Free Happy Families by Carlos Fuentes Page A

except the true truth, the external manifestation of spirit, without which the most beautiful body reveals, sooner or later, that it was simple copper painted gold, while the soul of an ugly form literally transforms it into something more beautiful than any exterior profile of the individual in question.
    These were ideas that were unfamiliar to Jesús Aníbal in his own mind and were perhaps the sediment of his listening to poetry every day on the Periférico route between El Desierto de los Leones and the Juárez district. It was another way of repeating Garcilaso from memory,
I was born for nothing but to love you,
and Góngora,
all things serve lovers,
and Pedro Salinas,
if eyes could sense your voice, oh, how I would look at you,
and Pablo Neruda,
my heart looks for her and she is not with me . . .
    When he went down to breakfast, he looked toward the courtyard and saw Valentina walking there, head bowed, again dressed in black but with one peculiarity. She was barefoot. She stepped on the grass without shoes or stockings. Jesús Aníbal had the feeling that his strange cousin, apparently a frustrated nun, just as the cousin from Monterrey had described her, was fulfilling some penitence. Until he noticed, for the first time, a smile of pleasure on her dry lips. Then he did something unusual for him. He took off his loafers and joined Valentina on the grass. He learned the reason for doing this. The coolness of the sod granted a pleasure violated by the modest crudity of shoes. Walking barefoot in the grass is not only a pleasurable act, it is also an erotic one. The earth rose like a joyful caress from his feet to his solar plexus.
    Valentina did not look at him, and Jesús Aníbal left for work with his shoes on and conscious of a dinner at home that night for the scattered relatives who were visiting them—the cousin from Nuevo León, the Veracruzan aunt, two Guadalajarans from Nayarit, Cousin Valentina from Morelia, Ana Fernanda, and himself, Jesús Aníbal. Nothing to worry about here. Ana Fernanda was the perfect homemaker, she would arrange the menu, hire the waiters, prepare the table, and assign places.
    Everything as usual. Everything normal.
    It was for this that the husband had thought up the program of family visits. Ana Fernanda was blossoming. She no longer had the single excuse of caring for Mama to turn away and distance herself from Jesús Aníbal, who was happy at first to sleep in a separate room far from the wails of Luisa Fernanda and, when the baby passed into the hands of a nurse, not to resume the ritual of the shared bed.
    Now Ana Fernanda made herself and the house attractive. She was satisfied and left him in peace. Jesús Aníbal no longer had to worry about pleasing her in bed or during a conversation at the table.
    The husband came home early to change his clothes and be on time for dinner. He went to the dining room to confirm the perfection organized by Ana Fernanda and was startled by a shout of alarm and an unusual uproar in the kitchen. He hurried in and found Valentina struggling against the siege of a young, dark, passionate waiter who was trying to embrace and kiss the cousin while she resisted with a fury diminished by the food in her mouth.
    Jesús Aníbal forcefully pushed away the waiter, slapped him in the mouth, and the boy looked at him with profound resentment but said only, “I’m leaving.”
    But before he left, he turned to speak to his employer. “Dames shouldn’t be in the kitchen when you’re working. They just make trouble.”
    “The truth is, I’m a glutton, and I felt hungry,” said Valentina, revealing another, somewhat childish side of her personality.
    “Excuse me, Señor,” the waiter continued. “I thought she wanted me to—”
    “It’s all right,” said Jesús Aníbal with a reflexive impulse. “Stay. Do your job.”
    And he looked at his cousin. “I understand.”
    It’s possible that the waiter hid a smile that continued the interrupted