Carlos Fuentes - Christopher Unborn

To which, deeply moved, the President answered as the entire nation fell into a collective hush: “I have always been, I am now and I shall always be, even when I have said the contrary, a faithful militant in the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI).”

The legislative body of the nation leapt to its feet, cheering the President in his moment of glory; they drown out his final words, the PRI, the only party, the only power, with which, out of patriotic zeal, all other lesser parties should fuse. That is what we hoped for from you, shouts Hipólito Zea, deputy for the ninth district of Chihuahuila, standing tall, thank you for showing us the way, Mr. President, shouts the peasant leader Xavier Coruera y Braniff, we are with you to the death, Mr. President, long live Mexico, long live the PRI!!!

* * *

Minister Federico Robles Chacón lowers the volume on his VCR when the applause explodes. Night has fallen, and he has reviewed the President’s speech for the thousandth time, he has estimated its effect, he savors the defeat of the pro-Yankee faction headed by Ulises López. Now the magnanimous minister can receive the Pasionaria of the defeated movement, the lover of the frustrated Mexican Ayatollah:

“Send in Madam Toro,” he says to his tuxedo-clad toady.

Yes, Matamoros Moreno is dead, Robles Chacón brutally informs the woman, who walked in dressed as if for a Ramón Pereda movie, circa 1945: a strapless evening gown with red sequins over strawberry satin and in her hair — especially black and massive, thanks to a stuffing of store-bought hair — quetzal-feather aigrettes. Mesh stockings and supremely pointed, rose-colored velvet shoes with stiletto heels complete the outfit.

Yes, Matamoros Moreno is dead: Robles wants to get this off his chest and erase all illusions, all hope. What he doesn’t explain is that he tried to save the Ayatollah’s life but that Colonel Inclán demanded it: he demanded nothing else, just as Juárez had demanded the death of Maximilian despite Victor Hugo’s plea, that’s what he said the colonel did in order to save the nation and deliver a definitive message to the mob, the idea here is to cut off a few heads so they don’t cut yours off, he said, with his eyes veiled by his black Pinochet-Huerta glasses, with his mouth dripping green slime. But after a few seconds of silence she merely chants “Baby Love.” It was a political crime, declares Robles, who tonight wants to be totally sincere in order to be able to look himself in the eye tomorrow. The feathers hide Concha Toro’s face, her head hangs down, lost love, because, madam, it was the response to another political crime, her feathers hang so low that the quetzal tail threatens to blend with the false eighteenth-century quill pen set in the bronze desk set on the secretary’s escritoire. That’s why it was a legal crime, long live pleasure, long live love (sings Concha née María Inez, her head hung low), because the country has already suffered enough from natural causes and acts of God for it to have to suffer a political, anarchic, bloody torment, oh love, if you could see how desperate I am because you aren’t here with me, an earthquake can’t be stopped, oh! but a revolution can.

“I am not going to tell you that I’m sorry.”

“Can it be true that sin has its price…”

“Excuse me?”

“How high a price I’m paying for loving you…”

Concha Toro sang with the melancholy voice of those who sing unaccompanied, thereby doubling their solitude.

“Madam, please…”

“Leave me, sir.” She hung her head even lower. “I must pay my tribute to my man now; in the moment in which I find out his fate. This is my requiem for my man, a little song, now, okay…”

“I would prefer you learn the truth from me personally.”

“And I thank you for it. You should hear the lies people are telling!”

“Why are you singing here in my office?” he asked in his rational way, his arms crossed, devoid of the elegance of intuition.

“Ay, señor, do you want me to sing at his grave, when the government isn’t going to give me back my sweetheart? Don’t you think I know it, damn it all!”

Robles refused to feel anything. He asked her if there was anything he could do for her. It went without saying that she had been granted a full pardon, the government was magnanimous and understood that she had only followed him out of love, and she might also ask for anything she might want.

“Except Matamoros’s body.”

“It’s very strange,” said Concha Toro after a moment. “When I found out that my man would never be coming back, I began to dream, I dreamed about a wild bull in a ranch down in my part of the world, in Maule, I saw him running in the fields and then suddenly fall down wounded, can you imagine that? How silly wounded and castrated by the wind from the mountains, the wind slicing up my bull, the wind like a knife and a meat hook turning my bull into steaks. And you know what happened then?”

Robles looked at her courteously.

“I felt real nostalgia for Chile. It hit me in the face, right during that dream of horror and the blood of that night, an aroma of plum trees in bloom and lilacs and the salty coast and rivers flowing into the sea with a wreath of kelp. Sir, I want to go back to Chile, that’s what I want!”

She looked at him with languid, liquid eyes. “Please, sir, send me back to Chile!”

“It’s impossible.”

Robles did not lower his eyes.

“But it’s that…”

“Madam: there is no Chile.”

Robles forced himself to go on telling the truth without circumlocutions. It was a sure method, without complications; on him there could be fixed an entire symbology; symbols don’t grow on symbols, symbols only grow over realities, the sage statesman reminded himself. The painful silence of the Chilean singer had the liquid eloquence of her big gray sad eyes, where there was room for all the rain of Temuco.

“Sir,” said Concha after another long pause (Robles Chacón was armed with patience: he only wished someone else had shown it before making a show of power), “we Chileans are big globetrotters, but at the end of our lives we always come back to Chile, don’t tell me any more of your cruel stories, sir, I’m begging you, have a heart…”

“I’ll tell you again, madam: Chile no longer exists.”

“But the tortures … the house of the bells … Pinochet in power until 1999…”

“Tales made up to make people think nothing changes. I’m sorry.”

“What happened to my country, sir?”

“What do you think happened? A horrible earthquake, the Pacific fault. All of Chile sank into the sea. The whole country, from the mountains to the sea. From La Serena to Cape Horn. It wasn’t anyone’s fault: like a sugar cube, Chile dissolved in the sea.”

“What about the desert up north?”

“Peru and Bolivia split it between them.”

“Well then, I can go to the desert!”

“The Peruvian Army shoots all the deluded Chileans who disembark in Arica or Antofagasta. Don’t delude yourself, madam, really.”

“Always the Army! Always the Peruvians! Shit! Grant me another favor, then. Please, where is he? Let me bury him? Take care of his grave, sir? At least make that one exception?”

“We cannot tolerate the existence of a site for pilgrims to gather. Are you going to celebrate his death year after year by visiting his grave? You can understand that…”

He did not finish his sentence, but his gesture was definitive. Concha Toro in that instant must have remembered every pose, every fatal gesture of every femme fatale that ever appeared on the silver screen.

“All right.” She pushed her aigrette back with as much style as Marlene Dietrich when she played a spy standing in front of the firing squad. “Don’t give me anything but the truth, Mr. Minister. Tell me if my man triumphed or failed.”