“Cacciavillani hanged himself. You didn’t say a word…”
“I know why he hanged himself! Because of his ulcers. About this other one, I don’t know. That’s what matters: the mystery in this thirty-one-year-old kid’s death.” Her voice grows familiar and concentrated: “He’s beautiful…”
Her husband gets angry:
“What a stupid word!”
The woman stumbles, surprised, because the tone is shattered:
“What, what did I say?”
“That: beautiful. It’s asinine.”
Amaya looks at him, meekly annoyed. Inside herself, she feels the strength of the afternoon, the vehemence of their table talk, disintegrate. She falls mute, and her lips soften, because all at once, she has understood she shouldn’t go talking about José Luis to others. She doesn’t know why; but without seeking out comparisons, she recalls the clumps of sugar she dissolved in water for Suspiros back when Suspiros was a girl. Dissolved like that, like a sweetness, in her interior, she feels the memory of that José Luis she never knew.
The sweetness subsists in Amaya for days and days, like a hope.
And yet she is easily exasperated.
She chases the flies out of the dining room and kitchen. One lights on Suspiros’s buttered toast, Amaya looks sickened, swats the bread away violently, and goes off looking for the Flit gun.
Rabid, she shoots down the flies that writhe against the fine wire mesh stretched over the hole of the window. She sees the reproach on Colorada’s face, who says nothing, but is upset. Then she hisses:
“You could have chosen another, less dirty bug: a bee, a wasp…”
Colorada can’t bear the rebuke, and explodes:
“No one chooses their children, they just come to you.”
Amaya holds back and stops spraying the Flit. She’s afraid she’ll remember the child that didn’t live. She’s afraid Colorada will get distracted from her harmless fantasy: that she is the one true mother of the flies, because one flew into her nose and stayed in her head and grew up there, and now all the flies in the village are born there. And when the boys ask her what she’s doing with Cataldo, she responds with pure candor: “We’re making flies.”
But Cataldo neglects her.
Sometimes he says his brother has put him in charge of the shack where they store the wine, and for a week he sleeps on a canvas cot beside the casks. Other times he says he’ll scrape together money to get married and sells cane he cuts from the wild canebrakes; then he buys candy and eats it with Colorada laid out on the grass close to the canals, talking to their inhabitants:
“My flies…”
“My worms…”
And they listen close, looking each other in the face to better hear and understand, and neither of them ever interrupts, and that respect brings them close.
It’s just that Cataldo is being negligent.
“All those days, Cataldo…where’d you get off to?”
“I was sad. When I’m sad, I don’t want you to see my face.”
“Ah…”
Colorada understands, and she respects it. She’s concentrated because she’s trying to give form to a question inside that she wants to ask, and it’s taking its time coming together. After a little while, it comes to her:
“So why were you sad…?”
But by this time, Cataldo has forgotten what he’s said and tries to earn her forgiveness a different way:
“I was really busy and I didn’t have any time.”
Colorada takes pity on him:
“Poor thing, Cataldo…”
“Why poor thing?”
“Because if you don’t have time, you must be really poor, Cataldo.”
“I’m not poor. I just don’t have any time.”
“Well, that’s how it is, then. It’s just that Don Teófilo says the poorest people are the ones that don’t have any time, because everybody’s got time to spare.”
“Ah…”
Again their dialogue dies down. Each has listened to the other, and everything is all right. Colorada fiddles with the grass and lets the sound of the water in the canal carry her away. Later, she thinks, she’d like to soak her toes and step in the hot sand at the edge, when Cataldo says so. Cataldo is watching the tree branches quiver. He knows a lizard is wandering around there. He wants to see it, not to do anything to it, just to look. He waits: it’ll come out.
“You could take her with you,” the husband says, indicating Suspiros with his eyes.
“No!” is Amaya’s rebellious response.
But she’s upset, because her husband is suspicious, wary, the way he was before.
He doesn’t press it, though.
“Leave me some clean pajamas.”
He runs the shop in garish printed pants and a pajama top.
From the dresser, Amaya takes out the salmon-colored pajamas with elaborate white frogging and lays them out on their marriage bed.
Suspiros watches. She says:
“The man from the circus had designs like that. But his coat was red.”
Amaya smiles at the comparison and thinks her smile is no slight against her husband. But afterward, she grows somber. She pities him, because she knows what he can do. Pity, pity that moves her. She prefers to misinterpret it, to not understand: she embraces the girl and speaks to her, with fire, of how she loves her, of how she loves her lots, “too much,” she says. Suspiros lets her, and watches with an empty gaze. Amaya is disconcerted; then she flags.
She returns from the city, ecstatic. But dissatisfied. Someone gave her a phone number. Why did she agree to listen to him? She tries to forget the number, but the digits remain.
On the bus, Amaya runs into the veterinarian, the man from Santa Fe. He’s in the next seat over, and his eyes have lighted on her; maybe they did some time ago, sure she wouldn’t notice.
Amaya didn’t know he was that. She thinks of him as vain, disrespectful. That’s his reputation. They call him doctor, even if they doubt a veterinarian deserves such a title, irrespective of how much he studies. Amaya doesn’t notice her own arrogance just then, the inner disapproval isolating and distancing her and possibly pushing others away.
She feels something’s missing, an omitted courtesy, as if she hadn’t answered a greeting, and she waves to him, and the man responds, surprised.
That’s all. But during the rest of the trip, their eyes meet, twice.
She is agitated when she enters the shop. She always runs off down the hall. Her husband’s verdict: “She has no self-control.”
She kisses the girl, kisses her many times…with her mind elsewhere.
She asks the servant about dinner. “You missing anything? I’ll go for it. I’m going out. I’m already dressed.” The servant, indifferent, says no.
Later, they eat, and the contrast between what happens to her and her surroundings submerges her, flattens her, placates her.
She withdraws into herself, clasps her legs in her arms, and stays a while in a little low chair, in the darkness of the yard, which looks directly onto the fields.
Her ears prick up. She hears noises, like steps resounding from the road. The moonrise lights up the well with the bucket they used in another time. Where she sits, Amaya sees what it was she came to see: against the white wall of the house in front, the moon reveals a man waiting for her. A nervous, silent man, his identity unknown.
And something quivers in some spot in Amaya’s body. And she feels the need to open up, to absorb more life, something more. She inhales, inhales deeply, and the scent of the irrigated land penetrates her, and something that seems to come from the pulp of the ripe yellow peaches.
“Mama…”
“Yeah, I’m coming.”
But she doesn’t go, she lets herself stay there, one arm folded over the cushion under the nape of her neck, her eyes turned to the canvas of the cloudless sky, indifferent to it.
A dog barks, not in the garden, not far off on the road, sounding as if inside the house. But who cares?
The fury is over, the surcease of the foregoing day is over. Now Amaya is a woman unhurried, without pressing needs, indolent and pleased to be so.
“Mama…”
“Yeah, I’m coming.”
And the day begins.
Lunch.
The father strokes his daughter’s hair.
“You almost ended up without a cat.”
“I don’t have a cat, Papa.”
“Of course you do. The gray one?”
“That one’s yours, to keep at the shop so he eats the mice.”
The reply unnerves the man, who feels a need to talk, perhaps because no one else is. Amaya and Colorada are eating and ignore everything but their food. Amaya gets up, brings more bread. Suspiros asks for water, drinks, dries herself with the back of her hand, looks outside, and lets her gaze lead her elsewhere.
“An animal! The brute! He brought a beast of a dog into the shop. I didn’t like it one bit…”
Amaya stops chewing. She waits.
“…The dog saw the cat. It barked its head off. And everything started shaking and looked like it was about to fall. I shouted at the guy: do something! He grabbed it by the collar, that’s true; but then he let it go.”
Amaya is already immersed in the episode, she’s living it:
“Did it bite him?”
“No. He ran out into the stairwell and clambered up on the piles of shoes up on the shelf.”
“Whose was it?”
“What?”
“The dog. What are we talking about?”
“The doctor, the veterinarian. He never comes into the shop. And the one time he shows up, he causes a ruckus.”
“Did you get mad at each other?”
“As far as I’m concerned…he’s the last person I need…but he wanted to make things right. He offered me a puppy. Because his dog wasn’t a boy, it was a girl, and he says she’s got two three-month-old puppies.”
Amaya lets him talk. He’s making some kind of calculation, reflecting on something.
“She’s a good-looking dog. He says she comes from good stock. Maybe we should do it.”
“You said yes?”
“No. I didn’t know right then. I told him there were lots of dogs starving out on the street. I wasn’t thinking.”
Amaya knows what to do. She talks to Suspiros, without putting a name to the puppy:
“Would you like…”
Suspiros says yes. Colorada too. “Go get it, Amaya, go get it.”
The man stretches his hands upward and opens them over the tablecloth, arches his eyebrows, and seems to apologize:
“I’m not opposed to it. I’m not opposed.”
Amaya watches her husband gesturing, then turns away from him. The brute, he said, an animal. Amaya thinks: A brute, a man who can look at you like that, in the eyes, only in the eyes…
Amaya will go ask for it and bring it back. But that can’t happen before Monday. Until it’s ready, you can’t leave the puppy alone for a whole afternoon, it’ll howl constantly, and that would be just like killing it. Tomorrow is movie day, movie day in the city. Colorada doesn’t go, because…
At the Independence Theater, in front of the plaza, they discover the talkies, as they’re called. Jeanette MacDonald sings with her drawn-out, high-pitched voice. Maurice Chevalier makes faces and belts out happy songs. The Love Parade.
When the lights comes up and it’s time to go, a murmur courses through the cinema, reaching the husband, who confirms the rumor and lets Amaya know:
“In the balcony over there, look: Borzani, the inspector.”
And to Suspiros:
“Look, Suspiros, look: the government.”
Amaya imagines the girl will get the idea that the government is a theater balcony with a gray-haired man dressed in black who talks and greets the women in long necklaces that hang out of their dresses.
She thinks she can indulge her husband’s occasional dimwittedness and let him go on whispering his little reports (“That one over there, with the beard, is Dr. Viñas, the school superintendent. They say he’s got an eye for the ladies.”) Amaya pays him no mind, because there is something about that ambience that brings her close to José Luis. She feels a wave of tenderness sweep over her and tells herself one day she’ll come to the cinema alone to be with him.
“When, Mama?”
“This afternoon, Suspiros. This afternoon.”
She can’t hold back that long. She goes out in late morning, with Suspiros holding her hand.
She stops on the sidewalk. She never looked closely at the veterinarian’s house. It’s old, the Gutiérrez family used to live there before he came, but now it’s painted and the garden is full of geraniums, poppies, and magnolias.
She queries Suspiros, and her questions have ulterior motives, because right now, she is using her daughter as an oracle:
“You like it? Should we go in? Are we sure?”
For a long time, Suspiros contemplates the garden with its wire mesh barrier. She says yes, moving her lips and nodding her head, then thinks it necessary to express herself more fully:
“Yeah, I like it.”
The oracle has responded. Amaya feels confidence and hope growing inside her.
She reaches the open gate. She steps onto the path that weaves among the flowerbeds and onto the porch standing guard in front of the rooms.
She claps her hands.
A voice reveals the presence of an old woman further back, lying in a hammock of wood and rushes.
“Miss…? Good day. Who are you looking for?”
“Hello, Miss…are you his mother? The doctor’s, I mean, the veterinarian’s. Sorry. Is he here?”
She has blurted all this out, as though appealing to this family relation will bring her closer.
The response doesn’t dispel her yen for adventure, for delving into whatever may happen. Yes, she’s the mother, but her son isn’t there…Will he come back in the morning? Amaya wonders rashly. No, he won’t be coming back. The woman’s reply brings with it a jarring, unforeseen image: “In the morning he’s never here. He’s overseeing the slaughterhouse.” Ah, the slaughterhouse, Amaya repeats, and thinks of his arms bare to the elbow, blotches of blood caking the hair, holding the mangled bodies of animals. Her initial enthusiasm wanes. She wants to rid herself of this new impression. She looks at the garden.
“Could I take a flower?”
“One? Yeah, why not. Which one? You choose, you can cut it yourself.”
Amaya chooses. She snaps a gladiolus stalk and the sap dampens her fingers. She doesn’t look at the flowers, but the stalk, with its fresh wound, holds her eyes a few seconds, and she thinks of the scant flow of the clear, vegetal blood, how it purifies.
Now it is easy for her to carry on with their talk:
“I came for a puppy, a puppy he offered my husband.”
“A puppy?” The old woman doesn’t seem to know about it. “Like a baby dog?”
“Yeah, from your dog.”
“But he already gave them all away…”
Amaya looks at the girl. Suspiros waits, trusting: she believes in the promise, passed along by her father, of an unfamiliar man who surely is the owner of a little dog he wants to give them, and this lady has nothing to do with the matter.
“Why don’t you talk to him? He’ll be around this afternoon. I can tell him to wait for you.”
“Yes, ma’am, that’ll be fine. I’ll be back, of course. We’ll be here.”
It’s as if she’d chosen the wrong house, the wrong people.
“I can make out the colors with my eyes closed,” Colorada says.
Unmoved, Cataldo informs her:
“So can I.”
“You too?” Colorada is happy to share her gift with Cataldo.
But she puts him to the test:
“Really…? Close your eyes and tell me.”
Cataldo didn’t think it would go this far. He swallows, brings his eyelids together, and waits.<
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Colorada doesn’t say anything to him, because when she looks around for something to tell him, she can’t find anything.
Cataldo complains:
“So…?”
Harried, the girl looks inside herself: she puts a hand under her blouse, finds something, and brings it out.
“What do I have?”
Cataldo tries to reach for it. She swats him away. Cataldo sniffs vehemently, distending his nostrils. He argues:
“We said color. That doesn’t mean I know what it is.”
“Should I tell you?”
“Yeah, exactly. Tell me.”
“It’s a spaghetti strap.”
“How’d you get it out? You’re going to lose your slip.”
“What do you care? I want to know the color. Say the color.”
“Pink.”
“No, white.”
Cataldo grumbles:
“I was going to say white.”
Colorada gets excited:
“You knew it was white?”
“Yep.”
“Really? Then you won.”
She stops him:
“Without opening your eyes! Let’s keep going.”
She takes her time, then continues:
“Do I have freckles?”
“Sure you do. You didn’t know?”
“Yeah, I know. But I didn’t know if you knew.”
“Of course I know.”
“From before?”
“From before.”
“You notice the color?”
“Never. You’ve got my word.”
“For real?”
“Absolutely for real.”
“So guess then.”
“You’ve got reddish freckles.”
“No.”
Cataldo opens his eyes, confused, to check. He takes a good look at his friend’s freckles and inquires, trying not to offend her:
“They’re not red?”
“No.”
“Not even a little: like brown with a little red mixed in…?”
“I said no.”
He gives up:
“Fine, I was wrong.”
“Let’s do it again with something else.”
Cataldo follows along, unnerved. But a long time passes and Colorada doesn’t continue.
“Can I help you?” Cataldo proposes timidly.
“No, it’s fine. Let’s see.”
“Is it something far away?”
Nest in the Bones Page 6
