The Stories of Eva Luna (4 page)

When the Pope made his visit, Clarisa was not quite eighty, although it was difficult to calculate her exact age; she had added years out of vanity, simply to hear people say how well preserved she was for the ninety-five years she claimed. She had more than enough spirit, but her body was failing; she could barely totter through the streets, where in any case she lost her way, she had no appetite, and finally was eating only flowers and honey. Her spirit was detaching itself from her body at the same pace her wings germinated, but the preparations for the papal visit rekindled her enthusiasm for the adventures of this earth. She was not content to watch the spectacle on television because she had a deep distrust of that apparatus. She was convinced that even the astronaut on the moon was a sham filmed in some Hollywood studio, the same kind of lies they practiced in those stories where the protagonists love or die and then a week later reappear with the same faces but a new destiny. Clarisa wanted to see the pontiff with her own eyes, not on a screen where some actor was costumed in the Pope's robes. That was how I found myself accompanying her to cheer the Pope as he rode through the streets. After a couple of hours fighting the throngs of faithful and vendors of candles and T-shirts and religious prints and plastic saints, we caught sight of the Holy Father, magnificent in his portable glass cage, a white porpoise in an aquarium. Clarisa fell to her knees, in danger of being crushed by fanatics and the Pope's police escort. Just at the instant when the Pope was but a stone's throw away, a rare spectacle surged from a side street: a group of men in nun's habits, their faces garishly painted, waving posters in favor of abortion, divorce, sodomy, and the right of women to the priesthood. Clarisa dug through her purse with a trembling hand, found her eyeglasses, and set them on her nose to assure herself she was not suffering a hallucination.

She paled. “It's time to go, daughter. I've already seen too much.”

She was so undone that to distract her I offered to buy her a hair from the Pope's head, but she did not want it without a guarantee of authenticity. According to a socialist newspaperman, there were enough capillary relics offered for sale to stuff a couple of pillows.

“I'm an old woman, and I no longer understand the world, daughter. We'd best go home.”

She was exhausted when she reached the house, with the din of the bells and cheering still ringing in her temples. I went to the kitchen to prepare some soup for the judge and heat water to brew her a cup of camomile tea, in hopes it would have a calming effect. As I waited for the tea, Clarisa, with a melancholy face, put everything in order and served her last plate of food to her husband. She set the tray on the floor and for the first time in more than forty years knocked on his door.

“How many times have I told you not to bother me,” the judge protested in a reedy voice.

“I'm sorry, dear, I just wanted to tell you that I'm going to die.”

“When?”

“On Friday.”

“Very well.” The door did not open.

Clarisa called her sons to tell them about her imminent death, and then took to her bed. Her bedroom was a large dark room with pieces of heavy carved mahogany furniture that would never become antiques because somewhere along the way they had broken down. On her dresser sat a crystal urn containing an astoundingly realistic wax Baby Jesus, rosy as an infant fresh from its bath.

“I'd like for you to have the Baby, Eva. I know you'll take care of Him.”

“You're not going to die. Don't frighten me this way.”

“You need to keep Him in the shade, if the sun strikes Him, He'll melt. He's lasted almost a century, and will last another if you protect Him from the heat.”

I combed her meringue hair high on her head, tied it with a ribbon, and then sat down to accompany her through this crisis, not knowing exactly what it was. The moment was totally free of sentimentality, as if in fact she was not dying but suffering from a slight cold.

“We should call a priest now, don't you think, child?”

“But Clarisa, what sins can you have?”

“Life is long, and there's more than enough time for evil, God willing.”

“But you'll go straight to heaven—that is, if heaven exists.”

“Of course it exists, but it's not certain they'll let me in. They're very strict there,” she murmured. And after a long pause, she added, “When I think over my trespasses, there was one that was very grave . . .”

I shivered, terrified that this old woman with the aureole of a saint was going to tell me that she had intentionally dispatched her retarded children to facilitate divine justice, or that she did not believe in God and had devoted herself to doing good in this world only because the scales had assigned her the role of compensating for the evil of others, an evil that was unimportant anyway since everything is part of the same infinite process. But Clarisa confessed nothing so dramatic to me. She turned toward the window and told me, blushing, that she had not fulfilled her conjugal duties.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“Well, I mean I did not satisfy my husband's carnal desires, you understand?”

“No.”

“If you refuse your husband your body, and he falls into the temptation of seeking solace with another woman, you bear that moral responsibility.”

“I see. The judge fornicates, and the sin is yours.”

“No, no. I think it would be both our sins. . . . I would have to look it up.”

“And the husband has the same obligation to his wife?”

“What?”

“I mean, if you had had another man, would your husband share the blame?”

“Wherever did you get an idea like that, child!” she stared at me in disbelief.

“Don't worry, because if your worst sin was that you slighted the judge, I'm sure God will see the joke.”

“I don't think God is very amused by such things.”

“But Clarisa, to doubt divine perfection
would
be a great sin.”

She seemed in such good health that I could not imagine her dying, but I supposed that, unlike us simple mortals, saints have the power to die unafraid and in full control of their faculties. Her reputation was so solid that many claimed to have seen a circle of light around her head and to have heard celestial music in her presence, and so I was not surprised when I undressed her to put on her nightgown to find two inflamed bumps on her shoulders, as if her pair of great angel wings were about to erupt.

The rumor of Clarisa's coming death spread rapidly. Her children and I had to marshal an unending line of people who came to seek her intervention in heaven for various favors, or simply to say goodbye. Many expected that at the last moment a significant miracle would occur, such as, the odor of rancid bottles that pervaded the house would be transformed into the perfume of camelias, or beams of consolation would shine forth from her body. Among the visitors was her friend the robber, who had not mended his ways but instead become a true professional. He sat beside the dying woman's bed and recounted his escapades without a hint of repentance.

“Things are going really well. I rob only upper-class homes now. I steal from the rich, and that's no sin. I've never had to use violence, and I work clean, like a true gentleman,” he boasted.

“I will have to pray a long time for you, my son.”

“Pray on, Grandmother. It won't do me any harm.”

La Señora came, too, distressed to be saying goodbye to her beloved friend, and bringing a flower crown and almond-paste sweets as her contribution to the death vigil. My former
patrona
did not know me, but I had no trouble recognizing her despite her girth, her wig, and the outrageous plastic shoes printed with gold stars. To offset the thief, she came to tell Clarisa that her advice had fallen upon fertile ground, and that she was now a respectable Christian.

“Tell Saint Peter that, so he'll take my name from his black book” was her plea.

“What a terrible disappointment for all these good people if instead of going to heaven I end up in the cauldrons of hell,” Clarisa said after I was finally able to close the door and let her rest for a while.

“If that happens, no one down here is going to know, Clarisa.”

“Thank heavens for that!”

From early dawn on Friday a crowd gathered outside in the street, and only her two sons' vigilance prevented the faithful from carrying off relics, from strips of paper off the walls to articles of the saint's meager wardrobe. Clarisa was failing before our eyes and, for the first time, she showed signs of taking her own death seriously. About ten that morning, a blue automobile with Congressional plates stopped before the house. The chauffeur helped an old man climb from the back seat; the crowds recognized him immediately. It was
don
Diego Cienfuegos, whom decades of public service had made a national hero. Clarisa's sons came out to greet him, and accompanied him in his laborious ascent to the second floor. When Clarisa saw him in the doorway, she became quite animated; the color returned to her cheeks and the shine to her eyes.

“Please, clear everyone out of the room and leave us alone,” she whispered in my ear.

Twenty minutes later the door opened and
don
Diego Cienfuegos departed, feet dragging, eyes teary, bowed and crippled, but smiling. Clarisa's sons, who were waiting in the hall, again took his arms to steady him, and seeing them there together I confirmed something that had crossed my mind before. The three men had the same bearing, the same profile, the same deliberate assurance, the same wise eyes and firm hands.

I waited until they were downstairs, and went back to my friend's room. As I arranged her pillows, I saw that she, like her visitor, was weeping with a certain rejoicing.

“
Don
Diego was your grave sin, wasn't he?” I murmured.

“That wasn't a sin, child, just a little boost to help God balance the scales of destiny. You see how well it worked out, because my two weak children had two strong brothers to look after them.”

Clarisa died that night, without suffering. Cancer, the doctor diagnosed, when he saw the buds of her wings; saintliness, proclaimed the throngs bearing candles and flowers; astonishment, say I, because I was with her when the Pope came to visit.

TOAD'S MOUTH

T
imes were very hard in the south. Not in the south of this country, but the south of the world, where the seasons are reversed and winter does not come at Christmastime, as it does in civilized nations, but, as in barbaric lands, in the middle of the year. Stone, sedge, and ice; endless plains that toward Tierra del Fuego break up into a rosary of islands, peaks of a snowy cordillera closing off the distant horizon, and silence that dates from the birth of time, interrupted periodically by the subterranean sigh of glaciers slipping slowly toward the sea. It is a harsh land inhabited by rough men. Since there was nothing there at the beginning of the century the English could carry away, they obtained permits to raise sheep. After a few years the animals had multiplied in such numbers that from a distance they looked like clouds trapped against the ground; they ate all the vegetation and trampled the last altars of the indigenous cultures. This was where Hermelinda earned a living with her games of fantasy.

The large headquarters of Sheepbreeders, Ltd., rose up from the sterile plain like a forgotten cake; it was surrounded by an absurd lawn and defended against the depredations of the climate by the superintendent's wife, who could not resign herself to life outside the heart of the British Empire and continued to dress for solitary dinners with her husband, a phlegmatic gentleman buried beneath his pride in obsolete traditions. The native Spanish-speaking drovers lived in the camp barracks, separated from their English
patrones
by fences of thorny shrubs and wild roses planted in a vain attempt to limit the immensity of the pampas and create for the foreigners the illusion of a gentle English countryside.

Under surveillance of the management's guards, aching with cold without so much as a bowl of hot soup for months, the workers survived in misery, as neglected as the sheep they herded. In the evening, there was always someone who would pick up the guitar and fill the air with sentimental songs. They were so impoverished for love that despite the saltpeter the cook sprinkled over their food to cool their bodily ardor and the fires of memory the drovers lay with their sheep, even with a seal if they could get to the coast and catch one. The seals had large mammae, like a nursing mother's, and if they skinned the still living, warm, palpitating seal, a love-starved man could close his eyes and imagine he was embracing a siren. Even with such obstacles, the workers enjoyed themselves more than their employers, thanks to Hermelinda's illicit games.

Hermelinda was the only young woman in all the land—aside from the English lady who crossed through the rose fence with her shotgun only when in search of hares; even then, all the men could glimpse was a bit of veiled hat amid a cloud of dust and yelping English setters. Hermelinda, in contrast, was a female they could see and count on, one with a heady mixture of blood in her veins and a hearty taste for a good time. She was in the business of solace out of pure and simple vocation; she liked almost all the men in general, and many in particular. She reigned among them like a queen bee. She loved their smell of work and desire, their harsh voices, their unshaven cheeks, their bodies, so vigorous and at the same time so pliable in her hands, their pugnacious natures and naïve hearts. She knew the illusory strength and extreme vulnerability of her clients, but she never took advantage of those weaknesses; on the contrary, she was moved by both. Her rambunctious nature was tempered by traces of maternal tenderness, and night often found her sewing patches on a shirt, stewing a chicken for some sick drover, or writing love letters for distant sweethearts. She made her fortune on a mattress stuffed with raw wool under a leaky zinc roof that moaned like lutes and oboes when the wind blew. Hermelinda's flesh was firm and her skin unblemished; she laughed with gusto and had grit to spare, far more than any terrified ewe or flayed seal could offer. In every embrace, however brief, she proved herself an enthusiastic and playful friend. Word of her firm horsewoman's legs and breasts without a trace of wear had spread across the six hundred kilometers of that wild province, and lovers traveled many miles to spend a while in her company. On Fridays, riders galloped frantically from such far reaches that as they arrived their foaming mounts dropped beneath them. The English
patrones
had outlawed the consumption of alcohol, but Hermelinda had found a way to distill a bootleg liquor that raised the spirits and ruined the liver of her guests. It also served to fuel the lamps at the hour of the entertainment. Bets began after the third round of drinks, when it was impossible for the men to focus their eyes or sharpen their wits.

Hermelinda had conceived a plan to turn a sure profit without cheating anyone. In addition to cards and dice, the men could try their hand at a number of games in which the prize was her person. The losers handed over their money to her, as did those who won, but the winners gained the right to dally briefly in her company, without pretext or preliminary—not because she was unwilling but because she lacked time to give each man special attention. The players in Blind Rooster removed their trousers but kept on their jackets, caps, and sheepskin-lined boots as protection against the antarctic cold whistling through the floorboards. Hermelinda blindfolded them and the chase began. At times they raised such a ruckus that their huffing and guffaws spread through the night beyond the roses to the ears of the impassive English couple who sat sipping a last cup of Ceylon tea before bed, pretending they heard nothing but the caprice of the wind across the pampas. The first man to lay a hand on Hermelinda blessed his good fortune as he trapped her in his arms and crowed a triumphant cock-a-doodle-doo. Swing was another of the games. Hermelinda would sit on a plank strung from the roof. Laughing before the men's hungry gazes, she would flex her legs so all could see she had nothing on beneath the yellow petticoats. The players, in an orderly line, had a single chance to possess her, and anyone who succeeded found himself clasped between the beauty's thighs, swept off his feet in a whirl of petticoats, rocked to his bone marrow, and lifted toward the sky. Very few reached the goal
;
most rolled to the floor amid the hoots of their companions.

A man could lose a month's pay in fifteen minutes playing the game of Toad's Mouth. Hermelinda would draw a chalk line on the floor and four steps away draw a large circle in which she lay down on her back, knees spread wide, legs golden in the light of the spirit lamps. The dark center of her body would be revealed as open as a fruit, as a merry toad's mouth, while the air in the room grew heavy and hot. The players took a position behind the chalk line and tossed their coins toward the target. Some were expert marksmen, with a hand so steady they could stop a panicked animal running at full speed by slinging two stone bolas between its legs, but Hermelinda had an evasive way of sliding her body, shifting it so that at the last instant the coin missed its mark. Those that landed inside the chalk circle belonged to her. If one chanced to enter the gate of heaven, it won for its owner a sultan's treasure: two hours alone with her behind the curtain in absolute ecstasy, seeking consolation for all past wants and dreams of the pleasures of paradise. They told, the men who had lived those two precious hours, that Hermelinda knew ancient love secrets and could lead a man to the threshold of death and bring him back transformed into a wise man.

Until the day that an Asturian named Pablo appeared, very few had won that pair of wondrous hours, although several had enjoyed similar pleasure—but for half their salary, not a few coins. By then Hermelinda had accumulated a small fortune, but the idea of retiring to a more conventional life had never occurred to her; in fact, she took great pleasure in her work and was proud of the sparks of pleasure she afforded the drovers. This Pablo was a lean man with the bones of a bird and hands of a child, whose physical appearance contradicted his tremendous tenacity. Beside the opulent and jovial Hermelinda he looked like a peevish banty rooster, but anyone who thought he could enjoy a good laugh at El Asturiano's expense was in for a disagreeable surprise. The tiny foreigner tensed like a viper at the first provocation, ready to lash out at anyone who stood in his way, but the row was always settled before it began because Hermelinda's first rule was that no one fought beneath her roof. Once his dignity had been established, Pablo relaxed. He had a determined, rather funereal, expression; he spoke very little and when he did he revealed his European origins. He had left Spain one jump ahead of the police, and he earned his daily bread running contraband through the narrow Andean passes. He was known to be a surly, pugnacious loner who ridiculed the weather, the sheep, and the English. He had no fixed home and he admitted to no loves or obligations, but he was not getting any younger and solitude was seeping into his bones. Sometimes when he awoke at dawn on the icy ground, wrapped in his black Castilian cape and with his saddle for a pillow, every inch of his body ached. The pain was not the pain of stiff muscles but an accumulation of sorrow and neglect. He was tired of living like a lone wolf, but neither was he cut out for domestication. He had come south because he had heard the rumor that at the end of the world there was a woman who could change the way the wind blew, and he wanted to see her with his own eyes. The vast distance and the risks of the road had not dampened his determination, and when finally he found Hermelinda's saloon and had her in arm's reach, he could see she was forged of the same hard metal as he, and he decided that after such a long journey life would not be worth living without her. He settled into a corner of the room to study her and calculate his possibilities.

El Asturiano had guts of steel; even after several glasses of Hermelinda's liquor his eyes were still clear. He refused to remove his clothes for St. Michael's Patrol, or Mandandirun-dirun-dan, or other contests he found frankly infantile, but toward the end of the evening, when it was time for the crowning moment—The Toad—he shook off the fumes of the alcohol and joined the chorus of men around the chalk circle. To him, Hermelinda was as beautiful and wild as a puma. He felt the stirrings of his hunter's instinct, and the undefined pain of the alienation that had tormented him during his journey turned to tingling anticipation. He saw the feet shod in low boots, the woven stockings rolled below the knee, the long bones and tense muscles of those legs of gold in the froth of full petticoats, and he knew that he would have but one opportunity to win. He took his position, planting his feet on the floor and rocking back and forth until he found the true axis of his being; he transfixed Hermelinda with a knifelike gaze, forcing her to abandon her contortionist's tricks. Or that may not have been how it was; it may be that she chose him from among the others to honor with her company. Pablo squinted, exhaled a deep breath, and after a second or two of absolute concentration, tossed his coin. Everyone watched as it formed a perfect arc and entered cleanly in the slot. A salvo of applause and envious whistles celebrated the feat. Nonchalantly, the smuggler hitched up his pants, took three steps forward, seized Hermelinda's hand and pulled her to her feet, prepared to prove in his two hours that she could not do without him. He almost dragged her from the room; the men stood around drinking and checking their watches until the period of the reward had passed, but neither Hermelinda nor the foreigner appeared. Three hours went by, four, the whole night; morning dawned and the bells rang for work, and still the door did not open.

At noon the lovers emerged. Pablo, without a glance for anyone, went outside to saddle his horse, a horse for Hermelinda, and a mule to carry their belongings. Hermelinda was wearing riding pants and jacket, and a canvas bag filled with coins was tied to her waist. There was a new expression in her eyes and a satisfied swish to her memorable rump. Solemnly, they strapped their goods onto the mule, mounted their horses, and set off. Hermelinda made a vague wave of farewell to her desolate admirers, and followed El Asturiano across the barren plains without a backward glance. She never returned.

The dismay occasioned by Hermelinda's departure was so great that to divert the workmen the management of Sheepbreeders, Ltd., installed swings, bought a target for darts and arrows, and had an enormous open-mouthed ceramic toad imported from London so the drovers could refine their skill in coin tossing, but before a general indifference, those toys ended up on the superintendent's terrace, where as dusk falls the English still play with them to combat their boredom.