Years With Laura Diaz, The by Carlos Fuentes Read Free Book Online Page B

breathlessly—eager, at first, to tell of her discovery, the lady of the forest who gave her jewels to the poor, the lost statue who protected the property of heaven which that nasty priest Almonte had stole— curse him, curse him —and she, Laura Díaz, knew the
secret of the forest. But then she realized she could tell no one, not now, not to them.
    She stopped running. She returned home slowly along the road of undulating hills and gentle slopes planted with coffee. In the patio, Grandfather Felipe was saying to his foremen that there was nothing to do but cut back the laurel branches, they’re invading us, as if they could move, the laurels are clogging the drains, they’re going to eat up the whole house, flocks of starlings gather right over here in the ceiba tree just outside the house and dirty up the entryway, this can’t go on; besides, we’re coming into the season when the coffee trees get covered with spiderwebs.
    “We’re going to have to cut down a few trees.”
    Aunt Virginia sighed. With complete naturalness she’d taken over her mother’s rocker, even though she wasn’t the firstborn.
    “I just listen to them,” she said to her sisters. “They don’t realize no one alive is as old as a tree …”
    Laura didn’t want to tell her aunts anything. She would only talk to her grandfather. She tugged on the sleeve of his black frock coat. Grandfather, there’s an enormous lady in the forest, you have to see her. Child, what are you talking about? I’ll take you to her, Grandfather, if you don’t come, no one will believe me, come on, if you come, I won’t be afraid of her, I’ll hug her.
    She imagined: I’ll hug her and bring her back to life, that’s what the stories Grandmama used to tell me say, all you have to do is hug a statue to bring it to life.
    She berated herself: how little time her decision to keep the secret of the great forest lady lasted.
    Her grandfather took her by the hand and smiled, he shouldn’t smile on a day of mourning, but this pretty little girl with her long, straight hair and more and more well defined features, her baby fat disappearing—her grandfather could tell that day, before Laura saw it in any mirror or even dreamed it, how she’d look when she grew up, with very long arms and legs and a prominent nose and thinner lips than any of the other girls her age (lips like those of her writing aunt Virginia)—this child was reborn life, Cosima restored, one life continued
in another and he its guardian, keeper of a soul, which required the living memory of a couple, Cosima and Felipe, to prolong itself and find new energy in the life of a girl, of this girl, the deeply moved old man said to himself—he was sixty-six! Cosima was fifty-seven when she died!—and Laura reached the clearing in the forest.
    “This is the statue, Grandfather.”
    Don Felipe laughed.
    “This is a ceiba, child. Careful now. Look at how beautiful it is but also dangerous. Do you see? It’s covered over with nails, except they aren’t nails but pointy spines like daggers which the ceiba produces to protect itself, don’t you see? Swords come out of the ceiba’s body, the tree arms itself, so no one will come near it, so no one will hug it.” Her grandfather smiled. “What a naughty ceiba!”
    Then bad news came. There was a miners’ strike in Cananea, another strike in the textile factory at Rio Blanco, right here in the state of Veracruz, the bodies of strikers killed by the federal army were carried from Orizaba to the sea in open boxcars, so everyone could see the corpses and learn a lesson.
    “Do you think Don Porfirio will fall?”
    “Are you serious? This shows that Porfirio Díaz has the same energy he always had, even if he’s seventy-five.”
    “Boss, we’re going to have to cut down the chalacahuites.”
    “It’s a pity we have to cut down trees that shade the coffee.”
    “That’s when coffee prices are high. Right now, prices are very low. We’re better