think such thoughts, and still more: On Saturdays I can go to the red-light district in Sabinas, if there is one, and have Sundays free to visit Renata! To think so much: to get entangled only to get disentangled, easy as it goes, and, what a good job he had landed!
23
Two naked old people lying in a fairly narrow bed, caressing each other with almost trembling hands. They offered each other fear more than kisses on the lips. At first their quite puckered lips sought each other unstintingly … That is, first the fearful nakedness that they both ultimately imagined as shamelessness: to see each other’s drooping skin offered up to groping touches. It was important to be curled up horizontally next to each other. The bed creaked with each and every move.
This between-the-sheets finale ended up being more lachrymose than throbbing. The sensual part occurred shortly after their encounter. Abelardo’s arrival, with a cane!: rather weary from the vicissitudes of his trip from Mexico City to this deserted and desolate place. Delayed recognition: the doctor (who boasted a quite graying quiff) was carrying his jacket over his forearm: he had to due to the heat: as he also had to loosen his tie and unbutton the collar of his shirt. An old-fashioned introduction, a bow, on the threshold of Zulema’s shop. We will spare ourselves the slow verbal rapprochement and go directly to the embrace, which we should posit as the very marrow of the thing, because it was the first one they had ever exchanged: Zulemita! … Abelardo! … What good fortune! After seeing each other’s wrinkles: it’s been so many years! For her this moment was more than unexpected, it was a sign from the above and beyond: God had willed it, and willed it well. The entire panorama of a lifetime, made to wait … Waiting behind a counter, always backpedaling, the heavy daily dullness, what could have been and—likewise—the waxing of what had been an irreparable youthful error … A life that stippled till it made shine what would literally become a deep fissure at the peak, this while they embraced. Finally, that the embrace would be the longed-for summation, above all for Zulema, who resisted letting go; and she won the day because when it came to physical strength she had much more of it than he, and what’s more: she was holding him up—careful! the cane lying on the ground. And words of love now as flowing as song: words repressed for half a century or more. To not let go of his aged wrist—no! Even if he tried, his efforts were, if we may say so, pathetic! … Whereby Abelardo had no choice but to demand, with plaintive tenderness: Let go of me, my love! and she—how wretched!—had to do as she was told.
More catching up in the kitchen. Everything that had settled like pirouettes of fog over long years and without a chance of clearing, all Zulema’s fault. That relative who came to tell me about you should have done so when I was a student. Now I am a widower and I have children and grandchildren, Abelardo proclaimed, then added in a phony tone: I always loved you, Zulemita, even though you were my cousin. There was no forgiving herself the blunder, now immense, the result of her recondite small-town candor. A regret to be churned in her stomach juices, never to be expelled.
But there they were, facing each other. No point in talking much now. They chose to wallow in carnal delights. Naked—anon! the silent exchange. Zulema took the initiative and unbuttoned her blouse. In response, he dropped his trousers. A jumble of garments strewn across the floor. Portents of ultimate disorder, even more so if viewed from above: O collage! Nevertheless, what we now see are the difficulties of divestment, more for him than for her, because standing on his feet without his cane—how was he supposed to keep his balance? But he did—really! A matter of dignity, of heroics, except his shoes: their removal—a risky business? That should take place while they were seated on the edge of the bed. Zulema, on the other hand, naked from head to toe in the kitchen. The rest can be inferred. Promptly, then, came the pleasure of the naked embrace, so full of tenderness and so abiding, though: it couldn’t move forward, for Abelardo simply couldn’t, confound it, no matter how hard he tried, and what a pity that he