Happy Families

  Are you sure? He or you?

  Both of us. I’m still with him because there’s nobody left but me who remembers his youth and his promise. Only I have his eyes of yesterday in my eyes of today.

  I NEED TO SLEEP with the window open. Close it. I need fresh air. It smells like a circus in here. I’ll get pneumonia. Close it. Look at what a disaster the bathroom is. Why don’t you keep your makeup someplace else? Why don’t you clean the sink after you shave look at the dirty soap look at your hairs look at my brush full of your bleached hairs hang the towel up to dry spread it out don’t leave it like that just thrown down put a mat beside the bathtub don’t get the floor all wet yesterday I slipped and almost broke my neck why do you use so much toilet paper? don’t you prefer to wipe your silky, high-handed ass with Kleenex? don’t use my razors anymore to shave under your arms you leave them full of hair but I only use the one you’ve already thrown away why don’t you remove the hair permanently and stop bothering me why did you rearrange my shirts? to make your life easier blue ones here white ones there short-sleeve shirts on one side sport shirts in the back because you wear them less often ah! do you want me to classify your panties your bras your panty hose because you can arrange my closet but I can’t arrange yours right? why? because that’s private Álvaro and I have nothing private, Cordelia? it’s different it’s different.

  WE’RE NOT THE SAME you’re right I have everything hanging on the outside you keep everything in those aromatic crannies, you’re full of folds and more folds Cordelia and you know you smell like a fish market that’s what you smell like a rotten red snapper that’s how I feel when I make love to you that I’m fucking a dead fish left on the beach for a week a man shows himself he shows everything a woman hides everything she arranges everything in little quilted boxes but a woman disarranges your soul roll up your socks slowly bottom to top don’t yank them don’t put your shoes on before your trousers be careful not to stain your tie at the cleaners they ruin ties ties have their virginity too why were you messing with my tube of toothpaste? because it’s very ugly to squeeze it from the top ah yes well I’m going to squeeze the tube from the top just to fuck up your little esthetic manias and give me the remote it’s not mine I want to watch the news with Adriana Pérez Cañedo well Chespirito is on at the same time and I’d rather see Chilindrina where did you leave the Reforma? I threw it out why? I already read it and what about me? don’t I have the right to read it, Álvaro? you don’t understand anything, Cordelia, women are bovine creatures they graze and have calves and give milk, that’s all and they don’t know what’s going on in the world and don’t care . . .

  AND YOU, ÁLVARO, don’t urinate outside the bowl just look at the drops you’ve left on the floor . . .

  ÁLVARO was obsessed with presenting himself as the éminence grise of powerful figures, he would come home full of himself and tell me:

  “I proposed to the secretary . . .”

  “I suggested to the subsecretary . . .”

  “I made the senior official see . . .”

  “The secretary’s secretary, thanks to me . . .”

  YOU STAY WITH ME because there’s nobody left but me who remembers your youthful beauty. Only I have your young eyes in my old ones.

  HOW DID IT HAPPEN? Was there a cause of all causes? What was first, what came later? Desire or jealousy? Ecstasy or disillusion? Misunderstandings or explanations? Suspicions or gossip? Desires or jealousy? Longing or disgust? Plenitude or rejection?

  WHERE WERE YOU all afternoon? I’ve been waiting for you. You know I desire you in an untimely way.

  Yes, you say I’m an untimely woman.

  That’s why I want you to be here when I desire you.

  I’m sorry to disillusion you.

  Bah, a man can’t lose his illusions if he doesn’t have any.

  I don’t understand you.

  There are too many explanations.

  That’s true. Never complain. Never explain.

  Not knowing where you are causes me tremendous anguish.

  But I’m always at your side, you know that, my presence is in your imagination, in your desire, you always say that, I’m a prisoner in your head, I never leave there . . .

  Your presence, darling, is only a bloody Kotex tossed in the toilet. Next time please pull the chain. Or send your menstrual filth to the cleaners, pig.

  WHEN HE FOUND OUT, he didn’t know what to do. Ignore it. Retaliate. Go out and kill him. He expected everything except her response.

  You’ve violated my privacy. Those letters belonged only to me.

  Álvaro couldn’t believe it.

  Only to you? Did the Holy Spirit write them? Did you write them to yourself? How long have you been quoting poems by Neruda?

  Ha ha.

  They’re my letters. Mine. Understand that. Respect my privacy.

  And if you found love letters sent to me by another woman, would you respect “my privacy”?

  It’s different, Álvaro. You have a profession, a public life, you go to work. You’re in the world. But I live alone in this house.

  Alone? Writing and receiving letters from a stranger?

  Understand that I’m alone, alone deep inside. You don’t give me all your time. I’m not reproaching you. But please understand that I need my time and my company, too. Yes, I need my privacy violated by your unhealthy curiosity. And everything going so well, my God . . .

  Tell me, tell me what you’re reproaching me for, Cordelia . . .

  I’ll tell you. You talk only about yourself, your career, your magnificent plans, your intelligence, your brilliance, the applause you receive. You’re an applause meter. You’re a valiant knight errant. Don Quixote. I’m your Sanchita Panzona. Well, no. Just as you live your life, I have the right to live mine.

  I don’t have a mistress, Cordelia.

  Well, you ought to find one. Then we’d be even and no recriminations.

  Is that all you can say to me?

  No, of course not. Just imagine. I have my lover every day and you whenever I feel like it.

  You’ve become a cynic.

  Not a cynic. Desperate. How many times, beside you, did I have to pinch myself and tell myself, “I’m alive. I think. I want . . .”

  Cordelia doesn’t look away. He can’t conquer her eyes.

  That drives him mad.

  I can bear only one tyrant. Myself, Álvaro.

  All right. What’s the point of telling you how it irritates me that you’re so pleased with yourself.

  What do you expect. I’m too alive.

  She doesn’t look away. He can’t conquer her eyes.

  This drives him mad.

  NO, he didn’t even give her the satisfaction of finding himself a mistress. He didn’t want her to have any excuses. He wanted her to know that his cruelty was gratuitous and undeserved. He ties her to the bed. He gags her and asks what are you thinking? He chokes her and asks her to sing “Amapola.” He says he wants to reduce her until the torments of curiosity (his) are lost completely.

  You won’t have any life but this one, locked up. At my side. Sequestered in your own house.

  He let it be understood—he never said so explicitly—that this was the price she had to pay for his forgetting. Álvaro will forget Cordelia’s guilt if Cordelia accepts gratuitous punishment, as if there were no sin between them. It was a painful way, she said to herself only because he said it first, “of beginning over.”

  I DON’T WANT anybody to think you’re married to me out of loyalty, love, or habit. I want to know and for you to know, too, that you’re here against your will.

  What do you say out in the world, Álvaro?

  That you prefer never to leave the house.

  HE’LL CHAIN HER to the foot of the bed and tell her that this will be the punishment she deserved for the mere fact of becoming old and losing her looks. He’ll gag her and ask what are you thinking about? He’ll choke her while he asks her to sing “Amapola.” He’ll tell her there?
??s no difference between the morgue and the bed. Lie down like a corpse! You’ll close your eyes. You’ll spare me your detestable vindictive gaze. You won’t tell me that death is the maximum aggression against us because I’ll keep you alive so you have no excuses. Until the final moment. I’ll make you feel that death is only your possibility, not your reality. My malice will postpone your death. I’ll prepare your death, dear wife. I’ll separate you from death by prolonging your pain. I’ll prepare your death. You won’t be my phantom. You’ll be my wife. Do you realize that I survive only to make you suffer?

  WHEN I DARED to tell him—Reforma, Adriana Pérez Cañedo—that the secretary had done the opposite of what Álvaro told me he told him he should have done, he ripped the paper, kicked the TV, and began to isolate himself, to not go out, to look at me reproachfully: I knew his secret, I paid no attention to him, his airs were pure smoke, I condemned myself, if he no longer had power outside, he would show me he had it in the house.

  AT THE LAST DINNER the two of them—Álvaro and Cordelia—attended together, they heard the honorable secretary say in a very low but exceedingly ill-intentioned voice:

  Álvaro Meneses is a lethal bureaucrat. He’s becoming redundant.

  YOU HAVE LESS fizz than a Coca-Cola that’s been open for a month . . .

  I have an enormous empty space. That’s what I have.

  He said this and stumbled, falling on his face over the rug that still smelled of urine, and at that moment the dog was exiled to live tied up, howling with melancholy, in the courtyard.

  HE BEGAN DISPUTING TERRITORIES WITH ME. He began extending his control over the closet, the bed, the bathroom, the TV, and I kept telling him your seclusion doesn’t free you from the big cold world Álvaro (but really tell him that Cordelia) you’re a child (don’t be afraid of him Cordelia) you let yourself be judged too easily (you pick up the sections of the paper tossed to the floor and put them in order so you can feel victorious) you go around imagining what they’re saying about you (tell him) what they think of you (think about it).

  I’M AT A LOSS FOR WORDS.

  You talk a great deal.

  Inside, I’m silent.

  HE MADE A POINT of masturbating in front of her. He laughed. He said, pleasures known to Onan unknown to Don Juan.

  Did you think convention would control me? he said when he was finished.

  No. What an idea. Not even love subjugates you, Álvaro.

  I told him many things.

  Will you let me tell you the truth?

  No.

  Excuse me. You’re too weak for me.

  Ah, you bitch. I’ll show you . . .

  I can endure only one tyrant. Myself. My own tyrant, Álvaro.

  Shall I tell you something? Why you’re so twisted? Why you never travel a straight path?

  I’ll ruminate on that, Álvaro.

  This drove him crazy. He began to shout, tear his hair, ruminate, ruminate, he shouted, that’s what cows say, why do you use those highfalutin words? why do you always talk like a well-bred girl? why do you constantly want to prove your superiority to me? because I was just a promising young man and you took charge of locking me away here . . . ?

  You locked yourself away . . .

  I locked myself away with you . . .

  Nonsense.

  You frustrated my ambition.

  Just realize it, that’s all.

  I didn’t become what I wanted to be.

  You locked yourself away, I’m telling you . . .

  I could have been somebody . . .

  You are somebody. You’re my husband. Isn’t that enough?

  It’s your fault I’m a nobody.

  What would you have done without me?

  Become what I could have been.

  Ah yes! The things I didn’t do to please you . . .

  Without you, Cordelia . . .

  DIRTY CLOTHES dropped and forgotten. Floors slippery with forgotten filth. Toilets overflowing with shit. Sheets stained with blood. Rats conspiring in the corners. Spiders keeping watch from the ceilings. Cockroaches smoking marijuana in the kitchen. The sweet stink of abandonment. Without you. Without me.

  I DREAMED I met you as a young man at a dance. A far-off dance long ago. Strauss waltzes. Tails. Crinolines. Cordelia Ortiz and her dance card. The line of suitors. A continental summer dance. Warm, distant, perfumed. Cordelia Ortiz and her blond curls arranged like tassels of wheat. Ah, how I desire her. Ah, how she charms me. I’m not even on her card. But I’m in her sight. She dances with someone else but looks at me. I’m the only one not wearing tails. I came unexpectedly. I’m dressed as a peasant. I can’t stop looking at her. I get her to look at me. Now we don’t stop looking at each other. Her eyes enslave mine. My eyes magnetize hers. We don’t know if we’re living for an instant or imagining an entire life. When she dances, she’s so graceful, so fresh, so beautiful that measures of time disappear. She is now. She is always. She turns my internal clocks upside down. She concentrates all the time I’ve lived or can live. She makes me feel I don’t need to go anywhere because now I’m here. She is my years, my months, my hours, in a minute. She is my place, all the spaces I’ve traveled through or can travel through. I am no longer divided. I am entire in myself and with her. I don’t need to have her in my arms. The young Cordelia dances with others but looks at me. When I came in, I was an indeterminate man. From now on, she determines me. I understand this in a flash and already begin to hate her. With what right is this woman I don’t even know going to determine me? I argue with myself, struggle against my doubts, I know I desire her, know my desire could be satisfied but still remain desire. I am like an island adrift that would like to unite with a continent. My insular desire can leave me there, surrounded by oceans. It can also unite me with the land I look at from my island and I see beaches strewn with black pearls and impenetrable forests and mountains broken into the steps of terraces and ravines that plunge into the deepest bowels of the earth. All of this I will have to conquer, the country called Cordelia, and once I conquer it, will I stop desiring it? No, I tell myself from the isolated island, from the shore of the dance that she dominates as if the floor were the entire universe, no, I’ll obtain what I desire and will immediately want to dominate what I have desired because there is no gratuitous desire, there is no desire that does not desire to possess and dominate what is desired, make it mine, with no opening whatsoever for any possession that isn’t mine. I desire Cordelia in order to have her first and dominate her immediately because otherwise how do I satisfy my desire? how, if I already possess her, am I going to stop desiring because I already possess? She is my wife. Don’t they call a wife a “ball and chain,” the handcuffs that bind the hands of the fugitive who attempted to steal the object of desire . . . ? The music stops. The lights dim. The orchestra withdraws to the sound of chairs carelessly overturned, feet accelerated by haste, abandoned music stands. The beaux are leaving downhearted, their black lines whipped by the approaching storm sending albino messages to the open-air ballroom. Only she remains in a circle of light that belongs only to her, to Cordelia Ortiz, my future wife, my beautiful prisoner, so no one will take her from me, she is my dream made reality . . .

  WHY DO YOU PERSIST? Leo asks Cordelia and Cordelia responds: Because it is his way of showing me he lives only for me. He doesn’t love himself. He becomes furious with me. Look, I tried to love him, to save him from everything unpleasant . . . I loved him once.

  He hasn’t reciprocated.

  That isn’t the point. The important thing is when I realized that Álvaro could love only me, I decided to put it to the test. To the point where I believed I was mad by my own will. The important thing is that by torturing me, he lives only for me. That’s what counts, Leo. Would you do as much for me?

  LEO DIDN’T SAY A WORD. Leo and Cordelia live together and don’t need to state that they love each other.

  You know my desire is that you don’t ever see him again.

  I know, and
that’s why I’m explaining my reasons for going back. Once a month. It’s not too much.

  I won’t say anything, love. You know your game. But to see you come back each month in that state, well . . . I . . .

  She places her index finger on his lips.

  Hush—she smiles. Respect conjugal ties.

  He doesn’t love himself. He becomes angry with you. Don’t go back anymore.

  Leo, it took me years to decide. To leave or stay. Run away. I would say to him, Álvaro, give me just one hour of peace. Just one. I’m giving you my whole life. Do you know what he answered? He said: Do you want the truth? Well, you won’t have it. I’ll give you something better. The lie. Because in the lie there can be love, but in the truth, never.

  SHE TURNED TO SAY GOODBYE. Álvaro opened the door for her and said:

  I’m opening the door for you. Why don’t you leave? You’re free.

  Have pity, Álvaro. Don’t look for me anymore. Why do you oblige me to come back? Why do you torture me this way?

  You’re wrong—Álvaro didn’t look at her, he moved his eyes around the yellow bedroom—I don’t want to see you. Get out.

  She was about to touch his hand.

  I’m not afraid anymore that you’ll lock me in, really. I don’t care if I’m your slave.

  Álvaro opens the door for her.

  Why don’t you leave? You’re free. I’ve said it so many times. Fly away, little dove, fly away! My house is not a cage.

  I’ll never leave you, Álvaro.

  Go. Consider me dead.

  I want to take care of you. You’re my husband.

  I’m not going to think about problems anymore. When they come, I’ll know how to face them by myself. Of course I will.

  He said this with a look that was not resigned but tranquil.