"Calm down. I liked your sullen silences better."
"Now you know how things stand. You can hurt me as much as you like. I've even given you the weapon. Now, suddenly, because I want you to hate me, and so all our illusions die all at once…"
"It would be simpler to forget everything and start over from scratch."
"That's not the way things work."
The immobile woman remembered her first decision, when Don Gamaliel had told her what was happening. To lose with power. To let herself be victimized and then take her revenge.
"Nothing can stop me, see? Just name one thing that can stop me."
"It's only natural. It just pours out of me."
"No need to nurture it and care for it. It just comes naturally."
"Leave me alone!"
She stopped looking at her husband. The absence of words obliterated the nearness of that tall, dark man with his thick mustache, who felt his brow and his nape weighed down by a pain of stone. That closed mouth, with its grimace of dissimulated scorn, spewed the words it could never say right into his face.
"Do you really think that, after doing all you've done, you still have a right to love? Do you really think that the rules of life can change just so you can get that reward in addition to everything else? You lost your innocence in the outside world. You can't recover it here inside, in the world of feelings. Maybe you once had your garden. I had mine, my little paradise. Now we've both lost it. Try to remember. You can't find in me what you've already sacrificed, what you lost forever by your own actions. I don't know where you come from. I don't know what you've done. I only know that in your life you lost what you made me lose later: dreams and innocence. We'll never be the same."
He tried to read those words in his wife's immobile face. Involuntarily, he felt close to the thought she did not express. Words regained their occult power. Cain: that horrendous word should never, ever have burst from the woman's lips; even if she'd lost all hope of love, she would still be a witness-a mute, suspicious witness-to love in the years to come. He locked his jaw. Only one act could perhaps rend this knot of separation and rancor. Only a few words, spoken now or never. If she accepted them, they could forget and begin again. If she didn't accept them…
"Yes, I am alive and here at your side because I let others die for me. I can talk to you about the ones who died because I washed my hands of them and shrugged. Accept me as I am, with these sins, and look at me as a man in need…Don't hate me. Take pity on me, Catalina. I love you: put my sins on one side of the scale and my love on the other, and you'll see that my love is much greater…"
She didn't dare. She wondered why she didn't dare. Why didn't she demand the truth from him-even if he was incapable of telling the truth, conscious as she was that his cowardice distanced them even more and made him also responsible for their failed love-so the two of them could be cleansed of the sin this man ached to share in order to be redeemed?
"I can't do it alone, alone I just can't do it."
During that brief, intimate minute of silence…
"Now I'm strong. My strength is to accept this destiny without fighting."
…he also accepted the impossibility of going back, of returning…She got up, murmuring that the baby was asleep alone in the bedroom. He was left alone, and he imagined her, on her knees before the ivory crucifix, carrying out the final act that would detach her completely
"from my destiny and my sin, clinging to your personal salvation, rejecting this, which should have been ours, even if I offered it to you in silence; now you will not return…"
He crossed his arms and walked out into the country night, lifting his head to greet the brilliant company bestowed upon him by Venus, the first star in the celestial vault, now quickly filling with stars. On another night he had looked toward the stars; remembering it gained him nothing. He was no longer that boy, nor were the stars the same ones his boy's eyes had contemplated.
The rain had stopped. The orchard gave off a deep aroma of guava and sloe, plum and apple. He had planted the trees in the garden. He had raised the wall that separated the house and the garden, his intimate domain on the farm.
As his boots sank into the moist earth, he stuck his hands into his pockets and walked slowly toward the gate. He opened it and walked toward the nearby houses. During his wife's first pregnancy, that young Indian girl had occasionally received him with an inert silence and a total absence of questions or demands.
He walked in without knocking, suddenly opening the door of the cabin made of scarred adobe. He took her by the arm, awakening her out of a sound sleep, already feeling the heat of her dark, sleeping body. The frightened girl stared at the master's twisted face, his curly hair falling over his glassy eyes, his thick lips surrounded by disordered, harsh whiskers.
"Come on, don't be afraid."
She raised her arms to put on her white blouse and reached out to pick up her rebozo. He led her out. She lowed softly like a lassoed calf. And he raised his face toward the sky, covered tonight with all its lights.
"Do you see that great big star shining over there? Looks like you could touch it, right? But even you know that you'll never touch it. We've got to stay no to the things we can't touch with our hands. Come on; you're going to live with me in the big house."
The girl came into the orchard with her eyes lowered.
Washed by the thunderstorm, the trees glowed in the darkness. The fermented earth filled with heavy odors, and he breathed deeply.
Upstairs in the bedroom, she left the door ajar and got into bed. She lit the night-light. She turned her face to the wall, crossed her arms so her hands were on her shoulders, and tucked up her legs. An instant later, she stretched out her legs and felt for her slippers. She got up and walked the length of the room, raising and lowering her head. Without realizing it, she lulled the child sleeping in his crib. She caressed her stomach. She went back to bed and waited to her the man's footsteps in the hall.
I let them do what they want, I can't think or desire anymore; I'm getting used to this pain; nothing can last forever without becoming normal. The pain I feel below my ribs, around my navel, in my intestines, is now my pain, a pain that gnaws: the taste of vomit in my mouth is my taste; the swelling of my stomach is my baby, I compare it to giving birth; it makes me laugh. I try to touch it. I run my hand from my navel to my pubis. New. Round. Doughy. But the cold sweat gives way. That colorless face that I manage to see in the asymmetrical mirrors on Teresa's handbag, which passes next to my bed, she never puts down her bag, as if there were thieves in the room. I suffer that collapse. I just don't know. The doctor's gone. He said he was going to get other doctors. He doesn't want to be responsible for me. I just don't know. But I see them. They've walked in. The mahogany door opens and closes, and their footsteps make no noise on the thick carpet. They've closed the windows. With a hiss, they've pulled back the gray curtains. They've entered. Ah, there is a window. There is a world outside. There is this strong plateau wind that shakes the thin black trees. We've got to breathe…
"Open the window…"
"No, no. You might catch cold and make things worse."
"Open…"
"Domine, non sum dignus…"
"Fuck God…"
"You curse Him because you believe in Him…"
Very clever. That was very clever. It calms me down. I don't think about those things anymore. Yes, why would I insult Him if He didn't exist? That does me some good. I'm going to admit all this because if I rebel I concede that those things exist. That's what I'll do. I don't know what I was thinking of. Sorry. The priest understands me. Sorry. I'm not going to let them have their way by rebelling. That's better. I should wear an expression of boredom. That's most appropriate. How much importance all this gets. An event that for the person most concerned, namely me, signifies the end of importance. Yes. That's the way to do it. That's it. When I realize that all of it will cease to have any importance, the others try to make it into the most important thing: pain itself, the salvation of someone's soul. I make this hollow sound through my nose and let them go about their business and I cross my arms over my stomach. Oh, get out, let me listen. Now we'll see if they understand me. Now we'll just see if they don't understand an arm bent like this…