He looked at Laura with the eyes of a conquered Indian. “Now I feel guiltier than ever. I have nightmares. I’m sure God punished me for my sacrilege by causing this persecution to fall on His Church. I believe I am responsible, because of my individual act, for a collective evil. I believe it profoundly.”
“Father, you have no reason to confess to me.”
“Oh, but I do.” Elzevir squeezed Laura’s hands, which he’d never stopped holding. “Oh, but I do. You were a child. But who better than a child can I ask for forgiveness for the tumult of my soul? Will you forgive me?”
“Yes, Father, I never made charges against you, but my mother—”
“Your mother and your aunts have understood. They have forgiven me. That’s why I’m here. Without them, I would have been shot.”
“I’m saying you did me no harm. Excuse me, but I’d forgotten all about you.”
“But that was the harm. Don’t you see? Being forgotten is the harm. I sowed scandal in my parish, and if my parish forgets it, the reason is that the scandal penetrated so deeply that it was forgotten and forgiven.”
“My mother has forgiven you,” Laura interrupted, somewhat confused by the priest’s logic.
“No, she keeps me alive here, puts a roof over my head, and feeds me, all so I can know the mercy I did not bestow on my flock. Your mother is a living reproach for which I am thankful. I don’t want any one to forgive me.”
“Father, my sons have not had their first communion. The fact is that my husband … would be outraged … if I even asked his permission. Wouldn’t you like to—?”
“Why are you really asking me for this?”
“I want to be part of an exceptional rite, Father. Routine is killing me.” Laura turned away, wailing. It was somewhere between raving and weeping.
In truth, she felt a deep satisfaction in participating in a ceremony missing from her married life, knowing she was going against her husband’s implicit wishes. Juan Francisco neither went to Mass nor spoke of religion. Neither did Laura or the boys. Only María de la O kept some religious pictures stuck in her mirror, which Juan Francisco, without saying so, considered the relics of a hypocritical old woman.
“I don’t oppose it, but still, I have to ask why,” Leticia wondered.
“The world becomes too flat without ceremonies to mark the passage of time.”
“Are you so afraid of losing track of the years?”
“Yes, Mutti. I fear time without hours. That’s what death must be like.”
Leticia, her three sisters, and Laura gathered together in the priest’s bedroom with Santiago and Danton.
“This is my body, this is my blood,” Elzevir intoned, and put pieces of bread in the mouths of the boys, now seven and six, amused because they’d been brought to a dark bedroom to eat bits of roll and hear words in Latin. They preferred running through the gardens of Xalapa, Los Berros and Juárez Park, watched over as always by their dark-skinned aunt; they felt they owned this tranquil city, a space without danger, a territory that gave them the freedom forbidden them in Mexico City, with its streets filled with trucks and wise guys and toughs from whose challenges Santiago had to protect his younger brother.
“Why are you looking so hard at the roof of that house, Mama?”
“No reason, Santiago. I lived there when I was young with your grandparents.”
“I’d like to have a birdcage like that at home. I’d be the owner of the castle and defend you against the bad guys, Mama.”
“Santiago, do you remember the maid I hired back in Mexico City before leaving for Xalapa? Now, when you go back, I want you to treat Carmela with respect.”
“Carmela. Sure, Mama.”
Laura had a premonition. She asked María de la O to stay a few more days in Xalapa with the boys while she went back to Mexico City to straighten up the house. “It must be a mess, with Juan Francisco all alone there and he so busy with politics. As soon as I have things in hand, I’ll send for you.”
“Laura.”
“Yes, Mutti.”
“Look what you forgot when you got married.”
It was the Chinese doll Li Po. True. She hadn’t thought of the doll since she’d gone.
“Oh, Mama, how sad it makes me that I forgot her.” She hid her real sadness with a false laugh. “I think it’s because I turned into my husband’s Li Po.”
“Do you want to take her with you?”
“No, Mutti. It’s better for her to stay here in her place until I come hack.”
“Do you really think you’ll be coming back, dear?”
Neither Carmela nor Juan Francisco was in the little house on Avenida Sonora when Laura arrived around midday from the Buenavista station after the usual delay on the trains.
She felt a difference in the house. A silence. An absence. Naturally: the boys and her cherished aunt were the noise, the joy of the place. She picked up the newspaper jammed under the garage door. She planned a solitary day. Would she go to the Cine Royal? Let’s just see what’s going on.
She opened El Universal and found the photograph of “Carmela.” Gloria Soriano, a Carmelite nun, had been arrested as a conspirator in the assassination of President-elect Alvaro Obregón. She had been discovered in a home near the Bosque de Chapultepec. When she tried to escape, the police shot her in the back. The nun had died instantly.
Laura spent the remaining hours of the day in the dining room staring fixedly at this photo of the very white woman with the deep shadows under her very black eyes. Sunset came, and even though she could no longer see the photo, she did not turn on the light. She knew the face by heart. It was the face of a moral ransom. If Juan Francisco had reproached her all those years for not having visited the Catalan anarchist in the attic, how could he reproach her now for having given sanctuary to a nun being hunted down? Of course he wouldn’t, they would both finally share a combative humanity, Laura told herself, repeating the word “combative.”
Juan Francisco returned at 11 p.m. The house was in darkness. The big dark man tossed his hat on the sofa, sighed, and turned on the light. He was visibly startled when he saw Laura sitting there with the newspaper open in front of her.
“Oh, you’re hack.”
Laura nodded.
“Did you see that item about the nun Soriano?” asked López Greene.
“No. I saw the item about the anarchist Aznar.”
“I don’t follow.”
“When you came to Xalapa to unveil the plaque in the attic, you praised my father for having protected Armona Aznar. That’s when I really met you and fell in love.”
“Of course. She was a heroine of the working class.”
“You aren’t going to praise me for giving sanctuary to a heroine of the religious persecution?”
“A nun who assassinates presidents.”
“An anarchist who assassinates tsars and princes?”
“No, Armona fought for the workers. Your Carmela fought for the priests.”
“Oh, so she’s my Carmela, not yours.”
“No, she’s not mine.”
“She’s not human, Juan Francisco, but someone from another planet?”
“Just from an outdated era, that’s all.”
“Unworthy of your protection.”
“A criminal. Besides, if she’d just stayed put here as I asked her, the shoot-to-kill law wouldn’t have been applied to her.”
“I didn’t know that the police of the Revolution kill people the same way the dictatorship did, shooting them in the hack.”
“There would have been a trial, I told her that, just as there was for the assassin Toral and his accomplice Mother Conchita—another woman, as you see.”
“You must have wanted to get on someone’s good side, Juan Francisco. Whose? Because you’ll be on my bad side forever.”
She didn’t want to hear his explanations, and Juan Francisco didn’t dare give any. Laura packed a suitcase, walked out to the street, hailed a cab, and gave the driver the
address of her girlhood friend Elizabeth García-Dupont.
Juan Francisco rushed after her, opened the taxi door with a bang, grabbed her by the arm, tried to pull her from the car, and slapped her in the face. The cabby got out, shoved Juan Francisco to the ground, and pulled away as quickly as he could.
The friend of her adolescence received Laura with joy, hugs, courtesy, tenderness, and kisses—everything Laura hoped for. Laura moved in with Elizabeth, in her modern apartment in Colonia Hipódromo. Later, in their nightclothes, they told each other their stories. Elizabeth had just divorced the famous Eduardo Caraza, who had blithely danced with her at the balls in the San Cayetano hacienda and just as blithely brought her along when they married and moved to Mexico City because Caraza was a friend of the Treasury Minister, Alberto Pani, who was miraculously putting the nation’s finances in order after the inflation during the Revolution, when every group had printed its own paper money, the famous “funny money.” Eduardo Caraza thought he was irresistible, even calling himself “God’s gift to women,” and told Elizabeth he’d done her a great favor by marrying her.
“That’s what I get for begging.”
“Consider yourself fortunate, my sweet. You’ve got me, but I need lots of women. It’s better we understand each other.”
“Well, I’ve got you, but I also need other men.”
“Elizabeth, you’re talking like a whore.”
“In that case, my dear Lalo, you’re talking like a primp.”
“Forgive me, I didn’t mean to offend you. I was just joking.”
“I’ve never heard you speak more seriously. You did offend me, and I’d be a fool to stay around and suffer more humiliations after listening to your philosophy of life. It seems you have the right to everything and I to nothing. I’m a whore, but you’re a ladies’ man. I’m a disgrace, but you’re what they call a gentleman, no matter what happens, correct? Bye-bye.”
Fortunately, they had no children. How could they, when Lalo wore himself out in orgies and wandered in at six in the morning limp as a wet noodle?
“Juan Francisco never played that trick, he always respected me. Until tonight, when he tried to slap me.”
“Tried? Take a look at your cheek.”
“Well, he did slap me. But he’s not that way.”
“Dearest Laura, I can see that if we go on like this you’ll forgive him everything and in less than a week you’ll be back in the cage. Instead, let’s have some fun. I’m inviting you to the Lyric Theater to see potbellied Roberto Soto in The Fall of Napoleon. It’s a satire on that union man Morones, and they say you’ll laugh your head off. It makes fun of everybody. Let’s go before it’s closed down.”
They got a box so they’d be more protected. Roberto Soto was the very image of Luis Napoleon Morones, with double everything—chin, belly, lips, cheek, eyelids. The setting was the union leader’s mansion in Tlalpam. He walked on dressed as an altar boy and singing “When I was an altar boy.” Instantly, nine or ten half-naked girls in banana skirts—the kind Josephine Baker made famous in Paris in the Folies-Bergère—and little stars glued to their nipples pulled off the altar-boy robes and began singing “Long Live the Proletariat!” while a tall, dark man wearing overalls served champagne to Soto-Morones.
“Thanks, dear brother López Greene, you’ve helped me better than anyone. I ask only that you change your name to López Red just to be in complete harmony, understand? Because we’re all red here and certainly not green-goes, right, girls?”
“Mutti, take care of the boys until I write again. And Auntie María de la O should stay with you too. I’ll send money. I have to reorganize my life, dearest Mutti. I’ll tell you everything. Meanwhile, Li Po can watch over you. You were right.”
8.
Paseo de la Reforma: 1930
“SOME MEXICANS LOOK GOOD only in their coffins.”
Orlando Ximénez’s bon mot was applauded by everyone at the cocktail party that Carmen Cortina gave to celebrate the unveiling of the portrait of her cousin, the actress Andrea Negrete. The artist, Tizoc Ambriz, a young painter from Guadalajara, had become, overnight, the society portrait painter most sought after by those who did not want to bequeath their image to the (Communist and monstrous) posterity of Rivera, Orozco, or Siqueiros, whom they referred to contemptuously as “the daubers.”
Carmen Cortina flouted conventions and invited what she herself called “the fauna of Mexico City” to her cocktail parties. The first time Elizabeth brought Laura to one, she had to tell her who the guests were, although it was impossible to distinguish them from the crashers, whom the hostess tolerated as homage to her social standing—after all, was there anyone who was someone who didn’t want to be seen at Carmen Cortina’s soirees? Vain and nearsighted, she herself had a hard time telling who was who, and people said she’d raised the senses of smell and touch to the level of high art, for all she had to do was bring her myopic face up to the nearest cheek to say, “Chata, what a delight you are!” or touch the finest cashmere to exclaim, “Rudy, how delighted I am to see you!”
Rudy was Rudy, but Orlando was rude. “Watch out!” Carmen called out in English to the star of the party, Andrea, a woman with a mother-of-pearl complexion and perfect facial symmetry accentuated by her hair, parted down the middle and, despite the sensual youth of her eternal figure, audaciously adorned with two white streaks at her temples. This was why she was disrespectfully called “Two-tone.” The irrepressible Orlando, especially, would say because of her skill at two-timing. Sooner or later, Andrea would be what was called an opulent woman, he noted, but not yet. She was like a ripe, freshly picked piece of fruit, challenging the world.
“Eat me,” Andrea said, smiling.
“Peel me,” said Orlando very seriously.
“Vulgarian,” laughed Carmen very loudly.
Tizoc Ambriz’s portrait was covered by a curtain in expectation of its being unveiled at the crowning moment of the evening, when Carmen and only Carmen determined that things had reached their climax, an instant before the boiling point, when all the fauna were assembled. Carmen was making lists in her head: who’s here? who’s missing?
“You’re a statigraphician of the high life,” said Orlando into her ear, but loudly.
“Hey! I’m not deaf, you know,” whimpered Carmen.
“What you are is hot.” Orlando pinched her backside.
“Vulgarian! What is a statigraphician?”
“Someone who practices a new but minor science, a brand-new way to tell lies.”
“What? What? I’m dying to know what that is.”
“Vargas is investigating it.”
“Pedro Vargas? He’s the radio sensation. Have you heard him? He sings on Channel W.”
“But, my dear Carmen, the Palace of Fine Arts has just been inaugurated. Don’t talk to me about Channel W.”
“What are you saying, that mausoleum Don Porfirio left half finished?”
“We now have a symphony orchestra. Carlos Chávez is the director.”
“Which Chávez is that?”
“The one who’ll give you a close chávez where you need it most.”
“Get lost, you’re impossible.”
“I know you like a book. You’re making lists in your head.”
“I’m the hostess. It’s my duty,” Carmen declared in English.
“I’ll bet I can read your mind.”
“Orlando, all you have to do is look around.”
“What do you see, my blind goddess?”
“The mixture, darling, the mixture,” Carmen went on in English. “Social classes have been abolished: doesn’t that seem significant to you? Tell me if twenty years ago, when I was a girl—”
“Carmen, I saw you flirting—with no success—at the Centenary Ball in 1910 …”
“That was my aunt. Anyway, take a look. What do you see?”
“I see a weeping willow. I see a nymph. I see an aureole. I see melancholy. I see sickness. I see egoism. I see vanity. I
see personal and collective disorganization. I see beautiful poses. I see ugly things.”
“Idiot. You’re a frustrated poet. Give me names. Names, names, names.”
“What’s in a name?”
“What, what did you say?”
“Romeo, Juliet, things like that.”
“What? Who invited them?”
Laura had resisted her friend Elizabeth’s importuning: you’re behaving like a widow without being one, Laura, you got rid of López Greene at just the right time, the way I got rid of Caraza, she would say as they walked along Avenida Madero in search of bargains. It was Elizabeth who organized these expeditions to find sales on clothes and accessories that were beginning to come back to post-Revolutionary Mexico in the shops on Gante, Bolivar, and 16 de Septiembre. These hunting parties would start with a breakfast at Sanborn’s, continue with lunch at Prendes, and finish up with a movie at the Cine Iris on Donceles Street—where Laura liked going because it featured first run American films from Metro Goldwyn-Mayer with the best actors, Clark Gable, Greta Garbo, William Powell—while Elizabeth favored the Cine Palacio on Avenida Cinco de Mayo, where they showed only Mexican movies. She loved to laugh with Chato Ortín, cry with Sara Garca, admire Fernando Soler’s histrionics.
“Remember when we went to see fatso Soto at the Follies? That’s where your life changed.”
“A dead marriage kills everything, Elizabeth.”
“Know what happened to you? You were cleverer than your husband. Just like me.”
“No, I think he loved me.”
“But he didn’t understand you. You walked out the day you understood you were more intelligent than he was. Don’t tell me you didn’t.”
“No. I simply felt that Juan Francisco wasn’t up to the same level as his ideals. Maybe I was more moral than he, though thinking that now annoys me a little.”
“Remember fatso Soto’s farce? To be considered intelligent in Mexico, you’ve got to be a crook. What I recommend, my love, is that you become a liberated, sensual woman, your own kind of crook. Come on, finish off that ice-cream soda, drain those straws, and let’s go shopping and then to the movies.”