Distant Relations by Carlos Fuentes Page A

back to Branly’s bed. There he bent over, holding the mirror in both hands so that its oval reflected both the host and the guest.
    Branly tells me that at that moment, with all his attention riveted, as Heredia desired, on the undeniable reflection of their faces, and with the impatience of one who hopes for a solution to certain enigmas, so they will cease to be enigmas, and almost expecting to see only one face in the glass, his own, he overlooked the additional possibilities that only later would occur to him, and which, this afternoon, he outlines as follows:
    â€œI could not, you see, distinguish between our two breaths, one perhaps cold, the other warm, or one actual and the other illusory. No, I did not know whose was the life that breathed moisture on the mirror, as I did not know whether, through me, Heredia’s eyes were projecting a profile that was not in the mirror, perhaps not even in the bedchamber, or even whether the opposite was true and I myself was no more than an illusion traced on that oval by a nebulous finger drawing in the ephemeral mist on a mirror. You see, my dear friend, at this point I still did not know that a succession of dreams were merely disguising my ignorance of my own desires.”

10
    â€œIl m’a eu,” my friend thought later. “He put one over on me and I allowed myself to fall into the trap.” Branly knew what his intention had been, to let Heredia know he was aware of the presence of the woman in the house. He wanted to confront him with the evidence, to see how he got around the proof gleaned from the inadvertently overheard conversation of the boys as they played on the terrace under his window, not suspecting Branly was listening.
    And too, he confesses now, he had wanted to know whether or not his dream was real, whether that oneiric wakefulness of the past few days could survive something as destructive and commonplace as verification: your dream is true, your dream is true because it is your dream, your dream is not a dream if it truly happened, your dream is a lie.
    But no; Heredia had caught him off-guard, had scandalized him with the exaggerated theatricality of the scene with the mirror; Branly himself had given him the opening with his unfortunate reference to vampires. Henceforward, he would be more cautious. He strongly suspected that Heredia was hiding something from him, that the vulgarity so repulsive to the involuntary guest was a sham, an attempt to divert his attention from the truth.
    â€œI realized, you see, that the sentiments I have been describing, all inspired by Victor Heredia’s uncouth behavior, were only my sentiments about the man. It was only fair to admit that I had never seen how he conducted himself in society, nor did I know what others thought of him. I even reproached myself: it was I who was crude, capable of viewing my host only in the light of my own standards, my own values, and—why not say it—my own prejudices.”
    But then he thought again of the vanished woman he had loved in a garden where birth and death were simultaneous. He rejected his impartial sympathy for Heredia to tell himself that the vulgar, uncivil, coarse host of the Clos des Renards had in his rasping voice sung him a pretty tune the night before only to distract him from one question: where is the woman the boys had been talking about?
    And, as if on cue, their voices rose from the terrace. Branly listened attentively. The whole thrust of their conversation this morning was—in their games, laughter, sudden silences, snatches of the madrigal, intense secrecy—a reaffirmation of their decision that they would do nothing they could not do together, nothing from which one would be excluded. He imagined they were getting to know each other, as he believed he was getting to know them.
    â€œDon’t you like it?”
    â€œNo, André.”
    â€œIt’s hard for me to change.”
    â€œBut I don’t want