Carlos Fuentes - Hydra Head

He pressed a button and the door clicked open electronically.

He didn’t allow me even that freedom. I wasn’t allowed even to open the door. I was manipulated like a damn fool, like a puppet on a string. Felix strode from the office, avoiding the eyes of the sumptuous Chayo.

HE WAS EXHAUSTED as he drove from the Ministry to his apartment in the Polanco district. He tried to recall the conversation with the Director General. It was essential that he not forget a single detail, that he reconstruct faithfully every word uttered by his superior. It frightened him that he felt drowsy. He pinched his leg as if to force himself to stay awake, to avoid an accident. He would have to have a cup of coffee before leaving for dinner. He pinched himself a second time. With whom had he just spoken? What had he said to him? He quickly rolled down the car window, welcoming the rush of cold, rainswept air that follows a storm.

He honked his horn three times to announce his arrival to Ruth. It was an affectionate custom of long standing. He parked in front of the twelve-story condominium. He took the elevator to the ninth floor. Sometime he should count the number of times per day he ascended and descended in a elevator. Perhaps what he really needed was a gray wool uniform with copper buttons and the initials MED embroidered across the breast. Maybe in the future that was the only way he would be recognized at the office.

As he entered his apartment, he called several times: Ruth, Ruth. Why did he feel the need to announce his arrival from the street, and again on entering, when he knew perfectly well that his wife would be angry with him, that she would be lying on the bed waiting for him, pretending not to be, leafing through a magazine, the television turned on but the volume down, dressed in a silk nightgown and bed jacket as if she were debating whether to go to bed early, still in her makeup, still not in her night creams, indicating that she was available and could be persuaded to go with him to the Rossettis’.

Before he opened the bedroom door, he studied the life-size reproduction of the Velázquez self-portrait hanging in the hall. It was one of their private jokes. When they’d seen the original in the Prado, they’d laughed in that nervous way one laughs to break the solemnity of museums, but had not dared say that Felix was the painter’s double. “No,” Ruth said, “Velázquez is your double,” and bought the reproduction as they left. He opened the bedroom door. Ruth was watching television. But she hadn’t fixed her hair, and was removing her makeup with Kleenex. This disconcerted Felix. Hello, hello Ruth, he said, but she did not reply. Felix walked directly to the bathroom. He called in a loud voice cloaked by running water and the sound of his electric razor: “It’s eight o’clock, Ruth, the invitation is for nine. You’re not going to be ready.”

The face in the mirror recalled the resemblance to Velázquez, the black almond eyes, the high olive-skinned brow, the short curved nose, Arab but also Jewish, a Spanish son of all the peoples who’d passed across the peninsula — Celts, Greeks, Phoenicians, Romans, Hebrews, Muslims, Goths — Felix Maldonado, a Mediterranean face, high prominent cheekbones, full sensual mouth with deep fissures at the corners, thick black wavy hair, wide-set but heavy eyebrows, and again the black eyes that would have been round, round to the point of obliterating the whites, were it not for their vaguely Oriental elongation, black moustache. But Felix’s face did not have the smile of Velázquez, the satisfaction of those lips that had just tasted plums and oranges.

“You’re not going to be ready,” he repeated. “All I have to do is shave, take a quick shower, and change my clothes. It takes you longer. You know I don’t like to be late.”

Several minutes passed and Ruth still did not answer. Felix turned on the taps and unplugged his electric shaver. Patience and compassion, the rabbi who had married them had exhorted; he remembered the words now, and kept repeating them under the shower. Patience and compassion, as he scrubbed himself vigorously with the towel, sprinkled himself liberally with Royall Lyme, smoothed the Right Guard beneath his arms, hefted the pouch of his testicles, and checked the size of his penis, not looking down at it, because from that vantage it always appeared small, but from the side, in profile before the full-length mirror, as women see it. Sara, Sara Klein.

Consciously naked, he walked into the bedroom, pretending to be drying his ears with the towel, and repeated what he had previously called. “Didn’t you hear me, Ruth?”

“Yes, I heard you. How nice that you bathed and perfumed yourself, Felix. It’s very unpleasant when you go to dinner still smelling of the day’s sweat and office odors and dirty undershorts. Of course, I’m the one who’ll have to pick them up.”

“You know I don’t always have time. I like to be punctual.”

“And you know I’m not going. That’s why you showered and soaked yourself in cologne.”

“Don’t talk nonsense, and hurry it up. We’ll be late.”

Ruth hurled her Vogue at him with fury. Felix stepped aside, remembering the knife-sharp pages of the student’s books in the taxi killing the chicks.

“Late, late! That’s all you ever think about. You know perfectly well that if we arrive on time there won’t be a soul at the Rossettis’. He won’t be home yet from the office, and she’ll just be rolling her hair. Who’re you trying to kid? God, how you irritate me. You know that if they invite us for nine they mean for us to arrive at ten-thirty. Only foreigners who don’t dig our ways arrive on time and embarrass everyone.”

“Who don’t ‘dig’ our ways? Did you pick that up from a Yankee friend, darling?”

“And stop parading around naked, you’d think you wanted to show off that pencil penis,” Ruth screamed.

Felix laughed. “Ah, it was much bigger before you forced me to be circumcised. How about that, circumcised at twenty-eight. Just to please you.”

He was angry now. His patience had run out, and he dressed hurriedly. It was always like that — first, good humor, then suddenly real anger, not feigned like Ruth’s. Just for you, I changed my religion, my diet, my foreskin, and got myself married in a fucking little skullcap.

She watched him. “I was thinking…”

“You?”

“You’re going to pull off those buttons, Felix.”

“Just call me Wimpy.”

“Don’t try to be funny. Come here, sit beside me for a minute. I’ll do your cuff links. You never can manage. I don’t know how you’d get along without me. I’ve been thinking that for months now we’ve been like enemies, and the only reason we’ve stayed together is to convince ourselves we should separate.”

“You may be right. The kind of life we lead is certainly a good argument for separation.”

“You’re away so much. What can I believe?”

“It’s my work. You ought to respect it.”

“I’m sorry, Felix. It’s just that I’m afraid.”

Ruth put her arms around him, and Felix’s heart turned over. He was about to ask her, do you know something, do you understand what’s going on. But she spoke first, to dispel the doubt. “Felix, I know what role I’ve played in your life.”

“I love you, Ruth. You must know that.”

“Wait. Please. I mean why you chose me over Sara and Mary.”

“You sound as if you think they were better than you.”

“The truth is, they were. I’m not as intelligent as Sara or as good-looking as Mary. I’ve spent the day thinking about it. You always put Sara on a pedestal. You went to bed with Mary. But for you either a pure, even intellectual, love or pure sex without love doesn’t work. You need a woman like me to solve your practical problems, to handle the details of your career and your social life, and as long as our everyday affairs go smoothly, you happily love and screw the same woman, one woman, me. I’m your untouchable ideal at times, and sometimes your whore, but always the woman who has your breakfast ready and your suits pressed and your bags packed — everything, the dinners for your bosses, everything. Am I right?”