Swift as Desire by Laura Esquivel Page B

satisfied smile that appeared on don Pedro’s face when she accepted his money. She didn’t know to what to attribute it. She was unaware that don Pedro had just discovered Júbilo’s Achilles’ heel and now knew exactly where to attack him.
    The olives didn’t taste as good as Lucha had expected. Her stomach churned, twisted, and trembled. On the one hand, she felt the disagreeable sensation that she had just done something wrong. On the other, she felt enormous satisfaction at having allowed herself a small pleasure. It was a strange new feeling. Lucha didn’t know how to assimilate what was going on inside her. She felt ashamed, as if she had somehow failed Júbilo. As if she had opened the door of her home to the devil himself. As if Júbilo and she were on the brink of danger, about to face something terrible and unknown. It was a premonition that unsettled and agitated her, provoking a nausea quite unlike anything she had experienced before. It reminded her of the way she had felt the day she met Júbilo, but this was quite different. On that earlier occasion the tickling in her stomach had been very agreeable. She had trembled, yes, but more from pleasure than from anything else. It had seemed like the response of a drum that someone has just struck. Her stomach had been shaken up for a while by the strong vibrations. But now the realdifference was that unlike the first time, when her stomach had been in tune with the loving energy Júbilo had sent her, this time she was responding to something hidden, dark, unknown, denied, but which was there, ready and waiting to shake her completely, to make her resonate with fury, to connect her with its black sun, with its dark light.
    Lucha felt that this unknown energy had taken control of her soul. She couldn’t get out of her mind the unpleasant sensation that don Pedro’s lips had produced as they brushed against her hand. It made her sick just to think about it. That kiss had made her feel like a sinner. As if from that moment she had lost her innocence forever. As if she could never get back to who she had been. Trying to calm down, she went to the telegraph office. She wanted to hear Júbilo’s healing laughter. She wanted to feel clean. She wanted to erase that disagreeable feeling and she could only do so in the company of her husband. When she was with him everything looked brighter.
    Júbilo was delighted with her unexpected visit. The smile on his face made Lucha momentarily forget her worries. Júbilo’s shining eyes instantly had the same effect on her as the sun’s rays in which she used to luxuriate in the garden of her parents’ house when she wanted to purify her soul. She felt like her old self again, clean, pure, light. Júbilo asked her to wait for a few minutes while he finished attending to a lady customer. It was close to lunchtime and he wanted to go home with her. Luchaagreed with pleasure and stepped away from the counter to allow her husband to work in peace.
    The lady in question was a stallholder from the market who was going through the same thing Lucha had just suffered: she didn’t have enough money to pay for the telegram she needed to send. Lucha’s eyes filled with tears and she turned toward the street so Júbilo wouldn’t notice. But it wasn’t necessary, because her husband, with characteristic generosity, was so focused on solving the lady’s problem that he had eyes only for what he was writing. He had suggested that she allow him to rewrite the message so that she could afford the cost of the telegram. The original telegram read: “I know that I owe you money and I have not been able to pay you. But however, I need ten boxes of tomato. I beg you to send them. As soon as I have sold them I will pay you for everything.” After Júbilo’s intervention, the message read like this: “I have made a good deal. With the sale of ten boxes of tomatoes, I can repay everything I owe you. Please send them urgently.” The message