Burnt Water

These Were Palaces

No one believed her when she began saying that the dogs were coming closer, batty old bag, crazy old loon she was, muttering to herself all day long, what nightmares she must have; after what she’d done to her daughter she couldn’t help but have bad nights. Besides, old people’s brains get drier and drier until there’s nothing left but a shriveled little nut rattling around like a marble in their hollow heads. But Doña Manuelita is so virtuous, she doesn’t just water her own flowers, she waters all the flowers on the second floor, every morning you can see her carrying her green gasoline tin, her yellowed fingers sprinkling water over the big clay pots of geraniums lining the iron railing, every evening you see her slipping the covers over the bird cages so the canaries can sleep in quiet.

Some say, isn’t Doña Manuelita the most peaceful person you’ve ever known? What makes people say bad things about her? Old, and all alone, she never does anything out of the ordinary, never calls attention to herself. The flowerpots in the morning, the bird cages in the evening. About nine, she goes out to do her shopping at La Merced market, and on the way back she stops in the big square of the Zócalo and goes into the Cathedral to pray for a while. Then she comes back to the old palace, a tenement now, and fixes her meal. Fried beans, warmed-over tortillas, fresh tomatoes, mint and onion, shredded chilis: the odors wafting out of Señora Manuela’s kitchen are the same as those borne on the smoke from all the meals cooked over old charcoal-burning braziers. All alone, she eats, and stares at the black grate awhile, and rests, she must rest. They say she’s earned it. All those years a servant in a rich man’s house, a lifetime, you might say.

After the siesta, about dusk, she goes out again, all stooped over, her basket filled with dry tortillas, and that’s when the dogs begin to gather. It’s only natural. As she walks along she throws them the tortillas, and the dogs know it and follow her. When she can get enough together to buy a chicken, she saves the bones and throws them to the dogs as they follow her down La Moneda Street. The butcher says she shouldn’t do it, chicken bones are bad for dogs, they can choke on them, chicken bones splinter and pierce the intestines. Then all the bad-mouths say that’s proof that Doña Manuelita is an evil woman, look at that, luring the dogs just to kill them.

She returns about seven, soaked to the bone in the rainy season, her shoes gray with dust when it’s dry. That’s how everyone always thinks of her, bone-white, shrouded in dust between October and April, and between May and September a soppy mess, her shawl plastered to her head, raindrops dripping from her nose and trickling down the furrows of her eyes and cheeks and off the white hairs on her chin. She comes back from her adventures in the black blouse and flapping skirts and black stockings she always hangs out in the night air to dry. She’s the only one who dares to dry her clothes at night. What did I tell you, she’s mad as a hatter, what if it rains, then what good does it do? There’s no sun at night. And there are thieves. Never you mind. She hangs her soaked rags on the communal clotheslines that stretch in all directions across the patio of the building. I’ll let them hang in the night air, the gossips imagine Doña Manuelita saying. Because the truth is, no one’s ever heard her speak. And no one’s ever seen her sleep. Suppositions. Doña Manuela’s clothes disappear from the clothesline before anyone’s up. She’s never been seen at the washtubs, kneeling beside the other women, scrubbing, soaping, gossiping.

“She reminds me of a lonely old queen, forgotten by everyone,” little Luisito used to say before he’d been forbidden to see her, or even speak to her.

“When she’s coming up the stone staircase, I can imagine how this was a great palace, Mother, how a long time ago very powerful and wealthy gentlemen lived here.”

“I don’t want you to have anything to do with her any more. Remember what happened to her daughter. You, more than anyone, ought to remember.”

“I never knew her daughter.”

“She wants you to take her place. I won’t have that, that would be the last straw, the old witch.”

“She’s the only one who ever takes me out. Everyone else is always too busy.”

“Your little sister’s big enough now. She can take you.”

* * *

So, following his directions, Rosa María pushed little Luisito in his wheelchair, wherever he wanted to go. Toward Tacuba Street if what he wanted to see were the old stone and volcanic rock palaces of the Viceregency, wide porticos studded with nail heads as big as coins, balconies of wrought iron, niches sheltering stone Virgins, high gutters and drains of verdigris copper. Toward the squat, faded little houses along Jesús Carranza Street if, on the other hand, it was his whim to think about Doña Manuelita. He was the only one who’d ever been in the old woman’s room and kitchen, the only one who could describe them. There wasn’t much to describe, that was the interesting thing. Behind the doors that were also windows — the wooden kitchen door hung with sheer curtains, the door to her room covered by a sheet strung on copper rods — there was nothing worthy of comment. Just a cot. Everyone else decorated their rooms with calendars, altars, religious prints, newspaper clippings, flowers, soccer pennants and bullfight posters, paper Mexican flags, snapshots taken at fairs, at the Shrine of the Guadalupe. But not Manuelita. Nothing. A kitchen with clay utensils, a bag of charcoal, food for her daily meal, and the one room with its cot. Nothing more.

“You’ve been there. What does she have there? What’s she hiding?”

“Nothing.”

“What does she do?”

“Nothing. Everything she does she does outside her room. Anyone can see her — the flowerpots, the shopping, the dogs and the canaries. Besides, if you don’t trust her, why do you let her water your geraniums and cover your birds for the night? Aren’t you afraid your flowers will wither and your little birds will die?”

It’s hard to believe how slowly the outings with Rosa María go. She’s thirteen years old but not half as strong as Doña Manuelita. At every street corner she has to ask for help to get the wheelchair onto the sidewalk. The old woman had been able to do it by herself. With her, if they went down Tacuba, Donceles, and Gonzales Obregón to the Plaza of Santo Domingo, it was little Luisito who did the talking, it was he who imagined the city as it had been in colonial times, it was he who told the old woman how the Spanish city had been constructed, laid out like a chessboard above the ruins of the Aztec capital. As a little boy, he told Doña Manuelita, they’d sent him to school, it had been torture, the cruel jokes, the invalid, the cripple, his wheelchair tipped over, the cowards laughing and running away, he lying there waiting for his teachers to pick him up. That’s why he’d asked them not to send him, to let him stay home, kids can be cruel, it was true, it wasn’t just a saying, he’d learned that lesson, now they left him alone reading at home, the rest of them went out to work, except his mother, Doña Lourdes, and his sister Rosa María, all he wanted was to be left to read by himself, to educate himself, please, for the love of God. His legs weren’t going to get well in any school, he swore he’d study better by himself, honest, couldn’t they take up a collection to buy him his books, later he’d go to a vocational school, he promised, but only when it could be among men you could talk to and ask for a little compassion. Children don’t know what compassion is.

But Doña Manuelita knew, yes, she knew. When she pushed his wheelchair toward the ugly parts of their neighborhood, toward the empty lots along Canal del Norte, turning right at the traffic circle of Peralvillo, it was she who did the talking, and pointed out the dogs to him, there were more dogs than men in these parts, stray dogs without masters, without collars, dogs born God knows where, born of a fleeting encounter between dogs exactly like each other, a male and a bitch locked together after the humping, strung together like two links of a scabrous chain, while the children of the neighborhood laughed and threw stones at them, and then, separated forever, forever, forever, how was the bitch to remember her mate, when alone, in one of a hundred empty lots, she whelped a litter of pups abandoned the day after they were born? How could the bitch remember her own children?

“Imagine, little Luis, imagine if dogs could remember one another, imagine what would happen…”

A secret shiver filled with cold pleasure ran down little Luisito’s spine when he watched the boys of Peralvillo stoning the dogs, chasing them, provoking angry barking, then howls of pain, finally, whimpering, as, heads bloody, tails between their legs, eyes yellow, hides mangy, they fled into the distance until they were lost in the vacant lots beneath the burning sun of all the mornings of Mexico. The dogs, the boys, all lacerated by the sun. Where did they eat? Where did they sleep?

“You see, little Luis, if you’re hungry, you can ask for food. A dog can’t ask. A dog must take his food anywhere he can find it.”

But it was painful for little Luis to ask, and he did have to ask. They took up the collection and bought his books. He knew that a long time ago in the big house in Orizaba they’d had more books than they could ever read, books his great-grandfather had ordered from Europe and then gone to Veracruz to wait for, a shipment of illustrated magazines and huge books of adventure tales that he’d read to his children during the long nights of the tropical rainy season. As the family grew poor, everything had been sold, and finally they’d ended up in Mexico City because there were more opportunities there than in Orizaba, and because his father’d been given a place as archivist at the Ministry of Finance. The building where they lived was close to the National Palace and his father could walk every day and save the bus fare. Almost everyone who worked in the office wasted two or three hours a day coming to the Zócalo from their houses in remote suburbs and returning after work. Little Luis watched how the memories, the family traditions, faded away with the years. His older brothers hadn’t graduated from secondary school, they didn’t read, one worked for the Department of the Federal District and the other in the shoe department at the Palacio de Hierro. Of course, among them they made enough money to move to a little house in Lindavista, but that was a long way away, and besides, here in the old building on La Moneda they had the best rooms, a living room and three bedrooms, more than anyone else had. And in a place that had been a palace centuries ago little Luis found it easier to imagine things, and remember.

If only dogs could remember each other, Doña Manuelita said. But we forget, too, we forget other people and forget about our own family, little Luisito replied. At dinnertime he liked to remember the big house in Orizaba, the white façade with wrought-iron work at the windows, the ground behind the house plunging toward a decaying ravine odorous of mangrove and banana trees. In the depths of the ravine you could hear the constant sound of a rushing stream, and beyond, high above, you could see the huge mountains ringing Orizaba, looming so close they frightened you. It was like living beside a giant crowned with fog. And how it rained. It never stopped raining.

The others looked at him strangely; his father, Don Raúl, lowered his head, his mother sighed and shook hers, one brother laughed aloud, the other made a circling motion at his brow with his index finger. Little Luisito was “touched,” where did he get such ideas, why he’d never been in Orizaba, he was born and bred in Mexico City, after all, the family’d come to the city forty years ago. Rosa María hadn’t even heard him, she just kept eating, her shoe-button eyes were as hard as stone, and held no memories. How it pained little Luisito to beg for everything, for books and for memories. I don’t forget, I collect postcards, there’s the trunk filled with old snapshots, it’s used as a chest, I know everything that’s inside.

Doña Manuela knew all this, too, because little Luisito had told her, before they’d forbidden her to take him out for a walk. When she was alone in her room, lying on her cot, she tried to communicate silently with the boy, remembering the same things he remembered.

“Just imagine, Manuelita, how this building must have looked before.”

That was little Luisito’s other memory, as if the past of that big house now shared by twelve families complemented the memory of the one and only house, the house in Orizaba, the house that belonged to only one family, his family, when they’d had an important name.

“Just imagine, these were palaces.”

The old woman made a great effort to remember everything the boy told her and then imagine, as he did and when he did, a majestic palace: the entryway before there was a lottery stand, the carved marble facade stripped of cheap clothing stores, the bridal shop, the photographer’s shop, and the soft-drinks stand, free of the advertisements that disfigured the ancient nobility of the building. A clean, austere, noble palace, a murmuring fountain in the center of the patio instead of the clotheslines and washtubs, the great stone stairway, the ground floor reserved for the servants, the horses, the kitchens, the grain storerooms, and the smell of straw and jelly.

And on the main floor, what did the boy remember? Oh, great salons smelling of wax and varnish, harpsichords, he said, balls and banquets, bedchambers with cool brick floors, beds draped with mosquito netting, mirrored wardrobes, oil lamps. This is the way that Doña Manuelita, alone in her room, spoke with little Luis, after they’d been separated. This is the way she communicated with him, by remembering the things he remembered and forgetting about her own past, the house where she’d worked all her life until she was an old woman, General Vergara’s house in the Roma district, twenty-five years of service, until they’d moved out to Pedregal. There hadn’t been time to win the friendship of young Plutarco; the new mistress, Señora Evangelina, had died only a few years after marrying the General’s son, and her mistress Clotilde before that; Manuela had been only fifty when she was fired, she reminded the General of too many things, that’s why he fired her. But he was generous. He continued to pay her rent in the tenement on La Moneda.

“Live your last years in peace, Manuela,” General Vergara had said to her. “Every time I see you I think of my Clotilde. Goodbye.”

Doña Manuelita chewed on a yellowed, knotted finger as she remembered her employer’s words, those memories kept intruding into the memories she shared with little Luisito, they had nothing to do with them, Doña Clotilde was dead, she was a saint, the General had been influential in Calles’s government, so in the midst of the religious persecution Mass was celebrated in the cellar of the house; every day Doña Clotilde, the servant Manuelita, and Manuelita’s daughter, Lupe Lupita, went to confession and received Communion. The priest would arrive at the house in lay clothes, carrying a kit like a doctor’s bag containing his vestments, the ciborium, the wine and the hosts, a Father Téllez, a young priest, a saint, whom the sainted Doña Clotilde had saved from death, giving him refuge when all his friends had gone before the firing wall, shot in the early morning with their arms opened out in a cross; she’d seen the photographs in El Universal.

That’s why she’d felt so bad when the General fired her, it was as if he’d wanted to kill her. She’d survived Doña Clotilde, she remembered too many things, the General wanted to be left alone with his past. Maybe he was right, maybe it was better for both of them, the employer and the servant, to go their own ways with their secret memories, without serving as the other’s witness, better that way. She again gnawed at her finger. The General still had his son and grandson, but Manuelita had lost her daughter, she would never see her again, all because she’d brought her to this accursed tenement, she’d had to break her little Lupita’s solitude, in her employer’s home she’d never seen anyone, she had no reason ever to leave the ground floor, she could get around quite easily in her wheelchair. But in this building there was no escape, all the overhelpful people, all the nosy people, everyone carrying her up and down stairs, let her get some sun, let her get some air, let her get out on the street, they took her from me, they stole her from me, they’ll pay for it. Doña Manuela’s few remaining teeth drew blood. She must think about little Luisito. She was never going to see Lupe Lupita again.

“Take me out to the empty lots where all the dogs gather,” little Luisito directed Rosa María.

Some masons were constructing a wall on the vacant lot along Canal del Norte. But they’d just begun to raise the cement partition on one side of the lot, and little Luisito told Rosa María to go down the other side, away from the workmen. There were no children today, but a gang of teenagers in jeans and striped jerseys, all laughing, they’d caught a dog as gray as the wall. The workmen were watching from a distance, wielding trowels and mortar, watching and elbowing one another from time to time. Beyond them, the sound of the armada of trucks choking the traffic circle of Peralvillo: buses, building-supply trucks, open exhausts, smoke, desperate horns, implacable noise. It had been in Peralvillo that little Luisito had been hit by the tram. The last streetcar in Mexico City, and it had to hit him. The teenagers clamped the dog’s muzzle shut; while a few held its legs, one of them laboriously cut off its tail, a mass of blood and gray hairs, better to have chopped it off with a machete, quick and clean.

They hacked at the ragged stump, leaving threads of flesh and a jet of blood spurting into the animal’s throbbing anus. But the other dogs of this pack that gathered every morning on the empty lots where the workmen had begun the wall hadn’t run away. They were all there, all the dogs together, at a distance, but together, watching the gray dog’s torture, silent, muzzles frothing, dogs of the sun, look, Rosa María, they’re not running away, and they’re not just standing there stupefied waiting for it to happen to them next, no, Rosa María, look, they’re looking at each other, they’re telling each other something, they’re remembering what’s happening to one of their own, Doña Manuelita’s right, these dogs are going to remember the pain of one of their own pack, how one of them suffered at the hands of a bunch of cowardly teenagers, but Rosa María’s shoe-button eyes were like stone, without memory.

About one o’clock Doña Manuelita peered through the curtains on her door as the girl returned, pushing her brother in his chair. Even from a distance she could see the dust on the girl’s shoes and she knew that they’d gone to the empty lots where the dogs gathered. In the late afternoon the old woman covered her head with her shawl, filled her shopping bag with dry tortillas and old rags, and went out to the street.

A dog was waiting for her in the doorway. It stared at her with its glassy eyes and whined, asking her to follow. When they reached the corner of Vidal Alcocer, she was joined by five more dogs, and all along Guatemala, by dogs of every breed, brown, spotted, black, about twenty of them, milling around Doña Manuelita as she portioned out pieces of dry tortilla, already turning green. They surrounded her and then preceded her, showing her the way, they followed her, nudging her softly with their muzzles, their ears erect, until they reached the iron fence before the Sagrario, the chapel of the Metropolitan Cathedral. From a distance, the old woman could see the gray dog lying beside the carved wooden door beneath the baroque eaves of the portal.

Doña Manuela and her dogs stepped into the great stone-floored atrium, she sat beside the injured dog, you’re the one they call Cloudy, aren’t you, poor half-blind fellow, well, just be thankful you have that one blind eye as blue as the sky and you can see only half the world, dear God, just look what they’ve done to you, come here, Cloudy, here on my lap, let me bandage your tail, bastards, picking on you for their fun, sons of your poor bitching mothers, just because dogs can’t defend themselves or talk or call for help, I don’t know any more whether they do these things to dumb animals to keep from doing them to each other or whether they’re only practicing what they plan to do tomorrow, who knows, who knows, let’s see now, Cloudy, poor old puppy, why I’ve known you since the day you were born, left on a rubbish heap, blind in that eye since birth, your mother didn’t have time to lick you clean, right away you were tossed into the garbage and that’s where I found you, there now, is that better? poor fellow, the cowards would pick on you, on you the most helpless of all my dogs, let’s go give thanks, let’s go pray for the well-being of all dogs, let’s go pray, there, in the house of the Lord our God, Creator of all things.

Quietly, bent over, petting the dogs, more stooped than usual, with sweet words, Doña Manuela entered the Cathedral of Mexico that afternoon with her twenty dogs surrounding her; they managed to reach the main altar, it was the best hour, no one around but a few devout old women and two or three peasants staring at the ceiling with their arms uplifted. Doña Manuelita knelt before the altar, praying aloud, a miracle, God, give my dogs a voice, give them some way to defend themselves, give them some way to remember each other and remember those who have tortured them, God, you who suffered on the cross, have mercy on these dumb animals, do not forsake them, give them the strength to defend themselves, since you did not give men mercy or teach them to treat these poor animals with tenderness. Oh, God, my Jesus, God and True Man, show that you are all of these, and give equally to all your creatures, not the same riches, no, not that, I’m not asking that much, only equal mercy so they can understand each other, or if not that, equal strength to defend themselves, don’t give more love to some of your creatures than to others, God, because those you have loved least will love you less, and they will say you are the devil.

Several of the women praying shushed her and one exasperatedly asked for silence and another cried, Respect the House of God, and then acolytes and two priests came running toward the altar, aghast, what sacrilege, a mad woman and a pack of mangy dogs. None of this had any effect on Doña Manuela, she’d never experienced such exaltation, she’d never spoken such beautiful and heartfelt words, almost as beautiful as those her daughter, Lupe, knew how to speak. The old woman stood there, so happy, more than bathed, feeling embalmed in the afternoon light filtering down from the highest domes, multiplied in reflections from silver organ pipes, golden frames, humble vigil lights, and the glowing varnish of the rows of pews. And God, to whom she’d been speaking, was answering her, He was saying:

“Manuela, you must believe in me in spite of the fact that the world is cruel and unjust. That is the trial I send you. If the world were perfect, you would have no need to believe in me, do you understand?”

But now the priests and acolytes were dragging her away from the altar, shooing the dogs; one maddened acolyte was beating the animals with a crucifix and another was dousing them with incense to stupefy them. All the dogs began barking at once and Doña Manuela, pushed and pummeled, looked at the crystal coffins wherein lay the wax statues of Christs more ill-treated than she or the dog Cloudy. Blood from your thorns, blood from your side, blood from your feet and hands, blood from your eyes, Christ of my heart, look what they have done to you, what are our sufferings compared to yours? Then why won’t you allow me and my dogs to speak of our little pains here in your house that was built large enough to hold all your pain and ours?

Flung to her knees on the flat stones of the atrium, surrounded by her dogs, she was humiliated because she’d been unable to explain the truth to the priests and the acolytes, and then she was ashamed as she looked up and met the staring, uncomprehending eyes of little Luisito and Rosa María. Their mother, Señora Lourdes, was with them. But her eyes, oh yes, her eyes had something to say: look! that’s the proof of what kind of woman old Manuela is, just what I’ve always said, we’ll have to cast her from our building the way the priest cast her from the temple. In the shocked recrimination of those eyes Doña Manuelita saw menace, gossip, everyone remembering once again what she’d been able to forget and make others forget by her discretion, her decency, her helpful everyday chores, watering the geraniums, covering the canaries’ cages.

Luisito looked quickly from his mother’s eyes to Señora Manuela’s. With both hands on the wheels he pushed his chair to where the old woman lay sprawled. He held out his hand, offering her a handkerchief.

“Here, Manuela. You’ve hurt your forehead.”

“Thank you, but don’t get yourself in trouble over me. Go back to your mother. Look at the terrible way she’s staring at us.”

“It doesn’t matter. Please forgive me.”

“But for what, child?”

“Every time I go out to the vacant lots and see how they treat the dogs, I feel good.”

“But, Luis, child.”

“I think to myself, if it weren’t for them I’d be the one getting the beating. As if the dogs stood between those boys and me, suffering in my place. I’m the biggest coward of all, aren’t I, Manuela?”

“Who knows,” the stunned woman murmured as she dried the blood from her head with Luis’s handkerchief; who knows, as laboriously she struggled to her feet, placing one hand on the ground and the other on her knee, then crossing them over her bulging belly and then on the arm of the wheelchair, rising like a statue of rags fallen from the highest niche of the Sagrario; who knows, is there anything you can do to make the dogs forgive you?

I’m fourteen, almost fifteen, I can talk to them like a man, they always will call me little Luis because I’ll never grow very big, I’ll be stuck in my chair getting smaller and smaller until I die, but today I’m fourteen, almost fifteen, and I can talk to them like a man and they’ll have to listen to me. He repeated these words over and over that night as before supper he pored over the photographs and postcards and letters stored in the trunk that now served as a chest, since everything had to do double duty in these tenements that used to be palaces and now sheltered down-on-their-luck families who lived there with former servants, they who’d been wealthy in Orizaba, and Manuelita, who had never been more than a servant in a wealthy house. Little Luis repeated those words to himself, sitting at his usual place at the table that was used for preparing and eating their meals, as well as for schoolwork and the extra accounting his father brought home so as to pay the bills every month.

Sitting in silence, waiting for someone to speak first, staring intently at his mother, daring her to begin, to tell here at the dinner table what had happened to Doña Manuela that afternoon, so yes, the gossip would begin here and tomorrow everyone in the building would know: they beat her and chased her from the Cathedral along with all her dogs. No one was saying anything, because, when she wished, Señora Lourdes knew how to impose an icy silence, to make clear to everyone that it was no time for joking, that she was reserving the right to announce something very serious.

She directed a bitter smile to each of them — to her husband, Raúl, to her two older sons, who were waiting impatiently to go to the movies with their sweethearts, to Rosa María, who could hardly keep awake — but she waited until everyone had served himself the simple rice with peas to tell again the same story, the one she always dragged out to prove how bad Doña Manuelita was, how she’d made her own daughter, Lupe Lupita, believe that when she was a little girl she’d had a bad fall and that she’d been crippled and would always have to be in a wheelchair, nothing but lies, why there was nothing wrong with her at all, nothing but the selfishness and evil of Doña Manuela, who wanted to keep the girl with her forever so she’d never be alone, even if it meant ruining her own daughter’s life.

“Thanks to you, Pepe,” Doña Lourdes said to her oldest son. “You suspected something and convinced her to get out of the wheelchair and try to walk, and you showed her how, thanks to you, my son, Lupe Lupita was saved from her mother’s clutches.”

“For God’s sake, Mother, that’s all over now, don’t keep bringing it up, please,” Pepe said, blushing, as he always did when his mother told the story, and stroking his thin black mustache.

“That’s why I’ve forbidden Luis to have anything to do with Manuela. And now, this very afternoon…”

“Mother,” Luis interrupted, “I’m almost fifteen, I’m fourteen years old, Mother, I can talk to you like a man.” He looked at his father’s face, drained by fatigue, at the sleepy face of Rosa María, a girl without memories, at the stupid faces of his brothers, at the impossible pride, the haughty apprehension of his mother’s beautiful face, none of them had inherited those high, hard, everlasting bones.

“Mama, that time I fell down the staircase…”

“It was an accident. No one was to blame.”

“I know that, Mother, that isn’t the point. But what I remember is how everyone in the building peeked out to see what was going on. I cried out. I was so afraid. But everyone stayed right where they were, staring, even you. She was the only one who came running to help me. She hugged me, she looked to see if I was hurt, and ruffled my hair. I could see all their faces, Mother. I didn’t see a single face that wanted to help me. Just the opposite, Mother. In that moment, everyone wanted me dead, everyone wished it, I guess, out of compassion — poor little fellow, take him out of his misery, it’s better that way, what can life offer him? Even you, Mother.”

“That isn’t true, Luis, how could you make up such a vicious lie?”

“I’m not very bright, Mother. I’m sorry. You’re right. Doña Manuela needs me because she lost her Lupe Lupita. She wants me to take her place.”

“Of course she does. Have you just realized that?”

“No. I’ve always known it, but I couldn’t find the words to say it until now. It’s good to know you’re needed, it’s good to know that if it weren’t for you another person would be terribly lonely. It’s good to need someone, like Manuela needed her daughter, like I need Manuela, like you need someone, Mother, everyone does … Like Manuela and her dogs need each other, like all of us need something, need to do something, tell something, even if it isn’t true, write letters and say that things haven’t been going too badly for us, in fact that we’re living in Las Lomas, isn’t that right, and that Papa has a factory, that my brothers are lawyers, and that Rosa María is in boarding school in Canada, and I’m your pride and joy, Mother, first in my class, a champion horseback rider, yes, me, Mother…”

Don Raúl laughed quietly, nodding his head. “That’s what you always wanted, Lourdes, how well your son knows you.”

The mother’s eyes, proud and despairing, did not leave little Luis’s face, denying, denying, with all the intensity her silence could muster. His father was shaking his head: “What a shame that I couldn’t give you any of that.”

“You’ve never heard me complain, Raúl.”

“No,” the father said, “never. But once, way back at the beginning, you told me the things you’d like to have had, only once, more than twenty years ago, but I’ve never forgotten, though you never said it again.”

“I never said it again, I’ve never reproached you for anything.” And Señora Lourdes’s eyes were on little Luis, in wild supplication.

But the boy was talking about Orizaba now, about the big house, the photographs and postcards, he’d never been there, so he had to imagine it all, the balconies, the rain, the mountains, the ravine, the furniture in that once-opulent house, the friends of a family like that, the suitors, why do you choose one person over another to marry, Mother, aren’t you ever sorry, don’t you ever dream what life could have been like with another man, and then you write letters to make him think everything worked out, that you’d made the right choice? I’m fourteen, I can speak like a man …

“I don’t know,” said Don Raúl, as if coming back from a dream, as if he hadn’t followed the conversation too closely. “The Revolution got us all off the track, some for the better and others for the worse. There was one way to be rich before the Revolution, and a different way after. We knew how to be rich in the good old days, but we were left behind, what can you do?” He laughed softly, the way he always laughed.

“I never mailed those letters, you know that very well,” Doña Lourdes said to little Luis in a tight voice as she helped him to bed, as she did every night, the same bed beside Rosa María, who’d fallen asleep at the table.

“Thank you, Mother, thank you for not saying anything about Manuela and her dogs.”

He kissed her affectionately.

* * *

All next day Doña Manuelita expected the worst and went around watching for signs of hostility. That’s probably why, very early, as she was gathering up her clothing and then watering the geraniums, she knew many eyes were watching her, curtains were silently drawn back, half-opened shutters were hastily shut, dozens of dark eyes, some veiled by the drooping lids of age, some young and round and liquid, were watching her in secret, were waiting for her without saying so, were approving of those tasks she was doing as if seeking forgiveness for what had happened with Lupe Lupita. Doña Manuela finally realized that she was doing these chores so they would be grateful to her, so they would never again throw the business of Lupe in her face. More than ever, that day, she realized that, she knew the arrangement was of long standing, that everyone had come to an understanding without any need for words, they were grateful that she watered the flowers and covered the bird cages, no one was going to say anything about what happened in the Cathedral, no one would humiliate her, everyone would forgive her for everything.

Doña Manuela spent the whole day in her room. She’d convinced herself that nothing was going to happen, but experience had taught her to be wary, alert, keep on your toes, Doña Manuela, best to sleep with one eye open, eh? Brooding in her single room and her kitchen, she fell prey to a strange bitterness, something foreign to her. If they no longer thought ill of her, why hadn’t they shown it before? Why, only now that she’d been humiliated in the Cathedral, did everyone in the building respect her? She didn’t understand, she just didn’t understand. Was it because the Señora Lourdes, Luis and Rosa María’s mother, hadn’t done any gossiping?

She lay on her cot, staring at the bare walls and thinking about her dogs, how thanks to her, through her, they transmitted their news, how they talked to one another and to her, Cloudy’s been hurt, he’s curled up by the Sagrario in bad shape, poor thing, let’s go pray to God Our Savior and ask Him to keep them from chasing us or abusing us any more, Doña Manuela.

It was the same with her and little Luisito, each could sense what the other felt, if she knew what he was feeling, he must know as well what she felt, they had so many things in common, especially the wheelchair, Luisito’s and Lupe Lupita’s. Young Pepe, little Luis’s brother, took Lupe Lupita from her wheelchair. Manuela had put her there to protect her, not because she herself needed a companion, a servant is always lonely by virtue of being a servant, no, that wasn’t it, it was to save her from their appetites, the way they would look at her. General Vergara with his bad reputation, his son Tín, always chasing after servant girls, no, she didn’t want them to lay a hand on her Lupe Lupita, no one would try anything with a cripple, they’d feel too disgusted or too ashamed, anyone should know that …

“I’m telling you this now, daughter, now that you’ve gone forever, it was to save you, I tried to save you from the terrible fate that lies in store for a servant’s daughter when she is beautiful, ever since you were a little girl I tried to save you, that’s why I named you as I did, twice Lupe, Lupe Lupita, twice virgin, twice protected, my little girl.”

It was a very long day, but Doña Manuelita knew there was nothing to do but wait. The moment would come. She would receive a sign. She’d let herself feel what her friend Luisito was feeling. They had so much in common, the wheelchair, his brother Pepe, who’d ruined La Lupita, and left her with only one of her names, her little girl was gone forever.

“I’m telling you this now, Lupe, now that I’ll never see you again … I tried to protect you because you were all your father left me. I loved that bastard more than I loved you, and when I lost him I loved you as I’d loved him.”

Then she heard the first barking in the patio. It was after eleven but Doña Manuela hadn’t eaten, lost as she’d been in her thoughts. Never, but never, had one of her dogs come into the patio, they knew all too well the dangers that awaited them there. Another barking joined the first. The old woman covered her head with her black shawl and hurried from the room. The canaries were restless. She’d forgotten to cover them so they could sleep. They stirred uneasily, not daring to sing, not daring to sleep, as during the eclipses that had occurred twice in Manuela’s life. The moment the sun had disappeared, the animals and birds had fallen silent.

Tonight, on the other hand, there was a moon and spring-like warmth. Increasingly certain of the meaning of her life, of the role that was hers to play as she waited for death, Doña Manuelita carefully placed the canvas covers over the bird cages.

“There, sleep quiet, this isn’t your night, this is my night, sleep now.”

She completed the chore that everyone was grateful to her for performing, the chore she did so they would be grateful and could live in peace, and then she walked to the top of the great stone staircase. As she had known he would, little Luis was there in his wheelchair, waiting for her.

It was all so natural. There was no reason it should be otherwise. Little Luis rose from his chair and offered his arm to Doña Manuela. He stumbled a little, but the old woman was strong, she lent him all her support. He was taller than either of them had supposed, fourteen, going on fifteen, a young man. Together they descended the staircase, little Luisito twice supported — by the stone balustrade and Manuelita’s arm. These were the palaces of New Spain, Manuela, imagine the parties, the music, the liveried servants holding aloft sputtering candelabra, preceding the guests on nights of great balls, the scalding wax burning their hands and never a word of complaint. Come with me, Manuela, we’ll go together, child.

Señora Manuelita’s twenty dogs were in the patio, barking in unison, barking with joy, all of them, Cloudy, the mangy ones, the hungry ones, the bitches swollen with worms or with pregnancy, who knows, time would tell, the bitches who’d recently given birth to more dogs, teats dragging, more dogs to populate the city with orphans, with bastards, with little sons of the Virgin huddling beneath the baroque eaves of the Sagrario. Doña Manuela grasped little Luisito by his belt and took his hand, the dogs barked happily, looking at the moon as if the moonlit night was the first night of the world, before pain, before cruelty, and Manuela led Luisito, the dogs were barking, but the servant and the boy heard music, old old music, music heard centuries ago in this palace. Look at the stars, little Luisito, Lupe Lupita always asked, when do the stars go out? Would she still be asking, wherever she is? Of course she is, Manuela, of course she’s asking, dance, Manuela, tell it all to me as we dance together, we’re just alike, your daughter and I, Lupe Lupita and Luisito, isn’t that right? Yes, yes, it’s true, I see the two of you, yes, I see you now, a moonlit, starlit night just like this, dancing a waltz, the two of you together, just alike, waiting for what never comes, what never happens, children in a dream, caught in a dream: don’t leave, my son, don’t come out to look, stay there, it’s better, stay there; but Lupita has gone, Manuela, you and I are left here in the building, it isn’t Lupita and I, it’s you and I, waiting, what are you waiting for, Manuela? What are you waiting for besides death?

How the dogs bark, that’s why the moon’s come out tonight, that’s the only reason it came out, so the dogs would bark, and listen, Luisito, listen to the music and let me hold you up, how well you dance, child, forget it’s me, pretend you’re dancing with my beautiful Lupe Lupita, that you have your arm around her waist, and as you’re dancing you smell her perfume, you hear her laughter, you look into her startled doe’s eyes, and I’ll pretend that I still know how to remember love, my only love, Lupe’s father, a servant’s love, in the dark, groping, rejected, the dark of the night, love that’s a single word repeated a thousand times.

“No … no … no … no…”

Dazed by the dancing, intoxicated by her memories, Doña Manuelita lost her footing and fell. Little Luisito fell with her, their arms about each other, laughing, as the music faded and the barking increased.

“Shall we promise to help the dogs, little Luisito?”

“Let’s promise, Manuela.”

“You can speak up. The dogs can’t. The dogs have to take what they can.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll look after them always.”

“It isn’t true what they say, that I love the dogs because I didn’t love my daughter. That isn’t true.”

“Of course it isn’t, Manuela.”

And only then did Doña Manuelita ask herself why in the midst of all the uproar of barking and music and laughter no one had looked out, no door had opened, no voice had protested. Did she also owe that to her friend little Luis? Did that mean no one was ever going to bother her again, not ever?

“Thank you, child, thank you.”

“Imagine, Manuela, just think. Centuries ago these were palaces, great palaces, beautiful palaces, very wealthy people lived here, very important people, like us, Manuela.”

* * *

Around midnight he felt very hungry and got out of bed without waking anyone. He went to the kitchen and, fumbling, found a hard roll. He smeared it with fresh cream and began to eat. Then suddenly he stopped, honor or duty, he didn’t know which stopped him. Always before, he’d asked. Even for a roll spread thick with cream. This was the first time he’d taken without asking. He took the dry leftover tortillas and went out to the patio to throw them to the dogs. But they were not there any longer, nor Manuelita, nor the moon, nor the music, nor anything.