A Divinely Impossible Love

It was a long-ago Friday evening in May. La Negrita was packed. Young professionals drank with plumbers and file clerks. Men and women mixed and separated in eddying pools along the bar spanning the length of a long wall in the cantina’s courtyard. On the other side of the courtyard, a Cuban band played loud and sinuous salsa music. The place was a cacophony of laughter, clinking, innuendo, and romance.

Plumeria and hibiscus stood vibrant against mariposa walls, glistening in the humidity. The air was redolent with tobacco smoke, botanical fragrance, and soap. Crowded wooden tables rocked on limestone paving and chair legs rasped against the stone floor.

Waiters carried heavy trays held high by one hand above the heads of the crowd. They brought drinks and botanas to patrons sloughing off the pain of their weekly labor while embracing the joy that makes life bearable.

Customers laughed and shouted at friends, leaning forward to hear the wit of their fellow drinkers. And offer casual barbs in convivial good spirits.

Francisco loved his cantina. Come Friday at five-thirty, he would meet his crew there to drink beer and tequila. Listen to Latin music. And fall, serially and unseriously, in love with women who undulated in front of the band. Women he lacked the courage to tell of his desires.

Eco, as Francisco was known to his friends, had no serious lover. This surprised his mates. He was a handsome youth with the unruly dark hair, deep-set eyes, and long thin fingers of an unpublished poet. He was a man who took pride in his clothes. A fact many glowing young women noted in confidential asides to their girlfriends. Sadly, nothing ever came of it. Eco was oblivious to his appeal.

It was even money on whether Eco was shy or just disinterested. Some even speculated he might be gay. But he never looked at other men the way he looked at the dancing women rolling their shoulders and hips, closed-eyed slaves to the beat.

This Friday started like every other. Eco was laughing at Eduardo and Pepe’s buffoonery. Josuay, who was gay and an incorrigible flirt, was batting his eyes at young men in tight trousers. His conversation was ribald. But no one took offense. Because Josuay had always been Josuay. The grinning scamp had been granted license, by consensus, to say aloud what others dared to barely think.

This Friday seemed no different from any other catina evening. However, Eco soon discovered it would be unlike any he had yet enjoyed.

A stranger walked by his table toward the band. Eco looked up. He saw her only from behind as she passed his table. His eyes rested on her as she walked away. She wore a loose white cotton shift dress that brushed modestly against her knees. It did not reveal its wearer's form. The unknown woman was tall. Her hair was dark and burnished. It lay in natural waves that owed nothing to a stylist’s art.

Even from the back, she was magnetic.

As she walked toward the dance floor, laughing drinkers turned to watch her pass, their humor shelved. Men stared, oblivious to their dates' side-eyed distrust. Women mentally rated her effect.

She flowed on, oblivious to the attention. At the edge of the dance floor, she paused like a swimmer estimating the water's temperature. Then she took a few steps to an open spot centered among the whirling dancers. Slowly, she raised her hands straight-fingered, with the palms close above her head. Her arms stretched high. Reaching toward the orange-red flowering branches of the flamboyán tree that roofed the open space.

She began to undulate her shoulders in counterpoint to her hips. Her head rocked slowly back and forth, framed by her upright arms. Her dress swirled and rested against her body as she slowly swayed. Her movements were long, flowing, and deliberate. She danced without effort or care.

She was lost in the union of the music and her primal spirit. Her gaze remained fixed on the ancient patinated mirror attached to the wall behind the band. She watched herself intensely, transfixed by her image.

It was in this mirror that Eco first saw the woman’s face. Her mocha skin testified to Mayan stock. The angularity of her bones was Norse-born. The cast of her eyes hinted at Asian roots. She was exquisite. A work of art sculpted from ancient amber.

Eco was lost in her attraction. He knew from first sight that he would never see her equal. Before this evening, she was unknown to him. From then on, he would know no other woman.

In unspoken agreement, the other chorines inched back to give her space. She danced in the warmth of a spotlight that existed only in Eco’s imagination. He was deaf to the conversation around him. At first, his companions wondered at his distraction. But before long, they had returned to their enjoyment. They engaged in wishful badinage with a table of pretty young office drones freed from their commercial chains and ready for attention.

Eco was indifferent to the back and forth. But when one of his more adventurous companions steered a partner to the dance floor, he seized his opportunity. He turned to a girl and asked if she would like to dance. She offered a casual “Sure. Why not?” And followed him as he navigated through the tables. 

He arranged it so that his companion danced between him and the object of his interest. Eco could see the woman in the white dress over his partner’s shoulder. He moved in time to her, paying no attention to the one he had asked to dance. Not that the agreeable young woman seemed to notice. Her mind was seduced by the rhythm of the music.

Eco hoped the stranger would not notice his rapt gaze. She didn’t. She paid no mind to anyone. She remained absorbed in her reflection.

After three songs, Eco’s partner announced she needed to sit down. She was wearing new shoes. And her feet hurt. His mother had raised him well. Years of her lectures on ‘manners maketh the man’ thwarted his desire to stay close to the enigmatic woman. But he did not forget her. As soon as he returned to his table, he turned to the dance floor. The woman in white was gone.

Eco spent the rest of the evening trying to have fun - unsuccessfully. The secretaries had given his fellows a seal of approval. And now the two groups were one, table hopping and pairing up. But Eco was quiet. If his dance partner had hoped there would be a second chapter to their story, she soon discovered those pages were blank.

The evening latened. Eco, normally among the last to leave, did not stay his usual term. His mind was absent. And his companions dropped all attempts to interest him in that evening’s affairs of the heart. Eco left and returned to his family’s home. A large and ancient house, crumbling near the cathedral. 

He worked as an abogado for his uncle’s law firm. He spent his professional time dealing with his clients’ real estate concerns. Mexico is a country that places great stock in documents and property. Land and home ownership was split across generations and branches of families. Thus Eco spent his time cracking open large leather-bound ledgers and pointing out decades-old passages in faded ink. Passages that often conveyed bad news to disappointed aspirants, who thought they had title to properties that others held.

Not that his clients expected otherwise. They were from a people resigned to bad news. Not that many wallowed in their disappointment. The citizens suppressed their pessimism with smiling sociability and devotion to family.  

Life is slower in Yucatan. Once a thriving hub of the Mexican economy, by the 1970s, the peninsula had become a rural backwater. On the Caribbean side, Cancun was beginning its rise to a global tourist destination. But by the Gulf, Merida, the old colonial capital, moldered in faded prosperity. Enterprising opportunists repurposed its prominent old buildings for the profits a hard-working entrepreneur could make. One of these hustlers had carved out the cantina La Negrita from a long-dead henequen millionaire’s colonial home.

On Friday, Eco returned to start his weekend with laughter. The woman in the white dress was a happy memory. He was his quiet, charming self. Chatting with his boys and flirting with the usual women. This evening the band was Brazilian. Dancers suggested future intimacy to the strains of samba. And all was as it usually was.

Until she returned to the dance floor.

The ethereal woman had traded her modest white shift for a tighter red dress. He saw more clearly the contours of her figure. She was not quite as full-figured as he had imagined. Her face seemed thinner than he remembered. Yet she radiated an attraction lost to no one. Again, she danced alone.

That evening, a slick-haired, grinning man, confident of his appeal, sidled up and matched his movements to her. She seemed oblivious to his presence. She gave no sign she was either happy or irritated at his presumption. He might as well have been transparent. No more important than any flower on the flamboyán tree. The man eventually realized his folly and slunk away, chastised by her indifference.

Eco noticed the disappointed man’s failure. Paradoxically, it seemed to steel his spine. He walked to the dance floor. As the band paused between songs, he stood boldly in front of her. He asked her if she minded if he danced with her. She glanced briefly at him. But she made no reply. Instead, she returned her gaze to the mirror.

Perhaps her disinterest spurred his competitive spirit. Maybe he thought persistence would erode her aloofness. Or it could have been sheer obstinacy. Whatever the cause, when the band started playing again, he silently moved with her as time passed unmeasured.

During interludes, he tried to talk with her. Unmoved, she said nothing. Eco told her his name. She did not answer his request for hers. Yet, he still danced with her - until, without warning, she left. Eco had blinked his eyes to ease the sting of the cigarette smoke hanging heavy in the still air. But when he opened them, she was gone.

A week passed. On the next Friday, Eco paid unusual attention to his appearance. It made no difference. The woman, this time dressed in black, danced once again with her reflection. Eco settled for proximity and the warm scent of her fragrance. Again he noticed that she seemed thinner, and her already aquiline features had become more pronounced.

His friends kidded him for his quixotic pursuit. But he said less and less to them. Slowly, they gave up trying to speak with him. Soon he said nothing except to repeat, quizzically, what they had said to him. They thought it odd. But granted it little importance, It was as if his mind were a prisoner elsewhere. And only vestiges of him remained.

Eco's work suffered. His uncle had to reprimand him. He made mistakes. Finally, his uncle had to let him go. He stayed in his bedroom, silent. Only going out on Friday nights to La Negrita. Every week, he would dance with the mysterious woman - who had still not said anything to him. But he was bound to the routine.

For months, little changed. Eco lived for the hour or so he could be with his anonymous inamorata. The woman he loved - but who showed him nothing in return. It was an arrangement he chose to accept.

But there was change. Every week, the woman seemed thinner. Her face once impossibly beautiful now seemed to wither in the mirror. Yet Eco’s love for her grew. He no longer spoke to his friends or family beyond saying a few fading words. More Fridays came and went. Eco danced. The woman ignored him. He noticed her increasing emaciation. But what could he do? She never acknowledged he even existed. He didn’t even know her name. 

Then came the last Friday Eco went to La Negrita. As always, he waited by the dance floor for her to come. She didn’t. Eco knew she never would again.

*

Decades passed. Eco spoke less and less. People only heard him occasionally, and he never said anything original. He aged and became ill. As he lay dying, an elderly man came to visit him.

Eduardo had led a full life. Eco's old friend had married one of the bright young things he had met on a Friday evening at La Negrita. He had loved and had his love returned. That love had fruited into a family. Eduardo had had children. And then grandchildren. The old man had lived long enough to become content.

Eco felt his loneliness more profoundly as Eduardo gushed about scraped knees, puppy love, and all the other challenges facing the children he had raised. But the old bachelor realized he was a captive to fate. He could not say he believed in God - not one or many. However, he knew clearly that forces beyond his control had determined his course. So be it. He had made peace with his destiny.     

Eduardo sat with Eco for hours. The visitor did almost all the talking. He reminisced about their youth. And asked Eco what had ever become of the mysterious woman he had danced with so often all those years ago. Then Eduardo's eyes brightened. He looked as if something important had just occurred to him. He turned to his old friend and announced as proudly as if he had won a mythology prize,

“I almost forgot to tell you. I discovered her name.”

“Her name.” Eco replied.

“Yes, her name.”

“Her name.” Eco said.

“Yes. Her name. It was Narcissa.”