One Out of Two (12 page)

“That would be me,” said one.

“Not so, I’m Constitución.”

“Lies! You wish you were, but I’m the real one.”

“Don’t start in with your jokes. I am Oscar’s fiancée.”

“But last week he proposed to me.”

“Anyway, he asked both of us.”

“Don’t you get it? He asked me.”

“That’s what you think, but I’m the one he asked.”

And there they were, rattling on and on to each other, throwing poisoned darts back and forth, while Dapper Dan turned ashen with anticipation and fear. Their coarse barbs nurtured his silence, his face turned more green than yellow, then red, as they continued with their: “That’s a lie, you are not.” “I’m Constitución.” “My God, you are such a liar.” And when his choler had reached its peak: his pallor turned purplish, like an overripe fig that bursts when it falls from the tree:

“Enough! … You’re disgusting. You pair of old hags!”

And Oscar turned on his heels and stomped away in a huff, clenching his fists, and he still heard behind him the twins’ pitiless giggles. He tried to understand the hoax or the rejection as an awkward business venture gone bad. He happened to hear a question, who knows if caustic or hopeful:

“But you’ll come next Sunday, won’t you?”

A paradox if ever there was one! but for him: to turn and look back meant to see himself petrified in memory, or rather: to see in a trance all that’s twisted turned to salt: the saltiness of love set adrift, though the man was pretty darn tough, being a real rancher and all, despite the suit. What a mistake it would be to turn around! Not even tears made sense, and getting drunk in order to cry his eyes out, even less. Nor was it the right moment to let out a self-congratulatory whoop for having escaped the clutches of that traitorous pair. The good part was the opposite and absolutely cold-blooded: he could now say to himself: “The fight was well fought, but was for naught.” Yes, a range of inferences would restore his precious feelings, which were already beginning to point in new directions. And his figure was shrinking, his ridiculed figure, while behind him, the two watched him depart, feeling somehow or other—now that they’d had their fun—a certain pity, especially the real sweetheart, who, driven perhaps by perfidy or sentimentality, took two steps forward, as if still seeking some kind of communion. But no, he kept walking away: a fluke: as he’d come. Constitución trembled: a sigh escaped her and opened a path through the clouds, then thundered beyond … Gloria took her arm and pulled gently, as if with a restrained caress.

“Please, dear sister, stop watching. Let’s go home.”

/

The usual: from then on: split down the middle, bound together by loyalties that reject the nectars and passions offered by a choir of voices that don’t project very far. The universe, theirs from now on, might just as well be reduced to the stitching of seams whenever the scissors makes as straight a cut as possible. The thread is what moves forward and in the end holds the pieces together. All threads are proxies and break haphazardly or on a whim. It’s worth going back and forth because then somehow a plait is made, edges are wedded, new beginnings forged, the centers are set on fire, and it is one in two or two by now in one. To toil on the back of similitude, of simultaneity. Interior toil that might be a portrayal—probably wanting but felicitous nonetheless—whose subsequent effect would be to create something radiant and unique out of things and thoughts, and perhaps as a bonus: with a double meaning that insinuates still others.

Along with that: daily sisterhood, sewing, the mirror: hidden vanities invented in silence in order to be intentionally expressed, thus to live believing that they vanish and that to affirm them brings a truce that lasts from one minute to the next. We are two peas in a pod—they would later say—that want to be one. Hence, to continue to dress the same was already a boon, the makeup, too, the same haircut, and the same understanding. And if—moving forward to a few months hence—one of the two had an urge to go to Múzquiz out of a moment of vain faith in gradual differentiation, she’d quickly desist, or rather: the topic no longer mattered.

Also: whenever Constitución remembered Oscar, his huge restaurant, the weaning of she-goats, the fattening of swine, the lingering kisses there in the walnut grove, she would suddenly feel nostalgic and go look for that scrap of paper—the one she secretly stashed in one place after another and on which was written his address: the one in Ciudad Frontera. She did this secretly to avoid problems with her sister … Bah, in any case it never was more than an ephemeral game that flamed up and fizzled out like a dud … Then came a bitter day when she wanted to completely erase all the yesterdays. She took the blessed scrap of paper and, standing precisely in the spot where they had once burned those petulant letters from their aunt, lit a match to it. The address took flight: a warm and passing breeze, no longer worth even a peek.

Speaking of their aunt: in the last few months, no letters had come: nothing, not even one. As if the aforementioned had died, or as if she had no chance to write from heaven.

Looking back, it all boiled down to an auspicious sign that they should again come to terms with being twins who crawl into their shell.

What they’d always been: the passion to be one that never fully is: two, here, so many things. Fusion refashioned.

To dance, to laugh, and, to get drunk: why not? Perchance, to sing: music and labyrinths! … Moreover, the real: greeting their customers, then cheerfully dispatching them. Right? But the shop needed spiffing up. Decorations? What kind? In the meantime: whitewash the walls, cover them with doohickeys and photos of nearby locales they snapped with their camera: Sunday outings. And the famous sign … RESTRICT YOUR CONVERSATION TO THE BUSINESS AT HAND …, once and for all take it down and open themselves up to others, give themselves over more fully to the fabrications that come and go day in and day out; but once they did that, there was suddenly someone who boldly asked one of them point blank:

“Hey, what about that boyfriend I don’t know which one of you had? Where is he, what happened to him? Because … Nobody in town has seen him again.”

“Oh, don’t even ask … It’s too painful … He was killed a few months ago on a bus in the north. A horrible accident, very close to Múzquiz,” one of them said.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry for even asking; thing is, I didn’t know, and to tell the truth, I don’t think anybody in town does … Poor you … As far as I understood it, you were going to get married, weren’t you? … Well, my heart goes out to you. But, if I’d known sooner, I would have brought flowers.”

Death is a good excuse: a good dodge: marvelous lie or harsh reality … Otherwise, everything the same: putting pieces together with the same zeal: tendrils of perfectionism. Tailoring and dressmaking to the point of shuddering, like pretending to live in the ambiguous present believing they are one: morning, noon, and night: a circle: vicious or not: that still tries to spin: just because: however possible: as time goes by.

DANIEL SADA was born in Mexicali, Mexico, in 1953, and died in 2011, in Mexico City. Considered by many the boldest and most innovative writer in Spanish of his generation, he published eight volumes of short stories, nine novels, and three volumes of poetry. His works have been translated into English, German, French, Dutch, Finnish, Bulgarian, and Portuguese. He was the recipient of numerous prizes, including the Herralde Prize for his novel
Almost Never.
Just hours before he died, he was awarded Mexico’s most prestigious literary award, the National Prize for Arts and Sciences for Literature.

KATHERINE SILVER is an award-winning translator of Spanish and Latin American literature. Some of her most recent translations include works by Horacio Castellanos Moya and César Aira. She is director of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre in Canada and lives in Berkeley, California.

The text of
One Out of Two
is set in Arno Pro. Book design by Rachel Holscher. Composition by Bookmobile Design & Digital Publisher Services, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Manufactured by Versa Press on acid-free, 30 percent postconsumer wastepaper.