27

What disconcerted Lorenzo most was that Fausta propelled him into unknown worlds over which he had no control—as with the computers. With Fausta, each time he ventured outside the perimeter, where his orders as director of the observatory were followed to the letter, Lorenzo revolved in space, not knowing how to behave. Once, at a café, a boy with long hair came up to their table from out of nowhere to ask her to dance. Without even a glance in Lorenzo’s direction Fausta got up and followed the boy to the middle of the room.

That afternoon he had invited Fausta for coffee at the only restaurant near Tonantzintla, and she had accepted happily. To his surprise, she asked for a beer. Ten minutes later, when Lorenzo was feeling self-confident, the young woman got up to dance with this disheveled rocker.

“I’m not a rebel without a cause, not a fool out of control,” the shrill scream of rock and roll came blaring out of the jukebox. Stupefied, Lorenzo watched her dance—holding the hand of a perfect stranger who spun her, exposing her lovely arm as he lifted it up high. Interrupt them, hit the bum, drag Fausta out, kick the jukebox—all these ideas crossed his mind in a matter of seconds. But he only raised the bottle of Negra Modelo beer to his lips as he watched.

The hippie put one coin after another in the jukebox, and Lorenzo considered walking out on her. Would she be saddened by his absence? No. Would she be afraid? No. He was the one with the fears. Would she ask him tomorrow why he had left? No. Alone with his beer, a frightening sense of abandonment invaded him. I’m an incomplete man, he said to himself, and ordered another beer. With each dance step Fausta trampled his pride and plunged him into a dark reality. I am obsessed with her, he thought. Far from giving him satisfaction, that certainty crushed him. Fausta, in the middle of the room, moved her hips, threw her head back, her long legs separated, breasts balancing under the blue blouse, delicate arms encircling the man, laughing in his face, an accomplice. She looked as if she belonged with the sweaty rocker, not with him. Lorenzo asked for a third Negra Modelo. If he got between them, could he replace the younger man? He couldn’t see himself, Mister Director, shaking it in the middle of the room; that would be something like the sky dissolving. He had to go to the bathroom, and he thought about walking out of the café when he returned, but the uselessness of the gesture stopped him. He didn’t want to leave. At the table, in front of his nth beer, he came to the conclusion that throughout his life he had paid more attention to his spirit than to his body, and that he must continue that way or he would fall apart. The justification of my existence is to work the way I do, he told himself. Science was his raison d’être. Being an astronomer was enough to gratify him. He couldn’t allow himself the luxury of feeling dissatisfied, but Fausta made him feel that way. “Fucking piece of shit that’s never done anything in her life!”

At one point he noticed Fausta smiling at him seductively from the dance floor. That smile alone made him glad he hadn’t left. Desire came over him, drowning him like a wave. Yet he still thought the only thing that could save him was to quash it, return to pure spirit. The rigor of observing had also given him knowledge of the secret springs of the souls of others. What would he do when Fausta returned to the table, if she returned? I’m not going to make the mistake of acting tragic, he thought. A sudden surge of desire invaded him again, and at the same moment Lorenzo replaced it with the certainty that Fausta would never love him, or would love him along with others—even worse, along with other women, and that was intolerable. The vision of his impulse destined to fail made him furious with her. Expelling her from his universe would not be difficult. In fact, there were women to spare.

When the rocker said to him with a grin, “Thanks for letting me borrow your daughter,” he responded, “She looks like me, doesn’t she?”

At that point Fausta put her hand on his arm. “Shall we go?” she asked, taking his hand. Without letting go, they left the restaurant. In the car, instead of sitting near the window, as she usually did, she sat close to him.

Lorenzo became agitated. Why was she doing this to him? Was she crazy or just mean? This whore had gotten the idea that he was incapable of love, yet she came to rub up against him, confusing him with the jerk she’d been dancing with five minutes earlier. Fucking bitches, really. Fucking bitches! Why didn’t he just take her to the nearest motel, fuck her, fire her the next day, and be done once and for all with the whole bother?

Iztaccíhuatl appeared in the windshield, in the light fog, and he saw Fausta as if for the first time. All the demons in his heart, all the shame in his spirit gave way before the image, and with a calm voice he said, “I can’t change gears.”

She jumped away from him.

The perfect summits of Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl, cut out against the deep blue-black of the night, made him recover his place in the landscape. He was the missing piece in the puzzle, a little bit of blue here, a little black there, and that’s it. It was finished. The girl, on the other hand, didn’t fit, and owing to her very nature, no one knew where to place her. But that was what she wanted—to be different. Hadn’t he told her that she was a moon that came out during the day?

He stopped the car in front of the house where she was staying, and Fausta, suggestively, asked him courteously, “Mister Director, would you like to come in?”

“No. I’m going to observe.”

“May I accompany you?”

“Tomorrow, my child, tomorrow.”

When he arrived home, he felt mortally tired. He took a bottle of sleeping pills out of the medicine chest, swallowed one more than had been prescribed, and fell on the bed that now seemed sad and deep.

Fausta had forced him to return to his adolescence. Also, inevitably, to think about women. They had to be protected, the poor things. So predictable. Reading them as he did took away all the mystery. Bags. About to give birth, they filled up with milk and they emptied of blood and fluids. Soft. Kneeling in the middle of the sheets, they awaited salvation. While the sun tanned him, blackening his body, they swelled up, then prostrated themselves at a man’s feet, like a balloon that has been popped. Screw them—a quick ejaculation and let’s be on our way. Not getting trapped like Chava in the sweet nectar of Rosita Berain. You had to apply the same formula to women that you did to death: let come what may, get out from between their legs quickly, wash them out of you. Poor creatures. Their time on Earth had still not come.

Fausta defied his parameters; he wasn’t the conqueror. This spoiled brat turned him upside down and made him certain of something that he wanted to hide—the fact that he was a weak man. Fausta brought back memories that were deeply buried, and Lorenzo had to reexamine his relationships with those “fucking women.” The first, at the Eden movie theater on Sundays. The minute the lights went out, the boys ran, in a stampede that made the floor rumble, to sit next to the girls. Father Chavez Peón would cover the projector lens with his hat when the kisses were prolonged on the screen, and in row after row of seats the kids yelled, “Kiss, kiss, kiss.” Then Chavez Peón, in his black suit, smelling rank, and his Tardan hat pulled down to his ears, got up on the stage to talk about decency. When he got off the stage, the movie would resume until the next kiss, so a thirty-minute episode could last from four to six thirty in the afternoon.

Lorenzo would run and sit next to a girl who was older than he. Socorro Guerra Lira. Her dark hair shone, its lemon fragrance attracted him, and she soon responded, letting him hold her hand. He no longer saw the movie, experiencing only his own sensations, which became more compelling as she softened. The desire to kiss her became painful. Socorro pretended not to notice, but when Lorenzo pulled her toward him, she was the one who kissed him first. After that unforgettable day, Sunday after Sunday, Lorenzo was in line in front of the Eden ticket booth, and he ran to the seat that Socorro saved for him, to kiss her at will. He didn’t recognize himself, and what he felt scared him. Where would this end? From what he saw, he was the one who imposed limits, because Socorro would put her hand on the fly of his pants, throwing him into unimagined desire. For the first time in his life he knew what ejaculation meant. He returned to the house on Lucerna three hours later, confused and ashamed.

Abdul Haddad had challenged him: “What are you doing with my girlfriend?”

Although Abdul was taller, Lorenzo threw himself on the boy and punched him. The workouts at the Beristains’ gym had served him well. The big boy took off, and when he saw Lorenzo coming at him again, he took out a little pistol and shot at his stomach. A great silence fell over the crowd, and the shouts of “Give it to him, Lencho” and “Kill him, Abdul” ceased as in a dream. Before he passed out, Lorenzo had time to wish that Diego had been there. He came to in a white hospital bed. He had a terrible headache and was doubled over with nausea. “It’s the anesthesia,” Leticia told him, her eyes all watery. Around the bed, she and Aunt Tana were watching over him.

“Young man, we’re not going to let you play d’Artagnan anymore.”

He recovered at the house on Lucerna. Aunt Tana, Tila, and Leticia took turns at the foot of his bed. “Thank God the bullet didn’t hit the intestines, and the wound is superficial. It grazed the sacroiliac; the operation was simple.”

He never saw Socorro Guerra Lira again, although the nurse told him that a female voice had telephoned, asking about him between sobs, but she hung up without giving her name. Lorenzo turned red when he heard about the sobbing.

“You’re quite a little bull, son,” commented the surgeon sympathetically. “You have a strong muscle wall. A few days of rest, and you’ll be better than before.”

Now Lorenzo was surprised that the memory of Socorro and the Arab sprung up so real and so palpitating from his memory. One afternoon, seated on the edge of his bed, Aunt Tana had unbuttoned his pajama top. “It’s too hot, Lencho. Take it off.”

Lorenzo felt the same knot in his stomach as he had at the Eden. Dona Cayetana must have perceived it, because she never touched him again. All the heat of Mexico entered through the window of his attic room. “You’ll be up and about soon enough. Don’t move too much, so it’s not so painful.”

“Passivity while suffering, Aunt? Never!” On the contrary, the most stimulating of impulses invaded him. “Aunt, I mold my life. I rule myself.”

Leticia laughed. “Always such big words.”

A prisoner of desire, Lorenzo hadn’t recognized himself. He was supposed to be lying in bed because of the pain, but the erections were what tormented him. Tila changed the white-flowered sheets without saying a word, and Lorenzo knew that embarrassment forced them both to keep silent. What happened to him was completely real, and all of them, himself included, pretended not to notice. In this house there are no bodies; no one discusses the tyranny of sex, thought Lorenzo. His frustration had no body either. Only once had Leticia—the only one who he thought was unaware of the duplicity, naïve because of her age—told him, “Aunt Tana told Tila that they must pray a lot for you. See, they do love you.”

“What else do they say down there?”

“They say that this happened to you for being horny. Father Chavez Peón came to tell on you.”

In the merciless oven of his attic room, Lorenzo was all flesh. Before, he had been all spirit. Now he had to tame his unruly body, hide his impulses under the sheets so that no one would see them, although they surely suspected.

“Your father says that he’ll see you when you can come down to the dining room and for you to remember that suffering is purifying,” Aunt Tana solemnly communicated.

“If suffering is such a great teacher, why doesn’t he suffer and come up to see me?”

“Impertinent boy. Your father in an attic room?”

“Listen, Leti, can you do me a big favor and ask Diego to bring me The Origin of Species?”

When Diego came up, they talked not only about Darwin, Abdul Haddad, and Socorro, but about the shooting.

“Show me your wound.”

Lorenzo boasted an immense scar.

“How lucky you are, brother! Oh, my God. Does it hurt?”

“It just itches. I want to scratch, but the stitches would come open.”

“How many stitches?”

“Thirteen, and they’re black thread.” Excited, Lorenzo asked his friend if human nature was really the source of freedom.

“I’m not a biologist, Lencho, I don’t know.”

“You should know, Diego.”

“I’m telling you, I don’t.”

“Okay, ask Dr. Beristain for me.”

“Yes, of course. Did I tell you he sends you a hug?”

“Thanks, but ask him about nature.”

“Brother, I see that your volcanic nature hasn’t changed. I’m sure they’re going to let you out soon. Listen, my dad sends you Facundo by Sarmiento.”

“Couldn’t you bring me Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables?”

“I don’t think that’s appropriate for convalescence, but it’s up to you.”

Damn it! If Lorenzo were to go down to the living room right now and tell the de Tenas that owing to the shooting and his having the time to reflect while in bed, another life had been revealed to him, a life that was infinitely better, and it waited for them outside, they surely would have responded that he was the oppressed one, he was the stupid one. Of course they had the best of all possible lives. The de Tenas were considered the cream of society. Great Grandmother Asunción had been a lady-in-waiting to the Empress Carlota. The de Tenas—like the Escandóns, the Rincón Gallardos, the Romero de Terreros, and the Martínez de Ríos—lived up to the motto on their coat of arms, and there were very few families in Mexico with their lineage and honorable family name. They came from Spain, spoke of the king as if he were their property and of Maximilian and Carlota as intimate friends. No, there was no possibility that Lorenzo’s discourse would provoke any reaction. On the contrary, only Juan and Leticia would feel it, damn it all.

Lorenzo only went back to the Eden movie theater once. No one had seen Socorrito since the shooting, and Father Chavez Peón reproached him: “You’ve ruined her reputation. Who knows if she’ll ever be able to marry now?”

 

 

His memories provided a respite. The intensity with which he thought about Fausta was making his existence phantasmagorical: Harvard, Tonantzintla—everything was falling apart around him. I have to work, he told himself. It’s the only way to forget about Fausta. Love makes me waste time.

“It’s already Wednesday?” Lorenzo said. “Oh, my, how time flies.”

On hearing him, Fausta replied, “Every day, sometimes twice a day, you lament the loss of time. If no one really knows what time is, what are you worrying about? Pretend that it’s very thin air passing by and there’s no way to hold on to it, and stop torturing yourself.”

Very carefully, through solitary days, Lorenzo made Fausta a participant in his obsession with time. When he spoke to her about Calderón de la Barca’s play Life Is a Dream, it surprised him that she answered that Góngora and Velazquez were also part of the golden age, along with Calderón de la Barca, born thirty-eight years after Lope de Vega.

“How do you know Calderón de la Barca’s work, Fausta?”

“I worked in the theater. I really like the servant’s name: Clotaldo, the only one who lived with Segismundo. It’s an ugly name and attractive at the same time. Listen, Doctor, as a child, I drew, but since I didn’t like my creatures, I gave them ugly names. I remember one was Jedaure. I thought that the day they came out well, I’d call them Rodrigo, Tomás, Andrés, Nicolás, Lucas, Cristóbal, Ines, but I never got to the point where I drew them skillfully, so I never got past Jedaure.”

“The search for perfection.”

Fausta repeated how Basilio, the king of Poland, locked Prince Segismundo up in a tower because the queen had died in childbirth, and the prophets had assured him that his son would steal his power. “You know, Doctor, no one knows Segismundo except for Clotaldo. When the boy becomes an adult, the king—after con-suiting with the seers—orders the servant to free his son and take him to the court to test him. Clotaldo gives him a potion, and Segismundo wakes up in the palace. There, because he has never seen a woman, he assaults Rosaura, insults the court, and throws one of the royal attendants off a balcony. Segismundo is a beast. It is impossible for him to be king, and his father sends him back to prison, making him believe it was all a dream.

“I dream that I am here
From these prisons carried,
And I dreamt that in another more pleasing state
I appeared. I saw myself.
What is life? Frenzy,
Rapture.
What is life? An illusion,
A shadow, a story,
And the greatest good is small,
All life is a dream. And dreams are dreams.

“However, Prince Segismundo has fallen in love, and finally the only thing he remembers is his love for his cousin Estrella. Doesn’t that story seem cool, Doctor?”

“What?”

Lorenzo and Fausta began to contemplate Segismundo’s monologue and to ask themselves why they had less freedom than birds and bears. They recited together “‘and having more soul, do I have less freedom? and I with better instincts, do I have less freedom?’”

Returning to the past was a clear sign of aging, and Lorenzo was afraid. I can cope with my body aging, but not my mind. It must not abandon me. No one can beat me.