This was how, Jesús Aníbal thought on his daily viacrucis along the Periférico Highway, the country had been made, and inviting distant family members was upright, it was entertaining, it was instructive, since all of them had gone through experiences that satisfied the lively curiosity of the young, unsatisfied husband who was eager as well to dilute to the maximum his own Basque inheritance and not think again about gachupín or indiano, the words for Spaniard in America. Take a bath in Mexicanism.
He had the reception rooms repaired, and the relatives began to arrive, with the cooperative enthusiasm of Ana Fernanda, who hadn’t thought of a pretext, as she said, to “show off a little bit,” fix up the house, and, in passing, free herself from the enslaving excuse of her mother.
And so the old Jaliscan uncle was constructing a family tree before the last Quiroz, that is to say, himself, disappeared. And the young nephew from Monterrey had created a center for technological development in the north. And the enterprising niece who was an executive in Sonora had joined a conglomerate of businesses in California. And Aunt Chonita from Puebla had arthritis, and it was hard for her to go every afternoon to say the rosary in the beautiful Soledad Church with its no less beautiful tiled dome, as she had been in the habit of doing for the past forty years. And her sister, Purificación, had died of indigestion from an orgy of marzipan, ham, candied sweet potatoes, and other delicacies of Pueblan pastry-making—and who told her to do that?—after a ten-day ecclesiastical fast in honor of the Holy Infant of Atocha. And (distant) Cousin Elzevir was on the run from Matamoros because of who knew what trouble with skirts or drugs or contraband, who can tell with somebody as disreputable as him. And the Sorolla twins from Sinaloa were looking for a singer to form a trio in Mazatlán. And Cousin Valentina Sorolla came from Morelia Michoacán to visit them, which was very unusual since she was known to be a reclusive spinster who did not even go to Mass though she did go to the bank punctually for the monthly allowance left to her by her miserly father, Don Amílcar.
“I’ll bet she prays to Saint Anthony to get married. She must be over forty by now,” said the Sonoran niece.
“Cousin Valentina was supposed to become a nun, but she didn’t have the vocation,” remarked the cousin from Monterrey.
Jesús Aníbal thought he had found in this lengthy parade of scattered clans the way to enliven the spirit of the big old house in El Desierto, learning in passing the peculiarities of related families and creating a pedigree for himself that saved him from an incestuous relationship between the Asturians and his beloved Basque country.
And so they call Aunt Teófila from Guadalajara 09 because she complains all day on the telephone. And the Quiroz family from Veracruz spends the entire day listening to boleros on a jukebox, all of them together as if they were at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, imagine. And Aunt Gudula from San Luis Potosí swears her house is a bijou, she’s so vulgar. And Uncle Parménides from Mérida is such a kid that at night he runs past barracks so the soldiers will shout “Halt! Halt!” at him.
These anecdotes were accompanied by a chorus of laughter from the family visitors on duty.
Was this the happiness that was possible, the warmth of families, severe at times, affable at others? Was this clan passive and happy or active and unhappy? Was the family perfect because it was bored or bored because it was perfect? Or were all of them, without exception, parts of a single symbol, accepted and acceptable, of the quota of happiness we deserve, always partial but always complete because death is the absolute border, not nomadic and not muddy, and nobody is prepared to die leaving behind families that are ugly, ruined, and sad?
Jesús Aníbal responded internally to this question, telling himself that in the final analysis, he was married to the beauty of the family, and the great idea of inviting the scattered Sorolla and Quiroz kin calmed the growing hours of distance between husband and wife and encouraged hours of social coexistence that obliged them both to be on their best behavior.
“It’s fine,” said Ana Fernanda. “Let Cousin Valentina come from Michoacán. I didn’t even think of her. She’s so unattractive.” And she added, applying her makeup in front of the mirror: “I agreed to the relatives so I can show off. Understand that, Jesús Aníbal. Don’t think I’m doing it for you.”
Cousin Valentina arrived without anyone noticing her and stayed in her bedroom until it was time for supper.
“Nobody noticed her?” Ana Fernanda said sarcastically. “I’m not surprised.”
And it was true that in this fortyish cousin there was a kind of disposition not only to not be noticed but to disappear, transforming, like lizards, into a part of the tree or rock they were on. Nothing, however, precluded courtesy, and if Ana Fernanda remained seated and waited for Cousin Valentina to come over to kiss her cheek, Jesús Aníbal got to his feet, ignoring a certain acerbic expression on his wife’s face—as if the cousin didn’t deserve even the slightest show of good breeding—and welcomed Valentina, kissing her first on one cheek and then on the other, but between the two kisses, because of a movement of their heads, he kissed her lips, too.
He laughed. Not the cousin. She moved away, not blushing but with severity. In Jesús Aníbal’s sense of smell, there remained a bitter, peppery trace, redeemed by a scent of musk and the cleanliness of a soap shop.
Standing, her hands crossed at her lower abdomen, dressed all in black in a long skirt and low boots, long sleeves and an unadorned neckline, Cousin Valentina Sorolla looked at the world from an imperturbable distance. Nothing seemed to move her regular features—too regular, as if minted for a coin commemorating the Bourbons, that is, only in profile. Because in order to look to the side, Valentina had no reason to move her head, since her eyes were separated on two equal sides by her sharp commemorative profile.
Nothing in her betrayed wit, mischief, or bad temper. She was a severe mask of severe absence from the external world. Like her body, her face was thin. Skin attached to bone with no obstruction except skin struggling to fuse with bone or bone yearning to reveal itself in skin.
All her hair pulled back into a chignon, a broad forehead and deep temples, a long nose that was inquisitive despite herself—a quiver betrayed her—and a dry, lipless mouth, shut like a money box with no opening. What coin could penetrate it, what brush clean her teeth, what kiss excite her tongue?
Cousin Valentina made the round of greetings with the silence of a distant bird in the sky, and Jesús Aníbal wondered about the reason for the uneasiness he felt when he looked at her. The fact was that Valentina did not resemble any of the relatives, either Quiroz or Sorolla, who had visited them. It was clear that, as the saying goes, she “ate separately.”
Supper confirmed this. While the aunt from Veracruz, that sparkling conversationalist, narrated the chronicles of the Veracruzan carnival and the Monterreyan nephew, a fanatic about himself, recounted operations in high finance, Cousin Valentina remained silent as an uneasy Jesús Aníbal dared to embark on a conversation doomed to failure, though he certainly attempted to at least catch the eye of this peculiar relative. When he succeeded, it was he who looked away. In Valentina’s eyes, he found a prayer for respite, the look of a woman conscious of her ugliness and fearful of ridicule.
That was when a protective attraction was born in the young husband, one that no other member of a family shaped by confidence in itself, from the extremes of pious devotion (we shall go to heaven) to professional success (we shall go to the bank), seemed to need, much less request, and certainly not from gachupines who came to Mexico, according to the popular saying, in espadrilles and a Basque beret.
Jesús Aníbal laughed to himself and looked at his cousin with a complicit air. Were they the two strangers in the bosom of this family, the displaced persons, the exiles?
Who, in reality, was Valentina Sorolla? Jesús Aníbal fell asleep with the question and had disturbing dreams, sometimes physically obscene, sometimes far too spiritual, though he eventually overcame their evanescence
with one certainty: His cousin appeared in all of them.
When he was awake, during the daily masculine ritual of lather and razor that for certain men is the best time for reflection and planning, the young husband thought that his wife’s beauty was evident just as his cousin’s ugliness was evident.
However, in that very contrast, Jesús Aníbal found an obvious reflection that, once it was freed, took swiftly to the air. Who tells us what thing or person is beautiful or ugly? Who determines the laws of ugliness and beauty? Is a form beautiful that cannot manifest as anything more than form but dares to present itself as spirit? On the other hand, can a form be ugly that is clearly inhabited by spirit? And what gives soul to the form except the true truth, the external manifestation of spirit, without which the most beautiful body reveals, sooner or later, that it was simple copper painted gold, while the soul of an ugly form literally transforms it into something more beautiful than any exterior profile of the individual in question.
These were ideas that were unfamiliar to Jesús Aníbal in his own mind and were perhaps the sediment of his listening to poetry every day on the Periférico route between El Desierto de los Leones and the Juárez district. It was another way of repeating Garcilaso from memory, I was born for nothing but to love you, and Góngora, all things serve lovers, and Pedro Salinas, if eyes could sense your voice, oh, how I would look at you, and Pablo Neruda, my heart looks for her and she is not with me . . .
When he went down to breakfast, he looked toward the courtyard and saw Valentina walking there, head bowed, again dressed in black but with one peculiarity. She was barefoot. She stepped on the grass without shoes or stockings. Jesús Aníbal had the feeling that his strange cousin, apparently a frustrated nun, just as the cousin from Monterrey had described her, was fulfilling some penitence. Until he noticed, for the first time, a smile of pleasure on her dry lips. Then he did something unusual for him. He took off his loafers and joined Valentina on the grass. He learned the reason for doing this. The coolness of the sod granted a pleasure violated by the modest crudity of shoes. Walking barefoot in the grass is not only a pleasurable act, it is also an erotic one. The earth rose like a joyful caress from his feet to his solar plexus.
Valentina did not look at him, and Jesús Aníbal left for work with his shoes on and conscious of a dinner at home that night for the scattered relatives who were visiting them—the cousin from Nuevo León, the Veracruzan aunt, two Guadalajarans from Nayarit, Cousin Valentina from Morelia, Ana Fernanda, and himself, Jesús Aníbal. Nothing to worry about here. Ana Fernanda was the perfect homemaker, she would arrange the menu, hire the waiters, prepare the table, and assign places.
Everything as usual. Everything normal.
It was for this that the husband had thought up the program of family visits. Ana Fernanda was blossoming. She no longer had the single excuse of caring for Mama to turn away and distance herself from Jesús Aníbal, who was happy at first to sleep in a separate room far from the wails of Luisa Fernanda and, when the baby passed into the hands of a nurse, not to resume the ritual of the shared bed.
Now Ana Fernanda made herself and the house attractive. She was satisfied and left him in peace. Jesús Aníbal no longer had to worry about pleasing her in bed or during a conversation at the table.
The husband came home early to change his clothes and be on time for dinner. He went to the dining room to confirm the perfection organized by Ana Fernanda and was startled by a shout of alarm and an unusual uproar in the kitchen. He hurried in and found Valentina struggling against the siege of a young, dark, passionate waiter who was trying to embrace and kiss the cousin while she resisted with a fury diminished by the food in her mouth.
Jesús Aníbal forcefully pushed away the waiter, slapped him in the mouth, and the boy looked at him with profound resentment but said only, “I’m leaving.”
But before he left, he turned to speak to his employer. “Dames shouldn’t be in the kitchen when you’re working. They just make trouble.”
“The truth is, I’m a glutton, and I felt hungry,” said Valentina, revealing another, somewhat childish side of her personality.
“Excuse me, Señor,” the waiter continued. “I thought she wanted me to—”
“It’s all right,” said Jesús Aníbal with a reflexive impulse. “Stay. Do your job.”
And he looked at his cousin. “I understand.”
It’s possible that the waiter hid a smile that continued the interrupted phrase “I thought I was doing the lady a favor,” though the craftiness of his sly Mexico City glance said to Jesús Aníbal, “If you want her, keep her, after all, you’re the boss.”
Jesús Aníbal was really curious about participating in the play of glances—or the lack of them—among the waiter, Valentina, and himself, and he was satisfied, rejecting all temptation to flush with confused embarrassment.
During the dinner, the waiter, when passing the platter of turkey and dressing, could not help directing a glance at Ana Fernanda’s décolletage but, without too much effort, avoided looking at the hidden breasts of Valentina, who, to forestall the servant’s eyes, directed hers at Jesús Aníbal with a clear intention to express thanks for the protection offered that afternoon.
Everyone was chatting amiably, animated by Ana Fernanda’s social gaiety, when one of the inevitable blackouts in the southern part of the city provoked an equally inevitable “Aaaah!” from the diners and Jesús Aníbal, moved by a force that not even he desired or understood, extended his leg under the table until his foot touched the tip of Valentina’s.
His cousin withdrew her foot for a second but immediately, as if she feared the return of the light, resumed contact with Jesús Aníbal. They amused themselves in this way until the power returned.
They were all talking about their next vacations, about places they had visited or were going to visit. Only Valentina remained silent, as if she weren’t going anywhere.
When everyone drank cognac, she chose a digestive tequila.
As they sat and talked after dinner, the host tried to avoid his cousin’s eyes, though it was difficult for him, and he told himself that these things didn’t happen by accident, there must be a deeper reason for two distant beings to become close so quickly, especially if they were not—and manifestly they were not—frivolous people, because Jesús Aníbal decided that walking barefoot or going into the kitchen for an early bite were delicious acts—did she think that? he thought—and in their own way, seriously free.
He prayed intensely for the darkness to return and the flirtation to resume. That did not happen. When he said good night, Jesús Aníbal’s kiss on his cousin’s cheek was fleeting, but what was prolonged was the union of nose against nose and the sensation that joined respirations produced in both of them.
“Good night.”
“Until tomorrow.”
And in a very low voice, Jesús Aníbal said, “Fate is on our side.”
The host knew very well which bedroom had been assigned to Cousin Valentina. Jesús Aníbal waited for the hour of the wolf to leave his room and find Valentina’s door. Would it be locked? No. He pushed it and entered a space lit by a candle beside the bed, more undulating than chaste.
Valentina stood waiting for him, barefoot, in a long nightdress with an embroidered bodice.
2. No, it wasn’t because she had been invited for only three nights, and whatever happened now would dissipate very quickly, divided between distance and forgetting. For once, Valentina Sorolla would surrender to forbidden pleasure, certain there would be no consequences. And it wasn’t because she was hungry for love and, in the arms of her cousin, discovered it not for the first but certainly for the principal time, and therefore it was worth it, with no further consideration. No, it wasn’t because, by allowing herself to be loved passionately by Jesús Aníbal, she would free herself from a feeling of revenge for the frustrations of an entire life, damaged as much by her physical appearance as by the withdrawn behavior determined by that fact.<
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No, it was nothing that came out of her and her life. This was what baffled her, subjected her, frightened her. She was barely a rivulet flooded by the great passionate torrent of the man. It was he, Jesús Aníbal, the cousin she had not known about until now, who was the origin, on that night and the three that followed, of the erotic and emotional fervor that overpowered Valentina when Jesús Aníbal removed, with so firm a gentleness he seemed to tear them off, the skirts of stiff silk and the buttoned black shirt, furiously undid the chignon and kissed her until he suffocated her, laid her on the bed, told her sometimes with words sometimes with silences first give me a minute Valentina that’s all I ask then give me the gift of an hour then let me spend the night with you saying and saying to himself Valentina your bitter peppery smell drives me crazy your hair hanging loose like a forest of snakes the beauty of your naked body so full so round so difficult to guess at under your nun’s clothes, so dissonant with the severity of your features, you have a face that disguises your body the body doesn’t correspond to the mask the mask converts the body into a dazzling discovery Valentina you know it don’t cover your face realize it’s your secret a face that conceals the secret of your body, how was I going to read you without daring to undress you, because it wasn’t you Valentina who brought me to you I’m the one from now on who came here the one who found you and doesn’t want to go away from you again I Jesús Aníbal bewitched by you by your newness so ancient so latent so patient waiting at the bottom of my soul you know Valentina? the truth is I was killing myself and if you and I loving each other is a deception then the lie gives me life and it’s my life my love my woman Valentina Sorolla desired and despaired over, do you realize the earthquake you provoke in me the yearning you cause in me the tender ferocity born in me when I possess you Cousin Valentina? you could hate me for what has happened between you and me and I would only love you more the more you despise me but it won’t be like that will it? don’t try to explain yourself at all all you have to do is accept this: because you are who you are you have captured me you are my unfamiliar pleasure each spin of your time fills the empty hourglass that was my soul Valentina how nice we become aroused side by side try to mistreat me my love and you’ll see that no matter how much harm you do me you’ll never succeed in touching the good you bring me I kiss all of you and I move with kisses from your feet to your head I don’t want to be the first or last man in your life I want to be the only man Cousin Valentina my love for you has a Spanish name it’s diehard love finding you turns me into pigheaded Jesús, if you leave me I’d have nothing but days without tranquility you’re my peace my freedom my navel my nails my digestion my dreams Valentina you free me from the burdens of conscience obligation faithfulness custom so I can be the lover of the ugly woman in the family comparable to no one unique in her passion who is all mine no one else’s since no one would envy me no one would want to take you far from my sight and my touch I am unique in the passion that is all mine no one else’s my pleasure unfamiliar pleasure my wide and ardent Valentina did you even know you carried inside you so much uproar so much delicate silky loving sensibility did you know? I didn’t don’t be surprised never think he did me a favor because it isn’t true you did me a favor and freed me from all lies all pretensions ugly no never say ugly the way you just did be quiet unique that’s what you are not like anyone else never say grateful again the way you did now the one receiving the gift is me Valentina if I’m with you it’s because you do me a favor you grant me something I want to deserve by loving you the way I did on Friday and now Saturday and tomorrow Sunday before you go Valentina I can’t bear that idea it’s as if the arrow were piercing me like a Saint Sebastian before the bow of your solemn eyes my love that’s why I love you because your eyes have dark circles and your lips are fleshless and your cheeks close to death and your hair a nest of vipers and your hands indecent claws on all my skin and your weight light under mine even lighter as if you and I the bodies of Valentina and Jesús had waited since infancy for the meeting promised by the stars of a man and a woman desperate to love each other the way you and I love each other cousin of my flesh forbidden cousin cousin obscene and pure at the same time Valentina if you leave me you know I will cry for you the sorrow of losing you will never disappear I will live and die for you because I am the discoverer of your true beauty the beauty seen only by the man who loves as I love you because I have discovered you and I cannot abandon the earthly body of my exploration I cannot veil with opacity and oblivion my privilege of being your cartographer your navigator your conquistador because your body is my land Cousin Valentina your body is my country because I am the lover who with you discovered the pleasure unknown until then because I love you Valentina because of my singularity and yours because no one would believe that someone like me would adore you or that someone like you would give herself to me and that is why each pleasure is a fragile sin and an incomparable thrill because you and I do not resemble anyone and that is what I was looking for without knowing it and what about you?