Swift as Desire

by Laura Esquivel

  It was true that Júbilo had completely forgotten about her birthday. Between his insomnia the night before and his feelings of guilt, of course he hadn’t remembered! On the other hand, even if he had been aware of it, all he would have done was to buy her some flowers rather than an expensive gift. He wasn’t in the habit of demonstrating his love that way. But don Pedro was, and Lucha, who was so accustomed to receiving gifts on her birthday, couldn’t help feeling pleased when don Pedro had given her the gift she had unwittingly helped to select.

  For Júbilo, this was the first sign that don Pedro had resumed wooing his wife, but what worried him most was that, this time, it seemed to please her. If not, then why was she trying to hide from him the fact that don Pedro had given her the scarf?

  What Júbilo wasn’t able to see was that his wife’s happiness was due to his own arrival in the office rather than to receiving the scarf. Júbilo’s apparatus for receiving messages seemed to be damaged. His mind confused the codes. It mixed up the clues he received from the outside world and converted them into an indecipherable tangle. Usually Júbilo’s mind was very sharp, and he always understood why people said “I hate you” instead of “I love you” and vice versa. But now he kept misinterpreting the messages Lucha sent him. To Júbilo, his wife was like the Enigma machine used by the Germans during World War II to send encoded messages.

  During the war, the radio served as an essential strategic tool. It was used to send orders to the troops on the front lines, but the signals were easily intercepted by the enemy. All they needed was a radio tuned to the same frequency. The German army, in accordance with its rigid routines, sent out orders at the same time each day, and the Allies took advantage of this to intercept the signals and listen to their orders. To foil the Allies, the Germans invented a cryptographic machine, which changed one letter of the alphabet for another. One could use this modified typewriter to write normally, but as each letter was printed, it was substituted by another letter, with the aid of twenty-six cylinders containing thousands of combinations. The only way to decipher an encrypted message without knowing the relevant code was by guessing the position of the rotors at the beginning of the message, which was practically impossible.

  But thanks to the collaboration of a number of notable mathematicians, the Allies soon developed an apparatus similar to the German Enigma, making it possible to decode the German messages. However, it was difficult and demanding work. At first they had to be laboriously guided by the number of repetitions of each particular letter, but then the Fish machine was invented, a teletype that coded and decoded messages much more swiftly. This process, which required so many hours of work, wasn’t wasted. After the war ended, it served to help advance the development of the computer.

  Júbilo’s mind too was a sophisticated cryptographic machine, only it was out of order at the moment and was therefore making errors in interpreting signals. His wife’s delight was because she was happy to see him, not because she had received a scarf as a gift. The difference was very significant, but he couldn’t read it correctly. For the third time in his life, this had to do with active sunspots interfering with radio communication systems. Júbilo was suffering the catastrophic consequences of this phenomenon, in both his personal and his professional life. Luckily, Lucha’s reaction to her husband’s surprise visit was so enthusiastic that it overcame his jealousy. She covered him with kisses and hugged him, and used their closeness to remedy her husband’s faulty memory.

  “I knew you hadn’t forgotten my birthday.”

  Júbilo realized his oversight immediately. How could he have forgotten something like that?! Since Lucha was thirteen years old they had always celebrated her birthday together, so although he was in no mood for celebration, he made an effort to put aside his jealousy and his problems to fete his wife as she deserved. He took her to dinner at Café Tacuba, and the meal turned out to be a powerful aphrodisiac. Café Tacuba was an integral part of their sentimental history. Among other things, Júbilo had asked Lucha to marry him there, and it was there that she had announced that he was going to be a father for a second time. Sitting at their regular table and being waited on by their usual waiter had a relaxing effect on Júbilo, and this helped him to recover his usual good mood. During dinner he was able to tell Lucha about his terrible experience the previous night, and he received from her all the support and understanding he expected and needed. As he held Lucha’s hand, light flooded his brain and illuminated the darkest corners of his soul. Gradually, the loving energy between them began to build up, and they hurried through the rest of their dinner so they could go home, eager to give themselves up to the pleasures of love. Júbilo’s birthday present to Lucha was the best night of lovemaking that she’d ever had in her life and that she would ever have. It was a magical night. They made love as they never had before. But from then on, events were fated to overtake them, events that would hurl them from heaven down to hell, with extraordinary speed.

  Lucha and Júbilo woke up aching but full of energy, despite having hardly slept all night. Lucha quickly dressed for work. She was careful, as always, to choose the least suggestive dress, in the hope that this would protect her most from her boss’s indiscreet glances. She gave her husband a long kiss on the mouth and hurried off to work. Júbilo took charge of Raúl and Ramiro.

  Júbilo had now been awake for two full days and nights, one because of the airplane accident and the other because of their lovemaking. But the previous night had filled him with sufficient energy to overcome his exhaustion. He functioned much better at work than usual. His batteries were so highly charged that he didn’t feel tired again until he opened the door of his home late that night. He expected to find Lucha at home, but, surprisingly, she wasn’t there. Instead, he found his mother-in-law, who tried to explain as best she could that Lucha had called her from the office to tell her that she couldn’t pick up the children: she had asked her mother to take them home, and to explain to her husband that she would be home late, because there was an emergency at the office.

  This seemed very strange to Júbilo. As hard as he tried to imagine what kind of “emergency” could occur in a telegraph office, he couldn’t think of any. He thanked his mother-in-law for looking after his children, and he swiftly took charge himself. After putting the children to bed, he lay down and turned on the radio. La Hora Azul had already started. Agustín Lara’s voice filled the bedroom.

  Sun of my life

  Light of my eyes

  Feel how my hands caress your smooth skin

  My poor hands, broken wings

  Crucified beneath your feet …

  It didn’t take long for the image of Lucha lying crucified on their bed to appear in his mind’s eye. Júbilo imagined her as she had been the previous night: burning, passionate, madly in love. It excited him to remember Lucha’s look of total ecstatic abandonment. What a woman he had!

  Where could she be now? Why hadn’t she called? He was really worried. Soon the telephone rang. It was Júbilo’s mother-in-law. She was worried too. Her daughter had never done anything like this before. To calm her, Júbilo told her that Lucha had already come home and was breast-feeding Ramiro. With those words he was not only sincerely trying to ease his suegra’s worry, but also trying to prevent her from calling again, because the ringing of the telephone made him even more nervous than he already was. He tried to listen to his radio program to clear his mind of negative thoughts and closed his eyes to concentrate even more.

  Tell me your roses bloomed for me

  Give me the smile that gives me hope

  Tell me I haven’t lost you

  Give me the tranquillity of your soul

  Come, with the moon I will show you my cabaña

  Counting the hours of the night, I will wait

  Know woman that my love for you is true

  Know it, know it well …

  He couldn’t stop thinking about Lucha. The music only served to remind him of the previous night, b
ecause these same songs had provided a musical background for their lovemaking. Lucha! Was she thinking of him too? Try as he could not to imagine anything bad, he failed. It seemed very suspicious that she hadn’t been in touch. The only reason he could think of was that she’d been in an accident…or that don Pedro had invited her out with him. His nerves were on edge. To calm them he turned first to cigarettes and then, when they ran out, he moved on to alcohol. It was bad luck that just at that moment Ramiro woke up. It was time for him to eat, but his mother wasn’t there to feed him. Júbilo tried to give him a bottle filled with cow’s milk from the refrigerator. While it was warming up, he held the infant in his arms so that his crying wouldn’t wake Raúl. But as soon as Ramiro noticed the smell coming from his father’s body, his crying escalated dramatically, and there was no way to quiet him.

  Júbilo had to apply cologne, brush his teeth, suck on mints, and coo to his son for hours before he was able to make him fall asleep again. He put Ramiro in his crib and lay back down on the bed. The alcohol and accumulated exhaustion of two full days and nights without sleep took effect and Júbilo slept deeply for a few minutes. It wasn’t long, but it was long enough for Ramiro to wake up again, pull the blanket that his father had covered him with over his face, and suffocate.

  Júbilo awoke to Lucha’s screams. She had just arrived home, and before lying down to sleep beside her husband, she had leaned over to kiss her baby, only to find he was dead. Through his confusion and Lucha’s hysterical sobbing, Júbilo managed to ask:

  “What happened?”

  “Ramiro is dead!”

  Júbilo just couldn’t understand what was happening. He approached his wife, who was pounding her fists on the wall, and tried to hold her arms so she wouldn’t injure herself. At first, Lucha let her husband hold her, but when she smelled alcohol on him, poorly disguised by the cologne, she pushed him away brusquely.

  “Are you drunk? Is that why you didn’t hear the baby?”

  Lucha now aimed her fury at Júbilo and struck him without mercy. At first Júbilo offered no resistance, he felt he deserved it, and much more. He felt guilty. But then the guilt became so overwhelming that he lashed out at her savagely in return.

  “What about you, where were you? Why didn’t you hear your baby? Were you out whoring around?”

  Lucha stopped crying. She couldn’t believe what she had just heard. It wasn’t possible that Júbilo had said such a thing to her, much less at a time like this. She moved away from him slowly and walked toward the bathroom. On the way she picked up Raúl who, rubbing his eyes, had come looking for his parents. Lucha closed the bathroom door behind her and locked it. She didn’t want to see Júbilo. She couldn’t bring herself to explain to him that she had come home late because don Pedro had raped Lolita. That she had taken her friend to the doctor and hadn’t left her side until she was able to calm her down a little and take her home. Lucha didn’t have the strength to talk. She decided right then and there that she didn’t have anything more to say to Júbilo.

  THE DEATH OF HIS son was devastating for Júbilo. Failing to hear his own child was the worst thing he had ever done. He who considered himself specially gifted at being able to hear anything, from thunder to absolute silence, just couldn’t grasp what had happened. He who had believed that there was no such thing as total silence had simply been deaf to the world for a few minutes. He who knew that no matter how quiet the air was, there were always hearts beating, planets spinning in the heavens, bodies breathing, plants growing; and all producing sounds, but he hadn’t heard anything! He hadn’t heard anything!

  FROM A VERY YOUNG age, Júbilo had realized that not everyone could hear as he did, that there were whispers, buzzes, creaks that were imperceptible for most people, but which to him were penetrating noises. Even the sound of an insect walking was audible to Júbilo. When he was taken to play at the beach, he would say to his grandmother, “Do you hear how the sand sings?” He was referring to the sound that the tiny grains of sand make as they are blown by the wind. To most people, that “song” is only sometimes audible in large sand dunes, but never on a sandy beach. To Júbilo, however, the intonations produced by the sand were quite clear.

  Without a doubt, Júbilo had an ear that was adapted for hearing shortwave frequencies that not even modern machines could pick up. That sensitivity had been a problem for him, since over the years the city had become filled with an overpowering noise, like that of a rumbling truck. The sound often bothered him, it filled his ears with whistling sounds that sometimes even gave him a headache. And after all that, what good had it done him? He hadn’t heard his own child dying!

  “PAPI, ARE YOU LISTENING…?”

  “Maybe he can’t hear you.”

  “Did you give him a sedative?”

  “No, I gave him an analgesic, because he complained of a pain in his stomach, then he fell asleep.…”

  “Papi, wake up, chiquito. Mamá has come to see you.…”

  Don Júbilo opened his eyes immediately. He couldn’t believe his ears. Lucha was there. His heart began to pound and his stomach trembled and started to hurt again. He had been waiting for this moment for so many years.

  Lluvia was also taken by surprise. She had repeatedly asked her mother to visit her father but Lucha had stubbornly refused. It was a unique occasion that she had finally appeared at the house, and without notice. Lluvia couldn’t remember her parents speaking to each other since the day she was married, thirty years earlier. For as long as she had been able to reason, she remembered the distance between her parents, they even slept in separate bedrooms. Once, Lluvia had asked her father why they hadn’t divorced. He replied that in those days a man was never granted custody of the children and that he wouldn’t have been able to bear being separated from them. To Lluvia this didn’t sound like sufficient reason, but she hadn’t insisted. Although it seemed odd, she had an inkling that her parents had maintained their strange relationship because of a loving force hidden beneath their apparent distance that continued to draw them together. Whatever the reason, she was thankful for the opportunity she’d had to enjoy her father’s presence at home while she was growing up, although to strangers her parents’ relationship had been a total mystery.

  It was at her wedding that her parents had seen each other for the last time, and now it was in her house that they saw one another again, and Lluvia could only bless the occasion. As soon as she had explained to her mother how her father “spoke” via the computer, Lluvia said to them:

  “Well, I think you two have a lot to talk about.”

  To which her mother replied:

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  Before closing the door, Lluvia managed to hear her mother say to her father:

  “I hate hating you, Júbilo.”

  Chapter 9

  LUCHA ARRIVED A LITTLE late for work, but happier than ever and unaware that it was the last day of complete happiness she would ever have. From that day forward everything would change, but at that hour of the morning nothing seemed wrong. No, more than that, in Lucha’s eyes the world shone even more brightly than usual and glowed warmly with a pinkish hue. She was totally in love with her husband even though they’d been married for ten years. She had never imagined that was possible. Much less that she would still be learning new ways of making love. Júbilo had turned out to be a wonderful sexual partner.

  The previous night they had discovered new positions that didn’t even appear in the Kama Sutra. And through them she had experienced incredible multiple orgasms. A night like that was well worth ten years of financial hardship. None of the little problems Júbilo and Lucha had gone through in their marriage was able to diminish in any way their love for each other. Even Júbilo’s recent inclination to drink didn’t seem like an insurmountable obstacle. Lucha was fully aware it was temporary and that Júbilo relied on it only as a way to forget about his problems, since for a man like him it must be very difficult not to be able to support his family. Some
times Lucha even felt guilty about being so demanding. She only hoped that it was clear to Júbilo she wasn’t interested in money itself, but only in its power to help her provide her family with a decent life.

  She wasn’t the only one who was concerned. Lolita had told Lucha on several occasions that perhaps she was asking too much of Júbilo and criticized her for having so many aspirations. Lucha didn’t take this the wrong way. She knew Lolita had said what she did out of love, that she was guided by her honesty and integrity. Lolita was a patient woman who didn’t expect anything from life. She was always the first to get to the office and the last one to leave. She performed her work quietly. She never acted in an irresponsible or unconventional manner. She was discreet, prudent, timid, modest, and very, very proper. She was so eager to please others that she never made a comment that was out of place: she was driven by an overwhelming fear that people would stop liking her. When she was a young girl, her father had abandoned her and her mother, and she never wanted to be abandoned again. So to avoid it, she was ready to do anything for anybody, to the point of servility. However, her need to please only caused men to run away from her. She never had a novio and she always fell in love with men who couldn’t love her back.

  Lucha loved and respected Lolita very much even though she knew her friend was in love with Júbilo. Lucha didn’t hold this against her. After all, Júbilo was the kindest and most loving person in the world. When the three of them were still working together, Lucha had always been pleased to see the looks Lolita threw at her husband from time to time. It never bothered her, just the opposite, it made her feel proud. Nor did she take it the wrong way when her dear friend defended Júbilo with sword drawn, or that Lolita seemed to be so worried about the situation Lucha and Júbilo found themselves in.