Read Kiss of the Spider Woman Online
Authors: Manuel Puig
Tags: #Regional.Latin America, #Fiction.Magical Realism, #Fiction.Literature.Modern, #Acclaimed.Horror 100 Best.Index
Kiss of the Spider Woman (9 page)
—That’s . . . that’s how it is when it comes to really deep feelings, at least I think so.
—I was just with some friends of mine. Well, actually a couple of harlots, unbearable, the two of them. But cute, and sharp too.
—Two girls?
—No, dummy, when I say harlots I mean queens. And so one of them was rather bitchy to the waiter, which was him. I saw from the beginning how handsome he was, but nothing more. Then when my friend got really snotty with him, the guy, without losing his self-control at all, he put her right in her place. I was surprised. Because waiters, poor guys, they always have this complex about being servants, which makes it difficult for them to answer any rudeness, without coming across like the injured servant bit, you get what I mean? Anyway, this guy, nothing doing, he explains to my slutty friend just why the food isn’t up to what it ought to be, but with such finesse, she winds up looking like a complete dope. But don’t get the idea he acted very haughty—not at all, perfectly detached, handled the whole situation. So immediately my nose tells me there’s something unusual, a real man. So the next week this woman heads straight to the same restaurant, but this time alone.
—What woman?
—Listen, I’m sorry, but when it comes to him I can’t talk about myself like a man, because I don’t feel like one.
—Go on.
—The second time I saw him he looked even cuter, in a white uniform with a Mao collar, it fitted him divinely. Like some movie star or something. Everything about him was perfect, the way he walked, the husky voice, but sometimes a slight lilt to it, kind of tender, I don’t know how to put it. And the way he served! I’m telling you, it was poetry, one time I saw him do a salad, I couldn’t believe! First he sat the customer at a table, because it was a woman, a real dog, and he sets up a little side table next to hers, to put the salad tray down right there, then he asks her, some oil? some vinegar? some of this? some of that? until finally he picks up the wooden fork and spoon and gets right down to mixing the salad, but I don’t know how to explain it, like he caressed the lettuce leaves, and the tomatoes, but nothing softy about it—how can I put it? They were such powerful movements, and so elegant, and soft, and masculine at the same time.
—And what’s masculine in your terms?
—It’s lots of things, but for me . . . well, the nicest thing about a man is just that, to be marvelous-looking, and strong, but without making any fuss about it, and also walking very tall. Walking absolutely straight, like my waiter, who’s not afraid to say anything. And it’s knowing what you want, where you’re going.
—That’s pure fantasy, that type doesn’t exist.
—Yes it does so exist, and it’s him.
—Okay, so he gives you that impression, but inside, at least as far as this culture goes, without power behind you no one walks tall, not the way you say.
—Don’t be so jealous, there’s just no talking to a guy about some other guy without getting into a fuss, you’re all like women that way.
—Don’t be stupid.
—See how you react, even insulting me. You men are just as competitive as women.
—Please, let’s stick to a certain level, or let’s not talk at all.
—What’s with this level bit . . .
—With you there’s simply no talking, unless it’s when you’re spouting off about some film.
—No talking to me? I’d like to know why.
—Because you can’t carry on a discussion, there’s no line of thought to it, you come out with any nonsense at all.
—That isn’t true, Valentin.
—Whatever you say.
—You’re so damn pedantic.
—If you think so.
—Show me. I’d like to see how I don’t come up to your level.
—I didn’t say you don’t come up to my level; I just meant you don’t stick to the point when we carry on a discussion.
—You’ll see, I do so.
—Why go on talking, Molina?
—Just go on talking, and I’ll show you.
—What do we talk about?
—Well . . . Why don’t you tell me what it means to you, being a man?
—You got me, that time.
—Let’s hear then . . . Give me your answer, what makes a man in your terms?
—Mmm . . . his not taking any crap . . . from anyone, not even the powers that be . . . But no, it’s more than that. Not taking any crap is one thing, but not the most important. What really makes a man is a lot more, it has to do with not humiliating someone else with an order, or a tip. Even more, it’s . . . not letting the person next to you feel degraded, feel bad.
—That sounds like a saint.
—No, it’s not as impossible as you think.
—I still don’t get you . . . explain a little more.
—I don’t know, I don’t quite know myself, right this minute. You’ve caught me off guard. I can’t seem to find the right words. Some other time, when my ideas are a little clearer on the subject, we can go back to it. Tell me more about your waiter at that restaurant.
—Where were we?
—The business of the salad.
—Who knows what he’s doing now . . . Makes me sad. Poor baby, there in that place . . .
—This place is a lot worse, Molina.
—But we won’t be in here forever, right? But him, that’s it, he doesn’t have any other future. He’s condemned. And I told you already what a strong character he’s got, he isn’t afraid of anything; but you can’t imagine, sometimes, the sadness you see in him.
—How can you tell?
—It’s in his eyes. Because he’s got those fair eyes, greenish, somewhere between brown and green, incredibly big, swallowing up his face it seems like, and it’s that look in his eyes that gives him away. That look that makes you see sometimes how bad he feels, how sad. And it’s what attracted me, and made me feel more and more like talking to him. Especially when things in the restaurant got a little slow and I’d notice that melancholy look on him, he’d go to the back of the dining room, where they kept a table so the waiters could sit sometimes, and he’d stay quiet there, lighting up a cigarette, and his eyes would slowly get strange, sort of misty. I started going there more and more often, but in the beginning he barely said anything unless it was absolutely necessary. And I always ordered the cold meat salad, the soup, the main course, dessert and coffee, so he’d come back and forth to my table a whole lot of times, and little by little we began to have a bit of conversation. Obviously, he had me pegged right off, because with me it’s easy to tell.
—To tell what?
—That my real name is Carmen, like the one in Bizet.
—And because of that he started talking more to you.
—Christ! you don’t know very much, do you? It was because I’m gay that he didn’t want to let me come near him. Because he’s an absolutely straight guy. But little by little, dropping a few words here, a few there, I made him see I respected him, and he started telling me little things about his life.
—All this was while he waited on you?
—For the first few weeks yes, until one day I managed to have a cup of coffee with him, one time when he was on day shift, which he hated the most.
—What were his regular hours?
—Well, either he came in at seven in the morning and left about four in the afternoon, or he’d show up about six in the evening, and stay until roughly three in the morning. And then one day he told me he liked the night shift best. So that aroused my curiosity, because he’d already said he was married, although he didn’t wear any ring, also fishy. And his wife worked a normal nine-to-five job in some office, so what was going on with the wife? You have no idea how much trouble I went through to convince him to come have coffee with me, he always had excuses about things he had to do, first the brother-in-law, then the car. Until finally he gave in and went with me.
—And what had to happen finally happened.
—Are you out of your mind? Don’t you understand anything at all? To begin with, I already told you he’s straight. Nothing at all happened. Ever!
—What did you talk about, in the cafe?
—Well, I don’t remember anymore, because afterwards we met lots of times. But first thing I wanted to ask him was why anybody as intelligent as he was had to do that kind of work. And now you can begin to see what a terrible story it was. Like, well, the story of so many kids from poor families who don’t have the cash to study, or maybe don’t have the incentive.
—If people want to study, some way they find the means. Listen . . . in Argentina an education’s not the most difficult thing in the world, you know, the university’s free.
—Yes, but . . .
—Lack of incentive, now that’s something else, there I agree with you, yes, it’s the inferior-class complex, the brainwashing society subjects everyone to.
—Wait, let me tell you about it, and you’ll understand what class of person he is, the best! He admits himself how, for a moment in life, he gave in, but he’s been paying for it too ever since. He says he was around seventeen, anyway I forgot to tell you, he had to work from the time he was a kid, even in elementary school, like all those poor families from certain neighborhoods in Buenos Aires, and after elementary school he started working in a mechanics shop, and he learned the trade, and like I said, at about seventeen, more or less, already in the flower of his youth, he started in with the chicks, making it like crazy, and then yes, even worse: soccer. From when he was a kid he could play really well, and at eighteen, more or less, he started in as a professional. And now comes the key to it all: why he didn’t make himself a career out of professional soccer. The way he tells me, he was only at it a short time when he saw all that crap that goes on, the sport is riddled with favoritism, injustice of every kind, and here comes the key, the key to the key, about what happens with him: he can never keep his mouth shut; whenever he smells a rat, the guy yells. He’s not two-faced, and doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut. Because the guy’s straight that way, too. And that’s what my nose told me from the very beginning, see?
—But he never got involved in politics?
—No, he’s got strange ideas about that, very off-the-wall, don’t even mention the union to him.
—Go on.
—And after a few years, two or three, he quit soccer.
—And the chicks?
—Sometimes I think you’re psychic.
—Why?
—Because he also quit soccer on account of the chicks. Lots of them, because he was in training, but the chicks grabbed him more than the training.
—He wasn’t very disciplined after all, it seems.
—Sure, but there’s also something I didn’t tell you yet: his fiancée, the one he was serious with, and got married to eventually, she didn’t want him to keep on with the soccer. So he took a job in a factory, as a mechanic, but the work was fairly soft, because his fiancée arranged it for him. And then they got married, and there he was at the factory, almost immediately he’d become a foreman, or chief of some division. And he had two kids. And he was nuts about his baby girl, the oldest of two, and at six she ups and dies. And at the same time he was having a row at the factory, because they started laying off people, favoring those who had connections.
—Like him.
—Yes, he did start off on the wrong foot there, I admit it. But now comes the part that’s so great about him, to me, and makes me forgive anything, listen. He took sides with some poor old guys at the factory who’d been working part-time but non-union, so the boss gave him the choice of getting tossed out on his ass or toeing the line . . . and so
he quits
. And you know how it is when you quit on your own—you don’t get a red cent in severance pay, not a fucking thing, and he wound up out on the street, more than ten years he’d put in at that factory.
he quits
. And you know how it is when you quit on your own—you don’t get a red cent in severance pay, not a fucking thing, and he wound up out on the street, more than ten years he’d put in at that factory.
—By then he must have been over thirty.
—Obviously, thirty plus. So he began, imagine, at that age, looking for work. In the beginning he was able to manage without just taking anything, but eventually he got offered that job as waiter and had to take it, naturally.
—He was the one who told you all that?
—Mmm-hmm, basically, little by little. I think it was a relief for him, to be able to tell somebody everything, and get it off his chest. That’s why he started to open up to me.
—And you?
—I adored him all the more, but he wouldn’t let me do anything for him.
—And what were you going to do for him?
—I wanted to convince him there was still a chance for him to go back to school and get a degree or something. Because there’s another thing I forgot to tell you: the wife made more than he did. She was secretary in some company and slowly got to be sort of an executive, and he didn’t go for that too much.
—Did you ever meet his wife?
—No, he wanted to introduce me, but deep down I hated everything about her. Just the thought of him sleeping beside her every night made me die of jealousy.
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