Lactose Tears

They met at the undecided hour of dawn, when the town had not yet awakened and the milk—warm and freshly drawn—rose in soft vapors like promises. He stepped out of his car with books tucked under his arm; she lifted pitchers as if she were holding small moons. They did not look at each other at first. Love—when it knows it will be hunted—learns to feign distraction.

But habit turned into ritual.

And ritual, into revelation.

She smelled of damp grass and predawn bread; he, of fresh ink and an ambition still unsoiled. They spoke little. The accidental brush of hands was enough, the white foam spilling and staining the ground like an omen: what is pure is also lost if it is not drunk in time.

They loved with the delicacy of those who know everything is fragile. Kisses were slow, learned, as if the mouth were a new language. Caresses lingered at the waist, at the nape, in the tremor that precedes trust. There was no haste—there was thirst. And thirst is best quenched when the glass is shared.

They promised small things—the only ones that last: to meet again, to write in a clear hand, not to lie when it hurt. They swore a future the way one presses a generous udder and waits, patient, for the daily miracle. “We will be,” they said, and the word fell thick, nourishing.

Opposition was immediate, fierce. Doña Margarita raised walls of silence; the milkman lowered his head as if the world were an impossible fence. They, like swallows without balcony or dew, chose the night. Its darkness, ever complicit, covered them with a mantle of stars.

There were secret meetings among barns and orchards, laughter muffled in handkerchiefs, bodies that learned to recognize one another without haste or fear. They belonged to each other with tenderness, with the respect of those who know desire is not conquest but agreement. And when love was full, when it no longer fit in the chest, they decided to give it form.

The wedding feast was humble and luminous.

A small church of lime and wood. Field flowers braided by friendly hands. The weary priest smiled as one who blesses a beautiful disobedience. She arrived in a simple dress, white as the first milk of the day; he, in a suit that did not hide his emotion. They looked at each other and the whole town understood—though it pretended not to—that this was true.

There was freshly baked bread, young cheeses, Amaretto wine. They danced until the floor opened, until joy learned the rhythm. The women sang romantic ballads; the men raised their cups with respect. When they kissed, there was no scandal—there was relief. As if something, at last, had found its channel. Time seemed to stop in that kiss. Even at that same hour Margarita rested from her feverish labor between the sheets of the old parliamentarian, and right there she interrupted his false caresses in an eternal second that sank into her chest like a premonition. “Pablo.” Yet the parliamentarian continued thrusting. But the nuptial kiss was still burning, the flame of that “I do” still ran through her eyes.

They left together at dawn, amid laughter and grains of rice. The sun, generous, followed them. No one knew—no one wished to know—that this inaugural whiteness was also farewell.

But that morning, at least, love was complete.

And the milk, for once, was not watered down.

Doña Margarita had been born to command even when she kept silent. In Stephenlandia it was enough to pronounce her name for servants to straighten their backs and important men to lower their voices. Discreet lover of the parliamentary chief, administrator of favors and silences, she believed she had traced the destiny of her only son the way one draws an inheritance on marble.

That is why Pablo’s secret marriage was an affront she could not forgive.

The girl was the milkman’s daughter: rough hands, an open laugh, a dignity without varnish. They loved with a faith only those who have not yet learned to fear the world possess. They married at night, with poor witnesses and a weary priest. A few days later, fate—that patient animal—showed its teeth.

Pablo had wagered more than he could lose. When the time came to pay, he chose to flee, leaving behind a chain of misfortunes the city preferred not to name. The police searched for him until weariness became habit. He escaped as he could, clinging to the metal of an airplane, crossing islands, borders, and lies, until he ended up in Miami, where the sea does not wash away guilt.

There he spent ten years confined.

“Dear Mother,

I received the money. It arrived the way things that save arrive—without making a sound. You cannot imagine how grateful I am. Here everything costs more than it seems, even silence, and your help allows me to go on with a dignity I try not to lose.

I write above all to ask you for something that is not for me. There is a woman—you know who—who deserves a hand extended, not out of charity but out of justice. If it was ever possible for you to move invisible threads, do so now for her. She needs no grand gestures: a job, discreet protection, the certainty that she is not alone. I will carry the debt.

I must tell you something I never said well. I did not flee out of cowardice, though it may seem so. I fled because I had made a mistake I did not know how to repair and because the city became an implacable mirror to me. I preferred to leave before the damage grew greater. I believed—perhaps naively—that distance could save everyone.

Do not worry about me. In Miami I am happy. I study, I read a lot, I learn new things. I have found a rhythm that sustains me and decent people who help me not lose my way. The climate is kind, and the sea, when I look at it, reminds me there are always horizons. I am well, Mother. Truly.

If you ever doubt, think that your son has not given up. Think that I keep walking, that I prepare myself to return one day without shaming you. Until then, care for her as if you were caring for me. It is the only thing I ask insistently.

Thank you again for your constant generosity, for not asking questions when they hurt most, and for believing in me even when I myself waver.

With love and respect,

Pablo”

The letters he sent spoke of study, of strength, of a carefully invented happiness. He said he was fine, said he was the best, said he needed nothing. Doña Margarita, proud and blind, sent him money. She did so with resources that asked no questions and favors that left no trace. At times she believed herself a duchess of an extinguished monarchy, heir to a lineage that existed only in her imagination and in her sins.

The truth was harsher. Pablo survived in a prison where affection blurred with necessity and companionship was a form of defense. He learned, yes. He studied. But loneliness was a language no one taught him to translate.

When he was released, aged before his time, he returned to Stephenlandia with hope as his only baggage. Then he learned he had a five-year-old son. The milkman’s daughter had raised him alone, amid hunger and silences, protected only by stubbornness.

The reunion was brief and fierce. They loved each other again as if time had not passed, and they confronted the milkman, who continued to orbit Doña Margarita’s house and share her bed of power and convenience. Both—the milkman and Margarita—opposed that union as if it threatened the natural order of things.

But the past had not finished speaking.

From the milkmen’s committee—an absurd and powerful institution—the truth was revealed: Pablo’s father was not who everyone believed. In her youth, Doña Margarita had been the lover of a man of noble blood, Stephenusaurius the Conqueror, when she did not yet understand the price of closeness to power. Pablo was not a bastard: he was an heir.

The news crossed the sea.

It reached the ears of a man who had shared with Pablo the harshest years of confinement. Driven by a mixture of affection, resentment, and a misconceived sense of right, he escaped and flew to Stephenlandia to claim a place he believed was his.

He did not arrive in time.

The parliamentarian, an expert at erasing traces, ordered Pablo’s death before he could claim his name. The body was never publicly mourned. The grief was clandestine, like his love.

Pablo’s son, by contrast, was lifted into arms. The parliamentarian embraced him before all and said,

“You are my son.”

And thus he was named heir to the presidency.

The milkman’s daughter returned to hunger. Her dignity was traded for bills and broken promises. Doña Margarita, defeated by sadness and guilt, offered forgiveness even to the one who had shared prison with her son. She did so as one offers last belongings—without pride.

None of that lasted.

The milkman, who knew too many truths, began to speak. Three weeks later they found him in a garbage dump, reduced to definitive silence. From then on, the milk reached tables watered down, and no one asked why.

In Stephenlandia they learned that lineages are not inherited: they are imposed. And that love, when it defies power, is almost always paid for in blood.

Several months later Margarita visits the cemetery and, before Pablo’s grave, falls to her knees:

“Punish me more, my life, even if your voice burns me.

Speak to me now that the house sleeps and the portraits look at me as if they knew.

I, who learned to command without raising my voice, never knew how to obey myself.

Pablo…

Your name still cuts like a shattered goblet. I thought I birthed you for marble and delivered you to mud. I wanted you strong, unharmed, mine; I loved you the way one loves what one is unwilling to lose. And for that reason I lost you.

I said no. I said no to your humble love, to the girl with clean hands, to the milkman’s daughter who looked at you without calculation. I feared her truth. I feared she would reveal me. I, who made a trade of secrets, could not bear to see love naked.

When you fled, I said it was destiny. I lied.

When they searched for you, I paid.

When you wrote cheerful letters, I read them as one absolves oneself.

‘I am fine,’ you said. And I answered with money, not with questions. Money was always my way of not touching the wound.

I believed myself a duchess because no one dares tell a duchess she is alone.

I believed myself noble because it hurt less to remember the man who took me when I was almost a girl and left me a lineage I could not pronounce. Stephenusaurius… Your name was a long shadow. From you Pablo inherited blood; from me, silence.

Ten years. Ten winters without your true voice.

And when you returned, worn and stubborn like love that comes back, I had already sold too much of myself to allow a clean repentance.

Then I learned of the child.

My grandson.

My condemnation.

I saw him breathe and understood that power is an animal that devours its own first. The parliamentarian understood it better than I. He embraced the child and named him son as one signs a decree. I assented. I always assented. I have been a woman of deadly assents.

Your death arrived without noise, as the decisions we believe inevitable arrive. I did not scream. I did not weep in public. I stored mourning in the drawers where I keep the evidence. What use is weeping when one has already chosen?

The child’s mother… the milkman’s daughter…

I watched her wither with a dignity I never learned. Her hunger accused me. My money bought her. That is how the world works, I told myself. That is how I have worked.

I forgave whom I should not have forgiven because I no longer distinguished forgiveness from surrender. I offered apologies as one offers false relics. And they accepted. They always accept.

The milkman spoke. Those who believe truth will save them always speak.

Three weeks later, silence returned to its place. The milk, watered down; the memory, too.

Now I am left alone with the only thing I could not bribe: my conscience.

Tell me, when did I confuse care with possession?

When did I call fear love?

When did I believe lineage was worth more than life?

If there is a justice, it will not come looking for me. It lives here, in this voice that will not be silenced, in the name of Pablo that does not age, in the child who will inherit a throne made of bones.

Speak to me more, silence.

Do not go.

Loneliness already knows too much.”

The End