Under the Skin (12 page)
age twelve in a statewide essay contest. She was required to maintain
superior grades in order to renew the scholarship from year to year,
and so far she had done so, despite, as her school record phrased it,
“unconventional attitudes,” a proclivity for asking “mischievous
questions” of the faculty nuns, and a reputation for occasionally
“prankish behavior.”
Don César could not sleep that night but only lay in bed with the
smell of the sea carrying into his hotel room and moonlight slanting
through the open balcony doors. He was enraptured—feeling more
alive than he had in more than two decades. A bat swooped into the
room and circled it thrice and flew out again, and he, a lifelong disparager of all superstition, took it for an omen. At dawn he rang
down for coffee and was sipping his second cup on the balcony when
the edge of the sun broke red as blood at the far rim of the gulf. And
he was decided.
He had first thought to buy her outright—to offer the parents a
sum greater than they could conjure in their dreams, and he was certain they would greedily accept it. But then, on reflection, he was not
so sure. One could not trust to the practicality of primitives, could
not trust them to know what was best for themselves. Never whisper
to the deaf or wink at the blind—an old adage and a wise one. They
might in their stupidity reject his money and thus make the matter
altogether more difficult. But even if they should accept the offer,
only a fool would trust in brutes to honor their side of a bargain. The
word of a brute was worthless. The rabble were slaves to their emotions, notorious for sentimental shifts of mind. The parents might
sooner or later choose to create complications for him by way of
protest to the authorities, a turn of events that would at the least
oblige him to make an additional round of payoffs to a wider circle of
hands. No! Despite his inclination to be fair, to pay a just price for
what he desired, he knew it was folly to expect the girl’s parents to
understand even the most fundamental notions of fairness and honor.
And so, later that day, after the girl was out of school and had
taken her swim in the gulf and was making her way home through
the rundown back streets, they drove up alongside her and one of Don
César’s men asked if she could give them directions to an address they
were unable to find. As she stepped up to the Cadillac the man
jumped out and clapped a hand on her mouth and pulled her into the
backseat and the vehicle gunned away. In seconds the car was around
the block and out of sight. Whoever might have witnessed the kidnapping could not have noted very much, the whole thing happened
so swiftly.
She was terrified of course—her eyes wild above the hand that stifled her efforts to scream, curse, plead, whatever she might have done.
Don César leaned against the other back door and watched her. By the
time they were out of town and on the open road she had ceased to
struggle, but her eyes were streaming tears and she was snorting hard
for breath through her runny nose. Don César gestured for his man to
unhand her. She pulled away from the man but was careful not to
come into contact with either of them—sobbing hard now, her arms
crossed over her breasts, her knees together, her hand wiping at her
eyes and nose. Don César held his silk handkerchief to her and she
glanced at it and looked away. Don César shook the hankie gently and
after another moment’s hesitation she snatched it from his hand and
blew her nose and wiped her eyes.
He asked if she felt better now—and her face was suddenly as
tight with anger as with fear. Who was
he,
she demanded to know.
Where was he
taking
her? What did he
want
? As if she already knew
the answer to that last question, she hugged herself even more tightly
and drew her pressed knees still farther from him.
Don César said everything would soon be clear to her, and asked
that she not agitate herself further. He promised she would not be
harmed.
He could hardly believe his grand fortune—she was even more
beautiful up close than she had appeared from a distance.
They arrived at an isolated landing strip just north of the city and
boarded a small chartered plane. He’d been afraid she might resist
going aboard and would have to be carried bodily, but her awe of the
aircraft was obvious—and her excitement, it amused him to note, was
sufficient to distract her from her fears. When the engine roared and
the craft began to move she clutched tight to the arms of her seat. She
stared out the window at the landscape speeding past and he made
soothing sounds at her as he would to a skittish horse. The plane
lifted off and she gasped—and then gaped at the sinking, tilting view
of the gulf. And then the sea was behind them and the dark green hill
country appeared below, and then the sudden mountains like enormous heaps of crushed copper gleaming in the day’s dying light.
Then they were in clouds and there was nothing more to see.
He told her his name, told her where he was from, told her of his
past. When he told her he’d been an officer of the Guardia Rural her
eyes widened. He told her of his heroic rescue of the president’s niece
some thirty-six years ago and of the wounds he had suffered, of the
honors he had been given by Don Porfirio, told her of La Hacienda de
Las Cadenas and described its magnificence, told her of the barbarities inflicted upon it by the Revolution. He told her—his throat
going hot and tight with the recollection—of the tragic loss of his
family, and told how he had lost his eye.
Through the latter portions of his narrative, her attention had
begun to wane, and she several times turned to the window, perhaps
checking to see if the clouds had cleared. But when he described the
life she would have at Las Cadenas she listened with greater heed. At
Las Cadenas, he told her, she would lead a more wonderful life than
she could ever have envisioned for herself. She would live like a
princess, she would have servants, beautiful clothes. She would never
again know want.
He saw his words touch her, saw in her eyes a sudden spark of
imagination. Though her aspect was still uncertain, he could see that
she was envisioning the life he had pictured. And that the vision excited her.
She asked again what he wanted with her.
He wanted her to live with him at Las Cadenas.
As what, she wanted to know. His
whore
?
No. As his wife.
She stared at him for a long moment as if he were some intricate
Because she was so beautiful, he said. Because she possessed a wonderful spirit. Because he loved her.
Loved
her? But how, she wanted to know, could that
be
?
He admitted he did not know. But then who, he said, can explain
love?
She blushed and covered her mouth with her hand and turned to
the window and the dark clouds sweeping by.
When she looked at him again her face was changed. There was no
fear or wariness in it now, only a mien of careful calculation, as if she
were assessing odds at a gaming table. He could not imagine what
she was thinking.
And then she accepted his proposal. She said it as if she were
agreeing to some irrefutable practicality.
He laughed with a mix of delight and relief and briefly touched
her hand. She smiled and said she had heard of less dramatic and
somewhat more extended courtships—and this time they laughed
together.
His two men in the seats ahead of them never said a word and
never turned around.
They landed at Torreón, where his car was waiting, and late that
night arrived at the casa grande. He spoke with the head housemaid
and then told the girl to go with her, that she would be fed and
casting looks everywhere as she went.
The following day he had a team of seamstresses from Torreón fit
her for a silk wedding gown and a silver crown inlaid with three small
rubies. A priest was fetched and that early evening they were wed in
the garden alongside the casa grande. Some hours later, following a
celebration party in the patio, the maids brought her to his open
chamber door and knocked timidly. The girl wore a satin nightgown
the color of pearl. Her unpinned black hair shone in the candlelight.
Her eyes were uncertain. He dismissed the maids and beckoned the
girl. From the pocket of his dressing gown he took out a necklace, a
fine gold chain holding a small diamond pendant. He gestured for
her to turn around and told her to raise the hair off her neck. She was
facing a full-length wall mirror and their eyes met as he clasped the
necklace at her nape and then tenderly kissed her bare shoulder. Her
eyes widened and her lips parted, and whether she was looking at the
diamond at her throat or his lips on her neck he could not have said.
He held her breasts from behind, their nipples hard against his palms.
He turned her around and kissed her. He slid the straps of the
gown from her shoulders and the garment streamed to a pale puddle
at her feet. Whatever she might have been feeling, shame in her
nakedness was no part of it. She was more beautiful than he had
imagined. Lean, sleek, brown. He took her hand and led her to the
bed. She was eager for it. Her mouth received his with a hunger the
more arousing to him for its obvious lack of practice, her touches
more exciting for their tentativeness. She was virgin—the bloodspot
on the sheets would testify to it. Had she not been, he was prepared
to annul the marriage in the morning. She cried at his entry but then
was soon gasping from effect other than pain, writhing unartfully but
urgently beneath him, digging her fingers into his back, inspiring
him to heroic effort.
before he flagged utterly. He had not risen to such occasion with such
frequency since his youth, and his expended vigor was slow to recoup.
Thereafter he rarely visited her bedchamber more often than once a
week. He desired her constantly in his imagination and the sight of
her naked body never failed to excite his lust, but his aged flesh was
recalcitrant and he was deeply humiliated by his frequent failures as
a lover. He had secretly hoped that she might bear him a son, a successor to Las Cadenas—but if she were never to conceive he knew the
fault would more likely lie in his old and sapless seed than within her
young womb. Still, he believed he could endure the disappointment
of a barren marriage as long as he could touch her.
But by the time they had been together two months she was
wearying of the accounts of his youthful adventures and of his ordeals
under the Revolution. She had grown bored with his talk of people
she did not know, many of them long dead. For his part, he could but
feign interest in her redundant schoolgirl memories and descriptions
of the beach where she always went swimming and tales of the times
when she went to sea with her uncle the fisherman. Unlike her, he
had no interest in books other than ledgers. But he didn’t care. He
derived unremitting pleasure from simply staring at her, from the
knowledge that she was there and would still be there the next day
and the day after that.
He lavished her with gifts, with everything he thought might
please her—jewelry, clothes, a beautiful black stallion and custommade saddle, the newest model phonograph, affectionate pet dogs, a
parrot that spoke her name. He sent a man to Jiménez to buy whatever recordings she asked for. He filled the house with her favorite
flowers. He replanted the patio garden to suit her tastes.
She told him she missed the sea and asked if they might go to the
coast for a holiday so she could swim. He said he could not leave the
hacienda, that there were many duties he must personally attend to,
that he never traveled except when he absolutely must on essential
business. The truth was that he was afraid she might desert him if
they went to a town—any town, but especially one on the seacoast.
He did not know how to swim, and he had never told anyone of his
recurrent bad dream in which they were at the seashore and she fled
him by swimming away. He built a spacious pool for her in the westside patio and for a time she took pleasure in it. She tried to teach
him to swim but his efforts had been comically inept and she had
laughed at him. He came close to losing his temper but was able to
restrain it. He would not, however, enter the pool again. She swam
in it every day—and made daily complaint that it was not the same
thing as the sea.
The months passed. He was aware of her increased discontent. She
turned moody. She rarely laughed anymore and never with him. He
felt hopeless in his attempts to please her. One evening he caught her
staring at him across the length of the dinner table and could see that
she was beholding him as an old man. He was more deeply pained
than he could say.
And then barely three weeks ago she asked if she might ride her
stallion beyond the walled confines of the casa grande grounds. She
was bored with the round-and-round of the riding track and with the
horsetrail through the mesquite thickets at the rear portion of the
compound. He refused. He said the countryside was too dangerous
for a woman alone. He could send a rider with her, she said, one of his
pistoleros, if he was so concerned for her safety. No, he said—and
knew instantly that she had perceived his mistrust of her, his fear that
she might cuckold him with a younger and more virile man. You
could send two of them, she said, to keep an eye on each other as well
as on me. She retreated to her bedchamber and remained there the
rest of the day.
When he went to her door that evening he found it bolted and she
refused to admit him. He might have walked away except he caught
sight of a housemaid passing at the end of the hall and glancing at