Read Online Years With Laura Diaz, The by Carlos Fuentes - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Carlos Fuentes
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filled with china hand-decorated with scenes from the Napoleonic Wars, some of them edged with gold reliefs in the form of garlands.
A sort of antechamber or pantry, as Fernando called it, again in English: this connected the dining room and the kitchen redolent with herbs, stews, and tropical fruits that dripped with juice when cut in half, a kitchen of braziers and griddles, where the fire under the skillets and pots required untiring hands waving straw fans to keep it alive. Nothing satisfied Doña Leticia more than going from one brick-and-iron oven to the next, steadily fanning the embers to keep the broths, the rice, the sauces bubbling as she stirred them, while the Indian women from the Zongolica mountains made tortillas and the little black man Zampaya watered the flowerpots in the corridors, muttering a hymn to himself:
Black Zampayita’s dance,
you can see it in a glance,
will surely cure your every pain,
even help you weight to gain.
Sometimes, little Laura, with her head in her mother’s lap, would listen delightedly, for the thousandth time, to the story of how her parents met at the Candlemas festival in Tlacotalpan, a doll-house-sized village where on February 2 everyone, even the old-timers, would come at the sound of clarinets and guitars to dance on wooden floors in the plazas next to the Papaloapan River, along which passes the Virgin, from boat to boat, while all the neighbors bet on whether the Mother of God has the same hairdo as last year, hair that once belonged to Dulce María Estévez, or whether it was the hair given to her, at great sacrifice, by María Elena Muñoz. After all, every year the Virgin was supposed to have a fresh new hairdo, and it was a great honor for decent young ladies to sacrifice their hair to St. Mary.
Rows of men on horseback take off their hats when the Virgin passes, but the Veracruz widower Don Fernando Díaz, now thirty-three years old, has eyes only for the tall, slender, extremely refined Miss Leticia Kelsen (ask, and anyone will tell you), dressed in a stiff, white, parchmentlike fabric and barefoot, at the age of sixteen, not because she lacks shoes but because (as she explained to Fernando when he offered her his arm so she wouldn’t slip in the mud along the riverbank) in Tlacotalpan the greatest pleasure is to walk barefoot on grassy streets. Did he know any other city with grass growing in the streets? No, laughed Fernando, and he himself, to the glee and shock of the citizens of Tlacotalpan, took off his boots with complicated hooks and eyes and his red-and-white-striped socks that sent Miss Leticia into paroxysms of laughter.
“They look like clown socks!”
He blushed and blamed himself for having done something so alien to his regular, measured habits. She fell in love with him right on the spot, because he took off his shoes and turned as red as the stripes on his socks.
“What happened next, what happened next?” asked Laura, who knew the story by heart.
“No one can describe that town, you have to see it,” added her father.
“What’s it like, what’s it like?”
“Like a toy,” Doña Leticia went on. “All the houses are one story high, all even, but each one is painted a different color.”
“Blue, pink, green, red, orange, white, yellow, violet …” enumerated the child.
“The most beautiful walls in the world,” concluded her father, lighting up a cigar.
“A little toy village …”
Now that they had the big house in the port of Veracruz, the Kelsen sisters came to visit, and Don Fernando would tease them: Weren’t you three going to get married as soon as Leticia, Laura, and I got back together?
“And who would take care of María de la O?”
“They’ve always got an excuse,” laughed Don Fernando.
“That’s the absolute truth,” María de la O agreed with him. “I’ll stay and take care of my father. Hilda and Virginia can go and get married whenever they like.”
“I don’t need a husband,”
A sort of antechamber or pantry, as Fernando called it, again in English: this connected the dining room and the kitchen redolent with herbs, stews, and tropical fruits that dripped with juice when cut in half, a kitchen of braziers and griddles, where the fire under the skillets and pots required untiring hands waving straw fans to keep it alive. Nothing satisfied Doña Leticia more than going from one brick-and-iron oven to the next, steadily fanning the embers to keep the broths, the rice, the sauces bubbling as she stirred them, while the Indian women from the Zongolica mountains made tortillas and the little black man Zampaya watered the flowerpots in the corridors, muttering a hymn to himself:
Black Zampayita’s dance,
you can see it in a glance,
will surely cure your every pain,
even help you weight to gain.
Sometimes, little Laura, with her head in her mother’s lap, would listen delightedly, for the thousandth time, to the story of how her parents met at the Candlemas festival in Tlacotalpan, a doll-house-sized village where on February 2 everyone, even the old-timers, would come at the sound of clarinets and guitars to dance on wooden floors in the plazas next to the Papaloapan River, along which passes the Virgin, from boat to boat, while all the neighbors bet on whether the Mother of God has the same hairdo as last year, hair that once belonged to Dulce María Estévez, or whether it was the hair given to her, at great sacrifice, by María Elena Muñoz. After all, every year the Virgin was supposed to have a fresh new hairdo, and it was a great honor for decent young ladies to sacrifice their hair to St. Mary.
Rows of men on horseback take off their hats when the Virgin passes, but the Veracruz widower Don Fernando Díaz, now thirty-three years old, has eyes only for the tall, slender, extremely refined Miss Leticia Kelsen (ask, and anyone will tell you), dressed in a stiff, white, parchmentlike fabric and barefoot, at the age of sixteen, not because she lacks shoes but because (as she explained to Fernando when he offered her his arm so she wouldn’t slip in the mud along the riverbank) in Tlacotalpan the greatest pleasure is to walk barefoot on grassy streets. Did he know any other city with grass growing in the streets? No, laughed Fernando, and he himself, to the glee and shock of the citizens of Tlacotalpan, took off his boots with complicated hooks and eyes and his red-and-white-striped socks that sent Miss Leticia into paroxysms of laughter.
“They look like clown socks!”
He blushed and blamed himself for having done something so alien to his regular, measured habits. She fell in love with him right on the spot, because he took off his shoes and turned as red as the stripes on his socks.
“What happened next, what happened next?” asked Laura, who knew the story by heart.
“No one can describe that town, you have to see it,” added her father.
“What’s it like, what’s it like?”
“Like a toy,” Doña Leticia went on. “All the houses are one story high, all even, but each one is painted a different color.”
“Blue, pink, green, red, orange, white, yellow, violet …” enumerated the child.
“The most beautiful walls in the world,” concluded her father, lighting up a cigar.
“A little toy village …”
Now that they had the big house in the port of Veracruz, the Kelsen sisters came to visit, and Don Fernando would tease them: Weren’t you three going to get married as soon as Leticia, Laura, and I got back together?
“And who would take care of María de la O?”
“They’ve always got an excuse,” laughed Don Fernando.
“That’s the absolute truth,” María de la O agreed with him. “I’ll stay and take care of my father. Hilda and Virginia can go and get married whenever they like.”
“I don’t need a husband,”
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