When she ran into Santiago Laguna on the fourth-floor landing that Saturday morning, she recognized him as the young man she had seen through the window at lunch the day before. This time, however, she saw his eyes up close, and a poem of her grandmother’s sprang to mind. It was about a young man who bathed in a sacred lake and was punished by a genie, forever condemned to bear the weight of the lake’s turquoise water in his eyes. Úrsula smiled stiffly; an invisible string between her stomach and her lips tugged at the sight of the handsomest man she had ever seen standing before her.
“I’m Santiago Laguna, your new neighbor,” he said, unable to hide his idolatry.
His voice sounded timid—gone was the depth with which he usually dominated his conquests. She was the only thing left in his heart, sheathed in a strappy dress. The entire world was reduced to their two stomachs. Úrsula thought he looked like an enchanting bird, though there was an air of torment about him, as if he had been locked in a cage.
“I’ll see you around, then.”
Santiago’s scar began to throb. Úrsula’s voice, asking him to take her to Scarlet Manor, pounded in his temples. He was lost in memory as she walked to her door, jingling her keys.
“Wait. Will you sign this for me?”
Santiago hurried to pull Úrsula’s most recent book,
Evening
Passions on the Divan,
out of his grocery bag and hand it to her. He had bought it that morning after breakfast with Isidro, after contemplating Saint Pantaleon’s still-liquid blood at the exact moment he asked the guard to reveal her identity, first hearing her name before that glorious relic.
“Have you read my other books?”
“No, but I’ve heard of you. I mean, I’ve seen you before.”
“Really? Where?”
“You know, I’m going to bake you a cake—I’m an excellent cook. I’ll bring it over and tell you everything then.” The Santiago with a sheen of arrogance from his messianic days was back.
Úrsula wrote “May the genie never take pity on your eyes” as she glanced sidelong at him.
“What genie is that?”
“I’ll tell you when you bring me that cake.”
Santiago’s hands were soon immersed in a bowl of egg yolks. He opened the window wide. The last time he’d cooked was when Olvido was alive. He added flour, sugar, and a pinch of salt to the yolks, his hands mixing the ingredients, transforming them into a dough. He dipped his right index and middle finger in, smeared a bit on one nipple to test the consistency. It was perfect. He kissed that bit of dough and combined it with the rest. He knew Úrsula was watching from her window, in plain sight. She watched him with interest at first, becoming more intent on the ripple of his hands, the thickness of his lips, the drops of sweat on his brow, an anatomy she began to intuit by staring at his temples, his cheekbones, his chin. She was sweating, too, as late-July heat baked the courtyard with its silent pipes. She, too, could feel the soft dough. Santiago opened a mesh bag of lemons and grated one until a little mountain of zest formed. He stared at it with awe, as if observing a landscape he could run his fingers through, smell, and suck. So he did. Then he put the zest in the dough and rolled it out on the counter, painting Úrsula’s face with more yolk. She had never seen such technique; this was a ritual that made her want to eat the cook, not the cake. She had never seen anyone bake with such love, a love that was solid, liquid, and gas, a love that crossed the inner patio to enlarge the corollas on her petunias, her windowsill becoming a jungle that gave way to the inevitable.
That night, on his way to perform at the café, Santiago felt as if someone nearby was weeping bitterly for him. The unexpected drama made him feel uncomfortable, caused his skin to tense, turning it frosty under the asphyxiating embers of bats plastering the Madrid sky. Walking down Calle de las Huertas, he wondered if it were scientifically possible for the dead to cry in a process to eliminate waste or something like that. He mused on whether only the recently departed could cry or those who had been dead for a long time, cemetery subsoil becoming secret marshland. These were the thoughts consuming him when he arrived at the café, his skin still icy cold. The usual bartender served him his whiskey and kissed him on the lips. Santiago took several gulps as lights flickered onstage, a reminder that they were waiting for him.
He climbed onto the stage and told a story about the sea. He rushed through it, accelerating storms, making mermaids capricious, drowning sailors without any consideration at all. He even introduced a traitor, like when Ezequiel Montes came into his life, someone to blame all misfortune on and finish the story before it was done. He felt the scar on his wrist burn with impatience under the moonlike warmth of the lights. All he wanted was to get home and bring Úrsula the cake. He had napped while it was in the oven, then showered, put on a shirt to look more like a man than a boy, and brought it to her. He rang the bell. No answer. He waited and rang the bell again, listening to the most painful silence through the door. He looked for her through the windows, seeing nothing but the jungle-filled sill. He was so frightened by the thought of her sudden disappearance that he had to fight the desire to cut himself to prove this was not a dream.
From his place onstage, Santiago saw Isidro on a barstool with a beer, looking like the good, solitary man he was. Over the years, the security guard’s eyes had grown bigger from watching TV, his soul Caribbean from countless soaps. Santiago suspected a rocky young love in his past, for his skin would become striped like a tiger’s whenever he heard a romantic story, an unmistakable sign of melancholy that could be cured only by shouting himself hoarse at Atlético matches. A woman with a white scarf covering her hair had sat down beside Isidro but kept her back to the stage. Santiago was annoyed by this gesture, as if his story was of no interest to her at all, and for a moment that not even he noticed, his chest began to sweat an earthen smell.
Santiago told the end of his story, stopping first for a few seconds, just long enough to drop a flower onto a grave. He got down from the stage and walked over to the bar amid applause that slashed ribbons of smoke and alcohol vapors. The woman in the white scarf finished her orange soda in a single gulp and jumped up from her stool the moment Santiago arrived to greet Isidro. She bumped into his arm as she hurried out, not turning to look at him or apologize. The door slammed shut, and Santiago stood watching through the window as her slightly stooped figure melted into sultry Madrid. His skin turned cold once again, overcome by a reptilian omen warning of something, though he had no idea what.
“Oh, how that poor woman cried,” Isidro said, burning with compassion. “Tears as big as pears.”
“Do you know her?”
“I only just saw her profile, but no.”
The bartender walked over to Santiago, smoothing her teased hair.
“Can I get you anything, love?”
“No, I’m heading home.”
“You’re such a bore sometimes,” she said, stalking off to serve two patrons in rock band T-shirts elbowing each other at the opposite end of the bar.
“Walk with me?” Santiago asked Isidro.
“Sure. I’m not up for any high jinks tonight either.”
Night plunged Santiago into an Úrsula paralysis yet again, and he forgot everything else. She was a pier that could stop any stormy wave the past might toss at him. Isidro saw the boy shiver before the blood of Saint Pantaleon when he pronounced her name, as instructed. When he overheard Santiago inject the suffering of Úrsula Perla Montoya into his prayers, Isidro’s lips drained of all blood. He took Santiago by the arm and marched him out of church, crossing himself with his other hand, afraid such sacrilege would cause hell to swallow him right there. Ever since, every time the guard looked at his friend, his face constricted in worry.
“She’s too old for you,” Isidro said as they walked up Calle de las Huertas.
“She’s only ten or twelve years older. That’s nothing.”
“It is when you’re only twenty-one. You’re just a kid and she’s an experienced woman. This is a bad idea. I’m telling you this because I know things, things I shouldn’t but I do. Our building is a small community and that courtyard a showcase of shame.”
“I don’t care what you know.”
“She’s like a praying mantis—beautiful, yes, but her beauty attracts her prey. They say she uses a man for every novel she writes, leaving him when she’s done.”
“Well, she’ll write the rest of her books with me. She’ll never leave me once she knows.”
“Once she knows what? That you fell in love like a dog after seeing her through a window?”
“Once she knows I’ve been searching for her for five years, that for five years she has appeared to me both asleep and awake.”
The two walked the rest of the way in silence. Isidro now understood all those times when Santiago kneeled before the relics of saints and martyrs, praying to find Úrsula, praying she would fly into his life on the same miraculous wings she had used to enter his dreams and visions. A shiver ran up the guard’s spine as his mind wandered to a series of soap opera arguments about lovers with miraculous destinies.
When they said good night on the second-floor landing, Isidro put a hand on Santiago’s shoulder and said: “I’m here for you, kid.” He sighed. “If only you’d been born in Venezuela . . .”
The light in the stairwell went out, but Santiago had no intention of fixing it. He took the stairs two at a time, traversing blades of moonlight as they penetrated open windows. He arrived home ready to track Úrsula Perla Montoya through the courtyard. This time it was easy; she was in her kitchen with a man in his early forties. He was uncorking a bottle of wine, and she, wearing her turquoise robe, was taking two glasses out of a cabinet as they chatted rather intimately, Santiago thought. Santiago picked up a knife and reopened the cut on his finger, but blood was not what confirmed this was real. Instead, his ears, the back of his neck, his chest, all began to burn as his head filled once again with green-eyed traitors. Then he noticed the cake crowning a white porcelain plate on the counter and decided to take it to her.
Úrsula opened the door with her mass of chestnut waves falling over her shoulders and down her back. The two looked wordlessly at each other, sensing each other’s heat.
“Now will you tell me what genie should never take pity on my eyes and why?”
“I’m busy, but thanks for the cake,” she said, snatching it from him. “Good night.”
Úrsula Perla Montoya walked down the hall to the kitchen, knotted by an anxiety so powerful it caused her hands to shake.
“What’s this?” the man asked when she walked in with the cake.
“A nice neighbor made it for me.”
“It smells delicious. Cut me a piece—I’m hungry.”
“No.” Her cheeks burned. “It’s not at its best yet. It has to sit until tomorrow.”
“Then I’ll come back again tomorrow.” He had taken Úrsula by the waist and was whispering in her ear.
“Take the wine and wait for me in the living room. I’ll be there as soon as I put this away.”
“Hurry.” He kissed her on the lips.
Alone with the cake, Úrsula recalled how Santiago had caressed the ingredients—the egg yolks, the flour, the sugar, the zest—how he had smelled them, kissed them; how he had mixed them with his hands, the dough hanging from his nipple, his lips parted, drops of sweat licking his brow. She was aroused by the love that went into its preparation, aroused by the love now inside, there for her to eat. She took a few crumbs and savored them slowly, pressing them to the roof of her mouth. The taste of Santiago was on her tongue. She pinched off a bigger piece, then another, spiced with a touch of cinnamon, alive, smooth, and a barely perceptible aroma of sugar and rain inflamed her breasts.
The man’s voice interrupted her tasting, calling out to her from the living room. Úrsula covered the cake with a tea towel and left the kitchen.
“You were taking too long.” He was settled into the loveseat.
“I couldn’t find the right container.”
Úrsula sat beside him and took the glass of wine he offered but drank not a drop. The man pulled her toward him and began to talk about the book he was translating from Greek. Úrsula was not the least bit interested in his problems with verbs or stanzas or the musicality of poetry. She had chosen him almost by accident; her most recent novel,
Afternoon Passions on the Divan,
was selling well, and her editor was pressuring her to write another. Úrsula needed a fling, and it was then she saw him in the library. They had gone to university together but lost track of each other after graduation. He was attractive. He had been living in Greece for five years, the last two on a small island where he grew pear tomatoes and translated nature poetry. Úrsula thought his sun-toasted face and Adonis profile might inspire a Greco-Latin passion filled with Cupid’s arrows and demigod lovers. But right then the taste of her neighbor, kept safe in her mouth, was the only thing to inspire passion, even if it was cannibalistic.
“You’re not listening,” the man complained. “Your mind is elsewhere.”
“I’m sorry. I was translating Ferdowsi until late and am exhausted.”
He stroked her hair, recited verses from
The Odyssey,
and tried to kiss her, but Úrsula’s lips were shut tight.
“I said I’m tired. Let’s do this another day. I really need to sleep.”
She said goodbye with two quick kisses on the cheek and headed into her room, sensing it would rain that night. The smell of mud and grass filled her house. It slipped in through the open windows and advanced on invisible steps. Úrsula looked in her dresser mirror, opened the neckline of her robe a little further, loosened the belt to show a slip of belly, lifted her arms, put her palms together, and shook her torso just as her grandmother had taught her. She was ready to find him now.
Santiago Laguna, his elbows on the bedroom windowsill, naked in that starry and noxious night, shook with rage when Úrsula appeared, fanning herself with peacock feathers.
“Can’t sleep?” she asked, leaning on her windowsill with the air of an empress.