Carlos Fuentes - Christopher Unborn

The helicopters that still work leave the jungle clearing near El Tajín in search of nonexistent targets / they see a nosegay of roof tiles and they drop a bouquet of napalm / they seek out the thickest places in the forest / the mangrove swamps the rotten vines / the wavy fronds of the palm trees and they open the valves of Agent Orange to exterminate all greenery /a chemical, dark-red cloud to defoliate the jungle / an orange-colored juice to defoliate its inhabitants: they come back late from their incursions when the tiger opens his golden eyes and begins his nocturnal prowling / they withdraw to their CAT HUTS and open their refrigerators and drink Iron City beer and tear open their cellophane bags and eat pretzels Doritos and individual-sized pizzas: then they drop a nickel into the beer bottle and try to see while they laugh and make jokes about Thomas Jefferson’s being a shithead, if what they say about Iron City beer is true, that it can dissolve a nickel, but they don’t know that the orange pesticide is dissolving them and they that now are twenty, thirty years old and then go home with medals and beer bellies and hearts swollen with patriotism to Allentown, Pennsylvania, and Lansing, Michigan, years later will wonder why is my pancreas my liver my fucking brain my colon my rectum dissolving?

they don’t wonder about this now now they go out on patrol carrying their Backpack Nukes: this is a green knapsack which contains a nuclear device equivalent to 250 tons of TNT and they go down to Villa Cardel spend a jolly Saturday in the cantinas where half of those who enter do not leave alive but they emerge safe and sound: who’s going to mess with a Detroit black six feet tall and carrying 250 tons of nuclear explosives? or with a Puerto Rican from the island of Vieques armed with / who walk in shouting THIS IS RAMBOWAR! and later on they decide to visit one of the bordellos they’ve been in all of them except one: the one that belongs to the old Chinese / he’s put them off / but they have bet each other that before leaving Veracruz they are going to screw every available woman and they’re about to reach 175 days here so they know that in four more days they’ll be transferred so that there will never be any official record of their ever having been in Veracruz they walk out singing happy tunes by Stephen Foster and Irving Berlin America America from sea to shining sea: the Oriental guardian of the Celestial Empire fans himself and rocks smiles at them and invites them Amelica? flum sea to shiny seamen? you go in now see mos’ elotic woman flom sea to shiny seamen smiles the diminutive Deng Chopin inviting the gringo soldiers in with his long mandarin pianist’s fingers and the boys from Detroit or PR look at each other, elbow each other with a joking air of complicity and they enter the Celestial Empire giggling Will Gingerich doesn’t know it but he’s delirious and in every one of the jungle’s shapes he sees a frightened tiger he imagines he’s a big sports hero a pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals a fullback for the Los Angeles Rams the oldest winner at Wimbledon he’s delirious but not even that can diminish his fear they’re going to come back they’re going to get him he walks in circles through the jungle they’re everywhere and he nowhere; the navy-blue sky splits open: the moon parts the veil and sticks to the sky like a silver decal: Will Gingerich flees and the Reverend Payne argues: why are we in Veracruz? Caressing the metallic body of his Apache attack helicopter, as metallic as his cheeks shaved four times a day, caressing the tenderly applied decals on the Apache each decal a star with a skull in its center and surrounded by statements in which only the geography varies: I WAS IN VIETNAM. I WAS IN GRENADA. I WAS IN NICARAGUA. MEXICO NEXT: Reverend Payne begins to pound desperately on the fuselage of his helicopter scratching the decals saying with a hoarse voice: Why are we in Veracruz? and Gingerich trying to quiet him down telling him we’re here to protect the oil installations in the Gulf of Mexico without which the free world would be strategifucked … and the Reverend interrupts him with an open, hard slap on the body of the helicopter that echoes like a gigantic can of Campbell’s soup allowed to swell monstrously in the boiling humidity of the jungle: the truth! shouts the Reverend the truth! We’ve got to terminate this country that exports greasers who are invading us like the plague of locusts that destroyed Pharaoh’s power! Michigan is not growing South Carolina is not growing Georgia isn’t growing, not even your own home state Texas is growing, Professor, we aren’t having kids but all these greasers grow and grow and cross over and cross over and they’ll end up coupling with our own daughters and mothers and wives who have emerged like Venus from the Caucasian genetic pool Are you listening to me, Professor? haven’t you heard how often they call each other motherfuckers? well I want to send them back to their mommas air-mail with my faithful Minuteman 92 kill them in their father’s seed before they enter their mother’s belly repulsive filthy greasers invaders of other people’s clean white American property / camping out on our green lawns Are you going to allow it, Professor? But you’re opposed to abortion, Reverend, how are you going to halt the demographic explosion of the Hispanics if you are an apostle of the anti-abortion movement in the good old U.S.A., but they are not U.S. of A. nor are they good nor are they old said the Reverend in a horrible explosion of rage, throwing himself on the unarmed figure of Professor Will Gingerich and killing an unborn child is not the same as killing a grownup Mexican with a mustache to keep him from procreating, it isn’t the same, Prof, admit it! Will Gingerich, assaulted by Reverend Payne, lands face-down next to a slow river surrounded by burning tigers

there is only one room in Deng Chopin’s bordello: it is divided by a vaporous but stained gauze curtain stained with what only God knows / semen from an onanistic Chicano, bat shit or beer or guacamole it’s impossible to tell: the tiny Oriental lets the men in invites them to undress and then silently approach the canopied bed, which in turn is wrapped in complicated mosquito netting arranged like theater curtains, without waking up the sleeping woman: she is the sleeping beauty that’s the secret of this celestial house, that there is only one prostitute here and she makes love asleep: asleep? The two gringos laugh and Deng Chopin closes his eyes significantly and invitingly: asleep and the two soldiers nudge each other and laugh finally Nat what we always wanted none of these pigs let us listen Macho Nacho making love at the same time you from the front and me from the rear then we trade places why not smiles Deng Chopin: only in Caldel can you carry out your illusions he invites them to undress and take off their backpacks ah no laugh Nat and Macho Nacho never, we can be naked but we never give up our BACKPACK NUKES even for a second they laugh but don’t you worry now Chink man, the only rockets that be gonna go off here are when my buddy and I come inside your sleepin’ beauty they cackle Deng Chopin fans himself doesn’t laugh only raises his eyebrows and goes back to his rocker on the main street of Villa Cardel: Now Entering Little Saigon

they told me there wouldn’t be any killing! exclaims Professor Gingerich they recruited me to help the cause of peace to avoid a war between the United States and Mexico I got out of the Acapulco catastrophe and they told me in the U.S. Embassy that the way to work for peace was to do some intelligence investigation in Veracruz the alternative? we send you to Texas to work on the border I’m a professor in Dartmouth College it doesn’t matter it says here that you’re a Texan it doesn’t matter where you work but where you’re from as far as repatriation is concerned Professor Gingerich the honorable way out of this fix is an intelligence mission in Veracruz our reward to you will be to send you back to Dartmouth College where Christmases are indeed white and the mountains are green and the summers are as slow and hot as deep lakes and the pale dahlias and yellow jasmines flower: don’t worry Professor there won’t be any killing it’s a reconnaissance-intelligence mission: we’ve got to find a reason, Professor Gingerich: why are we in Veracruz? Reverend Royall Payne gets into his black helicopter, which is like a spider a caterpillar a hidden diamond a diabolical crown the devil’s cloven hooves the anus of the vampire as black as the night of the day in which the sun set in the east and the cats closed their eyes and the dogs did not dare to bark / the Reverend gets into his Apache attack helicopter, which he learned to fly on direct orders from President Rambold Ranger who told him: “Royall, you are God’s co-pilot. If I weren’t here, you would make the Big Decision in my place”: the President personally gave him this marvelous apparatus, which can fly at 327 miles per hour for six consecutive hours at thirty thousand feet detecting and calibrating the distance to every aircraft that comes within three hundred miles: capable of locating more than 250 targets and making thirty air interceptions: but the most beautiful aspect of Royall Payne’s chopper is its rotodome, the disk that holds the radar and radio antennas of the craft with a range that duplicates that of the most advanced systems currently known — it looks like a white emblem mounted on top of the helicopter and thinking about the decals stamped with the death’s-head and the anxious difference between stamping the skull on the name of Mexico and adding the address of the newest decal: CANADA NEXT COLOMBIA NEXT TRINIDAD NEXT said Royall Payne, who had decided in that instant to speak to the world through the microphone of his trusty Apache broadcasting his message of war and salvation with each steel pulse of the blades of his helicopter blades that shine like the shining blades that every six hours shave the shining cheeks of the man of steel the Priest of Death striking fear into the air of the old Totonaca cemeteries bending the trunks of the palm trees beating the zinc roofs against the cardboard walls shortening the life of the CAT HUTS, which are already on the point of disintegration: someday you’ll thank me the Reverend whines as if in a stellar sermon but the voice from the radio says don’t come back Roy go back to your base no roars Reverend Royall someday you’ll thank me he shouted in pain biting his hands on which was tattooed