Constancia and Other Stories for Virgins (4 page)

She knew how to speak beautifully, gracefully, with passion and tenderness, but now, in her trance, I set aside our discussions and considered matters on my own account. Her conversation had kept from me many thoughts, which were rendered insubstantial so that they floated away from me like so many little birds, the barest of possibilities in place of the certainties that pin us down. So now one thought weighed on me heavily, horribly, through my long vigil, again and again, despite my conscious and unconscious denials:

Constancia, tell me, please, how many times have you died before?

8

(I sound like the survivor of some catastrophe. It's not true. Constancia and I are alive, the heat is intense, soporific, I'm sixty-nine, Constancia sixty-one, and now we're both shut up inside a shuttered room. She is better than I am at beating the heat of these dog days. Can you overcome the heat by showering your floor with wood shavings, like those Constancia has strewn around her bed and priedieu?)

I don't know how much of what she says without looking at me, as if I weren't present, during the long week of her recuperation, is a response to my question: —Constancia, tell me, how many times have you died…?

I don't know, I repeat, because I don't even know if she is talking to me. She says (not to me, she simply speaks) that she only gives voice to dreams and prayers. Of that I haven't the slightest doubt. She will announce: Last night I dreamed that …; or sometimes she will even say: —I am dreaming that …; and sometimes she will unsettle me by announcing: —I am going to dream that …

She dreams that:
She was a mannequin in a shop. Two wild young men, perhaps students, stole her from her window and took her to live in their studio. They threw dinner parties in her honor. Nobody knew if she, Constancia, was dead or alive, neither the jokesters nor the targets of their prank. The students fell in love with her, argued over her, but in the end destroyed her: or perhaps (the dream is ambiguous) abandoned her to save their masculine friendship. But she triumphed,
Madre Ana, madre mía
(delirious, she calls this name for the first time), and dominated those poor impure lovers,
madre mía,
slaves to male sexual vanity, which is the worst vanity of all because it excuses everything if you're a man, but you get away with nothing if you're a woman, nothing,
madre,
but she triumphed, she reappeared and looked at them as if
they
were the wooden dummies; she is alive; she is in her place:
Blessed art thou amongst women … you hear me, Mother?

She dreams that:
She has been born again, far away, a dark girl, ignorant, almost mute, silenced by centuries of servitude, misery, abuse, rape, violation, contempt, lack of charity, oh,
madre mía,
this dark girl in a faraway place has nothing, not even hope for all that you and I give unto the world: she has only the tracks of her tears like scars on her face:
Full of grace, the Lord is with thee, He sees my bare legs exposed to the sun.

She dreams that:
She is giving birth illicitly, knowing that a virgin birth can occur but once, without sin, not twice or three times, like a bitch's, but she is giving birth again because they killed her son, they didn't let the poor boy live out his life, and now she wants to have another child secretly, surrounded by women just as secretive as she is, and, thanks to the carpenters, the bricklayers, the architects, who have constructed a secret place, she can have her son there and this time protect him from death:
And forgive us our trespasses … Now and at the hour of our death
 …

She dreams that:
She is crossing a bridge during Holy Week and sees her reflection in the water … That the bullring is empty because the matador's servants have swept away the blood of the bull, so the beast will not return to his refuge in the arena … That a bloody specter follows her from the depths of the tomb where he had been hiding, headless, he who watched and painted the others, she and her lover … That …

Constancia wakes with a cry, murmuring feverishly:

—And blessed is the fruit of thy womb …

She looked at me terrified, without recognizing me, asking me: Why did you abandon me? Why did you leave without me? Why do you make me follow you? Why…?

I comfort her, I take her head between my hands, I reassure her, I haven't left you, Constancia, here I am, I'm not forcing you to do anything.

9

When Constancia, after two weeks of this, felt well enough to sit up in bed, propped up among her pillows, she slowly regained her sense of my presence.

I didn't want to let go of her hand, which I had held in mine all the while, as much to express my devotion as to make sure of detecting any sign of what had frightened me previously.

Gradually, we began to discuss our by this time long-standing marriage and, without intending to, the events that might have threatened it. We recalled together, for example, the first time that one of us, then the other, and finally both of us together, realized we were no longer young. It started when she misinterpreted a suggestion of mine, purely professional, about her periods. Since we were not able to have children, I suggested that she could avoid—and, frankly, spare me—the monthly nuisance by having a simple operation. I knew an excellent doctor in Atlanta who would take care of it discreetly …

Constancia stopped me unexpectedly, without attempting to disguise her anger. So that's how I saw her, as a menopausal old woman, sterile, like a … She screamed and ran to shut herself in her room, and stayed there, without food or water, not letting me enter, for more than twenty-four hours. Days later I made it up to her, in a sense, by giving up the cigarettes I had enjoyed as I worked, was lost in thought, or relaxed after dinner … I told Constancia I was doing it because of a slight heart murmur. Gradually I developed new habits, never asking her to follow my example. I stopped drinking, gave up tennis and squash, even though I knew those sports were good for my circulation: Constancia felt games should be left to the young and were dangerous for older people. Nor did I dare propose a program of jogging (besides, a number of my acquaintances had died with their Adidases on, in the course of those untimely trials).

In that way, I tried to show Constancia that old age is a series of renunciations of what we loved when we were young. I made myself into an example, but when I had done so, I realized that Constancia refused to follow my lead, and, in fact, she gave up nothing. She was always the same, or it might be better to say she still led the same life. She kept house, complaining about the lack of good servants in the United States but making no real effort to obtain domestic help; she saw no one but me, so she did not speak English (and had never wanted to learn it); she punched the buttons of the television set, without watching any particular program for very long; she went to Mass, said her prayers at night, and then delivered herself to a sexual pleasure that would have seemed almost indecent if it hadn't been preceded by hours of prayer, Constancia kneeling before the votive candles and the image of the Macarena … She broke too many rules, only to convert the exceptions into routines. It annoyed me sometimes, made me ask myself: Why not get a servant and stop complaining? For me, though, staying out of domestic affairs left me time to read, and reading transforms everything, raising it to a higher level of existence, beyond stupid routines.

There's an entire library here, don't you realize? I said to her one day, a first-rate library, I assure you, really choice, there are things in it that would interest even an uneducated woman. Has it ever occurred to you to go into the library and read a book, Constancia? Do you believe I'll always be satisfied with your daytime domesticity and your nighttime passion? When we are old, what are we going to talk about, you and I?

She screamed, ran to her room, again the cloister, and now, twenty or thirty years after my affront, here we are holding hands, both of us old now, and talking, not of books, but of our life together.

This unshakable faith in love, love, our love, might it not be just as much an affront as suggesting that she anticipate her menopause or make a little effort to fill the gaps in her vast Andalusian ignorance? I have said that she was not prepared to give up anything in exchange for my ever-increasing discipline, and in this disparity I saw a profound reflection of our religions: discipline (mine) in return for nothing (hers). And yet, without ever exchanging words on the subject, she acted as if I should thank her for her unreserved availability, her freely giving of herself. This exasperated my Calvinist genes, even though I knew that it was precisely this quality that made my woman so attractive to me. Her library was her prayer, or an exceptional song, or an unexpected danger.

I saw her from a distance one afternoon, seated on a bench facing the river in Emmett Park. I had been at the hotel buying a pack of cigarettes and was returning home along River Street. I saw her sitting on the bench facing the river and thought, what luck, I will surprise her. Then a young black man, about thirty years old, strong, vigorous, sat down beside Constancia. She looked at the river. He stared down at his tennis shoes with a fixed look. I went a little closer, clutching the cellophane of my cigarette pack. They didn't see me. The black man spoke to my wife. She looked at the river. I said to myself in a low voice, hoping she might somehow hear me at that distance:

—Don't show fear. By all you hold dear! If he senses you're afraid, he might attack. Fear incites them.

Now the black turned to face Constancia, speaking to her insolently. I was going to run to her. Then I noticed that she was answering him, without looking at him. He grabbed my wife's hand. She did not pull away. She didn't show fear. Or familiarity. That's good, I told myself, don't take chances. I had decided to approach them at a normal speed, give Constancia a kiss on the cheek; we would go back to our house together, along Lincoln Street. Then another black man approached the bench, a younger man, and seemed to ask the other for something. The first man got angry, stood up, the two faced each other wordlessly, the only sound was their hissing, that's what I particularly noticed, they were hissing like snakes, two black snakes glaring with fury, with blood in their eyes. Never have I seen so much hate concentrated in two human beings, they were trembling, both of them, not touching each other, just looking, the two bodies leaning close to each other.

Constancia got up from the bench and left by Factors Walk, on the other side from where I was standing. I decided to watch her go while the two black men faced each other with a wild tension, though, as far as I could see, no violent consequences. When Constancia disappeared from sight, I lost interest and returned home. She came in a few minutes later. I preferred not to mention the matter. I would end up asking for an explanation, and a marriage is weakened when a spouse has to make explanations. Who excuses accuses. The best course was to maintain a sympathetic silence.

Now, on this dying August afternoon, as the scissors of autumn slowly, mysteriously begin to snip through the heavy air of summer, and it's not worth the trouble to recall that remote incident in the park, I can almost understand her feeling that love that has complete certainty is not true love; it's too much like an insurance policy, or, worse yet, a certificate of good conduct. And indifference is the price you pay for it. So perhaps I am thankful for the moments of conflict that Constancia and I experienced in the past; they show that we had to test our marriage, we would not consign it to the indifference of perfect security. How could it be, when something of no importance to me—having a child—was a constant source of frustration and argument throughout the first twenty years of our life together, always raised by her: So you don't care about having a child? No, I care about having you. Well, I do care about it, I need a child, I can't have one, you're a doctor, you know that perfectly well, I can't, I can't, and you don't care at all, or else you care so much that you feign this horrid indifference that hurts me so much, Whitby, that hurts me so …

10

Conscious of the most obvious biological signs, I resigned myself to not having children. Her suffering was clear, but she refused to have any tests done. I urged her to see a doctor to have the problem diagnosed. We couldn't go on blaming each other. But her determination never to see a doctor was stronger than her frustration, pain, and unhappiness. That's a perfect example of the hermeticism of our marriage, which couldn't avoid what might be called intramural problems, even though all outside contacts—friendships, doctors, shopping, social calls, trips—were zealously avoided. On the other hand, we were capable of exploring, usually with good humor, such other possibilities as adoption (but the child would not be of our blood, Whitby, it has to be our blood) or artificial insemination of a surrogate mother (But what if she falls in love with the child and refuses to give it up to us? —We'll choose a poor woman, so if there's a dispute the court will award the child to us, since we can assure it a good future …).

—Children don't need money to have a good future.

—Constancia, you're your own worst enemy, you're the devil's advocate. You think like a gypsy! I laugh then.

—The Virgin was Blessed, she didn't have to fornicate to bear a child, the Holy Spirit passed through her sex like light through a crystal.

I kissed one of her ears and asked, laughing, if she would like that better than the way we did it. No, she answered, without hesitation, wrapping her arms around my neck and caressing it with her long fingers, proportionally the longest part of her body.

—Don't think about having children (typically, I resorted to a joke, just the sort that Mr. Plotnikov accused me of); think, rather, that Herod was probably right when he ordered all the male children of Israel to be killed.