Years With Laura Diaz, The

by Carlos Fuentes

  “But how does she live, how does she eat?”

  “The bank gives her everything she needs, telling her the money comes from her comrades in Barcelona.”

  “Is she crazy?”

  “No, just stubborn. She thinks her dreams are realities.”

  Laura disliked Doña Armona because, without knowing it, she became a rival for Santiago: she was depriving the young man of a place in the new house.

  Armona Aznar—no one ever saw her—disappeared from Laura’s mind when she went to the Misses Ramos’ school. These cultured but impoverished young women ran the best private school in Xalapa, the first, besides, to be open to both sexes. Although they weren’t twins, the Misses Ramos dressed, wore their hair, spoke, and moved in exactly the same way, so everyone thought they were twins.

  “Why would anyone believe that, when all you have to do is look at them to see how different they are?” Laura asked her deskmate Elizabeth Garcia.

  “Because they want us to see them that way,” answered the radiant blond girl, who always wore white and who, in Laura’s eyes, was either very stupid or very clever. It was impossible to know for certain if she pretended to be a fool because she was secretive or if she pretended to be intelligent to hide her stupidity. “Just figure it out. Between the two of them they know more than either one alone. But when you put them together, the one who knows music also turns out to be a mathematician, and the one who recites poetry can also describe heart murmurs. Laura, just think: poets talk about the heart this and the heart that, and it turns out the heart is nothing more than a rather unreliable muscle.”

  Laura decided she would devise a way to tell the Misses Ramos apart, seeing as how one was one and the other was the opposite, but when it came time to make the distinctions Laura got confused and became mute, wondering: Suppose they truly are one and the same, and both know everything, like the Encyclopaedia Britannica Papa has in his library?

  Suppose they say they are the misses but they’re actually just one miss? insisted Elizabeth another day, with a perverse smile. Laura said that then it was a mystery like the Holy Trinity. You simply had to believe in it without knowing anything more. Similarly the Misses Ramos were one who was two who was one, and that was that.

  It was hard for Laura to resign herself to this faith, and she wondered if Santiago would have accepted the fiction of the duplicated and united teachers or if, daringly, he would have turned up at night at their house to catch them by surprise in their nightgowns and ascertain that there were two of them. Because at school they both took care never to appear together at the same time. This was the source—intentional or accidental, who knows?—of the mystery. And Santiago would also have climbed the creaking stairs to the attic over the coach house or, as people were now beginning to say, the garage. Yet in Xalapa, even at this late date, no one had yet seen a horseless carriage, an “auto-mobile.” Besides, the colonial roads wouldn’t have allowed motor traffic. The train and the horse were enough to traverse the earth, in the opinion of the writer, Doña Virginia, and if it was the sea, then a ship of war, as that song the rebels sang had it …

  “And the stagecoach, when Grandmother’s fingers were cut off.”

  The horses and trains of the Revolution had passed though Xalapa but almost without noticing. Those bands of men had the port as their goal, and the Veracruz customs house. It was there they could control the flow of money as well as feed and clothe the troops, not to mention the symbolic value of owning the alternate capital of the country, the place where rebel or constitutional powers established themselves to challenge the government in Mexico City: me, not you. Veracruz had been occupied by the United States Marine Corps in April 1914 in order to put pressure on the dictator, Victoriano Huerta, the murderer of the democrat Madero, for whom young Santiago had given his life. “What fools these Yankees are,” said Don Fernando the Anglophile. “Instead of bringing down Huerta, they transform him into the knight of national independence against the gringos. Who would dare fight against a Latin American dictator, no matter how sinister, when the United States is attacking him? Huerta has used the occupation of Veracruz as a pretext to intensify his conscription of troops, saying his pelones, his ‘bald boys,’ are going to Veracruz to go up against the Yankees, when in fact he’s sending them north to fight Pancho Villa and south against Zapata.”

  The young students of the Xalapa Preparatory School mustered in their French kepis and their navy blue uniforms with gold buttons and marched off with their rifles toward Veracruz to fight the gringos. They didn’t get there on time. Huerta fell, and the gringos withdrew; Villa and Zapata battled Carranza, the Maximum Leader of Mexico’s revolution, and occupied Mexico City; Carranza took refuge in Veracruz until the fearsome General Alvaro Obregon defeated Villa at Celaya in April 1915 and retook Mexico City.

  All this passed through Xalapa, sometimes as rumor, sometimes as news; as songs sung as corridos and ballads when newsprint was under embargo; and only once as a cavalry charge accompanied by shouts and crackling rifle fire from some rebel group. Leticia closed the windows, threw Laura to the floor and covered her with the mattress. By 1915, it seemed that peace was returning to Mexico, but the habits of the small provincial capital hadn’t been much disturbed.

  Rumors reached them of a great famine in Mexico City, when the rest of the nation, convulsed and self-regarding, forgot about the luxurious and egoistic capital, stopped sending it meat, fish, corn, beans, tropical fruit, and flour, reducing it to the squalid products of milk cows in the Milpa Alta area and of the gardens scattered between Xochimilco and Ixtapalapa. As usual, there were many flowers in the Valley, but who eats carnations or calla lilies?

  The rumors spread: merchants were hoarding what little food there was. Into Mexico City marched General Obregon, whose first act was to make the shopkeepers sweep the city streets, to put them to shame. He emptied their shops and reopened communications so supplies could flow into the famished capital.

  This was all rumor. Just to be on the safe side, Doña Leticia. slept with a dagger under her pillow.

  Photographic images of the Revolution appeared in the newspapers and magazines Don Fernando consumed by the cartload: the dictator Porfirio Díaz was an ancient man with a square face, Indian cheek bones, white mustache, and a chest covered with medals saying farewell to the cowntry (as he pronounced it) from the German steamship Ipiranga, sailing from Veracruz; Madero was a tiny man, bald, with black beard and mustache, dreamy eyes astonished by his triumph in bringing down the tyrant; those eyes announced his own sacrifice at the hands of the sinister General Victoriano Huerta, an executioner with a head like a skull, black sunglasses, and a mouth like that of a serpent, with no lips; Venustiano Carranza was an old man with a white heard and blue sunglasses, whose vocation was to be the national paterhe; Obregon was a brilliant young general with blue eyes and haughty mustache, whose arm was shot off during the battle of Celaya; Emiliano Zapata was a man of silence and mystery, as if a ghost manifesting himself for only a short time: Laura became fascinated with the enormous, ardent eyes of this gentleman, whom newspapers referred to as “Attila of the South,” in the same way they called Pancho Villa “Centaur of the North.” Laura had never seen a single photo of Pancho Villa in which he wasn’t smiling, showing his white teeth like corn kernels and his little slits of eyes that made him look like an astute Chinese.

  Above all, Laura remembered being under the mattress and the scattered shots in the streets below, now that she was staring at herself in the mirror, so straight and tall, “such a cutie pie,” as her mother said, making ready to go to her first formal dance.

  “Are you sure I should go, Mama?”

  “Laura, for God’s sake, what can you be thinking about?”

  “About Papa.”

  “Don’t worry about him. You know I’ll be taking care of him.”

  It began with the slightest of pains in his knee, to which Don Fernando paid no special attention. Leticia rubbed on some Sloa
ne’s Liniment when the pain extended the length of his leg to his waist, but soon her husband complained that he was having difficulty walking and that his arms were numb. One morning he fell to the floor trying to get out of bed, and the doctors had no difficulty in diagnosing a diplegia that would affect his legs first and more intensely than his arms.

  “Can it be cured?”

  The doctors shook their heads.

  “How long will it last?”

  “It may last the rest of your life, Don Fernando.”

  “What about my brain?”

  “No effect. You’re fine. You’ll need help moving, that’s all.”

  This was why the family was thankful the house was on only one level, and María de la O offered to travel to Xalapa and be her brother-in-law’s nurse, to take care of him, to push him to the bank in a wheelchair.

  “Your grandfather’s well taken care of in Catemaco by your Aunts Hilda and Virginia. We talked it over and agreed that I’d come to help your mama.”

  “What does Papa always say in English? It never rains but it pours or something like that? In other words, the thunderstorm is upon us, Auntie.”

  “Go on, Laura. Just one thing. Don’t try to defend me if someone mistreats me. You’ll just make trouble for yourself. The important thing is to take care of your father and let my sister Leticia tend to the house.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “I owe your father as much as I owe your grandmother, who had me come live with all of you. One day I’ll tell you about it.”

  The double care that fell on the house, added to their mourning for Santiago, did not terrify Doña Leticia. She simply became thinner and more active. But her hair began to turn gray and the lines of her beautiful Rhenish profile slowly but surely covered with extremely fine wrinkles, like the cobwebs that covered sickly coffee bushes.

  “You have to go to the ball. Don’t even think about it. Nothing is going to happen to your father or to me.”

  “Swear that if something happens you’ll send someone for me.”

  “For heaven’s sake, child. San Cayetano is forty minutes away from here. Besides, it isn’t as if you were all alone and helpless. Elizabeth and her mama will be with you. Remember, no one can say anything about you … if something were to happen, I’d send Zampaya with the landau.”

  Elizabeth looked divine, so blond and beautifully shaped as she was at the age of sixteen, although she was shorter and plumper than Laura. And with more décolleté as well, having been shoehorned into a by now old-fashioned, though perhaps also eternal rose-colored taffeta dress with infinite layers of tulle and ruffles.

  “Girls, never show your boobs,” said Elizabeth’s mother, Luca Dupont, who all her life struggled to decide whether her name was as common in France as it was aristocratic in the United States, although how she could have married a Garcia, only the masculine charms of her husband could explain, not her daughter’s obstinacy in saying her name was only Garca and not Garca-Dupont, that’s right, with the distinguished Anglo-American hyphen.

  “Laura has no problems because she’s flat, Mama, but …”

  “Elizabeth, child, don’t shame me.”

  “There’s nothing to be done about it. God, with your help, made me this way …”

  “All right then, forget your tits,” Elizabeth’s mother blurted out, with no hint of shame. “Just remember that there are more important things. Look for the most distinguished connections. Make a point of making friendly inquiries about the right families—Ollivier, Trigos, Sartorious, Fernández Landero, Estevas, Pasquel, Bouchez, Luengas.”

  “And the Carazas,” interrupted Miss Elizabeth.

  “Keep your opinions to yourself,” fulminated her mother. “Hold on to the names of those in the best society. If you forget them, they will certainly forget you.” She looked compassionately at the two girls. “Poor things. Just watch what everyone else is doing. Imitate them, imitate them!”

  Elizabeth responded with exaggerated condescension. “Enough, Mama! You’re suffocating me! I’m going to faint!”

  San Cayetano was a coffee plantation, but it was the plantation house that everyone meant when they said “San Cayetano.” Here Spanish traditions had been forgotten and instead a petit château in the French style had arisen, in the 1860s, in a beech forest near a foaming waterfall and a noisy, narrow river. Its neoclassical facade was supported by columns whose capitals were covered with carved vines.

  The main house had two stories, at its entrance an enormous fig tree and a silent fountain, then fifteen steps up to reach the carved door of the ground floor, which was—Leticia warned her daughter—where the bedrooms were. An elegant, wide stone staircase led to the second floor, where the receptions were held: salons, dining rooms, and especially—this was the most notable feature of the place—a grand balustraded terrace, equal in size to half the floor space within, roofed over by an upper terrace and wrapped around three sides of the house, open to the cool night breezes and, during the afternoon, a place for sun-drenched siestas in sleepy rocking chairs.

  Here, couples could rest, leaning against the balustrade of the beautiful gallery, and chat, putting their glasses down when they decided to dance right here, on any of the three sides of the second-floor terrace. All her life, this place returned again and again in Laura’s memory as the site of youthful enchantment, the space where she felt the joy of knowing herself to be young.

  There, awaiting her guests, was Doña Genoveva Deschamps de la Trinidad, legendary mistress of the hacienda and tutelary leader of provincial society. Laura expected to meet a tall and dominating, even haughty woman, and instead found a small, erect lady with a flashing smile, dimples in her rosy cheeks, and cordial eyes, gray, like the elegant monotone of her gown. Apparently, Mrs. Deschamps de la Trinidad also read La Vie Parisienne, for her gown was even more modern than Laura’s: it eliminated every kind of false padding and followed, in a shine of gray silk, the lady’s natural shape. Doña Genoveva’s bare shoulders were wrapped in a veil of fine gauze, also gray, the entire ensemble harmonizing with her steely gaze and allowing her jewels, as transparent as water, to shine even more brightly.

  Laura was thankful that her hostess was such an amiable woman, but she realized that Mrs. Deschamps, before and after cordially greeting each guest, fixed them with a strangely cold stare, even calculated, almost judicial. The stare of the rich and envied lady conveyed her seal of approbation or disapproval. People would know, at the next annual ball at the hacienda, who had received the placet and who had been damned. That cold gaze of censure or approval lasted no longer than the few seconds between one guest moving on and the next arriving, when the affable smile would glitter again.

  “Tell your parents I’m very, very sorry not to see them here tonight,” said Doña Genoveva, lightly touching Laura’s hair, as if putting an unruly curl back in place. “Keep me abreast of Don Fernando’s health.”

  Laura curtsied, a lesson learned from the Misses Ramos, and set about exploring the place so discussed and admired by Xalapa society. She felt rapture on seeing the pale green painted ceilings, the fleurons on the walls, the multicolored skylights, and, beyond, the heart of the party, on the terrace wrapped by balustrades adorned with urns, the orchestra whose musicians were all wearing dinner jackets, and the guests, especially the young people, the boys in white tie and tail coats and the girls in various styles, which led Laura to conclude that a man dressed in a black uniform, white tie, and pique shirtfront would always look elegant, would never expose anything—while every woman was obliged to exhibit, dangerously, her personal, eccentric, conformist though always arbitrary idea of elegance.

  The ball had not yet begun, and each young lady received from the hands of the majordomo a dance card embossed with the initials of the hostess—DLT. They then got into position to await requests from the gallants to dance. Laura and Elizabeth had seen some of them at the much less elegant parties held at the Xalapa Casino, but the boys hadn’t
seen them because they were graceless girls, one flat-chested and the other bovine, frankly. Now, at the point of attaining perfect femininity, well dressed, feigning more self-confidence than they really had, Elizabeth and Laura first greeted school and family friends and allowed the boys, stiff in their frock coats, to approach.

  A boy with caramel colored eyes came up to Elizabeth and asked her for the first dance.

  “Thank you, but I already have a partner.”

  The boy made a polite bow, and Laura kicked her friend.

  “Liar. We just arrived.”

  “Either Eduardo Caraza dances with me first or I won’t dance with anyone.”

  “What is it about him you like so much?”

  “Everything. Money. Good looks. Look at him. Here he comes. I told you.”

  To Laura this Eduardo seemed neither better nor worse than anyone else.

  Any outsider would have to admit it and probably be shocked: Xalapa society was whiter than it was mestizo, and as for people of color, like Aunt María de la O, there were none, although the few people with Indian features were noticeable precisely because they were presentable. Laura felt an attraction for a very dark, very thin boy who looked like one of those pirates from Malaysia in the novels of Emilio Salgari which she’d inherited from Santiago along with the rest of his books. He had perfect dark skin, without the slightest blemish, completely clean-shaven, and slow, light, elegant movements. He looked like Sandokan, Salgari’s Hindu prince. He was the first to dance with her. Doña Genoveva put the waltzes first, then modern dances, and, at the end, returning to an era prior to the waltz, the polkas, lancers, and the Madrid schottische.

  The Hindu prince said not a word, to the point that Laura wondered if his accent or his stupidity would destroy the illusion of his marooned Malayan elegance. Her second partner, on the other hand, was a chatterbox from a rich Córdoba family, dizzying her with inanities about breeding hens and how to mate them with roosters, all without the slightest allusive or salacious intent, merely stupid. And the third, a tall redhead she’d already seen on tennis courts showing off his strong legs, svelte and down-covered, did not hesitate to abuse Laura, squeezing her against his chest, rubbing his crotch against her, nibbling her earlobe.