He moved.
Clara backed up for a moment, with her heart about to explode, and then took air like the one who throws herself into the void. He prepared hot water, fine sewing and alcohol tweezers. Elijah, pale and sweaty, looked at her with distrust and fear. She wrote with a firm hand:
“There’s something inside your ear. Let me get it out.”
He denied with violence. He took the notebook from him and wrote:
“It’s dangerous.”
Clara took the pencil and replied:
“It’s more dangerous to leave it there. Do you trust me?”
Elijah held her with his gaze for a few eternal seconds. Then, very slowly, he nodded.
Clara worked with her pulse shaking, but the decision stuck in her chest. He introduced the tweezers little by little, while he was clinging to the edge of the table until he became white. He felt resistance. Then a pull. And suddenly, something came out writhing between the metal.
… lo que ella le sacó del oído a su esposo dejó a todos atónitos.
La mañana en que Clara Valdés se convirtió en esposa, la nieve caía sobre la sierra de Chihuahua con una paciencia triste, como si el cielo mismo supiera que aquel no era un día de fiesta, sino de resignación.
Clara, de veintitrés años, se miró en el espejo agrietado de la casa de adobe y alisó con manos temblorosas el vestido de novia de su madre. El encaje amarillento olía a alcanfor, a años guardados y a promesas rotas. No temblaba por el frío. Temblaba de vergüenza.
Su padre, don Julián Valdés, tocó la puerta con los nudillos.
It’s time, my daughter.
Clara cerró los ojos un segundo.
—Estoy lista —mintió.
The truth was uglier and simpler. His father owed fifty pesos to the local bank. Fifty. Exactly the same amount for which they were to hand it over in marriage to a man I had not chosen. In the house they called him “arrangement.” The bank manager called it a “solution.” His brother Thomas, who smelled of pulque from before dawn, called him “luck.”
Clara called him by name.
Sale.
The man he was going to marry was named Elias Barragán. He was thirty-eight years old, he lived alone on a ranch isolated between pines and ravines, and in the village of San Jerónimo they all said the same thing about him: that he owned good land and that he spoke not to anyone. Some called it arisco. Others, crazy. Most of them called it simply “the deaf one.”
Clara had only seen him twice. The first, months ago, when he walked into the general store for salt, nails and coffee. Height, shoulder width, silent like a shadow. The second, a week before the wedding, when his father took him to the house. Elijah had stood in the room, with the snow melting in his boots, and he did not say a word. He took a notebook out of his pocket, wrote something in a short pencil and handed it to Don Julian.
“All right. Saturday.”
Nothing more.
No courtship. No questions. Not a single sign of illusion.
The ceremony lasted less than ten minutes. Father Ignacio pronounced the words as one who fulfills an uncomfortable obligation. Clara repeated the vows with a voice that she did not feel her own. Elijah merely nodded when necessary. When the time came for the kiss, he barely grazed her cheek with his lips and immediately turned away.
He didn’t seem happy.
