She cornered her prey in the patio. The cousin had half a banana in his hand and was chewing the other half; a two-day growth of beard shadowed his face, and he was sweating, because it was hot and because it was the night of his defeat.
“I am waiting for you,” Zulema said in Spanish, to avoid the shame of saying it in her own language.
The youth froze, his mouth full and his eyes alarmed. She walked toward him slowly, as inexorable as a ghost, until she was only centimeters away. Suddenly the crickets began chirping, a shrill, sustained chorus that grated on my nerves like the drone of an Oriental instrument. I noticed that my patrona was half a head taller and twice as heavy as her husband’s cousin, who, in addition, seemed to have shrunk to the size of a boy.
“Kamal . . . Kamal . . .” A murmur of words in their tongue followed as her finger touched his lips and traced their outline with a feathery touch.
Kamal groaned, vanquished; he swallowed what was left of the banana in his mouth and dropped the other half. Zulema pulled his head to her bosom, where it disappeared in her enormous breasts as if sucked under by bubbling lava. She held him there, rocking him the way a mother rocks her child, until he pulled away and they stared at each other, panting, minds racing, measuring the risks. Desire won out and, clinging to each other, they hurried to Riad Halabí’s bed. I followed them, but they were not perturbed. I believe I truly had become invisible.
I crouched down in the doorway, my mind a blank. I felt no emotion. I forgot my jealousy; it was as if I were watching a movie being projected from the mobile truck. Standing beside the bed, Zulema wrapped Kamal in her arms and kissed him until his arms seemed to rise of their own accord and encircle her waist as he responded to her caresses with a sob of anguish. She covered his eyelids, his neck, his forehead with rapid kisses, insistent flicks of her tongue, love bites; she unbuttoned his shirt and yanked it off him. He tried to remove her caftan but became entangled in its folds and, instead, tore at the low neck to reach her breasts. Without interrupting her fondling for an instant, Zulema turned him so his back was to her, and continued to cover his neck and shoulders with her kisses while her fingers unzipped his trousers and tugged them down over his hips. Only a few steps from me, I saw his masculinity pointed directly at me, unobscured. Kamal was even more compelling naked; without his clothes he lost that feminine delicacy. His slight build suggested synthesis, not fragility, and just as his prominent nose dominated his face without making it ugly, he was not made bestial by his great, dark sex. Stunned, for almost a minute I forgot to breathe, and when I did, I choked on a sob. He was right before me and for an instant our eyes met, but his passed on, unseeing. Outside, a torrential summer rain began to fall, and the clash of the cloudburst and thunder was joined to the dying song of the crickets. Finally, Zulema disrobed and stood revealed in all her splendid abundance, like a clay Venus—although the contrast between the woman’s prodigal flesh and the thin body of the youth to me seemed obscene. Kamal pushed her onto the bed; she screamed, imprisoning him between her heavy legs and clawing his back. He shuddered several times and fell limp with a visceral moan. She had not, however, spent all that time in preparation only to have everything over in one moment, so she rolled him from atop her, propped him among the pillows, and devoted herself to resuscitating him, whispering inducements in Arabic, with such good results that in a brief time he was ready. Then he surrendered himself, eyes closed, while she caressed him until he seemed near death: finally she swung astride him, smothering him with her voluptuousness and the wealth of her hair, completely obliterating him, absorbing him in her quicksands, devouring him, draining him, and leading him to the gardens of Allah where he was celebrated by all the odalisques of the Prophet. Then they rested, calm, entwined like two children in the crescendo of the rain and the crickets of that sweltering night that had become as hot as midday.
I waited until the horses stampeding in my chest had slowed, then stumbled away. I stood in the middle of the patio, water streaming from my hair, soaking my clothes and my soul, afire, with a strong presentiment of catastrophe. My first thought was that if we kept silent, it would be as if nothing had happened—what is not voiced scarcely exists; silence would gradually erase everything, and the memory would fade. But the smell of desire had drifted through the house, impregnating the walls, the clothing, and the furniture, filling rooms, sifting into cracks, affecting flowers and living creatures, warming subterranean rivers, saturating the very sky of Agua Santa; it was as visible as a beacon and would be impossible to hide. I sat down beside the fountain, in the rain.
* * *
Finally it stopped raining and the moisture in the patio began to evaporate, enveloping the house in a light fog. I had spent those long hours in darkness, gazing inward. I felt hot and cold; it must have been due to the persistent odor that for some days had floated in the air and clung to everything. It’s time to sweep out the shop, I thought when I heard the tinkling of the milk seller’s bells in the distance, but my body was so heavy I had to examine my hands to be sure I hadn’t turned to stone. I dragged myself to the fountain and plunged my head into the water; as I stood up, the cold water trickling down my back awakened me from the paralysis of that sleepless night and washed away the image of the lovers in the bed of Riad Halabí. I went to the shop without looking toward Zulema’s door. Let it be a dream, Mama, make it just be a dream. I spent the morning behind the refuge of the counter, without a glance toward the corridor but with one ear cocked to the silence of my patrona and Kamal. At noon I closed the shop, but still I was reluctant to leave those three rooms filled with merchandise, and I lay down among some grain sacks to get through the heat of the siesta. I was afraid. The house had been transformed into a lewd beast breathing at my back.
Kamal spent that morning dallying with Zulema; during the siesta, they made a lunch on sweets and fruit, and then, while she was sleeping from exhaustion, he gathered his things, packed his cardboard suitcase, and crept out the back door like a thief. As I watched him leave, I was sure he would never return.
Zulema awoke in the late afternoon with the shrill of the crickets. She walked into The Pearl of the Orient in her bathrobe, hair uncombed, lips swollen, dark circles beneath her eyes, but she looked beautiful, complete, satisfied.
“Close the shop and come help me,” she ordered.
As we cleaned and aired the room, putting fresh sheets on the bed and changing the flower petals in the pottery bowls, Zulema was singing in Arabic, and she continued to sing in the kitchen while she prepared yogurt soup, kibbeh, and tabbouleh. Then I filled the bathtub, perfumed it with lemon essence, and Zulema sank into the water with a happy sigh, her eyelids half-closed, smiling, lost in who knows what memories. When the water cooled, she asked for her cosmetics; she regarded herself in the mirror, gratified, and began to powder her face; she put rouge on her cheeks, lipstick on her lips, pearly shadow around her eyes. She emerged from the bathroom wrapped in towels and lay down on the bed for her massage; then she brushed her hair, pinned it in a knot, and put on a low-necked dress.
“Am I pretty?” she wanted to know.
“Yes.”
“Do I look young?”
“Yes.”
“How young?”
“As young as the photograph of your wedding day.”
“Why did you mention that? I don’t want to remember my wedding! Get out, you stupid girl. Leave me alone . . .”
She took a seat in a wicker rocking chair beneath the eaves of the patio to enjoy the evening and await her lover’s return. I waited with her, lacking the courage to tell her that Kamal had gone. Zulema sat for hours, rocking and summoning him with all her senses, while I nodded in my chair. The food in the kitchen turned rancid and the faint perfume of flower petals faded in the bedroom. At eleven I awoke, frightened by the silence; the crickets had stopped chirping and the air was still; not a leaf was stirring in the patio. The odor of desire
had dissipated. My patrona still sat motionless in the chair, her dress wrinkled, her hands clenched; tears wet her face and her makeup was streaked. She looked like a mask left out in the rain.
“Go to bed, señora, don’t wait any longer. Maybe he isn’t coming until tomorrow,” I begged, but she did not move.
We sat there the whole night. Although my teeth were chattering, a strange sweat was running down my back. I attributed those signs to the malign fate that had fallen over the house. I realized that something had shattered in Zulema’s heart and that this was not the moment to worry about my own discomfort. I was horrified when I looked at her. She was not the person I had known; she seemed to be turning into a kind of enormous vegetable. I prepared coffee for the two of us and brought it to her with the hope of restoring her old self, but she did not want to taste it. She sat rigid, a caryatid with eyes fixed on the patio door. I drank a sip or two, but it tasted strong and bitter. Finally I managed to raise my patrona from her chair and lead her by the hand to her room. I removed her dress, washed her face with a damp cloth, and put her to bed. She was breathing easily, but desolation clouded her eyes and she continued to weep, quietly and persistently. Then, like a sleepwalker, I opened the shop. It had been hours since I had eaten; I was reminded of my time of great misfortune, before Riad Halabí had taken me in, when my stomach was tied in knots and I could not swallow. I sucked on a medlar fruit and tried not to think. Three girls came into The Pearl of the Orient and asked for Kamal; I told them he was not in, that there was no point even in remembering him, because in fact he was not human, he had never been a flesh-and-blood creature; he was an evil genie, an efrit come from the other side of the world to stir their blood and trouble their hearts, but they would never see him again; he was gone, carried off by the same fateful wind that had blown him from the desert to Agua Santa. The girls went straight to the plaza to tell the news, and soon the curious began to drop by to find out what had happened.
“I don’t know anything. Wait till the patrón returns,” was the only answer I could think to give.
At noon I carried a bowl of soup to Zulema and tried to spoon it into her mouth, but I kept seeing shadows, and my hands trembled so that the liquid spilled onto the floor. Suddenly she began to rock back and forth with her eyes closed, mourning, first a moaning monotone and then a sharp and uninterrupted ayayay like the wail of a siren.
“Be quiet! Kamal will not be back. If you can’t live without him, get up and go look for him. There’s nothing else you can do. Do you hear me, señora?” I shook her, frightened at the magnitude of that suffering.
But Zulema did not respond; her Spanish was forgotten, and no one would ever hear her speak a word in that language again. Then I put her to bed, and lay down beside her, listening to her sighs until we both fell into an exhausted sleep. That was where Riad Halabí found us when he returned in the middle of the night. His truck was loaded with new merchandise, and he had not forgotten gifts for his family: a topaz ring for his wife, an organdy dress for me, and two shirts for his cousin.
“What’s going on here?” he asked, amazed at the wind of tragedy that swept his house.
“K-Kamal’s gone,” I stammered.
“What do you mean, gone? Gone where?”
“I don’t know.”
“But he is my guest—he can’t leave like this, without telling me, without saying goodbye.”
“Zulema isn’t well.”
“I think you’re even sicker, child. You have a high fever.”
In the days that followed, I sweated out my terror; my fever went away, and I regained my appetite. In contrast, it was evident that Zulema was not suffering from a passing illness. She was stricken with lovesickness, and everyone realized it except her husband, who did not want to see it and refused to connect Kamal’s absence with his wife’s despair. He did not ask what had happened, because he guessed the answer, and had he been certain of the truth, he would have had to take revenge. He was too softhearted to slice off his unfaithful wife’s breasts or to hunt down his cousin, cut off his genitals, and stuff them in his mouth, in keeping with the traditions of his ancestors.
Zulema continued silent and sullen, weeping at times, with no trace of interest in food, the radio, or her husband’s gifts. She began to lose weight, and at the end of three weeks’ time her skin had turned a light sepia, like a photograph from another century. She reacted only when Riad Halabí attempted to caress her; then she crossed her arms tightly, hunched her shoulders, and glared at him with implacable hatred. For a while my classes with the schoolteacher Inés and my work in the store were interrupted, and the weekly visits to the mobile movie theater were not resumed, because now I could not leave my patrona’s side. I spent all day and a large part of the night caring for her. Riad Halabí hired two girls to do the cleaning and help in The Pearl of the Orient. The only good thing about that period was that he began to pay attention to me as he had before Kamal had come: he asked me to read aloud to him or to tell him tales of my own invention; he invited me to play dominoes and again let me win. In spite of the oppressive atmosphere in the house, we found reasons to laugh.
Several months went by without noticeable improvement in Zulema’s health. The inhabitants of Agua Santa and neighboring towns came to inquire about her, each bringing a different remedy: some sprigs of rue for a healing tea; a syrup to cure trauma; vitamins in pill form; chicken broth. They did not do it out of consideration for that haughty and friendless foreigner, but from affection for the Turk. What she needed, they said, was to see an expert healer, and one day they brought a Goajira woman of few words, who smoked tobacco leaves, blew the smoke on the patient, and concluded that she had no illness known to science, only a prolonged attack of love sadness.
“She misses her family, poor woman,” her husband explained, and dismissed the Indian woman before she went further and divined his shame.
We had no news of Kamal. Riad Halabí never again mentioned his name, wounded by the ingratitude with which Kamal had repaid his hospitality.
SEVEN
Rolf Carlé began working with señor Aravena the same month the Russians launched a space capsule containing a dog.
Rolf’s Uncle Rupert was infuriated when he heard the news: “That’s the Soviets for you, they don’t even respect animals!”
“What’s all the fuss, husband? She was only a mutt, not even pedigreed,” Aunt Burgel replied without looking up from the pastry she was rolling out.
That unfortunate comment unleashed one of the worst fights the couple ever had. They spent all of Friday shouting at each other and hurling insults stored up during thirty years of married life. Among many other deplorable remarks, Rupert heard his wife confess for the first time that she had always detested the dogs; she was sick of raising and selling them, and she prayed every single one of the damned German shepherds would get distemper and die and get the hell out of her life. In turn, Burgel learned that her husband knew of an infidelity she had committed in her youth, but had not mentioned so they could live in peace. They said unthinkable things, and both ended in a state of collapse. When Rolf arrived Saturday at La Colonia, he found all the doors closed, and thought the family was down with the Asian flu that was taking its toll that season. Burgel was prostrate, lying on the bed with sweet-basil compresses on her forehead, and Rupert, purple with rage, had locked himself in the carpentry shop with his bitches and fourteen whelps, and was methodically destroying all the cuckoo clocks he had built for the tourist trade. The cousins’ eyes were swollen from crying. The girls had married their candlemakers, adding the delicious aroma of beeswax to their natural bouquet of cinnamon, clove, vanilla, and lemon. They lived on the street where they had lived as children, dividing the day between their own housekeeping and helping their parents with the hotel, chickens, and dogs. No one reacted to Rolf Carlé’s excitement over his new movie camera or, as they usually did, begged to hear detailed acc
ounts of his activities and the political unrest at the university. The argument had so radically disturbed the spirit of that tranquil home that for once he could not even pinch and nuzzle his cousins: they went around with long faces and failed to show any enthusiasm whatever for airing the eiderdowns in the unoccupied rooms. Sunday night Rolf returned to the capital, inflamed but celibate, wearing last week’s dirty clothes, without the usual biscuits and sausages his aunt always packed in his suitcase, but with the uncomfortable sensation that a Muscovite bitch was more important in his family’s eyes than he was. Monday morning he met señor Aravena for breakfast in a corner coffee shop near the newspaper office.
“Forget the damned dog and your aunt and uncle’s tiff,” his mentor said, attacking the toothsome dishes that helped him begin a new day. “Something important’s in the air.”
“What are you talking about?”
“There’s going to be a popular election in a couple of months. It’s all cut and dried, the General intends to govern another five years.”
“That’s not news.”
“But this time he’s going to get his ass reamed, Rolf.”
Just as predicted, a referendum was held shortly before Christmas, spearheaded by a publicity campaign that swamped the nation in noise, posters, military parades, and dedications of patriotic monuments. Rolf Carlé decided to do his work carefully and, within limits, with a degree of humility, beginning at the beginning and the bottom. Well in advance of the event, he began to gauge the situation, making the rounds of campaign offices and talking with officers of the armed forces, with workers and students. On election day, the streets were filled with the Army and the guardia, but very few citizens were seen at the polls; it looked like a country Sunday. It was announced that the General had won a crushing majority of eighty percent of the registered voters. The fraud was so brazen that instead of giving the desired effect it made the General look ridiculous. In the several weeks Carlé had spent snooping around, he had gathered a lot of useful information, which he delivered to Aravena with the brashness of a novice, hazarding in passing complex analyses of the political situation. Aravena listened with a sardonic air.