Los años con Laura Díaz

by Carlos Fuentes

  How can one separate passion from violence?

  Mexico’s question, Mexico City’s question, was Laura’s answer: yes, after all is said and done, as she walked away from her final meeting with Orlando Ximénez, Laura Díaz could declare, “Yes, I think I’ve managed to separate passion from violence.”

  What I haven’t achieved, she said to herself as she strolled quietly from Niza Street to Plaza Rio de Janeiro along Orizaba Street, the familiar, almost totemic, places of her daily life—the church of the Holy Family, the Chiandoni ice-cream parlor, the department store, the stationery store, the pharmacy, the newspaper stand at the corner of Puebla Street—what I didn’t do was solve those many mysteries, except Orlando’s, which I finally figured out this afternoon. He was waiting for something that never came; to wait for something that would never come was his fate, which he tried to change this afternoon by proposing to me, but fate—experience transformed into fatality—took control again. That was fatal, murmured Laura, sheltered by the sudden splendor of a long, agonic afternoon enamored of its own beauty, a narcissistic afternoon in the Valley of Mexico. She recited one of Jorge Maura’s favorite poems:

  Fortunate the tree, which is barely sensitive,

  more fortunate still the hard stone, because it feels nothing.

  There is no greater pain than the pain of being alive,

  nor any greater sorrow than conscious life …

  This “song of life and hope” by the marvelous Nicaraguan poet Rubén Dario shrouded Laura in its words that August afternoon, clean and clear because of recent rain, when Mexico City recovered for a few seconds the lost promise of its diaphanous beauty.

  The thunderstorm had carried out its punctual chore, and, as Mexico City denizens say, “it cleared up.” On her way home, Laura amused herself reviewing the unsolved mysteries, one by one. Did Armonía Aznar really exist? Had that invisible woman really lived in the attic of the Xalapa house, or was she merely a cover story for the conspiracies of the anarcho-syndicalists from Catalonia and Veracruz? Was she a figment of the young, mischievous, irrepressible imagination of Orlando, Ximénez? I never saw Armonía Aznar’s body, Laura Díaz was surprised to hear herself saying, now that I think about it. I was only told that “it didn’t stink.” Was her grandmother Cosima Reiter really in love with the handsome, brutal outlaw, the Hunk of Papantla, who cut off her fingers and left her self-absorbed for the rest of her days? Did her grandfather Felipe Kelsen ever miss his lost rebel youth in Germany? Did he ever resign himself completely to the fate of being a prosperous coffee grower in Catemaco? Would Aunts Hilda, and Virginia have been more than they were? If they’d been educated in Germany and if they hadn’t had the pretext of isolation in a dark corner of the Mexican forest, would they have been in Düsseldorf a recognized concert pianist and a famous writer? It was no mystery what would have been Auntie María de la O’s life if Grandmother Cosima had not energetically separated her from her mother, the black prostitute, and integrated her into the Kelsen household. The goodness and rectitude of her own father, Don Fernando Díaz, was also no mystery; nor was the pain he bore for the death of the promising young man, the first Santiago, shot by Porfirio Díaz’s soldiers at the Gulf. But Santiago himself was a mystery, the politics he chose by necessity and the private life he chose by act of will. Perhaps the latter was just another myth invented by Orlando. Ximénez to seduce Laura Díaz by exciting her. And what happened at the outset of her husband Juan Francisco’s life, a man who shone with such glory in the public eye for twenty years only to fade away and die defecating? Nothing, nothing before and nothing after the interlude of glory? Born from shit and dying in shit? Was the interlude the entire performance of his life, or something that had happened between the acts? Nothing? Infinitely painful mysteries: if her son Santiago had lived, if the promises of his talent were there, present and fulfilled, if Danton hadn’t had the ambitious genius that led him to wealth and corruption. And if the third Santiago, dead at Tlatelolco, had submitted to the destiny planned by his father, would he be alive today? And his mother, Magdalena Ayub Longoria, what did she think of all this, of these lives which were hers and which she shared with Lauras Díaz?

  Had Harry informed on his left-wing comrades to McCarthy?

  And finally, above all, what had become of Jorge Maura? Was he alive, was he dying, had he already died? Did he find God? Had God found him? Had Jorge Maura sought for spiritual well-being so strenuously only because he’d already found it?

  Arriving at that final mystery, the fate of Jorge Maura, Laura Díaz stopped, granting her lover a privilege she would soon grant to all the other protagonists of the years with Laura Díaz: the right to carry a secret to the grave.

  2.

  When the third Santiago was murdered in the Plaza of the Three Cultures, Laura presumed that the young, pregnant widow, Lourdes Alfaro, would continue to live with her. Lourdes transformed her grief into a decision to honor—twice over—the memory of Santiago. In April 1969 she gave birth to a boy, who was of course named Santiago, the fourth to be named after the Greater Apostle, witness of the agony and transfiguration of the victims: the Santiagos, “sons of the lightning,” descendants of Christ’s first disciple, executed by the power of Herod and saved for love, home, and the memory of Laura Díaz.

  Lourdes did her duty as a mother and—with the infant Santiago in a rebozo on her back—she organized demonstrations to seek the release of political prisoners from 1968, helped other young Tlatelolco widows like herself who had small children who needed nursemaids, medicine, care, and also, Lourdes said to Laura, the living memory of their fathers’ sacrifice. Of course, there were times when the situation was reversed and the fathers were widowers whose young student wives had fallen in Tlatelolco.

  Thus a union of survivors of October 2 came into being. Lourdes met, came to know, and fell in love with a young man who was twenty-six years old. Jesus Anibal Pliego, who was starting out as a filmmaker and had managed to shoot bits and pieces—shadowy fields, blood-red filters, echoes of machine-gun fire—of the night at Tlatelolco. That same night, Jesus Anibal’s young wife had also died, and the widower, a tall, dark, curly-headed young man with a radiant smile and eyes, was left with a little girl just a few months old, Enedina, who was in the same day-care center Lourdes used for her son, the fourth Santiago in the line of Laura Díaz.

  “I have something to tell you, Laura,” Lourdes blurted out after pussyfooting around for several weeks. Lauras, of course, had already guessed everything.

  “You don’t have to tell me anything, dear girl. You’re like my daughter, and I understand everything. I couldn’t think of a better match for you than Jesús Aníbal. You’ve got so much in common. If I were old-fashioned, I’d give you my blessing.”

  They had something more than love in common: work. Lourdes, who had learned a great deal at Laura’s side, could now work more and more with Jesus Aníbal as his photographic assistant. But what Lourdes had to tell Laura was that she, her husband, and the two children—Enedina and Santiago the Fourth—were going to live in Los Angeles. Jesus Aníbal had gotten an excellent offer from an American movie company: in Mexico he had few chances to work because the Díaz Ordaz government had confiscated his Tlatelolco films.

  “You don’t have to explain anything, mi amor. I know how things are.”

  The apartment on Plaza Rio de Janeiro was empty.

  The fourth Santiago barely left a trace in the memory of his great-grandmother. Just saying that word fills me with pride, satisfaction, consolation, and disconsolation, makes me afraid and makes me sad, convinces me in a happy way that I’ve finally managed to kill vanity—I’m a great-grandmother!—but also that I’ve managed to revive death, my own death forever accompanying that of each Santiago—the one shot in Veracruz, the one who died in Mexico City, the one murdered in Tlatelolco, and now the one who’s going to Los Angeles, my little bracero—now I’m going to laugh—my little wetback whom I’ll never get to dry with the towels
my mother Leticia gave me when I married. How certain things last! …

  Living alone was no problem for Laura Díaz,. She kept herself agile, busy, deriving pleasure from little things, like making the bed, washing and hanging out clothes, keeping herself “snappy,” as she said to Orlando, shopping at the new Aurrerá supermarket, just as she’d once gone, a young bride, to the old Parián market on Avenida Alvaro Obregón. Late in the day, she’d inherited from her mother Leticia a taste for cooking. She rescued old Veracruz recipes—rice and beans, the wonderful shredded beef of ropa vieja, tamales in the coastal style, stuffed crabs, squid in its own ink, snapper swimming in a sea of onions, olives, and tomatoes, strong, hot coffee the way they used to serve it in the Café de la Parroquia, hot coffee to keep out the heat, as Doña Leticia. Kelsen de Díaz recommended. And as if it had just arrived from another celebrated café, the one in Almendares Park in Havana, the cloyingly sweet tocinillo del cielo along with the full gamut of Mexican sweets which Laura would buy at the Celaya candy store on Avenida Cinco de Mayo—the bicolored jamoncillos, the marzipans and glazed sweet potatoes; the peaches, pineapples, figs, cherries, and crystallized quince—and for her breakfasts, chilaquiles in green sauce, huevos rancheros, fried tortillas with chicken, lettuce, and fresh cheese, “divorced” eggs (red and green), and, again, all the different kinds of Mexican breads: rolls, biscuits, white bread, the sugar cookies, the conch shells, and chilindrinas.

  She classified her negatives, attended to requests to buy prints of her classic photographs, prepared books, and dared to request prefaces from new writers—Salvador Elizondo, Elena Poniatowska, Margo Glantz, and the youngsters of the Onda movement, José Agustín and Gustavo Saínz. Diego Rivera had died in 1957; Rodriguez Lozano, María Izquierdo, and Alfonso Michel had died, artists she’d known and who had inspired her (the pure, brutal blacks, whites, and grays of the first, the false naivete of the second, the wise shock of each color in the third), and the only two who’d survived, antagonistic but huge, Siqueiros the Big Colonel with fists raised against the celebratory velocity of the world in motion, and Tamayo, handsome, shrewd, and silent, his head just like the volcano Popocatépetl. There wasn’t much to cling to. Unless it was disappearing memory and will. One after another, the guardians of shared memories were disappearing.

  One dry, no longer rainy afternoon during the beautiful Mexican autumn, someone knocked at Laura’s door. When she opened it, she had a hard time identifying the woman in black, the first thing Laura noticed being the dark suit in expensive good taste, as if to call attention to a figure that was attractive without needing attention, such was the faded aspect of the face with no memorable features, not even a trace of lost beauty. The beauty innate in all young women. Even in ugly ones. Here, instead, was an evident pride, concentrated, painful, submitted—that word emanated from the lady’s eyes, uncomfortable eyes, uncertain and troubled beneath thick brows as the unknown visitor emitted an “Oh!” as submissive as the rest of her person and shifted her eyes to the floor in alarm.

  “My contact lens fell out,” said the stranger.

  “Well, let’s find it.” Laura Díaz laughed.

  The two of them, on all fours, felt around on the entry way floor until Laura touched the tiny piece of moist lost plastic with the tip of her index finger. But with her other hand she touched a distant but familiar flesh as she presented the saved lens to Magdalena. Ayub Longoria. I’m Danton’s wife, your daughter-in-law, the woman explained, standing up but not daring to put the lens back in its place while Laura invited her in.

  “Oh, with all this pollution these lenses go coffee-colored right away,” said Magdalena as she put the lens in her Chanel bag.

  “Is something wrong with Danton?” asked Laura, trying to anticipate her.

  A smile fleetingly sketched itself on Magdalena’s face, followed by a strange giggle, almost an involuntary flourish. “There’s nothing wrong … with your son … I mean my husband … there’s never anything wrong with him, Señora, in the sense of anything serious. But you know that. He was born to win.”

  Laura said nothing, but inquired with her eyes, What do you want?, Come on, tell me.

  “I’m afraid, Señora.”

  “Just call me Laura, don’t be formal.”

  Everything in her guest was approximation, doubt, unnecessary expense but perfectly planned to cover appearances, from her hairdo to her shoes. One would have to anticipate her, ask her fear about what, about her husband, about Laura herself, about memory, the memory of her rebellious son, her dead son, her grandson now emigrated, far away from the country where violence held sway over reason and, worse, over passion itself.

  “Afraid of what?” asked Laura.

  They sat down on the blue velvet sofa Laura had been dragging with her since Avenida Sonora, but Magdalena looked around the disordered room, with the piles of magazines, books, papers, newspaper articles, and the photos tacked to cork panels. Laura understood the woman was seeing for the first time the place her son had gone to die. She stared for a long time at the picture of Adam and Eve painted by Santiago the Younger.

  “You must know, Señora.”

  “Just call me Laura, for heaven’s sake.” Laura feigned exasperation.

  “All right. You must understand that I’m not what I seem. I’m not what you think I am. I admire you.”

  “It might have been better if you’d loved and admired your son a bit more,” said Laura with great tranquillity.

  “That’s what you have to understand.”

  “Understand?”

  “You’re right to doubt me. It doesn’t matter. If I can’t share my truth with you, then there’s no one left I can share it with.”

  Laura said nothing but looked at her daughter-in-law attentively and respectfully.

  “Can you imagine how I felt when Santiago was killed?” asked Magda.

  Laura felt a bolt of lightning crossing her face. “I saw you and Dan ton sitting in the presidential box at the Olympics, when your son’s body was not yet cold.”

  Magdalena’s expression was one of supplication. “Imagine my pain, please, Laura, my shame, my fury, how I had to hold everything in, how the habit of serving my husband won out over my pain, my rage, how I ended up as I always do, submitting to my husband …” She looked into Laura’s eyes. “You must understand.”

  “I’ve always tried to imagine what happened between you and Danton when Santiago died,” Laura said, trying to read her mind.

  “That’s the bad part. Nothing happened. He went on with his life as if nothing had happened.”

  “Your son was dead. You were alive.”

  “I was dead long before my son died. For Danton, nothing changed. At least when Santiago rebelled, he lost his illusions. When our son died, well, it was as if he were saying he brought it on himself.”

  Danton’s wife fluttered her hands as if she were tearing away a veil. “Laura, I’ve come to you because I have to unburden myself. I don’t have anyone else. I can’t bear it anymore. I need to open myself up to you. You’re all I have left. Only you can understand everything, the hurt I feel, all the disappointment and pain rotting inside me for so many years.”

  “You’ve stood up pretty well.”

  “Don’t think I don’t have my pride, no matter how submissive you think I am, believe me I never lost the pride I had in myself, I’m a woman, I’m a wife, I’m a mother, I feel pride in being those things, even though Danton hasn’t shared my bed in years, Laura, accept that for just this reason I am furious and I have some pride, despite my submission to the intimidations I’ve endured.”

  She stopped for an instant.

  “I’m not what I seem,” she went on. “I thought only you could understand me.”

  “Why, daughter?” Laura caressed Magda’s hand.

  “Because you’ve lived your life freely. That’s why you can understand me. It’s very simple.”

  Laura was on the verge of saying to her, saying to you, what can I
do for you now that the final curtain’s about to fall, just as it did with Orlando, why does everyone expect me to write the last scene in the play?

  Instead, she lifted Magdalena’s chin and asked, “Do you think there ever was a single minute in your life when you took charge of yourself, alone and completely?”

  “Not me,” Magdalena blurted out. “You did, Laura. We all know that.”

  Laura Díaz smiled. “I’m not saying it about you, Magda. I’m saying it about myself. I’m begging you now to ask me a question. Ask me, Magdalena: were you always equal to your own demands?”

  “No, not me,” stuttered Magdalena. “Obviously not.”

  “No, you don’t understand me,” Laura replied. “Ask me that question. Please.”

  Magdalena pronounced some confused words, you yourself, Laura Díaz, were always equal to your own demands …

  “And those of others,” Laura went on.

  “And those of others.” Magda’s eyes shone, as she began to take flight on her own.

  “Did you ever feel temptation? Did you want to be seen only as a proper lady? Did it ever strike you that the two things could coexist—being a proper lady and, for that very reason, being a corrupt woman?” Laura went on.

  She paused. “Your husband, my son, represents the triumph of fraud.” Laura wanted to be implacable. Magda’s face registered disgust. “He’s always believed that other people’s lives depend on him. I swear to you, I detest him and despise him. Excuse me.” Laura hugged Magda’s head against her bosom. “Did it ever occur to you that the sacrifice of your son redeems Danton from all his sins?”