She shook her head and waved her hand as if to dismiss some outrage and the criada began to withdraw the pins and combs from the girl’s hair until the long black fall descended again over her shoulders and her back. She took her brush and began again to brush the girl’s hair, following with the flat of her hand beneath, holding up the silky blackness with each stroke and letting it fall again. Josefina came forward and took a silver haircomb from the table and swept back the girl’s hair along the side and held it there. She studied the girl and she studied the girl in the mirror. The criada had stepped back and stood holding the brush in both hands. She and Josefina studied the girl in the mirror, the three of them in the yellow light of the table-lamp standing there within the gilded plaster scrollwork of the mirror’s frame like figures in an antique flemish painting.
Cómo es, pues, said Josefina.
She was speaking to the girl but the girl did not answer.
Es más joven. Más …
Inocente, said the girl.
The woman shrugged. Inocente pues, she said.
She studied the girl’s face in the glass. No le gusta?
Está bien, the girl whispered. Me gusta.
Bueno, said the woman. She let go her hair and placed the comb in the criada’s hand. Bueno.
When she was gone the old woman put the comb back on the table and came forward with her brush again. Bueno, she said. She shook her head and clucked her tongue.
No te preocupes, the girl said.
The old woman brushed her hair more fiercely. Bellísima, she hissed. Bellísima.
She assisted her with care. With solicitude. One by one the hooks and stays. Passing her hands across the lilac velvet, cupping her breasts each in turn and adjusting the border of the decolletage, pinning gown to undergarment. She brushed away bits of lint. She held the girl by her waist and turned her like a toy and she knelt at her feet and fastened the straps of her shoes. She rose and stood back.
Puedes caminar? she said.
No, said the girl.
No? Es mentira. Es una broma. No?
No, said the girl.
The criada made a shooing motion. The girl stepped archly about the room on the tall gold spikes of the slippers.
Te mortifican? said the criada.
Claro.
She stood again before the mirror. The old woman stood behind her. When she blinked only the one eye closed. So that she appeared to be winking in some suggestive complicity. She brushed the gathered hair with her hand, she plucked the shoulders of the sleeves erect.
Como una princesa, she whispered.
Como una puta, said the girl.
The criada seized her by the arm. She hissed at her, her eye glaring in the lamplight. She told her that she would marry a great rich man and live in a fine house and have beautiful children. She told her that she had known many such cases.
Quién? said the girl.
Muchas, hissed the criada. Muchas. Girls, she told her, with no such beauty as hers. Girls with no such dignity or grace. The girl did not answer. She looked across the old woman’s shoulder into the eyes in the glass as if it were some sister there who weathered stoically this beleaguerment of her hopes. Standing in the gaudy boudoir that was itself a tawdry emulation of other rooms, other worlds. Regarding her own false arrogance in the pierglass as if it were proof against the old woman’s entreaties, the old woman’s promises. Standing like some maid in a fable spurning the offerings of the hag which do conceal within them unspoken covenants of corruption. Claims that can never be quit, estates forever entailed. She spoke to that girl standing in the glass and she said that one could not know where it was that one had taken the path one was upon but only that one was upon it.
Mande? said the criada. Cuál senda?
Cualquier senda. Esta senda. La senda que escoja.
But the old woman said that some have no choice. She said that for the poor any choice was a gift with two faces.
She was kneeling in the floor repinning the hem of the dress. She’d taken the pins from her mouth and now she laid them on the carpet and took them up one by one. The girl watched her image in the glass. The old woman’s gray head bowed at her feet. After a while she said that there was always a choice, even if that choice were death.
Cielos, said the old woman. She blessed herself quickly and went on pinning.
When she entered the salon he was standing at the bar. The musicians were assembling their pieces on the dais and tuning them and the few notes or chords sounded in the quiet of the room as if some ceremony were at hand. Within the shadows of the niche beyond the dais Tiburcio stood smoking, his fingers laced about the thin niellate ebony holder of his cigarette. He looked at the girl and he looked toward the bar. He watched the boy turn and pay and take up his glass and come down the broad stairs where the velvetcovered rope railings led into the salon. He blew smoke slowly from his thin nostrils and then he opened the door behind him. The brief light framed him in silhouette and his long thin shadow fell briefly across the floor of the salon and then the door closed again as if he had not been there at all.