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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Books by Carlos Fuentes

  Copyright

  Man hunts and struggles.

  Woman intrigues and dreams;

  she is the mother of fantasy,

  the mother of the gods.

  She has second sight,

  the wings that enable her to fly

  to the infinite of

  desire and the imagination …

  The gods are like men:

  they are born and they die

  on a woman’s breast …

  JULES MICHELET

  1

  You’re reading the advertisement: an offer like this isn’t made every day. You read it and reread it. It seems to be addressed to you and nobody else. You don’t even notice when the ash from your cigarette falls into the cup of tea you ordered in this cheap, dirty café. You read it again. “Wanted, young historian, conscientious, neat. Perfect knowledge colloquial French.” Youth … knowledge of French, preferably after living in France for a while … “Four thousand pesos a month, all meals, comfortable bedroom-study.” All that’s missing is your name. The advertisement should have two more words, in bigger, blacker type: Felipe Montero. Wanted, Felipe Montero, formerly on scholarship at the Sorbonne, historian full of useless facts, accustomed to digging among yellowed documents, part-time teacher in private schools, nine hundred pesos a month. But if you read that, you’d be suspicious, and take it as a joke. “Address, Donceles 815.” No telephone. Come in person.

  You leave a tip, reach for your brief case, get up. You wonder if another young historian, in the same situation you are, has seen the same advertisement, has got ahead of you and taken the job already. You walk down to the corner, trying to forget this idea. As you wait for the bus, you run over the dates you must have on the tip of your tongue so that your sleepy pupils will respect you. The bus is coming now, and you’re staring at the tips of your black shoes. You’ve got to be prepared. You put your hand in your pocket, search among the coins, and finally take out thirty centavos. You’ve got to be prepared. You grab the handrail—the bus slows down but doesn’t stop—and jump aboard. Then you shove your way forward, pay the driver the thirty centavos, squeeze yourself in among the passengers already standing in the aisle, hang onto the overhead rail, press your brief case tighter under your left arm, and automatically put your left hand over the back pocket where you keep your billfold.

  This day is just like any other day, and you don’t remember the advertisement until the next morning, when you sit down in the same café and order breakfast and open your newspaper. You come to the advertising section and there it is again: young historian. The job is still open. You reread the advertisement, lingering over the final words: four thousand pesos.

  It’s surprising to know that anyone lives on Donceles Street. You always thought that nobody lived in the old center of the city. You walk slowly, trying to pick out the number 815 in that conglomeration of old colonial mansions, all of them converted into repair shops, jewelry shops, shoe stores, drugstores. The numbers have been changed, painted over, confused. A 13 next to a 200. An old plaque reading 47 over a scrawl in blurred charcoal: Now 924. You look up at the second stories. Up there, everything is the same as it was. The jukeboxes don’t disturb them. The mercury streetlights don’t shine in. The cheap merchandise on sale along the street doesn’t have any effect on that upper level; on the baroque harmony of the carved stones; on the battered stone saints with pigeons clustering on their shoulders; on the latticed balconies, the copper gutters, the sandstone gargoyles; on the greenish curtains that darken the long windows; on that window from which someone draws back when you look at it. You gaze at the fanciful vines carved over the doorway, then lower your eyes to the peeling wall and discover 815, formerly 69.

  You rap vainly with the knocker, that copper head of a dog, so worn and smooth that it resembles the head of a canine foetus in a museum of natural science. It seems as if the dog is grinning at you and you let go of the cold metal. The door opens at the first light push of your fingers, but before going in you give a last look over your shoulder, frowning at the long line of stalled cars that growl, honk, and belch out the unhealthy fumes of their impatience. You try to retain some single image of that indifferent outside world.

  You close the door behind you and peer into the darkness of a roofed alleyway. It must be a patio of some sort, because you can smell the mold, the dampness of the plants, the rotting roots, the thick drowsy aroma. There isn’t any light to guide you, and you’re searching in your coat pocket for the box of matches when a sharp, thin voice tells you, from a distance: “No, it isn’t necessary. Please. Walk thirteen steps forward and you’ll come to a stairway at your right. Come up, please. There are twenty-two steps. Count them.”

  Thirteen. To the right. Twenty-two.

  The dank smell of the plants is all around you as you count out your steps, first on the paving-stones, then on the creaking wood, spongy from the dampness. You count to twenty-two in a low voice and then stop, with the matchbox in your hand, and the brief case under your arm. You knock on a door that smells of old pine. There isn’t any knocker. Finally you push it open. Now you can feel a carpet under your feet, a thin carpet, badly laid. It makes you trip and almost fall. Then you notice the grayish filtered light that reveals some of the humps.

  “Señora,” you say, because you seem to remember a woman’s voice. “Señora…”

  “Now turn to the left. The first door. Please be so kind.”

  You push the door open: you don’t expect any of them to be latched, you know they all open at a push. The scattered lights are braided in your eyelashes, as if you were seeing them through a silken net. All you can make out are the dozens of flickering lights. At last you can see that they’re votive lights, all set on brackets or hung between unevenly-spaced panels. They cast a faint glow on the silver objects, the crystal flasks, the gilt-framed mirrors. Then you see the bed in the shadows beyond, and the feeble movement of a hand that seems to be beckoning to you.

  But you can’t see her face until you turn your back on that galaxy of religious lights. You stumble to the foot of the bed, and have to go around it in order to get to the head of it. A tiny figure is almost lost in its immensity. When you reach out your hand, you don’t touch another hand, you touch the ears and thick fur of a creature that’s chewing silently and steadily, looking up at you with its glowing red eyes. You smile and stroke the rabbit that’s crouched beside her hand. Finally you shake hands, and her cold fingers remain for a long while in your sweating palm.

  “I’m Felipe Montero. I read your advertisement.”

  “Yes, I know. I’m sorry, there aren’t any chairs.”

  “That’s all right. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Good. Please let me see your profile. No, I can’t see it well enough. Turn toward the light. That’s right. Excellent.”

  “I read your advertisement…”

  “Yes, of course. Do you think you’re qualified? Avez-vous fait des études?”

  “A Paris, madame.”

  “Ah, oui, ça me fait plaisir, toujours, toujours, d’entendre … oui … vous savez … on était tellement habitué… et après…”

  You move aside so that the light from t
he candles and the reflections from the silver and crystal show you the silk coif that must cover a head of very white hair, and that frames a face so old it’s almost childlike. Her whole body is covered by the sheets and the feather pillows and the high, tightly buttoned white collar, all except for her arms, which are wrapped in a shawl, and her pallid hands resting on her stomach. You can only stare at her face until a movement of the rabbit lets you glance furtively at the crusts and bits of bread scattered on the worn-out red silk of the pillows.

  “I’ll come directly to the point. I don’t have many years ahead of me, Señor Montero, and therefore I decided to break a lifelong rule and place an advertisement in the newspaper.”

  “Yes, that’s why I’m here.”

  “Of course. So you accept.”

  “Well, I’d like to know a little more.”

  “Yes. You’re wondering.”

  She sees you glance at the night table, the different-colored bottles, the glasses, the aluminum spoons, the row of pillboxes, the other glasses—all stained with whitish liquids—on the floor within reach of her hand. Then you notice that the bed is hardly raised above the level of the floor. Suddenly the rabbit jumps down and disappears in the shadows.

  “I can offer you four thousand pesos.”

  “Yes, that’s what the advertisement said today.”

  “Ah, then it came out.”

  “Yes, it came out.”

  “It has to do with the memoirs of my husband, General Llorente. They must be put in order before I die. I want them to be published. I decided that a short time ago.”

  “But the General himself? Wouldn’t he be able to…”

  “He died sixty years ago, Señor. They’re his unfinished memoirs. They have to be completed before I die.”

  “But…”

  “I can tell you everything. You’ll learn to write in my husband’s own style. You’ll only have to arrange and read his manuscripts to become fascinated by his style … his clarity … his…”

  “Yes, I understand.”

  “Saga, Saga. Where are you? Ici, Saga!”

  “Who?”

  “My companion.”

  “The rabbit?”

  “Yes. She’ll come back.”

  When you raise your eyes, which you’ve been keeping lowered, her lips are closed but you can hear her words again—“She’ll come back”—as if the old lady were pronouncing them at that instant. Her lips remain still. You look in back of you and you’re almost blinded by the gleam from the religious objects. When you look at her again you see that her eyes have opened very wide, and that they’re clear, liquid, enormous, almost the same color as the yellowish whites around them, so that only the black dots of the pupils mar that clarity. It’s lost a moment later in the heavy folds of her lowered eyelids, as if she wanted to protect that glance which is now hiding at the back of its dry cave.

  “Then you’ll stay here. Your room is upstairs. It’s sunny there.”

  “It might be better if I didn’t trouble you, Señora. I can go on living where I am and work on the manuscripts there.”

  “My conditions are that you have to live here. There isn’t much time left.”

  “I don’t know if…”

  “Aura…”

  The old woman moves for the first time since you entered her room. As she reaches out her hand again, you sense that agitated breathing beside you, and another hand reaches out to touch the Señora’s fingers. You look around and a girl is standing there, a girl whose whole body you can’t see because she’s standing so close to you and her arrival was so unexpected, without the slightest sound—not even those sounds that can’t be heard but are real anyway because they’re remembered immediately afterwards, because in spite of everything they’re louder than the silence that accompanies them.

  “I told you she’d come back.”

  “Who?”

  “Aura. My companion. My niece.”

  “Good afternoon.”

  The girl nods and at the same instant the old lady imitates her gesture.

  “This is Señor Montero. He’s going to live with us.”

  You move a few steps so that the light from the candles won’t blind you. The girl keeps her eyes closed, her hands at her sides. She doesn’t look at you at first, then little by little she opens her eyes as if she were afraid of the light. Finally you can see that those eyes are sea green and that they surge, break to foam, grow calm again, then surge again like a wave. You look into them and tell yourself it isn’t true, because they’re beautiful green eyes just like all the beautiful green eyes you’ve ever known. But you can’t deceive yourself: those eyes do surge, do change, as if offering you a landscape that only you can see and desire.

  “Yes. I’m going to live with you.”

  2

  The old woman laughs sharply and tells you that she is grateful for your kindness and that the girl will show you to your room. You’re thinking about the salary of four thousand pesos, and how the work should be pleasant because you like these jobs of careful research that don’t include physical effort or going from one place to another or meeting people you don’t want to meet. You’re thinking about this as you follow her out of the room, and you discover that you’ve got to follow her with your ears instead of your eyes: you follow the rustle of her skirt, the rustle of taffeta, and you’re anxious now to look into her eyes again. You climb the stairs behind that sound in the darkness, and you’re still unused to the obscurity. You remember it must be about six in the afternoon, and the flood of light surprises you when Aura opens the door to your bedroom—another door without a latch—and steps aside to tell you: “This is your room. We’ll expect you for supper in an hour.”

  She moves away with that same faint rustle of taffeta, and you weren’t able to see her face again.

  You close the door and look up at the skylight that serves as a roof. You smile when you find that the evening light is blinding compared with the darkness in the rest of the house, and smile again when you try out the mattress on the gilded metal bed. Then you glance around the room: a red wool rug, olive and gold wallpaper, an easy chair covered in red velvet, an old walnut desk with a green leather top, an old Argand lamp with its soft glow for your nights of research, and a bookshelf over the desk in reach of your hand. You walk over to the other door, and on pushing it open you discover an outmoded bathroom: a four-legged bathtub with little flowers painted on the porcelain, a blue hand basin, an old-fashioned toilet. You look at yourself in the large oval mirror on the door of the wardrobe—it’s also walnut—in the bathroom hallway. You move your heavy eyebrows and wide thick lips, and your breath fogs the mirror. You close your black eyes, and when you open them again the mirror has cleared. You stop holding your breath and run your hand through your dark, limp hair; you touch your fine profile, your lean cheeks; and when your breath hides your face again you’re repeating her name: “Aura.”

  After smoking two cigarettes while lying on the bed, you get up, put on your jacket, and comb your hair. You push the door open and try to remember the route you followed coming up. You’d like to leave the door open so that the lamplight could guide you, but that’s impossible because the springs close it behind you. You could enjoy playing with that door, swinging it back and forth. You don’t do it. You could take the lamp down with you. You don’t do it. This house will always be in darkness, and you’ve got to learn it and re-learn it by touch. You grope your way like a blind man, with your arms stretched out wide, feeling your way along the wall, and by accident you turn on the light-switch. You stop and blink in the bright middle of that long, empty hall. At the end of it you can see the bannister and the spiral staircase.

  You count the stairs as you go down: another custom you’ve got to learn in Señora Llorente’s house. You take a step backward when you see the reddish eyes of the rabbit, which turns its back on you and goes hopping away.

  You don’t have time to stop in the lower hallway because Aura is waiting fo
r you at a half-open stained-glass door, with a candelabra in her hand. You walk toward her, smiling, but you stop when you hear the painful yowling of a number of cats—yes, you stop to listen, next to Aura, to be sure that they’re cats—and then follow her to the parlor.

  “It’s the cats,” Aura tells you. “There are lots of rats in this part of the city.”

  You go through the parlor: furniture upholstered in faded silk; glass-fronted cabinets containing porcelain figurines, musical clocks, medals, glass balls; carpets with Persian designs; pictures of rustic scenes; green velvet curtains. Aura is dressed in green.

  “Is your room comfortable?”

  “Yes. But I have to get my things from the place where…”

  “It won’t be necessary. The servant has already gone for them.”

  “You shouldn’t have bothered.”

  You follow her into the dining room. She places the candelabra in the middle of the table. The room feels damp and cold. The four walls are paneled in dark wood, carved in Gothic style, with fretwork arches and large rosettes. The cats have stopped yowling. When you sit down, you notice that four places have been set. There are two large, covered plates and an old, grimy bottle.

  Aura lifts the cover from one of the plates. You breathe in the pungent odor of the liver and onions she serves you, then you pick up the old bottle and fill the cut-glass goblets with that thick red liquid. Out of curiosity you try to read the label on the wine bottle, but the grime has obscured it. Aura serves you some whole broiled tomatoes from the other plate.

  “Excuse me,” you say, looking at the two extra places, the two empty chairs, “but are you expecting someone else?”

  Aura goes on serving the tomatoes. “No. Señora Consuelo feels a little ill tonight. She won’t be joining us.”

  “Señora Consuelo? Your aunt?”

  “Yes. She’d like you to go in and see her after supper.”

  You eat in silence. You drink that thick wine, occasionally shifting your glance so that Aura won’t catch you in the hypnotized stare that you can’t control. You’d like to fix the girl’s features in your mind. Every time you look away you forget them again, and an irresistible urge forces you to look at her once more. As usual, she has her eyes lowered. While you’re searching for the pack of cigarettes in your coat pocket, you run across that big key, and remember, and say to Aura: “Ah! I forgot that one of the drawers in my desk is locked. I’ve got my papers in it.”