by Michael Nava
On this occasion, she chose to perform her allotted role and brought a simple meal to the table, where the two men sat and ate. In his familiar surroundings, the old man seemed more lucid than he had at Belem when Sarmiento had last seen him, so he raised the subject that had brought him here.
“I have come to ask your counsel, Father, about a woman.”
His father dipped his bread into the garlicky chicken stew they were eating and, without looking up, said, “You are almost thirty. Surely by now you have worked out the basic biology of sexual attraction.”
He reached out and stayed his father’s hand. “I’m serious, father.”
His father stopped eating and looked at him. “All right, speak.”
Commanded to speak, Sarmiento’s words dried up; how could he explain Alicia Gavilán? Sensing his father’s impatience, he blurted out, “I believe I am in love.”
His father frowned. “You are being sentimental. What men call love is a pathological state induced by lust and fantasy. It explains nothing, so if you want my advice, you must present your problem to me rationally.”
This was the father Sarmiento remembered from his childhood who had met Sarmiento’s boyhood crises with cerebral coolness and detachment.
“I have met a woman for whom I feel great affection,” he said, “but she is physically … deformed. I wish to continue to see her, but her family has made it clear that I can only do so as her suitor.” He paused to collect his thoughts. “If I did so, there would the expectation of marriage, but I am not sure I could fulfill my conjugal duties were we to marry. You understand, Father?”
“Of course,” the old man snapped. “You don’t think you could have sexual relations with the woman because of her deformity. Is that it, Miguel?”
“Yes,” he murmured. “But in every other way, we are compatible.”
His father shrugged. “Marry her and seek sexual release elsewhere.”
“And hers?”
“Women are not men,” his father replied. “They endure sexual contact; they do not enjoy it. This lady would probably be grateful if you left her unmolested.”
“Or she would feel humiliated,” Sarmiento replied. “Believing that I find her repulsive.”
His father gulped wine, wiped his mouth, and said, “Well, don’t you?”
Sarmiento closed his eyes and let the question sink into his mind. Love, his father said, was lust and fantasy, and if that was true, he did not love Alicia Gavilán because she was neither the object of physical desire nor a symbol of some unmet need of his. She was real, perhaps the most real human he had ever encountered: kind, humble, generous, humorous, uncertain, vulnerable. There was nothing repulsive in her. To the contrary, she was magnetic. She had drawn him to her not, as other women had, through pretense but by being fully and completely herself.
“No,” he said. “I do not find her repulsive. She is, in fact, beautiful, Father. Perhaps the most beautiful woman I have ever met.”
His father, who had resumed eating, looked up and said, “A moment ago you said she was deformed and now you say she is beautiful. You’re talking nonsense, Miguel. Perhaps you are in love. Marry her and be done with it.”
Sarmiento entered the grand salon of the palace of the Gaviláns expecting to find only Alicia and her mother. Instead, four women sat on the long couch pushed up against the wall, beneath the portraits of the ruff-collared aristocrat and his wife he had noticed the first time he had come. In the center of the couch was La Niña, her small, sharp face and old hands emerging from the flood of black silk. To her right were three women, who, from the similarities of their features, he surmised were Alicia’s sisters. They were dressed in the extravagant style of fashionable ladies, their gowns appearing not so much sewn as confected. Across from the couch were two chairs and between couch and chairs was a low table that held a silver tea service. La Niña issued a curt invitation to sit.
“My daughter will be along presently,” she said. “These are her sisters: Nilda, Leticia, and Eulalia. Daughters, this is Doctor Miguel Sarmiento.” Before he could utter a greeting, the old woman clapped and a maid appeared. “Manuelita, the tea.”
While the maid poured tea into nearly translucent cups, Alicia’s three sisters conversed among themselves as if he were not present, while La Niña gazed at him with her small, sharp eyes.
One of the sisters said, “Your father is the crazy old man who plasters the city with denunciations of our dear President Díaz, no?”
“My father is a distinguished scientist who was once the personal physician to Don Benito Juárez,” he answered stiffly.
“Yes,” the sister—Eulalia—replied gaily. “That’s the man. I hope you are no subversive, Doctor.”
“I have no interest in politics,” he replied.
“How old are you?” the second sister, Leticia, asked politely.
“Twenty-nine, Doña,” he replied.
She lifted her teacup to her lips, paused, and said dubiously, “Twenty-nine. An age when most men are married and well settled into family life.”
“My father also married late,” he said. “It is, perhaps, a family trait. In any event, I’ve been abroad for most of the last decade, immersed in my medical studies.”
The last sister, Nilda, stared at him with frank hostility.
“Is that the only reason you left México? To immerse yourself in your medical studies?” she asked caustically.
“Yes, Doña,” he replied.
“One hears differently,” she said.
He was spared from further conversation with the acerbic sister by Alicia’s arrival. He stood up.
“Doña Alicia,” he said, extending his hand.
She simultaneously smiled and touched her fingertips to his. “Doctor Sarmiento, how kind of you to visit.”
She greeted her sisters. Nilda kissed the air on either side of her face; Leticia grasped her shoulders and kissed her lips; Eulalia gave her a light, affectionate kiss on the forehead.
“Sit beside the doctor,” her mother said. “Manuelita, tea for my daughter.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you arrived,” Alicia said to Sarmiento, but offered no excuse. Her face was bare and unveiled.
“I am very happy you are here now,” he said. “I had the great pleasure of being introduced to your sisters.”
“Good,” she said. “And your family? Your father is well, I hope.”
“Yes, quite well. Thank you.”
Each saw in the other’s eyes questions that neither could ask in this room so they grasped at conversational straws. The conversation moved awkwardly from topic to topic until, at length, La Niña said, “Thank you for coming, Doctor. Alicia, will you see our guest out?”
He rose, bowed to the three sisters, and said, “Enchanted.”
The three women appeared surprised that he was still there.
“Señora Marquesa,” he said, bowing to La Niña. “I am indebted to you for your gracious hospitality.”
She nodded slightly and said formulaically, “My house is your house. Good afternoon.”
They did not speak until the porter was opening the door for Sarmiento to leave.
“Why did you come?” she asked, her voice sad.
“To see you,” he replied. “I hope my company was not unwelcome.”
She shook her head. “This is a charade, Miguel. You cannot keep coming here and pretending—”
“I am not pretending,” he said. “I met a woman of great strength and character and kindness. I came to see that woman.” He smiled. “I will play the bear for you, if that is necessary, and parade beneath your window proclaiming my affection for you for the benefit of your neighbors.”
She did not return his smile but said, “Why would a man like you, handsome and in the prime of his life, court a woman who has nothing to offer but character and kindness? Those are not the qualities in a woman most men want in their bed.”
“You are very frank,” he said, abashed.
/>
“I apologize if my frankness is offensive, but I think we should understand each other.”
He nodded. “You are perfectly correct, so let me be frank in return. I have had enough experience with women to know that the important qualities are not those one takes to bed, but those to which one awakens. Those are your qualities, Doña Alicia.”
For a long moment, the audacity of their conversation rendered them speechless.
“So you think,” she said with a smile, “that I would not enjoy watching you pace beneath my window like a lovelorn boy?’
“Point out your window and I will be there tonight.”
“No need,” she replied. “But you may come back for tea, and I promise my sisters will not be here, although I’m afraid we cannot avoid my mother’s company. Good evening, Miguel.”
“Until we meet again,” he said, and pressed his lips to her fingertips.
As she approached the salon, she heard Nilda, her eldest sister, complain, “What possessed her to appear that way? Did she want to scare him off ?”
Leticia, who always defended her, replied, “He had to see her sometime.”
Eulalia said gaily, “My dear, that’s what the wedding veil is for, to make sure he didn’t see what he was getting until the deal was struck.”
“You are a flock of vicious hens,” her mother hissed.
“Oh, come, Mother,” Eulalia said. “You think there’s something wrong with him, don’t you?”
“Twenty-nine, never married, all those years abroad,” La Niña said. “Yes, there is definitely a story there and it cannot be as innocent as he pretends.”
“Still,” Leticia said, “he is very handsome.”
“Handsome is as handsome does,” La Niña replied. “I’m not going to marry off your sister to a man who might be hiding a dangerous secret.”
Nilda laughed harshly. “Had you applied that standard to us, none of us would ever have married. What is so special about our sister?”
“Marriage is cruel,” La Niña said. “Alicia has suffered enough.”
Alicia, pausing outside the room, listened to their conversation. Marriage is cruel. Was that true of all marriage? Certainly, none of her sisters spoke well of their husbands. Nilda’s man was a cold, acquisitive miser; Leticia was married to a philanderer; Eulalia’s husband, while more amiable toward her than her sisters’ husbands were to them, nonetheless lived so separate a life she rarely knew where he was or with whom. Alicia knew, as her mother only suspected, that Miguel had secrets, but unlike La Niña, she did not believe they were dangerous secrets. Rather, they were secrets that weighed him down with the melancholy that clung to him like a faint miasma comprised of guilt and sorrow. She wanted to believe what he had told her—that he came as her suitor for the good qualities he saw in her—but she could not help wondering whether paying court to her was a kind of expiation for whatever it was he had done that had so wounded him. If this was true, she thought, then surely he would one day awaken from his guilt and sorrow and stare in horror at her and that, she thought, would break her heart. She should end this now, before that happened, and yet, seeing him again had suffused her with happiness, a happiness that belonged to her alone, a happiness she had not felt since the long ago moment when Anselmo had touched her. God have mercy on her. She realized she was being selfish, but she could not bear to give up that happiness. Not yet.
As the weeks passed, Sarmiento returned often to the palace of the Gaviláns and sat with Alicia in the great salon while La Niña pretended to busy herself with an elaborate piece of embroidery. Each visit deepened the certainty of his affection for her. Alicia was the opposite of all the other women whom he had known. Their pleasing appearances had hidden whatever degree of moral disfigurement they suffered while Alicia’s physical disfigurement concealed a luminous heart. Still, the disfigurement of her face was an unavoidable fact and he continued to struggle with the aversion he could not help but feel. The question of whether he could be a husband to her in every sense gnawed at him each time he saw a beautiful woman. He could condemn his superficiality, but he could not deny it—like all men, he was moved by female beauty and driven to possess it. He could dismiss this drive as simple biology, but it was as basic as breathing. He could not set it aside for her, but could he redirect it toward her? That was the question. Was the answer contained in Virgil’s phrase—omnia vincit amor? Could love conquer all? He knew his father would likely dismiss his quandary as mere sentimentality, but he could think of no one else to whom he could present it.
The door to his father’s house was open, and as soon as he stepped into the dark courtyard, he knew something was amiss.
“Papá,” he called, as he stumbled across the patio to the library. “Papá, are you here?”
He smelled the decomposition before he opened the door, and when he entered the library the stink drove him back out. He retched and caught his breath before entering again, lighting matches as he searched for a lamp. When he found one, he lit the wick and followed the smell to the figure on the bed. His father’s face had been gnawed on by rats, and beneath the blanket that covered him, his body was liquefying. He lifted the lamp and saw the room was empty—the books taken along with the pathetic sticks of furniture that his father had salvaged for himself. Furious, he blundered through the house shouting Emilia’s name. His cries echoed in the emptiness. After a few moments, he returned to the library, fell to his knees, and sobbed like a child.
5
Alicia parted the curtain and looked out at the Alameda, filled at twilight with children and lovers strolling beneath the poplar trees that gave the park its name. She and Miguel had been to the park only two weeks earlier. Now that he was her suitor, the gossips could no longer insinuate scandal when they were together although their pairing continued to be mocked. The appellations they had been given were all variations of beauty and the beast; one of them, Perseus and the Gorgon, had reduced her to tears when her sister Nilda had repeated it to her. He was handsome and she was, she sighed, hideous. There were moments when her faith in their bond faltered and she would have ended it with him and returned to her old ways. Except, as the days and weeks had passed and she became accustomed to his presence in her life, she found it more and more difficult to imagine a life without him.
On that Sunday afternoon, he escorted Alicia on the pathways beneath the leafy trees. A band played waltzes in the distance and the park benches were filled with young men dressed in their best suits watching the girls in pastel-colored dresses pass by like a parade of flowers accompanied, always, by a dourly dressed chaperone. Little boys sped recklessly among the pedestrians on roller skates, and out of nowhere, a swarm of men in bowler hats rolled solemnly by on bicycles. Alicia wore a cream-colored lace dress and an enormous hat with a white veil.
“May we sit for a moment, Miguel?” she asked.
“Of course,” he said. He led her to a marble bench and wiped it with his handkerchief. He pointed out that the bench was a gift of the undertaker Eusebio Gayosso.
“Ah,” she said. “I always wondered about the philanthropist who donated the benches to the park. Now I will never be able to look at them again without thinking of tombstones.”
“They were not here when I was a boy,” he said. “Nor the wrought iron gazebos and fences. The park was not so grand then.”
“Did you come here very often?” she asked, hoping to engage him in a rare discussion of his boyhood.
“When I was a school boy I spent many indolent afternoons here with my friends eating bags of sweets we bought at the Dulcería de Celaya,” he replied, his eyes softening with remembrance. “We would sit here and flirt with the girls.” He smiled, patting her hand. “By that I mean we would steal glances at them as they passed and hope against hope that one of them would look back.”
“I’m sure they did, for you.”
He was silent for a moment. “Back then, my schoolmates called me güerito for my green eyes and fair skin, or
sometimes el gachupín. I didn’t mind the first, but the second was a fighting word.”
She nodded. The word was the insult term for a Spaniard. “That was cruel.”
“Cruelty is like breath to boys,” he observed. “But being called that made me feel different, unpleasantly so. I not only looked unlike my friends, I didn’t even sound like them. No doubt you have noticed.”
“Yes, your accent is that of a Spaniard.”
“I acquired it first from my father. He considers himself puro mexicano, but even after decades of living here in México he sounds as if he’s just stepped off the boat from Cadiz. And, of course,” he went on, “living in Europe I was more likely to encounter Spaniards than Mexicans. Speaking to them only hardened my own accent. Even as a boy it was pronounced enough to be a source of amusement to my friends, who teased me about it.”
“I think your accent is charming,” she said.
“Thank you,” he said. “Most people find it grating. In any event, I felt like an outsider, but then I noticed that my appearance and accent also had their advantages when I was with my friends in the park. They could sometimes slow the step of the girls in the Alameda as they passed us and earn me a smile.” He took her hand and smiled. “Silly now to think of how I proud I was when that happened, but it was the first power I had ever known in a life lived in the shadow of my father’s fame.”
“Did you tell him?”
“Yes,” he said, his smile fading. “He said, ‘You amuse yourself on the site of where the Inquisition burned the innocent for no other reason than that they refused to partake of the venality and ignorance of the church.’ After that, my accomplishment in getting a girl to look at me seemed quite petty.”
