Happy Families_ Stories - Carlos Fuentes [123]
Well, instead of matrimonial red tape, I give you love and admiration.
But you can’t make them public.
In your heart, what do you reproach your husband for, Lavinia?
For not being able to hold me. There it is. The truth, what do you think? He could only oblige me. Understand? I’m tied to obligation. Pure and simple.
Can’t you break off your relationship to your husband?
Don’t be cynical, Leo. I’ve proposed leaving him and living with you. You’ve told me a thousand times not to, that living together would ruin what we have—
A perfect affaire!
That’s what you say. How can you ask me now to leave my husband if I know you wouldn’t accept me as your wife?
Darling, who told you to leave your husband and marry me?
Who’s talking about marrying? Living together, that’s all, my love.
You don’t understand, Lavinia. I’m talking about you leaving your husband, not for me but for another husband.
Then what about you and me?
The same as always, darling. You married to Monsieur Quelconque, Mr. Nobody, and you and I free lovers forever after, with no domestic deadweight.
Really, just like now.
Except with a different partenaire.
Does that excite you, you cynic?
We’d be lovers and not create problems for anybody.
We wouldn’t gain anything.
We wouldn’t lose anything, either.
Then tell me what we gain if we don’t lose.
Being apart so we want each other more. Distance increases desire. It’s almost a Church dogma. Abelard and Heloise. Tristan and Isolde. You know.
I say we already have that. Explain what we would gain if I change husbands but continue as your lover.
I’ll tell you later.
You’re pushing me, Leo.
Toward what?
I’m just letting you know. Don’t push me too much, my love.
3. Leo looks intently at the painting by Hokusai. That Oriental sea—the rougher it becomes, the more cold it gives off. A white sail rises from the waves, which are so intense, and the sail so fragile, that one would doubt the existence of anything else: the undiscovered country, said the Bard, from whose bourn no traveler returns. Is that sail tossed on the agitation of the elements an act of mercy? Does it keep us from seeing the imaginary land hidden by the fog? Not to mention landing on it? Is the mist a friendly invitation to remain where we are, not to go beyond, to that làbas of the imagination where temptation and danger, satisfaction and disappointment, the life of death tremble like flames? Beyond. Taking the next step. Not settling for the crooning hush of the sea and its white sirens. Hush: crush. Crush the song of the sirens with drowned resonances and hostile foam. Hush the streams that come down from the sierra looking for the way to the sea. Crush the sirens so they don’t daze us. Daze and detain. Leo would have liked to set foot on the coast. Would he dare? Had he lived his life so far as a delicious conjuring trick, not daring to take the next step, the step from game to life, from shadow to wall, from appearance to touch, from touch to true absence? From observation of the sea to the certainties of terra firma, where all imaginary dangers are transformed into the greatest danger: no longer sensing any danger at all?
4. It’s all true, Leo. Álvaro insults me, abuses me, doesn’t appreciate me, mistreats me, but at the same time he complains violently that the world insults him, people abuse him, injustice victimizes him, and destiny mistreats him. That’s his posture. He’s simply giving me what the world, destiny, and people have given him. The worst thing is that deep inside, he believes this identifies us and, in a way, makes us partners in misfortune, so to speak. He makes us depend on each other in unhappiness. He and I. He creates an effect filled with blame.
Except that he can make you miserable, and you don’t know how to harm him, Cordelia.
Are you insisting I abandon him completely?
I said no such thing. I’m not asking you to leave him. I’m asking you to do him harm.
Isn’t it enough that