Constancia and Other Stories for Virgins (30 page)

And she was resigned yet determined, and she asked them to time the passes they made at the calves; resting now, a light between her rabbit's teeth, more mannish than ever, Dry-Mother, Sea-of-Sand, Junglemother, what should they call her?, she made them track each bull's speed, to encapsulate that speed within the matador's own rhythm, because otherwise the bull would trap theirs in his, boys, slowly, listen to the metronome, each time, slower, slower, longer, until it's more than the bull can do to rend cape or body.

Or body. That was the sensual longing that possessed Rubén Oliva: naked, at night, pressed against the body of the bull that he had to hold to keep from being stuck, divining the body of the enemy in a mortal embrace, all wet, emerging out of the cold river into that heated contact with the beast.

3

When Madreselva felt she had no more to teach them, she told those eleven, as she had told others on other graduation days, to prepare their bundles, get their hats, and go out into the bullfighting villages together to try their fortunes. She liked the number 11 because she was superstitious sometimes and like a witch she believed that when a 1 turns on another, the world becomes a mirror, in itself it sees itself and there it stops: beyond, it leads too far, to transgression, to crime. The witch was there to warn, not to entice. She was an exorcist, not a temptress.

Besides, she thought eleven generations of boys with a passion for the ring were not only sufficient but even significant, and signifying; she imagined them on the roads of Spain, reproducing themselves, eleven thousand matadors, the perfect reply to its eleven thousand virgins; and perhaps the two bands—matadors and virgins—would meet, and then Troy would blaze again. For they would meet in freedom, not by force.

She had her rules, and everyone accepted them, except Rubén Oliva. Who but he would have the cheek to go and wake her, a comic hat perched jauntily on his black hair, tieless though his shirt was buttoned to the neck, in a threadbare vest, peasant pants, with leather boots and empty hands: he had borrowed an old cape to throw over his shoulder to announce that he was a bullfighter.

No, she was enraged because Rubén Oliva entered without knocking and surprised her with her skirts up, rolling a cigarette on her thigh, which was fat and fine, in contrast with the rest of her body: no, she was enraged, dropping her skirts and hastily putting her breeches back on, as if magically to revert to her role of female bullfighter, you are not even an apprentice yet, don't affect a guise you have not attained, don't be impatient, don't imagine the world is yours for the picking—the world is not your oyster, believe me, your wretched youth is stamped all over your rags and bags, and if that's not enough, it's plain to see in the hunger etched on your face, Rubén, which neither I nor anyone else will ever erase, because from now on your only thought will be where to sleep, what to eat, who to hump, and even if you get rich, even if you're a millionaire, someone like you will still have a rogue's mentality, you'll just want to make it through the day and wake up alive the next and have a plate of lentils, even if they are cold.

She laced the legs of her trousers and added: You will never be an aristocrat, my Rubén, mornings will always torment you.

But we are all going together, we'll help each other, said Rubén, still so much of a child.

No, there are only ten of you now, said Madreselva, taking his hand, forgetting her leather breeches and her tobacco: his Mareseca whom he longed to kiss and embrace.

Pepe is staying here, she said, anxiously.

With you, Ma?

No, he will return to the bakery.

What will become of him?

He will never leave here. But you will, said Madreselva, the rest of you will escape, you won't be caught in a poor town, in a bad job, boring, the same thing over and over, like a long night in hell, you'll be far from the bricks and ovens and kitchens and nails, far from the noise of cowbells that turns you deaf and the smell of cowshit and the threat of the white hounds, you will be far from here …

He hugged her and he felt no breasts—his own adolescent chest was rounder, it retained the lingering fullness of childhood; he was a cherub with a sword, an angel whose eyes were cruelly ringed, but whose cheeks remained soft.

All he did was repeat that the eleven of them, no, the ten, would go together and help one another.

Ha, laughed Madreselva, surprised by his embrace but not rejecting it, you will go together and sleep together and walk together and fight together and keep each other warm, first you were eleven, now you are ten, one day you will be five, and in the end one man will be left, alone, with the bull.

No, that's not what we want, we're going to be different, Ma.

Sure, boy, that's right. But when you're alone, remember me. Remember what I tell you: on Sundays you are going to see yourself face to face with the bull, then you'll be saved from your solitude.

She pulled away from the boy and finished dressing, telling him: You are stubbornness itself, you will let the bull kill you to keep from wielding your cape, from luring the bull away from you.

When a matador dies of old age, in bed, does he die in peace? Rubén watched her put on her jacket.

Who knows?

I will remember you, Ma. But what is going to become of you?

I am ready to leave this town. I am going, too.

Where did you come from, Ma?

Look, said the dry, cracked woman with cucumbers on her temples, with her unruly hair hanging over her brow and a black cigarette between her yellow fingers, look, she said after a while, let's just go without asking questions; things may be bad someplace else, but they've got to be better than here. I took care of you, boy, I gave you a profession; now just leave. Don't ask me any more questions.

You talk as if you saved me from something, Ma.

Here you have no choice—he looked into her eyes, the eyes of his false mother—here you have to obey, there are too many people with nothing here, serving too few people with much, there are too many people here, and so they are used like cattle; you cannot be chaste that way, Rubén, when you're one of that abundant, docile herd, when they call you and tell you to do this or that, you do it or you are punished or you are driven out, there's no alternative. What they call sexual liberty really exists only in the fields, only in poor, lonely regions full of servants and cows. You obey. You must. There is no one to turn to. You are a servant, you are used, you are meat, you become part of a lie. The masters do whatever they want with you, for you are their servant, always, but especially when there are no other servants around to see what the masters do with you.

She smiled and gave Rubén a pat on the rump. It was the most intimate and loving gesture of her life. As far as he traveled, Rubén still would feel that hard and loving hand on his backside, far from the burnt sunflowers and the goatbells sounded by the wind of the Levant, leaving behind the superb firs and horses of Andalusia, which are white at birth but which Rubén Oliva found to be black on his return. Now he was going far away, to the salt flats and estuaries, the landscapes of electric towers and the mountains of garbage.

Saturday

—Don Francisco de Goya y Lucientes!

—What are you doing in Cádiz?

—Looking for my head, friend.

—Why, what happened?

—Are you blind? Can't you see it's missing?

—I did think something was odd.

—But don't dodge the question, what happened?

—I don't know. Who knows what becomes of your body after you're dead?

—So how do you know you don't have a head?

—I died in Bordeaux in April of 1826.

—So far away!

—So sad!

—You couldn't know. Those were dangerous times. The absolutists came to Madrid and persecuted every liberal they saw. They called themselves the Hundred Thousand Sons of San Luis. I only called myself Francisco de Goya …

—Y Lost Census …

—The kids stopped writing “deaf man” on the wall of my estate—instead, the absolutists wrote “Francophile.” So I fled to France. I was seventy-eight years old when I was exiled to Bordeaux.

—So far from Spain.

—Why did you have to paint the French, Paco.

—Why did you have to paint guerrillas, Francisco.

—Why did you have to paint for the court, Lost Senses.

—But what happened to your head, son, lopped off that way?

—I don't remember.

—So where did they bury you, Paco?

—First in Bordeaux, where I died at age eighty-two. Then I was exhumed; they were going to send me back to Spain in 1899, but when the Spanish consul opened the coffin, he saw my skeleton didn't have a head. He sent a wind message to the Spanish government …

—It's called a telegraph, Paco, a telegraph …

—We didn't have those in my day. Anyway, the message read:
SKELETON GOYA NO HEAD: AWAIT INSTRUCTIONS
.

—And what did the government say? Come on, Paco, don't leave us hanging, you always were such a …

—
SEND GOYA, HEAD OR NO HEAD
. I was exhumed five times, friends, from Bordeaux to Madrid and from San Isidro, where I painted the festivals, to San Antonio de la Florida, where I painted frescoes, five burials, and the boxes they put me in kept getting smaller every time, every time I had fewer bones and they were more brittle, every time I left more dust behind, so that now I'm about to disappear completely. My head foretold my destiny: it just disappeared a little before the rest.

—Who knows, my friend? France was filthy with mad phrenologists, crazy for science. Who knows, maybe you ended up a measure of genius—what a joke!—like a barometer or a shoehorn.

—Or maybe an inkwell for some other genius.

—Who knows? That was a century in love with death, the romantic nineteenth. The next century, yours, consummated that desire. I'd rather go headless than have to witness your time, the age of death.

—What are you saying, Paco? We're lolling in the lap of luxury here.

—Don't interrupt, Uncle Corujo.

—Hey, aren't we all part of the gang here, Aunt Mezuca? What's wrong with a little gossip?

—And who said anything about being part of the gang, you stunted old fool?

—It's okay, part of the gang, old wives' tales, old men's chatter, call it anything you like, what are you going to do here in Cádiz, where the streets are so narrow, and hotter than in Ecija, and lovers can touch fingers from one window to the next …

—And have to listen to the chatter of gossipmongers like you, Uncle Soleche …

—Shut your mouth, you old hen …

—Don Francisco was saying …

—Thanks for the respect, son. A lot of times we dead ones don't even get that. I just wanted to say that my case is not unique. Science takes absolute liberties with death. Maybe scientists are the last animists. The soul has gone, to heaven or hell, and the remains are just vile matter. That's how the French phrenologists must have seen me. I don't know whether I prefer the sacred fetishism of Spain or the soulless, anemic Cartesianism of France.

—The eyes of St. Lucy.

—The tits of St. Agatha.

—The teeth of St. Apollonia.

—The arm of St. Theresa in Tormes.

—And that of Alvaro Obregón in San Angel.

—And where is the leg of Santa Anna?

—The blood of San Pantaleón in Madrid, which dries up in bad times.

—Yes, in England, my skull might have been the inkwell of some romantic poet.

—Did what happened to you, Paco, happen to anyone else?

—Of course. Speaking of England, poor Laurence Sterne, with whom I often chat, because his books are something like written premonitions of my
Caprichos,
though less biting, and …

—You're digressing, Paco …

—Sorry. My friend Sterne says that digression is the sun of life. Digression is the root of his writing, because it attacks the authority of the center, he says, it rebels against the tyranny of form, and …

—Paco, Paco, you're straying, man! What
happened
to your friend Sterne?

—Oh, nothing, except when he died in London in 1768 his corpse disappeared from its tomb a few days after his burial.

—Like your head, Paco …

—No, Larry was luckier. His body was stolen by some students from Cambridge, knockabouts and idlers the way they all are, who were celebrating the rites of May in June, whiling away their white nights, using him for their anatomy experiments. Laurence says nobody needed to dissect him because he was more dried up and full of parasites than mistletoe, but since he had written so brilliantly of prenatal life, he approved of someone prolonging his postmortal life, if you can call it that. They returned it—the corpse, I mean—to its tomb, a little the worse for wear.

—Then your case is unique.

—Not at all. Where are the heads of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, of Sydney Carton and of the Princesse de Lamballe?

—Oh, crime, how many liberties are committed in your name!

—And the wheel keeps on rolling, Roland!

—You bet. But Byron, who's my neighbor these days—though not a sociable one—had his brains stolen when it was discovered that they were the biggest in recorded history. And that's nothing. There's a guy who's more sullen than anyone in my parts, he looks like a Ronda highwayman, a masher and slasher for sure. Dillinger he's called, John Dillinger, and I always think Dildo-ger, because when they cut him down leaving a theater …

—It was a movie house, Paco.

—In my day we didn't have those. A theater, I say, and when they did the autopsy they found he had a bigger dick than Emperor Charles V had titles, so they lopped it right off and stuck it in a jar of disinfectant, and there is the outlaw's John Thomas to this very day, in case anyone wants to compare sizes, and die of envy.