Free Happy Families by Carlos Fuentes

Valentina, kissing her first on one cheek and then on the other, but between the two kisses, because of a movement of their heads, he kissed her lips, too.
    He laughed. Not the cousin. She moved away, not blushing but with severity. In Jesús Aníbal’s sense of smell, there remained a bitter, peppery trace, redeemed by a scent of musk and the cleanliness of a soap shop.
    Standing, her hands crossed at her lower abdomen, dressed all in black in a long skirt and low boots, long sleeves and an unadorned neckline, Cousin Valentina Sorolla looked at the world from an imperturbable distance. Nothing seemed to move her regular features—too regular, as if minted for a coin commemorating the Bourbons, that is, only in profile. Because in order to look to the side, Valentina had no reason to move her head, since her eyes were separated on two equal sides by her sharp commemorative profile.
    Nothing in her betrayed wit, mischief, or bad temper. She was a severe mask of severe absence from the external world. Like her body, her face was thin. Skin attached to bone with no obstruction except skin struggling to fuse with bone or bone yearning to reveal itself in skin.
    All her hair pulled back into a chignon, a broad forehead and deep temples, a long nose that was inquisitive despite herself—a quiver betrayed her—and a dry, lipless mouth, shut like a money box with no opening. What coin could penetrate it, what brush clean her teeth, what kiss excite her tongue?
    Cousin Valentina made the round of greetings with the silence of a distant bird in the sky, and Jesús Aníbal wondered about the reason for the uneasiness he felt when he looked at her. The fact was that Valentina did not resemble any of the relatives, either Quiroz or Sorolla, who had visited them. It was clear that, as the saying goes, she “ate separately.”
    Supper confirmed this. While the aunt from Veracruz, that sparkling conversationalist, narrated the chronicles of the Veracruzan carnival and the Monterreyan nephew, a fanatic about himself, recounted operations in high finance, Cousin Valentina remained silent as an uneasy Jesús Aníbal dared to embark on a conversation doomed to failure, though he certainly attempted to at least catch the eye of this peculiar relative. When he succeeded, it was he who looked away. In Valentina’s eyes, he found a prayer for respite, the look of a woman conscious of her ugliness and fearful of ridicule.
    That was when a
protective
attraction was born in the young husband, one that no other member of a family shaped by confidence in itself, from the extremes of pious devotion (we shall go to heaven) to professional success (we shall go to the bank), seemed to need, much less request, and certainly not from
gachupines
who came to Mexico, according to the popular saying, in espadrilles and a Basque beret.
    Jesús Aníbal laughed to himself and looked at his cousin with a complicit air. Were they the two strangers in the bosom of this family, the displaced persons, the exiles?
    Who, in reality, was Valentina Sorolla? Jesús Aníbal fell asleep with the question and had disturbing dreams, sometimes physically obscene, sometimes far too spiritual, though he eventually overcame their evanescence with one certainty: His cousin appeared in all of them.
    When he was awake, during the daily masculine ritual of lather and razor that for certain men is the best time for reflection and planning, the young husband thought that his wife’s beauty was evident just as his cousin’s ugliness was evident.
    However, in that very contrast, Jesús Aníbal found an obvious reflection that, once it was freed, took swiftly to the air. Who tells us what thing or person is beautiful or ugly? Who determines the laws of ugliness and beauty? Is a form beautiful that cannot manifest as anything more than form but dares to present itself as spirit? On the other hand, can a form be ugly that is clearly inhabited by spirit? And what gives soul to the form