"Please forgive me. May I offer you something? Better yet: stay for dinner."
He opened his hands in a sign of invitation and pleasure, and the magnifying glass fell on the lap of this thin man with flesh stretched over brittle bones, with skull, jowls, and lips spotted with the yellow marks of age.
"I'm not shocked at what's happening," he'd said before, his voice always precise and courteous, sonorous when within those terms, otherwise flat. "What use would all my reading have been to me"-he gestured with the reading glass toward the shelves of books-"if it didn't teach me to understand the inevitability of change? Things change their appearance, whether we like it or not. Why should we stubbornly refuse to see them or long for the past? How much less tiresome it is to accept the unforeseeable! Or should I call it something else? You, Mr…excuse me, I've forgotten your rank…yes, Lieutenant Colonel, Lieutenant Colonel…I mean, I don't know where you're from, what your profession is…I esteem you because you shared my son's final hours…Well, you did act, but could you foresee everything? I didn't act and I couldn't either. Perhaps our action and our passivity converge in that, in that both are quite blind and impotent. Although there certainly is a difference…don't you think? Ah, well…"
He never lost sight of the old man's amber eyes, which were all too intent on creating an atmosphere of cordiality, too self-confident behind that mask of paternal sweetness. Perhaps those aristocratic hand movements, that fixed nobility of his profile, his bearded chin, that attentive cocking of his head, were all natural to him. He thought that even naturalness can be feigned; at times, a mask disguises too well the expressions of a face that does not exist either outside or under it. And Don Gamaliel's mask looked so much like his real face that it was disconcerting to think about the dividing line, the impalpable shadow that might separate them. He thought all this, and also that one day he might be able to say it right to the old man's face.
All the clocks in the house chimed at the same instant, and the old man stood up to light the acetylene lamp on the rolltop desk. He slowly pushed the top back and fumbled through some papers. He picked one up and half turned toward his visitor's armchair. He smiled, furrowed his brow, and smiled again as he deposited the paper on top of the others. Gracefully he raised his index finger to his ear: a dog was barking and scratching on the other side of the door.
He took advantage of the fact that the old man had turned his back toward him to scrutinize him secretly. Not one of Don Gamaliel's character traits broke the harmonious nobility of his full-length portrait. Seen from the rear, he walked elegantly, bolt-upright; longish white hair crowned the old man walking toward the door. Gamaliel Bernal was troubling-he grew nervous as he thought about it again-because he was too perfect. It was possible that his courtesy was nothing more than a natural complement to his naïveté. The thought annoyed him. The old man made his slow way to the door; the dog was barking: the fight would be too easy, could not be savored. But suppose the friendliness was merely a mask for the old man's cunning?
When the tails of his frock coat stopped swinging and his white hand had grasped the copper doorknob, Don Gamaliel looked at him over his shoulder with those amber eyes. His free hand stroked his beard. His look seemed to read his unknown visitor's thoughts, and his slightly twisted smile recalled that of a magician about to complete a totally new trick. If in the old man's gesture the unknown visitor could understand and accept an invitation to silent complicity, Don Gamaliel's movement was so elegant, so artful, that he never gave his accomplice the chance to return the look and seal the tacit agreement.
Night had fallen and the uncertain light of the lamp barely revealed the golden spines of the books and the silver trimming of the wallpaper that covered the library walls. He remembered, from when the door of the house had been opened to him, a long string of rooms that came into view beyond the old Puebla mansion's main vestibule and went all the way to the library, with room after room opening onto the patio with its majolica and its tiles. The mastiff jumped for joy and licked his master's hand. Behind the dog appeared the girl dressed in white, a white that contrasted with the crepuscular light stretching out behind her.
She stopped for a second at the threshold, while the dog leapt toward the unknown man and sniffed at his feet and hands. Don Gonzalo laughed, took the dog by his red collar, and muttered a vague excuse. His visitor didn't understand it. He stood up, buttoning his jacket with the precise movements of military life, straightening it as if he were still wearing a uniform; he remained still before the beauty of this young woman, who had not yet passed through the doorway.
"My daughter, Catalina."
She did not move. The long, smooth chestnut hair that cascaded down her long, warm neck (even at that distance, he could see the luster of her nape), her eyes, simultaneously hard and liquid, with a trembling stare, two glass bubbles: amber like those of her father but franker, less accustomed to feigning with naturalness, reproduced in the other dualities of that slim but well-rounded body, in her moist, slightly parted lips, in her high, taut breasts. Eyes, lips, hard, smooth breasts alternated between helplessness and rage. She held her hands together over her thighs and her narrow waist as she walked, fluttering the white muslin of her dress, cut full around her solid hips and buttoned down the back, ending near her thin calves. Toward him walked a flesh of pale gold, which even now revealed the faded chiaroscuro of the entire body in its forehead and cheeks, and she held out her hand, in whose touch he sought, without finding it, the moisture that would have revealed her emotion.
"He was with your brother during his final hours. I spoke about him to you."
"You were fortunate, sir."
"He told me about the two of you, asked me to visit you. He was a brave man, to the very end."
"He wasn't brave. It's just that he loved all…this too much."
She touched her bosom and then quickly withdrew her hand to trace an arc in the air.
"An idealist, yes, very much an idealist," murmured the old man, sighing. "The gentleman will dine with us."
The girl took her father's arm, and he, with the mastiff alongside, followed them through the narrow, damp rooms crammed with porcelain vases and stools, clocks and display cabinets, waxed furniture and large religious paintings of little value. The gilt feet of the chairs and the side tables rested on painted wooden floors devoid of rugs, and the lamps remained unlit. Only in the dining room a grand cut-glass chandelier illuminated the heavy mahogany table and sideboards and a cracked still life in which the pottery and brilliant fruit of the tropics glowed. Don Gamaliel shooed away the mosquitoes flying around the real fruit bowl, less abundant than the one in the painting. Pointing a finger, he invited him to sit down.
Sitting opposite her, he could finally stare directly into the girl's unmoving eyes. Did she know why he was visiting? Did she see in the look in his eyes that sense of triumph, made complete by the woman's physical presence? Could she detect the slight smile of luck and self-assurance? Did she feel his barely disguised intention to possess her? Her eyes expressed only that strange message of hard fatality, seeming to show that she was ready to accept everything but that she would nevertheless transform her acceptance into an opportunity to triumph over the man who in this silent and smiling way had begun to make her his own.