Two days before he died, he gave up the wheelchair and took to his bed. Supported by a mass of pillows, he maintained his elegant erect posture, his silky, aquiline profile. Sometimes he stretched out his hand to make sure his daughter was nearby. The mastiff whimpered under the bed. Finally, his thin lips opened in a spasm of terror, and his hand could no longer reach out. It stayed there, immobile, on his chest. She stood, contemplating that hand. It was the first time she'd witnessed death. Her mother had died when she was very young. Gonzalo had died far away.
"So it's this quietude that's so close, this hand that does not move."
Very few families accompanied the grand coach as it rolled first to the Church of San Francisco and then to the cemetery. Perhaps they were afraid of meeting her husband. He rented out the Puebla house.
"How helpless I felt then. Not even the boy helped. Not even Lorenzo. I began thinking what my life might have been with the man behind bars, the life he cut off."
("Ah, there's old Pizarro sitting in front of the main house of his hacienda with a shotgun in his hands. All he's got left is the house."
"That's right, Ventura. All he's got left is the house."
"He's also got a few boys left who are supposed to be good and who will be loyal to him to the death."
"Right, Ventura. Don't forget their faces.")
One night, she realized she was unintentionally spying on him. Imperceptibly, he began to forget her unaffected indifference during their first years, and she began to seek out her husband's eyes during the gray hours of the afternoon, the slow movements of the man who stretched his legs over the leather hassock or who bent down to light the wood in the old fireplace when it was cold.
"Ah, it must have been a weak look, full of self-pity, begging pity from him; nervous, yes, because I could not control the sadness and helplessness I was left with when my father died. I thought that nervousness was mine alone…"
She did not realize that at the same time a new man had begun to observe her with new eyes, eyes of repose and confidence, as if he wanted her to understand that the hard times were over.
("Well, sir, everyone's wondering when you're going to divide up Don Pizarro's land."
"Tell them to hold on for a while. Can't they see that Pizarro hasn't given up yet? Tell them to hold on and keep their rifles ready in case the old man tries something. When things calm down, I'll divide up the land."
"I'll keep your secret. I know you've been making deals with outsiders to trade Don Pizarro's good land for lots in Puebla."
"The small landowners will give work to the peasants, Ventura. Here, take this, and get some rest…"
"Thanks, Don Artemio. I hope you understand that I…")
And now that the foundation for their well-being was laid, another man emerged, ready to show her that his strength could also be used for acts of happiness. The night in which their eyes finally stopped to grant each other an instant of silent attention, she thought for the first time in ages about how her hair looked and she brought her hand to her nape with its chestnut tresses.
"…as he smiled at me, standing by the fireplace, with that, that candor…Do I have the right to deny myself the possibility of happiness…?"
("Ventura, tell them to return the rifles to me. They don't need them anymore. Now each one of them has his parcel of land, and most of it belongs either to me or to people who work for me. They have nothing to fear anymore."
"Of course, sir. They agree, and they thank you. Some had dreamed of getting much more, but they'll go along with you; they say won't bite the hand that feeds them, just to give it a reason to starve them."
"Pick out ten or twelve of the toughest and give them rifles. We don't want malcontents on either side.")
"Afterwards I resented it. I let myself go…And I liked it. I felt ashamed."
He wanted to efface all trace of the start of their life together, to be loved without a memory of the act that forced her to take him for a husband. Lying next to his wife, he asked silently-this she knew-that the fingers they entwined at that moment be something more than a temporary response.
"Perhaps I would have felt something more with the other one; I don't know; I only knew my husband's love; ah, he gave himself with a demanding passion, as if he couldn't live another moment unless he knew I felt the same…"
He reproached himself, thinking that appearances were proof against him. How could he make her believe that he'd loved her from the moment he saw her pass by on a street in Puebla, even before he knew who she was?
"But when we're apart, when we sleep, when we begin a new day, I lack whatever it is, the gestures, the way of showing things, that can extend the night's love into everyday life."
He could have told her, but one explanation would have required another, and all explanations would have led to a single day and a single place, a jail cell, one October night. He wanted to avoid that return. He knew that he could do it only by making her his without words; he told himself that flesh and tenderness would speak without words. Then another doubt assailed him. Would this girl understand everything he wanted to say when he took her in his arms? Would she understand the tenderness of his intention? Wasn't her sexual response excessive, fraudulent, learned somewhere? Wasn't any promise of real understanding lost in this woman's involuntary theatrics?
"Perhaps it was modesty. Perhaps it was a desire that this love in the dark be something exceptional."
But he did not have the courage to ask, to speak. He was sure the facts would eventually take controclass="underline" habit, fatality, need also. Where could she turn? Her only future was at his side. Perhaps that simple fact would make her forget the beginning. He slept next to the woman with that desire, by now a dream.
"I ask forgiveness for having forgotten in pleasure the reasons for my rancor…My God, how can I respond to this strength, the glow of these green eyes? What of my own strength, once that ferocious, tender body takes me in its arms, not asking permission, not begging my pardon for what I could throw in his face…Ah, it's terrible beyond words; things happen before a word exists for them…"
("It is so silent tonight, Catalina…Are you afraid of breaking the silence? Does it speak to you?"
"No…Don't talk."
"You never ask me for anything. Sometimes I'd like…"
"I let you talk. You know-the things-that…"
"Yes. There's no need to talk. I love you, I love you…I never thought…")
She would let herself go. She would let herself be loved; but when she woke, she would again remember it all and oppose her silent rancor to the man's strength.
"I won't tell you. You conquer me at night. I conquer you during the day. I won't tell you. That I never believed what you told us. That my father knew how to hide his humiliation behind his courtliness, that courteous man, but I can avenge him in secret and for the rest of my life."
She would get up, braiding her hair without glancing at the disarrayed bed. She would light the lamp and pray in silence, the same way that she would quietly show during the sunlit hours that she had not been conquered, although the night, her second pregnancy, her large belly, would say the opposite. And only in moments of true solitude, when neither the rancor of the past nor the shame of pleasure occupied her thoughts, was she able to tell herself with honor that he, his life, his strength,
"…offer me this strange adventure that fills me with fear…"
It was an invitation to adventure, to plunge into an unknown future in which procedure would not be sanctioned by the sanctity of custom. He invented and created everything from below, as if nothing had happened before, Adam without a father, Moses without the Tablets of the Law. Life wasn't like that, the world ordered by Don Gamaliel wasn't like that.
"Who is he? How did he rise out of himself? No, I don't have the courage to accompany him. I have to control myself. I mustn't weep when I remember my life as a girl. That nostalgia."