Carlos Fuentes - Hydra Head

Bernstein wagged his head and a strange resignation appeared in his eyes. “Sara accused me of being a hawk. You know, the third floor of this hotel was destroyed by lightning. Doves took over the ruins. And as no one ever repairs anything here … Vultures fly high overhead, especially here, around the market slaughterhouse. Every day, they kill a vulture or two trying to feed on the dead flesh of the cattle. Dead meat is what the buzzards like, they don’t bother the doves. It’s true. Someday we’ll be forced to abandon the occupied territories. Oil weighs more heavily than reason. But we shall have left behind cities and citizens, schools and a democratic political system. When the Arabs return, there will be peace only if they respect our new pilgrims, those who remain there. That will be your famous meeting of civilizations. That will be the acid test of peace. If not, everything will begin all over again.”

Again Bernstein approached the window. He peered in vain through the sheer curtains. A sudden tropical downpour had been unleashed.

Bernstein whirled to face Felix. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m remembering the conviction with which you used to expound economic theories at the university. From your lips, every theory was convincing, from Quesnay to Keynes. It was why we loved your classes. It was why we followed and respected you. You never pretended to be objective, but your subjective passions had the effect of being entirely objective. Professor, you didn’t come here to recover from a wound inflicted by a mysterious bullet. Much less to convince me of the rights and motives of Israel. Enough talk. I’m going to ask you to hand over what I came here to get…”

It wasn’t caramels in the bulging pockets of Bernstein’s wrinkled, sweat-stained jacket. Felix leaped from his chair and grasped the professor’s fat neck; he twisted the injured arm, pulling it from the protective sling, and Bernstein howled with pain, his free arm upraised, a tiny Yves-Grant.32 clutched in his hand. He let the pistol fall on the chessboard floor. Felix released his grip on Bernstein and picked up the automatic. He leveled it at the professor’s trembling belly.

His aim never wavering, he emptied Bernstein’s suitcase, tossing aside all its contents. He ordered Bernstein to precede him to the bathroom, where he opened the leather kit of personal toilet articles; he squeezed out the toothpaste, he tore open capsules of medicine, he removed the straightedge razor and ripped out the lining of the kit bag. With Bernstein before him, he returned to the bedroom and slit open the lining of the suitcase. He searched the closet and, for good measure, shredded the blue-striped seersucker hanging there. He repeated the process with pillows and mattress. He tore down the mosquito netting to examine its yellowed canopy. Throughout, Bernstein, seated on his precarious rattan throne, watched, unmoving, the grimace of pain yielding to an insulting smile.

“Take off your clothes,” Felix ordered.

He searched the clothing. Naked, Bernstein resembled a gluttonous child who’d turned into the mountains of cotton candy he’d consumed.

“Open your mouth. Remove your bridge.”

Only one orifice remained. Felix knelt. He pressed the barrel of the pistol against Bernstein’s kidney and inserted a finger up his rectum. He felt only the convulsions of the old man’s uncontrollable laughter.

“Nothing there, Felix. You’re too late.”

Pistol in hand, Maldonado rose to his feet and cleaned his finger across Bernstein’s lips. Even the professor’s gesture of revulsion could not check his amused chortles. “Nothing, Felix. You find yourself with empty, if slightly filthy, hands.”

Felix’s eyes were clouded with sweat, but the pistol never wavered. There could be no better target than the massive bulk of his former mentor. “Tell me just one thing, Professor, so I don’t go away empty-handed. After all, I brought you that…” He waved the pistol toward the newspaper-wrapped package.

Bernstein made a slight nervous movement. The Yves-Grant again pointed at Bernstein’s navel.

Felix asked, “How did you recognize me?”

Now Bernstein’s laughter was gargantuan. He bellowed like a Santa Claus on holiday, naked in the tropics, far removed from his icy workshop. “Such imagination. I told you! Ever since you were in college…”

“Answer me. I don’t need an excuse to shoot.”

“I don’t have the background, my dear Felix. I don’t understand why you think I shouldn’t recognize you.”

“This, and this, and this,” said Felix, with the rage of futility and fatigue. One by one, the pistol barrel pointed out the scars on his face. “And this, and this. I have a new face, can’t you see?”

Bernstein’s laughter was explosive. When it subsided, he settled his naked bulk in the only chair capable of sustaining him. “They made you believe that?”

“I can see myself in the mirror.”

“A touch here, a slight modification there?” Bernstein smiled. “Your hair cut short, a new moustache?” He crossed fat hands across his belly, but did not achieve the desired resemblance to a benign Buddha.

“Yes,” replied Felix, willing to be convinced. He felt that only by abandoning all strength could he recover his capacity for it. And there was something more, the dark little seed of an idea beginning to sprout in his guts, working its way toward his chest.

“The only surgery performed on you was that of suggestion.” Bernstein smiled, but immediately erased the smile. “It’s enough to know that a man is being sought. After that, everyone sees him differently. Even the man himself. I know what I’m talking about. Have a drink. It’s too late. Relax.”

Bernstein indicated the table cluttered with bottles, glasses, and ice, repeating the earlier wave of his hand through the open window toward the teeming market. The ring with the clear stone was no longer on the professor’s finger.

The seed exploded in Felix’s intestines, branched through his chest, and blossomed like a sunburst in his head.

As he ran from Bernstein’s room, still carrying the pistol, he could hear the professor’s steely cry, strong at first, then dissipated by street noises, then once again erupting from the open window: “It’s too late! Be careful! Watch out!”

THE CAMBUJO from the Hotel Tropicana was standing beneath Bernstein’s window, facing the market. He was ready, fists clenched, legs planted sturdily, and smiling; Felix could read the caution signal flashing from his gold teeth.

He stuck the pistol in a pocket and limbered his leg muscles. He meant to take a running jump with both feet on the servant’s belly, but the cambujo broke into a run toward the market, swinging the beef carcasses aside, turning over crates, scattering straw in his wake. Blood from the sides of beef stained Felix’s shoulders, and huge clusters of bananas struck him in the face; the machetes glittered more by night than by day. Felix grabbed one at random as he ran by. Better that no shots be heard that night in Coatzacoalcos.

The cambujo continued his flight through the market, zigzagging back and forth and sowing obstacles in Felix’s path. A mix of Olmec Indian and black, he was short in stature but fast, and Felix was unable to overtake him. They emerged at the far end of the market onto the railroad tracks, and Felix saw the mestizo bounding along the rails like a rabbit, following the tracks toward the port outlined in the distance by scattered yellow lights. Felix followed his dark hare, who had an obvious advantage; he’d played there as a child.

Maldonado tripped over a spike and fell, but he never lost sight of his prey; the cambujo seemed not to want to be lost from view; as Felix fell for the second time, he stopped and waited for Felix to get to his feet before he went on running.