue lights were coming on and the ladies of the night positioning themselves in windows and working the streets in full battle dress. Even before I heard the doorbell, I would know Melesio was there and run to meet him. After he held me up in his arms, he always said, You haven’t gained an ounce since yesterday, don’t they give you anything to eat? and, like a magician, he would pluck some sweet out of the air. He liked contemporary music, but his public demanded romantic ballads in French or English. He spent hours learning new songs for his repertoire, and as he learned them, taught me. I memorized them without understanding a single word; there was no “This pencil is red, is this pencil blue?” or any other phrase from the beginning English course I had listened to on the radio. We used to play children’s games that neither of us had had a chance to play when we were young; we made houses for the Spanish doll, sang rounds in Italian, and danced and chased each other around. I loved to watch him as he put on his makeup, and I helped him sew the beads on the costumes for the cabaret.
* * *
In her youth La Señora had analyzed her possibilities and concluded that she lacked the patience to earn a living through respectable means. So she began working as a specialist in erudite massage, and enjoyed a certain success at first, because such novelties were unknown in these latitudes; with the population growth and uncontrolled immigration, however, she encountered unfair competition. Asian women brought with them centuries-old techniques impossible to improve upon, and Portuguese girls offered unthinkably low prices. That removed La Señora from this ceremonial art, since she was not inclined to perform acrobatics, or to give anything away—not even to her husband, if she’d had one. Another woman would have resigned herself to exercising her trade in the conventional way, but La Señora was a woman of imagination. She invented some bizarre devices with which she planned to invade the marketplace, but she could not find anyone willing to finance her. For lack of commercial vision in this country, her ideas—like so many others—were grabbed up by North Americans, who now hold the patents and sell her models around the globe. The automatic telescoping penis, the battery-operated finger, and the nev
er-fail breast with candy nipple were her creations, and if she were paid the just royalty she would be a millionaire. But she was ahead of her time; no one dreamed then that such contrivances would have mass-market appeal, and it did not seem profitable to manufacture them to specification for the use of a few specialists. Nor could she obtain loans to open her own factory. Blinded by the petroleum boom, the government ignored non-traditional industries. She was not discouraged by that setback. She prepared a mauve velvet-bound catalogue of her girls and discreetly sent it to the nation’s highest officials. A few days later she received the first inquiry; it was for a party on La Sirena, a coral-reef- and shark-protected private island that does not appear on any navigation charts and can only be reached by small plane. Once her original enthusiasm had passed and she became aware of the magnitude of her responsibility, she began to ponder the best way to satisfy such a distinguished clientele. At that moment, as Melesio told me years later, her eyes fell on us. We had set the Spanish doll in one corner and from the opposite side of the room were tossing coins into her ruffled skirt. As she watched us, La Señora’s creative mind began shuffling possibilities, and she came up with the idea of substituting one of her girls for the doll. She remembered other childhood games, and to each she added some obscene touch, transforming it into a novel diversion for the party guests. After that, she was in constant demand with bankers, magnates, and leading government figures, who paid for her services from public funds. The best thing about this country, she used to sigh with delight, is that there is enough corruption for everyone. She was very strict with her girls. She did not recruit them with the deceitful tricks of the barrio pimps, but told them exactly what she had in mind, to avoid any misunderstandings and dispose of scruples right from the beginning. If one of the girls failed to show up—whether because of illness, grief, or unforeseen catastrophe—she was immediately dismissed. Do your job with enthusiasm, girls, we’re working for high-class gentlemen. In this business, she told them, you have to have a mystique. She charged more than the local competition, because she had proved that inexpensive peccadilloes are neither enjoyed nor remembered. On one occasion, when it came time to settle the bill, a colonel of the guardia who had spent the night with one of her girls pulled out his service revolver and refused to pay, threatening to arrest her if she insisted. La Señora never batted an eyelash. Within a month the officer called and asked for three well-disposed ladies to entertain some foreign delegates, and quite amiably she suggested that he invite his wife, his mother, and his grandmother if he wanted to fuck for free. Two hours later an orderly appeared with a check and a crystal box containing three royal purple orchids, which, as Melesio explained, in the language of flowers represented three supremely potent feminine charms, although possibly the customer did not know it and chose them only for the elegant packaging.