Bernardo
I remembered that I didn’t ask him to buy her or bring her here, I only asked him to look at her, that was all, it wasn’t my idea to bring her here, it was his, but that doesn’t mean you have the right of possession, I saw her first, I don’t know what I’m saying, it doesn’t matter, she must prefer me to my friend, she has to prefer me, I’m better-looking than you, I’m a better writer than you, I’m … Don’t threaten me, you bastard! Don’t raise your hand to me! I know how to defend myself, don’t forget that, you know that perfectly well, asshole! I’m not maimed, I’m not wooden, I’m not …
— You’re a child, Bernardo. But your perversity is part of your poetic charm. Beware of old age! To be puerile and senile at the same time: avoid that! Try to age gracefully — if you can.
— And what about you, asshole?
— Don’t worry. I’ll die before you do.
Bernardo and Toño
When I was carrying her, she whispered to me secretly: Look at me. Think of me, naked. Think of all the clothes I have left behind, every place I’ve lived. A shawl here, a skirt there, combs and pins, brooches and crinolines, gorgets and gloves, satin slippers, evening dresses of taffeta and lamé, daytime clothes of silk and linen, riding boots, straw hats and felt hats, fur stoles and lizard-skin belts, pearl and emerald teardrops, diamonds strung on white gold, perfumes of sandalwood and lavender, eyebrow pencils, lipstick, baptismal clothes, wedding gowns, mourning clothes: be capable of dressing me, my love, cover my naked body, chipped, broken: I want nine rings of moonstone, Bernardo (you said to me in your most secret voice); will you bring them to me? you won’t let me die of cold, will you be able to steal these things? she laughed suddenly, because you don’t have a dime, right, you’re just a poor poet without a pot to piss in, she laughed like crazy and I dropped her, Toño ran over to us furious, you’re hopeless, he said, you’re an ass, even though she’s only a mannequin, why did you have me get her if you’re going to mistreat her this way? You’re a hopeless bastard, a shithead forever, how could anyone put up with you, much less make any sense of you!
— She wants to dress luxuriously.
— Find her a millionaire to keep her and take her on his yacht.
Toño
We haven’t spoken for several days. We have allowed the tension of the other night to solidify, turn bitter, because we don’t want to say the word: jealousy. I am a coward. There is something more important than our ridiculous passions. I should have had the courage to tell you, Bernardo, she is a very delicate woman and she can’t be treated that way. I have had to put her down in my bed and the shaking of her hands is awful. She can’t live and sleep standing up, like a horse. Quick. I’ve fixed her some chicken soup and rice. She thanks me with her ancient look. How ashamed you must be of your reaction the day of the party. Your tantrums are pretty ridiculous. Now you leave us alone all the time and sometimes don’t come home to sleep. Then she and I hear the music of a mariachi in the distance, coming through the open window. We can’t tell where the sounds are coming from. But perhaps the most mysterious activity of Mexico City is playing the guitar alone the whole night long. La Desdichada sleeps, sleeps by my side.
Bernardo
My mother told me that if I ever needed the warmth of a home, I could visit my Spanish cousin Fernandita, who had a nice little house in Colonia del Valle. I would have to be discreet, Mother said. Cousin Fernandita is small and sweet, but her husband is a terror who takes revenge at home for his twelve hours a day behind a counter of imported wines, olive oil, and La Mancha cheeses. The house smells of it, though cleaner: when you walk in, you feel as if someone just ran water, soap, and a broom over every corner of that pastel-colored stucco Mediterranean villa set in a grove of pines in the Valley of Anáhuac.
There is a game of croquet set up on the lawn and my second cousin Sonsoles can be found there any hour of the afternoon, bent over, with a mallet in her hand, and looking out of the corner of her eye, between the arm and the axilla, which form a sort of arch for her thoughtful gaze, at the unwary masculine visitor who appears in the harsh afternoon light. I’m sure my cousin Sonsoles is going to end up with sciatica: she must keep up that bent-over croquet pose for hours at a time. It lets her turn her ass toward the entrance of the garden and wiggle it provocatively: it shows off her figure and makes it stand out better, stuffed into a tight dress of rose-colored satin. That was the style in the thirties; cousin Sonsoles had also seen it on Jean Harlow in China Seas.
I need a space between Toño and me and our wooden guest. Wooden, I repeat to myself walking along the new Avenida Nuevo León almost to the pasture that separates the Colonia Hipódromo from Insurgentes, walking across that field of prickly heather until I reach the leafy avenue and from there cross over to the Colonia del Valle: La Desdichada is wooden. I’m not going to compensate for that fact with a Waikiki whore, as Toño would, or would like to, cynically. But if I go on believing that Sonsoles is going to compensate me for anything, I know that I am making a mistake. The tiresome girl stops playing croquet and invites me into the living room. She asks me if I would care for some tea and I answer yes, amused by the British afternoon invented by my cousin. She skips off coquettishly and in a little while comes back with a tray, teapot, and teacups. Such speed. She hardly gave me time to sneer at the Romero de Torres-style kitsch of this pseudo-gypsy room, full of silk shawls on black pianos, glass cases, with open fans, wooden statues of Don Quixote, and furniture carved with scenes from the fall of Granada. It is hard to sit and take tea with your head leaning against a carving of the tearful Moorish king Boabdil and his stern mother, while my cousin Sonsoles sits under a column portraying Isabel la Católica in the encampment of Santa Fe, about to have a last swing at the infidel. — Will the gentleman take a little tea? the silly little thing asks.
I say yes with my most, well, gentlemanly smile. She serves me the tea. It doesn’t steam. I take a sip and spit it out involuntarily. It’s cider, a lukewarm apple drink, unexpected, repugnant. She looks at me with her hazel eyes very round, not sure whether to smile or take offense. I didn’t know what to say. I saw her there with the teapot in her hand, spilling out of her Hollywood vamp costume, bending over to expose her breasts while she pours the tea: the freckled, deceitful, heavily powdered breasts of my cousin Sonsoles, who looks at me with a question on her face, asking if I don’t want to play with her. But I only see a pale face, long and narrow, without artifice, almost unpainted, nunlike, protected from the sun and air for five hundred years — since the fall of Granada! — and now showing up, like a pale conventual ghost, in the century of the swimsuit, tennis, and suntan lotion.
— A little tea, sir?
She probably has a dollhouse in her bedroom. Then Aunt Fernandita arrives, what a surprise, stay for dinner, spend the night, Bernardito, Feliciano had to go to Veracruz to fill out the papers on some imported goods, he won’t be back until Thursday, stay with us, boy, come on, why not, it’s what your mother would want.
Toño
Bernardo hasn’t come back. I think of him; I hadn’t imagined that his absence would bother me so much. I miss him. I ask myself why, what is it that binds us? I look at her sleeping, her eyes always open but languid. There is no other mannequin like her; who can have given her this singular expression?
Since childhood, our literary vocation has earned us nothing but scorn. Or disapproval. Or pity. I don’t know what he is going to write. Nor what I am going to write. But our friendship derives from others’ saying: They’re crazy, they want to be writers. How can it be? Here, in this country that’s now wide open, anything you want, easy money, easy power, anyone can make it to the top … What binds us is that Lázaro Cárdenas is president and he brings a moment of moral seriousness to politics. We feel that Cárdenas values power and money less than justice and work. He wants to get things done, and when I see his Indian face in the newspaper, I sense that’s his one great anxiety: so little time! Then the crooks, the bullies, the murderers will be back. It’s inevitable. It’s wonderful, Bernardo, that we grew up under the power of a serious man, a decent man. If power can be ethical, then why can’t two young men be writers, if that’s what they want?