Happy Families_ Stories - Carlos Fuentes [32]
WE’RE NOT THE SAME you’re right I have everything hanging on the outside you keep everything in those aromatic crannies, you’re full of folds and more folds Cordelia and you know you smell like a fish market that’s what you smell like a rotten red snapper that’s how I feel when I make love to you that I’m fucking a dead fish left on the beach for a week a man shows himself he shows everything a woman hides everything she arranges everything in little quilted boxes but a woman disarranges your soul roll up your socks slowly bottom to top don’t yank them don’t put your shoes on before your trousers be careful not to stain your tie at the cleaners they ruin ties ties have their virginity too why were you messing with my tube of toothpaste? because it’s very ugly to squeeze it from the top ah yes well I’m going to squeeze the tube from the top just to fuck up your little esthetic manias and give me the remote it’s not mine I want to watch the news with Adriana Pérez Cañedo well Chespirito is on at the same time and I’d rather see Chilindrina where did you leave the Reforma? I threw it out why? I already read it and what about me? don’t I have the right to read it, Álvaro? you don’t understand anything, Cordelia, women are bovine creatures they graze and have calves and give milk, that’s all and they don’t know what’s going on in the world and don’t care . . .
AND YOU, ÁLVARO, don’t urinate outside the bowl just look at the drops you’ve left on the floor . . .
ÁLVARO was obsessed with presenting himself as the éminence grise of powerful figures, he would come home full of himself and tell me:
“I proposed to the secretary . . .”
“I suggested to the subsecretary . . .”
“I made the senior official see . . .”
“The secretary’s secretary, thanks to me . . .”
YOU STAY WITH ME because there’s nobody left but me who remembers your youthful beauty. Only I have your young eyes in my old ones.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? Was there a cause of all causes? What was first, what came later? Desire or jealousy? Ecstasy or disillusion? Misunderstandings or explanations? Suspicions or gossip? Desires or jealousy? Longing or disgust? Plenitude or rejection?
WHERE WERE YOU all afternoon? I’ve been waiting for you. You know I desire you in an untimely way.
Yes, you say I’m an untimely woman.
That’s why I want you to be here when I desire you.
I’m sorry to disillusion you.
Bah, a man can’t lose his illusions if he doesn’t have any.
I don’t understand you.
There are too many explanations.
That’s true. Never complain. Never explain.
Not knowing where you are causes me tremendous anguish.
But I’m always at your side, you know that, my presence is in your imagination, in your desire, you always say that, I’m a prisoner in your head, I never leave there . . .
Your presence, darling, is only a bloody Kotex tossed in the toilet. Next time please pull the chain. Or send your menstrual filth to the cleaners, pig.
WHEN HE FOUND OUT, he didn’t know what to do. Ignore it. Retaliate. Go out and kill him. He expected everything except her response.
You’ve violated my privacy. Those letters belonged only to me.
Álvaro couldn’t believe it.
Only to you? Did the Holy Spirit write them? Did you write them to yourself? How long have you been quoting poems by Neruda?
Ha ha.
They’re my letters. Mine. Understand that. Respect my privacy.
And if you found love letters sent to me by another woman, would you respect “my privacy”?
It’s different, Álvaro. You have a profession, a public life, you go to work. You’re in the world. But I live alone in this house.