Almost Never: A Novel (9 page)

A parsimonious stroll that included the search for a tavern (how about some
carne asada
tacos?) and locating Renata’s house: he would never ask his aunt, rather … it was more evocative to find it on his own. So he left.
Be back soon.
The town smelled of sweet marjoram. Odd. The evening heat was so extreme, it felt inhibiting; imagine, therefore, the savage sweating. Another wash, later, upon his return. Fat chance! There remained the fetters of haste. Everything the outlander would have to compress into distasteful actions: eating quickly and while sweating, everything seemed to be sweating: the walls, the trees, the tables, the food, the earth itself, and Renata’s house seen from a distance, a rectangular delusion set against the barren doodles of the sky: a—humid?—counterpoint slowly growing dark. The house was located on the corner of the plaza; it was white. Not quite at ease, Demetrio wanted to sit down on one of the benches in the plaza. His proximity excited him, and more sweating ensued. Nonetheless, there was Renata lit by a naked bulb. A door was open. The respectable diva was a small thing in motion, her long curly hair was visible but not her waist and legs. Oh, such a paragon so eager to be a mother, hmm … tomorrow he’d be able to appreciate her fully. The store. His aunt had briefed him on the stationery store, and now that we’ve mentioned that good woman, let’s assign to her, as the agronomist did, the task of informing Renata that the singular suitor from Oaxaca had arrived in Sacramento and what time would their date be, eh? Quite a favor. A matutinal task. In the afternoon, around five. Fast forward to the delight of she who would bathe and perfume herself like never before. Heavens! both must be presentable. But first aunt and nephew had to deal with how they would sleep. Not together. Why not? Well, just because! Yes, in separate cots in the open air, because of the heat; because Zulema had no fans … It would have been lovely to curl up with each other without sheets—dear me!—exposed to the fate of the regional breeze and the old woman’s tremulous caresses: a fleeting fancy (not warranting a response) that wouldn’t happen now—just because! Maybe later would come that irksome and dull indulgence. Zulema must have understood this, for she knew that with the morrow would come the declaration, the illusion … An illusion stitched with boredom: precisely what happened after a sordid morning during which Demetrio couldn’t figure out what to do with himself. Then came the good part: depart well-groomed, counting almost every step. There was a script: he would sit on the bench in front of the door to Renata’s house. The procedure described by his aunt, in turn described to her by … Renata would make him wait about twenty minutes: Doña Luisa’s advice.
You’ve got to ride the high horse.
A means of increasing desire or, rather, artifice. That’s why Demetrio didn’t know about it, of course.

And, finally, the wait.

Zulema gave her nephew a bouquet of white calla lilies: the only thing she found in her neglected garden. The importance of an offering. But Demetrio got rid of the bouquet, tossing it into the bushes in the plaza. A mere ostentation prone to complications and what for. Words are better, however they come out …

But the wait …

Half an hour!

Damn!

“G
o ahead! You mustn’t wait.”

“But if I do it … I don’t know … It might be a mistake in the long run.”

“Go ahead! Get pregnant! What are you afraid of? A child will bring you good luck.”

Mireya wasn’t quite as alone as she claimed. Once in a while she was able to shoot the breeze with a neighbor who had an abundance of work—thank God! She was a first-rate washerwoman, her name was Luz Irene, and she had a ten-year-old son who was in fourth grade (also thanks to God). A fact worth noting because it indicates a growing joy. Certainly we should picture a hovel of a room crammed with furniture, in the middle of which was a powerful radio … quite an achievement! On the other hand, the contiguous and ultra-run-down room next door—believe it or not—belonged to Mireya, who in spite of screwing so much (and with so many) still couldn’t afford to buy an apparatus as showy as her neighbor’s, not even a normal one, nothing, nor any furniture as shiny as that of the exemplary washerwoman, whose knowledge of life was vast, somewhat harsh, but quite judicious. A not-very-cheerful philosopher, or a dour woman well versed in the most elemental aspects of causes and effects. Or rather, Mireya should thank God she had her as a neighbor. They had spoken many times about the prospect of the tart’s pregnancy. The harshest and most oft-recycled advice Luz Irene offered was none other than:
The child is what matters, not the father,
and the second, from a different angle:
We are human beings, but we are also animals.
The animalistic, held up like a key, opened doors onto all sorts of tender mercies. One could profit from people taking greater pity on a mother than on a single woman. At another point in the conversation Luz Irene, who with good humor scrubbed in her sink the soiled underpants of ladies and gentlemen, maintained that, as opposed to what most people thought (that is to say, “all the chumps”), a child never was and never would be a burden; that ever since she had become a mother she had been flooded with work, both from that concrete and unavoidable responsibility and from …

“But I believe in love, and even if it sounds weird, I believe in the couple.”

“Love is a gift from God; He knows who gets it and who doesn’t, just like He decides who is rich and who is poor, who ugly and who beautiful.”

“Do you think a woman like me deserves to get married, have a family?”

“Only God knows … But you might as well try.”

A wild and crazy imbroglio, the suggestion of fabricating evidence, a bubble that fate can pop or leave intact, especially regarding the birth of a child; once the outcome is there to see, that’s to be seen … Who would take on the role of father … an archangel or an animal? Backward reasoning that led straight to numbing sorrow. For no matter what, the woman was the loser, this the premise and the conclusion. Another more telling premise, but also darker, was that Mireya slept with many men. Out of necessity, needless to say! but still …

“If I get pregnant, they’ll throw me out of the brothel.”

“That’s the best thing that could happen to you.”

“What?!”

“I can get you work as a washerwoman. To tell you the truth, I can’t keep up with all I’ve got.”

“It’s a lot of scrubbing.”

“Just look how well I’m doing. Any day now I’m going to open a grocery store. I’m already saving up. What’s more, touch me. I’m strong. Touch me!”

To timidly touch that feminine musculature. To engage with the other’s energy so fully, she could almost feel real sparks. Hence, vibrations whose emanations, indeed … Each vibration helped form a thought. A thread, too many threads: while Mireya was touching her, the request for a favor (that process) was forming in her mind, a brilliant and teeming favor: depraved and fortuitous, thus fragile. By the time the tart finally removed her hands from those imposing arms she had already formulated a plan she would now reveal: the request for a sacrifice of merely a few hours; this, her sentimental impudence: she asked Luz Irene to accompany her to the Presunción brothel, preferably on a weeknight; to remain outside watching, waiting, until Demetrio—the man in question—left. She belabored her description of him: tall and thin, young, about thirty years old, or a bit more. Nobody was quite like him, such an alluring presence. In other words, she’d hang around outside. It would be quite easy to distinguish what looked like a beanpole made of skin and bones though little of both, leaving the brothel, of course, and impressive—indeed! given that the Oaxacan world was peopled by the rather short statured, right? Then, after identifying him, to follow him, find out where he lived; the street, the address, the neighborhood—such vital information! A huge favor—she reiterated. And, the response? Luz Irene was mum. It was difficult to follow the wagging of her head, covered in an orange scarf: the horizon, the ground, her glances left and right, never eye-to-eye, or not yet, and in the meantime still not a peep. Finally, Luz Irene played around with the thorny problem of whom to leave her son with; someone trustworthy: but whom? A favor that incurs another favor and so on only to be subsequently settled: whom? She had a relative living in a wooded though squalid suburb of Oaxaca. Far out. Though it had been a long while since she’d visited her. She was a kind and generous person, hence: the language of persuasion: a manageable performance. Nevertheless, she went to see her to ask … Well, the favor couldn’t be granted too soon. That was the first thing she expressed. An entire prior explanation that led to,
Yes, I’ll help you.
Though …

“I think it’s good for you to fight for what you want. I’m just not sure Demetrio will recognize the child and agree to be the father.”

“Every time I see him he swears that he really loves me and that I give him what no other woman has ever given him.”

“That’s great, I just hope everything turns out the way you want it to.”

The longed-for day arrived. With great prudence, the washerwoman took with her two bills of large denomination, suspecting that this favor might incur a hefty expense. There was a food stand outside the brothel that served pork belly with almost tenderized vegetables: a dish she hardly ever felt like eating. Its acrid smell like an ass widespread … What she did imbibe slowly were three bottles of cola. As she came upon the deplorable red-light district, she repeated under her breath:
Poor old hags,
and kept pitying the most unexpected details, thereby exalting herself in minor increments; she even spit out in a stentorian voice:
I am worth much more than all of this.
Anybody hearing her would have thought she was crazy.

R
enata arrived at the bench aglow. She had walked ten yards. A moment earlier, Demetrio had announced his arrival with a fleeting gesture toward the open door of the stationery store. The house had three doors facing the street, and the diminutive diva emerged, without any hip-wiggling, from the one where three women and two children were shopping. Her lack of confidence was evident in her tentative steps. Was the future mother-in-law managing things from within?

The summit meeting, smiles from both in response to an invitation to be seated: he with suave gesture and she with spirited submission, perhaps strategic as well. Once settled, a tremulous silence descended. Demetrio noticed something strange about her: a natural face-to-face—no! why? maybe later … Doña Luisa had recommended that her daughter avoid looking her suitor in the eye, not at first, for that would be flirting. Hence, the modest damsel’s eyes lowered in self-restraint, the pavement her only field of vision, a misguided sense of decorum rendering her like a wooden puppet, or to make her interest less obvious, among other things … The suitor, so as not to waste time, began to talk about the difficulties of traveling from Oaxaca to Sacramento. He said he had employed every possible means of conveyance: airplane, bus, train, boat, and horse-drawn carriage. He tried to be funny by mentioning that the only thing he had failed to do was mount a burro bareback and pedal a bicycle part of the way. Three days there and three days back. An exhausting trip. She expressed no awe, sitting there instead with her head bowed. Her response was,
Sounds exhausting! Was it?
which led Demetrio to immediately if fleetingly recall Mireya, who would have said:
What a feat! Congratulations!
and more admiring largesse. But with Renata it became quite clear that he would have to play the role of seducer, as if he were trying to sell her a product, and therefore, his task consisted of couching his intentions in syrupy phrases: another effort, this one really difficult, was the supercharged verbosity—indeed!—like swimming across the ocean: almost, or at least a lake or a rushing river, without yet knowing if this would please her. In the meantime the trepidant delight of the coming endeavors. The importance of everlasting love. The permanence of the joy of mutual understanding. A shared meaning of life. One bit of baloney after the other until he reached the longed-for locus:
Renata, will you be my sweetheart?,
using the familiar
tú
form of address, a subtle impudence she could not reproach, given the earnestness of the request, the very one she had longed to hear ever since that night of the dance, and she muttered:
Yes, yes, I will.
Forthwith: the impulse to grab that slightly calloused, white, and village hand: Demetrio in search of the sensual. Such a spur-of-the-moment outburst should have paved the way for this, at the very least, but the diva put a lid on it:
No, sir, not yet. I won’t let you hold my hand until the next time you come.
Modesty placed front and center was such a gross hindrance. Oh no! to wait a year for … Too much desire. Too much punishment. He, scowling, put out, speechless. Her eyes weren’t there to see his predictable reaction. But his silence was something Renata could interpret and thus she uttered this sentence:
If our courtship proceeds one step at a time you’ll see that everything will turn out marvelously.
It will be, it is already, as if she overcooked love’s certainty in order to appreciate, through longing, the value of time: if we understand love now as a sorrowful fabrication, now as thoughts tangled in dreadful constraints, and Demetrio, in the meantime, acting the role of the long and silent sufferer: exemplary? because if not, what claim could he make … that meant anything? No, only resignation, thanks to how quickly he found out that the first kiss on the mouth would be something as remote as the distance between the earth and the sun, their nakedness and his screwing her now light-years away. And as far as the hand goes, ah … During the dance he had already touched it, as well as her waist, and her hair with his cheek: a fleet and pleasing accident; but such modesty (now!) all in one burst … A courtship that delays in finding the license enchantment grants can transition with passion to the good parts. Restraint as nothing less than a circle swirling with deep water—right? Restraint: for months, years, a route that must go backward in order to go forward, and, phew! there came a break—an overdose of silence is risky—: Renata spoke about her father’s death; the sudden change in the lives of two women who weren’t used to earning their keep. She had to admit that the stationery store was not generating the desired benefits; the calculations had not been optimally carried out. A delicious (worthwhile) nut was being cracked open, with barely any cracklings of affection and trust that would allow Renata to boast about the hustle and bustle of that business challenge. The unexpected: biweekly trips to Monclova: the carriages, the sweats, endless hassles, brutal even down to the most unexpected details. Demetrio, as it were, played the part of the moved listener: so still he barely blinked as he heard a complaint that after reaching out suddenly contracted into a single idea: branches in one continuous curve: all that verbiage—out of necessity, and if not—by a beauty who kept her head bowed and began to cry—why? could it be from sudden joy … and if not, what? A courtship should be cheerful! or rather: future cheer; future long and soft kisses: a great subject for the study of sensations, and with the sudden release of the lips—cheerfulness at last! right? or not? In their heads—there?!
Ipso
her sweetheart asked:
Why are you crying?
and mechanically Renata answered:
Sometimes I’m quite a crybaby. You’ll soon get to know me … I ask only that when you see me like this you don’t pay any attention to me;
though where to look and what to say at that moment that would be appropriate: Demetrio tried. The surroundings themselves seemed discrepant: the trees in the plaza: witnesses, just like the little people in the distance: brute curiosity scattered about, which the suitor found intriguing, even more so upon seeing a young boy (head slightly bowed) just leaving the stationery store. Would he come straight over to the bench? It would seem so, because as soon as he touched Renata’s arm, he practically issued an order:
Your mother says you should go home.
Renata jumped up as if spring loaded:
Good-bye, Demetrio. Write soon.
The end. So had passed one hour of sacred love. Not even time for her to ask him:
When will you return?
and for him to answer:
In a year.
Nothing, not even an encouraging finale, a hope-infused warmth. Nothing, then, except the parting of a sweetheart who had wagered her paltry pleasure on the clock. One hour … how dear. A disappearance that inspired growing desire. Nothing fascinating and unforgettable, or maybe a little, but—insipid? As he walked away her sweetheart thought about the three days it would take him to get back to Oaxaca. He thought of the hour—annual?—supreme and pale, a bobble melting into the distance. He thought about the stack of circumstances that would arise throughout the year, and to top it off, he had to find a nook in his brain for the idea that the sacred was unattainable. God was in a different sphere—likewise, true love, as was everything truly paradisiacal. Sex, on the other hand, a caprice. Ease at the expense of false loving … Pretense-sex, see-through-sex … But worthwhile love was nothing more than the dark and daring work of rodents, restraint, struggle—a nuisance or courage? Upon his arrival at his aunt Zulema’s house, the strange suitor cut loose. He could hardly believe what he had just experienced. The aunt—no need to guess—made herself comfortable: listening with lively astonishment … Yes! with a sarcastic look on her face she would listen to a story imbued with exasperation, and nothing he came up with could unhinge her psyche; a psyche quite seasoned in such scabrous affairs; an old maid’s psyche that surely did not reel in anticipation of hearing graynesses over blacknesses and who would offer her point of view—knowingly—as soon as her nephew unloaded. Half an hour of contradictiousness: a rude concoction of rage and desire, and the culmination—here goes!:
You’re going to have to work very hard to get what you want from that woman; it wouldn’t make any difference if you lived in Sacramento. That’s our way around here. I could tell you a dozen love stories from this region, and the most thankless thing about them is that they are all the same. You’ll have to decide for yourself if you are going to stick with it or give it up. What I can tell you is that once Renata becomes yours, she’ll stay yours forever. She will never marry another even if she is widowed, even if he looks exactly like you. Understand that! She’ll be faithful to you for as long as she lives, and what’s more: it will be eternal love. She’ll put up with you even if you make her suffer. I swear to it! You could be a drunk, a murderer, a thief, even a deadbeat and a grouch, she’ll stay with you no matter what. But in the meantime, you’re going to have to suck it up.
All that was some sort of poultice, a conceptual compress that would be dangerous to remove. A fairly heavy flagstone, a simile of unconditional love. A fruit that’s never too cloyingly sweet. Or also a torso taut with muscles and veins, or a stigmata that never decays. But most evident was the level of motivation Renata had managed to awaken in Demetrio. Having raised her bar to almost improbable heights, she knew that by not letting him even touch her hand she’d opened a gaping space of uncertainty. Perhaps that hour of terrifying proximity was the first and would be the last between them. That is, Renata was the one playing with the highest stakes, by far, because an outlander with those qualities, especially considering the trip he had made from the south of the country to see her, not the act of an ordinary creature, no, as it turned out an adventure without a what or a wherefore. Let’s consider her, what she did after they said good-bye: she dashed off to pray to her private saints; she kneeled, mumbled lengthy entreaties that lasted more than an hour. Renata wanted her knees to hurt, some penance she must undergo, and—what the devil was she praying for? what? after having agreed to be, let us say, a hypothetical sweetheart and in the end feeling lonelier than an archangel—alone! on the other hand her mother’s demands: which would only increase if Demetrio returned. And to return, for him … would it make any sense? Perhaps … The sad part was the year of reticent love still to come: a year of letters—how many changing plotlines? and in them she’d express the passion that could not be confessed in person; still to come: the immediate difficulties: Mireya with open legs; Mireya and her unique fellatios; Mireya letting herself be eaten; Mireya sweeping the floor and singing sweetly; who knows if a whore would be capable of giving him the good kind of love; still to come: getting her out of the brothel and taking her to live with him—where? that possibility, et cetera …