Carlos Fuentes - Hydra Head

I tried to justify my cruel deceptions of the night. As I deceived Felix, I’d been discovered by him. I told myself that had I not offset the frailty of my human resources and done what I’d done — establish a principle of hierarchy founded on fear — my undertaking would have failed. The base for any action in the future could only be the fear I inspired in my friends and my enemies.

I closed the Oxford edition with bitterness. I could derive only one lesson from this first adventure of the Mexican secret service. Terror is universal, justice is not. Every intelligence organization, however it might strive toward the goal of justice, is perverted by its means — terror — and finally it becomes the servant of oppression, not the instrument of justice it set out to be. A tiny cell of fascistic structure, espionage, which is intended to protect society, finally becomes a cancer that infects the society in which it takes root. All its heroes are reactionaries, from Ulysses to James Bond. Which explains the exhaustion of its heroism, as ravaged as the plastic features of Howard Hunt.

But as I turned off the lights in my library I was confident that, in spite of everything, Felix Maldonado, my unconscious hero, saddened and exhausted, would return to tell me what he’d done after he had left the refuge of my home.

I thought about him as I climbed the stairs to my bedroom. Oh, if only one day I might compare my probable scenario with Felix’s real version. Where would we coincide? Where would we differ? Which of the two endings would be the true one: the one I was preparing to invent, or the one he was preparing to live?

These thoughts went whirling through my mind as I removed the false moustache before my mirrored dressing table. The gum arabic pulled at the real moustache growing beneath the false one.

I placed the luxuriant black moustache neatly in a box of carefully arranged hairpieces: beards, moustaches, eyebrows, and sideburns of various colors, denoting various ages. In the mirrored dressing table and cabinets, I was surrounded by wigs, by new suits and old suits, polished shoes and scuffed shoes, shirts and undergarments and jackets with labels attributing their origins to shops as distinct as Lanvin in Paris, Gath & Chávez in Santiago, Harrods in Buenos Aires, Austin Reed in London, Hart, Schaffner & Marx in Houston, a branch of Marks & Spencer’s in Riyadh, the Arrow shirt shop in Tel Aviv, and El Borceguí shoestore in Mexico City.

I stood before the mirror prepared to declaim Macbeth’s famous soliloquy in Act V, scene v, but I felt ridiculous. The sound and the fury had ceased, along with my hour on the stage, even though as I crawled into my loveless bed the night truly seemed a walking shadow.

INEVITABLY, he will return to the Suites de Génova and will ask for the same room, the room where Sara Klein died, where he made love to Mary Benjamin. The beds of Felix Maldonado are always occupied by some woman, living or dead. They know him at the hotel; he gives good tips; he’s an eccentric; they’re not surprised that he’s returning with no luggage after a week’s absence. I myself had telephoned them: Licenciado Velázquez had been called away unexpectedly and hasn’t had time to pack his things, would they please keep his suitcase for him?

“Your usual room, Señor Velázquez?”

It is raining outside my house in Coyoacán. In August, the storms of the high plateau beat against the mountain peaks, spill down the slopes of the ancient snow-topped volcanoes, and in the late afternoon or early evening, like clockwork, unleash their yield, before giving way to the hurricanes along the Gulf, which rage until the onset of autumn — on the Feast Day of St. Francis, when, as they say, the saint’s cord-belt lashes them into quietude. Then a luminous and uninterrupted peace consecrates our winters. But soon the crystal of cold sun becomes clouded with the dust of prolonged drought, and the winds of spring raise suffocating dust storms, veritable screams of agony from the dry, cracked tongue of the earth.

Soaked with rain after waiting for a taxi to come along Calzada de la Taxqueña, Felix arrived at the hotel without luggage. The Indian concierge wrapped in a gray sarape recognized him — why wouldn’t he? — and waked the night clerk, who’d fallen asleep watching a movie on the kitchen television.

“Your usual room, Señor Velázquez?”

“If it’s available,” Felix said to the thin, sleepy, hollow-eyed young attendant.

“For you, señor, it’s always available.”

“I thought by now everyone would have forgotten about the murder.”

“Sir? The President of Petroquímica Industrial del Golfo personally called and asked that the room be kept at your disposal.”

“He’s very considerate.”

“Oh, of course. He’s one of our most distinguished clients. He sends all his foreign guests to us.”

“I know him. He’s very careful about details, a real puppet master.”

“Sir? Shall we bring up your suitcase, Señor Velázquez?”

“I don’t need it. Send it tomorrow.”

“As you wish, sir. Here’s your key.”

He slept uneasily. They brought his suitcase at ten, and after he shaved and ate breakfast, he walked to the Plaza Río de Janeiro. It was recess time in the neighborhood schools and he had to make his way through hordes of happy, yelling children. Red and yellow and blue balloons shone against the glistening leaves of the palm trees. Felix walked to the entrance of the red brick building with the slate towers and pushed open the gate into the dark passageway.

He knew that Memo was working. Lichita might have gone back to work in the Hospital de Jesús, or she might still be on vacation, enjoying the benefits of her service to Ayub and the Director General. He hoped no one was home; he could search at his pleasure, and Memo wouldn’t be able to lie to him.

But no. Licha opened the door. Her makeup was streaked and she seemed half asleep. The lace-edged silk robe covering her small, firm breasts clamored for a trip to the dry-cleaners. She seemed stunned, not knowing whether to shut the door or leave it half open and talk with Felix.

Before she could decide, he stepped into the room. Licha threw her arms around him. “Sweetie pie, you’re a sight for sore eyes, I thought you’d forgotten me, oh, I’m sorry, I’m a mess, why don’t you come back in an hour? let me slick up a little, you go away and come back in a while, hmm?”

She kept her arms around him, trying to push him out into the hall, but Felix planted himself firmly in the doorway. Then she tried to turn him so he couldn’t see the bed.

“Did you miss me, honey? I missed you a little, well, that’s not true, I missed you more than I can tell. Kiss me, sweetie.”

“Where’s Memo?”

“Working, where do you think?”

Felix glanced toward the bed and then toward the man’s clothes draped carelessly over a chair. “Tell him to get up. I want to talk to him.”

“But, sweetie, I just told you, he’s working…”

“Then who is that in your bed?”

“Shhh, honey, it’s a girlfriend. She had a terrible case last night, a dying man, and it was too late for her to get home from the hospital, her house is way out in Azcapotzalco. I told her she could spend the night here, honey. Why don’t you come back in a while, mmh?”

“Tell your girlfriend she needs plastic surgery.”

“Ha, ha!” Lichita forced a laugh. “Are you going to throw that in my face? I wasn’t the one who sliced you up; I took care of you, handsome, and if I hadn’t, you wouldn’t have come out looking so good.”

“It isn’t her face, it’s her body. Your friend’s all out of shape. Things don’t seem to be in the right place.”