chapter four. love & marriage: a horse & carriage
Guillermo seems to fall in love with the idea of Rosa Esther. The following Sunday, he puts on a suit and white shirt, borrows his father’s car, and drives over to the Union Church near the Plazuela España. He luckily finds a parking space around the wide circle. It is just before noon.
He takes a deep breath before entering the church. When he reaches the back pews, he happily realizes that the services are about to end. The pastor has finished his homily on a piece of scripture and is preaching that only through God’s grace, not through good works, can salvation be achieved. The only way to receive this grace is to accept Christ into your heart as the only true God; only in this way will the sinner be forgiven his sins and be born again. He concludes by saying that one day the Lord Jesus will return to this godless land and the final and complete resurrection of the dead will occur. This will lead to the establishment of a new heaven and a new earth and the elimination of suffering, evil, and even death in this new glory and the holiest of holies — as things were before the fall. The saved will share in the everlasting glory while those who fail to accept Jesus will suffer eternal punishment. The righteous will be part of an endless banquet while the damned will fight for morsels of food.
Guillermo has heard these things before, but this pastor — obviously not Guatemalan — says it with a kind of fatalism that seems almost admirable. He is pleased not to have heard another wishy-washy speech about how Guatemalans need to reach out to the poor. The sermon is in English, and clearly the majority of the seventy-five or so parishioners are comfortable with English and Anglican culture. This could be a service anywhere in Europe or North America. Looking over the crowd, Guillermo sees just a few people — including Rosa Esther’s sister — who are authentically Guatemalan. Everyone is applauding enthusiastically.
To Guillermo, this sermon only underscores how simply Jesus Christ brings salvation to believers. It is all a bit too easy. He smiles as he stands in the back of the church, watching the parishioners hug one another as they make their way out. He too could believe in Christ if it meant he could kiss Rosa Esther over and over again on the mouth. He is not beyond duplicity.
Guillermo cranes his neck but doesn’t see her. Beatriz Marisol is there with her grandmother; Rosa Esther is nowhere to be seen.
More than disappointed, Guillermo feels betrayed. Why would she suggest he come if she weren’t planning to be there? When, with much embarrassment, he asks after her, Beatriz Marisol tells him she was there for the nine o’clock service but volunteered to accompany the children’s church to the Aurora Zoo.
“And your parents?”
Marisol drops her eyes. “They’re dead. We have an uncle, Lázaro, who lives in Mexico City. Otherwise we are alone, ” she says somewhat melodramatically.
Guillermo can only say, “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be. It happened long ago.”
* * *
Guillermo returns to the Union Church the following week, arriving a half hour earlier. Once more he wears his only suit, from his high school graduation. He wants to look the part, though he is only there for one reason.
This time he sees Rosa Esther from the church doors, where he waits out the service. She looks lovely in a long white dress with little violet and yellow flowers and a buttoned sweater.
When she comes out of church with her grandmother and sister, he approaches them to say hello. He’s a bit giddy. She doesn’t seem surprised to see him.
“Ah, the gallant boy from Pecos Bill,” the grandmother says.
“Yes, it’s me. I’ve come to ask your granddaughter if she would join me for coffee and dessert at Jensen’s across the street.”
Rosa Esther begins making excuses, but her grandmother interjects: “Do you have your own car?”
“Yes,” Guillermo answers, pointing behind himself with his thumb.
“Please take her from us. She’s been too much of a recluse lately. Try to cheer her up.”
It is over croissants and tea at Jensen’s that Guillermo learns her parents died in an Aviateca flight that crashed in the jungles of the Petén when she was six and her sister four. Her grandmother volunteered to raise the young girls. Guillermo pretends to listen attentively but his one desire is to unbutton her white dress and lick her equally white flesh.
* * *
So this is how the courtship of Rosa Esther begins. Guillermo realizes that she is no Perla Cortés and he won’t be able to put his hand under her dress so easily. He has to embark on dating — traditional Guatemalan-style dating. Formal, polite, and virginal.
Guillermo is attracted to her inaccessibility and emboldened by her grandmother’s approval of him.
What does Rosa Esther see in Guillermo? She is attracted to his boldness and has always had an innate desire to tame wild stallions. She is up for the challenge. She has also grown bored of her life with her sister and grandmother and wants to escape.
At the moment there is a surge of violence in Guatemala. The country is gripped by its worst years of armed conflict — the massacres, the forced conscription of Indian villagers, the wholesale emptying of towns, the militarization of the countryside, the killing of student and union leaders in the capital, and the president’s daily rants.
But Guillermo and Rosa Esther are soon locked in a state of courtly love, immune to the chaos, engaged in what could be described as “spiritual dating.” They kiss, sometimes for two or three seconds, never deeply, and certainly never touching tongues. But under it all there is a passion stirring, like water on the verge of boiling.
More than fearing the qué dirán, Rosa Esther’s religious upbringing doesn’t permit her to venture beyond certain forms of mild petting. So Guillermo thinks. But Rosa Esther knows what she is doing — she is an expert fisherman who knows that patience, above all, helps reel in the big fish.
This foreplay goes on for five months. But when Guillermo is granted a full scholarship to attend the master’s program in corporate law at Columbia University in New York City, he realizes that something has to change. He wants to take Rosa Esther with him, and the only way that that can happen is if they are married.
When he asks Rosa Esther’s grandmother for her hand in marriage, she grants it instantly, knowing full well that she is condemning Beatriz Marisol to a life of unconditional devotion to and caring for the grandmother.
Rosa Esther apparently has no say in the matter. Or does she?
* * *
Juancho is the one most surprised by the liaison. “Why Rosa Esther?”
“I love her.”
“You do?”
“I love looking at her and seeing how she despises filth.”
“Is that enough to sustain a marriage?”
Guillermo looks at his friend with a condescending sympathy. They are so different. “She is the perfect wife for a young lawyer. She will give birth to my children and she will see to their education and pleasures, without requiring much from me. And she will fuck me any time I ask her to.”
“Is that enough?” Juancho repeats.
“If it isn’t enough, I know the places to go to get it.” Juancho shakes his head as Guillermo gives him a hug, whispering, “Don’t forget, I’ll be a lawyer. If it doesn’t work out, we can always get divorced.”
* * *
And marry they do, in a small, quiet Lutheran ceremony in August of 1983 at the Union Church. Günter Rosensweig does not understand a word of English so he hardly follows the service, and neither does his wife Lillian. Guillermo’s sister comes all the way from San Francisco with her lover and raises more than a few eyebrows by holding her partner’s hand throughout the service.