Of Love and Shadows Page 9

  — PART TWO —

  Shadows

  The warm earth still guards their last secrets.

  —Vicente Huidobro

  From the time he started working for the magazine, Francisco had felt as if he were living a life of perpetual surprises. The city was divided by an invisible frontier that he was regularly obliged to cross. The same day that he photographed exquisite dresses of muslin and lace, in his brother José’s barrio he treated the little girl who had been raped by her father, then carried the latest list of victims to the airport where, after reciting the password, he delivered it to a messenger he had never seen before. He had one foot in compulsory illusion and the other in secret reality. In each situation, he had to adjust his frame of mind to the demands of the moment, but at the end of the day, in the silence of his room, he would review the day’s events and conclude that in facing the daily challenge his best course was not to think much at all, to avoid being immobilized by fear or rage. At that hour the image of Irene would grow in the shadows until it filled the room.

  Wednesday night he dreamed of a field of daisies. Normally he did not remember his dreams, but the flowers were so fresh in his mind that he woke up convinced he must have been outdoors. At the office, midway through the morning, he ran into the astrologer, the woman with the coffee-black hair who was determined to tell his fortune.

  “I can read it in your eyes, you’ve come from a night of love,” she said the minute she met him on the stairs to the fifth floor.

  Francisco invited her to have a beer and, lacking other cosmic signs to aid her in her predictions, told her his dream. She informed him that daisies are a sign of good luck, and that he could count on something pleasant happening to him within the next few hours.

  “That’s some consolation, my friend,” she added, “because you’ve been marked by the finger of death.” She had told him this so often that the prediction no longer frightened him.

  His respect for the astrologer increased, however, when shortly after her prediction was fulfilled: Irene called his house and said she wanted to meet the Leals, and asked him to invite her to dinner. They had scarcely seen each other during the week. The fashion editor had wanted to take a series of photographs in the Military Academy, and Francisco was tied up with the assignment. That season, romantic dresses with bows and flounces were in style, and the editor envisioned contrasting them with heavy artillery and uniformed men. For his part, the Commandant believed that this was an opportunity to present the armed forces in a more favorable light and, after increasing security measures, opened his doors to them. Francisco and the rest of the crew spent several days inside the military compound, at the end of which time he did not know whether he was more repelled by the patriotic hymns and military ceremonies or by the three beauty queens who posed for his camera. Both entering and leaving, they were subjected to a rigorous inspection. Amid a level of confusion akin to an earthquake, the guards turned their cases inside out, pawing through dresses, shoes, and wigs, prodding everything with their electronic equipment in search of any hint of covert activities. The models began the day with expressions of utter boredom, and spent the rest of the day complaining. It was the mission of Mario, the elegant and discreet stylist always dressed in white, to transform the models before each photograph. He was aided by two assistants, recently initiated into the homosexual world, who darted about him like two fireflies. Francisco, who was responsible for the cameras and film, had to force himself to remain calm if the guards exposed a roll during their inspection and ruined the day’s work.

  This traveling show, unsettling to anyone not accustomed to such a spectacle, caused some minor breakdowns in Academy discipline. The soldiers who were not excited by the beauty queens were distracted by the assistants, who flirted with them unrelentingly, much to Mario’s annoyance. He had no tolerance for bad taste, and years ago had conquered any tendency toward promiscuity. He had come from a miner’s family of eleven children. He had been born and raised in a gray town where the dust from the mines coated everything with an impalpable and deadly patina of ugliness and choked the lungs of the inhabitants, turning them into shadows of themselves. He was destined to follow in the footsteps of his father, his grandfather, and his brothers, but he had no taste for crawling into the entrails of the earth to dig at living rock, or for facing the backbreaking labor of a miner. He had delicate hands and a spirit inclined toward fantasy, a quality his father had tried to beat out of him. Drastic measures had not, however, cured his effeminate mannerisms or altered his inclinations. As a child, if the family turned their backs for an instant, he slipped away to entertain himself in solitary pastimes that provoked pitiless ridicule: he gathered stones from the river and polished them for the pleasure of seeing colors shine; he scouted the dismal landscape looking for dry leaves to arrange in artistic compositions; he was moved to tears by a sunset, wanting to capture it forever in a line of poetry or in a painting he could imagine but felt incapable of realizing. Only his mother accepted his peculiarities, seeing them not as signs of perversion but as evidence of a soul that was different. To save him from his father’s merciless floggings, she took him to the parish priest to enroll him as an assistant to the sacristan, hoping to disguise his womanly gentleness among the skirts of the mass and offerings of incense. The boy’s mind always wandered from his dog Latin, however, diverted by the golden particles floating in the light that streamed through the church windows. The priest overlooked his ramblings and taught him arithmetic, reading, and writing, and some rudiments of culture. At fifteen, Mario knew almost by heart the few books in the sacristy, as well as others lent him by the Turk who ran the general store and whose aim was to lure him into the room behind the store and there reveal to him the mechanisms of pleasure between men. When his father learned of these visits, he led Mario by the ear to the mine whorehouse, accompanied by his two older brothers. There, with a dozen men impatient to spend their Friday wages, they waited their turn. Only Mario noticed the filthy, faded curtains, the stench of urine and Lysol, the infinite desolation of the place. Only he was moved by the melancholy of those women exhausted by wear and the absence of love. Threatened by his brothers, when his turn came he tried to play the macho with the prostitute, but she needed only a glance at the boy to see that he was destined for a life filled with mockery and solitude. She was moved with compassion when she saw him trembling with revulsion at the sight of her naked flesh, and she asked the men to leave them alone so she could do her job in peace. As soon as the others left, she bolted the door, sat on the bed beside Mario, and took his hand.

  “This isn’t something you can be forced to do,” she said to Mario, who was weeping with terror. “Go away, far away, boy, where no one knows you, because if you stay around here they’ll end up killing you.”

  In all his life he had never received better advice. He dried his tears and promised never to spill them again over a manliness that in his heart he did not desire.

  “If you don’t fall in love, you will go far,” the woman told him as she said goodbye. Then she pacified his father, thus sparing Mario another thrashing.

  That night Mario talked with his mother and told her what had happened. She reached into the back of her cupboard, pulled out a small roll of wrinkled bills, and put them in her son’s hands. With that money, he took the train to the capital and found work sweeping up at a beauty salon in exchange for his food and a place to sleep, a straw mattress in the salon itself. He was dazzled. He had never imagined the existence of such a world: bright colors, delicate perfumes, smiling voices, frivolity, warmth, leisure. He marveled as he watched, in the mirror, the hands of professionals dressing the clients’ hair. Seeing the women unveiled, he learned about the feminine soul. At night, alone in the salon, he practiced hairstyles on the wigs, and tried shadows, powders, and pencils on his own face to learn the skills of the art of cosmetics, and so discovered how to improve a face with colors and brushes. Soon
he was allowed to work on new clients, and in a few months he was cutting hair better than anyone, and the most demanding ladies were requesting his services. He was able to transform a woman of ordinary appearance, using the frame of a nimbus of hair and the artifice of cosmetics skillfully applied; even more, however, he convinced each one of her attractiveness, because, finally, beauty is merely an attitude. He began to study with dedication, and to practice audaciously what he learned, helped by an infallible instinct that inevitably led him to the best solution. He was sought after by brides, models, actresses, and the wives of foreign ambassadors. Wealthy and influential ladies of the city opened their doors to him, and for the first time the miner’s son walked on Oriental rugs, drank tea from translucent porcelain, and admired the glow of wrought silver, polished wood, and delicate crystal. He quickly learned to distinguish objects of real value, and vowed that he would never be satisfied with less, because his spirit suffered when he was faced with any form of vulgarity. Once he was a member of the inner circle of art and culture, he knew he could never go back. He gave free rein to his creativity and his entrepreneurial vision, and within a few years he was the owner of the most prestigious beauty salon in the capital and a small antique shop that served as a front for discreet deals. He became an expert in works of art, fine furniture, and luxury items, and was consulted by people in high positions. He was always busy, always in a hurry, but he never forgot that his first real opportunity had come to him through the magazine where Irene Beltrán worked, and any time they requested him for a style show or an article on fashion and beauty, he set aside whatever he was doing and showed up with the famous kit of wigs that were the tools of his trade. He became so influential that at elegant social affairs ladies wearing his outré maquillage proudly displayed his signature on their left cheek like a Bedouin’s tattoo.

  When he met Francisco Leal, Mario was a mature man with a narrow, straight nose—the result of plastic surgery—an artificial tan, a slender, trim physique won at the price of diets, exercise, and massage, a man impeccably dressed in the best English and Italian clothes—in sum, he was cultivated, refined, and famous. He moved in exclusive circles and, under the pretext of buying antiques, traveled extensively. He lived like an aristocrat, but he never denied his humble origins; any time the subject of his mining-town past arose, he spoke of it with tact and good humor. His simplicity won the sympathy of people who would not have forgiven his inventing a fictitious family tree. In exclusive circles, those to which one was admitted only by family name or great wealth, Mario was respected for his fine taste and his ease in good company. No important gathering was considered a success without him. He never returned to the house where he was born, nor ever again saw his father or brothers, but every month he sent a check to his mother to provide her with certain comforts and to help his sisters study for a profession, set up a business, or marry with a dowry. His sentimental involvements were discreetly expressed, never strident, like everything else in his life.

  When Irene introduced Mario to Francisco Leal, only a slight gleam in his eyes betrayed the impression Francisco made on him. Irene noticed, and later teased her friend, telling him he should guard himself against the hairdresser’s advances if he did not want to end up with an earring in his ear and a soprano voice. Two weeks later, they were both in the studio working with the new cosmetics of the season when Captain Gustavo Morante came by to look for Irene. His face changed when he saw Mario. The Captain had a violent antipathy to effeminate men, and it bothered him that his fiancée worked in a place where she brushed elbows with someone he considered a degenerate. Mario was absorbed in stroking golden frost onto the cheeks of a beautiful model, and his instinct failed him; he did not see the Captain’s disapproval and, with a smile, held out his hand to him. Gustavo folded his arms across his chest, staring at Mario with unveiled scorn, and said, sorry, he never had anything to do with fairies. A glacial silence fell over the studio. Irene, the assistants, the models, everyone, stood frozen in consternation. Mario paled, and a shadow of pain clouded his eyes. Francisco Leal put down his camera, walked slowly forward, and placed his hand on the stylist’s shoulder.

  “You know why you don’t want to touch him, Captain? Because you’re afraid of your own feelings. Maybe all that rough camaraderie at the barracks is just a cover for homosexuality,” Francisco said in his usual deliberate and amiable tone.

  Before Gustavo Morante could appreciate the gravity of the statement, or react in accordance with his upbringing, Irene stepped in; she seized her fiancé by the arm and dragged him from the room. Mario never forgot the incident. A few days later, he invited Francisco to dinner. Mario lived on the top floor of a fashionable building. His apartment was decorated in black and white, in a tasteful, modern, and original style. Geometric lines of steel and crystal were softened by three or four very old baroque pieces and by Chinese silk tapestries. On one of the soft area rugs purred two Angora cats, and near the hearth where hawthorn logs were blazing dozed a sleek black dog. I adore animals, said Mario as he greeted Francisco. Francisco saw two goblets beside an ice bucket where a bottle of champagne was cooling; he noticed the soft lights, smelled the aroma of the wood fire and incense burning in a bronze censer; he heard the jazz from the hi-fi speakers, and realized he was the only guest. For an instant, he was tempted to turn and walk out, to avoid raising any hope in his host’s heart, but his desire not to hurt Mario, to gain his friendship, won out. As he looked in Mario’s eyes, Francisco was moved by a mixture of pity and sympathy. He searched among his gentlest emotions for the one most appropriate to give to the man who was timidly offering him his love. He sat down beside Mario on the raw-silk sofa and accepted a glass of champagne, calling on his professional experience to help him steer through uncharted waters without doing something foolish. It was a night they both remembered. Mario told Francisco his life story, and delicately hinted at his growing passion. He anticipated a refusal, but he was too moved not to voice his emotions; no man had ever appealed to him so strongly. Francisco combined virile strength and assurance with the rare quality of gentleness. Mario did not fall in love easily; he distrusted stormy affairs, the cause of much unpleasantness in the past. He was prepared this once, however, to risk everything. Francisco also talked about himself and, without overtly saying so, communicated to Mario the possibility of sharing a solid and deep friendship, but never love. Through that long evening they discovered shared interests, laughed, listened to music, and drank champagne. In a burst of confidence forbidden by the most elementary caution, Mario spoke of his revulsion for the dictatorship and his desire to oppose it. His new friend, able to read the truth in his eyes, offered his secret in return. When they said goodbye, shortly before the hour of curfew, they exchanged a firm handshake, sealing a pact of solidarity.

  Following that dinner, Mario and Francisco not only worked together at the magazine, but also in subversive activities. There was never a hint from the stylist of his feelings, of anything that might cloud their friendship. He was a very open person, and Francisco came to doubt that Mario had spoken as he had that memorable night. Irene became the third member of the group, even though they never included her in clandestine activities: by birth and education she belonged to the opposite camp, she had never shown any interest in politics, and, last but not least, she was the fiancée of a military man.

  That day at the Military Academy, Mario’s patience had worn thin. In addition to the security checks, the heat, and collective bad humor, there was his assistants’ constant prancing before the soldiers.

  “I’m going to get rid of them, Francisco. These two idiots have no class, and they never will. I should have thrown them into the street the day I found them wrapped in each other’s arms in the rest room at the office.”

  Francisco Leal had also had his fill, primarily because it had been several days since he had seen Irene. Their schedules had not coincided at the office, and by the time she called to announce he
r wish to come to dinner, he was desperate to see her.

  At the Leal home, painstaking preparations to welcome Irene were in progress. Hilda cooked one of her favorite dishes and the Professor bought wine and a bouquet of the first flowers of the season, because he admired the girl and felt that her presence was like a fresh breeze that swept away boredom and worry. They invited their other sons, José and Javier, and his family, because they liked to see them at least once a week.

  Francisco had just finished developing a roll of film in the bathroom that served as his darkroom when he heard Irene arrive. He hung up the strips of negatives, dried his hands, locked the door to protect his work from his nephews’ curiosity, and hurried to greet Irene. The smells from the kitchen washed over him like a caress. He heard the sound of high childish voices, and supposed that everyone was in the dining room. Then he saw Irene, and felt struck with good fortune; she was wearing a dress printed with daisies, and in her hair, which she had pulled back into a braid, she had tied several of the same flowers. It was the synthesis of his dream and the astrologer’s good omens.