by D.N. Stuefloten
Jacqueline Lizarraga de Stuefloten awakens in the morning. She puts on her makeup. She leans into her mirror. It is only within the mirror, she announces, that truth is visible. She smiles as a brush flutters across her cheek. It is only in obscurity, she adds, that clarity can be seen.
Fifty years have passed. During this time we have lived in Morocco, in Spain, in East Africa, Borneo. We traveled together down the Amazon, from Pulcallpa to Belem. We rode motorcycles up the center of Australia, across the unbounded desert. The wind blew her hair away from her face: she leaned forward, into the wind, like the bowsprit of a ship. The gibber plains, the hard rock hills, the drifting sand, animals bounding away, startled, as we plunged among them like visitors from outer space—all this she took in with glinting eyes, eyes like the sharp edges of razors, a smile thin across her face, teeth so white they seemed artificial against her brown skin. She reminded me of an animal, something small and feral, a rat perhaps, a mole, a vulpine creature, a snake writhing in its nest, a vicious ocelot twisting its way through foliage. Nothing about her was tame, not even when we strolled, arm in arm, in the Gran Via of Madrid during the afternoon paseo. She wore a beige skirt: it was so tight the metal clasps holding up her stockings were visible. Middle-aged women with garish faces stared at her like hawks, and the blue-veined hands of old men trembled, holding cigars and tazas de café. She clicked at my side in her high-heeled shoes. I remember her cheek brushing mine. It is only in obscurity, she whispered, that love can erupt. La oscuridad, she whispered, the darkness al fondo del mundo, the moist petals of the hidden flower, the secret aperture visible only sin luz, without light, in the darkness, she whispered, in the darkness between my legs.
In Mexico, in the mornings, she untangles herself from my arms and legs. I am an old man now, my arches fallen, my eyes rheumy. She bathes me with some delicacy. I see intentness in her face. She caresses my testicles.
Did you sleep well?
As always.
Perhaps today I will make soup. Would you like that?
That would be nice.
She sucks at my cock, which fumbles itself erect. She mounts me, thoughtfully.
Onions, she says. Leeks!
Celery, I say. Some rice—
Carnitas—albondigas? A few pieces of shrimp—sliced at an angle—
Limon?
Of course!
I imagine myself 30 years younger, burrowing into her like a hungry beast. I remember el Rio de la Pasion, near its juncture with the Rio Usumacinto: we arrived there in the afternoon, in the dugout canoe I’d acquired in Sayaxche. The river was so swollen, so slow, it spread high up the banks, over the boles of the trees. We strung our hammock at a place called Altar de los Sacrificios, a few tumbled rocks left by the Maya, carved limestone, roots twisting into each crevice, a lintel fallen onto its side, a frieze of murderous triumph—victims, victors, a few tortured limbs—monkeys barking and howling in the forest like a pack of wild dogs. We coupled at twilight in our hamaca matrimonia, beneath a white cloud of netting. We had, by then, perfected our procedure, the hammock rocking and twisting dangerously, our oscillations always on the verge of disaster. The hammock was canvas, a jungle hammock, wide enough for two people, suspended by sisal ropes from trees which whipped and swayed from our exertions. She wore stockings that evening—this was part of our ritual, even in the jungle, the thin nylon mudded and wet, laddered and snagged, loose at the thighs, sometimes falling transparently to her ankles. She kept them, during the day, in a pocket of her shirt. At evening, safe in our hammock, mosquitoes swarming just beyond the netting, she would take them out and pull them onto her legs, her toes wiggling, her mouth with its white teeth grinning up at me—a boned face, a skeletal face, lips curled to reveal their fleshy undersides. I groped with my red hands at her mud-slicked, sweat-slicked, nylon-slicked limbs. The fury of this encounter, as always, surprised me. It seemed an endless replay: each time different, each time the same, always ferocious, always tender, her aperture forever open, forever wet, as red as the lipsticked reds of her face, as swollen as the river rising—like a long, distended belly—over the boles of the forest.
My dear, she says, sponging at my face. Her tongue is between her white teeth. La oscuridad, she whispers, grinning at me, la oscuridad! I see myself mirrored in her eyes: ferocious, hard, vicious, sweet, tender, old, young. When she leans into me, I am engulfed. Darkness, sweat, mud, she says, la oscuridad, she says, la oscuridad al fondo del mundo.
Text and photos copyright D.N. Stuefloten.
Contact: don@dnstuefloten.com