With no children other than the sea, Santiago slowly disappeared into the sea as if in a mirror that did not distort him but only sent him farther and farther away, little by little, mysteriously, from the mirror of air where he inscribed his hours on earth. Santiago slowly separated from the horizon of the sea, from the promise of youth. Suspended in the sea, he asked those who loved him, Let me disappear by becoming the sea, I could not become forest as I told you one day, Laura, I lied only about one thing, little sister, I did have things to tell, I did have things to see, I wasn’t going to keep silent out of fear of being mediocre because I came to know you, Laura, and every night I fell asleep dreaming, to whom shall I tell everything if not to Laura? In a dream, I decided I would write for you, precious girl, even if you didn’t find out, even if we never saw each other again, everything would be for you and you would know despite everything, you would receive my words knowing they belonged to you, you would be my only reader, for you not a single word of mine would be lost, now that I’m sinking into the eternity of the sea, I expel the little air I have left in my lungs, I make a gift to you of a few bubbles, my love, it’s an intolerable pain for me to say goodbye because I don’t know to whom I’ll be able to speak from now on, I don’t…
Laura remembered that her brother had wanted to lose himself forever in the forest, to become forest. She tried to make herself into sea with him, but the only thing that came to mind was to describe the lake where she grew up, how strange, Santiago, to have grown up next to a lake and never really to have seen it, it’s true that it’s a very big lake, almost a small sea, but I remember it in little pieces, here is the place where the aunts would swim before the priest Elzevir Almonte came, over here is where the fishermen would land, over here they’d put the oars, but the lake, Santiago, to see it the way you knew how to see the ocean, that I can’t do, I’m going to have to imagine the place where I grew up, little brother, you are going to make me imagine it, the lake and everything else, right at this very minute, I’m knowing it, from now on, I’m not going to hope for things to happen, I’m not going to let them happen without paying attention to them, you are going to make me imagine the life you did not live but I swear you will live at my side, in my head, in my stories, in my fantasies, I won’t let you escape from my life, Santiago, you are the most important thing that ever happened to me, I’m going to be faithful to you by always imagining you, living in your name, doing what you did not do, I don’t know how, my handsome and young and dead Santiago, I’m going to be frank with you and I don’t know how, but I swear I’ll do it.
That was all she thought as she turned away from the remains under the waves and went home to the house next to the arcades, prepared, despite her thoughts, to be a child again, to stop being a big girl, to lose the premature maturity Santiago had momentarily given her. She asked if she could have his bullet-ridden glasses and imagined him without his spectacles, waiting for the bullets, having put them in his shirt pocket.
The next day the little black man swept the halls as if nothing had happened, singing as always:
You dance putting your arm
around your partner’s waist
if she lets you, lets you,
as she will surely do…
4.
San Cayetano: 1915
“YOU THINK YOU KNEW Santiago well? You think your brother gave everything to you? How little you know of a man so complex, he gave you only a part of himself. He gave you what was left of his boyish soul. Another part he gave to his family, another to his poetry, another to politics. And passion, the passion of love, to whom did he give that?”
Doña Leticia, in silence, wanted to finish the hem of the ball gown.
“Stop fidgeting, child.”
“It’s just that I’m very nervous, Mama.”
“And for no reason, a ball is nothing extraordinary.”
“For me it is! It’s the first time, Mutti.”
“You’ll get used to these things.”
“What a shame.” Laura smiled.
“Quiet. Let me finish. This child can’t stand still!”
As soon as Laura slipped on the pale yellow dress, she ran to the mirror, but she did not see the modern ball gown her mother, as skillful in couture as in every domestic labor, had copied from the most recent issue of La Vie Parisienne, which, though it came late because of the war in Europe and the distance to Xalapa from Veracruz, reached them regularly. Paris had abandoned the complicated, uncomfortable styles of the nineteenth century with their Versailles remnants of crinolines, stays, and corsets. Now the fashion was streamlined, as Don Fernando the Anglophile would say, which is to say, as fluid as a river, simplified and linear, fitted to the real forms of the feminine body, slender and revealing from the shoulders through the bust and waist, then suddenly flaring out from the hips. Laura’s Parisian dress was taken in between the hips and the calves with a lot of draping, as if a queen had picked up the train of her gown, but the train, instead of being wrapped around her forearm, had under its own power draped itself around her legs.
Laura stared at herself, not at the gown. Her seventeen years had accentuated but not yet resolved the qualities hinted at when she was twelve. She had a strong face, the forehead too wide, the nose too big and aquiline, lips too thin, though she did like her own eyes, to tell the truth; they were a light chestnut, almost golden; sometimes, at daybreak or sunset, they were truly golden. She looked as if she were dreaming while awake.
“But my nose, Mama…”
“You’re lucky. Just look at those Italian film actresses. They’ve all got big beaks… distinct profiles. Don’t tell me you’d like to be a little pie-faced pug-nose. Come, come.”
“But my forehead, Mama…”
“If you don’t like it, hide it with bangs.”
“But my lips…”
“With lipstick you can make them whatever size you please. And just look, sweetheart, what beautiful eyes God gave you…”
“I’ll go along with that, Mama.”
“You vain little thing.” Leticia smiled.
Laura didn’t dare think ahead. And if the lipstick is wiped off by kisses, I’m not going to act like a jerk, he’ll want to kiss me again, or should I suck in my lips like a little old lady, grab my stomach as if I ere about to vomit, and run to the bathroom to put on more lipstick? How complicated it is to become a young woman.
“Don’t worry about anything. You look divine. You’re going to cause a sensation.”
She didn’t ask Leticia why she wasn’t accompanying her. She would be the only girl there without a chaperon. Wouldn’t that make a bad impression? Leticia had already sighed enough, but she intended to leave it at that, recalling the habit of her own mother, Cosima, sitting in the rocking chair in the Catemaco family house. She had sighed enough. As Don Fernando would put it, citing, as usual, an English proverb: It never rains but it pours.
The three maiden aunts were in Catemaco taking care of Grandfather Felipe Kelsen, whose ailments were slowly but surely joining forces, as he himself predicted the one time he’d been made to see a doctor in Veracruz. What did he say, Papa? asked the three sisters in one voice, a habit that was ever more deeply rooted in them and of which they were unaware.