Violeta, p.12
Violeta, page 12
“Our love is unstoppable,” he said, and I nodded again.
And so began the passionate affair that would put an end to my marriage and seal my fate. Julián Bravo asked me to meet him in his room and half an hour later we were naked, desperately exploring each other in broad daylight right there inside my mother-in-law’s hotel, steps away from my husband, who was drinking beer with the Danes and explaining via interpreter his fascinating technique for artificial insemination. But upstairs on the second floor, between four walls of fragrant boards from the native forests, the sunlight filtering through a curtain of raw sackcloth, on a feather mattress with linen sheets, I learned at age twenty-eight the surprising possibilities of pleasure and the fundamental difference between an uninspired husband and a lover who seemed to have stepped out of an erotic novel.
Until that first afternoon with Julián Bravo, my ignorance of my own body was so monumental that it can only be explained by the time and place I was born into. I was raised by a prudish mother who’d had six children brought down from heaven by Baby Jesus, as she assured me in hushed tones, and two spinster aunts who never mentioned “the nether regions,” which was code for the section of the body between the waist and the knees. Aunt Pía died a virgin and the other one, well, who knows; she may have gone to bed with Bruno Rivas in her later years, but she never admitted it to me. As far as Josephine Taylor, she simply showed me illustrations of the human body in a book, because despite her revolutionary ideas she was just as puritanical as my aunts. From her I learned to take off and put on my clothes like a contortionist to avoid vulgar nudity at all costs. I didn’t have girlfriends my own age; I never went to school; my severely limited knowledge came from animals mating on the farm. When I got married, I continued getting undressed as I’d seen Miss Taylor do, and Fabian and I made love in pitch-dark silence; I never imagined there were other options, and I think Fabian considered bovine reproduction more interesting than our sexual encounters.
Julián ripped my dress off like a puma with two swipes of his hands, never even giving me a chance to protest. He smothered my first startled exclamation with a kiss, and from that point on I abandoned any hint of resistance, willing my body to come undone and melt in his arms, wishing I could stay right there with the door shut forever and never see another living soul again, only him. He looked me over, assessing my features and making flattering comments about the shape of my breasts and hips, the shine of my hair, the softness of my skin, my smell of soap, and other attributes I’d never paid attention to and that, frankly, were not that exceptional.
He realized that his open admiration embarrassed me so he pulled me almost by force over to the large mirror on the wardrobe, where I saw a naked stranger, trembling, with wild hair, a picture of depravity that would’ve terrified my aunts but had the effect of relaxing me. By that point there was no turning back. He guided me to the bed and took his time to caress me from head to toe with a slow and delicious boldness, not expecting anything in exchange, murmuring a string of nonsense, compliments, and vulgarities. The contrast between my clumsiness and his skill must’ve been comical, but that didn’t dampen his enthusiasm, only encouraged his efforts to pleasure me.
I hope you’re not horrified by this brief reference to sex, Camilo. I feel the need to justify why I submitted to Julián Bravo for all those years. I’ve had some lovers in my life, but there weren’t very many. The ideal is to make love with someone you adore, but that wasn’t the case with Julián that first afternoon. There was no love, only desire—simple, brutal, devastating desire, direct and remorseless. Oblivious to anyone or anything else, we were the only man and the only woman in the universe, lost to absolute pleasure. Orgasm was as dramatic a discovery as the revelation of the woman I had hidden inside me: the stranger in the mirror, shameless, defiantly unfaithful, and giddy.
We spent the entire afternoon together, and I suppose Fabian must have asked everyone if they had seen me. I heard the bell announcing that the dining room was open for dinner and I understood that I had to shake off my drowsiness. Julián left me curled up in bed, dressed quickly, and left. I don’t know how he convinced someone in the kitchen to give him bread, cheese, smoked salmon, grapes, and a bottle of wine, or how he managed to get the meal up to his room without arousing suspicion. We sat on the floor, naked; I drank wine from his mouth and he ate grapes from mine.
I had the chance to observe him, as he had done with me, and appraise him. He was without a doubt the most attractive man I’ve seen up close: muscular, supple, tanned from head to toe by outdoor sports, as if he sunbathed nude, and he had an irresistible laugh that made his eyes disappear, dark hair, light eyes that shifted between green and blue, and a few deep lines chiseled in his face. I didn’t know it that day, but I soon learned that he had a smooth tenor singing voice, and that in one period of dire economic straits he’d earned a living as a cabaret singer in England and the United States.
I didn’t go home that night. I awoke at dawn, wrapped in Julián’s arms on a nest of wrinkled sheets, damp from sweat and sex, momentarily disoriented, unable to clearly recall where I was. It took me over a minute to fully accept that nothing would ever be the same as before. I’d have to face Fabian and explain what had happened.
“Relax, Violeta. There’s a simple solution. Tell your husband that you didn’t feel well and so you got a room for yourself to lie down,” Julián suggested, but it was an absurd alibi.
“My mother-in-law owns this hotel. If I’d stayed here on my own, she’d know it, because I would have occupied one of her rooms.”
“Well, then what are you planning to tell Fabian?”
“The truth. You must understand that I can’t go back to him now.”
“A lot of husbands will look the other way to avoid trouble. He’ll believe anything you tell him,” he replied, alarmed.
“Is that how it’s worked out for you before?” I asked, with the vague feeling of stepping into quicksand.
“I’m not cynical, Violeta, I’m practical. No one has seen us; we can avoid causing a stir. I’m not trying to upend your life …”
“It’s already been upended. What do we do now?”
...
We hurriedly dressed and Julián left before I did. I ran his comb through my hair, skipped washing up, and tiptoed down the hallway praying no one would see me. I hid in the garden and a few minutes later Julián picked me up in one of the cars the Danes had at their disposal and drove me to the train station. By ten o’clock I was at the Rustic Homes office in Sacramento with my brother.
“What are you doing here, Violeta? I thought you were supposed to be at the Hotel Bavaria with the Danes.”
“I left Fabian.”
“Where?”
“I’m leaving him, José Antonio. I’m not going back to him; the marriage is over.”
“My God! What happened?”
My brother listened to me with disbelief plastered across his face, horrified as the substitute patriarch responsible for the family’s honor. But just as I had expected, instead of judging me or trying to convince me that the mistake could be made right, he simply asked, wiping his forehead with his shirtsleeve, how he could help. Then he picked up the phone and left messages for Fabian at the Schmidt-Engler farm and at the Hotel Bavaria.
Around noon my husband called the office, relieved to know I was with my brother in the city and that everything had been cleared up in the end. He asked when I was coming home so he could meet me at the station.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to come here, Fabian. Violeta has something serious to talk to you about,” José Antonio told him.
My husband arrived in Sacramento hours later, and we met face-to-face in the office, with my brother standing guard in the next room in case my husband tried to hit me. José Antonio felt it would be completely justified.
“I had a terrible night looking everywhere for you, Violeta. I went all the way to Santa Clara to see if you were with your aunts. Why did you leave without telling me?”
“I just lost my head and had to run away.”
“I’ll never understand you, Violeta. But it doesn’t matter. Let’s go home.”
“I want us to separate.”
“What are you saying?”
“That I’m not going back with you. I’m in love with Julián Bravo.”
“The pilot? But you just met him yesterday! Are you crazy?”
He sat down from the shock of the news. In his mind, the chances of me leaving him were as remote as my likelihood of spontaneously combusting.
“People don’t just separate, Violeta! Problems between couples are normal; they are worked out behind closed doors, without causing a scandal.”
“We’re going to annul the marriage, Fabian.”
“You’ve completely lost your mind. You can’t throw a marriage out the window for a little lust.”
“I want an annulment,” I insisted, so nervous my voice shook.
“Don’t talk nonsense, Violeta. You’re confused. I’m your husband and it’s my duty to protect you. I’ll clean up this mess. Don’t worry, I’ll right this wrong; no one needs to know it ever happened. I’ll talk to that scoundrel.”
“This has nothing to do with Julián, it’s between you and me. We’re going to have to annul the marriage, Fabian,” I repeated for the third time.
“I’m never going to go along with that sham. We’re married in the eyes of the law and before God, society, and, above all, our families!” he stammered.
“Think about it, Fabian: An annulment would set you free too,” my brother interrupted, appearing in the doorway as soon as the tone of the conversation began to intensify.
“I don’t need to be set free! I need my wife!” he shouted, and all of a sudden his anger vanished and he slumped in his chair with his face in his hands, sobbing.
As you know, Camilo, divorce didn’t become legal in this country until the twenty-first century, when I was eighty-four years old and it was useless to me. Before, the only way out of a marriage was to get it annulled by resorting to chicanery and legalese, arguing the incompetence of the civil registry, typically by claiming an error in the bride and groom’s address. It was easy, as long as both parties agreed; all that was needed were two witnesses willing to commit perjury and an amenable judge. Fabian refused to even consider the notion, which he thought was perverse and sordid. He was sure, he said, that he could win me back, that I should give him another chance, that he’d loved me since he first laid eyes on me, that he’d never loved another woman, that without me life had no meaning. He continued baring his soul this way until his voice began to fail and his tears ran out.
José Antonio suggested that we give each other time to think, and in the meantime I would stay with him in Sacramento, to keep the family from asking too many questions.
In the end, Fabian agreed to call a truce until we’d both cooled off. It coincided with a planned trip to Argentina to inseminate nine hundred cows on a ranch in Patagonia, mixing Holstein, Jersey, and Montbéliarde breeds. He gave me a detailed explanation of the work that was totally inappropriate at that moment. He’d be gone several weeks and I’d have a chance to change my mind. When he said goodbye he gave me a kiss on the forehead and asked my brother to take care of me until he returned, to make sure I didn’t do anything crazy.
My brother called Julián at my in-laws’ farm, where he’d been invited to help break the horses. As it turned out he was a champion jumper, another of his talents I was oblivious to, and he knew so much about horses that he’d never lost money on a race.
“You’d better come straight to Sacramento, young man. We have to talk,” my brother ordered in a threatening tone that did not leave room for delay.
It was impossible to intimidate Julián Bravo. He’d spent several years risking his life during the war, loved extreme sports, had parachuted into the heart of the Amazon jungle, surfed the world’s tallest waves in Portugal, and climbed the most inaccessible Andean peaks without guide ropes. He’d danced with death. His unflagging boldness led him naturally into illicit ventures, but that was later, when he was recruited by the mafia. He didn’t answer my brother’s summons out of fear, but because he couldn’t stop thinking about me.
He arrived in Sacramento on the first train the next day, and he stayed with me the rest of the week until he had to return to the Hotel Bavaria and fly the Danes back to civilization in his seaplane.
11
Julián and I spent those days in clandestine debauchery, with nothing to do except make love and drink white wine. I didn’t offer my brother any explanations, but he understood that I could not be dissuaded and that all he could do was wait for the passion to fizzle out so I would come to my senses. I let myself sink into the delicious swamp of a desire that once satisfied was immediately rekindled; nothing could satiate my primordial thirst for that man. I imagined myself lost forever in his arms, denounced the entire world beyond that room—a frozen world, a world without him.
I stayed in his hotel room, naked or wrapped in one of his shirts—because all I had with me was what I’d been wearing when I left the Hotel Bavaria—anxiously awaiting his return, counting the minutes and hours I spent alone. They were many, because Julián couldn’t stand being shut inside and went out to go horseback riding at the Equestrian Club or on his friends’ ranches. I forgave his absences as soon as I heard his footsteps outside in the hall and saw him in the doorway, virile, smiling, damp with sweat from physical exertion, dominant, and content. The days we were together and the nights I spent pressed against his body banished all doubts and nourished my adolescent obsession with him. I surrendered myself with an absolute submission that now, in hindsight, seems inconceivable. I lost my good judgment and self-possession; nothing mattered, only him.
Afterwards, when he had to leave, I bought enough new clothes to get by and red lipstick to cheer myself up, and I moved into José Antonio’s house without any intention of returning to my previous life. I announced this to Fabian when he returned from Argentina and came to get me, carrying a bouquet of flowers. He repeated that I’d get an annulment over his dead body and asked how I was doing all on my own, since it was apparent that the damned pilot had disappeared.
Julián hadn’t vanished, as Fabian supposed. He came to see me when his work allowed, and each new encounter added a link to the chain that bound me to him with little effort on his part. After the war he had worked for a time as a commercial pilot, until he was able to buy his own seaplane and make a living transporting passengers and goods to places where there were no runways. He flew his picturesque yellow plane all around South America on private contracts. Back then, the south was known as a paradise for fishing and bird-watching, so he had plenty of clients. I counted the hours and minutes until we could be together, and marked his absences on a calendar each time he bid me farewell.
I think that my blind innocence confused Julián; he couldn’t seem to pull away from me as he had undoubtedly planned. He found himself trapped in the spider’s web of a love that did not match his adventurous lifestyle. I held on to him with the desperation of an orphan, and I refused to acknowledge the mountain of obstacles that lay ahead, but the thing that ultimately wore down his resistance was the arrival of Juan Martín.
...
In one of our private conversations, José Antonio asked me if I planned to be Julián Bravo’s lover to the end of my days. No, of course that wasn’t my plan. I planned to be his wife as soon as I could convince my stubborn legitimate husband to let me. I was so certain I’d be able to marry Julián soon that I wasn’t very careful as we frolicked in bed. We took certain measures, but not always; sometimes we used a condom and sometimes we forgot or were in too much of a hurry. I had the idea, without much basis, that I was sterile and that’s why I hadn’t had children in my marriage. The logical consequence of so much carelessness took me by surprise.
Julián found out I was pregnant during one of his visits, and the first thing he asked was whether it was Fabian’s.
“How could it be? I haven’t even seen him in five months,” I answered, offended.
Red with rage, he paced around the room accusing me of having done it on purpose, saying that if I was trying to use this to trap him I was sadly mistaken, that he would never give up his freedom. He went on and on, until he noticed me curled in a chair, crying, terrified.
He seemed to snap out of a trance; his anger quickly faded and he fell to his knees beside me, murmuring apologies, begging for my forgiveness, saying it was a shock but it was as much his fault as mine and that we could decide together how to solve the problem.
“It’s not a problem, Julián, it’s our baby,” I responded.
That shut him up. A little while later, once we’d both calmed down, Julián poured himself a glass of whiskey and confessed that in his thirty-something years of amorous adventures across four continents he’d never been faced with the prospect of becoming a father.
“So you thought you were sterile too,” I said, and we both started laughing, relieved and excited to welcome the tiny creature bobbing around inside my belly.
...
I thought that Fabian would give in when he heard the news. Why would he stay married to a woman who was pregnant with another man’s child? I asked him to meet me at a pastry shop in Sacramento so we could come to an agreement. I was nervous, mentally preparing for a fight, but he disarmed me from the outset by taking both my hands and kissing me on the forehead. He was happy to see me, he said, he’d missed me a lot. We made small talk as they served our tea, catching up on family news, and I told him about Aunt Pía, who was having stomach pains and feeling weak. Since Yaima’s rituals and remedies had proven useless, Aunt Pilar was going to bring her to the Sacramento hospital for a checkup. An uncomfortable silence followed, and I took the opportunity to tell him about my condition, blurting it out with my face hidden behind the teacup.
