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IT WAS THE TIME of day when children in small towns everywhere play in the streets, filling the afternoon with their shouting. When the black walls still reflect the yellow light of the sun. At least that’s what I’d seen in Sayula, just yesterday at this same hour. And I’d seen the still air shattered by doves flapping their wings as if they were breaking free of the day. They flew about, dipping toward the rooftops as the shouts of children fluttered about and seemed to turn blue in the evening sky. Now here I was, in this town devoid of all sound. I heard my footsteps as they fell on the
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I would’ve liked to tell her: “You were all wrong about this place. You led me astray. You sent me out to chase my own tail. To an abandoned town. Searching for someone who doesn’t exist.”
Outside in the patio, footsteps, as if people were walking in circles. Muffled noises. And here inside, that woman standing in the doorway, her body holding back the day’s arrival, allowing only fragments of the sky to pass through her arms, and below her a shattering of light, a drizzle of light as if the floor beneath her feet were inundated with tears.
»Later, I stopped hearing those noises. It’s exhausting being happy. That’s why I wasn’t at all surprised when it came to an end.
By the way, whatever happened to your mother? —She died —I said. —She died, huh? What of? —I never really knew. Perhaps it was sorrow. She used to sigh a lot. —That’s not good. Each sigh is like a sip of life that slowly gets away from us. She’s dead, then? —Yes. I thought you would’ve known.
Aren’t they all still alive? It’s just that they don’t come out. I have no idea what they do during the day, but at night they shut themselves in. Nights around here are filled with shadows. If only you could see the horde of souls that roam the streets. They come out as soon as it gets dark, and we’re all afraid of seeing them. With so many of them and so few of us we no longer plead for them to be freed from their torment. There just aren’t enough prayers to go around. Maybe we could say a few lines of the Lord’s Prayer for each one, but what good would that do? And then there’s the matter
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Besides, I lost all interest in looking up when Father Rentería assured me I’d never know the Glory of God. Said I wouldn’t get to see it even from a distance . . . On account of my sins. But he shouldn’t have told me that. Life beats you down all on its own. The only thing that keeps a person going is the hope you’ll end up someplace different after you die, but when one door slams in your face and the only other one takes you straight to Hell, it would’ve been better never to have been born . . . For me, Juan Preciado, Heaven is right here where I am now.
—And what about your soul? Where do you think it’s disappeared to? —I suspect it’s wandering the earth like so many others, searching for anyone still alive who’ll pray for it.
Death is not shared with others as if it were a blessing. No one goes looking for sorrow.
He loved her so much he spent his remaining years slumped over in an equipal chair, gazing down the road where they’d carried her off to the cemetery. He lost interest in everything. He abandoned his lands and ordered the equipment burned. Some say he was exhausted, others that he was disillusioned. What’s certain is that he ran everyone off and just sat down in that equipal and stared down the road she’d left on.
—This world grabs onto us so tightly it squeezes out fistfuls of our dust here and there, breaking us into pieces as if to douse the land with our blood. What did we do? Why have our souls rotted away?
I immerse myself in the sea, fully. I give myself over to its steady force, its gentle possession, holding nothing back. »—I like to bathe in the sea —I told him. »But he doesn’t understand. »And the following day, I returned to the sea, to purify myself. To give myself over to its waves.»
Lord, Thou dost not exist! I asked Thee to protect him. To look after him. That’s all I asked for. But all Thou carest for is the soul. And what I want from him is his body. Naked and warmed by love, simmering with desire, massaging the trembling of my arms and breasts. My transparent body suspended by his. My slender frame supported by and lost in his strength. What am I to do with my lips now when I don’t have his mouth to occupy them? What am I to do with my aching lips?”
“Sweet little thing,” he said to her. And he had held her tight, hoping her flesh might transform into that of Susana San Juan. “A woman who was not of this world.”
». . . An immense moon hung over the world. I stared at you until my vision seemed to fade. The rays of the moon filtering down on your face. I never grew tired of watching the apparition that you were. Soft, caressed by the moonlight. Your lips swollen, moist, shimmering with the stars. Your body growing translucent in the water of the night. Susana, Susana San Juan.»
