Ah, she said, so it’s today, I had a suspicion that today was yesterday, it happens to me quite often, not to mention those times when I’m sure it’s tomorrow. Sit down, sweetheart, you wanted to talk to me? Ah, her, the child, her name is Dolores, I want to underline the fact that she’s been a deaf-mute since birth, the sisters of Good Counsel dug her up for me, God rest their souls, now you’ll understand why I have a devotion to them that at times must seem excessive.
She must have had a suspicion that her reasoning might not be completely comprehensible. She conceded a rapid explanation.
Well, never have your hair combed by someone who has the power of speech, that’s obvious. Why don’t you sit down?
The young Bride didn’t sit down, because she hadn’t imagined anything like this and for the moment she had no other ideas except to get out of the room and start again from the beginning. She held her book under her arm: it had seemed to her a way of getting straight to the problem. But the Mother didn’t even seem to have seen it. It was odd, because in that house a human with a book in hand should have leaped to the eye at least as readily as an old woman who showed up at the evening rosary with a crossbow under her arm. In the young Bride’s mind the plan was to enter that room with Don Quixote in plain sight, and, in the span of time that the Mother’s presumed surprise would give her, utter the following sentence: It can’t hurt anyone, it’s wonderful, and I wouldn’t want to stay in this house without telling someone that I read it every day. Can I say that to you?
It wasn’t a bad plan.
But now the Mother was like an apparition, and to the young Bride it seemed that there was something much more urgent to resolve in that room.
So she sat down. She placed Don Quixote on the floor and sat down.
The Mother turned her chair to get a better look at her, and Dolores moved with her, finding a position in which she could continue her patient activity. Not only was she a deaf-mute; she was also nearly invisible. The Mother seemed to have with her the same relationship she might have maintained with a shawl she had thrown over her shoulders.
No, she said, you’re not ugly. Something happened. Years ago you were, frankly, too ugly to look at—surely you’ll explain to me what went through your head or what you expected to gain by ruining yourself like that, in what is undoubtedly a form of unjustified discourtesy toward the world, a discourtesy to avoid, believe me, so useless, the waste . . . but there is no wealth without waste, it seems, so it’s not worth the trouble to . . . In any case what I mean to say is that you’re not ugly, not at all, now I imagine it would be a matter of becoming beautiful, in some way, you must have thought about it, I imagine, you won’t spend your life in this state, a weak broth, good heavens, you’re eighteen years old . . . you’re eighteen, right? yes, you’re eighteen, well, frankly, at that age one can’t be truly beautiful, but it’s at least obligatory to be outrageously desirable, there should be no doubt about that, and now if I ask myself if you’re outrageously adorable, or maybe I said desirable, yes, probably I said desirable, it’s more precise, if I ask myself, then . . . get up a moment, sweetheart, do me a favor, there, thank you, sit down again, it’s clear, the answer is no, you’re not outrageously desirable, sad to say, but so many things are sad, you certainly must have noticed how many things are saddening if you only . . . but the earth looks different seen from the moon, don’t you think? I think so, I’ve been led to believe it, and so for that reason I don’t think it’s necessary to . . . despair may be a little strong . . . become melancholy, there, certainly there’s no reason to become melancholy, I wouldn’t want to see you melancholy, it’s not important, in the end it’s just a decision, you see, you should give in to the idea, and stop putting up resistance, I think you should decide to be beautiful, that’s it, maybe without expecting too much, the Son is arriving, if I were you I’d hurry, he could arrive at any moment, he can’t continue to send rams and toothed wheels forever . . . although now it occurs to me that perhaps you came to ask me something, or am I mixing you up with someone else, there are so many people who want things, the number of people who want something from you is oddly . . . you came to ask me something, sweetheart?
Yes.
What?
How to do it.
How to do what?
To be beautiful.
Ah.
She handed Dolores a comb, the way she might have readjusted the shawl that had slid off one shoulder. The child took it and continued her work with that. Probably it had a particular millimetric alignment of teeth that in that specific phase of the operation had proved to be necessary. Maybe even the material it was made of had its importance. Bone.
In general it’s a business that takes years, said the Mother.
It seems that I am in some hurry, said the young Bride.
Indisputably.
I can learn quickly.
I don’t know. Maybe. Do you not like to put up your hair? said the Mother. Gathered in a bun, at the nape.
The young Bride did it.
What’s that? asked the Mother.
I put up my hair.
Exactly.
That’s what I was supposed to do.
You don’t gather your hair at the nape to gather stupid hair at a stupid nape.
No?
Try again.
The young Bride tried again.
Sweetheart, will you look at me? Look at me. So, the sole purpose of putting up your hair, gathering it at the nape, is to take men’s breath away, to remind whoever is around at that moment, with the simple force of that gesture, that whatever they are doing at that moment is tremendously inadequate because, as they remembered the exact instant they saw you twist your hair at the nape of your neck, there is only one thing they truly desire in life: to fuck.
Really?
Of course, they want nothing else.
No, I mean, you really put your hair up to . . .
Oh Lord, you can also do it as if you were tying your shoes, many women do, but we’re talking about something else, I think, no? About being beautiful.
Yes.
There.
So the young Bride loosened her hair, was silent for a moment, then gathered it in her hand again and slowly lifted it, twisting it at her nape and pinning it in a soft knot, ending the action by arranging behind her ears the two locks that, on either side of her face, had escaped the operation. Then she rested her hands in her lap.
Well . . .
Did I forget something?
You have a back. Use it.
When?
Always. Start again from the beginning.
The young Bride bent her head forward slightly and brought her hands to her neck to undo the hair that she had just arranged.
Stop. Does your neck itch, by chance?
No.
Strange, one lowers the head to scratch.
And so?
Head tilted back slightly, thank you. Like that, very good. Now toss your head gently two or three times while your hands undo the knot, and that will inevitably lead you to arch your back in what for any male present will signify a kind of announcement, or promise. Stop there. You feel your back?
Yes.
Now bring your hands to your forehead and gather up all the hair, carefully, more carefully than necessary, then throw your head straight back and, running your hands over your head, clasp the hair tight at the nape so that it falls gracefully. The lower down you hold on to it the more your back will arch, and you’ll assume the correct position.
Like that?
More.
It hurts.
Nonsense. The farther back the arms go, the farther forward the bosom is thrust and the more the back arches. There, like that, eyes up, stop. Can you see yourself?
With my eyes up . . .
Feel, I mean, can you feel what po
sition you’re in?
Yes. I think so.
It’s not an ordinary position.
It’s uncomfortable.
It’s a position in which a woman takes pleasure, according to the rather limited imagination of men.
Ah.
From here on, it’s all simpler. Don’t be stingy with the rotation of the neck, and draw this hair up, knotting it as you like. It’s as if you had opened your robe and now you’re closing it, simple. A robe with nothing under it, I mean.
The young Bride closed her robe with a certain elegance.
Don’t forget to always let some hair escape: adjusting it at the last minute with some vaguely imprecise gesture gives a childish touch that’s reassuring. To men, not to hair. There, like that, you’re coming along well, I have to admit.
Thank you.
Now from the beginning.
From the beginning?
The idea is to do it not as if you had to lift up a kneading trough in the kitchen, but as if it were the thing you wanted to do most in the world. It can’t really function if you’re not the first to get excited.
Me?
You know what we’re talking about, right?
I think so.
Get excited. It will happen to you, I hope.
Not while I’m fixing my hair.
That’s exactly the mistake we’re trying to correct.
Right.
Ready?
I’m not sure.
Maybe a little review will help you.
In what sense?
The Mother gestured imperceptibly, and Dolores stopped combing and took two steps back. If before she had been close to invisible, in that second she seemed to disappear. Then the Mother drew a brief sigh and, simply, pulled up her hair and slowly arranged it at the nape of her neck, in what to the young Bride seemed an implausibly expanded moment. She had the irrational impression that the Mother had undressed for her, and had done so for a mysterious length of time, sufficient to arouse desire but so limited as to prevent any memory of it. It was like having seen her naked forever and having never seen her at all.
Naturally, the Mother added, the effect is more devastating if after performing the act you are skillful enough to speak on trivial subjects, like the seasoning of cured meats, the death of some relative, or the state of the roads in the countryside. We needn’t give the impression that we’re really trying, you understand?
Yes.
Good, your turn.
I don’t think . . .
Nonsense, just do it.
In a second . . .
Do it. Think that you are eighteen years old. You’ve won before you started. They’ve wanted you for at least three years. It’s just a matter of reminding them.
All right.
The young Bride thought that she was eighteen, that she had won before she started, that they had wanted her for at least three years, and that she no longer remembered even the plot of Don Quixote. An incomprehensibly expanded moment passed, and at the end she was there, her hair gathered at the nape of her neck, her chin slightly raised and in her eyes a gaze that she didn’t remember ever having had before.
The Mother was silent for a while, looking at her.
She was thinking of the Son, of that long silence, and his words: her mouth.
She tilted her head slightly, to observe better.
The young Bride remained motionless.
Her mouth was half-closed.
Did you like it? the Mother asked.
Yes.
It’s a matter of how much you liked it.
Is there a way to know?
Yes. If you truly liked it, you’ll now have a great desire to make love.
The young Bride tried to find an answer somewhere, in herself.
Well? the Mother asked.
I think so.
You think?
I have a great desire to make love, yes.
The Mother smiled. Then she shrugged her shoulders imperceptibly, lifting them an infinitesimal amount.
She must have made an invisible gesture, in an invisible moment, because there was no trace of Dolores in the room; some equally invisible door had swallowed her up.
Then come here, said the Mother.
The young Bride approached and stood in front of her.
The Mother stuck a hand under her skirt, shifted her underpants aside, and opened her sex, slowly, with one finger.
Yes, she said, you have the desire to.
Then she withdrew her hand and placed the finger on the lips of the young Bride, thinking again about what her Son had told her, so long ago. She ran her finger over the young Bride’s lips and then pushed it between them until she touched her tongue.
It’s your taste, learn to recognize it, she said.
The young Bride licked.
No, taste it.
The young Bride did, and the Mother began to understand what her Son had wanted to tell her, that time. She withdrew her finger, as if it had been burned.
Now you do it, she said.
The young Bride wasn’t sure she understood. She stuck a hand under her skirt.
No, said the Mother.
Then the young Bride understood, and she had to bend over to put her hand under the Mother’s dress, which was almost floor-length. The Mother parted her thighs slightly, and the young Bride slid her hand over the skin and found the sex without encountering anything else. She found it with her fingers. She moved them a little, then took her hand away. She looked at it. The fingers were shiny. The Mother gestured and she obeyed, sliding the fingers between her lips, sucking them slowly.
The Mother let her, before saying:
Let me taste, too.
She leaned forward a little, she didn’t close her eyes, and she kissed that mouth, because she wanted to and because she would never miss a single chance to understand the mystery of her beloved Son. With her tongue she went to recover two things that were hers, that came from her womb.
She broke off for a moment.
Yes, she said.
Then again with my tongue I part the lips of the young Bride.
Now, so many years later, now that the Mother is no longer, I am still surprised by the lucidity with which she did everything. I mean, she was fantastic, by day, in her continuous raving, lost to herself, wandering in her words, inscrutable in her syllogisms. But I realize, in the vague clarity of the memory, how, from the moment we approached each other, just to talk about beauty, everything changed in her, and in the direction of absolute mastery, which began in the words and overflowed into actions. When I said that to her, at a certain point during the night, she stopped caressing me for a moment and whispered Baudelaire’s “Albatross,” read it, since you read, and only long afterward, when in fact I read it, did I understand that she was a solemn animal when she flew in her body or that of others, and an awkward bird at any other time—and this was what was marvelous about her. I recall that I blushed, when she uttered that sentence, because I felt we were discovered, I and my Don Quixote, and so I blushed, in the near-dark of the room, and this still today seems to me so ridiculous, to blush because of a book while a woman older than me, whom I barely knew, was licking my skin, and I was letting her, without blushing, without the least shame. She took away any shame, you see. She talked to me the entire time, while she guided my hands, and moved hers, she talked to me slowly, in the rhythm that using her mouth on me or using it to talk to me gave her, a rhythm that I later sought in all the men I had, but never found again. She explained to me that often love had nothing to do with all that, or at least she wasn’t aware that it did very often. It was rather an animal thing, which had to do with the salvation of bodies. She told me that if only you avoid giving too sentimental a meaning to what you’re doing, then every detail becomes a secret to
extort, and every corner of the body an irresistible call. I remember that the entire time she kept telling me about men’s bodies, and their primitive way of desiring, so that it was clear to me that although that mixing of our symmetrical bodies was delightful, what she wanted to give me was only a fiction that would help me at the right moment not to lose anything of what a man’s body could offer. She taught me that one needn’t be afraid of smells and tastes—they are the salt of the earth—and she explained to me that faces change during sex, the features change, and it would be a pity not to understand that, because with a man inside, moving on him, you can read his whole life in his face, from the child to the dying old man, and it’s a book that at that moment he can’t close. From her I learned to start by licking, contrary to every handbook of love, because it’s a gesture that’s servile and regal, of enslavement and of possession, shameful and courageous—And I don’t mean you have to lick his sex right away, she pointed out, it’s the skin you have to lick, hands, eyelids, throat—don’t think it’s a humiliation, you have to do it like a queen, an animal queen. She explained that one needn’t be afraid to talk, making love, because the voice we have when we make love is what is most secret in us and the words we’re capable of the only shocking, final, total nudity available to us. She said not to pretend, ever, it’s only effortful—she added that you can do everything, or anyway much more than what you might believe you want to, and yet vulgarity exists, and kills pleasure, and she was insistent that I stay far away from it. Every so often, she said to me, men close their eyes and smile while they’re doing it: love those men, she said. Every so often they open their arms wide and surrender: love them, too. Don’t love men who cry when they make love, beware of those who take off their clothes themselves the first time—taking off their clothes is a pleasure that is yours. She talked, and didn’t stop for a moment, something in her body was always looking for me, because, she explained to me, making love is an endless attempt to find a position in which to merge with the other, a position that doesn’t exist, but looking for it exists, and knowing how to look is an art. With her teeth, with her hands, she hurt me, sometimes, squeezing or biting or putting into her movements an almost cruel force, until she told me that she didn’t know why but that, too, had to do with pleasure, so you needn’t be afraid to bite or squeeze or use force, although the secret was to know how to do it with legible transparency, so he’ll know that you know what you’re doing, and that you’re doing it for him. She taught me that only idiots have sex in order to come. You know what come means, right? she asked me. I told her about the Daughter, I don’t know why, I told her everything. She smiled. We’ve moved on to secrets, she said. Then she told me that for years she had made men wild because she refused to come when she made love. At a certain point she broke off, crouched in a corner of the bed, and came alone, touching herself. They went into a rage, she said. I remember I asked some of them to do the same, too. When I felt a kind of final weariness, I pulled away and said Touch yourself. Go on. It’s lovely to see them come, in front of you, without even touching them. Once, only once, she said, I was with a man I liked so much that at the end, without even saying anything to each other, we separated and, looking at each other, from a distance, not too great, we touched ourselves, each alone, but looking at the other, until we came. Then she was quiet for a long time, taking my head in her hands and pushing it gently where she wanted to feel my mouth, on her throat, then farther down, and wherever she wanted. But it’s one of the few things I remember distinctly, in sequence, because the rest of the night now seems to me, as I let it return in memory, a lake without beginning or end, where every reflection still shines, but every shore is lost, and the breeze is illegible. I know, however, that I didn’t have hands, before that lake, nor had I ever breathed like that, together with someone else, or lost my body in a skin that wasn’t mine. I can remember when she put a hand over my eyes and asked me to open my legs, and I’ve often seen again, in the strangest moments, the gesture with which every so often she put her hand between her sex and my mouth, to stop something I don’t know: she kept her palm on my mouth, the back of the hand on her sex. I owe to that night all the innocence that I later spent in many acts of love, to emerge from them pure, and I owe to that woman the certainty that unhappy sex is the only waste that makes us worse. She was slow in doing, childish and solemn, magnificent when she laughed with pleasure, and desirable in each of her desires. I don’t have in my weary memory the last words she said, and I regret that. I remember that I fell asleep in her hair.
The Young Bride Page 7
