Aura by Carlos Fuentes

Aura

by Carlos Fuentes

This is a famous novelette published in 1962, one that furthermore has been widely admired. It is set in an urban environment, in which the protagonist, a cultured and effete intellectual by the name of Felipe Montero, enters into a strange household that is dominated by a decrepit old woman (la señora Consuelo) and a young family member (referred to as her “sobrina”) by the name of Aura. The atmosphere is gothic, in which secrets seem to palpate in the corridors and rooms of a decrepit building, one in which darkness and mood predominates, along with mysterious images. It is an evocation of memory and the spell cast by nostalgia and the idea of obsession.

As mentioned previously, Felipe Montero, the protagonist, seems to suffer from the fate of other highly educated professionals who are widely traveled (most of the time this refers to France for Fuentes, at least in this case), and who are unable to earn a living. There is thus a common literary motif, the intellectual as exile, one who returns to the new world and finds himself at odds, yearning always for the spirit of novelty, culture and order that predominates in the old world.

He answers a mysterious ad in a newspaper for a historian with precisely his characteristics. He is drawn to this position, initially, by the generous wage, but then he falls somehow under the spell of decrepitude that prevails in this house. It seems to be characterized as an interior space, one in which darkness predominates. “Buscas en vano una luz que te guíe. Buscas la caja de fósforos en la bolsa de tu saco pero esa voz aguda y cascade te advierte desde lejos: --No,…no es necesario.” (p. 14)

He is guided by directions in the dark, and he becomes more and more disoriented. The thin stream of words serves almost like the thread in the labyrinth of the Minotaur, to recall classic mythology, and he comes to view his prize, whose green eyes seduce him: “Abre los ojos poco a poco, como si temiera los fulgores de la recámara. Al fin, podrás ver esos ojos de mar que fluyen, se hacen espuma, vuelven a la calma verde, vuelven a inflamarse como una ola: tú los ves y te repites que no es cierto, que so unos hermosos ojos verdes idénticos a todos los hermosos ojos verdes que has conocido o podrás conocer.” (p. 20)

It is noteworthy that the comparison is to liquids and to things that move and take different shapes. They are not earthy or stable or grounded, like the rabbit that the old woman harbors, but instead eyes that seduce him like an illusion, one in which he will be a willing participant. The rabbit, incidentally, also represents a vital force. The old woman will affirm that its name is “Saga”, and that it is “Sabia. Sigue sus instintos. Es natural y libre.” (p. 39)

The narration proceeds in the third person, using the future tense, as if this was an oracle that had been delivered, and the actions seemingly confirm what has been predicted. This form of narration also suggests strongly the sapping of the will of the protagonist, who is rendered as a somewhat passive figure, unable to resist the spell of memory that is being woven. He appears to tolerate everything, the solitude, the poor food (kidney, wine) and the lack of cleanliness (there are rats nests in the old lady’s room), all because he has become enchanted by Aura, a young woman about who he weaves theories such as the possibility that she is an innocent victim, imprisoned against her will by the old and moribund woman who is referred to as“la anciana”.

There are appointments made to go either to the room of the old woman or to Aura’s room. This seems rather too formal, but also, constitutes an act of seduction, and it occurs to me that the inseparable rabbit that accompanies the old woman is a symbol of sexuality, redolent of productive power and a necessary accessory for a woman who has not been able to produce children, and furthermore, cannot attract a man.

Her husband was a Francophile Mexican general by the name of Llorente, one who spent many years of his life in France and who left various notebooks that are distributed to Felipe little by little. But what consumes the protagonist is not the life of this deceased figure, but the story in which he finds parallels, little by little, with his own experiences. Felipe, after all, is another Francophile, although one who is more adept in the language. The play of light and shadow becomes more evident, for the old woman seems to live in a world of darkness, and her house is deprived of natural light because of the buildings that surround it (“Es que nos amurallaron, señor Montero. Han construido alrededor de nosotras, nos han quitado la luz” p. 29). It creates a suffocating sensation in the reader, and recalls another tales by Edgar Allen Poe (The Cask of Amontillado).

The dreams become more and more unsettling, and they involve incongruous images, and the projection of a type of need. In one instance, he has a vision of gats fighting each other, meowling grotesquely, and he has difficulty reconciling this with the adamant refusal to provide a space for cats by the old woman. (The general’s memoir affirms a curious and disturbing custom of the old woman when she was young, which was that of torturing cats, as if it was a way of offering a sacrifice “parce que tu m’avais dit que torturer les chats était ta manière a toi de render notre amour favorable, par un sacrifice symbolique…”, p. 41. There are other images of sacrifice, curiously enough, such as the one where Aura is killing a male goat, all the while with a curiously vacuous gaze, and when Felipe goes to observe the old woman, she is making motions as if she were the one who were butchering an animal, but in thin air.)

Is it that he is living in a zone of variable time, in which the house recalls different periods, one in which it wasn’t surrounded by modern buildings that deprived it of light, one in which there was a stable and energetic marriage, that of the general and the señora? Felipe has perceived the existence of a garden, but the old lady insists there is none. Gardens, battling cats, light, all this is suggestive of a past whose existence coincides and pervades the house, like the juxtaposition of light and darkness.

There is a growing sensation that Aura is not completely real, that she is a creation of the old woman. Aura is a spell that is woven, and the imagines in which Felipe perceives the two of them together, with identical expressions, performing identical hand movements, are unnerving. Is she, indeed, a spectre? It is an obsession for him:

“Y si Aura quiere que la ayudes, ella vendrá a tu cuarto. Permances allí, olvidado de los papeles amarillos, de tus propias cuartillas anotadas, pensando sólo en la belleza inasible de tu Aura—mientras más piensas en ella, más tuya la harás, no sólo porque piensas en su belleza y la deseas, sino porque ahora la deseas para liberarla” (p. 37)

The narration proceeds in a languid manner, one that can be frustrating for the reader, and recalls the indolent pacing of a Henry James novel of the late 19^th century. In the end, there will be an apparent sexual encounter with Aura, and Felipe will find the last notebook of memoirs written by the old general, along with a parcel of photographs. He will find that the old woman, when young, looked exactly like Aura, and her husband, at that same moment, almost a lifetime ago, looked exactly like him. The narrative converges, and we see the confluence and the way in which the old woman has seduced Felipe with her spell of memory and eternal love. Aura is, indeed, a creation of memory, a spectre of desire and vital forces, one that somehow manages to overcome the grotesque quality

“No volverás a mirar tu reloj, ese objeto inservible que mide falsamente un tiempo acordado a la vanidad humana, esas manecillas que marcan tediosamente las laras horas inventadas para engañar el verdadero tiempo, el tiemp que corre con la velocidad insultante, mortal, que ningún reloj puede medir. Una vida, un siglo, cincuenta años: ya no te será posible imaginar esas medidas mentirosas, ya no te será posible tomar entre las manos ese polvo sin cuerpo.” (p. 59)

Is it an affirmative view of a love that is triumphant? It seems unsettling, precisely because of the obsessive quality, but it points as well to a pervasive theme in Fuentes, the preocupation with time and the ghosts of history, both personal as well as national, and a famous remark by a writer widely admired by the Boom Generation of Latin America, William Faulkner, that the “past is not even past”.



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