The Sadness of Shadows - Lola Ancira, tr. Juana Adcock

The Sadness of Shadows Tristes sombras

The Sadness of Shadows Tristes sombras stories by Lola Ancira translated by Juana Adcock

— mto press wivenhoe 2024

Copyright © Lola Ancira, 2024, First published as Tristes sombras by Paraíso Perdido, Guadalajara, México, 2021 Translation copyright © Juana Adcock, 2024 This English-language translation first published in the United Kingdom by MTO Press in 2024.

Design by Gabriela Basta-Zabawa Typeset in Juana, Adobe Garamond Pro Cover art: treatment of ‘The Parents’ by Käthe Kollwitz, 1921-22 (published 1923); image courtesy of the Käthe Kollwitz Museum Köln.

The moral right of Lola Ancira to be identified as the original author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988.

The moral right of Juana Adcock to be identified as the author of this translation has been asserted.

The moral right of the editors has been asserted.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from MTO Press.

This is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise indicated, all the names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents in this book are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

ISBN 978-1-916913-03-5 MTO Press Essex County United Kingdom mtopress.com

Contents

LA CASTAÑEDA MEMENTO MORI THE LIVES OF OTHERS FUROR IMPIUS MORBUS PUERI MERCURY MIRRORS UPROOTING EVIL EPILOGUE LECUMBERRI HORRORS NEVER SEEN BEFORE! IVORY REVENGE ABLAZE I CAN DREAM IT WAS SO LIVING MEMORY TAKING SHIP Acknowledgements (from the Spanish Edition)

13 29 45 59 75 87 95 103 117 131 141 153 173 189

“Only in books is there space for what no longer fits in a country.”

— EDUARDO RUIZ SOSA, Anatomía de la memoria

“The problem of a country like Mexico (…) was not only Evil, but the fact that it was complicated to distinguish between fact and fiction. Anything could happen because everything was equally believable.”

— BERNARDO ESQUINCA, Carne de ataúd

The Sadness of Shadows Tristes sombras

the sadness of shadows

LA CASTAÑEDA

MEMENTO MORI

It was at the Sunday market that the widow Rosa heard of the unnatural wonder that Eugenio Frey was offering patrons at his apothecary: the chance to replicate the aroma of any deceased loved one. Or, as Father Santiago liked to say during his sermons, “capturing in small, dark bottles a fragment of the soul of those who should be finding repose”. She was instantly willing to pay in the silver cutlery she still owned, or any of her last remaining jewels, just to be able to smell José Luis’s scent again, though she knew that God would punish her for trying to bring back a person that he had decided to take away. But, for now, other expenses were more pressing. Contrary to what she had always been told, it was within the church’s tall walls and stained-glass windows smoked with incense that she most intensely felt the grief and longing for the man who had been her husband, and that is where she spent the better part of her days—mourning endlessly in her black linen dresses matched by fascinators and hats adorned with feathers, nets, lace or gauze in ebony shades.

The loss had turned Josefina, Rosa’s only child, into a quiet and withdrawn adolescent. She inherited his same face, though her features were more delicate and her skin was dark.

Ever since she was little, Rosa and the women who had an influence on her education had taken it upon themselves to insist that the first thing that would be needed upon noticing her menses would be to find her a husband that would get her pregnant, thus ensuring her sustenance. To this guidance was

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added that of finding a home to take her mother, who was in charge of ensuring she that she never missed her embroidery and knitting lessons, taught by a maid. To Rosa, Josefina was a contradiction: both an obstacle to rebuilding her own life, and her only salvation in that moment. Without her, the Tardans would have no reason to continue to support her. It was the father who had seen to Josefina’s upbringing, and the girl developed a bond with him so strong that Rosa found it impossible to hide her jealousy. Josefina learned to hide from this maternal rejection and rage by pressing her face into the rabbit fur felt fedora that her father would place on the dining table so that Josephina could easily reach it. She knew that she needed to “handle it gently, like it’s a living, breathing creature”, as he would say, looking into her eyes as she caressed it.

Although both were treated amicably by the Tardans while José Luis was still alive, by the first anniversary of his death, Rosa had almost nothing of value left to pawn, and they were evicted from the first floor of Casa Borda, in Madero. They asked for shelter at the Franco-Spanish family mansion, where anyone of obvious Mexican blood and features was discreetly rejected.

Doña Margarita, who, by virtue of being a widow, had been obliged to crown herself as head of the family over eight years ago, offered them lodging in a spacious room, as she feared there might be divine retribution or the ire of her deceased first-born if she left them out on the street.

Rosa spoke the bare minimum and became deeply engrossed in religion, while Josefina loved spending long hours in the immense kitchen, where the clay stove was always lit. The aromas of chicken broth, fresh tortillas, spices, mole, hot chocolate and sweet pastries fresh out of the oven were her favourite. She took refuge in a warm world of scents that enveloped

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her. She loved to pretend she was blind, depending solely on her sense of smell to guess what the cooks were preparing.

Although Rosa, who was never any good at cooking, had told her that love was transmitted through food, to Josephina, love was to be found in the aromas. From time to time, she still remembered perceiving the smell of her father when he was about to arrive—the same smell she spent hours memorising when she pressed her nose into the perfumed collar of his shirts and blazers, although his natural essence was best preserved in the black rabbit fur fedora with a grosgrain trim in the same colour and a leather inner band, which he cared for meticulously.

One particularly cold morning when the storm clouds concealed the light of dawn, she was in the kitchen and the smell of pinole atole with cinnamon brought back the soft texture of the smooth, glossy felt, and she thought about how nice it would be to have a fedora of her own. She wondered what might have happened to her father’s.

“Narcisa, on what day will you cook chillied rabbit?”

“This week we’ve got two days of suckling pig, three of duck and two of beef. I think probably in a fortnight, child.”

“Will you keep the hide of a black one for me, when they bring them to you?”

“Oh, the things you say, child! The lady of the house brings me the rabbits already dead and flayed. Probably cheaper that way.” * José Luis Tardan had a natural talent for hat making, an activity that he pursued from the age of thirteen until shortly before his thirtieth birthday, always in Casa Chica—a workshop

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that formed part of Casa Grande, the viceroy-style villa that his father purchased. He died after suffering from the same symptoms that brought an end to his father’s life. Don Carlos agonised for weeks due to persistent diarrhoea, which, along with his meagre diet, caused him to lose almost half his bodyweight. Prostrated on the bed, he suffered constant tremors, refusing to take food or any kind of witch’s brew or home remedies, and adamantly rejecting any kind of help. The only thing he wanted was to return to his workshop, and he would not stop muttering absurd measurements, made up surnames and non-existent delivery dates. He barely slept, and in the intervals when he was most at ease, he was even unable to recognise his own wife and children. His unsettling symptoms led the specialists to diagnose dementia. His eldest child passed away seven years later, exhibiting the exact same signs over the course of a two-week agony. After this, a rumour emerged that the mad hatter’s disease ran in the family.

Neither Don Carlos nor José Luis witnessed how the jingle “From Yucatán to Sonora, choose a Tardan felt fedora”, coined by the poet Salvador Novo, caught on, continuing to be heard for two decades after it was first aired on the XEW radio station. Nor were they any wiser to the discovery of the real causes of their affliction: mercurial erethism, or chronic poisoning with mercury—that malleable liquid, as enigmatic as it was deadly, yet necessary to the labours of their profession.

At the start of the century, the death of the owners of the business founded in 1865 caused the remaining male sibling, whose involvement had been limited to administrative affairs, to settle in Veracruz with his family, in order to better tend to the business at the port, though he did return for long periods.

On rare occasions, during his visits to the capital, he allowed his niece Josefina to accompany him to the walkway of

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Plaza de la Constitución Street, opposite the Palacio Nacional, where the shop was. When this happened, Josefina became fascinated with the hundreds of hats exhibited in the shop, which crowned the wooden heads held up by metal supports.

She knew the difference between a charro hat, a trilby, a bowler, a fedora and a high top; a narrow or wide brim; whether they were leather, fur or artificial. What she knew, she had learned from her father and grandfather. Her pleas to work in the shop or the workshop were inevitably met with a no, and eventually she gave up on her efforts and decided instead to be a persistent and discreet observer: gazing at the head of a man seemed to her an act of intimacy that verged on nudity; in her conception of the world, the garment was essential.

Most Tardan customers were men dressed in tailcoat tuxedos, levitas or tweed blazers and top hats, gloves, shiny patent leather shoes and cufflinks. Sometimes they were accompanied by women who wore long gloves, fans, parasols, elaborate dresses of silk and velvet with multiple layers of lace and ostentatious hats with feathers, laces, artificial flowers and sequins.

No matter the gender, a range of jewels glistened among the garments and the tall and pale bodies. The shop constituted a small bubble at the heart of an area where huaraches, clothes of coarse white cloth and wide brim straw hats were the norm, and they both uniformed and set apart the others: people who were short in height, with curly black hair and skin overly tanned by the sun. Josefina, in whom the characteristics of both worlds were combined, identified with neither.

With the arrival of the adolescent’s first period, Rosa, who considered her daughter ungainly and lacking the skills of social life, taught Josefina some of her secrets: she usually whitened her skin with rice powders that she kept in small metal tins, and drank the juice of two lemons with vinegar each

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morning with the same purpose. She had gone so far as to try some substances containing lead or arsenic that needed to be ingested with extreme caution, though she did not often purchase these due to their cost. She also showed Josefina how to mark, with a bluish pigment, the veins of her face, neck and hidden neckline, and to give a little life to her cheekbones with rouge. She taught her to decorate the centre of her lips with a bar of crimson and to file and polish her nails with olive oil.

Before concluding the lesson, she gifted Josefina with a small bottle of cologne with a lavender base: her own aroma. The whole ensemble conferred Rosa with a grace that few men overlooked. The final touch was to curl her hair using the curling tongues that José Luis gifted her upon returning from one of his trips to France before they were married, designed

by Marcel Grateau himself.

But Josefina did not truly feel she was a part of that feminine world until she wore a corset. Though it cut off her breath and restricted her movements, it gave a striking definition to her waist. The stabbing pain in her stomach and the fainting became less important; she needed to show off a delicate waist, worthy of the lady she was becoming. Besides, those pains did not compare to the intense menstrual cramps that Narcisa helped her ease with chamomile infusions. To Josefina, growing up was synonymous with physical suffering and anguish, and she knew it wouldn’t be long before a partner was found for her.

In those days there was a rumour that Rosa, still young and with voluptuous hips and breasts concealed by dark dresses, had begun to engage in nocturnal visits to her brother-inlaw. Doña Margarita, in her sleepless nights, had witnessed the visits she made to her son, regardless of the stealth with which the woman entered or exited. The eighty-year-old would cross

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herself and invoke God and his entourage of saints, as if by doing so she could expunge the double sin of her very own blood.

The fact did not cloud her avarice. It would still be she who decided who her granddaughter should marry. The chosen one was Bernardo, another one of her grandchildren, a prim boy raised in Veracruz, who was barely eighteen. She was confident that the marriage would make a man out of the effeminate youngster and, in turn, accentuate Josefina’s timid personality—the girl was the only thing she had left of her firstborn son. The elderly woman limited herself to repeating to her other heir, “Remember that on her depend the descendants of your brother, may God have him in his holy glory”, after which she would cross herself three times with a shaky hand. “She is gentle and kind,” she continued, “at least she has some of the feminine qualities that her miserable mother sorely lacked.”

When Bernardo received Doña Margarita’s order to marry Josefina, that aloof adolescent he had seen wandering the kitchen and hallways when they visited the city, he was saddened to learn that there was little he could do to change his grandmother’s decision. Aware of the sacrifices that he would be required to make in order to obey her, he forced himself to be cordial to Josefina.

One Sunday morning, not long before the wedding scheduled for December, Doña Margarita insisted on attending the first mass of the day. She violently refused to be accompanied by any maid and decided to travel the distance of two kilometres on foot, with only a shawl to warm her shoulders. Rosa was woken up by the noise, and decided to accompany her mother-in-law for some distance, despite the woman’s stubbornness. A wagon transporting pigs to the market drove past at great speed in the same direction. Due to the scarcity of

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