I would have liked to think that the last words Maria de la Luz let slip from her lips were, “Let no one weep for me at my grave.” But I would not have been so sure. She was scared to death of the attention given her after we were foretold of her passing within the year. Even before winter came, relatives were sending lilies and letters which expressed their sorrow and regret, and which promised her many prayers to send her along her way. Whether or not she threw these gifts away was a fact hidden from us, for she was a very private woman, despite the seventy short years in which countless men shared the most intimate knowledge of her.
I would have liked to think that her last thought was of me. My earliest and strongest memory was of her, of her unforgettable, yet indeterminable scent - a mixture between the smell of the fresh waters in Lake Imago and the smell of ripe, prepared fruit - which bathed the house every time she gave her unexpected, always up-beat visits. She was the first person who taught me how to dance, to be sensitive to the pulse and tempo of your partner, to know where she was going, to be just as sensitive as if I were making love. When I gave an adolescent grin, she grew a bold expression on her face, as if offended by my pubescent reaction.
“I used to dance a wild step when I was young,” she said. “Or am I too old now to remember?” But I knew she would not think of me.
Although she was seventy, she looked no older than fifty. And yet she talked as if she lived a whole century. I could think of no one who lived a more exhausting life, whose heart was more torn, who bore more scars from tearful drunkards who did not wish to spend their lonely nights with their wives, than her. And yet - she would not think of those men either. Nor would she think of her five daughters, who ended up, with her consent, marrying the finest gentlemen in the village. Perhaps she was sad when each of them, all within a year, kissed her farewell as they departed with their husbands to enjoy their wild nuptials. “Take care,” she warned each of them, “that you keep up with the tempo.”
No - I read her journal, a month before she was to pass. She would not be thinking of anyone except the only person whom she did not want to see leave her, despite five years of watching the most excruciating heartache she had ever seen a man suffer - Papa:
“I am constantly plagued by his eyes, the red veins that streamed across his sclera, those eyes that were so determined to lose life just to stop the overflowing of tears. I was there when he had pointed the gun between his two eyes and above the nose in desperation, counting to three before he cut open and removed such a huge portion of my heart. Every second, every tick of the moving hand, I can feel it come closer, and I grip close to me this one memory and hope - that I will not count or cry or see it draw nearer and nearer. I wish someone would end it for me, give me it, behind my back…”
I would have wanted that time to be the last time I saw her. Death would be drawing nearer to her, and she would be more and more unable to tear her eyes from Her, despite an interminable desire to do so. So what was I to do? How could I deny a dying woman her last wish?
