Three Messages and a Warning (16 page)

The pineapple slices would have to cook in the sauce for five minutes, enough time for Lou to open up a bottle of brandy and inhale its aroma. Brandy was not his favorite drink, but his wife had always thought it was one of the best ingredients one could use in the kitchen, and so he learned to incorporate it into his dishes, such as in the Romanoff strawberries he prepared on their wedding day. The memory of brandy and orange juice lingered on his palate, of Triple Sec and strawberries, of cream and sugar glass, resulting in his chest turning into an earthy crust of stale bread which crumbled onto the kitchen floor with each sigh.

Leaving behind a thin carpet of breadcrumbs, he warmed up a bit of brandy on the saucepan, stirring it every once in a while with a wooden spoon. The sweet fragrance of the fermented alcohol was delicious, like the scent of Alina’s neck or like that of her hips as he followed the fragrant line to her thighs.

Fatally crumbling with each step, Lou grabbed a plate on which to serve the pineapples seasoned with butter and orange sauce, and added three tablespoons of brandy. He put the plate on the table, garnished it with mint leaf, cleaned the edges, and stepped away from the dish, which stood out from the kitchen’s yellow walls, from the vapors trapped under the ceiling, and from the set of silverware he had bought on their third anniversary.

Lou sat on a chair, expecting Alina to appear through the door. His crumbling body left traces beside his plate. He closed his eyes, hoping to see her, hoping to tell her that he needed her, to share with her every dessert he had prepared and those that he had yet to imagine. Turning his back to the door, Lou heard the doorknob rotating and his wife pacing inside the house. He smiled while his moldy body cracked and fell to pieces, descending in a kind of orange-colored dust.

Alina entered the kitchen with the certainty of having seen Lou cooking, but all she found was his pineapple dessert, to which she drew near. The dust on the floor stirred when she pushed in her chair. Alina shook her head as she remembered their wedding day and their promise to be together forever. Yet forever is a very long time, she thought. As she tasted the pineapples for the first time, she felt the aroma ascend from her palate to her temples, inundating her with an incredible lusciousness. She sipped the sauce and felt as if she had been raised to the heavens and beyond. The brandy’s perfume made her ecstatic. She breathed heavily as she felt the fresh pineapple glaze her throat with the most exquisite sweetness she had ever tasted. Alina, sighing between each bite, felt as if Lou caressed her through the dessert’s sweet, creamy taste. She cried. After she was finished eating, feeling a quasi-celestial delight in her stomach, Alina wiped the corners of her mouth and remembered that she needed to distance herself from this place, to feel that she did not depend on anyone, that she was not bound by the flavor of a recipe, that, above all, she had yet to taste other flavors, to dip into other sauces, to simmer gently in the presence of another body. Standing up abruptly, she placed the petition for divorce on the table and left the house without glancing back. Inside the kitchen, the breeze tossed the breadcrumbs around, making them float like a starry shower, like crystals reflecting the light filtering through the curtains.

When Fernando wanted to possess her, he gazed at her with nearly shut eyes, the slight expansion of his nostrils suggesting that he was guided by her scent. She slowly began to grow attached to him, like coral to a rock. Someone swore he had seen them frolicking in the sea or on the white sand. At dusk, they lit a bonfire on the beach. Fernando played the bongo and Amaranta danced until exhaustion laid them down under the heaven’s starry vault.

Gradually, Amaranta began to amuse herself by decorating her body with colorful plastic bags, making strips from them and tying them together, wrapping them around her neck, legs, and arms like long, brilliant scarves. Resembling a bird with extended wings, she ran down the beach, playing with the wind.

Fernando found her one afternoon among the rocks, swollen and purple, unconscious, almost dead, the plastic strips that had decorated her neck now tangled on the rocks. When Amaranta recuperated, they cried tears of joy and embraced each other tenderly. After that, each morning Fernando and Amaranta set out together to walk along the beach. Fernando carried with him a fishnet over his should and a sharp stick. They returned home with the net full of garbage, leaving a trail behind them as they dragged it along the sand. Amaranta sat down under the crooked palm tree with her legs spread and with a fisherman’s knife she cut the plastic waste into very thin strips. Then she struck the empty aluminum cans with a stick until they were reduced to strange forms with which Fernando made art. She whistled while engaged in these tasks: a faint whistle reminding one of the sound pelicans make before diving for fish.

Fernando abandoned traditional painting for an amalgam of painting and collage. Employing dyed sand, cans, and plastic strips, he designed shapes that resembled the ocean’s depths: elastic pendants that moved with the breeze, cans that looked like rocks; his artworks seemed to emerge from a parallel dimension. Fernando sold the first, second, and third pieces at one of the island’s hotels. He bought Amaranta sandals and dresses, a red coral necklace and ornaments for her hair. He bought himself a white guayabera, and he treated his wife to dinner at the hotel’s restaurant. The guests greeted them warmly and watched them with curiosity. Amaranta appeared to them as a savage mermaid with shapely legs.

Fernando’s fame surged with the tide. He received requests from other hotels and from private collectors. He added accessories to the cabin to make it more comfortable. He bought a finer hammock and pieces of furniture that he painted himself. There was still money left over.

The islanders began to hover about the artist and his lover. Strange people with cameras that had telescopic lenses also began to come around. Amaranta sensed their deceit and every day she spent more and more time in the sea.

Since everyone tells a different story, nobody knows exactly what happened. One morning, it seems, Fernando pounced upon the spectators, breaking cameras and dislocating jaws:

“You ran her away, damn you!”

They locked him in the town’s jail until the bronze of his skin faded and his rage and tears dried up. Nobody ever saw Amaranta again. Fernando was released early on a Sunday morning and he went home. Taking his clothes off, he sat, facing the sea.

When a school of dolphins passed by the painter, Fernando leaped into the sea and swam after them. Some said that he became food for sharks, but nobody saw bloodstains nor did they find his remains, and most of the islanders were convinced that Amaranta had come back for him.

The offerings consisted of food, animals, herbs, incense, and flowers. But there was also music and after-dinner dancing around the cross. Still in the near side, on the outskirts of the city, I could distinguish a woman in a dark corner of the ruins: cooking alone, nearly in secret, intoxicating aromas enveloping her. She readied a large pot and filled it with a stew of meat, beans, and dried chilies. The pot bubbled on a stove fashioned from the cover of a metal drum container that had been stolen from a construction site. For fuel she used cardboard, rags, plastic, and wood scraps. The sorcerer ensured that the woman had that which she needed to cook in the fire.

They were celebrating the third of May, the biggest holiday of the year, marking the beginning of the rainy season and clement weather for the cornfields. Ironically, their generation no longer possessed cornfields. They dwelled on hard grayish terrain and resided in units of public housing situated along grids in infinite settlements spread out among the remote valleys and hills of the periphery of Mexico City. Because of the difficulty involved in crossing such a deep ravine, the only means of reaching the far side was by way of the bridge: and although the faithful had constructed the bridge less than a decade ago, it threatened to collapse at any moment. Nevertheless, they would cross it on their periodic pilgrimages because the Holy Cross had to be erected on the sacred site of the ruins. From the hilltop one could see a valley that had been populated, destroyed, and rebuilt so many times over that its rivers had dried up and its mountains had crumbled. The impression was that the end was near, disorder had reached intolerable levels, and complete annihilation might ensue at any moment. Nevertheless, new buildings were continuously being constructed over old ones, over ruins, over hollows. The men no longer raised crops in the valley. They had become laborers, and they constructed buildings by the hundreds, overseen by their foremen, who each year without fail permitted the laborers this one holiday: the third of May. After the rituals and the offerings, it would rain—a few days before or after—though for some years now the rainfall was acidic. It no longer fell on fields of corn or beans. It fell on the hard buildings and on the impermeable, grayish ground. The night before the third of May, day of the Holy Cross, the laborers would grow impatient waiting for the festival, the celebration, and the alcohol: but only those lucky enough to be employed were invited by their foremen. At one time almost everyone was employed, even if only on a part-time basis; but now the majority was unemployed. This woman cooked for the unemployed. She cooked for the duration of afternoon and evening, so the next day she would be able to feed forty unemployed laborers and their families who no longer had a foreman to invite them to the festivity of the Holy Cross. She always fed them provided that they participated in the prayers and helped carry the new cross and offerings to the hilltop. If they followed their nahual and pleased him in everything, they would surely have a good year. The difficulty was in knowing what the nahuales expected of them and in making contact with them, but this was the sorcerer’s function. He would instruct the men regarding the specifics of the offerings, since none of them remembered the old rituals anymore. Curiously, the people no longer prayed for rain, rather they prayed that it would not rain: or else their neighborhood would flood again, garbage inundating the sewers, and many houses would collapse. It was expected that the population follow the nahual’s advice: and they prayed to the ancient gods, to the comparatively new saints, and to anyone who might intercede on their behalf for employment and nourishment.