The Dark Bride

sixteen

“Se sentaban con recato,” don Alonso Olmeda told me last night — a veteran of the Troco who frequented La Catunga in Sayonara’s time and knew and respected the mujeres de la vida.

They sat with modesty, don Alonso had said of the prostitutas of those days, and his delicate observation took me by surprise, it hit me like a peculiar clue for deciphering that world, one with which this book should be in harmony and which forced me to rethink things I had written earlier. For example, “her flesh overflowed the low neckline of the blue satinette dress.” But they sat con recato. A curious and archaic word, recato. I heard my grandmother use it often and then after she was gone, gradually less and less, as if it alluded to an extinct virtue. Recato: a magical term when it refers, as from don Alonso’s mouth, to a puta. From the Latin recaptare—to hide what is visible — it seems to refer to a secret world that avoids exhibition and which is, significantly, contrasted with the Latin prostituere, to debase, put before the eyes, expose.

“How did they dress, don Alonso?”

“With the elegance of poor ladies who wanted to look beautiful.”

“No cleavage or bright-colored fabrics?”

“Cleavage, yes, and bright-colored, showy dresses too, but nothing that would call attention with vulgarity. The famous striptease, now obligatory in any brothel, would never have occurred to anyone at the Dancing Miramar and the other cafés in La Catunga. Instead we enjoyed dance contests and there were prizes and celebrations for the couple who performed the best tango, rumba, or cumbia. It was another world and things gave off different colors, and prostitution, forgive me for expressing a personal opinion, wasn’t disgraceful for the woman who practiced it or for the man who paid for it.”

“Even though there was payment?”

“The petrolero worked hard and earned his money. The prostituta worked hard and ended up with the petrolero’s money. They say that love for money is a sin, but I say that it’s nothing more than the law of economy, because bread doesn’t fall from the sky for anyone. And don’t believe what they tell you, that amor de café is pleasure and not love. When some fellow worker was smitten by a particular woman, the rest of us managed to stay away from her and not interfere.”

“Were you always successful?”

“No, not always. There were a few crooked girls who made their men suffer until they drove them to their deaths. No one confronted them for it because they were within their rights, and anyone who fell in love with a woman from that world was at the mercy of his own good luck. But in general, love between couples was respected and there were numerous cases of sworn and upheld fidelity, by choice of the couple and not because of any other circumstance. I can tell you the names of petroleros who had children in common agreement with prostitutes, without the women leaving the profession. It was a simple world because it wasn’t hypocritical. It wasn’t hypocritical but that doesn’t mean that it was heartless. It may sound ridiculous to you, but there was a certain feeling of chastity in all of that. A certain kind of chastity, you know, and a certain elegance. To understand it you had to have seen them, so proudly gathering their skirts when they danced a pasodoble.”

“Were you in love with any of them, don Alonso?”

“It’s a story that wouldn’t be honorable to confess because I am the widower of a good and noble woman. Out of respect for the dead. But I will tell you one thing, many of us were in love with prostitutas, and with the passing of the years and a look back in time, now that we’re closer to death, we have to recognize that they were the great passion of our lives.”