Almost Never: A Novel (21 page)

Next step: digging up the letters: the fat one and the thin one. A (strategic) maneuver at noontime. Digging more with nails than with the whole hand to get to the not-very-deep bottom. The aridity aided her: finding and hoping. Rereading under that authoritarian sun—in the middle of December! To pronounce each word out loud would be like pleading:
Demetrio … Demetrio, come! Come love me!
If only that effect would result from that cause. More likely Renata would stuff the tender pages under her mattress: right in the middle so that when his beloved lay down he would feel her weight in that faraway ranch. Naked imaginings: yeehaw!: that’s it: an ambitious “yeehaw” as a response to a hot and steamy reality, and then a glimpse into a nighttime bedroom scenario: Demetrio on his back, hugging a pillow, a wool pillow, pretending it is Renata’s succulent body: in, out; in, out: further in and not all the way out: a deep-seated position, yes, so that the sperm would soon gush: so that immediately the scion would start to sprout (pretty nice, isn’t it?), O masturbation! understood as a libation. A vibrating plea:
Don’t forget me, Demetrio. Feel my body even if it is a pure and vague illusion. Feel it like this or like that, as if I were keeping the rhythm you tell me to keep.
After this mental entreaty, Renata went to lie down for a while in bed. First she placed the letters where we said before and tossed and turned to see if … She cried out with unwholesome pleasure … She wouldn’t even think of masturbating: only motile sanctity, ever more feminine; more denigrating divinations. Well then! at that moment a few drops of rain began to fall on the roof. Large drops, we should say: hail? Increasing: really joyous, because the random symmetry of sounds was so merciful! At last! Huge heavenly onslaught in the middle of December. The outburst decreed by God lasted for three hours and a tad. It was a—contorted—miracle! whose consequence was colder and colder and now, indeed, the logic of terrestrial life: winter, as it should be, seen as a camouflaged accident, which put in order a disorder that was also fortuitous.

Needless to say Renata and Doña Luisa celebrated Christmas modestly, but with the consolation of shivering while they ate their chicken dinner.

I
n, out; in, out; in, out: frantic and frenetic midst the nausea the big guy felt in those primitive quarters. Sex as corrosive expansion; sex as a thrust from something far away; an urge with an exasperating sting. That debut onanism on the ranch, the result of despair, for three months had passed without so much as a touch, not even a graze, down there, not even a toying with—never! not even when he washed by the bucketful: soaping around his belly button: the lather necessarily falling toward his scrotum—always a possibility? when that action produced stimulating tickles: ah, dealing with that problem was what the (final) redemptive bucketful was for: water to the rescue, and that was that. Thus sanctity should be understood as routine abstinence, abstinence that sets the spirit aflame in order to transform it into some kind of foil, or also into a knot that was only kind of untied; the beneficial sensation of being in control, translated into a quarrel with oneself, ongoing, although Demetrio had discovered during his many trips to Sabinas and Nueva Rosita that there were brothels in both places, in that region they were called
congales
or
zumbidos:
to wit: cathouses, almost clandestine (better), but till then—we are at the beginning of December—he had not had the nerve to pay any a visit, among other reasons because hooking up with a whore meant a sleepless night for sure, for those houses, according to what he had been told, opened their doors only after ten at night, and the return trip to La Mena, and the early morning chores the next day … Nevertheless, the person in question didn’t realize that the peons themselves would forgive him a slight excess of this kind, only for the obvious reason that seeing him so saintly, so single, so single-mindedly devoted to the comings and the goings—making sales! as well as his apprenticeship, though only as the hoister, of the slaughter of the animals, the slitting of throats, the skinning (also selling), the bringing to pasture (more and more), and the keeping quiet; as well as his connection—a counterbalance—to civilization through the radio and its songs, night after night: a soothing softness even if it was distressing. It was Benigno who told him he should go to the
congales
to appease his bachelor longings; for his part, he wouldn’t breathe a word to the boss; he should go, let off some steam, whenever he liked, for as manager, he was getting results never seen before: he was taking a lot of initiative selling meat and hides: quite pleasing progress, all noted by Don Delfín when he received the weekly take. But Demetrio resisted any disparity. On the contrary: what he needed to do was purify himself to avoid confusion. Once, he confessed to Benigno that whores scared him; he even admitted that a long time ago he had fallen in love with one and that such foolishness had ended badly, for he was no longer able to distinguish between a good woman and a bad—where, then, could one find the truth about love? That since then he had had filthy ideas, which led to the terribly shameful. What he did not confess to the peon was that he had a saintly sweetheart in Sacramento—why spill out the private? For his part, keeping that secret made him feel more blessed, more energetic, even though he had made no effort to go visit she who would certainly be his lifelong wife.

Reserve. Silence. No revelations of anything subconscious. Careful: keep the light to himself, and for that very reason (come what may) create an air of suspicion. And in the meantime: in, out; in, out; the corporeal pillow; nocturnal depravity transferred to an always future figuration: Renata in full ecstasy offering up words of gratitude. Hopefully! So many sentences he invented and placed inside that candied mouth … But Demetrio was fooling himself—or was he? For lately he’d shown stamina: let’s imagine him as a lecherous robot, placing the pillow on the bed every night and: aye aye! taking off his underpants and trousers, and, to put it prudishly, he didn’t always flail around like mad until the white band of streamlined snot appeared … How disgusting! Filth. A tumult in his conscience … Surely Bartola noticed his besmirchings when she washed his few washables; in fact, yes, hence the peon’s coercive words—as already stated—: again mentioning the
congales
that were there to be visited: temporary relief—why ever not! However, we must make room for an onanistic upheaval: one night Demetrio decided to place the pillow on top of himself. He had to try a new position if only for a change. To see if it would be more effective. The movements were more difficult, that’s true, that bit of exasperating distress led to—or so he fancied—it starting to rain: a miracle! and the rain got heavier. Sublime unexpected storm: and yes: the heat fled headlong, so abruptly, and likewise winter arrived—maybe because the big guy put the pillow on top of himself? So it was: let’s just accept it. There may have been other causes, but …

And Demetrio, as if bewitched, and because in his present state he couldn’t ejaculate, chose to go to a
congal
in Sabinas. He went during the week, to wit: he didn’t give a damn about interrupting his rapturous work routine, arguing to himself that Don Delfín had many times congratulated him for his dedication and his … et cetera and et cetera … Now let’s set him down in Sabinas having a cup of coffee at a tavern. A deliciously cool afternoon.

Later at night, the cold, a speculative disintegration: and he’s off; whether he’d regret it or not; whether he should ask directions. Fear vying with urgency. They’ll tell him once he’s in the neighborhood. That’s why he had to drive around: searching in the outskirts: perhaps it wasn’t so obvious; until someone told him that at such-and-such a house, one that did not even sport a red lightbulb. And Demetrio knocked several times on a corrugated metal door. It took a while for it to open … remember how clandestine, so he—is it already obvious?—had to think up an excuse because the purpose of his visit was solely to get a woman he could fuck. From behind the closed door they told him that they rented women by the hour, not more: okay? What he already knew, somewhat indirectly. More details translated into restrictions that inhibited the solicitor, who was on the verge of saying:
Thank you, I’ll come back next week.
But he dug in his heels on that threshold of a hell, if it really was one. It’s worth mentioning here that it all transpired through the corrugated door. The madam didn’t open it until she had set the exorbitant fee: one peso and fifty centavos! in comparison with the prices in Oaxaca … a comical bargain … finally a faceless agreement: a nuisance. Demetrio was trembling when he entered. He saw a small room lit with half-burnt candles that looked pretty gloomy, inhabited by monsters or something of the sort.

Whores as living ghouls, alas.

What he saw—ghastly! and suggestive of worse.

Wandering about, like a superfluous emphasis, was a pack of black and gray cats, but not a single white one.

The whores, three on show, were very fat ladies with unkempt hair, all wearing nothing but an apron; grotesque nakedness otherwise: no underpants—really! Seated horrors. All three were wearing flip-flops instead of spike heels, and, which one should he choose? None! but his horniness …

Under his breath Demetrio asked the madam if by some chance she had a female specimen a bit younger and with a nice body and:

“They’re all I’ve got … But I can guarantee you that they do good work … They are professionals.”

Such a long time without an imbroglio … the distasteful as a substitute for—the palm of the hand? … on the ranch? Descending doubts, though not at an avid downhill speed. The ascent, like a fluttering certainty, is never complete, of course, as far as fulfilling whatever need. Go for it! He hired the least ugly and least fat one, probably the youngest, judged on the fly. Then came the sinful march; culmination, that is, unimaginable, in a tiny room whose nauseating effluvia weren’t in the least exciting … Demetrio was even ashamed to take his clothes off. She just had to take off her apron and—ready to go! Stripped naked! And straight to business—oh, my God! The bad part: total consternation, as you can imagine: what kind of erection if … ? But a screw did ensue. It was like penetrating something very deep and very gelatinous. It was a struggle to find contractions that never, well, let’s see: the chubby woman didn’t even manage to touch his arm: kisses on the mouth—not on our life! Though, examining things more closely, what would that sausage with puffy lips (heavily lipsticked) and a snaky and (perhaps) scaly tongue taste like? Moreover, the woman kept rushing him. She wanted that semen to come as if out of a modern electrical appliance, latest model. Verbal aggression not worth reproducing here, for Demetrio, feeling more and more like the victim of an idle simulacrum, brusquely disengaged and with true dis-ease got dressed, the quicker to escape from such pestilence. Here we can offer an analogy: it seemed like the big guy had just been released from a pretty tricky coyote trap.

Fortunately his investment in that experiment had cost him only one peso and fifty centavos.

An infectious, monumental, depressing adventure because it gave him no glimmer of clarity as to the direction his life was taking. Curves and straightaways, though many more curves and perhaps some regression that could be interpreted as a harbinger of a precipitous conclusion, so much so that on his way back to La Mena he felt as though he were approaching an abyss.

The headlights of the pickup, in addition to shedding light on the familiar route, seemed to place in his path armies of nopales and huisaches: rising abruptly out of the earth or descended from the heavens: no! for God’s sake—not now! Interlopers! Frauds! A world of thorns. Certainties that when passing were merely glanced sidelong, fade-outs rather than fortuitous disappearances or the semblance of a current rushing backward. The (illuminated) illusory was so real, so apocryphal because so fleeting. Then, when he arrived at La Mena, he would have liked to see a single lightbulb, one electrical surprise to counteract, given the splendor of the mass of stars, but—what a fool! what a doltish delusion! it would be forever before electricity would come to that region. Not next year, nor the following, not in a lustrum, nor in a decade. The bulb relief—O remora! A highfalutin fantasy: a teensy and allusive stigma of what might or might not happen three decades from now … If only there were a bulb (just one one-hundred-watt bulb, let’s say) Demetrio would acknowledge that this ranch was his ideal place, and he, of course, the wise pioneer chosen by God to build first a hamlet, then a village, and then a city: a fervent founding father, but the darkness—primitive, shapeless, constricted thus rank because so narrow: now errant, now repellent, now the dregs of the dregs, and, therefore, a reality that not only dejects but imprisons. When he saw how uncertain all this was, especially when it was almost midnight, Demetrio realized he couldn’t live there much longer. Neither alone nor accompanied. Renata, in the meantime, resurrected. Sexual meekness that required a maximum of spiritual meekness, a future in dribs and drabs in exchange for true power. What a paradox! The big guy had taken this job to be closer to her and in the end he was much further away. The lack of communication, the workload increasingly heavy. He could neither send nor receive letters, and a trip to Sacramento, without knowing the roads well: ah, he would get gruelingly lost. He didn’t even try. It would be so risky, tempting perhaps, but … Renata instead inspired him to focus on his job. If he killed a goat, there in the thick of the blood Renata’s smile appeared. If he milked a cow (he’d already learned how), he encountered the oneiric semblance of her beauty in the spurts of milk. If he heard songs on the radio, his darling appeared to him suspended in the breeze. And during his trips to Sabinas and Nueva Rosita, Renata’s face, above the clouds, began to appear, and the intense green of her eyes dyed the white and blue of the sky. Then dissipation. Then the magnetism of her voice saying:
Come, come love me. Don’t abandon me.
In fact, some time before, in an about-face and with unexpected force, Benigno asked him: