In Praise of the Stepmother Page 6

  Now that she is already on fire inside, her little head phosphorescing with lubricious images, I shall scale her back and roll about on the satiny geography of her body, tickling her in the proper zones with my wings, and gambol about like a happy little puppy on the warm pillow of her belly. These affected gestures of mine make her laugh, and they kindle her body till it becomes an incandescent coal. My memory is already hearing her laugh that will be forthcoming, a laugh that drowns out the moans of the organ and makes the lips of the young music teacher drool. When she laughs, her nipples grow hard and erect, as though an invisible mouth were sucking them, and the muscles of her stomach ripple beneath the smooth skin with the scent of vanilla that suggests the rich treasure of warmths and moistures of her private parts. At that moment my turned-up nose can catch the faint odor of her secret juices, like a whiff of overripe cheese. The aroma of this amorous suppuration drives Don Rigoberto mad, and he—as she has told me—kneeling as if in prayer, absorbs it and impregnates himself with it to the point of blissful, intoxicated rapture. It is, he maintains, a more powerful aphrodisiac than all the elixirs, compounded of the nastiest substances, hawked to lovers by the sorcerers and procuresses of this city. “As long as that is how you smell, I will be your slave,” she says that he says to her, with the loose tongue of those drunk on love.

  The door will soon open and we will hear Don Rigoberto’s soft footfalls on the carpet. We will soon see him appear at this bedside to ascertain whether the two of us, the music teacher and I, have been capable of bringing base reality closer to his tinseled fantasies. Hearing the lady’s laughter, seeing her, breathing in the odor of her, he will take it that something more or less like that has happened. He will then make an almost imperceptible gesture of approval, which for us will be an order to take our leave.

  The organ will fall silent; with a deep bow, the music teacher will make his exit by way of the orangery, and I will leap through the window and take off on my flying trapeze into the fragrant dark of the open sky.

  The two of them, and the echo of their tender love bout, will remain behind in the boudoir.

  Eight.

  The Salt of His Tears

  Justiniana’s eyes were as big as saucers and she was gesticulating wildly. Her hands looked like the vanes of a windmill.

  “Little Alfonso says he’s going to kill himself! Because you don’t love him anymore, he says!” she exclaimed, blinking in terror. “He’s writing a farewell letter, señora.”

  “Is this another one of those wild notions that…” Doña Lucrecia stammered, looking at her in the mirror of the dressing table. “More twittering from that birdbrain of yours?”

  But the maidservant’s face was dead serious and Doña Lucrecia, who was plucking her eyebrows, dropped the tweezers on the floor, and without further questions headed off down the stairs at a run followed by Justiniana. The boy’s bedroom door was locked. His stepmother knocked: “Alfonso, Alfonsito!” There was no answer and not a sound could be heard inside.

  “Foncho! Fonchito!” Doña Lucrecia called out insistently, knocking on the door once more. Her back felt ice-cold. “Open the door! Are you all right? Why don’t you answer me, Alfonso!”

  The key turned with a creak in the lock, but the door did not open. Doña Lucrecia drew a deep breath. The ground beneath her feet was solid again, the world was righting itself after a dizzying slide into chaos.

  “Leave me alone with him,” she ordered Justiniana.

  She entered the room, closing the door behind her. She did her best to repress the indignation that was gradually getting the better of her, now that the scare she had had was over.

  Alfonso, still dressed in his school uniform, was sitting at his desk, his head bent. He raised it and looked at her, not moving, sad-faced, more beautiful than ever. Though daylight was still coming in through the window, his study lamp was turned on and in the golden circle falling on the green desk blotter Doña Lucrecia spied a half-finished letter, the ink still glistening, an uncapped pen lying alongside his little hand with inkstained fingers.

  She crossed the room slowly and halted beside him. “What are you doing?” she murmured.

  Her voice and her hands were trembling, her breast heaving.

  “Writing a letter,” the boy replied, in a firm voice. “To you.”

  “To me?” She smiled, making an effort to appear pleased. “May I read it?”

  Alfonso put his hand over the paper. His hair was touseled, his face grave. “Not yet.” There was an adult determination in his eyes and his tone of voice was defiant. “It’s a farewell letter.”

  “A farewell letter? Does that mean, then, that you’re going off somewhere, Fonchito?”

  “I’m going to kill myself,” Doña Lucrecia heard him say, his gaze riveted on her, not moving a muscle. Yet, after a few seconds, his composure suddenly left him and his eyes brimmed with tears. “Because you don’t love me anymore, stepmother.”

  Hearing herself told that in this way, half in grief and half in anger, the boy’s little face puckering into a pout that he tried in vain to control, in the words of a dejected lover which sounded so incongruous coming from this beardless figure in knee pants, left Doña Lucrecia dumbfounded. She stood there openmouthed, not knowing what to say in reply.

  “What do you mean by such foolishness, Fonchito?” she finally murmured, only halfway pulling herself together. “I don’t love you, you say? But, darling, how can that be, if you’re like my own son. You’re the one I…”

  She fell silent, because Alfonso, flinging himself upon her and putting his arms around her waist, burst into tears. Pressing his face against Doña Lucrecia’s belly, he sobbed and sobbed, his little body shaken with sighs, his panting like a famished puppy’s. Yes, at this moment, no doubt about it, he was a child, given the despair with which he wept and the shamelessness with which he manifested his suffering. Fighting not to allow herself to be overcome by the emotion that gripped her throat and filled her eyes with tears, Doña Lucrecia stroked his hair. Confused, a prey to contradictory feelings, she listened to him unburden himself, in a rush of stammered complaints.

  “You haven’t spoken to me for days now. I ask you something and you turn away. You don’t let me kiss you good night or good morning, and when I come back from school you look at me as if it annoyed you to see me come home. Why, stepmother? What have I done?”

  Doña Lucrecia contradicted him and kissed his hair. No, Fonchito, none of that is true. You are hurt much too easily, sweetie! And, searching for the kindest way to put it, she tried to explain. Of course she loved him! A whole lot, darling! She worried about him all the time and thought about him every minute when he was at school or playing soccer with his friends. It was just that it wasn’t good for him to be so attached to her, to love his stepmother to distraction like that. It could do him harm, silly boy, if he allowed himself to be so impulsive, to have such strong feelings. It would be better for him emotionally if he didn’t depend on someone like her so much, someone so much older than he. His affection, his interests ought to be shared with other people, be directed above all toward boys his own age, his friends at school, his cousins. He would grow up sooner that way, with a personality of his own, be the upright young man that she and Don Rigoberto would have every reason to be so proud of later.

  But as Doña Lucrecia spoke, something in her heart belied what she was saying. She was certain, moreover, that the boy wasn’t listening to her. Perhaps he didn’t even hear her. I don’t believe a single word of what I’m telling him, she thought. Now that his sobs had ceased, though every so often he heaved a deep sigh, Alfonsito’s attention appeared to be riveted on his stepmother’s hands. He had seized them and was kissing them lingeringly, timidly, with fervent devotion. Then, as he rubbed them against his satiny cheek, Doña Lucrecia heard him murmur in a very soft voice, as though he were addressing only the slender fingers that he was squeezing so hard: “I love you a lot, stepmother. A whole lot… Don’t ever tr
eat me again the way you have lately, because I’ll kill myself. I swear to you I’ll kill myself.”

  And then it was as though a dam had suddenly burst within her and a flood descended upon her prudence and her reason, submerging them, pulverizing ancestral principles she had never doubted, and even her instinct for self-preservation. She squatted down, bent one knee so as to be at the same height as the seated boy, and embraced and caressed him, free of all constraint, a stranger to herself, and as though caught in the eye of a storm.

  “Never again,” she repeated, haltingly, for emotion scarcely permitted her to get the words out. “I promise you I’ll never treat you that way again. The coldness of these recent days was a pretense, lambikins. How stupid I’ve been: I wanted to do you a kindness, and I’ve made you suffer. Forgive me, love…”

  And at the same time she kissed him on his touseled hair, on his forehead, on his cheeks, tasting on her lips the salt of his tears. When the boy’s mouth sought hers, she did not refuse it to him. Half closing her eyes, she let herself be kissed and returned the kiss. After a moment, emboldened, the boy’s lips pressed down hard on hers and then she opened hers and allowed a nervous little viper, clumsy and frightened at first, and then rash, to visit her mouth and explore it, gliding across her gums and her teeth from one side to the other. Nor did she push away the hand she suddenly felt on one of her breasts. It rested there for a moment, perfectly still, as though summoning strength, and then, forming a hollow, caressed it with a delicate, respectful squeeze. Even though, in the depths of her mind, a voice urged her to get to her feet and leave, Doña Lucrecia did not move. Instead, she hugged the boy to her and, with no inhibitions, went on kissing him with an impetuousness and a wantonness that mounted step by step with her desire. Till the moment when, as in dreams, she heard a car brake to a stop and, shortly thereafter, her husband’s voice calling to her.

  She leapt to her feet in terror; her panic communicated itself to the boy, whose eyes were suddenly filled with fear. She saw Alfonso’s clothes in disarray, the traces of lipstick on his mouth. “Go wash your face,” she hurriedly ordered him, pointing, and the boy nodded and ran to the bathroom.

  She came out of the bedroom in a daze and practically staggered across the little sitting room overlooking the garden. She went into the guest bathroom and locked herself in. Her legs were about to give way, as though she had been running. Looking at herself in the mirror, she was seized with a fit of hysterical laughter that she stifled by clapping her hand over her mouth. “You stupid fool, you madwoman,” she berated herself as she wet her face with cold water. Then she sat down on the bidet and let the jet run for a long time. She carefully tidied herself and straightened her clothes and composed her features and stayed there in the bathroom till she felt altogether calm again, in complete control of her facial expression and her gestures. When she came out to greet her husband, she was as fresh and smiling as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened to her. Nonetheless, though Don Rigoberto found her as affectionate and solicitous as always, leaning over backward to pamper and indulge him, and listening, with the same interest as usual, to his stories of how the day had gone, there was a hidden malaise in Doña Lucrecia that did not leave her for an instant, an edginess that, every so often, made her shiver and her stomach feel hollow.

  The youngster had dinner with them. He was polite and nicely behaved, his usual self. He greeted his father’s jokes with bubbling laughter and even asked him to tell some more, “off-color ones, Papa, the kind that are a tiny bit dirty.” When her eyes met his, Doña Lucrecia was surprised not to find in that clear, pale blue gaze the least shadow of a cloud, the slightest gleam of impishness or connivance.

  Hours later, in the privacy of their darkened bedroom, Don Rigoberto whispered once again that he loved her and, covering her with kisses, thanked her for his days and nights, the immense bliss that filled his life because of her. “Since we’ve been married, I’ve been learning how to live, Lucrecia,” she heard him tell her excitedly. “Had it not been for you, I would have died without ever knowing that such wisdom existed and without even suspecting what pleasure really meant.” As she listened to him, she was moved and happy, but even now she couldn’t stop thinking about the youngster. Nonetheless, that intruding proximity, that curious angelical presence did not detract from her pleasure, but, on the contrary, enhanced it with a feverish, disturbing piquancy. “Aren’t you going to ask me who I am?” Don Rigoberto finally murmured.

  “Who, who, my love?” she asked with the requisite impatience, spurring him on.

  “Well, a monster,” she heard him say, already far away, unreachable, in his flight of fancy.

  Nine.

  Profile of a Human Being

  My left ear was bitten off in a fight with another human being, as I remember. But I hear the sounds of the world clearly through the thin slit that remains. I also see things, though only obliquely and with difficulty. Because, even though not apparent at first glance, this bluish protuberance, to the left of my mouth, is an eye. That it is there, in working order, apprehending forms and colors, is a marvel wrought by medical science, a testimonial to the extraordinary progress so characteristic of our time. I ought by all odds to be doomed to perpetual darkness, since all the survivors of the great fire—I do not recall whether it was caused by a bombardment or a coup d’état—lost both their sight and their hair, because of the oxides. I had the good fortune to lose only one eye; the other one was saved by the ophthalmologists after sixteen operations. It has no eyelid and frequently oozes tears, but it allows me to distract myself watching television and, above all, to detect in a flash the appearance of the enemy.

  The glass cube I live in is my home, I can see through the walls of it, but no one can see me from the outside: a very handy system for ensuring the safety of the home, in this era of terrible traps. The glass panes of my dwelling are, of course, bulletproof, germproof, radiationproof, and soundproof. They are continually perfumed with the distinctive odor of armpits and musk, which to me—and only to me, I know—is delightful.

  I have a very highly developed sense of smell and it is by way of my nose that I experience the greatest pleasure and the greatest pain. Ought I to call this gigantic membranous organ that registers all scents, even the most subtle, a nose? I am referring to the grayish shape, covered with white crusts, that begins at my mouth and extends, increasing in size, down to my bull neck. No, it is not a goiter or an acromegalic Adam’s apple. It is my nose. I know that it is neither beautiful nor useful, since its excessive sensibility makes it an indescribable torment when a rat is rotting in the vicinity or fetid materials pass through the drainpipes that run through my home. Nonetheless, I revere it and sometimes think that my nose is the seat of my soul.

  Francis Bacon. Head I (1948), oil and tempera on hardboard, collection of Richard S. Zeisler, New York

  I have no arms or legs, but my four stumps are nicely healed over and well toughened, so that I can move about easily along the ground and can even run if need be. My enemies have never been able to catch me in any of their roundups thus far. How did I lose my hands and feet? An accident at work, perhaps; or maybe some medicine my mother took so as to have an easy pregnancy (science doesn’t come up with the right answer in all cases, unfortunately).

  My sex organ is intact. I can make love, on condition that the young fellow or the female acting as my partenaire allows me to position myself in such a way that my boils don’t rub against his or her body, for if they burst they leak stinking pus and I suffer terrible pain. I like to fornicate, and I would say that, in a certain sense, I am a voluptuary. I often have fiascoes or experience a humiliating premature ejaculation, it is true. But, other times, I have prolonged and repeated orgasms that give me the sensation of being as ethereal and radiant as the Archangel Gabriel. The repulsion I inspire in my lovers turns into attraction, and even into delirium, once they overcome—thanks almost always to alcohol or drugs—their initial prejudices and agr
ee to do amorous battle with me on a bed. Women even come to love me, in fact, and youngsters become addicted to my ugliness. In the depths of her soul, Beauty was always fascinated by the Beast, as so many fantastic tales and mythologies recount, and it is only in rare cases that the heart of a good-looking youth does not harbor something perverse. No one has ever regretted being my lover. Males and females alike thank me for having given them advanced instruction in the fine art of combining desire and the horrible so as to give pleasure. They learned from me that everything is and can be erogenous and that, associated with love, the basest organic functions, including those of the lower abdomen, become spiritualized and ennobled. The dance of gerunds they perform with me—belching, urinating, defecating—lingers with them afterward like a memory of times gone by, that descent into filth (something that tempts all of them yet few dare to undertake) made in my company.

  My greatest source of pride is my mouth. It is not true that it is open wide because I am forever howling in despair. I keep it wide open like that to show off my sharp white teeth. Is there anyone who wouldn’t envy them? I’m missing only two or three of them. The rest are still strong and carnivorous. If necessary, they crush stones. But they prefer to feed on the breasts and hindquarters of calves, to sink into the little tits and thighs of hens and capons or the throats of little birds. Eating flesh is a prerogative of the gods.

  I am not a miserable wretch, nor do I want people to pity me. I am what I am and that’s enough for me. Knowing that others are worse off is a great consolation, of course. It is possible that God exists, but at this point in history, with everything that has happened to us, does it matter? That the world might have been better than it is? Yes, perhaps, but what’s the use of mulling over a question like that? I’ve survived and, despite appearances, I am part of the human race.