Almost Never A Novel

11


Renata arrived at the bench aglow. She had walked ten yards. A moment earlier, Demetrio had announced his arrival with a fleeting gesture toward the open door of the stationery store. The house had three doors facing the street, and the diminutive diva emerged, without any hip-wiggling, from the one where three women and two children were shopping. Her lack of confidence was evident in her tentative steps. Was the future mother-in-law managing things from within?

The summit meeting, smiles from both in response to an invitation to be seated: he with suave gesture and she with spirited submission, perhaps strategic as well. Once settled, a tremulous silence descended. Demetrio noticed something strange about her: a natural face-to-face—no! why? maybe later … Doña Luisa had recommended that her daughter avoid looking her suitor in the eye, not at first, for that would be flirting. Hence, the modest damsel’s eyes lowered in self-restraint, the pavement her only field of vision, a misguided sense of decorum rendering her like a wooden puppet, or to make her interest less obvious, among other things … The suitor, so as not to waste time, began to talk about the difficulties of traveling from Oaxaca to Sacramento. He said he had employed every possible means of conveyance: airplane, bus, train, boat, and horse-drawn carriage. He tried to be funny by mentioning that the only thing he had failed to do was mount a burro bareback and pedal a bicycle part of the way. Three days there and three days back. An exhausting trip. She expressed no awe, sitting there instead with her head bowed. Her response was, Sounds exhausting! Was it? which led Demetrio to immediately if fleetingly recall Mireya, who would have said: What a feat! Congratulations! and more admiring largesse. But with Renata it became quite clear that he would have to play the role of seducer, as if he were trying to sell her a product, and therefore, his task consisted of couching his intentions in syrupy phrases: another effort, this one really difficult, was the supercharged verbosity—indeed!—like swimming across the ocean: almost, or at least a lake or a rushing river, without yet knowing if this would please her. In the meantime the trepidant delight of the coming endeavors. The importance of everlasting love. The permanence of the joy of mutual understanding. A shared meaning of life. One bit of baloney after the other until he reached the longed-for locus: Renata, will you be my sweetheart?, using the familiar tú form of address, a subtle impudence she could not reproach, given the earnestness of the request, the very one she had longed to hear ever since that night of the dance, and she muttered: Yes, yes, I will. Forthwith: the impulse to grab that slightly calloused, white, and village hand: Demetrio in search of the sensual. Such a spur-of-the-moment outburst should have paved the way for this, at the very least, but the diva put a lid on it: No, sir, not yet. I won’t let you hold my hand until the next time you come. Modesty placed front and center was such a gross hindrance. Oh no! to wait a year for … Too much desire. Too much punishment. He, scowling, put out, speechless. Her eyes weren’t there to see his predictable reaction. But his silence was something Renata could interpret and thus she uttered this sentence: If our courtship proceeds one step at a time you’ll see that everything will turn out marvelously. It will be, it is already, as if she overcooked love’s certainty in order to appreciate, through longing, the value of time: if we understand love now as a sorrowful fabrication, now as thoughts tangled in dreadful constraints, and Demetrio, in the meantime, acting the role of the long and silent sufferer: exemplary? because if not, what claim could he make … that meant anything? No, only resignation, thanks to how quickly he found out that the first kiss on the mouth would be something as remote as the distance between the earth and the sun, their nakedness and his screwing her now light-years away. And as far as the hand goes, ah … During the dance he had already touched it, as well as her waist, and her hair with his cheek: a fleet and pleasing accident; but such modesty (now!) all in one burst … A courtship that delays in finding the license enchantment grants can transition with passion to the good parts. Restraint as nothing less than a circle swirling with deep water—right? Restraint: for months, years, a route that must go backward in order to go forward, and, phew! there came a break—an overdose of silence is risky—: Renata spoke about her father’s death; the sudden change in the lives of two women who weren’t used to earning their keep. She had to admit that the stationery store was not generating the desired benefits; the calculations had not been optimally carried out. A delicious (worthwhile) nut was being cracked open, with barely any cracklings of affection and trust that would allow Renata to boast about the hustle and bustle of that business challenge. The unexpected: biweekly trips to Monclova: the carriages, the sweats, endless hassles, brutal even down to the most unexpected details. Demetrio, as it were, played the part of the moved listener: so still he barely blinked as he heard a complaint that after reaching out suddenly contracted into a single idea: branches in one continuous curve: all that verbiage—out of necessity, and if not—by a beauty who kept her head bowed and began to cry—why? could it be from sudden joy … and if not, what? A courtship should be cheerful! or rather: future cheer; future long and soft kisses: a great subject for the study of sensations, and with the sudden release of the lips—cheerfulness at last! right? or not? In their heads—there?! Ipso her sweetheart asked: Why are you crying? and mechanically Renata answered: Sometimes I’m quite a crybaby. You’ll soon get to know me … I ask only that when you see me like this you don’t pay any attention to me; though where to look and what to say at that moment that would be appropriate: Demetrio tried. The surroundings themselves seemed discrepant: the trees in the plaza: witnesses, just like the little people in the distance: brute curiosity scattered about, which the suitor found intriguing, even more so upon seeing a young boy (head slightly bowed) just leaving the stationery store. Would he come straight over to the bench? It would seem so, because as soon as he touched Renata’s arm, he practically issued an order: Your mother says you should go home. Renata jumped up as if spring loaded: Good-bye, Demetrio. Write soon. The end. So had passed one hour of sacred love. Not even time for her to ask him: When will you return? and for him to answer: In a year. Nothing, not even an encouraging finale, a hope-infused warmth. Nothing, then, except the parting of a sweetheart who had wagered her paltry pleasure on the clock. One hour … how dear. A disappearance that inspired growing desire. Nothing fascinating and unforgettable, or maybe a little, but—insipid? As he walked away her sweetheart thought about the three days it would take him to get back to Oaxaca. He thought of the hour—annual?—supreme and pale, a bobble melting into the distance. He thought about the stack of circumstances that would arise throughout the year, and to top it off, he had to find a nook in his brain for the idea that the sacred was unattainable. God was in a different sphere—likewise, true love, as was everything truly paradisiacal. Sex, on the other hand, a caprice. Ease at the expense of false loving … Pretense-sex, see-through-sex … But worthwhile love was nothing more than the dark and daring work of rodents, restraint, struggle—a nuisance or courage? Upon his arrival at his aunt Zulema’s house, the strange suitor cut loose. He could hardly believe what he had just experienced. The aunt—no need to guess—made herself comfortable: listening with lively astonishment … Yes! with a sarcastic look on her face she would listen to a story imbued with exasperation, and nothing he came up with could unhinge her psyche; a psyche quite seasoned in such scabrous affairs; an old maid’s psyche that surely did not reel in anticipation of hearing graynesses over blacknesses and who would offer her point of view—knowingly—as soon as her nephew unloaded. Half an hour of contradictiousness: a rude concoction of rage and desire, and the culmination—here goes!: You’re going to have to work very hard to get what you want from that woman; it wouldn’t make any difference if you lived in Sacramento. That’s our way around here. I could tell you a dozen love stories from this region, and the most thankless thing about them is that they are all the same. You’ll have to decide for yourself if you are going to stick with it or give it up. What I can tell you is that once Renata becomes yours, she’ll stay yours forever. She will never marry another even if she is widowed, even if he looks exactly like you. Understand that! She’ll be faithful to you for as long as she lives, and what’s more: it will be eternal love. She’ll put up with you even if you make her suffer. I swear to it! You could be a drunk, a murderer, a thief, even a deadbeat and a grouch, she’ll stay with you no matter what. But in the meantime, you’re going to have to suck it up. All that was some sort of poultice, a conceptual compress that would be dangerous to remove. A fairly heavy flagstone, a simile of unconditional love. A fruit that’s never too cloyingly sweet. Or also a torso taut with muscles and veins, or a stigmata that never decays. But most evident was the level of motivation Renata had managed to awaken in Demetrio. Having raised her bar to almost improbable heights, she knew that by not letting him even touch her hand she’d opened a gaping space of uncertainty. Perhaps that hour of terrifying proximity was the first and would be the last between them. That is, Renata was the one playing with the highest stakes, by far, because an outlander with those qualities, especially considering the trip he had made from the south of the country to see her, not the act of an ordinary creature, no, as it turned out an adventure without a what or a wherefore. Let’s consider her, what she did after they said good-bye: she dashed off to pray to her private saints; she kneeled, mumbled lengthy entreaties that lasted more than an hour. Renata wanted her knees to hurt, some penance she must undergo, and—what the devil was she praying for? what? after having agreed to be, let us say, a hypothetical sweetheart and in the end feeling lonelier than an archangel—alone! on the other hand her mother’s demands: which would only increase if Demetrio returned. And to return, for him … would it make any sense? Perhaps … The sad part was the year of reticent love still to come: a year of letters—how many changing plotlines? and in them she’d express the passion that could not be confessed in person; still to come: the immediate difficulties: Mireya with open legs; Mireya and her unique fellatios; Mireya letting herself be eaten; Mireya sweeping the floor and singing sweetly; who knows if a whore would be capable of giving him the good kind of love; still to come: getting her out of the brothel and taking her to live with him—where? that possibility, et cetera …

Twists and turns that set things straight. Theories that slowly run their course. Edifices left half finished. Margins of error when making a decision. What’s incomplete versus what’s finished, when finishing is a cruel detour. What conscience dictates: certitude or a ruse …

Demetrio fell asleep perplexed, he woke up perplexed, and Zulema knew it. In fact, she had the tact not to push harder on the subject at hand. She knew that her opinion had sounded a bit too decisive, more like a verdict. It was he who subconsciously repeated, after waking up, the words that for better or for worse had bored into his spirit: You could be a drunk, a murderer, a thief, and even a deadbeat and a grouch, she’ll stay with you no matter what. To memorize this concept of salvation: a yearlong task; a reductive duty, with thousands of reverberations. At that moment he had said: Thank you, Auntie, for your advice. Next: each to his or her own: she to the store of her devotion and he to embark on the dreary trip back. Here we must mention that Zulema did not offer him breakfast (insensitive hostess), though she did place her aged hand near his mouth:

“Kiss it!”

“Why?”

“Do it! It’ll make you feel good.”

“I don’t see the point …”

“Come on! Don’t be a fool. I know Renata didn’t let you hold her hand.”

“But you are not Renata.”

“Pretend I am. Take my hand and kiss it.”

Without knowing what he would get in return, Demetrio obeyed. He became a bemused kisser of wrinkled skin. Wrinkles that inspire tenderness. A warm sensation so similar to … and after continuing to kiss it slowly the depraved suitor stuck out his tongue and licked it lustily. It seemed like an obscenity, but then—ah yes! to lick and lick and lick the pith, so much saddened saliva, and in such high concentrations. The kiss lasted a whole minute. It could have been longer, but Zulema pulled her hand away and said:

“Now you can leave at your ease.”

And Demetrio left with a bit of a cramp.