The Years with Laura Diaz

by Carlos Fuentes

  The sheer size of the modern metropolis makes amorous relationships difficult; no one wants to spend an hour in a bus or car in order to enjoy ninety seconds of sex. The telephone enabled lovers to agree on intermediate rendezvous sites. In Paris, pneumatiques, the quick “petits bleus,” brought couples together; lovers opened those little blue envelopes that might contain all the promises of love with more apprehension than if they were telegrams. But in Mexico, during the year of oil expropriation, the year of the Spanish Republic’s last-ditch defense of Madrid, if lovers didn’t also happen to be neighbors and if one had Ericsson and the other Mexicana, they were doomed to invent bizarre, complex, or, as Orlando said, baroque communication networks.

  Nonetheless, the first communication between them, the first personal message, could not have been more direct. It was, simply, a meeting of eyes. Later, she would say she was predisposed to what happened, but when she saw him, it was as if she’d never thought about him. They did not exchange glances; each anchored their eyes in those of the other. She asked herself, Why is this man different from all the rest? And he answered in silence, the two of them separated by the hundred other guests at the party, because I’m looking only at you.

  “Because he’s looking only at me.”

  She wanted to leave; she was frightened by this attraction, so sudden but also so complete, the novelty of the encounter alarmed her, it disturbed her to imagine the consequences of an approach, she thought about everything that might happen-passion, giving herself, guilt, remorse, her husband, her sons; it wasn’t that all these issues would come afterward; involuntarily, instantaneously, they were coming first; everything entered the present moment, as in one of those living rooms where only family ghosts sat down to talk and, serenely, to judge her.

  She thought of leaving. She was going to flee. He came over to her as if guessing her thoughts and said, “Stay a little longer.”

  They looked directly into each other’s eyes; he was as tall as she, not as tall as her husband, but even before he spoke a word to her, she felt he treated her with respect, and his familiar tone was merely the way Spaniards dealt with one another. His accent was Castilian and his physical appearance, too. He couldn’t have been more than forty, but his hair was quite white, contrasting with the freshness of his skin, which had no notable wrinkles except in his brow. His eyes, his white smile, his straight profile, his courteous but impassioned eyes. His very white complexion, his very black eyes. She wanted to see herself as he saw her.

  “Stay a little longer.”

  “You’re the boss,” she said impulsively.

  “No.” He laughed. “I’m making a suggestion.”

  From the first instant, she conceded three virtues to the man: reserve, discretion, and independence, together with impeccable social graces. He wasn’t an upper-class Mexican like so many of those she’d met at the hacienda in San Cayetano or at Carmen Cortina’s cocktail parties. He was a wellborn Spaniard, but in his eyes there was melancholy and in his body a disquiet that fascinated and disturbed her, invited her to penetrate a mystery, and she wondered if this might not be the subtlest trick of a Spanish hidalgo (as she quickly nicknamed him): to present oneself to the world as an enigma.

  She tried to penetrate the man’s gaze, his eyes sunk deep in his skull, near the bone, near the brain. The white hair lightened his dark eyes, the same way that here in Mexico it lightens mestizo faces. A dark young man could, with white hair, become a paper-colored old man, as if time had faded his skin.

  The hidalgo made her a present of a look that combined adoration with fate. That night, together in bed in the L’Escargot Hotel facing the Parque de la Lama, the two of them caressing each other slowly, over and over, cheeks, hair, temples, he asked her to envy him because he could see her face from various perspectives and, above all, illuminated by the minutes they spent together. What does the light do to a woman’s face, how does a woman’s face depend on the time of day, the light of dawn, morning, midday, sunset, nighttime, what does the light that faces her, outlines her, surprises her from below or crowns her from above, attacks her brutally and without warning in broad daylight or caresses her softly in the half light, what does it say to her face? he asked her, but she had no answers, no wish to have answers, she felt admired and envied because in bed he asked all the questions that she always wanted a man to ask, knowing they were the questions that all women want to be asked at least once in their lives by just one man.

  She no longer thought about minutes or hours, she lived with him, beginning that night, in a time without time of amorous passion, a whirlwind of time that dispensed with all the other concerns of life. All the forgotten scenes. Although at dawn on that night, she feared that the time with him, this night with him, had devoured all the previous moments of her life and had also swallowed up this one. She clung to the man’s body, clasped it with the tenacity of ivy, imagining herself without him, absent but unforgettable, saw herself in that possible but totally undesired moment when he would no longer be there even if the memory of him was; the man would no longer be with her but his memory would be with her forever. That was the price she paid from that moment on, and she was pleased, thought it cheap in comparison with the plenitude of the instant. She could not keep from asking herself, in anguish, What does this face, these eyes, this voice without beginning or end mean? From the first moment, she never wanted to lose him.

  “Why are you so different from the rest?”

  “Because I look only at you.”

  She loved the silence that followed sex. She loved that silence right from the first time. It was the hoped-for promise of a shared solitude. She loved the place they’d chosen because it was at the same time a predestined place. The place of lovers. A hotel next to the shady, cool, and secret park within the city. That was how she wanted it. A place that might always be unknown, a mysterious sensuality in a place that everyone but lovers takes to be normal. For all time, she loved the shape of her man’s body, svelte but strong, well proportioned and passionate, discreet and savage, as if the body of the man were a mirror of transformations, an imaginary duel between the creator god and his inevitable beast. Or the animal and the divinity that inhabit us. She’d never known such sudden metamorphoses, from passion to repose, from tranquillity to fire, from serenity to excess. A moist, fertile couple one for the other, each one endlessly divining the other. She told him she would have recognized him anywhere.

  “Even feeling around in the dark?”

  She nodded. Their bodies joined once again in the free obedience of passion. Outside it was growing light; the park surrounded the hotel with a guard of weeping willows, and one could get lost in the labyrinths of high hedges and even higher trees, whose whispering voices were disorienting and could make anyone lose their way with the sound of rustling leaves in lovers’ ears, so far away from what would come next, so close to what was absent.

  “How long has it been since you’ve spent a night away from home?”

  “Never, since I came back.”

  “Are you going to give an excuse?”

  “I think so.”

  “Are you married?”

  “Yes.”

  “What excuse will you give?”

  “That I spent the night with Frida.”

  “Do you have to explain?”

  “I have two boys.”

  “Do you know the English saying ‘Never complain, never explain’?”

  “I think that’s my problem.”

  “Explaining or not?”

  “I’m going to feel badly about myself if I don’t tell the truth. But I’ll hurt everyone if I do.”

  “Haven’t you thought that what’s between you and me is part of our intimate life, and no one has to know about it?”

  “Are you saying it’s for the two of us? Do you have to keep quiet or talk?”

  “No, I’m only asking you if you know that a married woman can conquer a man.”

  “The good thing is that
Frida’s telephone is Mexicana and ours is Ericsson. It would be hard for my husband to keep track of my movements.”

  He laughed at the telephone complication, but she did not want to ask him if he was married, if he had a sweetheart. She heard him say that a married woman can conquer a man who isn’t her husband, a married woman can go on conquering men, and his words alone were enough to cause an exciting disturbance, almost an unstated temptation, that threw her back into his strong, slim arms, the dark hair around the sex, the hungry lips of the Spaniard, her hidalgo, her lover, her shared man, she realized immediately, he knew she was married, but she in turn imagined he had another woman, except that she could not manage to understand this intuition of another woman, to visualize her, what kind of relationship would Jorge Maura have with the woman who was and was not there?

  Laura D az opted for cowardice. He didn’t tell her who the other woman was or what she was like. She did tell him who her husband was and what he was like, but she wouldn’t say a word to Juan Francisco until Jorge told her about the other woman. Her new lover (Orlando strolled down the street of her memory) was a two-story man. At the entrance to the house, he was reserved, discreet, and comported himself impeccably. Upstairs he was a man who gave of himself, an open man, holding back nothing at all for the time of love. She could not resist the combination, this complete way of being a man both serene and impassioned, open and secret, discreet while clothed, indiscreet when naked. She admitted she’d always wanted a man like that. Here he was, finally, desired forever or invented right now but revealing an eternal desire.

  Looking from the hotel window toward the park that first shared dawn, Laura D az had the conviction that for the first time she and a man were going to see each other and know each other without having to say anything, without explanations or superfluous calculations. Each one would understand everything. Each shared instant would bring them closer together.

  Jorge kissed her again, as if he’d divined her completely, mind and body. She could not tear herself away from him, from the flesh, from the body coupled to her own, she wanted to measure and retain her orgasm, she was proclaiming as hers the looks she shared during the orgasm, she wanted all the couples in the world to have as much pleasure as she and Maura had in those moments, it was her most universal, most fervent desire. No man, ever, instead of closing his eyes or turning aside his face, had ever looked into her eyes during his orgasm, wagering that by the mere act of having the two of them see each other’s faces they would come at the same time. And that’s how it happened each time: with their impassioned but conscious looks, they named each other man and woman, woman and man, who make love face to face, the only animals who have sex face to face, seeing each other, look at my open eyes, nothing excites me more than seeing you seeing me, the orgasm became part of the gaze, the gaze into the soul of the orgasm, any other position, any other answer remained a temptation, temptation subdued became the promise of the true, the best, and the next excitement of the lovers.

  To face each other and open their eyes when they both came together.

  “Let’s desire this for all the lovers of the world, Jorge.”

  “For everyone, Laura my love.”

  Now he was pacing around the disorder of the hotel room like a cat. She had never seen so much paper tossed around, so many portfolios opened, so much disorder in a man so beautiful and well ordered in everything else. It was as if Jorge Maura did not like the paperwork, as if he were carrying in his briefcases something he could toss aside, something disagreeable, possibly poisonous. He didn’t close up his portfolios, as if he wanted to air them or as if he were hoping that the papers would fly off or an indiscreet chambermaid would read them.

  “She wouldn’t understand any of it,” he said with a bitter smile.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I hope things work out for the best.”

  Laura went back to being the way she was before, but as she never was with him: languid, timid, careless, doting, strong. She went back to that because she knew what would defeat the pulse of desire, and desire could destroy pleasure itself, could become demanding, thoughtless about the woman’s limits and the man’s, making couples become too conscious of their happiness. That is why she was going to introduce the theme of daily life, to calm the destructive tempest which had, since the first night, fatally accompanied pleasure, secretly frightening them. But she did not have to; he anticipated her. Did he really anticipate her, or was it foreseeable that one of the two would descend from passion to action?

  Jorge Maura was in Mexico as a representative of the Spanish Republic, which by March 1938 had been reduced to the enclaves of Madrid and Barcelona and, in the south, the Mediterranean territory of Valencia. The Mexican government, under Lázaro Cárdenas, had given diplomatic aid to the Republicans, but this ethical action could not equal the crushing material assistance given to the rebel Francisco Franco by the Nazi and fascist regimes. Nor could it make up for the cowardly abandonment of the Republic by the European democracies: England and France. Berlin and Rome intervened with all their strength in favor of Franco, while Paris and London turned their backs on the “child Republic,” as María Zambrano called it. The tiny flower of Spanish democracy was trampled by everyone, its friends, its enemies, and, at times, its supporters.

  Laura Díaz told Jorge she wanted to be everything with him, share everything, know everything, that she was in love with him, madly in love.

  Jorge Maura’s expression did not change when he heard her declaration, and Laura did not understand if it was part of his seriousness to listen to her without a word or if the hidalgo was only pausing before beginning his story. Perhaps a bit of both. He wanted her to listen before making any decisions.

  “I swear I’ll die if I don’t know everything about you,” she ventured in turn.

  Thinking about Spain locked him within himself. He said that Spain for the Spaniards is like Mexico for Mexicans, a painful obsession. Not a hymn of optimism, as their country is for Americans, not a phlegmatic joke as it is for the English, not a sentimental madness (Russians), not a reasonable irony (French), not an aggressive command, as Germans see theirs, but a conflict of halves, of opposed parts, of tugs at the soul-Spain and Mexico, countries of light and shadow.

  He began by telling stories, with no commentary, while the two of them strolled among the hedges and pines of the Parque de la Lama. The first thing he told her was how shocked he was at the resemblance between Mexico and Castile. Why had the Spaniards chosen a plateau so like Castile as the site of their first and principal viceroyalty in the New World?

  He was looking at the dry land, the gray brown mountains, the snowy peaks, the cold transparent air, the desolation of the roads, the burros and bare feet, the women dressed in black and covered with shawls, the dignity of the beggars, the beauty of the children, the floral compensation and culinary abundance of two countries dying of hunger. He visited the oases, like this one, of refreshing vegetation, and he felt that he hadn’t changed places, or that he was ubiquitous, and not only physically but. historically because being born Spanish or Mexican transforms experience into destiny.

  He loved her and wanted her to know everything about him. Everything about the war and how he lived it. He was a soldier. He obeyed orders. But he rebelled first, the better to obey later on. Because of his social origin, the government first thought to use him on diplomatic missions. He was a descendant of the first reform minister at the turn of the century, Antonio Maura y Montaner; he’d been a disciple of Ortega y Gasset; he’d graduated from the University of Freiburg in Germany: he wanted first to live the war in order to know the truth and then to defend it and negotiate for it if necessary, but first to know it. The truth of experience first. The truth of conclusions later. Experience and conclusion, he told Laura, those are perhaps the complete truth, until the conclusion itself is negated by other experiences.

  “I don’t know. I have an immense faith and an immense doubt at the sam
e time. I think certitude is the goal of thought. And I always fear that any system we help to build will end up destroying us. It isn’t easy.”

  He fought in the battles at the Jarama River during the winter of 1937. What did he recall of those days? Physical sensations above all. The mist that came out of your mouth. The frozen wind that emptied your eyes. Where are we? That’s the most disconcerting thing in war. You don’t know exactly where you are. A soldier doesn’t carry a map in his head. I didn’t know where I was. We were ordered to execute flanking movements, advances into nothingness, then to scatter so the bombs wouldn’t kill us. That was the biggest confusion in battle. Cold and hunger were constant. The people were always different. It was hard to fix a face or a phrase beyond the day you saw or heard it. Which is why I decided to concentrate on a single person, so the war would have a face, but above all to have company. In order not to be alone in the war. So alone.

  I remember I saw a pretty girl one day wearing blue overalls. She had the face of a nun, but she shouted the worst obscenities I’ve ever heard in my life. I’ll always remember her because I never saw her again. Her hair was so black it seemed as blue as midnight. Her thick eyebrows met in a frown of rage. She had a bandage on her nose, and not even that would hide her profile-like that of a wild eagle. But her constant litany of insults camouflaged the prayer she recited silently. Of that I was so convinced that I communicated it to her with my eyes. She understood, got upset, spouted a couple of curses at me, and I answered “Amen.” She was as white as a nun who’s never seen the sun and had whiskers like the women of Galicia. She was pretty for all that, because of all that. Her language was a challenge, not only to the fascists but to death itself. Franco and death were a couple, two big sons of bitches. Sometimes the image of the beautiful woman with the pale blue overalls and the night-blue hair threatens to fade. He laughed. I needed someone as different from her as you are to remember her today. No, both of you were or are tall women.