Carlos Fuentes - Hydra Head

“No, I mean, what is my name?”

“Uh … Licenciado…”

“Licenciado who?”

“Uh … just Licenciado … like all the others…”

She burst into uncontrollable sobs, invoking the immediate presence of her mommy, and again hid her face in the lace handkerchief with the little yellow chicks embroidered in a circle around the initial M.

FOR MORE THAN AN HOUR, a perplexed Felix Maldonado walked about aimlessly. What he most disliked about the Ministry was that it was in such an unattractive part of the city, the section where all the streets were named after doctors. A run-down mass of low buildings dating from the beginnings of the century, and an all-pervading concentration of cooking odors issuing from squalid little lunchrooms. An occasional tall building loomed like an excessively inflated glass tooth in a mouth filled with cavities and badly healed extractions.

He walked as far as Doctor Claudio Bernard, trying to put his thoughts in order. He was unpleasantly distracted by the odors from the shabby eating places opening directly onto the sidewalk. He turned to make his way back to the Ministry. He bumped into a stand where ears of corn were being steamed over boiling kettles. He pushed his way through crowded streets filled with itinerant vendors selling sliced jícamas sprinkled with lime and chili powder and paper cones of scraped ice that like a blotter absorbed red-currant and chocolate syrups.

His strongest impression was one of a faltering will. He inhaled deeply, but was offended by the smells. He set off down Doctor Lucio and, a block before reaching the Ministry, saw a beggar woman with a tiny baby sitting on the sidewalk. It was too late to turn his back to them. He could feel the woman’s black eyes observing him, judging him. These were the dangers of walking through the streets of Mexico City. Beggars and the unemployed, even criminals, everywhere. That’s why you had to have a car, to go directly from a well-protected house to the tall office buildings besieged by the armies of the hungry.

He reflected, and told himself that on any other day he would have done one of two things: walk straight ahead, unperturbed, without even glancing at the woman with the outstretched hand and the tiny baby, or turn his back to them and walk back the way he’d come. But this morning all he dared do was cross to the opposite side of the street. Obviously, the most cowardly and least dignified solution. How could it have hurt him to walk past the pitiful pair and give them twenty centavos?

From the opposite sidewalk, he could see that the girl was an Indian, very young, not more than twelve. Barefoot, dark-skinned, filthy, with the tiny baby wrapped in her long shawl.

Is it hers, Felix Maldonado asked himself. Is it her child or her brother?

Is it hers, he repeated, as if someone had asked him the question, and then answered in a low voice: “No, señor, it isn’t mine.”

The girl continued to stare at him, hand extended. Felix felt an urgent need to rush back to the office to sort things out. He walked faster, until he reached the Avenida Cuauhtémoc. Unable to resist, he turned once again to look at the pair, the child-mother and the son-brother. Two nuns were bending over the two beggars. He realized that they were nuns by their black skirts and the hair pulled back into a bun. One of them looked up, and Felix thought he recognized one of the sisters who had ridden with him in the taxi that morning. The nun turned away, covered her face with a veil, took her companion’s arm, and the two quickly walked away, without looking at him again.

FELIX ENTERED the Ministry building and walked to the elevator. If he was lucky, he’d meet some friend going up. And the elevator operator himself would know him, of course. We ask your indulgence. The operator is not on duty. We respectfully request the public to use the self-service elevator to the left. Felix recalled the elevator operator, remembering him in clear detail. A small, ageless man, very dark, with high cheekbones and watery eyes, a sparse moustache, and a gray uniform with copper buttons and the initials MED embroidered on the breast pocket. If he remembered the elevator operator, Felix said to himself as he ascended surrounded by strangers, it was only logical that the elevator operator would remember him.

Ordinarily, Malena cashed his bimonthly paycheck for him at the cashier’s office. All he had to do was sign the payroll. But today he decided to go in person. He got off the elevator and walked toward the cashier’s window. There was a long line. He stood at the end, deciding not to pull rank. The two girls ahead of him were engaged in animated conversation. The elevator operator, his acquaintance, the dark little man, joined the line directly behind him. Felix smiled at him, but the man was absorbed in contemplation of a coin.

“How are you? What are you looking at?” Felix asked.

“This silver peso,” said the elevator operator without looking at Felix. “Can’t you see?”

“Yes, of course,” Felix said, hoping the man would look at him. “But what about it? Haven’t you ever seen a peso coin before?”

“The eagle and the serpent,” the man said. “I’m looking at the eagle and the serpent on the coin.”

Felix shrugged. “It’s the national emblem, man. It’s everywhere. What’s so unusual about it?”

The elevator operator shook his head, never raising his eyes from the tarnished silver coin. “Nothing unusual. It’s just that it’s beautiful. An eagle on a cactus, eating a serpent. I like it better than what it’s worth.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I don’t care what it’s worth. I like the design.”

“Oh. I see. Listen, won’t you look at me?”

The operator finally looked up and observed Felix with watery eyes and a stony smile.

“Every day I go up to my office in your elevator,” Felix blurted impulsively.

“Lots of people go up. If you only knew.”

“But I’m an important official, the chief of…” Exasperated, Felix left the sentence unfinished.

“I’m the only one who doesn’t go anywhere. Everyone looks at me. I don’t look at them,” the operator said, again staring at his coin.

To avoid standing there like an idiot, staring at the elevator operator staring at the eagle and the serpent, Felix turned his attention to what the two secretaries were saying. Now they were near the cashier’s cage.

“If a girl doesn’t have respect for herself, who will?”

“You’re absolutely right. Besides, everyone should get the same treatment, you know?”

“If only we could. But you’d have to be blind not to see she’s his favorite…”

“It’s undemocratic. And I told him so. You know?”

“You did? You told him that?”

“You don’t believe me? Well, I’m fed up to here, dear, you know? I said, you’re giving special treatment to Chayo, you can see it a mile away. That’s what I told him, you know? And I said, on the other hand, did you bother to come to our Christmas party last year? No, you didn’t, did you? Excuse me, but I call that discrimination.”

“You told him that?”

“Well, practically. I sure wanted to tell him. You bet your bottom peso I wanted to, you know?”

“Well, you’ll have to forgive me, but I would’ve said it. Yes. We all have our dignity. I’d’ve said, just because you don’t think we’re quite as high up as you, that’s no reason to insult us, Licenciado.”

“Well, you know how it is, that Chayo thinks she’s the queen bee. I guess it’s not all her fault, and the truth is, the chief, old Maldonado, ’s a pretty good guy…”