bedroom and bathroom were preserved as a kind of shrine to tackiness; because And-So-On so loved pink, everything in her room—curtains, walls, bed, pillows, rugs, comforters, chairs—was that color, and there was even a rose-tinted mirror, as if to give Doña Rosenda back her self-esteem (though I can’t imagine she ever lost it). One detail alone—a white camellia in a vase—clashed with the bedroom’s symphony in pink. There was also an iron bidet, solid enough to resist any and all onslaughts.
“She was romantic,” Don Celes had said, without any further explanation, dogma for his loyal servant, obviously me, concerning the virtues of the household to which I had the honor of being admitted.
The bathroom’s pinkness also included pink toilet paper, and—as I discovered when I pulled a pink chain—pink water. Everything was pink, save that iron bidet and the camellia. And save Doña Rosenda herself who, in preparation for death, had prematurely dyed her hair a natural blonde.
Convinced that the Holguín family practiced a kind of dull and conventional eccentricity, I paid attention to the young Abelardo because he was neither dull nor eccentric, except within the norm of his family. Tall, thin, silent, he seemed to belong to a different species. He was no Holguín.
“Was he adopted?” I asked Priscila one day, in a mocking tone.
“Don’t be rude!” she rebuked me. “You foul-mouthed bastard! Two little trees have grown on my ranch!”
I tried in vain to discern a logical relation between my question and these arboreal insults. That was Priscila. For her no cause led to any effect. Under no circumstances. That is why we did not have any children.
“I love your little tummy,” I told her with much affection. “I want to make it bigger and bigger.”
“Until I’m pot-bellied?” she said, infuriated. “You’d rather I had a pot-belly? Is that what you want, you monster? To see me deformed? Are you that apathetic?”
“Actually that wouldn’t count as a deformity.”
“Oh really? What else do you call ruining my figure? You know who gave me my figure? The Lord God gave it to me, and only He can take it away . . .”
“On the day you die,” I said without meaning for it to come out the way it did.
“Oh! So that’s what you want! To kill me! Spineless creep!”
“That’s not what I said . . .”
“To fatten me up like a carnival balloon until I explode, you coward, fool, ass-kisser! Out on the big ranch!”
As I said, Priscila’s outbursts were usually delivered out of conversational context.
No, she did not refuse me her “favors.” But she guarded them with so many precautions that in the end I would lose not just my passion, but also my pleasure. Fortunately, everything took place in the dark. Priscila never saw my genitals. Better off that way! I never saw hers. The worse for me!
“Turn off the light.”
“Okay, fine.”
“Don’t look at me.”
“How could I possibly see you? It’s too dark.”
“Touch me with mercy.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Touch my scapulars.”
“You don’t have any scapulars.”
“Dummy.”
“Oh.”
The problem was that she did wear scapulars where she should not have, so my moves felt sacrilegious. How was I to caress the Sacred Heart of Jesus? How was I to suck on the breasts (and whatever else) of Our Lord of Sorrows? How to penetrate, in short, the Holy of Holies covered by the Veil of Veronica? This last one was a temptation of a subtlety scarcely attributable to Priscila, who was perhaps unaware of Veronica’s questionable past, because she confused her with Mary Magdalene; she believed they were both sisters of the Lord, reformed by religion, and therefore stripped the Virgin Mary of her virginity, unless the girls were younger than Jesus, in which case, as they say in roulette, rien ne va plus, and everyone to Bethlehem!
“The wildest Negro I met in Havana,” Priscila sang when I had satisfied her.
All this took place in the dark. So she never saw me naked. Better still.
Chapter 6
Whoever reads this will understand that he who writes it needed a safe haven outside of his home. To forget about the Holguín family. Their living and their dead. To be able to look at myself in the mirror without blushing, because Priscila and her family embarrassed me and made me ashamed of them and of myself.
I gave the Holguíns just as much as or more than they gave me to reassert my authority (still shaky because I’d hit the jackpot by marrying Priscila, which allowed me to bound up the social ladder from the crowded rungs of nobodies to the spacious heights of somebodies, beyond what my merits entitled me to, if not below my own weaknesses). The Holguíns gave me the gift of contrast: by being both what I was and what I am with them, I had the enormous freedom to be someone else when I left the house to pursue my career.
My detractors say that Don Celestino bankrolled me. I suppose that’s so, but I turned out to be a very good investment. I paid back his loan with exorbitant interest. I drew a line. In the house of Lomas Virreyes, I would adapt to the eccentricities of the family. Outside of it, I would be my own man. Free from the influence of those at home. Do not transfer any phone calls to me, Ms. Secretary, from my wife or father-in-law. Fulfill their requests yourself, as long as they are important (money, property, and unavoidable meetings). Ignore the nonsensical requests (hair-salon schedules, complaints about the help, dinner plans with people who aren’t important, I’ve got a major headache, Why don’t you love me the way you used to?, Where did you put the car keys?, Can I hang a picture of the Pope in the living room?).
My office is my sanctuary, inviolable by definition, sacred by vocation. My private life is denied entrance. Because my employees know this, they treat me with the respect that a man—such as I am—about whom they know nothing outside of work, deserves. My office, unlike most, is an image of privacy. My house is an agora of hullabaloo, silliness, gossip, and blackmail by those who think they’ve got you by the nuts just because they knew you when you were a hungry greenhorn. Familiarity also breeds misfortune. I’m thankful that I can get away from that. None of it matters to me. I’m the guy who swings his leg over the arm of the chair.
The Real Me is born and reborn when I walk into the office, give instructions to the secretaries, and preside over the conference table around which my associates have been waiting.
I address them with the familiar tú.
They address me with formal usted.
(Authority accrues certain privileges.)
They stand at attention when I enter a room.
I remain seated until they’ve all left.
I never leave to go to the bathroom.
I urinate before a meeting.
I do not drink water during a meeting.
They do. They condemn themselves in my presence by acknowledging their needs. (Words, class indicators. They need. I have.)
And so, imagine my surprise (concealed as it was by my best poker face) on that January 6, when my colleagues welcomed me to the conference room wearing dark sunglasses.
I gave no signs of surprise beyond the aforementioned, failed joke.
I dealt with old business, asked for opinions, gave permission to go to the restroom, offered water, as if this were business as usual . . .
The meeting ended. That was Friday. I announced a meeting for Monday, wondering what would happen.