Constancia and Other Stories for Virgins (21 page)

—Solomillo? Andrés Solomillo.

—No, Papa, you're getting mixed up. First they shot the landowners, then the revolutionary leaders began to shoot each other.

—Anyway, they all died, said the old survivor with something like resigned sadness.

—Oh, it was a long time ago, Papa.

—And you, what happened to you?

—The soldiers shouted hurray and threw their caps in the air, we tossed our sombreros in the air too, we all embraced, and I swear, sir, no one who was present that morning in Santa Eulalia will ever forget that famous line, “The soldiers are the people…” Well, the important thing, really, was that we'd gotten rid of the landowners first and the generals after.

He paused a moment, looking at the barranca, and said:
And it didn't do us a bit of good.

The old man shrugged, his memory was beginning to fail him, surely; besides, they told so many different stories about what happened at Santa Eulalia, you could just about believe them all; it was the only way not to lie, and the old man laughed.

—But in the midst of so much death, there's no way to know who survived and who didn't.

—No, Papa, if you don't remember, who is going to?

—You are, said the old man. That is why I tell you. That is how it has always been. The children remember for you.

—Does Dimas know this story? I ventured to ask, immediately biting my tongue for my audacity, my haste, my … The old man showed no reaction.

—It all happened a long time ago. I was a child then and the soldier just told us: You're free, there's no more hacienda, or landowners, or bosses, nothing but freedom, our chains were removed,
patrón,
we were free as air. And now see how we end up, serving still, or in jail.

—Long live our chains! Marco Aurelio gave a laugh, a cross between sorrow and cynicism, as he passed by, hoisting a Dos Equis, and I watched him, thinking of Eduarda as a child, how she must have struggled to reach my arms, and I thought of Dimas Palmero in prison and of how he would stay there, with his memory, not realizing that memory was information, Dimas in his cell knowing the same story as everyone, conforming to the memory of the world and not the memory of his people—Prisciliano Nieves was the hero of Santa Eulalia—while the old man knew what Dimas forgot, didn't know, or rejected: Prisciliano Nieves had died in Santa Eulalia; but neither of them knew how to convert his memory into information, and my life depended on their doing nothing, on their memory, accurate or not, remaining frozen forever, an imprisoned memory, you understand, my accomplices? Memory their prisoner, information my prisoner, and both of us here, not moving from the house, both of us immobile, both prisoners, and everyone happy, so I immediately said to Marco Aurelio: Listen, when you visit your brother, tell him he'll lack for nothing, you hear me? Tell him that they'll take good care of him, I promise, he can get married, have conjugal visits, you know: I've heard it said in the house that he likes this red-cheeked girl with the bare arms, well, he can marry her, she's not going to run off with one of these bandits, you've seen what they're like, Marco Aurelio, but tell Dimas not to worry, he can count on me, I'll pay for the wedding and give the girl a dowry, tell him I'm taking him, and all of you, into my care, you will all be well cared for, I'll see to it that you'll never lack for anything, neither you here nor Dimas in the pen, he won't have to work, or you either, I'll look after the family, resigned to the fact that the real criminal will never be found: Who killed Eduarda? We'll never know, I swear, when a girl like that comes to the city and becomes independent, neither you nor I, nobody, is guilty of anything …

That was my decision. I preferred to remain with them and leave Dimas in jail rather than declare myself guilty or pin the crime on someone else. They understood. I thought of Dimas Palmero locked up and also of the day I presented myself to Brigadier Prisciliano Nieves in his hospital room.

—Sign here, my general. I promise to take care of your servants and your honor. You can rest in peace. Your reputation is in my hands. I wouldn't want it to be lost, believe me. I will be as silent as the grave; I will be your heir.

The dying Brigadier Prisciliano Nieves looked at me with enormous brazenness. I knew then that his possessions no longer mattered to him, that he wouldn't bat an eyelash.

—Do you have any heirs, other than your servants, I asked, and the old man surely had not expected that question, which I put to him as I took a hand mirror from the table next to the bed and held it in front of the sick face of the general, in this way registering his surprise.

Who knows what the false Prisciliano saw there.

—No, I have no one.

Well informed, I already knew that. The old man ceased to look at his death's face and looked instead at mine, young, alert, perhaps resembling his own anonymous youthful look.

—My general, you are not you. Sign here, please, and die in peace.

To each his own memory. To each his own information. The world believed that Prisciliano Nieves killed Andrés Solomillo at Santa Eulalia. The old patriarch installed in my house knew that they had all killed each other. My first sweetheart Buenaventura del Rey's papa, paymaster of the constitutionalist army, knew that as well. Between the two memories lay my twenty-five years of prosperity. But Dimas Palmero, in jail, believed like everyone else that Prisciliano Nieves was the hero of Santa Eulalia, its survivor and its enforcer of justice. His information
was
the world's. The old men, by contrast,
held
the world's information, which isn't the same. Prisciliano Nieves died, along with Andrés Solomillo, at Santa Eulalia, when the former said that the soldiers, being the people, would not kill the people, and the latter proved the contrary right there, and barely had Prisciliano fallen when Solomillo, too, was cut down by the troops. Who usurped the legend of Prisciliano Nieves? What had been that man's name? Who profited from the slaughter of the leaders? No doubt, someone just as anonymous as those who had invaded my garden and surrounded my house. That was the man I visited one morning in the hospital and blackmailed. I converted memory to information. Buenaventura's papa and the ragged old man residing in my garden retained memory but lacked information. Only I had both, but as yet I could do nothing with them except to ensure that everything would go on the same as always, that nothing would be questioned, that it would never occur to Dimas Palmero to translate the memory of his clan into information, that neither the information nor the memory would ever do anyone any good anymore, except for me. But the price of that deadlock was that I would remain forever in my house in Las Lomas, Dimas Palmero in jail, and his family in my garden.

In the final analysis, was it I who won, he who lost? That I leave for you to decide. Over my telephone lines, you have heard all I've said. I've been completely honest with you. I've put all my cards on the table. If there are loose ends in my story, you can gather them up and tie them in a bow yourselves. My memory and my information are now yours. You have the right to criticize to finish the story, to reverse the tapestry and change the weave to point out the lapses of logic, to imagine you have resolved all the mysteries that I, the narrator crushed under the press of reality, have let escape through the net of my telephones, which is the net of my words.

And still I'll bet you won't know what to do with what you know. Didn't I say so from the beginning? My story is hard to believe.

Now I no longer had to take risks and struggle. Now I had my place in the world, my house, my servants, and my secrets. I no longer had the guts to go see Dimas Palmero in prison and ask him what he knew about Prisciliano Nieves or what he knew about Lala: Why did you kill her? On your own? Because the old man ordered you to? For the honor of the family? Or for your own?

—Lala, I sighed, my Lala …

Then through the gardens of Virreyes came the girls on pogo sticks, hopping like nubile kangaroos, wearing sweatshirts with the names of Yankee universities on them and acid-washed jeans with Walkmans hooked between blue jean and belt and the fantastic look of Martians, radio operators, telephone operators, aviators all rolled into one, with their black earphones over their ears, hopping on their springy pogo sticks over the hedges that separate the properties of Las Lomas—spectacular, Olympic leaps—waving to me, inviting me to follow them, to find myself through others, to join the party, to take a chance with them: Let's all crash the parties, they say, that's more fun, hopping by like hares, like fairies, like Amazons, like Furies, making private property moot, seizing their right to happiness, community, entertainment, and God knows what … Free, they would never make any demands on me, ask for marriage, dig into my affairs, discover my secrets, the way the alert Lala did … Oh, Lala, why were you so ambitious?

I wave to them from a distance, surrounded by servants, goodbye, goodbye, I toss them kisses and they smile at me, free, carefree, dazzling, dazzled, inviting me to follow them, to abandon my prison, and I wave and would like to tell them no, I am not the prisoner of Las Lomas, no, they are my prisoners, an entire people …

I enter the house and disconnect my bank of telephones. The fifty-seven lines on which you're listening to me. I have nothing else to tell you. Soon there will be no one to repeat these fictions, and they will all be true. I thank you for listening.

Merton House

Cambridge

May 1987

Viva Mi Fama

Muera yo, pero viva mi fama

Let me die, but let my fame endure

Guillén de Castro,
The Youth of El Cid

 

For Soledad Becerril and Rafael Atienza,
ex toto corde

 

Sunday

What he would particularly remember about that Sunday was the quiet tedium. Lying on the sofa in T-shirt and briefs to beat the unbearable heat, but wearing his socks out of a sense of decorum even he could not explain, he leaned his head against his raised arms and clenched fists, watching the frozen, repeating image of the black bull in an Osborne brandy ad on the television screen: why should that seductive yet bestial image linger there, inviting us to consume an alcoholic drink, perhaps threatening us—will we be killed, gored by that mercantile bull, if we reject his command: Drink me? Rubén Oliva was about to pose that question to his wife when the voice of the announcer praising the bull's brandy became smothered by the smells of other, louder voices wafting in from the street, from neighboring balconies and from distant open windows. He heard them as smells because those voices—bits of soap-opera dialogue, commercials like the one he was watching, children's squeals, domestic squabbles—reached him with the same mixture of faintness and force, immediate yet immediately dissipated, as the kitchen smells that circulated through that lower-class neighborhood. He shook his head; he didn't distinguish between a newborn's wail and a whiff of stew. He put his hands back over his eyes and rubbed them, as if his hands could scour out the shadows under his intense green eyes, lost in cavernous depths of dark skin. Surely those eyes shone more brightly because they were ringed by such darkness. They were lively but serene eyes, resigned, always alert, though without illusions that anything could be done with the day's news. To wake, to sleep, to wake again. He looked back at the television screen, the figure of the bull at once dark and clear, heavy and light, a pasteboard bull that was also flesh and blood, ready to attack if he, Rubén Oliva, didn't obey the command: Drink!

He got up with a wince, but easily; he wasn't heavy, he never had to make an effort to stay slim. A doctor had said to him: —It's heredity, Rubén, you can thank your metabolism. —Centuries of hunger, you mean, he had answered.

He worried sometimes about turning forty within the year, developing a paunch; but no, skinny he was born and skinny he would die. He smiled and, smelling beans cooking in oil, went to the balcony to watch the kids running along Calle Jesús Fucar like him dressed in T-shirt, shorts, and sandals with socks, repeating until everyone was sick of it the tired old comic ditty about the days of the week: “Monday one, Tuesday two, Wednesday three, Thursday four, Friday five, Saturday six,” they sang all together, and then a single voice, “and Sunday seven!” The others laughed and they began another round of the week, ending with another lone voice crying out the “Sunday seven!” business, and the others laughing again. But Sunday would come in turn to each, muttered Rubén Oliva from his balcony, his elbows resting on the iron balustrade, the taunts and the jests divided equally, and then he stopped talking, because talking to yourself was the mania of a deaf man or a madman and he wasn't even alone, which would have been a third excuse for such a monologue.

The voices, the various emissions, were silenced then by a sudden wind, a summer gust that picked up worn-out dust and discarded papers, whirling and swirling them along the narrow, boxed-in street, forcing Oliva to close the window and the voice from the kitchen to scream at him: —What are you doing? Can't you help me in the kitchen? Don't you know it isn't good to fix a meal when you're menstruating? Are you going to help me, or would you rather have poisoned soup?

Rubén Oliva had forgotten she was there.

—You can fix dinner, Rubén called back, what you can't do is water the plants. That
is
true, you could kill the plants if you water them when you are unwell. That is true, Rocío, yes.

He lay back down on the sofa, raising his arms and resting his head on the joined fingers of his open hands. He closed his eyes as he had closed the window, but in such intense heat the sweat dripped from his forehead, neck, and armpits. The heat from the kitchen added to that of the living room, but Rubén Oliva remained there, with his eyes shut, incapable of getting up and reopening the window that let in the little noises and fading smells of a Sunday afternoon in Madrid, when the unexpected breeze died away and they were shut inside the little four-room flat—living room, bedroom, bath, and kitchen—he and his wife, Rocío, who was menstruating and fixing supper.