Liberada
Whatever happened to Liberada? and, how did she
come to get that name? 'Liberada' means 'delivered', in the sense of 'rescued'.
Probably something to do with the bible, or perhaps she was an adopted foundling
or something of the sort.
She lived
with Uncle Julio and Auntie ... oh, what was her name, now. She was a constant
presence when we were kids, filling in the role of the kindly elderly auntie,
sweet to us.... Bianca, that was her name. Auntie Bianca she was: very white of
skin, a sort of pallor with red blotches probably caused by menopause although
we thought she was much older than that.... and a sad look in her
eyes
Liberada was twenty something,
pretty although not perhaps exactly beautiful -there is a difference. Her
features weren't perfect but sort of came in together very well and she was very
attractive. But then she would have been very attractive to the seventeen-year
old flavio, with raging hormones and a starving sex drive whilst being so
lacking in social skills. And she teased me, smiled with that glint in her eye,
flirted with me, ever such a lot, which sent me crawling up the
walls.
She sometimes stayed in my
grandfather's bedroom upstairs. I could her giggling and chatting well into the
night, i would come out into the tiny little inner patio, see the door closed
upstairs, the moon bathing it all with its cold ghostly blue light. I would get
a bit closer, at the bottom of the stairs, straining to hear what i didn't want
to hear, in the clutches of unformed desire and a jealousy that couldn't find an
object -how could i be jealous of my eighty five year old grandfather? Even if
he was far more active and strong than I was and of course he was a man while I
was hardly more than a little boy. All these things and many others went through
my head in front of that closed door behind which bolts of giggles would burst
out in the night while I was downstairs in the so-called patio bathing myself in
the silver blue light of the moon of ghosts and unfulfilled
desires
She was basically an Andino
girl transplanted to Caracas, having quickly become streetwise but at the same
time having remained a peasant girl. She wore different dresses to every other
girl on the street, her shiny wavy jet black hair sometimes with a flower on it.
She had lovely shapely legs as yet undamaged by the domestic work. And she had
bright, intelligent, mischievous eyes that at the same time promised and
teased.
I wasn't in love with her. She
was too old for me, postively ancient at around twenty-five, or so i thought.
But I lusted after her with the intensity of a seventeen year old with few
outlets for the hormonal volcano of that age. And she knew it -would she not
know it? and enjoyed the cat and mouse game, the chess game of seduction at
which I was (and still am) woefully incompetent and at which she had both more
natural skill and more experience.
Not
a lot happened. There wasn't actual sex, as in making love, although there was
much sexual playing and foreplay. Of course it was too long ago and only rusty
crumbling memories remain of times in the kitchen of that flat in El Silencio,
that place that felt unchanged since the 1910's or perhaps the 19th Century.
There was always Blanca sitting in the living room , ostensibly listening to the
radio with face turned away from us and the mirror in which we could see her
and, I presume, she could see us as well.. Oh, the intensity of those innocent
games of mutual touching and discovering and
exploring.
I wonder why nothing major
(meaning copulation) happened. How come it didn't happen any of those times we
were playing on the bed for hours, mutual masturbation and non-stop touching
notwithstanding.
I was innocent and was
already possessed by demons. I would leave the flat in El Silencio and walk the
dangerous st reets of central Caracas in the night, looking up dodgy doorways
with red lights, some over-made up middle aged woman smoking at the door saying
with a sarcastic, tone, dismissive of the young kid obviously too young and
penniless, 'would you like to have a look upstairs?' but i would just carry on
walking and walking, burning inner fire and energy for which there were no
outlet, So I would walk and walk, playing with the twenty-five centimes coin
that would eventually get me back to Los Magallanes in a packed noisy smelly bus
full of what seemed to me ugly, sour-smelling evil looking
people...
Posted: Sun - December
21, 2003 at 12:44 PM