Eva Luna (20 page)

“Keep your knees together when you're sitting down,” Zulema commanded me, I think with Kamal in mind, “and button up all your buttons.”

The cousin's sorcery spread through the house and The Pearl of the Orient, spilled through the town, and was carried even farther on the wind. Girls came to the shop from morning to night on the most transparent errands. They ripened before Kamal like wild fruit, swelling beneath their short skirts and tight blouses, so perfumed that after they left, their scent permeated the room. They came in groups of two or three, laughing and whispering; they leaned on the counter so that their breasts were exposed and their bottoms, atop dark legs, invitingly elevated. They waited for him in the street; they invited him to their homes for the afternoon; they initiated him into the dances of the Caribbean.

I felt an unrelenting restlessness. It was the first time I had ever experienced jealousy, and that emotion clung to my skin day and night like a dark stain, a contamination I could not shed; it became so unbearable that when finally I rid myself of it, I was freed forever of the desire to possess another person or the temptation ever to belong to anyone. From the instant I saw Kamal I was deranged; my nerves were raw, chafed by the supreme pleasure of loving him and the unendurable ache of loving him in vain. I followed him everywhere, like a shadow; I waited on him; I made him the
hero of my solitary fantasies. But he ignored me completely. I became conscious of myself; I studied myself in the mirror; I touched my body; I tried different hairstyles during the silence of the siesta; I applied a touch of rouge to my cheeks and lips, careful that no one should notice. Kamal walked by without seeing me. He was the protagonist of all my love stories. Now I was not content with the final kiss of the novels I had read to Zulema, and I began to live tempestuous nights with him in my imagination. I was fifteen years old and a virgin, but if the cord with seven knots my
madrina
invented had measured intentions as well, I would not have passed the test.

*  *  *

All our lives changed when Riad Halabí went away for the first time and left Zulema, Kamal, and me alone. The
patrona
's indisposition vanished as if by a miracle, and she awakened from a lethargy of almost forty years. She got up early and prepared breakfast; she put on her best clothes; she adorned herself in all her jewels; she fastened half her hair at her neck and let the rest fall loose about her shoulders. She had never looked so beautiful. At first Kamal eluded her; when he was with her, he kept his eyes lowered and scarcely spoke; he spent the entire day in the shop, and at night went out to roam through the town. Soon, however, it was impossible to escape the power of the woman, the sultry scent, the heat of her tread as she passed by, the bewitchment of her voice. The atmosphere was heavy with secret urgencies, with omens, with summonses. I sensed that something of great magnitude was happening from which I was excluded, a private war between those two, a titanic battle of wills. Kamal beat a constant retreat, digging his trenches, defended by
centuries of taboos, by respect for the laws of hospitality and the bonds of blood that joined him to Riad Halabí. Zulema, avid as a carnivorous flower, fluttered her fragrant petals to lure him to her trap. That lazy and docile woman, who had lived her life lying on a bed with cold cloths pressed to her forehead, was transformed into a stupendous female, a pale spider tirelessly spinning her web. I wanted to be invisible.

Zulema, sitting in the shade of the patio painting her toenails, her massive legs exposed to mid-thigh. Zulema smoking, the tip of her tongue playing with the mouthpiece of the cigarette holder, lips shimmering. Zulema, bending forward, her dress slipping to reveal a plump shoulder that captured the sunlight in its impossible whiteness. Zulema, eating a piece of ripe fruit, the yellow juice splashing one breast. Zulema, toying with her blue hair, covering part of her face, and gazing at Kamal with the eyes of a houri.

The cousin resisted heroically for seventy-two hours. The tension was building to an excruciating level, and I feared the air would explode like lightning, reducing us all to cinders. On the third day, Kamal worked from early morning, not showing his face in the house, performing meaningless tasks in The Pearl of the Orient to pass the time. Zulema called him to eat, but he said he was not hungry, and spent another hour counting the till. He waited to close the shop until the town had gone to bed and the sky was black, and when he calculated that the evening drama had begun on the radio, he stole into the kitchen to look for leftovers from our meal. But for the first time in many months Zulema was prepared to miss an episode. To throw him off the track, she left the radio turned on in her room, and the door ajar; then she stationed herself in the semi-darkness of the corridor. She had put on an embroidered tunic; beneath it she was
naked, and when she raised her arm, milky flesh glowed to her waist. She had spent the afternoon removing body hair, brushing her hair, rubbing herself with creams, perfecting her makeup; her body was perfumed with patchouli and her breath freshened with licorice; she was barefoot and jewelless, ready for love. I saw everything, because she had not sent me to my room; she had forgotten I existed. For Zulema, all that mattered was Kamal and the battle she was about to win.

She cornered her prey in the patio. The cousin had half a banana in his hand and was chewing the other half; a two-day growth of beard shadowed his face, and he was sweating, because it was hot and because it was the night of his defeat.

“I am waiting for you,” Zulema said in Spanish, to avoid the shame of saying it in her own language.

The youth froze, his mouth full and his eyes alarmed. She walked toward him slowly, as inexorable as a ghost, until she was only centimeters away. Suddenly the crickets began chirping, a shrill, sustained chorus that grated on my nerves like the drone of an Oriental instrument. I noticed that my
patrona
was half a head taller and twice as heavy as her husband's cousin, who, in addition, seemed to have shrunk to the size of a boy.

“Kamal . . . Kamal . . .” A murmur of words in their tongue followed as her finger touched his lips and traced their outline with a feathery touch.

Kamal groaned, vanquished; he swallowed what was left of the banana in his mouth and dropped the other half. Zulema pulled his head to her bosom, where it disappeared in her enormous breasts as if sucked under by bubbling lava. She held him there, rocking him the way a mother rocks her child, until he pulled away and they stared at each other,
panting, minds racing, measuring the risks. Desire won out and, clinging to each other, they hurried to Riad Halabí's bed. I followed them, but they were not perturbed. I believe I truly had become invisible.

I crouched down in the doorway, my mind a blank. I felt no emotion. I forgot my jealousy; it was as if I were watching a movie being projected from the mobile truck. Standing beside the bed, Zulema wrapped Kamal in her arms and kissed him until his arms seemed to rise of their own accord and encircle her waist as he responded to her caresses with a sob of anguish. She covered his eyelids, his neck, his forehead with rapid kisses, insistent flicks of her tongue, love bites; she unbuttoned his shirt and yanked it off him. He tried to remove her caftan but became entangled in its folds and, instead, tore at the low neck to reach her breasts. Without interrupting her fondling for an instant, Zulema turned him so his back was to her, and continued to cover his neck and shoulders with her kisses while her fingers unzipped his trousers and tugged them down over his hips. Only a few steps from me, I saw his masculinity pointed directly at me, unobscured. Kamal was even more compelling naked; without his clothes he lost that feminine delicacy. His slight build suggested synthesis, not fragility, and just as his prominent nose dominated his face without making it ugly, he was not made bestial by his great, dark sex. Stunned, for almost a minute I forgot to breathe, and when I did, I choked on a sob. He was right before me and for an instant our eyes met, but his passed on, unseeing. Outside, a torrential summer rain began to fall, and the clash of the cloudburst and thunder was joined to the dying song of the crickets. Finally, Zulema disrobed and stood revealed in all her splendid abundance, like a clay Venus—although the contrast between the woman's prodigal flesh and
the thin body of the youth to me seemed obscene. Kamal pushed her onto the bed; she screamed, imprisoning him between her heavy legs and clawing his back. He shuddered several times and fell limp with a visceral moan. She had not, however, spent all that time in preparation only to have everything over in one moment, so she rolled him from atop her, propped him among the pillows, and devoted herself to resuscitating him, whispering inducements in Arabic, with such good results that in a brief time he was ready. Then he surrendered himself, eyes closed, while she caressed him until he seemed near death: finally she swung astride him, smothering him with her voluptuousness and the wealth of her hair, completely obliterating him, absorbing him in her quicksands, devouring him, draining him, and leading him to the gardens of Allah where he was celebrated by all the odalisques of the Prophet. Then they rested, calm, entwined like two children in the crescendo of the rain and the crickets of that sweltering night that had become as hot as midday.

I waited until the horses stampeding in my chest had slowed, then stumbled away. I stood in the middle of the patio, water streaming from my hair, soaking my clothes and my soul, afire, with a strong presentiment of catastrophe. My first thought was that if we kept silent, it would be as if nothing had happened—what is not voiced scarcely exists; silence would gradually erase everything, and the memory would fade. But the smell of desire had drifted through the house, impregnating the walls, the clothing, and the furniture, filling rooms, sifting into cracks, affecting flowers and living creatures, warming subterranean rivers, saturating the very sky of Agua Santa; it was as visible as a beacon and would be impossible to hide. I sat down beside the fountain, in the rain.

*  *  *

Finally it stopped raining and the moisture in the patio began to evaporate, enveloping the house in a light fog. I had spent those long hours in darkness, gazing inward. I felt hot and cold; it must have been due to the persistent odor that for some days had floated in the air and clung to everything. It's time to sweep out the shop, I thought when I heard the tinkling of the milk seller's bells in the distance, but my body was so heavy I had to examine my hands to be sure I hadn't turned to stone. I dragged myself to the fountain and plunged my head into the water; as I stood up, the cold water trickling down my back awakened me from the paralysis of that sleepless night and washed away the image of the lovers in the bed of Riad Halabí. I went to the shop without looking toward Zulema's door. Let it be a dream, Mama, make it just be a dream. I spent the morning behind the refuge of the counter, without a glance toward the corridor but with one ear cocked to the silence of my
patrona
and Kamal. At noon I closed the shop, but still I was reluctant to leave those three rooms filled with merchandise, and I lay down among some grain sacks to get through the heat of the siesta. I was afraid. The house had been transformed into a lewd beast breathing at my back.

Kamal spent that morning dallying with Zulema; during the siesta, they made a lunch on sweets and fruit, and then, while she was sleeping from exhaustion, he gathered his things, packed his cardboard suitcase, and crept out the back door like a thief. As I watched him leave, I was sure he would never return.

Zulema awoke in the late afternoon with the shrill of the crickets. She walked into The Pearl of the Orient in her bath
robe, hair uncombed, lips swollen, dark circles beneath her eyes, but she looked beautiful, complete, satisfied.

“Close the shop and come help me,” she ordered.

As we cleaned and aired the room, putting fresh sheets on the bed and changing the flower petals in the pottery bowls, Zulema was singing in Arabic, and she continued to sing in the kitchen while she prepared yogurt soup, kibbeh, and tabbouleh. Then I filled the bathtub, perfumed it with lemon essence, and Zulema sank into the water with a happy sigh, her eyelids half-closed, smiling, lost in who knows what memories. When the water cooled, she asked for her cosmetics; she regarded herself in the mirror, gratified, and began to powder her face; she put rouge on her cheeks, lipstick on her lips, pearly shadow around her eyes. She emerged from the bathroom wrapped in towels and lay down on the bed for her massage; then she brushed her hair, pinned it in a knot, and put on a low-necked dress.

“Am I pretty?” she wanted to know.

“Yes.”

“Do I look young?”

“Yes.”

“How young?”

“As young as the photograph of your wedding day.”

“Why did you mention that? I don't want to remember my wedding! Get out, you stupid girl. Leave me alone . . .”

She took a seat in a wicker rocking chair beneath the eaves of the patio to enjoy the evening and await her lover's return. I waited with her, lacking the courage to tell her that Kamal had gone. Zulema sat for hours, rocking and summoning him with all her senses, while I nodded in my chair. The food in the kitchen turned rancid and the faint perfume of flower petals faded in the bedroom. At eleven I awoke,
frightened by the silence; the crickets had stopped chirping and the air was still; not a leaf was stirring in the patio. The odor of desire had dissipated. My
patrona
still sat motionless in the chair, her dress wrinkled, her hands clenched; tears wet her face and her makeup was streaked. She looked like a mask left out in the rain.

“Go to bed,
señora
, don't wait any longer. Maybe he isn't coming until tomorrow,” I begged, but she did not move.

We sat there the whole night. Although my teeth were chattering, a strange sweat was running down my back. I attributed those signs to the malign fate that had fallen over the house. I realized that something had shattered in Zulema's heart and that this was not the moment to worry about my own discomfort. I was horrified when I looked at her. She was not the person I had known; she seemed to be turning into a kind of enormous vegetable. I prepared coffee for the two of us and brought it to her with the hope of restoring her old self, but she did not want to taste it. She sat rigid, a caryatid with eyes fixed on the patio door. I drank a sip or two, but it tasted strong and bitter. Finally I managed to raise my
patrona
from her chair and lead her by the hand to her room. I removed her dress, washed her face with a damp cloth, and put her to bed. She was breathing easily, but desolation clouded her eyes and she continued to weep, quietly and persistently. Then, like a sleepwalker, I opened the shop. It had been hours since I had eaten; I was reminded of my time of great misfortune, before Riad Halabí had taken me in, when my stomach was tied in knots and I could not swallow. I sucked on a medlar fruit and tried not to think. Three girls came into The Pearl of the Orient and asked for Kamal; I told them he was not in, that there was no point even in remembering him, because in fact he was not human, he had
never been a flesh-and-blood creature; he was an evil genie, an
efrit
come from the other side of the world to stir their blood and trouble their hearts, but they would never see him again; he was gone, carried off by the same fateful wind that had blown him from the desert to Agua Santa. The girls went straight to the plaza to tell the news, and soon the curious began to drop by to find out what had happened.