The Lazarus Rumba Read Online Free PDF Page A

see what a desgraciado you have for a father.”
    â€œSecond floor, first door on your right,” the old woman called to them, then she tightened her shawl around her and murmured to herself: “Yo no, yo me quedo aquí. I don’t care how wet I get. This is one story I do not want to know.”
    Doña Adela hurled that first door open with a violence that startled her more than it did the petite woman in the light blue peignoir sitting on the edge of the iron and brass bed where Teodoro was lying, except for the bareness of his feet (the toes like black grapes), fully dressed. He stirred and raised his head: “Alicia … Adela, my pink and yellow sunflowers. How did you get so wet? Have you been to the sea? Come, come, sit by me on this side, hold my other hand. Don’t fight, por favor, don’t fight, for me, for the father of your daughters.”
    Renata la Blanquita did not move, her eyes fixed on the wife whose life she had in so many prayers cursed. Her skin was like a smoked glass through which doña Adela imagined she could see the gross fist of her heart, and when she spoke her voice fluttered like a trapped moth: “He always talks to me about you and your daughter. I hate when he does that. But I never once let him know. Es un hombre bueno.”
    Doña Adela said nothing as she moved towards the bed and began to lift her husband up. When Renata resisted, holding him down, saying that this bed is where he wanted to die, Teodoro waved his hand at her and told her to have some respect for his wife, to be quiet.
    â€œDon’t fight. I am going now. Así es, a man dies in his own home, with his own wife and his own daughter. ¿Qué voy a hacer?”
    Renata said nothing more. She let go of him and with measured steps backed off into a far corner of the room, her hands over her mouth, her eyes brimming with a flood of tears that no levee of pride could hold back, and watched her lover stumble out of the room with his arm around his wife, watched and said nothing more.
    When they got to the door, Teodoro leaned heavily on his wife and turned to face his mistress: “Why are you weeping, woman? Is it for yourself or for me? I can’t tell. If it’s for me, don’t bother, don’t waste your tears. I don’t deserve them. … Do you want to come? Then come. We can all be together at last. What law have I broken in loving more than once? Why all this grief for someone who loved twice? Go, woman, find your daughter and come.”
    Renata did not move, did not answer.
    Doña Adela fixed a hold on her husband’s arms. She spoke (like the Lord on certain afternoons) in hisses: “No one is coming, you crazy old man, except you. Solo, solo morirás si sigues así.”
    Teodoro nodded and turned around. When he spoke again, his back to his mistress, still leaning heavily on his wife, both women thought that he was speaking to her
and
the other at the same time. “That’s right … that’s right, this is how it must end. (What was I thinking?) In your own bed, with your own wife and your own daughter. I love you, woman, let my life be a proof of that and not this my errant death. I am stuck. I am stuck. Only one step more.”
    And they were out of the room. In her rage, doña Adela had not noticed that Alicia had gone from her, and when she went to ask her for her husband’s shoes, there was no one there. She left Teodoro standing with a tight grip on the banister, warning him not to go back into that room. He mumbled to her of the need for a man to die in his own bed, in his own home. She climbed a narrow staircase to the attic and pushed the half-open door slowly and peered in.
    Two girls were sitting on the dusty floor, cross-legged, holding hands. They had been waiting, staring wide-eyed, brows furrowed, at the half-open door, as if expecting one of the witches from the old woman’s stories to burst through. One