Carlos Fuentes - Christopher Unborn

The pins split apart under the impact of the ball with the stars on it and a nine-year-old boy, as green as the forest, retrieves the wooden ball and returns it to the man with the long, ash-yellow hair tumbling down his back and wearing the black jacket: The boy goes back to the platform and sweeps away the splinters with a broom

Will Gingerich running out of the jungle under a permanently navy-blue sky

I in my mother’s belly one month before my happy arrival in the world a Mexican boy like me but he already born and I not yet he picking up the broken pieces of clay the broken earth varnished blood-red the boy picks up the pieces of idols vessels ceramics and patiently replaces them with another twelve figurines and the man with the title THE PRIEST OF DEATH written across the back of his black leather jacket again throws the ball and breaks only ten of the twelve figurines and then turns his fury against the promontory where the CAT HUTS are crowded together: he looks at the ruins-to-be of the prefabricated shacks set to self-destruct in September they’ve been here since April replacements have not arrived he turns and looks with a resigned ardor at the eternal ruins of the Totonacas how long is this going to go on I thought we were going to clean this up in six months and get out I thought we would never have to request more CAT HUTS because we weren’t going to be here in this clearing between the pyramid and the temporary housing for the invading Army more than six months what frightens the tiger?

the officers’ city on the hill is surrounded by concertina wire, the entrance is flanked by twin machine-gun towers and a sign legible at a distance of a quarter of a mile:

RESTRICTED AREA. USE OF DEADLY FORCE AUTHORIZED

I, Christopher, do not understand why the Priest of Death again tosses the ball, sending it spinning against the clay figurines, and this time he rolls a strike because within a month I will be BORN and now I must take more and more account of the presence of the OTHER, that OTHER to whom I speak even if he doesn’t speak to me and I only have you, READER, to understand finally what I intuit outside my chamber of genetic echoes you must tell me for example that … Reverend Royall Payne looks one day with his eyes of burnished steel at his intelligence officer, Professor Will Gingerich, and he says in his most truculent tone stroke my chopper Prof go on just feel how smooth its sides are close your eyes and tell me please if it doesn’t make you as hot as I am to wipe out these greasers in a single day, which I could do by firing my portable Minuteman 92 against Jalapa and make pickled jalapeños out of those spicy jalapeño chicks hahaha tell me the truth egghead why are we in Veracruz?

Will Gingerich’s terror as he flees through the jungle has an echo: the jungle of red suns and blue nights tells him it isn’t possible you can’t come back to me there is no possible reconciliation none none The Priest of Death little Christopher is a veteran of the Contra wars in Central America, Grenada, and Vietnam his name is Royall Payne (Reverend Royall Payne) and he’s a fundamentalist preacher who made a fortune by refusing merely to preach comfortably and only practicing his preaching under the protection of a pleasure dome built by the contributions of the faithful in a southern city, instead he decided to put his anti-communist, fundamentalist crusade into practice and be present on all the battle fronts where the red menace is being confronted: when Royall Payne returns from his sanguinary tourism in praise of the Lord, multitudes crowd the entrance to his pleasure dome in Savannah, Georgia (it was a beautiful Southern port with a muggy, sugary Caribbean atmosphere until Payne turned it into the seat of his fundamentalist crusade, surrounded it with gas stations built in the shape of tabernacles, turned the mansions into motels and filled the labyrinthine streets and plazas with shops that sold the Bible on cassette — read by Reverend Payne — Bible videos — acted out by Reverend Payne, his family, and his associates — rubber baby bottles stamped with the picture of Reverend Payne blessing the city and the world, and plastic bottles of holy water to put into the formula so that children would learn from the cradle on to recognize the preacher who would guide them toward their reunion with Jesus, outwardly Protestant but actually Catholic the Reverend, since he sells holy baby bottles and also sells holy enemas the extremes meet but, brothers and sisters, be very careful not to mix up the orifices), his only condition being that wherever he was there be television cameras the Reverend would never abandon the faithful but instead of appearing every Sunday on TV wearing shiny shantung or costly double-knits and Cardin shirts or lizard Lacoste shirts like the other TV preachers, now utterly displaced by the energy of the most Fundamental of Fundamentalists, he would always appear in battle dress wearing his black jacket with THE PRIEST OF DEATH emblazoned on the back like the prophets of the Old Testament, the OT in the Reverend’s personal shorthand, his fax machine to the Almighty his direct line to Divine Grace: he marched out to battle just as Joshua had tumbled down walls and crossed rivers and made the sun stop in its path across the sky and now they don’t let him carry out his mission, they force him to be content stroking the metallic body of his Apache attack helicopter, as smooth as the cheeks he shaves four times a day, petting the decals tenderly stuck onto the fuselage and being satisfied with climbing up to the cockpit of his chopper and sermonizing his intelligence officer, Professor Gingerich, the greenish boy who sets up the Totonaca figurines on the board, the inimitable ruins of El Tajín, the parrots, the tigers, the river:

GOD IS PLEASURE! shouts the Reverend to his intelligence officer in this wasteland of Veracruz as long as we carry on His work on earth He rewards us pleasure is only odious when we do not deserve it when we seek pleasure before we seek the Lord but if we first seek the Lord we shall always find Him He is only absent when we do not seek Him out all we have to do is seek Him to find Him and the nothing is a sin NOTHING NOTHING is impossible and everything is possible is permitted in the name of the Lord everything is permitted to him who has found the Lord and the voice of the Lord has said: Go forth and be my soldier exterminate my enemies and then I shall receive you and you will have the pleasure which I am! says the Reverend to Professor Gingerich of Dartmouth College and Will Gingerich realizes that the Reverend is surrounded by a luminous, orange-colored square and the feline purring of a TV camera (a tiger in the jungle): If you turn your back on Jesus, Jesus will turn his back on you, concludes Royall Payne, followed by organ music and a list of thanks to the program’s patrons and an announcement that this program reaches your home via satellite thanks to a subsidy from the Union Carbide Corporation from somewhere in Veracruz: now you know why we’re in Veracruz! Close-up of the Reverend’s fists and slow fade:

Royall Payne jumps off his designer helicopter picks up a towel to wipe off his sweat lathers up his cheeks picks up his razor and reminds Will Gingerich you are here to tell Washington what it wants to hear nothing else don’t work so hard don’t even leave your CAT HUT just write your weekly report saying there are Communists in Veracruz Soviet agents Cuban bases even if it isn’t true: modern intelligence consists in telling your superiors what they want to hear: the rest of the time, well, there’s a case of beer over there and in Cardel there are very pretty girls if you don’t mind dying of some venereal disease but what can stop sex, eh, Professor? Go on tell me what can stop it. I’ll tell you: the fear of God, but you, an agnostic secular humanist, what do you do, Professor? Screw and die!