After sharing her secret, Candelaria bit her lips and continued slamming the sheets against the white stones of the laundry sink. Her dark words shrank away from the clamor of the water and the foam and went whizzing among the trees. The clothes were as white as the morning.
“And then what happened?” Tefa asked.
Evita wanted to hear the rest of the conversation, but Rutilio called Tefa over, so she went to the laundry room.
“What did you say, Candelaria?” the little girl ventured.
“Nothing for your bratty ears to hear.”
All morning, Candelaria continued beating the white clothes against the white stones. Evita obtained no more words from the washwoman. The little girl waited a long time, to no avail. The servant, absorbed in her work and her singing, did not deign to look at her.
“What day is today?” Eva asked at lunch.
“Friday,” her father replied.
“Hmph!” she commented, unconvinced.
Weeks did not actually follow each other in the order her father believed. It was possible to have three Sundays in a row or four consecutive Mondays. Equally possible was: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, but this was a coincidence. A pure coincidence! It was much more likely that from Monday we would jump abruptly to Friday, and from Friday return to Tuesday.
“I wish it were always Thursday,” Leli announced.
“I’d ask for Tuesday,” her sister replied.
Thursdays and Tuesdays were the best days.
“We’re already at five Fridays in a row,” Leli noted, with a gesture of annoyance.
Her father stared at her.
“It’s outrageous you still don’t know the days of the week.”
“Yes, we know them,” Evita protested.
The purple and silent Fridays filled the house with cracks. The girls saw the shattered walls and stepped away from them in fear. They raced each other to the pool and, to avoid seeing the dust, jumped headfirst into the water.
“Come out now. Your skin’s all wrinkled from soaking in there!”
The servants took the girls out of the water and sat them down at the table.
Fridays were days full of thirst. At night, the sound of the crumbling walls kept the girls from sleeping.
“Do you think it’ll be Thursday tomorrow?”
They woke up to another Friday. The walls were still standing, sustained by the very last bit of Thursday.
“Rutilio, what day is today?”
“Why do you care, if any day is a good day to die.”
That was not true. Some days were better than others when it came to dying. Tuesdays were skinny and transparent. If they died on a Tuesday, they would see the other days through tissue-paper walls: the days ahead and the days behind. If they died on a Thursday, they would stay stuck in a golden disk spinning like the horses on a merry-go-round and would see the days from afar.
“Dad, what day is today?”
“Sunday.”
“That’s what the little guitar calendar says, but it’s wrong.”
“That’s what the calendar says because that’s what it’s supposed to say. There’s an order, and the days are part of that order.”
“Hmph . . . ! I don’t think so,” the little girl insisted.
Her father burst out laughing. Every time they made a mistake, he laughed, lifted their bangs, looked at their foreheads, laughed again, and then took a sip of coffee.
“The señor doesn’t know anything,” Evita declared.
“Let’s go see Don Flor . . .”
King Felipe II overheard them from his painting.
“Shh! He’s listening . . .”
They looked at him: hanging on the wall, dressed in black, listening to what they whispered, next to the little table where they were having their afternoon custard, by the balcony curtains.
No one could see Don Flor. The people who spoke with him came from far away and only “when they had troubles.” Eva and Leli would escape from their home to spend time on the hill with giant sunflowers. From its strategic height, when they sat on the ground, it commanded a view over the patio and the pen of Don Flor’s house. There was so much light that the house, the patio, and the pen were within hand’s reach. From the hill, they could see the cooking pans, the stones, the chairs, and the white ixtle fibers. The house was round and painted white. It looked like a pigeon house. All the colors were on the inside, but the girls discovered this some time later.
Don Flor didn’t dress in white, like other men, and didn’t wear pants either. His suit was long, bougainvillea-colored, and looked like a tunic. His hair was cut in a bob, just like the girls’, and in the afternoon he sat on the patio or the walkway of his house, weaving baskets and chatting with the Days. From the hill the girls saw him weave wicker and white ixtles. Each day had a different color. Sometimes the week was incomplete, and Don Flor would chat only with Wednesday and Sunday. Sometimes he spent four days in a row with Monday.
“What are you chatting about? Come inside. Dinner’s going to get cold!”
Friday, peering through the window that looked out onto the pen, called out to Don Flor and to Monday. Then, Eva and Leli remembered they had to go home. Night was falling, so they rushed down the hill and entered the village.
“We saw it’s been Monday for three days,” Evita said.
“Did you go to Don Flor’s house? You’ll be struck by evil! Don’t you know he’s not Catholic? I’m going to tell your parents.”
Candelaria got very angry when she found out they had been to see Don Flor. He, on the other hand, knew nothing about this. He continued to wander calmly in his pen, weaving baskets with his dark hands. The Days sat in a circle on some petate mats. The ring of the Days looked lovely. The complete week was like a rainbow and showed its colors with no need for rain.
One afternoon, Don Flor approached Thursday, who was weaving a white ixtle, and placed an orange nopal flower on the tip of her black braid. The flower was the same color as her dress. Eva and Leli sat on the hill all afternoon, in spite of the heat that came down from the sky and rose up from the earth. They couldn’t turn their eyes away from the orange flower on the black braid. The furry sunflowers were dry; instead of giving shade, they increased the heat as if made of wool.
“Too bad we don’t have black braids!”
At night, Don Flor’s lit-up house glowed like the orange flower on Thursday’s black braid.
“Today’s Thursday!” the girls announced, radiant.
Felipe II stared at them with irritation. He looked as though he wanted to slap them.
“You’re getting the days mixed up. You’re bewitched . . .” Candelaria sighed, pushing the basket of cookies closer to them.
The maid crossed her arms and looked at the girls for a long time. She, too, shone black in Thursday’s orange light. The girls chewed their “violins” and “flutes” noisily.
“Our Lord Jesus Christ is going to shrivel your eyes up, for looking at what you’re not meant to see.”
“We’re not scared of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
“What are you saying, you wicked girls? You’re not afraid of getting the days wrong either?”
They didn’t answer but kept munching on their cookies. Our Lord too could make mistakes and could have said the days wrong. That afternoon was followed by many round and orange Thursdays. Little by little, the last Thursday turned red, and Sunday made its appearance once more, without Our Lord plucking the girls’ eyes out. Candelaria hadn’t reported them to their parents and Felipe II watched them with anger and without words.
“Do you want to go see what day he takes out today?”
They escaped to the sunflower hill. The hill was silent. There were no cicadas. The earth had closed all of its little holes and was not letting either the ants or the black beetles out. A red wind brought the reddish clouds down until they touched the tips of the sunflowers. From the flowers, a yellow dust rained. Don Flor was alone, lying on the patio of his house. Not a single day accompanied him. The week had ended. Evita and Leli wanted to go home. But the red afternoon spun around them, and they stayed sitting on the burning earth, watching the abandoned patio of the Days and, collapsed on the ground, Don Flor, who stared at the sky without moving.
Some time passed and Don Flor, in his bougainvillea suit, lay still at the center of the patio of his house. Because the girls had been staring at him for so long, his suit was becoming humongous and the patio teeny tiny. Maybe Our Lord Jesus Christ was gouging their eyes out. That’s why all they could see was the stain of the bougainvillea-colored suit growing bigger and bigger.
“Let’s go see Don Flor. He’ll tell us.”
They made their way down the hill and took a detour to reach his house, which vibrated white under the red clouds. They knocked on the door and waited. After a while, the door cracked half-open, then opened all the way.
“What sorrow brings you here, little girls?” Don Flor asked when he appeared in the doorway.
They looked at him: tall, wearing his tunic with its opaque folds, his ears covered by black hair.
“We can’t see . . .”
“Come in, come in.”
He led them down a minuscule hallway, painted lilac, and from there to the round patio. The bedroom doors, which led to the patio, were all closed. Each door was a different color. The windows looked out onto the pen. The house was identical to a pigeon house. In the center of the patio, where a fountain should have been, Don Flor placed three chairs, told the girls to sit down, and looked at them pensively.
“So, you’re the güeritas?”
They let him observe them in silence.
“Female hair . . .” Don Flor said, touching their hair with his fingers covered in rings.
With a shove, he brought his chair closer and leaned over to look at their eyes.
“Male eyes,” he added.
The girls didn’t know what to say. They lowered their eyes and stared steadily at the round and gray stones on the ground.
“There’s a lot of water, a lot of water in your eyes.”
Don Flor said these words gravely. Then he kept a mournful silence.
“Between you and me, there’s all the water in the world.”
When he said this, Don Flor grew very sad. His eyes filled with amazement, he clapped a few times vigorously, as if he were about to make the afternoon explode, then he stretched his hands forward, with his palms turned up, and fell into ecstasy. After a while, he leaned toward Leli, placed a finger between her eyes, and stared intently at her.
“You—you’ll go to the other side of the water.”
When he removed his finger, the little girl thought it had bored a hole in her forehead. Don Flor shook his hands as though they were wet. Then he turned around to look at Eva and once more placed his dark finger on the girl’s pale forehead.
“And you . . .”
He stayed silent; he seemed baffled. He removed his finger from the girl’s forehead and grabbed one of her knees.
“I’m going to read your knee.”
He quickly bent over her leg, covered in dirt from the hill, and stayed there a long time. Evita didn’t move.
“You’re not going anywhere. You’re staying in the middle of these days.”
“Which ones?” Eva asked, scared.
“These ones. We’re here in the center of the days.”
His words drank the afternoon’s water and an arid silence emerged. The girls felt thirsty. They looked at the dusty patio, through which hot air was flowing. In the house there was not a single plant, not even a trace of leaves.
“There are no more days . . . Where did they go?” Eva asked.
“The Week went to the Fair of Teloloapan. Here only the center of the days remains,” Don Flor replied, watching them with his glassy eyes, which smelled of alcohol.
“To the fair?”
“You don’t believe me? Come!”
Don Flor stood up and started walking, shuffling the folds of his bougainvillea-colored tunic. The girls watched him walk away. Suddenly he stopped, turned around, and gestured for them to come. They had no choice but to obey and approach the man who waited for them impatiently. He stopped in front of a door painted red.
“Do you see?”
Over the red paint, in letters of a darker red, someone had written “Sunday” and, in smaller script, “Lust,” and beneath this “Generosity.” The man pulled out a bunch of black keys from within the folds of his tunic, chose one, and slid it into the lock on the door. Then, with a sharp kick, he opened it wide.
“After you.”
Accompanied by Don Flor, the girls walked in and stopped in the middle of the room.
“Do you hear?” the man asked, in a strange voice.
The girls looked at him in surprise. In this room with red walls and a red door, there was no one, nor could they hear any sound.
“Can’t you hear the lashings?” Don Flor insisted.
The girls looked at his dry, alert eyes and at his face, turned toward sounds they did not hear. Don Flor seemed satisfied, strangely satisfied.
“Listen . . .”
All there was in the room was a chilling smell, they couldn’t tell if pleasant or unpleasant. Necklaces made with black shells hung from one of the red walls.
“You see? Sunday isn’t here. It went to the fair with the other Days.”
“No, it’s not here,” the girls replied.
Don Flor moved closer to touch the black shells, then turned back toward the girls.
“Of all of them she’s the worst: lustful and prodigal. I haven’t been able to make her yield to the virtue that would curb her vice.”
The man moved his head and twisted the rings on his fingers. He looked at the girls again with dry eyes.
“When I visit her, she makes me sweat blood, but I do the same to her. I leave her striped from the lashes . . . Do you hear her? She’s calling me. Listen to her! Listen to her cry as she calls me! She loves pleasure and vice . . .”
The girls couldn’t hear anything. Sunday’s bedroom scared them. They looked at Don Flor; his eyes had become as dry as the black shells that hung on the wall.
“Listen to her . . . ! Listen to her . . . !”
He turned to look at them again. He was smiling, showing his white teeth.
“I like her tight skin . . . It bursts like guavas . . . Such a pity, this woman! A pity . . .! Flesh for the devil. A pity, so much beauty . . . !”
“We have to go,” the girls said, scared.
“What do you mean, you have to go? You’ve come to meet the days, and I’m only just showing you Sunday’s lust.”
Don Flor burst into uncontrollable laughter. He smoothed his black hair and then grew sad.
“A bad day . . . Evil woman . . . I hope I won’t lose myself in her pleasures . . . I’m afraid of her.”
“I hope I won’t lose myself in her pleasures . . . !” Don Flor repeated, anxious. When they left Sunday’s room, he closed the door carefully.
“I shut the door tight to keep her moans from escaping. This woman needs to repent. As I’ve told you, she makes me sweat blood, but I do the same to her . . .”
His panting words fell onto the little girls’ blond heads. They were walking near the jaws of an unknown animal whose breath was as scalding hot as the afternoon’s. Don Flor paused before the next door. The door was painted pink. In a darker shade of pink, someone had written: “Saturday,” “Sloth,” “Chastity.”
“Saturday! Sloth! Chastity!” Don Flor read out loud.
He pushed the door open, and they entered a bedroom with pink-colored walls. The floor was covered in sugar cane husks. Hanging on the wall were little rag dolls stabbed with pins.
“I haven’t been able to make Saturday accept virtue either. She’s useless. Useless!”
Don Flor was outraged. He kicked the sugar cane husks and, with his ring-laden hand, readjusted the pins that threatened to fall from the head of one of the dolls.
“Look at this impertinence! She’s so lazy that she’s not even good for giving kisses.”
Eva and Leli let him talk, without understanding his irritation. They would have liked to ask him why the dolls were so small and so covered in pins, but they preferred to keep quiet. Don Flor’s agitated face frightened them.
“I make her scrub and scrub the floor, but she doesn’t understand. As soon as I turn my back, she starts chewing sugar cane and lounges on the mat, singing. I make her work by force, without joy . . . She’s worthless. But she needs to get it through her head that I’m the master of the Days. The only thing I like about her is that she can’t stand me . . .”
Don Flor burst out laughing. Still laughing, he left the room and closed the door, amused.
The girls wanted to leave. Every word Don Flor uttered smelled of alcohol and came out of his mouth magnified. Without paying attention to them, the man took them to Friday’s room. Beneath the name on the door was written “Pride” and “Diligence.” The door and the walls were purple. On the walls were kites with large, shiny tails. The room smelled of musk and glycerin.
“Here you won’t find a single word!” the man explained before staying silent for a while. “Even talking to her is hard. She’s difficult, this woman, incredibly so! I can’t even bring her down from her heights with a whip. The punishments the others fear slip over her without a single word. This woman makes me sad . . . I can’t handle her, I can’t handle her . . .”
He really did seem sad. Absorbed in his own thoughts, he spent some time looking at a heap of white baskets piled in a corner of the room. He moved his head, incredulous.
“She’s the one who weaves the best.”
Don Flor caressed the white baskets, which smelled of the countryside. His eyes moistened.
“Even if I keep her occupied for a whole night, the easy way or the hard way, I can’t get a single word out of her. I’ve left her covered in wounds! But when a woman doesn’t want it, she just doesn’t, and that’s how she makes a man break.”
They left Friday’s room without speaking. Don Flor’s sadness spilled onto the girls and followed them through the narrow hallway. Written on the door of the room called Thursday was “Anger” and “Humility.” Its door and walls were orange, like the nopal flower that Don Flor had placed on the woman’s black braid. The room smelled of squash blossoms. Corncobs hung from the ceiling.
“This is where Thursday lives. The others tremble in fear of her. I’ve already told her: ‘Woman, you’ll end up in hell, transformed into a tongue of fire,’ but she doesn’t get any better. When I whip her, she attacks me like a cat. Imagine that! I spend many nights and days with her. She gives many pleasures, many pleasures. But only for me! She’s never known another man. I snagged her at the tenderest age.”
Don Flor beat his chest with pride. The smell that peeled off from his tunic gave the girls nausea. He bent to grab the palm leaf mat and shook it in front of them.
“You see? You see?”
The girls saw nothing. The ring-filled fingers signaled the weaving of the mat.
“Don’t you see the pleasures? They’re drawn here.”
Wednesday’s room was green and the words etched in pale green were “Envy” and “Patience.”
“I haven’t been able to get this one to accept virtue either. Have you seen her?”
“Yes,” replied the girls, who had seen Wednesday from far away: she wore a skirt and a very cute green huipil and had green ribbons in the braids hanging from her neck.
“If she had it her way, I’d visit only her. That’s why my nights with her are few and far between. But she puts up with everything: scorn, blows . . . as long as I let her punish the others from time to time.”
Don Flor laughed. He turned to look at the girls with shiny eyes, where dry sparks danced.
“She’s bloodthirsty!”
His laughter reeked of alcohol. The girls listened to him without understanding what he said.
“It’s not that I don’t like her. I like her, this woman—oh, I like her a lot! Not every day, of course; you already know there are days for the days. But you should see how she gets when I give her the punishments. She’s a bitch in heat! Have you ever seen the faces of skewered bitches? She even drools . . . !”
Tuesday’s room was a pale yellow. Its door read “Greed” and “Temperance.”
“She’s so delicate I don’t even like to touch her. She’s brittle, and I’m a strapping man. I want a body more similar to mine.”
Suddenly he seemed to fly into a rage. He stared at the floor as though searching for something, then he swiftly bent over and lifted a tile. Beneath it, a pair of earrings with blue beads were hidden in the loose dirt.
“I’ve already told her not to hide anything. I’m going to make her vomit her lungs, so that she can hide them in this hole.”
The violence of his words, pronounced in a low voice, made the yellows on the wall flicker. Don Flor closed the door with a blow. Gasping for air, he leaned against the wall in the hallway to calm down. The girls waited, stunned.
Monday’s room was blue, like its dress. On the equally blue door was written, in a slightly different shade of blue: “Gluttony” and “Humility.”
“This one, when I touch her, she licks my hands. So greedy!”
Don Flor looked at his hands with satisfaction. Then he brought them close to the girls, as if waiting for them to lick them, too. His rings were greasy and the colored rocks opaque. He stayed in this position for a long time, then he straightened up and sniffed around like a dog.
“Smell this! Smell this!” he urged them.
The girls breathed in hard, trying to smell, but no scent reached them. Monday’s room was the only one without a smell. The effort they made to inhale increased their nausea. Don Flor looked at them and howled with laughter.
“Don’t you smell it? Monday is greedy with delicacies and with men . . . She turns me into such an animal . . . Sometimes she scares me. A man, little girls, is in danger when faced with a gluttonous woman.”
He brought them out onto the patio, where a round and dry heat awaited them.
“Well, little girls, now you’ve seen where the Days live, and what they’re like. You’ve also seen who governs the Week. And you’ve seen that everything is in disorder: the colors, the sins, the virtues, and the Days. We’re in disorder, and that’s why I whip the Days: to punish them for their faults.”
Don Flor fell silent. In the heat of the patio, the girls saw that his suit was dirty and that the fingers on which his rings spun were steeped in filth. The patio smelled sour, and the words were rotting when they left the man’s mouth. Don Flor stooped over the girls and looked at them with his black, dry eyes. Inside his eyes were bloody lakes and dark stones.
“Tell me, little girls, what sorrow do you have?”
The girls had forgotten about their fears. They saw Don Flor’s eyes and smelled the gush of scents streaming from the cracks in the colored doors, gathering in the center of the patio, and forming a whirl of vapors. Our Lord Jesus Christ had not punished them, and the only thing they wanted was to be back home where the walls and the gardens smelled of walls and gardens.
“The people from around here don’t treat me well, little girls. You’re the first ones who’ve come to visit me. Meanwhile, people make their way here all the way from Mexico City to find solace for their sorrows. They come to me, cowering, and I show them the disorder of the days and the disorder of man. They ask me to punish the day on which they will meet their fate. They want to have the upper hand so that they can enter the day when it’s tired. Some of them run in elections, and I give a thrashing to the day of the vote. Ladies come too, asking for punishments for their rivals’ days. They all pay me good money and go away satisfied, after seeing how I beat up the day they need. When they see it all bloody, they start getting the money out . . .”
Don Flor waited a moment and burst out laughing. The girls didn’t know what to say; they kept on staring at the ground. The man leaned over their heads and asked:
“And you, little girls, what punishment do you want?”
The girls looked at each other with fear. They wanted to go home and stay close to Felipe II and Candelaria. Don Flor and his round house scared them.
“I’m the master of the Days. I’m the Century. Tell me on what day you’ve been offended, and you’ll see what we do to the Day you choose.”
The girls looked at Don Flor’s dry eyes.
“Come back! It doesn’t matter that there’s so much water between you and me. I’ll do you this favor either way. The days are the same for everyone! Do you want us to whip Thursday? Tell me, which day do you want to see covered in blood?”
The girls looked at the ground again. They didn’t want to see the eyes of this man or hear his somber words.
“Tell me, little girls, which day do you want to see covered in blood?”
Don Flor repeated his question again and again.
“Which day do you want to see covered in blood?”
He did not change his voice nor did he lose patience before their silence.
“Which day do you want to see covered in blood?”
A lot of time passed before they were able to reach the exit door. They didn’t pay attention to whether the door stayed open or closed. The only thing they wanted was to get home. When they reached the entrance hall, the voice repeated, before Rutilio’s astounded figure:
“Which day do you need to see covered in blood? Which one? Which one, little girls? Which one? Tell me, which day do you need to see covered in blood?”
The girls burst into tears. Their father explained to them that the days were white and that the only week that existed was the Holy Week: Palm Sunday, Holy Monday, Holy Tuesday, Holy Wednesday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Glorious Saturday, and Resurrection Sunday. But it was difficult to forget the week of colors locked up in Don Flor ’s house.
“Which day do you need to see covered in blood? Which one? Which one?”
“You crazy birds, hopping from the Holy Week to the Week of Colors locked up in Don Flor’s house!” Candelaria said as she drew the veil of the mosquito net, which proved useless at protecting them from Don Flor ’s question: “Which day do you need to see covered in blood? Which one? Which one?”
In the morning, Candelaria didn’t bring them their breakfast. It was Rutilio who served them oats with milk. He looked at them with fear in his eyes. Their father and mother had left the house to run an errand.
“So that they wouldn’t disturb you,” Rutilio explained.
The girls looked at him, frightened.
“Are you sure he spoke to you?” Rutilio asked, scooting the basket of cookies toward them.
“Who?”
“Don Flor.”
From the white morning, stretched over the tablecloth, the question arose: “Which day do you need to see covered in blood? Which one, little girls, which one?”
“Yes . . . he spoke to us a lot . . .”
They burst into tears.
“Did you leave the door open?” Rutilio asked.
“I don’t know . . .” Evita answered.
“Yes, yes . . .” Leli affirmed.
“That’s what people are saying, that you were the ones who left the door open. There was such a strong stench that the mule drivers noticed it when they passed by; they walked into the patio and found him lying there at the very center. They say it was the women who killed him, because the Week has disappeared . . . Are you sure he spoke to you? . . . They say he died days ago . . .”
