“Alta cocina”

de Amparo Dávila

Cuando oigo la lluvia golpear en las ventanas vuelvo a escuchar sus gritos.
Aquellos gritos que se me pegaban a la piel como si fueran ventosas. Subían
de tono a medida que la olla se calentaba y el agua empezaba a hervir.
También veo sus ojos, unas pequeñas cuentas negras que se les salían de las
órbitas cuando se estaban cociendo. Nacían en tiempo de lluvia, en las
huertas. Escondidos entre las hojas, adheridos a los tallos, o entre la hierba
húmeda. De allí los arrancaban para venderlos, y los vendían bien caros. A tres
por cinco centavos regularmente y, cuando había muchos, a quince centavos la
docena.

En mi casa se compraban dos pesos cada semana, por ser el platillo obligado
de los domingos y, con más frecuencia, si había invitados a comer. Con este
guiso mi familia agasajaba a las visitas distinguidas o a las muy apreciadas.
“No se pueden comer mejor preparados en ningún otro sitio”, solía decir mi
madre, llena de orgullo, cuando elogiaban el platillo.

Recuerdo la sombría cocina y la olla donde los cocinaban, preparada y curtida

por un viejo cocinero francés; la cuchara de madera muy oscurecida por el uso
y a la cocinera, gorda, despiadada, implacable ante el dolor. Aquellos gritos
desgarradores no la conmovían, seguía atizando el fogón, soplando las brasas
como si nada pasara. Desde mi cuarto del desván los oía chillar. Siempre
llovía. Sus gritos llegaban mezclados con el ruido de la lluvia. No morían
pronto. Su agonía se prolongaba interminablemente. Yo pasaba todo ese
tiempo encerrado en mi cuarto con la almohada sobre la cabeza, pero aun así
los oía. Cuando despertaba, a medianoche, volvía a escucharlos. Nunca supe
si aún estaban vivos, o si sus gritos se habían quedado dentro de mí, en mi
cabeza, en mis oídos, fuera y dentro, martillando, desgarrando todo mi ser.

A veces veía cientos de pequeños ojos pegados al cristal goteante de las

ventanas. Cientos de ojos redondos y negros. Ojos brillantes, húmedos de
llanto, que imploraban misericordia. Pero no había misericordia en aquella
casa. Nadie se conmovía ante aquella crueldad. Sus ojos y sus gritos me
seguían y, me siguen aún, a todas partes. Algunas veces me mandaron a
comprarlos; yo siempre regresaba sin ellos asegurando que no había
encontrado nada. Un día sospecharon de mí y nunca más fui enviado.
Iba entonces la cocinera. Ella volvía con la cubeta llena, yo la miraba con el
desprecio con que se puede mirar al más cruel verdugo, ella fruncía la chata
nariz y soplaba desdeñosa. Su preparación resultaba ser una cosa muy
complicada y tomaba tiempo. Primero los colocaba en un cajón con pasto y les
daban una hierba rara qua ellos comían, al parecer con mucho agrado, y que
les servía de purgante. Allí pasaban un día. Al siguiente los bañaban
cuidadosamente para no lastimarlos, los secaban y los metían en
la olla llena de agua fría, hierbas de olor y especias, vinagre y sal. Cuando el
agua se iba calentando empezaban a chillar, a chillar, a chillar… Chillaban
a veces como niños recién nacidos, como ratones aplastados, como
murciélagos, como gatos estrangulados, como mujeres histéricas…
Aquella vez, la última que estuve en mi casa, el banquete fue largo y
paladeado.
The Tomb Garden
El jardín de las tumbas
by Amparo Dávila
Translated from Spanish by
Matthew Gleeson & Audrey Harris
Issue 31 Online Exclusive

A Diego de Mesa

…a la entrada de la capilla hay una inscripción en latín que yo leo siempre cuando
cruzo la puerta… La memoria fue tan fiel que sintió como si hiciera muy poco tiempo
desde la última vez que estuvo en el convento. Recordaba con toda claridad el gran patio
central con su majestuosa arquería, la capilla a un lado, el jardín, el enorme comedor con
su larga mesa, las galerías, las celdas, el escritorio de su padre, donde siempre lo
encontraba escribiendo, leyendo, pensando; la puerta que separaba el mundo de la luz y
el mundo de la sombra, el mundo de lo conocido y el mundo de lo desconocido, de aquel
misterio temido y anhelado…

…todos los veranos salimos de vacaciones y mi familia renta un viejo convento

abandonado para ir a descansar y a huir del calor de la ciudad. Yo debo haber tenido
unos cuantos meses la primera vez que me llevaron al convento y desde entonces no
hemos dejado de ir verano tras verano durante muchos años. ¡Qué felices somos mis
hermanos y yo de dejar por un tiempo el departamento de la ciudad, la escuela y las
tareas, de tener todo el día para jugar y tanto espacio!

…comenzamos a hacer planes y preparativos para las vacaciones con varios meses de
anticipación. Seleccionamos cuidadosamente los juguetes y la ropa que vamos a llevar y
ahorramos casi todo el dinero que mi padre nos da los domingos, para dulces y helados.
Con ese dinero compramos las cosas que necesitamos para nuestros juegos…

…durante el día el viejo convento es un lugar maravilloso. Las horas se nos van
jugando a la pelota en el patio central o en el jardín. Nuestro jardín fue el cementerio
de los frailes y está lleno de tumbas que sólo tienen unas lápidas de cantera al nivel del
suelo; en algunas todavía se pueden leer los nombres de los monjes, en otras están ya
borrados. Sólo hay una tumba grande con monumento, la de un obispo que, según
cuentan, vino a visitar el convento y se murió de pronto. Nosotros corremos y brincamos
sobre las tumbas atrapando ardillas o cazando mariposas; otras veces somos
exploradores en busca de grandes tesoros cuyo hallazgo nos convertirá de la noche a la
mañana en señores poderosos… No pudo menos que sonreír. La lectura del diario lo
complacía y no dejó de sentir nostalgia de aquella edad tan desprovista de malicia
literaria y de las complicaciones de la vida.

for Diego de Mesa

 

…at the entrance to the chapel there’s a Latin inscription I read every time I cross the
threshold… The memory was so precise that he felt hardly any time had passed since the
last time he’d been in the monastery. He remembered with utter clarity the large central
patio with its majestic arches, the chapel on one side, the garden, the huge dining room
with its long table, the galleries, the cells; his father’s desk, where he always found him
writing, reading, thinking; the door that separated the world of daylight from the world
of shadow, the known from the feared, longed-for unknown…

…every summer we go on vacation and my family rents an old abandoned monastery

where we relax and get away from the heat of the city. I must have been just a few
months old the first time they brought me to the monastery, and since then we’ve come
every year without missing a single summer. My brothers and I are so happy to leave the
apartment in the city for a while, to escape school and homework, to have the whole day
for playing and so much space!

…we start making plans and getting ready for summer vacation months beforehand. We
carefully pick out the toys and clothes we’re going to bring, and we save almost all the
money Father gives us on Sundays for candy and ice cream. We use this money to buy
the things we need for our games…

…during the day the old monastery is an incredible place. The hours fly by while we
play ball in the main patio or the garden. Our garden was the monks’ cemetery, and it’s
full of graves that are marked only by gravestones set in the dirt; on some of them you
can still read the monks’ names, others are already worn away. There’s only one big
tomb with a monument, which people say belongs to a bishop who came to visit the
monastery and died suddenly. We run and jump over the graves, catching squirrels or
chasing butterflies; other times we’re explorers in search of great treasures which, if we
find them, will turn us into rich and powerful lords overnight… He couldn’t help
smiling. Reading the diary pleased him, and he still felt nostalgia for that time of life
when he had been so innocent of literary concerns and life’s complications. He had kept
it from the age of nine to sixteen, and it was divided in two parts: the first contained
episodes from his childhood and the second the beginning of his life as a young man.
He’d stopped writing the diary when he left for France. He’d felt then that he was
moving on to a more serious stage of life and that the diary was a sign of adolescence…

…when night falls everything wears a different face. Our castle (we pretend the
monastery is a fairy-tale castle) transforms into a series of long, dark galleries
submerged in silence. Nothing could make us go into the garden or cross the main patio
alone; in the moonlight they’re filled with terrifying, monstrous shadows. The peach and
almond trees sway in the wind like specters swooping down on us… Marcos lit a
cigarette and stoked the fire in the fireplace; winter was coming and the nights were
growing cold. He had come home to his apartment intending to finish the essay he’d
promised Pablo for his journal, and while looking up some bibliographic references he
had found the old diary. And now he didn’t feel like working. Really, he felt too tired to
try to write. It had been a long day— just thinking about everything he’d done exhausted
him…
…my brothers and I have always been sure that the treasure the monks buried when they
left the monastery is in the bishop’s tomb. We excavate around the sides of the
monument, trying to tunnel our way to the bishop’s coffin. We take turns digging, and
one of us, or a friend, climbs a tree to keep watch for any intruder who might tell our
parents on us. When they call us to come eat, we carefully cover the holes with branches
and dirt so no one will suspect what we’re doing and beat us to the treasure…

…we’ve never reached the bishop’s coffin because the holes we dig one day are full of
dirt again the next. If we ever reach it, I wonder if we’ll be brave enough to open it; no
doubt the treasure’s there, but so is the bishop, eaten by worms, his eyes gone, and just
the thought of him is too much for us. Just for desecrating his tomb, he comes for me
every night…

…we have dinner at seven; our father sits at the head of the long table. We children
aren’t allowed to speak, and we always eat in silence. When we finish, Father gives
thanks for the dinner, the day we’ve lived through, and many other things. Then we say
goodnight and go upstairs to bed. I go first because I’m the youngest, and we each carry
a candle. Both of my brothers sleep in the same cell; I sleep alone. Our nanny Jacinta
comes with me and stays while I undress; once I’m in bed she blows out the candle and
leaves the cell. Then the night of terror begins for me, and I don’t know, I’ll never know,
if it’s the same for my brothers. I’ve never been able to tell them how scared I feel or
anything about what happens to me at night; I’m afraid they’ll make fun of me and give
me some ridiculous, embarrassing nickname. I want to shout to my nanny not to leave
me alone, not to blow out the candle, but I’m too ashamed to say a word… At forty years
old he still couldn’t conquer his fear of the dark. He felt lost in the dark and sometimes
found himself paralyzed—he always felt like he was about to stumble into something, or
he had the strange sensation that he wasn’t in his house, or wherever he’d been when the
lights went out, that he was in another unfamiliar place where presences surrounded him,
pressing in on him, coming closer and closer…

…the shadowy world of darkness and growing silence casts its spell on me when I’m
alone in the cell, a cold and sticky sweat trickles down my forehead, my heart beats
loudly, and a thousand shadows stir. I shrink into my bed until I’m curled into a ball and
pull the blankets up to my nose. I try to think about Christmas or my birthday, about
school prizes, but it’s useless, nothing can distract me or calm my fears. I can never
close my eyes, because I sense that this increases the danger. Time slows down, and the
nights are eternal. Shadows coming and going, murmurs, footsteps, the rustle of monks’
habits, flutterings, dragging chains, whispered prayers, low moans, an icy wind cutting
me to the bone, and then the bishop without a face before me, his face gone, his eyes
gone, empty… Sometimes he would wake up suddenly in the middle of the night; the
faint light of the moon or the streetlights filtering in through the blinds would have a
bluish tinge, almost metallic, and everything would begin to spin inside that disturbing
atmosphere. His heart would beat violently and a cold fright would course through him,
finally paralyzing him completely when he realized he wasn’t alone—that someone
seated in front of his bed was staring at him with empty eye sockets, piercing him to the
soul… An eternity of anguish and unbearable dread would pass before his mind began
working again and he discovered, or rather understood, that the bishop was only the
clothes he’d left flung over the chair…
…when the first light of day starts to seep in through the skylight in the cell, the bishop
leaves, together with the shadows and noises. The terror of night fades away, and I
begin to recognize the cell and all my things. I stretch out in bed for the first time all
night, my arms and legs lose their stiffness, and I fall right to sleep. Soon Jacinta´s voice
wakes me…

…I’d like to know how my brothers’ nights are, if they’re anything like mine. But I’ve
never dared to ask. At breakfast they’re always fresh and happy, full of plans for the
day. Sometimes my mother notices how pale I am, and how I can’t keep from yawning.
“Are you sick, dear, did you sleep poorly?” And she looks me over carefully. I rush to
assure her that I’m very well and that I slept all night. As I speak, I feel myself turning
red, scared my own voice will give me away. I could never bear my parents asking me
questions and my brothers mocking me. “So you’re scared of ghosts? And what kind of
ghosts are they, son?” I can almost hear my father’s voice and I can even imagine his
smile… He still didn’t know much about his brothers—they cared about each other and
respected each other in everything, they sought each other out regularly and chatted
easily together, but there had always been a kind of inner barrier he couldn’t break
through. Maybe he lived wrapped up in his own world and wasn’t interested in being
part of theirs. “I wish you were simpler, like your brothers, you live too much inside
yourself, my dear,” his mother often told him. “I’d love to know what goes on in your
world!” His world was his alone, perpetually full of unease, distress over everything and
nothing, anxiety that grew over the years, restlessness, constant boredom with what he
had or the desire for something different, going back and forth looking for a place he
couldn’t find, a sense of peace he never found, his loneliness a constant burden. Not
even his work helped—only while he was producing it did it belong to him, afterward it
might as well be someone else’s, so remote, as if it hadn’t been created by him…

II

…every night I leave the monastery. While everyone is sleeping I slip out without a
sound. I still can’t get over the fear of seeing or sensing the bishop there in the muffled
darkness of the cell, the bishop without a face who stalked me for so many years, when
all I could do was spend the night frozen with terror…He must have been about sixteen
when he began to sneak out at night. He still remembered the excitement of his first
breathless escapes, and his fear of being caught by his parents…

…I pretend to go to bed so no one will suspect me, and when everything’s quiet I hurry
out of the monastery. In the town tavern I have a few drinks with the campesino boys—I
need this to whip up my courage. I feel very self-conscious in front of them, they’re so
decisive and direct in everything they do. At first they didn’t really accept me, but little
by little I’ve been able to gain their trust and respect…

Last night he’d drunk a lot, stupidly; he felt angry remembering it. The get-together had
been going along very pleasantly and everyone was happy. José was definitely a great
conversationalist, full of irony, prone to making fun of himself and everyone else. But
suddenly that joke José made bothered him; knowing him as well as he did, Marcos was
sure he’d already made everyone else laugh at his expense before. He tensed up and
started tossing back drink after drink until he fell into a stupor. It was always the same;
for one reason or another, or for no reason at all, he drank like a sponge. It used to be out
of shyness—“getting up the courage,” as he thought when he was sixteen—but later…

…I can definitely say I live a double life—by day I’m one person in the monastery with
my parents and brothers, and by night in the tavern I’m another. There I drink, play
cards, dance foxtrot and danzón, and I end the night in Carmen’s narrow bed… He
couldn’t explain how despite his great shyness then, when just being around one of his
brothers’ girl friends made him blush, he’d sought out the body of a woman to escape
the solitude of the night. He still felt that sensation of being the sole survivor of a
shipwreck: no voices, no warmth, like falling suddenly into death, solitude of the body
and solitude inside, emptiness, darkness, crushing silence. The dread of being alone had
always haunted him and always would. Often, when he was already on his way home to
sleep, well into the night, after having been at some party, his terror assailed him. He
wouldn’t go home—he’d duck into the first bar or café he found open and wait patiently
there, having drinks or sipping coffee, until day broke. Often it was six or seven in the
morning when he finally arrived at his apartment to find the doorwoman sweeping the
sidewalk outside. “Must have been quite a party, young man.” And she’d look at him
suspiciously…

…last night they almost caught me. Matilde came out of the kitchen when I thought
she’d already gone to bed. I pressed myself against a pillar, almost embedding myself in
it, and held my breath. Luckily the wind blew out her candle. She muttered something
between her teeth and turned around to light it. I’ve never run so fast in my life. Just
thinking they might have caught me and I wouldn’t be able to sneak out at night
anymore, I felt sick. In the tavern everyone noticed. “You look like you got a good
scare,” said Jacobo when he saw me, and he made me swallow a bunch of wine without
stopping for air…

…if my mother knew where I spend my nights, it would upset her terribly and she
wouldn’t understand. Mothers are never ready to let their children stop being children.
Sometimes when I kiss her goodnight I’m overcome with guilt and remorse for lying to
her, but as soon as I enter the cell, all I want is to run away as fast as I can…

…the brawl last night was dangerous, and it’s lucky I didn’t come out of it with a huge
bruise on my face. I shouldn’t have stepped in, but if I hadn’t, everyone would have
looked down on me and I’d never be able to go back to the tavern again. All day I felt
bad, sore and tired, and I didn’t feel like doing anything…

…I’m not in love with Carmen, I have a feeling love should be something different.
During the day I hardly even think of her and I don’t feel any need to see her; I wouldn’t
even know what to talk about with her. And it’s not that she’s ugly—all the boys think
she’s pretty. Sometimes I think I won’t go looking for her anymore, but I can´t leave her,
the night doesn’t scare me when I’m by her side, her body is like a refuge… He still
believed that love should be something other than this; every time he broke things off
with someone he repeated the same thing to himself and hoped it would be different next
time, but he was tired now—why not admit it?—tired of so many cheap conquests, , of
finding pleasure for pleasure’s sake and nothing more. How he envied his brothers
sometimes! And certain friends too, people who found a woman and anchored
themselves—they were happy with their small daily lives, which might lack excitement
but brought them security and company, not this overwhelming loneliness that grew ever
bigger and harder to fill, this wandering around with nowhere to go like a stray dog,
even if his address book was filled with the names and phone numbers of a thousand
women who meant no more for the most part than a brief fling or a caprice. He felt cold,
felt the need to have someone there, a dog, a cat, a familiar face, even if it weren’t true
love or a great passion; just some company, to hear footsteps, hear something fall and
break, someone else’s breathing, the warmth of a body mingling with his in sleep, a
warmth so familiar it felt like his own. He felt colder; he poured himself a glass of
cognac and drew closer to the fireplace. He began to look over his books, his records, his
collections of pipes and stamps, the thousand objects he’d accumulated over the years,
all those things he’d bought to give the apartment a sense of home; there he sat in the
middle of that static world, distressingly alone. He drank one cognac, then another; the
clock of a distant church struck three in the morning. He yawned, he was tired, reading
those diaries had stirred up many things inside him that he preferred to ignore because he
had no solution for them. He undressed and got into bed. Before turning out the light, he
organized his plans for the next day: breakfast with X, then go to the tailor, pick up the
books he’d ordered at the bookstore, eat lunch somewhere, and sit down to work all
afternoon and part of the night until he finished the essay. He slept deeply then.

The daylight entered triumphantly through the skylight in the cell.

“I thought you were up and dressed already. Look at you, taking advantage of your
parents going into town today,” said Jacinta. “But I’ll tell them how lazy you’ve been
when they get back.”

Marcos opened his eyes with great effort and looked at Jacinta through the mist of sleep.

“And don’t give me that look like a dying lamb, I don’t feel sorry for you at all. Get up
quick, your brothers are already eating breakfast,” Jacinta went on.

The boy stirred in bed, yawning, and as he awoke and his mind began to clear, he felt an
enormous sense of relief when he saw that another harrowing night had fortunately
ended, and it was day again.