Chapter 4 #2
How strange, he thought, that the aunt and the niece should resemble each other so slightly.
Even the ways they moved seemed starkly different.
Perla’s perfect posture and careful gestures, the swish of her dress, hinted at extensive lessons in etiquette that had gone stale between the walls of the old house.
Meanwhile, the younger woman lacked such refinement; she navigated the room with efficiency, avoiding obstacles, refilling drinks, lacking grace but demonstrating an energetic, determined rhythm that reminded him of a hummingbird flitting from flower to flower.
“The canapés are delicious, Perla. I do love it when you throw these tertulias,” Sarita said.
“You know how to be a proper hostess. Many young people don’t understand how to receive guests anymore.
They play the radio to entertain their guests.
Mr. Linares, when we were younger, Perla and I both took piano classes with Natalia Figueroa.
A piano: that is proper entertainment. This is a pleasant tertulia, I tell you, Mr. Linares. ”
“You must call me Ulises.”
Sarita blushed. “What a lovely name you have,” she said.
“The name of a hero, a king of Ithaca,” Nepomuceno said.
“You like the classics, Professor?” Ulises asked.
“I taught them, in another life. And, if we open the apricot brandy and I wet my throat, I can recite a few lines from The Odyssey. Or, if there’s no brandy, a glass of sherry would do. Do we have sherry?”
“Reciting from that musty book!” the doctor said. “I would prefer music. It’s been ages since you played the piano, Perla. Why don’t you oblige us tonight? Play for us.”
“The piano is dreadfully out of tune, and I haven’t practiced in forever.”
“People used to come from far away to listen to Perla play when she was a girl,” Sarita Novo said excitedly.
“Our great-uncle, Monsignor Luis Manuel, used to visit each summer to listen to me play, yes. I’ll see what I can do in a little while,” Perla said with a false modesty that made Ulises suspect she would subject them to a one-hour concert in that “little while.”
“Do you like music, Ulises?” Sarita asked, blushing again as she spoke his name. “What do you do for fun in Mexico City?”
“Most important, what do you do for a living, Mr. Linares?” Cándido asked, and his voice was chilly. At once Ulises recognized an enemy. He could have avoided the question, but he decided it would be best to answer.
“I’m a photographer. Portraits, that’s what I do,” he said.
This was a lie, but seasoned with sufficient truth that if he was questioned further, he could provide satisfactory answers, for he knew about cameras, about darkrooms, and had pored over negatives with zeal when the occasion—his father’s methods had included the sporadic bit of blackmail—required it.
“That can’t provide you with a good living, taking carnival snapshots and the like.”
“It depends on whom you take pictures of. I’ve worked for one of the best studios in the city and photographed several debutantes and starlets.”
“Movie people!” Sarita said, practically spilling a cup of coffee over her blouse as she leaned forward. “Why, that’s wonderful! Have you met anybody famous?”
“A few. I photographed Dolores del Río not too long ago. Sadly, the owner of the studio where I worked passed away recently and I’m on a sabbatical, although I have a mind to open a studio of my own.
Still, there are many elements to consider.
I wouldn’t want to rush heedlessly into a business venture. ”
“You can’t run a business these days,” the doctor said. “The government picks our pockets at every turn. Taxes and more taxes. When my father was young, he owned a proper estate in Ovejuna, but the rebels burned the house down and the government stole the land. They’re all corrupt clowns.”
“If Carranza hadn’t shot every good man in the nation, beginning with Zapata, it wouldn’t have turned out the way it did,” the professor said.
“Zapata! That criminal had that bullet coming.”
“I suppose you prefer the corrupt perfume of the oligarchs.”
“Tell me one good thing the Revolution did for anyone in this town. All that violence and destruction, for what?”
“For equality and justice. Not that I’d expect you to know the meaning of those words,” the professor declared with aplomb.
The men glared at each other, but before their conversation could devolve into a brawl, Cándido interrupted them and spoke again to Ulises. “Then you’re unemployed at this time,” he said, pressing on undeterred.
“I’m on vacation. Three weeks in your beautiful town, away from the chaos of the capital.”
“Is that where you’re from originally? From Mexico City?”
“You heard the professor. I’m from Ithaca.”
Cándido frowned and rattled the spoon in his cup of coffee. Ulises thought he was going to be interrogated further, but Lulú turned worriedly toward the doctor and began to speak.
“Dr. Carrel, my wrist has been hurting for the past two days, and since I have you here, I thought I’d better ask if you can take a quick look at it. I fear I’ve sprained it. I can barely hold my cup, see?”
The conversation shifted to the subject of ailments and aches.
The evening dragged on. Perla played compositions that sounded as worn as the battered keys while the dog curled up by the piano.
Ulises was certain that her repertoire had not been updated in a couple of decades, and her movements had a soulless precision that could not invite true praise.
Monsignor Luis Manuel must have been half blind if he’d picked that yellow settee for his living room and half deaf if he enjoyed Perla’s playing.
Yet the audience clapped effusively, and Perla smiled as proudly as if she’d been performing at Bellas Artes.
Inés distributed the apricot brandy, much to the delight of Professor Nepomuceno. She carried a tray, cleared plates, handed a glass, emptied an ashtray, moving around the room silently and unobtrusively.
At one point the younger police officer tried to speak to her, but he was a combination of shy and bumbling that would not permit much conversation, and she looked at him with an amused face that did not preface a romance.
The poor sap is sweet on her, but can’t manage to string two words together, Ulises thought, and wistfully remembered the one girl he’d loved, a beauty who’d been his neighbor for a year when he was seventeen.
At that age, he’d had pimples and had not understood the proper way to romance a woman.
He’d bought her a few boxes of chocolates and a bouquet of flowers, but she’d taken up with a loutish young man and thereafter ignored Ulises.
Not that the relationship would have flourished even if she’d liked him more.
Ulises’s father would not have allowed it.
There was no money in love. But he had fantasized for a few months about leaving their life of minor scams and petty thefts to live an honest existence, married to his sweetheart.
Since that time there had been scant opportunities to practice the art of love as proper society demanded: to follow a girl home and look up at her balcony until she came to the window and signaled her interest, to write letters with elaborate cursive handwriting and copy lines from El Correo del Amor—that manual full of useful phrases suitors utilized when their own wit failed them.
Inés handed the young policeman a glass of brandy and drifted to a different corner of the room.
Ulises listened to Manuela and Eduviges as they explained how they had once been some of the most eligible ladies in Orizaba, and how on the Sundays when they went to the bullfights with their parents gentlemen would stare at them from afar and tremble if they smiled.
They were serenaded every week, with guitars and mandolins and on occasion even a marimba.
Ulises suspected this was an exaggeration, since the sisters resembled two skeletal birds of prey and even in their youth must have had the appearance of starving buzzards, but he let them chatter to avoid another conversation with Cándido.
He strained to keep his smile plastered on his face.
He wondered if he could last a full three weeks in this place, and whether it was even worth the effort.
He didn’t think Perla was the big score he’d dreamed of.
He’d been hoping for someone with real money.
But who had real money these days? Prices kept going up and up, inflation was sky-high.
It was all the fault of the damn war and the fascist pigs.
The guests began to depart, until there was only Lulú, left half asleep in a chair, and Cándido.
The lawyer turned to Perla. “Could we go into the office and talk a little business tonight?” he asked.
“We still have guests,” Perla said. “I can’t simply walk out of the room.”
She looked at Ulises, but he sprang to his feet and smiled politely. “Don’t worry about me. I’m eager to slip into bed. I’m still tired from traveling on the train, it drains you.”