A Change of Skin

by Carlos Fuentes

  “You rapped on the door most politely and waited and came in and I said, ‘Here, this letter came for you.’ I had opened it. You took it without a word. You put it in your pocket and went out of the room. You didn’t seem angry with me for having opened it. Fifteen minutes later we were eating supper together and both of us were smiling as if nothing had happened.”

  This you have offered, Father, to your ancient seed.

  * * *

  Δ The Volkswagen left the winding stretch of road and moved swiftly beside a field where sandy-colored calves were playing. The descent was toward dry pastures, down a spur of the Sierra Madre Oriental. Beyond the plain, in the distance, the mountains rose in successive walls of mute transparent blue, each fainter than the one before. The calves ran and jumped, rolled and tumbled, jerked their heads from side to side, kicked up their hind legs. Across the field was a grove of round-topped elms where only a few weeks ago the calves had dropped from their mothers.

  Franz slowed and Javier spread the map on his knees and hunched over it and announced, “We’ll have to ford a river. There’s no bridge.”

  “God,” you sighed. “Why didn’t we go straight on to Veracruz?”

  “Well, it wasn’t I who insisted on seeing Xochicalco and Cholula.” Javier folded up the map again.

  “There, Franz, ask that man,” you said, pointing ahead to a figure walking slowly beside the road.

  Franz slowed to a crawl. Isabel put her head into the window and called out, “Which way to the ford?” just as you were saying, “Please, señor, where is…” When Isabel interrupted you, you became silent. Franz stopped the car.

  The man was old, gray-haired, with bent shoulders. He walked mechanically and as if he were carrying a heavy load on his back. Old and gone. Exhausted by labor and years. And when he turned slowly and faced you, his forehead was wrinkled as if it were still bound by a porter’s headband, a strap that he had worn for decades, the burden on his back shifting to the movements of his tired thin body as he came and went from the mountains with firewood. He stopped and stared at you and took off his tattered straw hat, a peasant’s hat with a flat low round crown and wide unraveling brims. Once it had been white, now it was bands of black and dull yellow. Franz set the hand brake and leaving the engine running got out and walked toward the old man and both you, Dragoness, and Isabel watched, though Javier did not, and you tried to hear but because of the sound of the idling engine you couldn’t. You saw Franz reach the old man and unbutton his hip pocket and take out his wallet as he spoke to the man and the man answered, stretching an arm and pointing to the right. He stood with his hat flat on his chest and his arm across it and with a completely expressionless face he looked at Franz and at the car. It was a face with a thick mustache around a large mouth, the lips invisible. He was very small, not so high as Franz’s shoulders, and he was dressed in rags and patches: a shirt that originally had been white and had no buttons, so that he must have put it on by pulling it down over his head, loose in front over the belly, a somewhat military-looking collar, wide sleeves that reached halfway down his arm. White tight pants, also without buttons, that extended to the mid-calf and were secured around the waist by the two bands that were part of the waist, not by a belt. Long ago the first tears and holes had been repaired with patches of white cotton cut from some older, worn-out garment, and then the patches had grown tired and had come apart and had had to be patched themselves, so that now he seemed to be dressed in a web of threads, a vague integument of joined rags that all together were simply one large rag. And his worn sandals seemed integral with his callused, gnarled, dusty old feet, not separate objects. Franz took out a peso bill and spoke and the old man laughed and covered his mouth with a brown hand and with the same hand wiped his nose and Franz held the bill to him and the old man laughed again while looking at Franz with half-closed eyes and an expression that now was a little malicious, ferocious. He took the bill and turned his back and walked on, slow, old, mechanical. Franz returned to the car.

  “The road to the ford is just ahead on the left.”

  “But he pointed to the right,” you said, Dragoness.

  “Yes,” said Franz. “He wanted to deceive us.”

  The Volkswagen passed the old man and he removed his hat but did not stop his slow trot. Ah, Macehual.

  A paved road appeared.

  “There, you see?” you said. “It is to the right.”

  * * *

  Δ “Oberon,” you said, nestling against Franz’s shoulder. He nodded.

  One day in May the concierge brought them a card from Herr von Schnepelbrücke. It was an invitation to have dinner with him in a small neighborhood restaurant. Their June examinations were near and neither of them could afford to take an evening off from studies, so Franz went to Herr Urs’s door and tapped. The dwarf answered but did not open the door. Franz explained their situation and in his splendid deep voice Herr von Schnepelbrücke said that he understood and would hope to have the pleasure of inviting them out again once they had successfully passed their exams, as he was sure they would. He did not come into the hall, he spoke from behind the closed door. And that was how it always was: they never saw him, never heard a sound from him. They were curious and would have liked to question the concierge, but being two months behind in their rent, they found it best to stay away from that sharp-voiced woman, who, when she was not boasting about the excellence of the house and the good breeding of its tenants, was shrilly and zealously trying to collect for its anonymous owners. They had had their troubles with the concierge and they avoided her as much as possible. Even to stop to say good afternoon was to risk indignity, a humiliating tirade.

  Once they passed their examinations, however, they would have their revenge. They planned a celebration and had invited a number of their classmates. They owned the only refrigerator in the student community and would stock it with wine and beer. Their guests would all bring additional bottles. A costume party. A real blast.

  “The day we were examined we almost danced all the way home. We had both passed. We cracked jokes, sang songs. But in front of the house we found the concierge standing with her apron raised to her face, biting her nails. She called to us to run, quick, quick. We imagined some disaster. A short circuit in the refrigerator. The ice had melted and run over the room. Or a fire had started.”

  As they hurried up the stairs, the concierge explained. Something was wrong with Herr von Schnepelbrücke. He had not been seen since day before yesterday. She was sure that he had not come out of his room, neither to go to his meals nor to pick up dolls to repair. And his door was locked. Something had happened! Franz took the knob and turned it. The door was locked, all right. Ulrich put his mouth near the door and shouted. “Herr von Schnepelbrücke! Open the door, sir!” “I tell you I’ve already tried the master key,” said the concierge. “It’s barred inside.” At once they ran against the door with their shoulders while the concierge wailed and crossed herself and said she would report them to the landlord if the door was damaged. The rickety bar finally gave. The door opened. They ran inside, one looking for the light switch while the other opened the drawn curtains.

  They found themselves in the midst of an amazing confusion. Broken dolls hung from wires attached to the ceiling, a whole array of little figures that as Franz and Ulrich bumped into them knocked against each other, emitting small cries and complaints. Twenty dolls hanging with wires twisted around their small necks. Blond wigs and black wigs. Tulle skirts. Patent-leather slippers. Staring porcelain eyes. They were not surprised, at first, for they knew Herr Urs’s occupation. Then they looked closer and were astonished. The dolls had a shocking peculiarity. All that were female had some male garment or characteristic; all that were male had something female. A hussar wore a lace bodice beneath his gold-buttoned fur jacket. A girl in crinoline showed off military boots and carried a whip in her hand. A train conductor with a striped cap was dressed in cambric panties. A little Chinese girl with black b
raid and silver hairpins possessed a small male phallus carefully glued between her legs, the plaster still damp and unpainted.

  “Stop, Franz,” you said quietly, Elizabeth. He was exceeding his role, surprising you with something that perhaps was not subtle but that you had not expected. Now, however, you could guess what would follow. Good nose, Dragoness.

  “Then, while the concierge covered her face with her apron and began to pray, we looked at the walls and found the same kind of incongruence. On the one hand, there were canvases of the most ordinary and traditional scenes. A ship entering harbor. A party lunching on the bank of a river. The rooftops of Munich. Flowers in Chinese vases. That sort of thing. And on the other hand, paintings that were deformed and insane or obscene. Vague shapes with gaping mouths and terrified eyes. Hands with long curling fingernails. Heaps of excrement. Animals copulating. Dead, rotting snakes and elephants swarmed over with flies. Severed smiling heads of bulls and boars. A tiny man carried high in the air by the claw of a gigantic invisible bird.”

  “I know, Franz. I know. You don’t have to go on. I can see it.”

  They stared around the room and entirely forgot why they had entered. Then gradually, little by little, they both became aware of the dominating object in the room, an enormous old-fashioned four-poster bed, its mahogany posts carved with climbing vines and topped by urns. “A wide bed, Lisbeth, a vast desert of a bed, the kind they don’t make any more. Huge pillows. The covers in confusion. Beneath the bedspread, extending up under one of the lace pillows, a tiny shape. We lifted the pillow and saw his head. His enormous head.”

  “I know it already, Franz. Caligari and the Sleepwalker, lost in a white labyrinth. You don’t have to go on.”

  He lay there as if sleeping. Like a child having a nightmare. Sleeping with his eyes and mouth open, his black hair down over his forehead, his hands joined under one cheek. Small and made even smaller because his short legs were drawn up and bent. Yellow and old like a centuries-old papyrus.

  Ulrich touched one of the sleeping shoulders and prodded it. He put his hand to the temple of Herr von Schnepelbrücke and felt for a pulse. He announced that Herr von Schnepelbrücke was dead. “Do you know whether he has any relatives?” Franz asked the concierge. With her head and hands she indicated that she did not know. “Where he keeps his money?” Again no. “Someone may owe him something on these dolls or perhaps for one of his paintings,” Ulrich suggested, and both of them smiled. The concierge was wailing again. What was she to do? What was she to do? A dwarf dead in one of her best rooms. Suppose the other tenants were to learn? Everyone would move out. The house would be emptied overnight.

  “Ulrich and I looked at each other. We had lived together for a year and a half. We knew each other completely, we had become like one mind, and now the same thought came to both of us. Want a cigarette, Lisbeth?”

  “Yes, thanks. No, Franz, you were different. He was Ulrich and you were Franz. You’ve never been anyone but yourself.” Franz lit your cigarette and handed it to you. In the mirror across the room you saw your naked bodies on the bed, the cigarette in your mouth, the smoke rising.

  “We told the concierge not to worry, that we would take care of everything. She must stand in the corridor and make sure no one saw us. We wrapped Herr Urs in his bedspread and Ulrich took him in his arms. We went out quickly, quickly into our room. The concierge wanted to follow but I put my finger to my lips and warned her: not a word or the other tenants would find out and take their departure. Nothing had happened. Nothing at all. Clean up his room and throw out his things and forget him.”

  You moved your head from his shoulder and studied your reflections in the mirror.

  “That’s enough, Franz. Look at us in the mirror. What do we look like?”

  “I don’t know, Lisbeth. Like Lisbeth and Franz. What?”

  “We look like a memory or a premonition.”

  “You’re being as complicated as your husband.”

  “Are you through?”

  “No. I’ll tell you about the party.”

  “Let’s smoke first. What did you say to that old Indian this morning?”

  “Nothing, Lisbeth. Nothing at all.”

  “You know, I can take almost anything so long as there are compensations. Not just part, either, but everything. But there has to be a compensation. I really love these people. And maybe to love them earns a kind of forgiveness.”

  “Maybe, if I understand you.”

  “Don’t look at me as if I were an ingénue. It’s true. In the end I have no other way.”

  “It’s a woman’s way.”

  “It’s mine. Smoke your cigarette, Franz, and then put your head on my breast and fall asleep. Sleep until the room is as warm as we are.”

  * * *

  Δ Elena rapped on the cabin door and came in, saying in her broken Italian that it was a beautiful day out, and put the fresh figs on the table and winked an eye. Javier got up from bed. Elena laughed and said wheeee! showing the stumps of her teeth; she crossed herself and covered her face with widespread fingers and said that it would be a better world if the signor could walk on the beach exactly like that, and you, Dragoness, were lucky, oh, quant’è lungo, oh, quant’è bello il signor, sei fortunata, signorina, sei fortunatissima. You got up too and put on your bathrobe while Elena waxed as eloquent about your beauty as she had about Javier’s, and the three of you walked out Indian-file, Elena and her bucket of figs first, her face dark and wrinkled as the kernel of a nut with eyes and a brilliant smile, wrapped in a black shawl, the torn white shawl beneath framing her brown face. Elena with her stride that was at once both light and tired. Elena with her black stockings and her canvas shoes which she placed on the sand with supreme elegance as she told you what she told you every morning, the story of her eight children. She has eight children and five of them die (she never used the past tense in speaking of them) and her husband is sick with rheumatism and the oldest son works in Athens but she knows nothing about his job, nothing except that he has a girl there and never sends money home, while the other son is a waiter in a café in Rhodes and the last child is a little girl. And every day someone leaves the island, emigrates to a better country, for here wealth is to have olive trees and not many do have them. She raises her arm and gestures toward the restaurant near the beach. The couple who own that restaurant used to be as poor and skinny as she herself. Today they are fat pigs. She aims her finger at them and shows her rotten teeth as she shouts “Brava, brava!” She laughs and shouts at them that now that they weigh two hundred kilos each they have forgotten that once they didn’t own a pot to piss in. The fat owners of the restaurant grunt and turn and run inside. Elena shouts “Brava, Brava!” and shows you and Javier her hands: twice a week she must scrub clothes; she shows you the copper bracelet that is her amulet and serves to protect her skin and nerves from the effects of hard labor. The owners of the café reappear with a carabiniere. They shout in Greek, he in Italian: they have told her again and again to stay away from the beach in front of their restaurant, that she may not sell her figs there, how many times must they repeat it? Elena plants her bucket of figs on the sand before her, she looks at Javier, she looks at you. Loudly she hums a song that makes the proprietor of the restaurant furious. The carabiniere moves toward her and she begins to sing. You look at Javier and he is motionless, merely observing. You step in front of Elena.

  “If you people bother her, we won’t eat in your restaurant. Never again.”

  The fat couple stare at you and then at each other. They put their heads together. They shrug their shoulders finally and invite the carabiniere to step inside for a glass of Lindos wine. Elena laughs and laughs and offers you a fig and you feel yourself the mistress of Falaraki.

  “Soy la dueña!” you say to Javier. “I’m the mistress, the lady of the manor!”

  “Mitzvah,” Javier laughs. “A good deed every day. Oh, the spirit of the Boy Scout.”

  “Soy la dueña!” you repeat
.

  To become baroque for a little, Dragoness. Falaraki is a beach rimmed with the pebbles that follow the line of the coast. While Javier sits at the table in the cabin and writes, you walk the beach gathering pebbles. You have nothing to do except love your husband and wade along the beach, sometimes diving, stretching your fingers for those small polished stones. When still wet they are brilliant, like mirrors, you can even see your face in them. For hours you sit on the beach sorting out your pebbles and giving them names. You call them the hemispheres of the hours of the sea. You say that the pebbles of the coast of Rhodes are like the island’s sternest sons and you think that some secret depth of the sea gave them their watery colors long ago so that those colors would never be lost. Some are red, some ocher, some white, green, yellow, black, but not these colors as they are seen on land; no, different, new, like the polished shield-shaped stone you hold now: all grays unite in it, the veins are of transparent white, the nerves of silver, the arteries of duller tin. Some of the stones are like sculpted eggs, some are tablets of mustard, some are half-moons, and all have been polished and smoothed by the friction of water and sand. They are valueless, but the treasures of the island’s poor. Children adorn their sand castles with them. Fishermen’s wives string them into necklaces. But away from the water, the pebbles lose their brilliance and become opaque and in the end forget their origin. So say the women of Rhodes, and they are right.