She looked at Laura but didn’t smile, and Laura was grateful for the woman’s imperturbable seriousness because she feared what she might see if the enigmatic visitor opened her mouth. Such was the cold and nervous style of this visitor: she tried to hide the emotion of her gaze but did not quite succeed. She knew it and transferred the enigma to her mouth, closed in sorrow, sealed with manifest difficulty in order not to show … Her teeth? Laura wondered. Does this woman want to hide her teeth from me? If she could only be identified by her eyes, Laura Díaz, accustomed to discovering eyes and making them into metaphors, saw in them instantaneous moons, torches of straw and wood, lights on the mountain—and she stopped, biting her lower lip, as if to restrain her own memory, so as not to remember those words as spoken by Maura, Jorge Maura, in the Café de Paris almost twenty years before, with Domingo Vidal and Basilio Baltazar, the three of them safe in that bohemian setting on Avenida Cinco de Mayo yet at the same time exposed to the most brutal storms, like the hyenas and oxen and wind and lights on the mountain, whenever they opened their mouths.
“I am Laura Díaz. I took these photographs. May I assist you?”
The woman dressed in black turned to look at the empty frame where Basilio’s portrait should have been and told Laura, If you know this man, tell him I’ve returned.
She smiled then and showed her savagely ruined teeth.
22.
Plaza Río de Janeiro: 1966
LAURA DÍAZ’S GRANDSON, SANTIAGO López-Ayub, and his girlfriend, Lourdes Alfaro, came to live with her at Christmas in 1966. The apartment was old but spacious, the building itself a relic from the previous century that had survived the implacable transformation of Mexico City, from the town of pastel colors and two-story buildings which Laura first saw when she arrived as a new bride in 1922, to what it was now, a blind giant, growing and destroying everything in its path, demolishing the nineteenth-century French architecture, the eighteenth-century neoclassical architecture, and the seventeenth-century baroque architecture. In some sort of grand regressive reckoning, the past was being burned away until there appeared, pulsing like a forgotten, awful, painful wound, the very sediment of the Aztec city.
Laura was not merely ignoring the impudence of her generous, though hardly disinterested, son Danton when she rejected his help and set herself up in the old building on Plaza Rio de Janeiro, adapting the flat to her work needs—with living space but also a darkroom, an archive, space for her illustrated reference works. She had, for the first time in her life, the famous “room of one’s own” that Virginia Woolf had said women deserved so they could have their sacred zone, their minimal redoubt of independence: a sovereign island of their own.
After she’d left the family house on Avenida Sonora and grown accustomed to living alone and free as she went from being fifty-nine to being sixty-seven with a profession and a livelihood, gratified by fame and success, Laura did not feel threatened by the renewed youth Santiago and Lourdes offered her, and she was pleased by how easy it was for the three of them to share household chores, by the understandable but unexpected richness which their after-dinner conversations developed, by the sharing of their experiences, desires, and similar tastes that living together afforded them right from the first moment the third Santiago appeared at Laura’s door and said, Grandmother, I can’t live with my father anymore and I don’t have enough money to live alone and take care of my girlfriend.
“Hello. Let me introduce myself. I’m your grandson Santiago, and this is my girlfriend, Lourdes, and we’ve come to ask you to put us up.” Santiago smiled with Danton’s strong, white teeth but with his uncle’s sweet, melancholy eyes. He had an elegant, even excessive way of moving, too, that reminded Laura of the dissimulating affectation of the Scarlet Pimpernel of the Revolution in Veracruz, Santiago the Elder.
Lourdes Alfaro by comparison was modestly beautiful and dressed the way all young people dressed nowadays, in pants and a T-shirt—one day with the face of Che Guevara, Mick Jagger the next—a long mane of black hair and no makeup whatsoever. She was small and shapely, a “tiny mistress full of virtues,” an epithet which, Laura recalled, Jorge Maura used to quote from the medieval Archpriest of Hita’s Book of Good Love when he teased her about her own Teutonic stature.
The presence of the young lovers in her house was enough to gladden Laura Díaz’s heart, and she opened her arms to the couple—they had a right to happiness now and not after twenty years of violence and unhappiness, as had been the case with Laura and Jorge, or with Basilio Baltazar and Pilar Méndez (now reunited as Jorge and Laura could never have dreamed of being, since destiny can’t succeed twice in turning a tragedy into a happy ending).
The third Santiago and Lourdes for all these reasons had all the rights in the world, in the eyes of Laura Díaz. The boy, whom she’d never met before, given Danton’s stubborn rancor and his wife’s arrogance, now told her about himself, told her he knew and admired her, because, he said, he was going into his first year of law school and didn’t have the artistic talent of either his grandmother or his uncle Santiago, who’d died so young …
“That painting of the couple looking at each other, is it his?”
“Yes.”
“What a great talent, Grandmother.”
“Yes.”
He didn’t sing his own virtues, but Lourdes told Laura one night while she was preparing dinner—saffron rice and drumsticks—Santiago is a tough guy, a real man, considering how young he is, Doña Laura, nothing fazes him … at one point I thought I’d just be a burden to him, given his career, and especially given his relations with his parents, but you should have seen, Doña Laura, how firmly Santiago faced up to them and made me feel that he needed me, that instead of a burden I was someone he could lean on, that he respected me.
They’d met at the school dances Santiago liked more than the parties organized by his parents and his parents’ friends, where everything was about exclusivity and only children of “well-known families” were invited. But at the school dances, social barriers fell and buddies studying the same subjects could meet regardless of their wealth or their family connections. Along with the boys came girlfriends, sisters, and the odd maiden aunt—the tradition of “chaperons” wouldn’t die …
Danton approved of those gatherings. Lasting friendships were made in school, and even though your mother’d prefer that you went to parties only with people of our class, if you notice, son, the people who govern us never come from the upper classes, they develop at the bottom or in the middle class, and it’s important for you to know them when you can help them, because one day, I assure you, they’ll help you. In Danton’s eyes, poor friends could be a good investment.
“Mexico is a country open to talent, Santiago. Don’t forget that.”
In his first year at law school, Santiago met Lourdes. She was in nursing school and came from Puerto Escondido, a beach town on the Oaxaca coast where her parents had a modest hotel with the best temazcal in the region, she said.
“What’s that?”
“A steam bath with fragrant herbs that cleanses you of all toxins.”
“I think that’s just what I need. When are you going to invite me?”
“Whenever you like.”
“Sounds good.”
Together they went to Puerto Escondido and they fell in love there, facing the Pacific, which meets the steep bluffs along a treacherously sandy, sweet beach, but in fact it’s an abyss where anyone can quickly lose his footing, with no support to withstand the swift currents, which caught Santiago and dragged him, more in anguish than in danger, until Lourdes dove into the water, hooked an arm around the boy’s neck, swam with her free arm, helping him to get to shore, and there, exhausted but excited, they exchanged their first kiss.
“You tell me that with your voice trembling,” said Laura.
“It’s that I’m afraid, Doña Laura.”
“Forget the dona. You make me older than I am.”
“Okay, Laura.
”
“Afraid of what?”
“Santiago’s papa is a very hard man, Laura, he won’t put up with anything he himself hasn’t ordered, he becomes like a panther, and it’s something terrifying.”
“He’s not as fierce as you think, that little cat. He roars and scares you until you roar back and put him in his place.”
“I don’t know how.”
“I do, my dear. I do. Don’t you worry.”
The creep actually went down to Puerto Escondido, Grandmother, usually he sends one of his thugs to scare people, but this time he went himself in his private plane to see Lourdes’ family and tell them not to get any big ideas, this thing with his son was nothing but a rebellious, spoiled brat’s adventure, he asked them to explain that to their daughter, that Santiago shouldn’t fool her, she should be careful, he might make her pregnant and then walk out on her, but pregnant or not he was going to walk out on her.
“Your son has never said anything like that to us,” said Lourdes’ father.
“Well, I’m saying it, and I’m the one who gives the orders.”
“I would like to hear it from your son.”
“He can’t speak for himself. He’s just a confused kid.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“Don’t be stubborn, Mr. Alfaro. Don’t be stubborn. I’m not playing around. How much do you want?”
Face to face with Santiago, Danton did not treat him as a “confused kid.” He simply presented “reality” to him. He was an only child since unfortunately his mother couldn’t have a second child, which would have killed her, Santiago was her dream, her cherished filial love, but he, Danton, as a father, had to be more severe and objective, couldn’t afford the luxury of sentimentality.
“You’re going to inherit my fortune. It’s wonderful you’re studying law, though I’d suggest some postgraduate work in economics and business administration in the United States. It’s only natural that a father would like to have his son carry on in his place, and I’m sure you won’t fail me. Neither me nor your mother, who adores you.”
She was a woman whose beauty had evaporated—“like the dew,” she herself was in the habit of saying. Magdalena Ayub de López-Díaz, until the high noon of her life, kept the attractions that so seduced Danton during those Sundays at the Jockey Club: her obvious defects—unbroken eyebrows, prominent nose, square jaw—in counterpoint to her Arab princess eyes, dreamy, velvety, with their olive eloquence under their glossy lids, provocative, like a hidden sex. By contrast, most of the marriageable young ladies of that period, pretty but all too “decent,” left the nuns’ school as if someone had stamped a nihil obstat on a secret part of their body and elevated it to the public category of “face.” A knee, an elbow, or an ankle could serve as models for the sweet, acceptable, insipid faces of the Sacred Heart schoolgirls whom their beaux called “chicks” (a corruption of “chic”). Their features, joked the young Danton, were useful but faded.
Magdalena Ayub—“my dream,” Danton called her when he courted her—was different. She was, besides, the mother of the third Santiago, whose birth instantly erased forever the remains of the youthful charms of Don Danton’s lady wife. She was weighed down by the sentence of the doctors: one more child would kill you, ma’am. She kept her unbroken eyebrows and her hips widened.
Santiago grew up with that stigma: I almost killed my mother when I was born, and I have destroyed any chance of life for possible sisters or brothers. But Danton turned guilt into obligation. Santiago, being an only child, having almost torn away his mother’s life to have his own, now had to do the right thing. Danton asked nothing special from his son: he had to study, graduate, marry a girl of his own class, add to the family fortune, ensure the survival of the species.
“And give me a calm and satisfied old age. I think I deserve one, after all my years of work.”
He spoke with one hand in the side pocket of his blue pin-striped double-breasted suit, the other caressing his lapel. His face was like his suit: buttoned up, double-breasted, striped, with his bluish beard and brows and still-black hair. He was, altogether, a midnight blue man. He never looked at his shoes. They glistened. No need to look.
The third Santiago did not dispute the chart drawn for him by his father until he fell in love with Lourdes, when Danton reacted with a brutality and lack of elegance that the son, from that moment, began to see as attributes of a father he’d loved and whom he’d thanked for so much—the allowance, the four-door Renault, the novelty of the American Express card (with a spending limit), the freedom to wear Macazaga suits (though Santiago preferred leather jackets and jeans)—without judging the motives, acts, justifications or errors in the “that’s the way things are” mode of his father’s words; his father was a man anchored in the security of his economic position and his personal morals, with the nerve to say to his son, “You will follow my path,” and to his son’s girlfriend, “You’re nothing but a stone in the road, get out of the way or I’ll kick you out of the way.”
His father’s attitude riled the young Santiago, enraged him at first, but then encouraged him to do things that had never occurred to him before. He became aware of his own moral nature, and aware that Lourdes too was aware of it: they wouldn’t sleep together until the situation was quite clear; they wouldn’t cheat each other, either with a baby “by mistake” or with sex as mere defiance. Santiago began to ponder, Who is my father, what has my father got that he should have this absolute power over people and this self-confidence?
He told Lourdes, Let’s outsmart him, mi amor, let’s stop seeing each other every day, only in secret on Friday evenings, so the old boy doesn’t get suspicious.
Santiago told Danton, fine, he’d study law, but he also wanted to learn practical things, and to do that he should work in his father’s office. Danton’s satisfaction with his son’s attitude blinded him. He couldn’t imagine any danger in letting his own son into the offices of Cooperative Resource Allotment Partnership (CRAP), a building of glittering glass and stainless steel on Paseo de la Reforma, a few yards from the statue of Christopher Columbus and the Monument to the Revolution. It had once been the site of the Paris-style house with the mansard roof where Butt del Rosal had awaited snow in Mexico—that old aristocrat of the Don Porfirio days whose trick was to eat his gelatin monocle at Carmen Cortina’s soirees. But Paseo de la Reforma—the avenue that the Empress Carlota had created to connect her residence in Chapultepec Castle as Maximilian’s consort with the center of the city (she conceived it as a reproduction of the Avenue Louise in her native Brussels)—was coming to resemble a street in Houston or Dallas, lined with more and more skyscrapers, parking lots, and fast-food outlets.
There, Santiago would learn the business, let him explore every floor, get to know everything, he’s the boss’s son …
He became friends with the file clerk who was mad about bullfighting by giving him season tickets—that year Joselito Huerta and Manuel Capetillo were the stars. He became friends with the telephone operators by getting them passes to the Churubusco Studios so they could watch Libertad Lamarque make her movies: the same Argentine tango singer who’d brought tears to the eyes of Harry Jaffe in Cuernavaca.
Who was this Miss Artemisa who called Don Danton every day? Why did they treat her so deferentially when Santiago wasn’t there and so secretively when he was around? Who was the man his father treated with respect bordering on servility, yes, sir, we’re here to serve you, sir, whatever you say, sir, so strikingly different from those who received only his usual rapid, implacable, and unadorned commands: I need it this minute, Gutierritos, don’t fall asleep on me now, there’s no room for lazy fuckers here and you look like the laziest fucker I’ve ever seen, what’s wrong with you, Fonseca, did the sheets stick to your skin or what, I expect you in a half minute or you’d better start thinking about another job; which differed in turn from those who got the more serious threats, If you have any consideration for your wife and children, I’d r
ecommend you do what I tell you, no, I’m not giving you some orders, I’m commanding you, that’s the way I deal with errand boys, and you, Reynoso, just remember the papers are in my possession and all I have to do is give them to Excelsior to publish and you’ll be up shit’s creek.
“As you say, sir.”
“Get that report up to me on the double.”
“Don’t stick your nose in someone else’s business, you bastard, or you’re going to wake up someday with your balls in your mouth and your tongue up your ass.”
As he penetrated the metal-and-glass labyrinth his father dominated, Santiago searched with equal tenderness and voracity—two names of need but also of love—for Lourdes’ affection. They held hands at the movies, they stared deep into each other’s eyes in cafeterias, they kissed in Santiago’s car, they petted in the darkness, but they waited until they could live together to join completely. They agreed on that, no matter how strange and at times even ridiculous it might seem, sometimes to one, sometimes to the other, sometimes to both. They had something in common. Postponing the act excited them. Imagining each other.
Who was Miss Artemisa?
She had a deep sugary voice, and the finishing touch was when she’d say on the telephone to Danton, “I wuve wou, Tonton, I wuve wou, my widdle sugar pwum.” Santiago almost died laughing when he listened illicitly to this saccharine dialogue, and his laughter redoubled when the severe Don Danton said to his widdle sugar pwum, “What are my little titties up to, how’s my little lazy balls, what does my little Tricky eat to make her kisses taste so pricky?” “I suck bananas every Thursday,” answered the hoarse, professionally tender voice. Lourdes, said Santiago, this is really getting good, let’s find out who this Artemisa or Tricky is and what she really tastes like. My old man takes the cake, I swear!
Santiago wasn’t thinking about the fact that the forgotten Doña Magdalena was being cheated on, he wasn’t a puritan, but I’m curious, Lourdes, and so am I, laughed the fresh and nubile girl from Oaxaca as the two of them waited for Danton to leave the office one Thursday night, when dear old Papa took the inconspicuous Chevrolet out alone, with no chauffeur, and drove to Darwin Street in the Nueva Anzures neighborhood, followed by Santiago and Lourdes in a rented Ford so no one would notice.