Happy Families_ Stories - Carlos Fuentes [112]
The cook, María Bonifacia, the chambermaid, Pepita, the butler, Truchuela, the chauffeur, Jehová, the gardener, Cándido . . . The staff was not only perfect but silent. Señor Albarrán did not need to exchange words with a single servant to have everything in its place at the correct time. He did not even need to look at them.
At nine in the evening, in pajamas, robe, and slippers, when he sat in the wingback chair in his bedroom to eat a modest light meal of foaming hot chocolate and a sweet roll, Don Luis Albarrán could anticipate a night of recuperative sleep with the spiritual serenity of having honored, for another day, the sweet memory of his loyal companion, Matilde Cousiño, a Chilean who had until the day of her death a southern beauty with those green eyes that rivaled the cold of the South Pacific and were all that had been left to her of a body slowly defeated by the relentless advance of cancer.
Matilde: Illness only renewed her firm spirit, her character immune to any defeat. She said that Chilean women (she pronounced it “wimmen”) were like that, strong and decisive. They made up for—this was her theory—a certain weak sweetness in the men of her country, so cordial until the day their treble voices turned into commanding, cruel voices. Then the woman’s word would appear with all its gift for finding a balance between tenderness and strength.
They had a happy love life in bed, a “carousing” counterpoint, Don Luis would say, in two daily lives that were so serious and orderly until the illness and death of his wife left the widower momentarily disconcerted, possessed of all obligations—office and home—and bereft of all pleasures.
The staff responded. They all knew the routine. Doña Matilde Cousiño came from an old Chilean family and was trained in ruling over the estates of the south and the elegant mansions of Providencia, and she inculcated in her Mexican staff virtues with which they, the domestic crew of the Polanco district, were not unfamiliar and normally accepted. The only novelty for Don Luis was having, when he returned home, elevenses, the amiable Chilean version of British afternoon tea: cups of verbena with teacakes, dulce de leche, and almond pastries. Don Luis told himself that this and a good wine cellar of Chilean reds were the only exotic details Doña Matilde Cousiño introduced into the mansion in Polanco. The staff continued the Chilean custom. Given Mexican schedules, however (office from ten to two, dinner from two to four, final business items from four to six), Don Luis had elevenses a little later, at seven in the evening, though this sweet custom cut his appetite for even the monastic meal he ate at nine.
Doña Matilde Cousiño, as it turned out, died on Christmas Eve, so for Don Luis, December 24 was a day of mourning, solitude, and remembrance. Between the night of the twenty-fourth and the morning of the twenty-fifth, Señor Albarrán dismissed the servants and remained alone, recalling the details of life with Matilde, perusing the objects and rooms of the house, kneeling at the bed his wife occupied at the end of her life, playing records of old Chilean tunes and Mexican boleros that choked him with romantic and sexual nostalgia, going through photograph albums, and preparing rudimentary meals with odds and ends, gringo cereals and spoonfuls of Coronado jelly. He had a sweet tooth, it was true, he saw nothing wrong in sweetening his bitterness and something sinful in stopping at a mirror hoping to see the face of his lost love, and the sorrow that ensued when he discovered only a closely shaved face, an aquiline nose, eyes with increasingly drooping lids, a broad forehead, and graying hair vigorously brushed straight back.
The doorbell rang at eight on the evening of December 24. Don Luis was surprised. The entire staff had left. The days of asking for lodgings were over, destroyed by the city