Happy Families_ Stories - Carlos Fuentes [33]
Alone? Writing and receiving letters from a stranger?
Understand that I’m alone, alone deep inside. You don’t give me all your time. I’m not reproaching you. But please understand that I need my time and my company, too. Yes, I need my privacy violated by your unhealthy curiosity. And everything going so well, my God . . .
Tell me, tell me what you’re reproaching me for, Cordelia . . .
I’ll tell you. You talk only about yourself, your career, your magnificent plans, your intelligence, your brilliance, the applause you receive. You’re an applause meter. You’re a valiant knight errant. Don Quixote. I’m your Sanchita Panzona. Well, no. Just as you live your life, I have the right to live mine.
I don’t have a mistress, Cordelia.
Well, you ought to find one. Then we’d be even and no recriminations.
Is that all you can say to me?
No, of course not. Just imagine. I have my lover every day and you whenever I feel like it.
You’ve become a cynic.
Not a cynic. Desperate. How many times, beside you, did I have to pinch myself and tell myself, “I’m alive. I think. I want . . .”
Cordelia doesn’t look away. He can’t conquer her eyes.
That drives him mad.
I can bear only one tyrant. Myself, Álvaro.
All right. What’s the point of telling you how it irritates me that you’re so pleased with yourself.
What do you expect. I’m too alive.
She doesn’t look away. He can’t conquer her eyes.
This drives him mad.
NO, he didn’t even give her the satisfaction of finding himself a mistress. He didn’t want her to have any excuses. He wanted her to know that his cruelty was gratuitous and undeserved. He ties her to the bed. He gags her and asks what are you thinking? He chokes her and asks her to sing “Amapola.” He says he wants to reduce her until the torments of curiosity (his) are lost completely.
You won’t have any life but this one, locked up. At my side. Sequestered in your own house.
He let it be understood—he never said so explicitly—that this was the price she had to pay for his forgetting. Álvaro will forget Cordelia’s guilt if Cordelia accepts gratuitous punishment, as if there were no sin between them. It was a painful way, she said to herself only because he said it first, “of beginning over.”
I DON’T WANT anybody to think you’re married to me out of loyalty, love, or habit. I want to know and for you to know, too, that you’re here against your will.
What do you say out in the world, Álvaro?
That you prefer never to leave the house.
HE’LL CHAIN HER to the foot of the bed and tell her that this will be the punishment she deserved for the mere fact of becoming old and losing her looks. He’ll gag her and ask what are you thinking about? He’ll choke her while he asks her to sing “Amapola.” He’ll tell her there’s no difference between the morgue and the bed. Lie down like a corpse! You’ll close your eyes. You’ll spare me your detestable vindictive gaze. You won’t tell me that death is the maximum aggression against us because I’ll keep you alive so you have no excuses. Until the final moment. I’ll make you feel that death is only your possibility, not your reality. My malice will postpone your death. I’ll prepare your death, dear wife. I’ll separate you from death by prolonging your pain. I’ll prepare your death. You won’t be my phantom. You’ll be my wife. Do you realize that I survive only to make you suffer?
WHEN I DARED to tell him—Reforma, Adriana Pérez Cañedo—that the secretary had done the opposite of what Álvaro told me he told him he should have done, he ripped the paper, kicked the TV, and began to isolate himself, to not go out, to look at me reproachfully: I knew his secret, I paid no attention to him, his airs were pure smoke, I condemned myself, if he no longer had power outside, he would show me he had it in the house.
AT THE LAST DINNER the two of them—Álvaro and Cordelia—attended together, they heard the honorable secretary say in a very low but exceedingly ill-intentioned voice:
Álvaro Meneses is a lethal bureaucrat. He’s becoming redundant.
YOU HAVE LESS fizz than a Coca-Cola that’s been