Constancia and Other Stories for Virgins (32 page)

—No. I said no, and I began a painting, a picture of angels, moreover, in the poor, secret corner of the church where she was now so private, Elisia. The mobs stepped over my paint jars, making a rainbow to death and an obscene gesture at me.

—And then?

—They exhumed her right then and there.

—And then?

—When they opened the coffin, they saw that nothing remained of the body of the beautiful Elisia.

—She had risen!

—Pray for her!

—Nothing was left but the worm-eaten bun crowning the actress's skull. La Privada was bone and dust.

—Caramba!

—But then from that dust a butterfly flew out and I laughed, I stopped painting, put on my cape and hat, and left, laughing like crazy.

—Her bun by her buns.

—The butterfly in her cunt!

—Who would believe it!

—Until death!

—What did you do, Don Francisco!

—I followed the butterfly.

—Touch my fingers, sweetie, my balcony faces yours and I'm so cold, in the middle of August.

—Our streets are so narrow!

—Our sea is so vast!

—Cádiz, little silver teacup.

—Cádiz, the balcony of Spain facing America.

—Cádiz, the double: American shores, Andalusian lanes.

—Reach out your window to touch my hand.

—You, nothin'.

—I gave you everythin', and you, nothin'.

—Nobody marries a woman who is not a virgin.

—Don't shave after eating.

—The noble Spaniard and his dog tremble with cold after dining.

—Let death find me in Spain, so it will be late in coming.

—Titian: one hundred years.

—Elisia Rodríguez: thirty.

—Pedro Romero: eighty.

—Francisco de Goya y Lucientes: eighty-two.

—Rubén Oliva, Rubén Oliva, Rubén Oliva.

—Six bulls, six.

—When?

—Tomorrow, Sunday, at exactly 6 p.m.

—Where?

—In the royal grounds at Ronda.

—Are you going to go?

—I always go to see Oliva.

—Why? He's a disaster.

—You just never saw him when he wasn't.

—When?

—Sixteen years ago, at least.

—Where?

—Also in Ronda.

—And what happened?

—Nothing, except nobody alive has seen a performance that could compare, except Manuel Rodríguez. There was never anything like it, since Manolete. That fellow stood in the center of the plaza like a statue, without moving, violating all the rules of the fight. Letting the horned beast do what it wanted with him. Exposing himself to death every minute. Not raising a hand to the bull. Refusing to fight, exposing himself to death. As if he wanted to embrace the bull. Closing his eyes when it came near, almost enticing it: Oh, bull, don't leave me, let's perform the ceremony together. And that's how the fight went: with love for the bull, Rubén Oliva inviting it to his domain as he had always entered the bull's, refusing to
cargar la suerte,
to control the bull with his cape, refusing to trade the steel for the aluminum blade, fighting with steel the whole time. That first bull of Rubén Oliva's did not have time, gentlemen, to orient itself, to back off, to find a middle ground, to paw the ground. Rubén Oliva didn't let it, and when the bull asked for death, Rubén Oliva gave it to it. It was madness.

—But he never repeated the deed.

—Correction: he hasn't repeated it yet.

—You're still waiting, eh?

—Maestro, when you've seen the best fight of your life, you can die in peace. The bad thing is that this bullfighter neither retires nor dies.

—It seems to me that this Rubén Oliva has conned you all and lives on the fame of his first fight, knowing he'll never repeat it.

—May his fame endure!

—Well, if the fellow wants to live on that …

—Look: this is what makes bullfighting bad: a bullfighter keeps coming back for years and years even though he's terrible, because, from one fight to the next, hope is reborn, and the final disillusionment is sometimes years in coming. Rubén Oliva is a scoundrel, he was good only once. We'll see if he can ever repeat that day.

—Twenty years, for Rubén Oliva.

—And you're going to Ronda to see him fight.

—Yes, who knows, maybe tomorrow he'll surprise us.

—Tomorrow Rubén Oliva will be forty.

—The same age as Pedro Romero when he retired from the ring.

—Well, let's wish him luck.

—That he won't get pelted with pillows!

—Poor Rubén Oliva!

—You know him, Paco?

—Nobody knows him.

—Look, Paco. Here's his photo in
Diario 16.

—But this can't be the man you've been talking about!

—This isn't Rubén Oliva? Well then, even his own mother was mistaken, but you, Don Francisco, you dare to…?

—This is not Rubén Oliva …

—Who is it, then?

—This is the portrait without an artist that Elisia Rodríguez showed me one day, saying: If you paint me, I'll let you see me naked, I'll faint in your arms, I'll …

—You told me, Paco: a witch gave it to her and told her, Elisia, find a painter who can put a name to this portrait …

—Which is not a portrait but a photograph …

—In my time, we didn't have those …

—Rubén Oliva.

—It's not a portrait, it's the man himself, reduced to this frozen, imprisoned condition …

—It's the man-portrait.

—Rubén Oliva …

—I followed the butterfly through the night, I found it in the arms of this man, fainting. I took La Privada's face, painted it and unpainted it, made it and destroyed it, that is my power, but this man, this man I couldn't touch, because he's identical to his portrait, there's nothing to paint, there's nothing to add, it drove me crazy!

—Nobody knows him.

—Don Francisco.

—Headless.

—Y Lost Sentiments.

—Try to sleep, Auntie Mezuca.

—Boys, in this heat you can't even talk.

—Silver teacup.

—Balcony of Andalusia.

—Vast sea.

—Narrow streets.

—Touch hands from window to window.

—Nobody knows himself.

Sunday

It seemed that the afternoon darkened.

—García Lorca,
Mariana Pineda

1

He was dressed in the Palace of Salvatierra, by Sparky, his sword handler, watched gravely by an old friend, Perico of Ronda, who had served him fifteen years before. His suit was on a chair waiting for him when he entered the large stone-and-stucco room whose balcony faced the steep gorge dividing the city.

The clothes set out on the chair were the ghost of fame. Rubén Oliva stripped and looked out at the city of Ronda, trying to define it, to explain it. Swallows, those birds that never rested, flew overhead, and with the fluidity of an unforgettable song they seemed to recall some distant words to Rubén's ear, which until then had been as naked as the rest of him. My village. A deep wound. A body like an open scar. Contemplating its own wound from a watchtower of whitewashed houses: Ronda, where our vision soars higher than the eagle.

Sparky helped him put on his long white underpants, and although Perico was watching them, Rubén Oliva felt that he was alone. The sense of absence persisted while he was helped into the stockings held up by garters under the knee. Sparky fastened the three symmetrical hooks and eyes on the legs as Rubén looked for something he failed to find outside the balcony. The attendant helped him put on his shirt, his braces, his cummerbund, and his tie. Perico went out to see if the car was ready, and Sparky began to help Rubén put on his vest and one-piece coat. But he didn't want any more help. Sparky discreetly withdrew and the bullfighter fastened his vest and adjusted its fit.

He was barefoot. Now Sparky knelt before him, helping him put on his black shoes, and the eyes of the bullfighter met those of the sword handler as they followed the swift, soaring flight of the swallows, their eyes blinded by the afternoon summer sun that moved so slowly and was so distant from his own agony.

—What time is it?

—Five-twenty.

—Let's go to the plaza.

He arrived in an apple-green suit of lights, and gazed up at the high iron balcony, the pediment facing the Royal Display Grounds, as if expecting to see someone there waiting for him. Time had been shattered into isolated moments, separated from each other by the absence of memory. He tried to remember the events just prior to his dressing. How had he gotten here? Who had hired him? What was the date? He knew the day: it was Sunday, Sunday seven, that's what the boys outside the bullring sang, Saturday six and Sunday seven, but time was still fragmented, discontinuous, and all he could remember was that Perico of Ronda had told him that some very important people were coming from Cádiz, and from Seville, Jerez, and Antequera, too; but it was the people from Cádiz who had come to the house to warn him: —Tell the
Figura
we're going to be out there, see if he'll give us the great fight he owes us this time.

The words were almost a threat, and that was what Rubén Oliva found disconcerting and bitter. But no, he was sure it was just well-wishing. He made a great effort to concentrate, to tie it all together, everything that had been happening, acts, thoughts, memories, desires, the ebb and flow of the day, a succession of distinct moments, yet linked to each other, like the passes he would string together this afternoon, if he was favored by luck and was able to overcome the strange state that held his will; in it, time seemed to have been ruptured, as though many distinct moments, from different times, had taken residence in the house of time that was his soul. He had always been a man of the present. That was what his profession demanded, that he banish memory; in the ring, memory is no more than a longing for the sweetest, the most peaceful times: it is, in the ring, the presentiment of death.

To live in the moment, but a moment tied to all other moments, like a stupendous series of passes, that's how to drive away nostalgia and fear, the past that is lost to us and the future that awaits us when we die. He thought of all that, kneeling before a wide-skirted, rosy Virgin, with her Child on her knees, in the chapel on the plaza. The angels flying above her were the true crown on that queen, but Rubén Oliva found them unsettling: they were angels with incense burners, and on their faces were mocking smiles, almost grimaces, which distanced them from ironic complicity, setting them apart from the central figure of the Virgin? the Mother? Their smiles made him wonder what they had been perfuming. He thought they gave off a miasma of perspiration and the dark humors of long, tiring, penitent pilgrimages.

And there was something else he wished he knew: what had happened between his prayer imploring the Virgin for protection (he couldn't remember it, but that's what it
had
to have been) so that he would come safely out of the ring he had not yet entered, and his arrival just now at the entrance, where, alone with his cuadrilla, he was getting ready for the bullfight, suddenly realizing that this was a cattleman's contest, that he, Rubén Oliva, would fight six bulls in the next three hours. He would have the opportunity—six opportunities—to prove that his previous fight, which was so renowned, had not been a fluke after all. Now, with luck, he could show that he was capable of defeating fear, not once but six times.

—I'm not afraid this time—he said, loud enough for the sword handler to hear when he hung the bullfighter's cape over Rubén's left shoulder.

—
Figura
 … If I may … said Sparky, embarrassed, not meeting the bullfighter's eyes, arranging the cape over Rubén's left hand, and leaving his right hand free to hold the hat, which Rubén Oliva dropped and the swordhandler picked up, alarmed, putting it back in Rubén's hand without a word, just as the music announcing the beginning of the fight was heard.

Then Rubén entered the arena, and he experienced the unexpected, and it was simply fear, simple fear, the perfectly banal horror of dying right in the middle of his debate with himself, before he could answer the questions: am I a good artist, am I a true bullfighter, can I give a good performance today, or is that no longer possible, and will I die, will I live to see forty, or is it too late? Those questions had always been provisional (which was natural, Rubén Oliva told himself), because all the while he was fighting the interminable fight, there was a public in front of him and around him that was going to give or withhold their applause, their sympathy, the trophies of the fight. But not this time: this time, the public did not exist for him.

Nervously, breaking an almost sacred tradition, he looked behind him, but his cuadrilla showed no surprise, they seemed to see a normality that he was denied: the two stories, the hundred thirty-six columns, the sixty-eight arches, the four sections of the plaza of Ronda full of people turned toward Rubén Oliva, anxious to see if he would fulfill his promise this time. The picadors looked at the crowd, the banderilleros looked at the crowd, but Rubén Oliva did not.

He walked into the glory of the arena, perspiring not from the familiar burden of the suit of lights which he wore, or from the secondary fear that its weight would plant him motionless in this beach of blood. He was not afraid of that, even when Sparky gave him the look he knew so well, the one that said you've forgotten something, Rubén, you're not doing it right. What, what have I forgotten, Sparky?

—You forgot to salute the president's box,
Figura,
the sword handler murmured as he removed the display cape and gave him the one he would use in the bullfight.

Rubén Oliva assumed his position, the heavy cape, starched and stiff, held between his spread-out legs. The eighteen pounds of thick fabric seemed to rest on the flimsy pedestal of his dancer's shoes. It was a ballet of sun and shade, the matador thought, standing there waiting for the first bull, an instinctive decision, waiting in the ring rather than watching the bull from the entrance to assess its color, its temperament, its speed, which might differ from the bullfighter's expectations.