The Feast of the Goat (50 page)

“I’m very sorry about that scene, all the melodrama, Lucindita,” she says at the door of the Jaragua. She has to speak loudly because the music playing in the casino on the ground floor drowns out her voice. “I’ve made the night a very bitter one for Aunt Adelina.”

“What are you talking about, girl? Now I understand what happened, the reason for the silence that made us all so sad. Please, Urania, come back and see us. We’re your family, this is your country.”

When Urania says goodbye to Marianita, the girl embraces her as if she wanted to weld herself to her, bury herself in her. The girl’s slender body trembles as if it were a sheet of paper.

“I’m going to love you very much, Aunt Urania,” she whispers in her ear, and Urania feels paralyzed by sadness. “I’m going to write every month. It doesn’t matter if you answer or not.”

She kisses her several times on the cheek, her thin lips like the peck of a little bird. Before she goes into the hotel, Urania waits until her cousin’s old car is lost from view on Avenida George Washington, with its backdrop of noisy white waves. She walks into the Jaragua, and on her left the casino and adjoining nightclub are bright and noisy: rhythms, voices, music, slot machines, exclamations of the players at the roulette wheel.

As she heads for the elevators, a male figure cuts her off. He is a tourist in his forties, a redhead in a checked shirt, jeans, and loafers, slightly drunk:

“May I buy you a drink, dear lady?” he says in English, making a courtly bow.

“Get out of my way, you dirty drunk,” Urania replies, not stopping but seeing the bewildered, astonished expression on the face of this incautious man.

In her room she begins to pack, but in a little while she goes to sit by the window and look at the twinkling stars and foaming waves. She knows she won’t sleep and has all the time in the world to finish packing her suitcase.

“If Marianita writes to me, I’ll answer all her letters,” she decides.