Para partir con ella mi cariño
(To share with her my love)
Para partir con ella mi dolor.
(To share with her my pain.)
Buscaba la Virgen que tocaba
(I sought the Virgin who touched)
mi frente con sus labios dulcemente
(My forehead with her sweet lips)
En el febril insomnio del amor.
(In the feverish insomnia of love.)
Como en la sacra soledad del templo
(As in the sacred solitude of the temple)
Sin ver a Dios se siente su presencia,
(Without seeing God His presence is felt,)
Así presentí en el mundo tu existencia
(Thus I foresaw your existence)
Y como a Dios,
(And like God,)
sin verte te adore
(without seeing you, I adored you.)
Amémonos mi bien en este mundo,
(Let us love each other in this world,)
Donde lagrimas tanto se derraman.
(Where so many tears are spilled.)
Los que viste, quizas los que se aman,
(Those who love)
Tienen un no se que de bendición.
(Have some sort of blessing.)
Amor es empapar el pensamiento
(Love is to soak the thoughts)
Con la fragrancia del Edén perdido.
(With the fragrance of Eden lost.)
Amor es llevar herido
(Love is to have injured)
Con un dardo celeste el corazón.
(With a celestial dart the heart.)
Es tocar los dinteles de la gloria.
(It’s to touch the heights of glory.)
Es ver tu cara.
(It’s seeing your face.)
Es escuchar tu acento.
(It’s hearing your accent.)
Es llevar en el alma el firmamento.
(It’s carrying in one’s soul the firmament.)
Es morir a tus pies de adoración.
(It’s dying at your feet of adoration.)
As the song came to an end with a flurry of guitars and horns, Carolina swooned. She had always loved this song and the way he sang it. “Amémonos,” she whispered its title, gazing into Fulgencio’s eyes as he looked up at her. Let us love each other.
He said, “Carolina Mendelssohn, will you marry me?” He held out the tiny black box he had saved all those years.
She clasped it in her hands and let the tears rain down upon the shimmering diamond she had waited so long to finally see.
“Yes, Fulgencio. Yes.”
They embraced. They kissed. The mariachis yelped, sang, and applauded, plucking at their strings and blowing their horns in jubilation.
Thirty-Four
Clad in a heavy wool sweater, Paloma Angélica Ramirez paced up and down the stairs in her dorm. A chill clung to the air as her mind raced. She was laboring on her honors thesis, a grand architectural project she had envisioned in her sleep. She was designing a futuristic city, anchored on either side of a river that would flow through the center beneath a soaring community punctuated by glass turrets and towers. She had not shared the geographic location for her design with her faculty advisor. It was unnecessary since the vast majority of these projects were an exercise in futility, conceptual whimsies that never came to fruition.
Typically, on move-out day, dozens of miniature models could be found peeking out of dumpsters in Harvard Square. But hers, she knew, was meant to straddle the Rio Grande on the banks north of El Dos de Copas, mending the heart of Caja Pinta. There, she would assemble all the friends and family she so loved and missed during her years on the distant and frigid East Coast. In her mind, she would be uniting two bodies that had been torn asunder by this deep wound which fate had carved between them. She would bridge them together with a vision of love, “the healing power of love” to which her father often referred, glancing tenderly at her mother. Those two pieces of land divided reminded her of the stories they had shared about their misguided youth. Love had mended them. They had built upon it. Now, so would she. She would be the architect of a new world, glorious and brave.
Thirty-Five
Fulgencio and Carolina were wed in a quiet ceremony out on the ranch. They gathered at the edge of the lake beyond the hut, surrounded by a small—but supportive—cluster of close family and friends.
Carolina’s mother, her weak voice wavering with emotion, gave them her blessing, saying, “When you were teenagers, you were ahead of your time. Now, you’re behind the times! Far be it from me to object if—after all these years—you still love each other.”
Ninfa del Rosario—while approving of their union—insisted that the ceremony “did not count” because the officiating minister was no longer among the living. But Fulgencio dismissed her concerns, proclaiming, “Who better than Brother William to unite us in the eyes of God?”
Fulgencio’s brothers all wore tuxedos and all managed to bring dates to the event, leading Fulgencio to believe that they too were beginning to reap the benefits of his triumph over la maldición. Cipriano, El Primo Loco Gustavo, El Papabote LaMarque, and the dearly departed Fernando Cisneros (playing cards clutched in his hands like a paper rosary) rounded out the guest list. Brother William brandished his gleaming silver cross high above the bride and groom.
As the Brother spoke the ritual words that would formally bind them together, the two lovers barely heard or noticed what was transpiring around them. They held each other’s hands tightly, kneeling before the Brother. They gazed into each other’s eyes. They felt like children floating in a fantasy
After their wedding, the two lovers escaped to Veracruz, which neither had ever seen. There, beneath the stars and palms, Fulgencio sang the song of the same name, bringing tears to the eyes of all within earshot. The two strolled along the beach, barefoot, hand-in-hand. Lying on a colorful serape that would become a family heirloom, they made love as the waves crashed around them and the water lapped at their feet. They laughed and they cried and they feasted on each other’s flesh with desire and regret, with abandon and forgiveness, releasing the burden of their wasted years. There upon the sand, they conceived a miracle of their own. Not one borne of Fulgencio’s magic, but rather by the enduring spell of their love.