Happy Families_ Stories - Carlos Fuentes [47]
“Doña Mede has one foot in the grave.”
“She’ll go flying to the cemetery.”
“Doña Mede’s ready to breathe her last.”
“One of these days Doña Mede will kick the bucket.”
“Death already rented her body.”
“The next world is in her eyes.”
It isn’t true. You know Doña Medea doesn’t have death in her eyes, she has sadness. You know the lady’s comings and goings don’t reveal her real concern. She has another, secret desire. Does it have to do with the men she knew in her life? Who knows if you know. Doña Medea has pure desolation in her eyes.
You’ve heard there were men in Doña Medea’s life. But you never saw their faces, and neither did anybody else. One thing is sure: This woman lost all her men in cheap pulque taverns.
It was her destiny. And destiny is like a hare. It jumps out when you least expect it. And nothing less than the rabbit of fatality jumped out at Doña Medea in the taverns. This is a crowded district, you know that very well. It’s as if lives become confused here. Names are lost. Men change their lives and their names without having to or being afraid to. Like movie stars, wrestlers in masks, criminals. El Santo. El Floridito. El Pifas. El Tasajeado. Evil names, all of them. El Cacomixtle. But then, like compensation, there are all the blessed names. Holy Child of Atocha, Christ of the Afflicted, Virgin of Remedies.
That’s how flashes are given out, because for Doña Mede, flashes were what people called themselves or what they were called by others. Flashes in the city. Sudden flare-ups. Grass fires.
“And how did you get such a strange name, Doña Medea?”
“Because of Empress Carlotta.”
“What does she have to do with it?”
“My mother saw a movie with an actress who always played Carlotta.”
“What was her name?”
“Medea. Empress Medea de Navarra.”
“Isn’t it Novara?”
“Navarra, Novara, at this late date, what difference does it make? We all have the names that somebody else dreams up for us. That’s God’s truth!”
Men change their names and their lives. That’s why it’s strange that all of Doña Mede’s loves have been pulqueros. Not exactly the owners but the victims of pulque taverns. In La Solitaria she lost a husband among the silver mirrors and wooden barrels. In La Bella Bárbara another man drowned in pulque mixed with oats. And they say a third husband was swallowed up by a mixture of lukewarm eggs, cascabel chili, and watered milk at the pulque tavern El Hijo de los Aztecas.
That’s why nobody knows the father of Doña Mede’s only son. The mariachi.
2. Do you know why Doña Medea Batalla finds herself in the police station, dressed only in a diaper? Because, you’ll say, that’s just what she needed. Just that? It isn’t that her life was so full of affliction. Doña Medea, except for her amorous adventures in the pulque taverns, was always a tidy woman. Her day usually begins with a visit to the markets. She spends the entire morning looking without buying, choosing without paying, sensing that the noisy peace of the old city market-places compensates her for life, or at least calms her curiosity about living. She walks up to the stalls, and modern toys, the Barbie dolls, the Dragon Balls, the SpongeBobs, make her laugh. She recalls with affection the dolls in the old days. The bullfighter puppets in their pink stockings, the Mamerto cowboys with their big mustaches and huge hats, the fat Torcuata ladies in their wide skirts and rolled-up braids.
She asks them to play vinyl records of the old boleros and rancheras. And against all her feelings to the contrary, she wants to get angry, she wants to cry, she finally gives in, the mariachi music traps her, silences her, makes her cry, and enrages her, too.
To calm down, she goes up to a food stand, and as she eats, she airs recollections that are very much appreciated by the restaurant owners