“Take me in! Everything! Farther in! Farther still! Down to the infinity of your depth! Try to swallow my skeleton!”
It was his desperate desire for Teresa’s skin to split open and cover him like a wing, dissolving him in her blood. Then he could make his way through her totally, then nothing of her would be denied to him. He wasn’t seeking pleasure. What he sought was the explosion of his wife into thousands of burning crevices, that the pleasure he was going to give her would splatter her soul.
He moved furiously, more like a madman than an animal. With each lurch of his hips he seemed to want to give life. Enormous prickly husks fell onto his tensed back, sounding like the cracking of a whip, but it didn’t matter to him. Teresa corresponded by slapping his ribs with her inflamed bosoms, ravaging his waist between her mare-like thighs, moving her hips in a voracious grinding. But Alejandro’s despair would not abate; the more he gave, the more was asked of him. He knew his wife kept a secret, unconquerable citadel. Now his hip thrusts sounded like shots. It seemed my grandmother’s pelvic bones were cracking one by one. Attracted by the sugary juice of the smashed cactuses, hundreds, thousands of lizards began to gather, a green and shiny blot around the couple like a living halo. All those tiny tongues savoring the sap made the glassy sound of a stream. My grandfather could go no further. He threw his head back, arching his spine as if he wanted his hoarse whine to pierce the center of heaven, and sank himself totally into his wife’s stomach. She gave such a lurch that it tossed him on his back six feet way, with his sex exploding in a white bush.
“Don’t make me pregnant again! One more life is one more death! I don’t want to manufacture corpses for the Murderer!”
The semen fell onto the vegetal magma in thick, heavy drops that sank in and created small, ephemeral green crowns. From each of them was born a white butterfly. The tangle of white wings tried to seek out the light, but the lizards skillfully leaped up and carried all of them off, dying in their moist jaws.
Alejandro regained consciousness. He sank his head between Teresa’s bosoms and began to laugh shamefully. She calmed him, as if he were a child: “It’s nothing, silly boy. It’s the earthquake, it’s this new land, another sky, another sun. Soon we’ll get used to things and be just as we were. Come on, get dressed.”
The children cautiously approached their parents to hand them their clothing. Teresa checked to see if the seven fleas were in their place and, satisfied, she covered herself. Her husband as well. They took the children by the hands and went back to the wagon, strolling slowly as if they were parading through the florid gardens on the banks of the Dnieper in a year without pogroms.
Monkey Face, having recovered from his fainting spell, waited for them to climb aboard and then set the horses into motion again. “Get up there, Whitey! Get up there, Blacky!” Then, his tiny eyes filled with humility and sadness, he begged the couple: “Please, Doña Teresa and Don Alejandro, don’t misunderstand me. Don’t ascribe to me any bestial instincts. I’ve never known a woman. Besides what woman would want to be with me with this face of mine? I’m chaste, and despite being thirty I have no more experience than a child. Madam, allow me to explain my reactions. There is nothing lustful in them. According to what I’ve been told, my mother tossed me into a garbage can because I was ugly. Was she poor? Rich? Sick? A victim of rape or incest? I’ll never know. A beggar found me and dropped me off at the Red Cross. I caused a stir. I was two days old but I was covered with hair. They did all sorts of tests on me to figure out if I was a superior kind of monkey or a degenerate human. They accepted the second hypothesis. I regret it to this day.
“If they had chosen to declare me a highly evolved animal, I would have had a better life: luxury cages, first-class education, fame, worldwide respect. I was declared human, but the National Orphanage received me grudgingly and did very little to keep me alive. I grew up in a room smaller than a cage in the zoo. The guards only spoke to me to mock me, and the orphans only to teased me. And how could it be otherwise, when even the dogs barked and the cats hissed with their hair standing on end when they saw me? The only friends I had were a spider, a mouse, and a pigeon with a broken wing. When there were official parades, national holidays, Labor Day, the anniversary of the naval battle of Iquique, they left me locked up in the orphanage and absolutely forbade me to appear.
There, in the alienation and isolation of the vast building, where the dark corners hid foul perils and the shadows were as accusing as judges, I had no other refuge but the Chapel of the Three Marys. It was a long gymnasium converted into a temple. On the altar reigned three virgins. Since the guards were men, and in the orphanage the boys lived in one building and the girls in another, those statues were the only women I’d ever seen in my short life. One was white, made of marble, the Virgin of the Snows. The next was red porcelain, the Virgin of the Dawn. And the third was black, carved out of ebony, the Virgin of the Night. All beautiful, with the sweetest smiles. Taking advantage of the solitude, I climbed up on the altar to embrace them with my small arms and to cover their mouths with kisses, imagining my mother’s lips. The marble, porcelain, and ebony did not have the warmth of flesh, but to me that coldness seemed much warmer than the contempt of the guards and the orphans.
“Once I managed to steal a bottle of sleeping pills from the infirmary. Late that night, I slipped through the corridors, entered the chapel, and, kneeling before the three Marys, I decided to end my insignificant life. Just as I was about to throw a handful of pills into my mouth, a gush of milk bathed my face. At first, I saw nothing, blinded by the surge of warm liquid in my eyes. Then I realized that the milk was pouring from one of the breasts of the Black Virgin.
“When that miracle ceased, another began: the White Virgin began to weep. Two streams of water ran from her eye sockets. I leapt to kiss those tears, trembling with fever. When I licked the last drops, I saw that myriad rubies were sprouting from the forehead of the Red Virgin. I thrust my chest forward so it would be stained with that precious blood.
“In their own way, my three mothers had spoken to me: ‘Place your physical pain and your spiritual suffering in us, and we will nourish you with our love. You are not alone in the world. You exist for us. For that reason, then, live for us.’ And I did just that. I cast aside the poison and decided to live. That miracle for me, for me alone, would be the secret attraction that would allow me to face society. God the Father had abandoned me, but the Holy Maternal Trinity, in its infinite pity, adopted me. I thought: I’ll have a better chance if, instead of trying to go higher, I dash downhill. Instead off fighting to attain my legitimate human place, I should exaggerate my animal behavior, make myself more monkey than human, pass over their jokes, abase myself much more than they could abase me. If I exaggerate my sarcasm, losing my dignity in the process, aligning myself with the grotesque, they will find me sympathetic. Even if my isolation is complete, I will be surrounded by laughter.
At dinner, after an anemic soup or a thin stew, all the orphans had the right to dessert — guava jam or quince syrup with cheese or macaroons or, in winter, fritters in hot syrup — everyone except me. I was always served, accompanied by malicious giggles, a banana. That way my atrocious face was put on display. It was as if every afternoon, I was trying to hide my simian aspect — with refined gestures and expressions that were all too delicate — and they were unmasking me. As the saying goes, ‘You can dress a monkey in silk, but he’s still a monkey.’