The Years with Laura Diaz

Habsburg kings’. But this time there were no curls, only a receding hairline, a mature face, and quite yellowish skin, like that of the Chinese workers on the Veracruz docks.

Orlando saw the sad shock in Laura’s eyes and said, “Orlando Ximenez. You don’t recognize me, but I recognize you. Santiago spoke of you so tenderly. I think you were-what did I tell you…?

“His favorite virgin.”

“No longer?”

“Two sons.”

“Husband?”

“He no longer exists.”

“Did he die?”

“You figure it out.”

“And here we are, you and I, still alive. Hmm. Funny how things work out.”

Orlando looked around as if he were once again trying to find the San Cayetano balcony, the corner where they could be alone again and speak. A bittersweet wave of lost opportunity rolled across Laura’s breast, but Carmen Cortina would not allow frivolous intimacy or shameful solitude at her parties. As if she sensed a private-that is, exclusive-situation in the making, she interrupted the couple and introduced them around: to Butt del Rosal, an old aristocrat who used a monocle and whose joke was to take the lens out of his eye and, look at this, ingest it as if it were a communion wafer-it was phony, made of gelatin; then Onomastico Galan, a fat, red-faced Spaniard who went to parties in a nightshirt and matching cap with stripes and a red tassel, carrying a candle in one hand-in case there was a power failure in this disorganized and revolutionary country, which needed a good, soft dictatorship like Primo de Rivera’s in Spain; after him came a couple in sailor costumes, he with short pants and a blue cap with the words KISS ME on it and she as Mary Pickford, with a wig of big blond curls, white knee socks, patent-leather shoes, frilly panties, and a daringly short pink skirt, in addition to the requisite bow on her curly head; behind them came an art critic in an impeccable white suit and its contemptuous corollary on his lips, which he repeated constantly: “These people are all ridiculous!”

He was hand in hand with his sister, a tall, beautiful statue made of confectioner’s sugar who would repeat, like some sisterly echo, “Ridiculous, we’re all ridiculous,” while an old painter with invisible, sharp, and powerful halitosis announced he was the teacher of this new artist, Tizoc, a position disputed by another painter of melancholic and disillusioned mien, famous for his funerary black-and-white paintings and for his pure-black lover and disciple, nicknamed “Xango” by the painter, by Mexico City, and by the world, although to gild, I mean geld, I mean gild the lily, as Carmen Cortina would say, the powerful black had an Italian wife whom he introduced as the model for La Gioconda.

This whole circle was watched from a distance and with clinical disapproval by an English couple whom Carmen introduced as Felicity Smith, an extremely tall woman who could not observe what was going on without lowering her disdainful eyes, although, because she was courteous, she preferred to fix them on the distance; and a short, bearded, elegant man whom Carmen introduced as James Saxon and (sotto voce) as King George’s bastard son, who’d taken refuge in a tropical hacienda in the Huasteca area of the state of San Luis Potos, which said batard had transformed into a folie worthy, as his companion Felicity pointed out, of the king of literary eccentrics William Beckford: “When you live in James’s house, you have to fight your way through orchids, cockatoos, and bamboo blinds.”

“The problem,” whispered Carmen to Orlando and Laura, “is that everyone here is in love with everyone else. Felicity’s in love with James, who is homosexual and very interested in the critic who says ‘ridiculous,’ who is mad for the black Xango, who’s a false fag, who gives the melancholy painter satisfaction for reasons of state but who in fact has his fun with the Neapolitan, although she-the so-called Mona Lisa-has proposed converting the melancholy painter to heterosexuality, thus forming a menage a trois that would be not only pleasant but economically convenient in times of crisis, my dear, when no one, absolutely no one, will buy an easel painting and the government is the only patron of the daubers, quelle horreur!, except that Mary Pickford is in love with the Italian woman, who secretly sleeps with the sailor, who is also something else, but she wants to prove to him that he’s a real man, which is true, except that Popeye knows that by passing himself off as a fag he arouses the maternal instincts of ladies who want to protect him while he takes advantage of them by surprising them, except that La Gioconda, knowing her husband is Lothar and not Mandrake the Magician, would like to see herself playing the Narda role-are you following me, dearies, don’t you read the comic strips in El Universal?-and try, with Xango, to bring about the conversion to normalcy of the melancholy painter so as to integrate the trio, as I said, which threatens, as things seem to be going, to turn into a quartet, and even a quintet if we include Mary Pickford, what a mess and what a problem for a hostess who is, after all, from a proper family like my own!”

“Carmen,” observed Orlando, resigned, “leave well enough alone. Imagine, if Dostoyevsky had psychoanalyzed himself he might not have written The Idiot.”

“Mr. Orlando,” murmured Carmen Cortina, “I only invite people with high IQs, never an idiot! God forbid!” She gasped, but she still managed to introduce Pimpinela de Ovando, an aristocrat fallen on hard times, and Gloria Iturbe, suspected of being a spy for Germany’s Chancellor Franz von Papen, the things people say!, but everything, my dears, is so international nowadays, that no one even bothers to mention the sins of La Malinche!

Carmen Cortina’s verbal cascades multiplied into similar cataracts in the mouths of all her guests, except the cadaverous black-and-white painter (“I’ve eliminated everything superfluous from my paintings”), who was the one who supplied Orlando’s famous dictum: “Some Mexicans look well only in their coffins,” words mumbled a moment before the introduction of the Minister of Education in the current government, which gave the hostess and her protege the painter from Veracruz the chance to unveil the painting, which they did together, raising the excitement and the scandal of the party to a fever pitch when what everyone saw was the true image of the actress who’d played in Poppy: You Won’t Be Alone Anymore in all her splendid nakedness, stretched out on a blue sofa that emphasized the whiteness of her skin and the absence of hair, the one vain, the other coy, united by the art of the painter in a sublime expression of spiritual totality, as if nudity were the habit this nun wore, inclined as she was to flagellation as a superior form of fornication, eager to sacrifice her pleasure for the sake of something more than modesty, or, as Orlando summed it up, “Look, Laura, it’s like the title of that novel from the last century: Nun, Wife, Virgin, and Martyr.”

“It’s the portrait of my soul,” Andrea Negrete said to the Minister of Education.

“Well, your soul has hair on it,” he retorted, his sharp eye having noticed that the painter hadn’t shaved Dona Andrea’s pubis but had painted her pubic hair white, just like the hair around the actress’s temples.

At that, the party crested, after which the waters, as we say, became calm. Voices dropped to a whisper of shock, of damnation or admiration. It was impossible to know what people thought of Tizoc’s art or Andrea’s audacity. The Minister said goodbye with an impudent expression on his face and a whispered comment to Carmen, “You told me this would be a cultural event.”

“It’s like Goya’s Maja, Mr. Minister. One day I’ll introduce you, it’s the Duchess of Alba, a great friend of mine.”

“Duchess of Tarts,” said the member of Ortiz Rubio’s cabinet.

“Oh, how I’d love to see the members of all the members in all the cabinets,” said the little sailor boy wearing the KISS ME cap.

“Goodbye.” The Minister nodded his head when the sailor in short pants inflated a balloon with BLOW JOB written on it and let it float to the ceiling.

“This is over,” said the merry mini-Popeye. “Where do we go from here?”

“The Leda,” called out Mary Pickford.

“The Candles,” suggested the painter with halitosis.

“The Crouchers,” sighed the critic in white.

“How ridiculous,” intoned his sister.

“The Rio Rosa,” chimed in the Italian woman.

“El Salon Mexico,” decreed the Englishman of la main gauche.

“Mexico beautiful and beloved,” yawned the extremely tall Englishwoman.

“Mexico little Africa,” growled a society columnist.

“I’m getting a highball,” said Orlando to Laura.