their - The University of Texas at Dallas

It is in this connotatively rich dialogue with the
characters of Rut, la que huyó de la Biblia, that the
English translation seeks to express the message of the
author.
This fifth novel by Cuban author Josefina Leyva,
laden with striking metaphor and haunting lyricism, is
an exquisite tapestry woven of multiple narrative
voices, perceptions of and reactions to oppression.
The reader is introduced to Ruth by means of an
interior monologue voiced by Amelia, a neighbor who
sees through the image projected by the protagonist,
yet whose apparent intimacy with her leads to more
questions than answers.
Ruth, you who fled from the Bible. Walking
so briskly to the cemetery, like you do each
and every day of your eccentric life. It’s
your unfailing routine. You pass silently
beneath my balcony. Your skin is as white
and radiant as a votive, as if you’ve stolen a
candle from church and bathed yourself in
its wax. Your eyes are as black as death
itself. I’ve had to look carefully to see how
beautiful you are. Those thin, tight lips that
look as if someone had cleaved them to your
face with a kiss. Why so secretive, Ruth
Why this black mystery surrounding your
life It casts a pall over your soul, just like
your mourning garb, complete with long
sleeves and high collars. You are as stark as
an old Spanish house. As barren as a stone
castle. Ruth, so stunning, so self-possessed,
so full of yourself.
Amelia’s assessment of her neighbor is piercing.
The monotony of Ruth’s routine, the starkness of her
beauty and the unmistakable solitude of her existence
are punctuated with vocabulary charged alternately
with religious and violent associations. References to
piety are quickly eclipsed by impressions of deceit
and latent sexuality. The underlying ambiguity of
Ruth’s relationships with others is likewise presented
in terms echoing physical conflict and internal
uncertainty.
You’re as rigid as a lance when you walk. Ruth,
so arrogant. Ruth, as provocative as a whisper. I
wonder if you’ve ever made love, if you’ve ever
slept with a man, if you’ve ever slept with anyone.
And if anyone has ever melted the ice in your
veins. Who could sway you, garner a caress from
you, undress you for your pleasure and his own
Ruth, you, with a black dress covering your
alabaster body. You’re not thirty-five. Another of
your brazen lies. You’re toying with forty, like a
nun with her rosary. And now, that man you say is
your uncle is coming out to the balcony to watch
as you disappear into the distance. He keeps tabs
on you. He’s secretive, too. Him, with his
chivalric airs, wearing that suit, spent by the
poverty that curses the bowels of this country. A
player. He used to risk his life playing Russian
roulette just to thrill you with the terror of death.
Then he would hold you on his knees and shoot
you between the eyes with a kiss. Ah, Ruth,
you’re the mysterious one! And that man you say
is your uncle, he’s surrounded by your same aura;
his lips are pressed tight like yours, he shares your
silence. You say he’s capable of risking his last
breath on a card, a bet, a duel. When there’s
nothing left to bet, he’ll gamble his body, his soul,
himself. He’d bet his very existence on the wheel
of fortune. Is he really your uncle Could he be
your lover Could he be your uncle and your
lover You hate him and admire him, that man
you live with, alone in your suffocating house.
You, Ruth, who lulls me to sleep and shares my
insomnia. You, a survivor of the world before, the
world destroyed by the Great Protector and his
cocky revolution.
Amelia also introduces Pablo here, the mysterious
uncle inexorably linked to Ruth — dictator of her past
and future and casting a shadow of oppression over
her life, as does the Great Protector over the
unidentified island on which the story takes place.
This first monologue presents the fundamental
tensions of the novel: Ruth’s loneliness and inability
to relinquish a lifestyle lost to a tyrannical political
regime, an obsessive bond with her dead mother, the
ambiguity of her relationship her uncle, and a latent
sexuality that is the source of both her fragility and
her power.
Additionally, Amelia’s voice sets the tone for the
reader’s developing sense of Ruth as a profoundly
complex character. However, the omniscient narrative
voice relates a vision of Ruth in which the strength
and self-possession so evident in Amelia’s monologue
is but the thinnest of veils behind which she hides.
Offered a ride on a horse-drawn cart, Ruth replies:
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