Kiss of the Spider Woman Read online

  —Yes.

  —Well, this kindly old black woman amounts to more or less a housekeeper. Big and fat, her hair’s already turned completely gray, and always giving the girl these sweet looks ever since she arrived on the island. And by the time the girl regains consciousness the old housekeeper’s already carried her inside to bed, and she makes the girl believe that what happened was just a nightmare. And the girl doesn’t know whether to believe her or not, but when she sees how nice the housekeeper treats her she calms down, and the housekeeper brings her tea to help her sleep, it’s camomile tea, or something like that, I can’t remember exactly. Then the following day the marriage ceremony is to take place, so they have to go see the mayor, and pay their respects to him and sign some papers, and the girl is busy getting dressed for the occasion, in a very simple tailored dress, but with a beautiful hairdo which the housekeeper fusses over, to put it up in a kind of braid, how can I explain it? well, back then the upsweep was a must on certain occasions, to look really chic.

  —I don’t feel well . . . I’m all dizzy again.

  —You sure?

  —Yes, it’s not really bad yet, but I feel the same way I did when it started the other times.

  —But that meal couldn’t have done you any harm.

  —Don’t be ridiculous. What makes you think I’m blaming it on your food?

  —You seem so irritated . . .

  —But it’s got nothing to do with your food. It’s a matter of my system, there’s something still wrong with it.

  —Then try not to think about it. That only makes it worse.

  *

  —I just couldn’t concentrate any longer on what you were saying.

  —But honestly, it must be something else, because that food was totally healthy for you. You know how sometimes, after an illness, you’re still suggestible for a while?

  —Why not tell a little more of the film, and just see if it goes away. Maybe it’s because I’m feeling so weak. I probably ate too fast or something . . . Who the hell knows why . . .

  —But that must be it, you’re just very weak, and I noticed how fast you were eating, like a kid, without even chewing your food.

  —Ever since I woke up this morning I’ve been thinking about only one thing, and it must be getting to me. I can’t get it off my mind.

  —What is it?

  —The fact that I can’t write to my girl . . . but to Marta, yes. And you know, it would probably do me some good to write her, but I can’t think of what to say. Because it’s wrong for me to write her. Why should I?

  —I’ll go on with the film then?

  —Yes, do that.

  —Okay, where were we?

  —It was just when they were getting the girl ready.

  —Ah, that’s right, she was having her hair done up in—

  —Yeah, it’s up, I know already, and what do I care if it is? Don’t get so bogged down in details that have so little importance crudely painted effigy, a sharp blow, the effigy is made of glass, it splinters to bits, the fist doesn’t hurt, the fist of a man

  —the treacherous somnambula and the white nurse, the contagious patient stares at them in the darkness What do you mean don’t! You just keep still because I know what I’m saying. Starting with the fact that wearing the hair up is—pay attention—important, because women only wear it up, it so happens, or they used to back then, when they wanted to really give the impression it was an important occasion, an important date. Because the upsweep, which bared the nape of the neck because they pushed all the hair up on top of the head, it gave a woman’s face a certain nobility. And with that whole mass of hair pushed up like that the old housekeeper is making her a braid, and decorating her hair with sprigs of local flowers, and when she finally drives off in a little chaise—even though it’s modern-day times they go off in this little carriage pulled by two tiny donkeys—the whole town smiles at her, and she sees herself en route to paradise . . . Is the dizzy spell going away?

  —Seems like it is. But continue the story, okay?

  —So they go along, her and the housekeeper, and on the steps of that kind of Town Hall-type place they have there, in a colonial style, her fiancé is waiting for her. And then you see them later on, they’re out in the dark night air, her lying in a hammock, with a good close-up of the two faces, because he bends down to kiss her, and it’s all lit up by the full moon kind of filtering through the palm trees. Oh, but I forgot something important. You see, the expression on their faces is like two lovers, and so contented-looking. But what I forgot is that while the black housekeeper’s still brushing her hair up for her, the girl—

  —Not that hairdo again?

  —But you’re so irritable! If you don’t make any effort yourself you’ll never calm down.

  —I’m sorry, go on.

  —So the girl asks the housekeeper some questions. Like, for instance, where did he go to spend the night. The housekeeper tries to conceal her alarm and says he went to say hello to some people out in the banana groves, including the ones that lived on the farthest plantation of all, and out there most of the peons believe in . . . voodoo. The girl knows it’s some kind of black religion and she says how she’d very much like to see some of that, some ceremony, perhaps, because it must be quite lovely, with lots of local color and music, but the housekeeper gives her a frightened look, and tells her no, she better just stay away from all that stuff, because it’s a religion that can get very bloody at times, and by no means should she ever go near it. Because . . . but at this point the housekeeper stops talking. And the other one asks her what’s the matter, and the housekeeper tells her how there’s a legend, which probably isn’t even true but just the same it scares her, and it’s about the zombies. Zombies? What are they? the girl asks her, and the housekeeper motions her not to say it so loud, only in a very low voice. And she explains that they’re the dead people that witch doctors manage to revive before the corpses get cold, because the witch doctors themselves are the ones who kill them, with a special poison they prepare, and the living dead no longer possess any will of their own, and they obey only the orders of the witch doctors, and that the witch doctors use them to do whatever they want them to, and they make them work at anything, and the poor living dead, the zombies, they don’t have any will at all beyond the witch doctor’s. And the housekeeper tells her how many years ago some of the poor peons from a few of the plantations decided to rebel against the owners because they paid them almost nothing, but the owners managed to get together with the chief witch doctor on the island to have him kill all the peons and turn them into zombies, and so it came to pass that after they were dead they were made to work at harvesting bananas, but at night, so as not to have the other peons find out, and all the zombies work and work, without any talk, because zombies don’t say a word, or think, even though they suffer so much, because in the middle of working, when the moon shines down on them you can see the tears running down their faces, but they never complain, because zombies can’t talk, they haven’t any will left and the only thing they get to do is obey and suffer. Well, all of a sudden the girl, because then she remembers the dream that she still thinks she had the other night, the girl asks her whether there’s such a thing as a zombie woman. But the housekeeper manages to get off on a tangent somehow and tells her no, because women are never strong enough for such hard work in the fields and so that’s why, no, she doesn’t think there’s any such thing as a zombie woman. And the girl asks her if the fiancé isn’t afraid of all that business, and the housekeeper answers no, but naturally he has to put up with a certain amount of superstition in order to stay on friendly terms with the peons, so he just went out there to receive the blessing from the witch doctors themselves. And then the conversation ends, and like I told you, later on you see them together on their wedding night, and happy-looking, because for the first time, you see the kid, the husband, has a look of peace on his face, and all you hear is the bzz-bzz of tiny bugs outside and water runni
ng in the fountains. And then later you see the two of them lying asleep in their bed, until something wakes them up and gradually they hear, louder and louder, off in the distance, the beating of the drums. She shivers, a chill runs up and down her back . . . Are you feeling any better? night rounds for the nurses, temperature and pulse normal, white cap, white stockings, good night to the patient

  —A little . . . but I can barely follow what you’re saying. the endless night, the cold night, endless thoughts, cold thoughts, sharp slivers of broken glass

  —But I ought to stop then. the strict nurse, the very tall cap stiff with starch, the slight smile not without cunning

  —No, honestly, when you distract me a little I feel better, please, go on. the endless night, the icy night, the walls green with mildew, the walls stricken with gangrene, the injured fist

  —Okay. So . . . how did it go next? They hear drums way off in the distance, and the husband’s expression changes, all that peace is gone, he can’t sleep now, so he gets up. The girl doesn’t say anything, discretion itself, she doesn’t move a muscle, making like she’s fast asleep, but she really pricks up her ears and hears this noise of a cupboard door being opened and squeaking, and then nothing more. She doesn’t dare get up and actually investigate, but then it gets later and later and still no sign of him. She decides to look, and finds him lying across an easy chair, completely drunk. And she quickly eyes all the furniture and discovers a little open cabinet, hardly big enough for one bottle, the empty bottle of cognac, but the husband also seems to have another bottle, next to him, and that one is just half empty. So the girl wonders where it came from, because there’s no liquor kept in the house at all, and then she notices how, just underneath the bottle in the cabinet, certain things have been tucked away, and it’s a bunch of letters and photographs. And it’s a job for her to drag him back into the bedroom, where she just lies down beside him, trying to cheer him up because she loves him and promises him he’s not going to be alone anymore, and he looks gratefully at her and falls back asleep. She tries to get some sleep too, but now she can’t, although before she was so contented, but seeing him drunk like that makes her incredibly upset. And she realizes how right the majordomo was to smash that rum keg. She puts on her negligee and goes back to the cabinet to look at the photos, because what intrigues her incredibly is the possibility of finding a picture of the first wife. But when she gets there she finds the cabinet closed, and locked too. But who could’ve locked it? She looks around but everything is swallowed up in complete darkness and absolute silence, except for those drums, which you can still hear. Then she goes over to shut the window so as not to have to listen to them, but right at that very moment they stop, as if they’d spotted her from miles and miles away. Anyhow, the next morning he looks as if he doesn’t remember anything, and he wakes her with their breakfast all ready, and smiley as can be, and informs her that he’s going to take her on a ride by the sea. She becomes totally infected with his excitement, and off they go into the tropics, in a great convertible with the top down, and there’s a peppy musical background, calypso type, and they drive past a couple of divine beaches, and here it’s a very sexy scene because she feels the urge to go for a swim, because by then they’ve already seen the lovely coconut groves, and rocky cliffs looking out to sea, and here and there some natural gardens with gigantic flowers, and the sun is scorching hot but she’s forgotten to bring along a bathing suit, so he says, why not swim in the nude? and they stop the car, she undresses behind some rocks and then you see her off in the distance running naked to the ocean. And later on you catch them lying on the beach together, under the palms, her with a sarong out of his shirt, and him with just his pants on, nothing else, and barefoot, and you have no idea where it comes from, but you know the way it happens in movies, you suddenly just hear the words of this song, saying how when it comes to love, it’s a question of earning it, and at the end of some dark trail, strewn with all kinds of hardships, love awaits those who struggle to the last in order to earn that love. And you can see the girl and he are completely enchanted with each other once again and they decide to let bygones be bygones. And then it begins to get dark, and when they drive up a little ridge of road, you just manage to catch in the background, not too far from there, all glinty from the sun which is like this fiery red ball, a very old colonial house, but pretty, and very mysterious, because it’s completely overrun by vegetation, which covers it up almost totally. And the girl says how some other day she’d like to go for a ride to that house, and she asks why it’s been abandoned. But at this point he seems to get very nervous and tells her like very rudely, never, never go near that house, but he doesn’t offer the slightest explanation, just saying that he’ll tell her why some other time. the night nurse is inexperienced, the night nurse sleepwalks, is she asleep or awake? the night shift is long, she’s all by herself and doesn’t know where to turn for help You’re so quiet, you’re not even making any wise-cracks . . .

  —Somehow I’m not feeling very good. Just go on with the film, it’s good to take my mind off things for a while.

  —Wait, now I lost the thread.

  —I don’t understand how you manage to keep so many details in your head anyway. the hollow head, the glass skull, filled with mass cards of saints and whores, someone throws the glass head against the putrid wall, the head smashes, all mass cards fall onto the floor

  —In spite of the great time they were having that whole day, the girl gets upset all over again now, because she saw how nervous he became the minute she asked about that house, the one that looked abandoned. Well, when they arrive back at the mansion, he takes a shower, and that’s when she can’t resist looking through his pockets for the keys in order to search through that cabinet of the night before. And she goes and searches through his pants, and finds a key ring, and runs to the cabinet. On the key ring there’s only one tiny key; she tries it and it fits. She opens the cabinet. There’s a full bottle of cognac inside, but who put it there? Because she hasn’t left her husband’s side for a second since the night before, so he didn’t do it; she would have seen him. And underneath the bottle there’s some letters, love letters, signed by him and others signed by the first wife, and underneath the letters some photographs, of him and some other woman, was that the first wife? The girl seems to recognize her, it’s as if she’s seen her somewhere before; surely she’s come upon that face before, but where? An interesting type, very very tall, long blond hair. The girl goes on looking through each and every photograph, and then she discovers one in particular that’s like a portrait, just of the face, the eyes very pale, that slightly lost look . . . And the girl remembers! It’s the woman who chased her in the nightmare, with the face of a madwoman, dressed all in black down to her toes . . . But at that point she notices the water isn’t running in the shower, and her husband could easily catch her going through his things! So she tries frantically to put away all that stuff, setting the bottle back on top of the letters and photographs, closing the cabinet, and then going back into the bedroom, where she finds him right there! all wrapped up in this huge bath towel, but smiling away. She doesn’t know what to do, so she offers to dry his back, she has no idea how to keep him busy, how to distract him the poor nurse, so unlucky, they assign her to a patient on the critical list and she doesn’t know how to keep him from dying or killing her, the danger of contagion is stronger than ever because he’s already about to start getting dressed, but she’s terrified that she has the key right in her hand, and he might notice that fact any minute now. But she goes on drying his shoulders with one hand, looking over at his pants draped on the chair, and doesn’t know what to do to get the key back into his pocket—until she gets an idea, and says she’d like to comb his hair. And he answers, wonderful, the comb is in the bathroom if you want to get it, and she says, that’s no way for a gentleman to act, saying that, so then he goes to look for it himself and meantime she takes the chance to slip the key back into his pocket jus
t in the nick of time, and when he comes back she starts combing his hair and massaging his bare shoulders. And the poor little newlywed, she just breathes a sigh of relief. Then a few days go by, and the girl realizes how the husband always gets up around midnight because he can’t sleep, and she pretends to be sound asleep, because she’s afraid of bringing up the subject face to face with him, but in the early morning she gets up to help him back into bed, because he always ends up bombed out of his mind and collapsed in the armchair. And she always checks the bottle, and it’s a different one each time, and it’s full, so who’s putting it there in that cabinet? The girl doesn’t dare ask him a thing, because when he comes back every evening from the plantations he’s so happy to see her waiting there for him, embroidering something, but at midnight you always begin to hear those drums again, and he gets all obsessed about something, and can’t sleep anymore unless he gets himself into a drunken stupor. So obviously, the girl gets more and more uptight about the whole thing, and at one point when her husband is outside somewhere, she tries to have a word with the majordomo, to discover some possible secret from him maybe, about why the husband seems so nervous at times, but the majordomo tells her with a big sigh how they’re having lots of problems with the peons, etcetera, etcetera, and in the end he really doesn’t say too much about anything. Well, the thing is, the girl, one time when the husband tells her he’s going off for that whole day with the majordomo, to that plantation that’s the farthest away of all, and won’t be back until the following day, she decides to go off by herself on foot to that same abandoned house, because she’s sure she’ll find out something there. And so just after tea, around five o’clock, when the sun isn’t so strong anymore, the husband and the majordomo set out on their trip, and the girl eventually goes off too. And she’s looking for the road to that abandoned house, but she gets lost, and soon it’s getting late, and already almost nightfall, when she manages to find that ridge in the road from where you got to see the house, and she doesn’t know whether to turn back or not, but her curiosity gets the best of her, and she goes on to the house. And she sees how suddenly, inside there, a light goes on, which encourages her a little more. But once she reaches the house, which is, no exaggeration, almost buried by wild plants, she doesn’t hear anything, and through the windows you can see how on the table there’s a candle burning, and the girl gets up enough courage to open the door and even take a look inside, and she sees over in the corner a voodoo altar, with more candles burning, and she goes farther inside to see what’s on top of the altar, and she walks right up to it, and on top of the altar she finds a doll with black hair with a pin stuck right through the middle of the chest, and the doll is dressed in an outfit made to look exactly like what she was wearing herself on her own wedding day! And at this point she almost faints with fright but spins around to run away through the same door that she came in by . . . And what’s in the doorway? . . . this incredibly huge black guy, with bulging eyeballs, wearing only a ragged pair of old pants, and with the look of somebody who’s totally out of his mind, staring at her and blocking any escape. And the poor thing, all she has left to do is let out a desperate scream, but the guy, who’s actually what they call a zombie, one of the living dead, he keeps coming closer and closer, with his arms reaching out, just like the woman from the other night in the garden. And the girl lets out another scream, and runs into the next room and locks the door behind her. The room’s almost dark, with the window almost covered with jungle growth so only a tiny bit of light comes through, a little twilight, and the room has a bed in it, which little by little the girl begins to make out, as she becomes more accustomed to the darkness. And every inch of her shudders, nearly suffocated by her own cries and her terror, as she sees there on the bed . . . something moving . . . and it’s . . . that woman! Incredibly pale, all disheveled, the hair hanging down to her waist, and with the same black duster on, she slowly rises and begins to move toward the girl! in that room without escape, all locked up . . . The girl would like to drop dead she’s so frightened, and now she can’t even scream, but suddenly . . . from the window you hear a voice ordering the zombie woman to stop and go back to her bed . . . It’s the kindly black housekeeper. And she tells the girl not to be scared, that she’s going to come right in and protect her. The girl opens the door, the black woman hugs her and calms her down; and behind her, in the front doorway, is that black giant, but he’s totally obedient now to the housekeeper, who tells him he must look after the girl, and not attack her. The giant black zombie obeys, and the zombie woman, too, all disheveled, because the housekeeper orders her back to her bed, and the woman completely obeys. Then the housekeeper takes the girl affectionately by her shoulders and tells her she’s going to get her back safely to the main house in a little donkey cart, and along the way she tells her the whole story, because by now the girl’s realized that the zombie woman with the blond hair down to her waist . . . is her husband’s first wife. And the housekeeper begins to tell how it all happened. the nurse trembles, the patient looks up at her, asking for morphine? asking to be caressed? or does he just want the contagion to be instantaneous and deadly?