A Change of Skin

by Carlos Fuentes

  “Put it the other way around, Dragoness, and you’ll understand why Borges says that at wakes, as the process of decay proceeds, the dead man recovers all of his previous faces.”

  “The film reversed.”

  “Yes. By the way, no matter what your husband thinks, I enjoy watching you jump up from bed. Zip, pow, like the Marines making a landing.”

  “Get off my neck, caifán. What you like is not how I get out of bed but the way I hop into it.”

  * * *

  Δ “Have you finished yet?”

  “No, Lisbeth, not yet. I want to tell you about our party.”

  Yes, the party, Dragoness. An end of the semester celebration by young German students, in costumes yet.

  “Ulrich and I sat beside the coffin-refrigerator for quite a long time, as if we were holding a wake for Herr Schnepelbrücke. But darkness was about to fall, and with it, our guests. I ran out to buy more beer and wine. When I came back, Ulrich already had his costume on. I laughed when I saw him. A brown uniform with a wide black belt and a wide strap slanting down across his chest, black boots, a swastika arm band. I laughed and he laughed and he pranced around the room goose-stepping, throwing his right arm up stiffly, crying ‘Heil, Heil, Sieg Heil!’ He did it perfectly. I roared until my sides hurt.”

  “The Nazis were a joke to you then, Franz?”

  “I went behind the screen and put on my own costume. A horned helmet, a chest-plate and long red skirts, a yellow wig of curls that came down to my neck, a bronze lance. I came out with a shrill Valkyrie howl and it was Ulrich’s turn to laugh.

  “There was a knock at the door and our guests rushed in, happy, shouting, carrying bottles and cans, loaves of bread, sausages, Limburger, all of them disguised. Heinrich was old Goethe and with him was our classmate Elizabeth decked out as Mephistopheles, her eyes blue and candid beneath the painted arched eyebrows, her red lips smiling above the pointed painted beard. Reinhardt and Elsa were dressed as Tyrolean peasants. Malaquias was a Prussian officer. Otto was an Austro-Hungarian hussar. Ruby, in wooden shoes and a striped skirt and the customary liberty cap with its tricolor ribbons, was a French Marianne. Lorenz was Rasputin: black gown, long beard and wig. And Lya was dressed like me but had a higher rank; she was Brunhilde and I was her aide-decamp. Everyone cried out ‘Yo-ho-to-ho-ho’ and danced around chanting the Valkyrie music and using the wine bottles as lances. High-pitched voices, low-pitched, a crazy chorus, all of us in costume to celebrate the end of the school year. Finally the singing died down.

  “Reinhardt and Elsa were the first to head for the refrigerator, laughing, with their bottles of white wine in their arms. I jumped in front of them, almost tripping over my skirts, and spread my arms dramatically and cried out: ‘No! Forbidden! Decree of Woden. The libations must be made at once. No bottle that enters our refrigerator shall ever come forth from it again!’ Heinrich and Lisbeth protested, groaning, but the others shouted and laughed and Ulrich quickly grabbed a bottle from Lorenz-Rasputin, uncorked it, and raised it to his lips. Everyone began to open bottles then, gathering in a circle to pull the corks out. We drank with heroic, grandiose gestures, letting the wine wet our false beards, smear our painted lips, splash down our bodices. The naked bulb that hung from the ceiling cast a cold and too direct white light. I turned on the light on the drawing board, turned off the overhead bulb, shouting, ‘Shadows! Twilight! The dead year wants no light, the dead year is buried!’ Our Tyrolean couple embraced with mock fear and everyone laughed again. I went from guest to guest passing out drinks, sweating inside my wig and armor. ‘Celebrate! Three months of freedom! Three months before us without the beard of Professor Essler, without the pompous jokes of Professor Von Cluck! Without…’ ‘Don’t even mention them,’ Ruby-Marianne interrupted. Her cap had fallen down to her eyebrows. ‘Franz,’ she said, ‘you’re a phony.’ ‘Frankness, honesty forever!’ I replied. Ruby sat on the floor with her eyebrows heavy and her lipstick smeared and took off her wooden shoes and her red and white striped stockings and began to rub her feet. I emptied my cup over her head and she slapped me. The party was on its way.”

  “The dirty jokes began,” you suggested, Dragoness.

  “No, Lisbeth. The ideology. Heinrich-Goethe proclaimed that all greatness has always come from aristocracy. Malaquias, the Prussian officer, shouted that power must remain with the people. Heinrich shouted back: ‘Oh, to hell with your free people! Look at your ridiculous Weimar Republic! Your miserable Stresemann, the inflation, the unemployment, the national humiliation! There you can see what happens when the magnificent people govern themselves!’ Malaquias raised his thumb to his nose and wagged his fingers. Heinrich, shouting violently about the Jews and the bankers, grabbed him by the ears and knocked off his proud helmet with its gilded imperial eagle. I separated them and emptied the last of a bottle into their glasses.

  “Elsa, sitting on the bed between Reinhardt and Elizabeth, was saying that love comes only once. She squeezed Reinhardt’s hand and with her other hand smoothed her Tyrolean skirt. Elizabeth smiled dryly and said that if Reinhardt was true to her, it was because he had never been sufficiently tempted. Elsa looked questioningly at Reinhardt. He caressed her hand and said that in January, when he took his degree, they would be married. I poured their glasses again and asked Reinhardt if he had a job lined up yet. No, he said, not yet, but his father had connections in Cologne that might lead to something. At first, he went on, they would make their home with his parents. Elizabeth, who seemed to be taking her role as Mephistopheles seriously, laughed. ‘And that will be the end of love, Elsa!’ Elsa calmly shook her head. No, she liked Reinhardt’s family and they liked her. ‘You’ll see how much they like you when they start correcting you, asking where in the world were you brought up, telling you that that’s not the way to handle a baby, hinting that their handsome Reinhardt deserves something better.’ ‘Cut it out, Elizabeth,’ Reinhardt said, looking at her coldly. ‘We’re going to be very happy.’ ‘Okay, okay, be happy,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Be happy as birds.’ ‘We need so little that we can’t help but be happy,’ said Elsa. ‘And just what do you need?’ smiled Elizabeth. ‘To be together the rest of our lives,’ said Elsa. ‘That’s all.’ ‘To have a decent job and be respected,’ said Reinhardt. Elizabeth raised her glass to them. ‘God bless you both!’ She jumped up from the bed and began to dance, alone, humming. ‘Berlin for me!’ she cried. She was pliable and slender in her red costume, happily unworried as she spread the corners of her cape like wings. ‘Berlin and freedom! Let blockheads peel potatoes! The cafés, the theaters! Nobody bothers you! Berlin! Freedom! Hoppla, wir leben!’ Heinrich grinned and embraced her. Then Otto, the hussar, took off his cape and began to play at bullfighting with Elizabeth. She would charge him, jerking her horned head and grunting ferociously. We formed a circle around her and applauded, spilling our drinks as we interlocked arms, all of us beginning to sweat now and to feel that our costumes had lost their freshness and elegance. Suddenly Heinrich broke the circle and rushed at Ulrich and grabbed him by both shoulders. ‘I won’t tolerate it any longer!’ he said angrily. Ulrich, astonished, stared at him. ‘You see, I tell you straight, straight to your face,’ said Heinrich. ‘And it was with good reason,’ he went on, turning until he was facing me, ‘that I said we ought not to have our party in the room of a goddamn foreigner!’ I started to move toward him but Ruby pulled me back, saying wearily, ‘Oh, Heinrich, what a bore you are!’ ‘What’s bothering you so?’ Ulrich asked quietly. ‘Your costume, pig!’ Heinrich shouted. ‘It’s a mockery! A calculated insult!’ He extended his arm and jerked off the red band with the black swastika. Ulrich’s response was to drive his fist into Heinrich’s face. Heinrich’s gray wig fell as he threw himself upon Ulrich with all his weight and carried him down to the floor. They rolled there, Heinrich on top trying to rip the brown shirt off, Ulrich trying to choke him as he went on shouting ‘Pig! Pig!’ Lorenz and I pulled them apart to cries of ‘What a loused-up party!’ ‘Dri
nk, you idiots, get up and drink!’ ‘Stop spoiling the evening!’ We pulled them apart and helped them up and they glared at each other with false smiles, pressed teeth. Finally Ulrich shrugged and extended his hand, Heinrich, sneering, turned his back on him and embraced Elizabeth. I snapped off the remaining light and went from mug to mug pouring beer as a peace offering. Our guests found places on the divan, the bed, on the floor, and their conversations dropped to murmurs as the kisses and caresses began.

  “I sat on the floor, leaning back against the bed, with my arm resting on Reinhardt’s bare knees. I closed my eyes and heard Elsa whispering to him about a certain dress she would have to buy before their marriage, about the furniture they would need, about their honeymoon trip to Switzerland. She was afraid that Reinhardt had not worked out their itinerary well enough and she made him repeat its timetable: Lucerne, Lake of Thun, Wengen, the Jungfrau. Ruby, carrying her stockings and wooden shoes, which she put down with a clump, sat beside me. I felt her warm hand take mine. Very softly she said to me, ‘And you, aren’t you going to go anywhere during the vacation?’ It was true: we were really on vacation now. I had known it and celebrated it, but it was only now, feeling Ruby’s hand and the breath of her voice in my ear, that I really grasped that another year had gone by and ahead of me lay a time of freedom to be enjoyed, lazy idle reading, unhurried long walks. Ruby put her legs across my knees and asked me to rub her feet. In a voice even softer than hers, as if I were speaking only to myself, Lisbeth, I told her, ‘I don’t know if I will go anywhere this year. Next year, yes, when I take my degree, I want to take a long slow trip to all those places I have never seen. From city to city, just looking.’ ‘Where?’ said Ruby, who had bent until her head was resting on her knees and I could smell the perfume of her hair each time I breathed. ‘To Treves to see the ruins of the baths and the basilicas. To Aix-la-Chapelle to see the chapel of Charlemagne. Then down the Rhine. The cathedrals at Worms and Mainz, the abbey at Laach. And Cologne, St. Mary in the Capitol, the Holy Apostles … I want to see it all and feel it all, Ruby, because I believe that it has to be preserved, that man is his building, his stone, his love for what he has constructed.’ I stopped. ‘Why am I talking like this to you, little mocker? You’ll be laughing at me.’ ‘No, I’m not laughing. Take me with you.’ Ruby raised her face until she touched her nose to my cheek, like this, Lisbeth, so lightly I could hardly feel it. I took her hand like this, between my hands, in the darkness that gave us freedom and daring and let us speak the truth, as if it were carnival time. ‘Ruby … Lisbeth … I want to build. I want to make buildings by instinct.… I don’t want the old Greek Valhallas that at school they insist we admire. Still less, glass boxes. I don’t know. Do you understand me? I want to make a building as a bear finds its cave or an eagle builds its nest, that naturally. Buildings like placentas, warm and humid, without vertices, without … No, I don’t know. Do you understand me, Ruby? Lisbeth? Something new and free and natural, no longer slave to the old models, to the old prestigious.… Do you understand?’ Ruby kissed me. Like this. And I took her in my arms, like this. And we were silent now, listening to silence, our eyes closed, a little dizzy from the beer and wine. And listening also, willy-nilly, to the voices of Elsa and Reinhardt on the bed behind us:

  “‘Is what Elizabeth said true?’

  “‘What?’

  “‘That if you were tempted enough, you would love someone else.’

  “‘You are the only girl I love, Elsa.’

  “‘But maybe … some day…’

  “‘No, Elsa. I understand my duties and responsibilities.’

  “‘And I’m sure that I can love only once in my life.’

  “‘Yes. Nothing will ever separate us.’

  “‘Nothing, Reinhardt. And when we have children, we’ll be even closer.’

  “‘How many shall we have?’

  “‘As many as God sends us.’

  “‘I believe I’ve chosen well. Without a woman to give us; breath, we can’t do anything in life.’

  “‘I want to see you honored, respected by everyone. You’re going to be a great architect, Reinhardt.’

  “I couldn’t take it any longer, Lisbeth. I had to cover my mouth. I pushed Ruby away and opened my eyes. Everything was spinning. I tried to look at Elsa and Reinhardt and I saw four of them. The couples talking in whispers seemed very near yet very far and my own body was enormous yet at the same time tiny, as if my knees were heavy mountains yet also feathers in the wind. I leaned forward vomiting. Elsa gave a little cry. Reinhardt knelt over me. ‘Hey, Franz is sick. A glass of water.’ The ceiling light came on, white and cold again. I closed my eyes and then opened them immediately and looked toward the refrigerator, our piece of furniture that was as cold and colorless as the light. Lorenz, the blackclad Russian monk, was moving toward the refrigerator with a clean glass in his hand. I shouted, ‘No, Lorenz, please!’ Lorenz opened the refrigerator. ‘Close it, Lorenz, please, close it! You’re drunk, it isn’t true, you haven’t seen anything!’ Lorenz let the glass drop to the floor. Lya, standing behind him, screamed, screamed, bit her nails and screamed, her face as pale as flour. Herr Urs von Schnepelbrücke, lightly covered with frost, had arrived at our party.”

  Franz stopped.

  “Well, what happened?”

  “Nothing. Reinhardt married Elsa. He was killed shortly afterward, right at the beginning, in Poland.”

  “And the dwarf?”

  “He finally crashed the party. Haven’t I just told you?”

  “Yes, but what happened to him after the party?”

  “Nothing. He stayed there in our little students’ room in Germany. He must still be there.”

  * * *

  Δ “Javier? Are you here? Put on the light, I can’t see the bed. That goddamn mania you have for always drawing the curtains. Or is it night already? Javier, are you here? Did you take your blessed Nembutal? Okay, okay, if you don’t want to answer, I don’t really care. Aaaay, I’m bushed. Damn it, if you don’t turn the light on, I’m going to fall over something. This rotten little stinking little hotel. We ought to have gone straight on to Veracruz, Javier, to the sea. That’s all right, you don’t have to move. Aaaaay, all I want to do is rest. The pillow’s cool, thank God. Christ, wouldn’t I give something to sleep the way you do? You don’t really need those silly pills. Do you hear me? I say you don’t need those stupid pills. I wish we had gone straight on to the sea and were there already. Javier. Do you hear me? Why don’t you answer me? Are you here? Javier, Javier, I swear, forgive me, I don’t do it to hurt you but to help us both. To offer you, to offer both of us, with naturalness and spontaneity, a way out. A way to keep the dream going, Javier. To keep it up.”

  When he brought you home to Mexico City, at the outbreak of the war, you went on dreaming about him. It had become your habit to go to bed with a book and little by little to let your attention drift away from your reading as you repeated his name over and over, until finally you fell asleep with the book open, hypnotized by the word Javier. You knew that a little later he would come into the bedroom, close your book, and put out the light. Your dream would already have formed: his face and figure, exactly. Yet perhaps not completely: perhaps only a color, a glitter, an iridescence like that of the stars that roll through space, the blue stars that come toward us, the red ones that move away, the yellow stars that do not move at all. His presence in your dream was like a flaming blue star. And when you woke in the morning and saw him face down beside you with his hair mussed, you would have liked to prolong that presence within you, but you couldn’t: he would have to wake and dress and go out and you would be left to pass the day alone in your apartment on Nazas, there alone or walking the neighborhood alone. After breakfast he left, and there you were. You had a yellow lamp of tarnished glass that had been made from an old pulque demijohn. You could see your face in it, deformed by the refraction, and you used to run your hands over the smoothness of the glass. And seated on the sofa wi
th your knees together you would lean forward and pick up the black ashtray of burned Oaxacan clay that was your husband’s favorite, that he always used when he was in the living room and always carried to the table to smoke after lunch and into the bedroom when he read and smoked in bed. You ran the sensitive tips of your fingers over the black clay. You passed your fingers also over the square low table of polished pine that stood before the sofa, let your fingertips linger on the rings left by his glass of beer, on the scars where his cigarettes had burned out. You would walk across the jute rug with your hands together behind your back, slowly, reflectively, as though you were trying to step in his steps, all the way to the squeaking board that always announced his arrival home again, and then back, repeating your actions in reverse: walk across the rug, touch the marks and scars on the table, feel the weight of the black ashtray between your hands, touch the imperfect mirror of the demijohn lamp. Nor did you stop there. You searched for other things that would speak to you of him. You would sit on your heels on the floor or cross-legged or lying back against the sofa or lying forward with your chin propped on your palms, and look at every corner of this room you shared with him. The bookshelves that occupied one entire wall from the door to the corner; the titles and authors that were arranged according to no plan, entirely helter-skelter: Rilke, Dostoevsky, Cervantes, Reyes, Huidobro, Kleist, Nietzsche, Thomas Mann, Sheridan Le Fanu, Gérard de Nerval, Emily Brönte, D. H. Lawrence, Byron, Euripides, Quiroga. The pine stool in front of the books was covered with a hand-loomed piece of Huichol cloth and on it was the pulque demijohn. From your position on the floor all the room was reflected in the yellow glass, the closer objects made very large, those farther away small at the end of a tunnel of light, the cblong of the window brilliant and motionless on one curving side. The deep, comfortable sofa with its Scotch plaid upholstery that was beginning to be a little worn now. The wide low table marked by his beer glass and his cigarettes, with his favorite ashtray and a candelabra without candles, a clay and plaster tree painted a thousand colors supported by a legless angel who carried on his rosy shoulders the trunk, the branches, the blue and yellow and red blooms. A pack of “Alas” cigarettes that he had forgotten. A box of “La Central” matches with its sand-paper striking surface and its blurred small reproduction of Corot’s “The Sowers.” The thin English chair that Javier had rescued from his parents’ home, with its lace back. Here he read, made notes, and consulted books, seated on the floor like you with his book open on the low table, his glass of beer staining the polished tabletop, his cigarette butts burning it, his arm, sometimes his head, resting on the chair. You spent many mornings studying the apartment in this way, always seated on the floor or stretched out, looking at the ceiling and watching the changing lights of passing day that entered through the Venetian blinds and made figures on the ceiling, reflections from the sun, from white clouds, from the chrome accessories of automobiles, even the nickel-plated bells of street venders.