The Lazarus Rumba Read Online Free PDF

wore a rubber raincoat with the hood thrown back and galoshes, the other a knee-length white summer dress and leather sandals. Aside from that, they were unimaginably similar; both had the black-black hair that had once been the color of their father’s. (It was not until the year of doña Adela’s pregnancy that his hair and his eyebrows went from the color of coal in January to the color of cigarette ashes on the day his daughter arrived—though Renata had surmised that it was the dire knowledge that with the birth of his daughter he could never leave his wife that made his shock of hair turn gray just like that.) Both had fair skin (though not pale like a yanqui’s, but colored, colored in subtle peach-blossom primrose tones), dark eyes and little noses, and thick lips that looked as if they had been wet with the juice of a strawberry, a face like his, his, the father’s—(Where was the mark of the wife or the mistress in these frightened angelic faces? Had both loved the father so much that they were unwilling to leave any mark on their own daughters?)—whom doña Adela’s mother had warned about on the day of her engagement, proclaiming that it was a dangerous thing when the groom was more beautiful than the bride, when his unpainted face put to shame any beauty mask the bride would wear (
Not even a pansy’s face
, the old bitter woman had said from behind the shadow of her mosquitero, on that day that, up to that point near midnight, before she burst into her mother’s room with the news, had been the happiest of the young Adela’s life,
is as naturally gorgeous as the face of that hunk of man who has asked you to marry him. Cuidado, mijita, such beautiful men end up either as absent husbands, o bueno, que Dios te proteja … maricones
). And though one girl, doña Adela knew, was a year older, they seemed no more than hours apart in age, as if one had stalled and the other hurried her journey to womanhood, a journey almost ended now, with the sisters hand in hand, sitting cross-legged in an attic, terrified of the sounds beyond a half-opened door, of the grief they knew, one day, as women would be theirs, two girls, so alike they could have been sisters born of the same woman.
    â€œBuenas,” the one girl that was not her daughter said. “I am Marta.”
    â€œI know,” doña Adela would have liked to say, and take her, this child that haunted her Tuesday siestas (that in those nightmares sometimes became her husband, sometimes her own daughter, sometimes herself, lying expectant of torment), in her arms and hold her tight, till she melded into her own body, but she didn’t, she remained cordial, stern: “Buenas,” she answered and then turned to her daughter. “Alicia, we are leaving now, grab your father’s shoes and come.”
    Alicia obeyed, and when she got to the half-opened door she turned and waved to her sister, who remained cross-legged, alone in the attic and could not wave back.
    When they tried to put the shoes on Teodoro he became agitated and kicked his legs and almost fell over the banister: “No, no, damn it! I will go barefoot. I have always hated shoes and now I hate them even more. What good are shoes where I am going?” Doña Adela relented. She took off her raincoat and put it on him and they slowly made it down the stairs, out the front door, and down the porchsteps. Teodoro turned and spoke to the old woman still sitting in her rocking chair, her hair hanging over her face, wet and loosened by the rain, her lavender dress sticking to her bony shins: “Adios, vieja,” he said. “You have been kind to me.”
    â€œAdios, hombre,” the old woman answered, her voice shivery, “how could I not be kind? Coño, I was half in love with you myself. You’re going to make a beautiful corpse! Women are going to start wanting to make love to the dead.”
    Doña Adela pulled