Read Years With Laura Diaz, The Online
Authors: Carlos Fuentes
Years With Laura Diaz, The (16 page)
In those years, when at almost the same time the Mexican Revolution and the European war culminated and ended, movies became the great novelty. The armed revolution was winding down: the battles after General Obregón’s great victory over Pancho Villa at Celaya were only skirmishes. The once powerful Division of the North was disintegrating into bands of outlaws with each faction seeking support, arrangements, advantages, and ideals (in that order) after the triumph of Venustiano Carranza, the Constitutionalist Army, and, in 1917, the promulgation of the new Magna Carta—that was what the newspapers called it—the object of examination, debate, and constant fear among the gentlemen who gathered every evening at the Xalapa Casino.
“If the agrarian reform is put into effect exactly as written, we’ll be ruined,” said the father of the young man from Córdoba whom Laura had danced with and who had talked only of roosters and hens.
“They won’t do that. The country has to eat. Only the big properties produce,” said the father of the red-haired and abusive young tennis player, trying to be conciliatory.
“And workers’ rights?” joined in the elderly husband of the lady who had waxed nostalgic about the oh-so-handsome French Zouaves. “What is there to say about ‘workers’ rights’ stuck into the Constitution like a pair of banderillas in a bull’s back?”
“Like Jesus wearing six-guns, my dear man.”
“Red Battalions, House of the Workers of the World … I assure you, Carranza and Obregón are Communists and are going to do the same thing here that Lenin and Trotsky are doing in Russia.”
“None of this is relevant here, as you gentlemen will soon see.”
“A million dead, gentlemen, and all for what?”
“I assure you, most of them died not in battles but in bars.”
That provoked general hilarity, but when some films of revolutionary battles made by the Abitia brothers were shown in the Victoria Salon, the cultivated public protested. No one wanted to go to the movies to see huarache-wearing men wielding rifles. Movies meant Italian movies, only Italian. Emotion and beauty were the exclusive privilege of Italy’s divas and vamps of the silver screen; society suffered and exulted with the dramas of Pina Menichelli, Italia Almirante Manzini, Giovanna Terribili González—stupendous women with darkly shadowed shining eyes, disturbing brows, electric hairdos, voracious mouths, and tragic gestures. Why did the Gish sisters hide their faces when they wept, why did Mary Pickford dress up as a beggar? If you want poverty, go out on the street; if you want to avoid emotion, visit your neighbors.
The neighbors’ homes went on being, in Laura’s life and in the life of everyone in provincial society, the irreplaceable seats of communal life. People “received” constantly if sporadically, almost taking turns. In private homes, people played lottery and blackjack, forming large circles around the tables. It was there that culinary customs were preserved. It was there the youngest girls were taught to dance, taking little steps through the rooms, “you do it this way, lifting your skirt,” preparing them for the grand soirees at the Casino; and it was the place
for baptism parties, for setting up the crèche at Christmas, with the Christ Child in his manger and the Wise Men and, in the center of the room, the “French Ship” filled with sweets that was opened up after midnight. Mass. And then Carnival and its masked balls, the tableaux vivants at the end of term at the Misses Ramos’ school, with their representations of Father Hidalgo Proclaiming Independence or the Indian Juan Diego negotiating with the Virgin of Guadalupe. But the principal party was the Casino hall every August 19. It was there that all of local society met.
for baptism parties, for setting up the crèche at Christmas, with the Christ Child in his manger and the Wise Men and, in the center of the room, the “French Ship” filled with sweets that was opened up after midnight. Mass. And then Carnival and its masked balls, the tableaux vivants at the end of term at the Misses Ramos’ school, with their representations of Father Hidalgo Proclaiming Independence or the Indian Juan Diego negotiating with the Virgin of Guadalupe. But the principal party was the Casino hall every August 19. It was there that all of local society met.
Laura would have preferred to stay at home, not only to be with her parents but because since the death of the Catalan anarchist the attic had been sealed. She began to assign a special value to every corner of her house, as if she knew that the pleasure of living and growing up there would not last forever. Her grandfather’s Catemaco house, the apartment above the bank and facing the sea in Veracruz, and now the one-story home on Lerdo Street in Xalapa … how many more homes would she live in over the years of her life? She could foresee none of them. She could only recall yesterday’s homes and memorize today’s, creating sanctuaries in her uncertain life—never again foreseeable and secure as it had been during her childhood near the lake—which she would need to hold on to in the time to come. A time that young Laura could not imagine, no matter how often she said to herself, “No matter what happens, the future will be different from this present.” She did not want to imagine the worst reasons why life would change. The worst of all was the death of her father. She was going to say that the saddest was staying behind, lost and forgotten, in a little town, like Aunts Hilda and Virginia in their father’s house, stripped of the reason for being settled there and being unmarried. Grandfather was dead; Hilda played the piano for nothing, for no one; Virginia piled up pages, poems, that no one would ever know. The active life was preferable, a life committed to another life, which was the case of Aunt María de la O, constantly caring for Fernando Díaz.
“What would I do without you, María de la O?” the indefatigable Mutti Leticia would ask—seriously, without sighing.
Laura, as once she had memorized Santiago’s bedroom in Veracruz, now, eyes closed, ran through the patios, the corridors, the floors of Marseilles brick, the palms, the ferns, the mahogany armoires, the mirrors, the four-poster beds, the clay jugs of filtered water, the dressing table, the pitcher, the closet, and, in her mother’s domain, the kitchen redolent of mint and parsley.
“Don’t turn in on yourself the way your Grandmother Kelsen did,” Leticia would say. She could no longer endure the sadness of her own gaze. “Go out with your girlfriends. Have fun. You’re only twenty-one.”
“What you mean, Mutti, is that I’m
already
twenty-one. At my age, you’d been married for years, and I’d been born—and no, Mutti, don’t even bother asking: I’m not fond of any boy.”
already
twenty-one. At my age, you’d been married for years, and I’d been born—and no, Mutti, don’t even bother asking: I’m not fond of any boy.”
“Have they stopped coming to see you? Because of everything that’s happened?”
“No, Mutti, I’m the one who’s been avoiding them.”
As if responding to a warning of an incomprehensible change, vibrating like late-summer leaves, the girls Laura would visit, younger than she, had all decided to prolong their childhood, even if they made coquettish concessions to an adulthood they, disconcerted, did not wish. They called themselves “the chubbies” and played practical jokes inappropriate to their eighteen years. They jumped rope in the park so they’d have color in their cheeks before going on the seductive evening stroll; they would take long siestas before tennis at Los Berros; they would innocently mock their costumed boyfriends during Carnival:
“Are you a circus clown?”
“Don’t insult me. Can’t you see I’m a prince?”
They would skate in Juárez Park to lose the pounds they put on eating “devils,” cakes filled with chocolate and covered with marzipan, the delight of sweet-tooths in this city that smelled like a bakery. They volunteered to be in the tableaux vivants at the end of the term in the Misses Ramos’ academy, the only time when one could see that the teachers really were two different people, since one presided over the tableaux while the other worked behind the scenes.
“Something awful happened to me, Laura. I was playing the part of
the Virgin, when I suddenly had to go. I had to make terrible faces so Miss Ramos would close the curtain. I ran to make wee-wee and came back to be the Virgin again.”
the Virgin, when I suddenly had to go. I had to make terrible faces so Miss Ramos would close the curtain. I ran to make wee-wee and came back to be the Virgin again.”
“In my house, they’ve gotten bored with my comedies and costumes, Laura. My parents have hired only one spectator to admire me. What do you think of that?”
“You must be happy, Margarita.”
“The thing is, I’ve decided to become an actress.”
Then they all rushed madly to the balcony to see the cadets from the Preparatoria march by, rifles on their shoulders, wearing their French képis, their uniforms with gold buttons, and their very taut flies.
The bank informed them they’d have to give up the house in September, after the Casino ball. Don Fernando would get a pension, but the new bank director would, as is natural, be coming to live in the house. There would also be a ceremony up in the attic, the unveiling of a plaque in honor of Doña Armonía Aznar. The Mexican trade unions had decided to honor the valiant comrade who had donated money, had delivered mail to the Red Battalions and the House of the Workers of the World during the Revolution, and had even sheltered union men on the run right here, in the house of the bank director.
“Did you know that, Mutti?”
“No, Laura. And what about you, sister?”
“Not a clue!”
“It’s better not to know everything, isn’t that so?”
None of the three dared to think that a man as honorable as Don Fernando would knowingly have tolerated a conspiracy under his own roof, especially with Santiago’s having been shot on November 21, 1910. When she thought about it, Laura imagined that Orlando Ximénez knew the truth, that he was the intermediary between the attic and Doña Armonía’s anarcho-syndicalists. Then she discarded that suspicion; Orlando. the frivolous … or perhaps for that very reason was he the likeliest suspect? Laura laughed heartily. She’d just read Baroness d’Orczy’s
The Scarlet Pimpernel
to her father, so she was imagining poor Orlando as a Mexican Pimpernel, a dandy at
night and an anarchist by day … saving union men from the firing squad.
The Scarlet Pimpernel
to her father, so she was imagining poor Orlando as a Mexican Pimpernel, a dandy at
night and an anarchist by day … saving union men from the firing squad.
No novel prepared Laura for the next episode of her life. Leticia and María de la O set about looking for a comfortable house that they could afford under Fernando’s pension. The half sister thought that given the circumstances, Hilda and Virginia should sell the Catemaco coffee plantation and use the money to buy a house in Xalapa where they could all live together and save on expenses.
“And why shouldn’t we all go back to Catemaco? After all, we did live there … and we were happy,” said Leticia, without sighing like her self-absorbed mother.
Her question became superfluous as soon as the unmarried sisters Hilda and Virginia appeared at the Xalapa house, loaded with packages, boxes of books, steamer chests, seamstress dummies, cages filled with parrots, and even the Steinway piano.
People gathered in Lerdo Street to observe the arrival of such curious baggage, for the two sisters’ belongings filled a mule cart to overflowing. Covered with dust, the sisters themselves looked like refugees from a battle lost many years ago, with huge straw hats tied under their chins and gauze veils that protected their faces from flies, the sun, and the highway filth.
Theirs was a brief story. The Veracruz farm workers had armed themselves and quickly occupied the Kelsen hacienda and all the other properties in the area, declared them agrarian cooperatives, and run the owners off the land.
“There was no way to warn you,” said Aunt Virginia. “Here we are.”
They hadn’t known that the Xalapa house would no longer be theirs in September, after the Casino ball in August. Now, with her sisters added to her burden, her husband an invalid, and Laura having no marriage on the horizon, Leticia finally gave in and burst into tears. The expropriated sisters exchanged perplexed glances. Leticia begged their pardon, drying her tears on her apron, and invited them to make themselves at home. That night, Aunt María de la O came to Laura’s bedroom, sat down next to her, and caressed the girl’s head.
“Don’t be discouraged, child. Just look at me. Sometimes you must have thought that life’s been difficult for me, especially when I lived alone with my mother. But you know something? Being born is a joy even if you were conceived in sadness and misery. I mean inner sadness and misery, more than outer. You come into the world, and your origin is erased, being born is always a party, and I’ve done nothing but celebrate my going through life, not caring two cents where I came from, what happened at the beginning, how and where my mother gave birth to me, how my father behaved … Know something? Your grandmother Cosima redeemed everything, but even without her, without all I owe your grandmother and how much I adore her, I celebrate the world, I know I came to the world to celebrate life, through thick and thin, child, and I’m going to go on celebrating, damn it to hell. And excuse me for talking like someone from Alvarado, but that’s where I grew up …”
María de la O drew her hand away from Laura’s head for a moment and gave her niece a radiant smile, as if the little aunt always brought warmth and joy on her lips and in her eyes.
“And something else, Laurita, to complete the picture. Your grandfather brought me to live with you, and that saved me, I can’t say it often enough. But your grandmother did not concern herself any more with my mother, as if it were enough to save me and Old Nick himself could take her. The one who did concern himself was your father, Fernando. I don’t know what would have become of my mother if Fernando hadn’t looked out for her, helped her, given her money, and allowed her to grow old with dignity. Pardon me for being blunt, but there’s nothing sadder than an old whore. What I want to say is just this: the important thing is being alive and where you’re alive. We’re going to save this home and the people in it, Laura. María de la O swears it, the aunt you more than anyone else have respected. I never forget!”
She was getting fat, and it was rather hard for her to move about. Whenever she went for a walk with Fernando in his wheelchair, people would look away, not wanting to feel sorry for the two, the invalid man
and the ashen mulatta with fat ankles who insisted on being out and around, ruining things for young, healthy people. María de la O’s will was greater than any obstacle, and the four sisters, the day after Hilda and Virginia arrived, decided not only to find a house for the family but to turn it into a guest house, contribute to its maintenance, each one would give her part, and take care of Fernando.
and the ashen mulatta with fat ankles who insisted on being out and around, ruining things for young, healthy people. María de la O’s will was greater than any obstacle, and the four sisters, the day after Hilda and Virginia arrived, decided not only to find a house for the family but to turn it into a guest house, contribute to its maintenance, each one would give her part, and take care of Fernando.
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