This story is from Elena Poniatowska’s book, De Noche Vienes. I couldn’t find an English version of the book, which is a tragedy. Poniatowska is an influential Mexican literary figure whose work focuses on the experiences of the poor and disenfranchised. Her writing is singularly free, with prose that, at times, borders on poetry.
I translated this story, in hopes that it might reach a wider audience. Or at least a different audience.
She felt like the words were flapping around the room before he even said them. With one hand she smoothed her hair, with the other she pretended to calm her heartbeat. Anyways, she had to prepare dinner and do bills. But the words went from one side to the other turning over in the air (without coming down) like black butterflies, brushing against ears. She got the notebook from the kitchen and a pencil; the tip was so sharp that, when writing, it broke the page, and this hurt. The walls of the room narrowed in turn around her and even the grey eye of the window appeared to be observing her with an ironic look. And Juan’s blazer, hanging on the hanger, had a threatening ghostly look. Where could another pencil be? There was one in her purse, smooth and warm. She wrote: gas $18.00; milk $2.50; bread $1.25; squash $0.80. The pen melted gently above the lines, almost like balsam. What to feed him for dinner? At least there was chicken; which he liked so much! But no, she would open a can of deviled ham. Because at least the room wouldn’t smell like gas for the love of God.
Juan continued smoking in bed, mouth open. The smoke of his cigarette ascended, getting lost among his black and blue hairs.
- You know what, Manuela?
Manuela knew. She knew that there was still time.
I know, I know. You had a lot of fun on vacation. But what is vacation, Juan? It’s nothing more than a long Sunday and Sundays degrade men. Yeah, yeah, don’t interrupt me. Just man, without the dignity that his two hands and daily obligations bestow upon him. Haven’t you seen how awkward people look on the beach, with their printed t-shirts, their mouths open, their sunburns and their slowly but surely expanding stomaches? (My god! What am I saying? I’m heading in the wrong direction!)
- Oh, Manuela! - mused Juan - Oh my English governess. Will there be beaches in heaven, Manuela? Great fields of grain that mix among the clouds?
Juan stretched, yawned again, pulled-in his legs, settled, and turned his face to the wall. Manuela closed the notebook and also turned her face towards the wall where there was a shelf covered in objects that she had bought with many jobs. Like many single and nervous women, Manuela had populated her dreams with marvelous objects, absolutely indispensable to her stability. First an expensive reproduction of Fra Diamante, of opalescent blue with gold stars. “The Fra Diamante, heavens, if I don’t have it I’ll die!” The price was much more than she had expected. It represented overtime in the office, an original and 3 copies, 2 new monographs, prologues for textbooks and depriving herself of the theater, of butter, of the little glasses of cognac that helped her fall asleep. But finally she acquired it. After 15 joyous days in which Fra Diamante illuminated the whole room, Manuela felt that her dream hadn’t been fulfilled. Following were the music box with the first notes of Beethoven’s la Pastoral, the alleged Velasquez landscape painted on a postcard with all of its stamps, the old watch in the shape of a medallion that was supposed to belong to a young lady flushed with tuberculosis, the samovar from Saint Petersburg like the one from the Lady with the Little Dog from Chekov. Manuela spent her virginity for all of these objects like a dry leaf.
Until one day, Juan with the soft hants like smooth leaves full of sap.
First she saw no more in him than one of those students that eternally listen to the same jazz record, with a cigarette in his mouth and a lock of hair over his eyes. How can a lock of hair be so desirous? One of those that disturb the teachers because they’re tricky and pure like a unicorn, so fake in their protection of the maiden.
- Teacher, after class, can you explain…
The tiger came closer, provocative and malevolent. Manuela looked from behind her glasses. Yes, he was one of those that end up giving scratches so deep that they take years to disappear. He slid into his surroundings. At every instant he was in danger of falling because he crossed in front of her, without looking at her but roaring incomprehensible things like you hear from the sky when it’s going to rain.
And one day he licked her hand. Since that moment, almost unconsciously, Manuela decided that Juan would be the next marvelous object that she would bring home. She would put a collar and a chain on him. She would drive him to her apartment and his soft body would graze her legs when he walked. There she would store him on the shelf with the other whimsies. Maybe Juan would break them into pieces but what did it matter! The collection of marvelous objects would reach its conclusion with the tiger finally dissected.
Before making an irrevocable decision, Manuela went to confess:
- Look, father, I continue with this mania of buying every object that sparks my affection and this time I wanted to get a little tiger…
- A tiger? Well, it’s fine, tigers are also creatures of God. Take good care of it and return it to the zoo when it’s too big. Remind yourself of San Francisco.
- Yes, father, but it’s that this tiger has the face of a man and the eyes of a tiger and frolic of a tiger and everything else of a man.
- Oh, this must be a species of Felinantropus dangerous erectus! Daughter of my soul! In this Department of Philosophy and Arts we teach the students strange things…The advent of nominalism or it could be the confusion of the name with the man that has led many young people to delirium and disturbance of the morals. Don’t think about such nonsense and as penitence you will pray the rosary y 303 exclamatory prayers.
- Pure Hail Mary!
- Without sin conceived!
Manuela prayed the rosary and the exclamatory prayers: Striped tiger, roar for me! Eyes of burnt sugar, roar for me! Eyes of obsidian, roar for me! Canines of ivory, bite my soul! Jaws tear me for mercy! Pink palate, swallow me until the grave! So that the fires of hell burn me! Tiger devourer of sheep, carry me to the jungle! Crush my bones! Amen!
Finished with the exclamatory prayers, Manuela returned to the Department. Juan smiled showing his sharpened canines. This same afternoon, defeated, Manuela put the collar and chain on him and took him home.
- Manuela, what do you have to eat for dinner?
- What you like best, Juan. Fruit and raw fish, solid and stretchy.
- You know what, Manuela? There on the beaches I followed so many immensely green women that my arms turned red. When I hugged them they were like sponges, slow and absorbent. I also captured mermaids to take them to bed and they turned to rivers throughout the night.
Juan disappeared every year in the vacation season and Manuela knew that one of these escapes would be definitive…When Juan kissed her for the first time, throwing off her glasses, in a hallway of the Department, Manuela told him not to, that people only kiss after a long friendship, after a constant siege and tenacity of words, or projects. People always kissed with ulterior motives: to get married and have children and head down a good path, not corniness. Manuela knit a long chain of compromises, of res-pon-sa-bi-li-ties.
- Manuela, you are as awkward as a bird trying to fly, and hopefully you learn. If you go on like that, your words won’t be clusters of grapes but raisins dried by virtue.
Over the stove, a fly lay immobile in a drop of syrup. A tender fly, sweet, heavy and drunk. Manuela could kill it and the fly wouldn’t even notice. That’s how women in love are; like big-stomached flies that let themselves go because they are full of sugar.
But something unforeseen happened: Juan, in his arms, started to turn into a cat. A lazy and familiar cat, a bland stuffed animal. And Manuela, who aspired to be devoured, heard nothing but light meows.
What happens when a man stops being a tiger? He purrs about the household trainers. His impetuous jumps turn into rickety hops. He gets fat and instead of confronting the kings of the jungle, dedicates himself to hunting rats. He is afraid of walking on the tightrope. His love, which with one roar filled the silence with birds, is only a breath over the roof about to be demolished.
Before the transformation, Manuela increased the number of exclamatory prayers to 407: “Striped tiger, you only come at night! Tigered man, resound in the storm! Dark stripes, soak yourselves in honey! Holy streaks, take me to the back of the mine! Cave of ferns, seaweed, humidify my soul! Tiger, tiger, dip yourself in my blood! Cover me again with delicious sores! King of the heavens, unite us at last and kill us in just one soldering. Improbable virgen, let me die on top of the wave! If the exclamatory prayers had an effect, Manuela did not record it in her diary. She only wrote one day with terrible handwriting - surely she did it without glasses - that her heart had left for a crack in the ceiling and that hopefully she could follow it.
Juan lit another cigarette. The smoke rose slowly, concentric like an offering.
- Manuela, I have something to tell you. There on the beach I met…
It was already there: the calm river flowed and the words sprouted torrentially. They collapsed like overly-ripe fruit that’s starting to rot. Round fruit, prickly, primitive. There are antediluvian words that take us back to the essential state: among sand, palm trees, snakes covered by a great green tree and golden with life.
And Manuela saw Juan among the foliage, reviewing his role of tiger for the other inexperienced Eve.
Regardless, Manuela and Juan talked. They talked like they had never done before and with the words of always. At the hour of the rupture the floodgates open. (It hadn’t occurred to anyone to build a spillway for their coexistence). After some time, the conversation tripped with a hostile and insurmountable force. Human dialogue is a mysterious necessity. For on top of the words and of all its senses, on top of the mimicry of the faces and the expressions, there exists a law that does not escape us. The time of communication is strictly limited and beyond there’s only desert and sunshine and rock and silence.
- Manuela, do you know what I would like for dinner today?
- What?
- A little bit of milk.
- Yes, cat, that’s fine.
(There was a scar in the voice of Manuela, as if Juan had cut her, hoarse; she would no longer give sharp drops of laughter, the tear of shouting would never reach again, there was a firepit of extinguished ashes.)
- Yes, only a little.
- Yes, cat, I understood you.
And Manuela had to admit that her tiger was tired of raw meat. How the wrinkle on his forehead was accentuated! Manuela reached out her hand wearily. She covered his mouth. Juan was a cat, but hers forever…How the room smelled like gas! Maybe Juan didn’t even notice the difference…It would be so easy to open the valve before lying down, to go get the little plate of milk…
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