The Young Bride (13 page)

She was silent for a moment.

Looking at yourself in the mirror with a man on you you've never seen before.

She looked at me.

Making them come.

Feeling that you're frighteningly beautiful, said the elegant Woman. Has that ever happened to you?

Once, one morning, said the young Bride.

Maybe even feeling despised, said L., but I don't know, maybe. Maybe I'd like to do it with someone who despises me, I don't know, it must be a very strong sensation and it's not something that happens to you in life.

And so many other things that don't happen in life, said the elegant Woman.

That's enough now, said L.

Why?

Stop it, come on.

Keep going.

No, that's enough now, said the elegant Woman.

Yes, said the young Bride.

I have a story to tell. I promised the Father.

Do you really have to do it?

Yes.

Tell me a story, instead, said L.

It was the story of the Father.

 

Who went to that brothel twice a month, for needs that were more than anything medical, in order to discharge his bodily fluids and assure his system a certain equilibrium. Rarely did the thing cross the emotional borders offered by a home remedy, consummated, as it was, amid the pleasure of conversation and with the purity of a tea ceremony. There were even times when it was up to the nurse on duty to reprimand the Father politely—
So, we've definitely decided to be lazy today, eh?—
while she was holding his sex in her hand, with great mastery but scant results. Then the conversation was suspended and the nurse placed one of the Father's hands between her thighs—other times she uncovered a breast and offered it to him, to his lips. This was enough to get the procedure back on track, and lead the Father to the broad delta of an orgasm compatible with the imprecision of his heart.

If all this seems irritatingly antiseptic, if not, indeed, cynical, or excessively clinical, it should be remembered that when everything started, many years ago, this story was, on the contrary, one of fierce passions—said the elegant Woman to the young Bride—and of love, death, and life. You don't know anything about the Father of the Father, she said, but at the time everyone knew about him, because he was a man who stood out as a giant in the prudent panorama of these lands. It was he who created the Family's wealth, coined its legend, and made its happiness immutable. He was the first who didn't have a name, because the entire populace referred to him as
the Father
, sensing that he was not only a man but an origin, a beginning, an ancient age, the time without precedents, and the first land. Before him there had perhaps been nothing, and so he was of everything, and for everyone,
the Father
. He was a strong, calm, wise, and enchantingly ugly man. He didn't make use of his youth because he needed to invent, to construct, to fight. When he was thirty-eight years old he looked up and saw that what he had imagined he had now accomplished. So he left for France and wasn't heard from until, some months later, he returned home, bringing with him a woman of his age who didn't speak our language. He married her, refusing to do so in church, and a year later she died, giving birth to a son who for his whole life would carry, in memory of her, an imprecision in his heart: today you call him
the Father
. The mourning lasted nine days, and so did the shock and distress, since the Father of the Father didn't believe in unhappiness, or still hadn't understood its purpose. So everything went back to the way it was before, with the nearly imperceptible addition of a child and, more conspicuously, of a promise: the Father of the Father said that he would never love, or marry, another woman in the world. He was then thirty-nine, he was at the height of his strength, his mystery, and his enchanting ugliness: everyone thought it a waste, and he was aware of the risks of a pointless renunciation of desire. So he went to the city, acquired a secluded but palatial building, and, on the top floor, had a place constructed that was absolutely identical to the one, in Paris, where he had met the French woman. Look around and you'll see. It's hardly changed at all since then. I imagine that a small part of the wealth you will come into with your marriage is from here. But it wasn't the economic side that interested the Father of the Father. Twice a month, for twenty-two years, always on a Thursday, he came through that door, because he had resolved to carry until death a heart that would not admit love and a body that would not accept privation. Because he was
the Father
, he could imagine doing it only in a luxurious setting and an atmosphere of a communal and permanent celebration. For all that time, the richest, most ambitious, loneliest, and most beautiful women in the city tried in vain to extract him from his promise. It was a siege that flattered him, but he was unreachable behind the walls of his memories and escorted by the sparkle of his whores. Until one girl became obsessed with him. She possessed a magnificent beauty and an unpredictable intelligence, but what made her dangerous was something more impalpable and undefined: she was free, and with such unbounded naturalness that innocence and ferocity were indistinguishable in her. Probably she began to desire the Father of the Father even before she saw him: maybe the gamble attracted her, certainly she liked tackling a legend. Without hesitating, she made a surprising move, which she found simply logical: she came to work here, and waited for him. One day he chose her, and from that day on he chose only her. It lasted a long time: and for all that time they never once met outside of here. For that reason the Father of the Father must have felt that his strength was inviolate and his promise intact: too late he realized that the enemy had already entered, and that neither promise nor strength existed anymore. He was absolutely certain when the girl informed him, fearlessly, that she was expecting a child. It's hard to say if the Father of the Father contemplated the possibility of redesigning his life around that late passion and that unexpected offspring, because, if he did, he wasn't given the time to tell himself or the world: he died, one night, between the girl's legs, with a thrust of his belly, in the half-light of a room that no one has used since then. If you hear it said that it was an imprecision of the heart that betrayed him, pretend to believe it. But it was obviously the dismay, the surprise, maybe the weariness, certainly the relief at not having to invent a different end. The girl remained there holding him between her legs, stroking his hair, and speaking to him in a low voice of travels and inventors, for as long as it took to send someone into the countryside, to tell the people at home. It was all done with a discretion that had been learned by heart, because many men die in brothels, but no man dies in a brothel, as everyone knows. So everyone knew exactly what to do, and how to do it. Just before dawn, the Son arrived. Today you call him the Father, but then he was scarcely more than twenty and because of the imprecision of his heart he had a reputation as a weak, elegant, and mysterious young man. At the brothel he had been seen only a few times, and those few times he had passed almost unnoticed. He trusted just one woman, a Portuguese girl who usually worked for certain bored, very wealthy ladies: they sent their daughters to her, to learn. It was she who met him, that night. She led him to a room, lay down beside him, and told him what he was about to see, explaining everything and answering all his questions. All right, he said. He got up and went to his father. At that precise moment, the Family was little more than a hypothesis, pasted onto the unborn life of a mistake of a child and the uncertain health of a boy. But no one had understood what boy this was, and no one could know that daily intimacy with death makes one cunning and ambitious. He sat on a chair in a corner of the room, and, with his hands pressed to his heart, to protect it, he looked for a long time at his father's stony back, and the face of the girl who was talking in a low voice, her legs spread to guard a dead man. He understood that something bizarre had shifted, in the destiny of the Family, something because of which it had become difficult to separate birth from death, construction from destruction, and desire from killing. He wondered if it made sense to oppose the inertia of fate and he realized that ten minutes would be enough to ruin everything. But he wasn't born, nor had his mother died, for that. He got up and had them call the faithful servant who had come with him—a man of unique dignity. He told him that the Father had died at home, in his bed, at three-forty-two in the morning, wearing his best pajamas and without time to ask for help. Obviously, said the servant. Probably an imprecision of the heart, said the Son. It's clear, said the servant, while he approached the girl and, with an unforgettable sentence—
May I?—
leaned over the Father's body. Displaying unsuspected strength he picked him up in his arms. Then he made sure that the body disappeared from the brothel invisibly, without marring the pleasure and the party that, within these walls, were and are an inflexible obligation, always. Left alone with the girl, the son introduced himself. He asked her if she knew something about him. Everything, the girl answered. Good, that will save time, the Son noted. Then he explained to her that they would be married and that the child she was carrying in her womb was his and would forever be their beloved son. Why? asked the girl.

To restore order to the world, he answered.

The next day, he instructed that the mourning should last for nine days from the day of the burial. On the tenth day he announced his marriage to the girl, and on the first day of summer it was celebrated with unforgettable joy. Three months later the girl gave birth, without dying, to a son, whom you will soon marry: since then, we've all called her
the Mother
. In the house you know, she became a woman, diligently, and she is the light who allows that man whom we all now call the Father to live in shadow, while he fiercely keeps the world in order. There is something that binds them, but obviously the word
love
, in this case, explains nothing. The secret they share is stronger, and the task they have chosen. One day, when they had been living together for a year, without ever sharing a bed, they felt strong enough to challenge together the two fears they were accustomed to associating with sex: he of dying, she of killing. They locked themselves in a room and didn't come out before they were sure that if a spell had been cast on them, they had broken it. That's why the Daughter, who was conceived during those nights, exists: if fate wanted her crippled and very beautiful, it's no doubt in order to write a coded message that no one has yet been able to understand. But it's only a matter of time, sooner or later it will be known. When you put the world in order, the Father says, you can't decide the speed at which it will let you do so. He wanted me to tell you this story, I don't know why. I've done it. Now don't look at me like that, and finish your wine, girl.

But the young Bride sat motionless, her gaze fixed on the elegant Woman. She seemed to listen, with absorption, to words that had been delayed along the way and now were piling up, stragglers, soundless. Instinctively she greeted them with annoyance. She wondered what had happened to that day to make it so weak that it released every secret and shattered the gift of ignorance. She didn't understand what these people wanted from her, so suddenly avid and generous with truths that seemed dangerous to her. Without thinking about it, she threw out a question, biting into the words.

If the story is secret, how do you know it?

The elegant Woman didn't lose her lightness.

I was born in Portugal, I teach sex to society girls, she said.

You.

Do you need some lessons?

I don't need anything.

You don't need anything, no.

Or maybe one thing.

Tell me.

Would you mind leaving me alone for a little?

The elegant Woman didn't answer. She merely raised her eyes toward the room, but as if she had lowered them onto a chessboard where someone had started a game whose outcome she was able to foresee, with no uncertainty. Then what she did was to take off, very slowly, the splendid red silk gloves she wore, which went up to her elbow, and place them on the young Bride's lap.

You want to be alone, she said.

Yes.

All right.

The elegant Woman rose, not disappointed, not hurried, not anything. She must have risen like that from many couches, many beds, many bedrooms, many lives.

L., too, got up, but not with the same tranquility, she wasn't familiar with tranquility, as far as I knew. She got up and looked at the time.

Fuck.

You have to leave?

I had to leave a long time ago.

You
did
leave a long time ago.

Not in that sense, idiot.

When you left you forgot a pack of cigarettes on the bed, half empty. I carried them around for months. Every so often I smoked one. Then they were gone.

Don't try anything.

I'm not trying anything.

And stop killing yourself in this shitty place that seems like a maniac's lair.

Shall I call you a taxi?

No, I have the car.

She put on her jacket, and in the reflection of a window smoothed her hair. Then she stood for a moment, looking at me, I thought she was deciding whether to leave with a kiss, but in fact she was thinking about something else.

Why all that sex?

In what sense?

In the book, all that sex.

There's almost always sex in my books.

Yes, but here it's an obsession.

You think?

You know.

Obsession seems to me a little much.

Maybe. But evidently there is something that attracts you, in writing the sex.

Yes.

What?

That it's difficult.

L. began to laugh.

You never change, eh?

It's the last thing she said. She left without even turning or saying goodbye, it was a thing she used to do then, too. I liked it.