Constancia and Other Stories for Virgins Read Online Free PDF Page B

tennis and squash, even though I knew those sports were good for my circulation: Constancia felt games should be left to the young and were dangerous for older people. Nor did I dare propose a program of jogging (besides, a number of my acquaintances had died with their Adidases on, in the course of those untimely trials).
    In that way, I tried to show Constancia that old age is a series of renunciations of what we loved when we were young. I made myself into an example, but when I had done so, I realized that Constancia refused to follow my lead, and, in fact, she gave up nothing. She was always the same, or it might be better to say she still led the same life. She kept house, complaining about the lack of good servants in the United States but making no real effort to obtain domestic help; she saw no one but me, so she did not speak English (and had never wanted to learn it); she punched the buttons of the television set, without watching any particular program for very long; she went to Mass, said her prayers at night, and then delivered herself to a sexual pleasure that would have seemed almost indecent if it hadn’t been preceded by hours of prayer, Constancia kneeling before the votive candles and the image of the Macarena … She broke too many rules, only to convert the exceptions into routines. It annoyed me sometimes, made me ask myself: Why not get a servant and stop complaining? For me, though, staying out of domestic affairs left me time to read, and reading transforms everything, raising it to a higher level of existence, beyond stupid routines.
    There’s an entire library here, don’t you realize? I said to her one day, a first-rate library, I assure you, really choice, there are things in it that would interest even an uneducated woman. Has it ever occurred to you to go into the library and read a book, Constancia? Do you believe I’ll always be satisfied with your daytime domesticity and your nighttime passion? When we are old, what are we going to talk about, you and I?
    She screamed, ran to her room, again the cloister, and now, twenty or thirty years after my affront, here we are holding hands, both of us old now, and talking, not of books, but of our life together.
    This unshakable faith in love, love, our love, might it not be just as much an affront as suggesting that she anticipate her menopause or make a little effort to fill the gaps in her vast Andalusian ignorance? I have said that she was not prepared to give up anything in exchange for my ever-increasing discipline, and in this disparity I saw a profound reflection of our religions: discipline (mine) in return for nothing (hers). And yet, without ever exchanging words on the subject, she acted as if I should thank her for her unreserved availability, her freely giving of herself. This exasperated my Calvinist genes, even though I knew that it was precisely this quality that made my woman so attractive to me. Her library was her prayer, or an exceptional song, or an unexpected danger.
    I saw her from a distance one afternoon, seated on a bench facing the river in Emmett Park. I had been at the hotel buying a pack of cigarettes and was returning home along River Street. I saw her sitting on the bench facing the river and thought, what luck, I will surprise her. Then a young black man, about thirty years old, strong, vigorous, sat down beside Constancia. She looked at the river. He stared down at his tennis shoes with a fixed look. I went a little closer, clutching the cellophane of my cigarette pack. They didn’t see me. The black man spoke to my wife. She looked at the river. I said to myself in a low voice, hoping she might somehow hear me at that distance:
    â€”Don’t show fear. By all you hold dear! If he senses you’re afraid, he might attack. Fear incites them.
    Now the black turned to face Constancia, speaking to her insolently. I was going to run to her. Then I noticed that she was answering him, without