Distant Relations by Carlos Fuentes

rosebushes, whose geometry, gradually revealed in this first persistent rain of the coming autumn, was sundered by a long, deep scar, a knife slash through this rational and most perfect of gardens, an eruption of savage forest in a space designed to negate it: from the fallen leaves, across the gravel, through grass and shrubs, the rain revealed, as if in developer solution, an indecent trough, a cruel, oblique swath carved across the face of the garden, a garden disfigured by something resembling the track of a mysterious, lurking, nocturnal beast.
    The color and texture of this scar were those of a match burn on human flesh—black, white, and gray. Branly’s eyes sought the birch trees, the striated silver of their bark, and, among the tree trunks, the figures of the two boys. This time they were not there, unless they were hidden in the mist.
    He shook his head. The crows soared. He massaged his temples. Night fell as he asked himself: How to describe the shadow of a dream? The insistence of the dripping shower drowned out the fine, expiring rain.
    Heredia turned on the light, and Branly clapped his hands over bedazzled eyes. He wondered how long his host had been standing there in the darkness, observing him observe the garden, the rain, and the scar in the garden, revealed by the rain. Not long, he concluded immediately. Peculiar to Heredia—Branly is saying this November afternoon in the empty, darkened dining room of the Automobile Club, where only he and I remain, and we remain thanks to the respect in which my friend is held in this establishment—was his ability immediately to dispel serene contemplation, good humor, spontaneity of sentiments, and to make anyone who shared with him an hour, or a room, feel self-conscious, if not guilty.
    After his host turned on the light, he picked up the tray he had set on a chair. He said, as he put it down, this time on my friend’s lap, that his guest would not complain today, he’d see, a delicious cassoulet, no leftovers from some earlier meal, eh? don’t you believe it. Branly did not reply at once. Though his eyes never wavered from Heredia’s, pale as the bark of the white birch trees, he settled himself in the bed before affirming that of course the hot meal must be the work of Madame; he was happy to know that she had returned and would take charge of the kitchen. Heredia must permit him to state with some frankness—Branly figuratively wiped his lips before beginning to eat—that the food today had not been, how should one say, umh, up to the standards of a Spanish innkeeper, or even of a thatched hut in the Antilles, not even … But surely Heredia would understand what he was trying to say: how could he suppose that his guest, during a day in which, astonishingly, his host did not once appear—how could he suppose that his guest would guess there was a plate of cold cuts for him in a dumbwaiter.
    â€œDidn’t you get enough?” Heredia asked.
    â€œI have eaten less under other circumstances,” was Branly’s reply, as once again he ignored Heredia’s impertinence. “That is not the point,” he continued. “It was the lack of any warning. Had I known last evening … You might have informed me.”
    â€œWell, the fact is, you found the food. You’ll know where to find it from now on.”
    Branly savored with pleasure a portion of sauce-soaked goose before adding: “Does that mean I may not expect to see you during the day, M. Heredia?”
    â€œI told you. I get up late. I go to bed late.”
    â€œAre you a vampire?” asked Branly with his best worldly smile, not looking at Heredia, but concentrating on carefully spearing with his fork the green beans swimming in the deep dish of the cassoulet.
    Heredia glanced at my friend from the corner of his eye and then did an extraordinary thing: he walked to the washbasin, took down the oval mirror, and carried it