Carlos Fuentes - Christopher Unborn

They didn’t know whether to treat this result as a success or a failure. In any case, they did not lose hope; instead, they derived the following corollary: if the representation of matter, its reproduction, is complemented by an opposite term, it must be possible to isolate this relationship within matter itself, seeking within each object in the universe the principle of antimatter, the potential twin of the object. To make the antimatter materialize at the instant matter disappears became the concentrated, obsessive avenue of your grandparents’ genius, Christopher.

They began by taking simple, organic objects — a bean, a piece of celery, a lettuce leaf, a jalapeño pepper — and submitting them to a kind of infinite race between Achilles and the turtle. By keeping each one of those objects connected to its vital source — the root that supplies nutrition — my parents tried to accelerate the process by which the bean, the lettuce, the pepper, and the celery were ingested, while at the same time they were replaced by the accelerated reproduction of other identical objects. From integrating the process of growth with the process of consumption there was only one revolutionary step: to introduce within each pepper, lettuce, bean, or celery a principle of reproduction that would be inherent in but separate from the object in question: the Achilles of consumption would be caught every time and more and more by the turtle of reproduction acting as an active principle of antimatter.

All that remained to my parents, Isabella and Diego, to do was to apply this discovery to the natural envelope of those ingredients: the tortilla, our national and supernatural food, and announce the discovery of the Inconsumable Taco: a taco that, the more it is eaten, the more it grows back: the solution to Mexico’s nutrition problems! the greatest national idea — Uncle Homero Fagoaga laughed when he learned about it — since mole was invented in Puebla de los Angeles by a dyspeptic nun!

They all laughed, Angeles, Uncle Homero, and his horrid sisters Capitolina and Farnesia (ages unconfessable), as they made a detailed inventory of the house that belonged to my parents and me in the neighborhood of the Church of St. Peter the Apostle in Tlalpan: a house painted in bright colors — yellows, blues, and greens — with no windows on the street but plenty of interior patios, located between a hospital from the Porfirio Díaz era and a water-pumping station: making an inventory of what one day, according to my parents’ express intention, was to be mine, along with an inheritance of forty million gold pesos. It was to have been mine when I turned twenty-one.

“I can stay right here and live alone,” I said, stubborn and full of the sufficiency of my eleven years.

“No, no, by Jesus, a thousand times no!” exclaimed Farnesia. “In this horror?”

“Quite horrible, little sister, but property values here are going up because of how near the paper factory is, and the diners, and the entrance to the Cuernavaca highway,” Don Homero said, calculating rapidly. He may have been very academic in regard to the language, but he was also very academic in business.

“In any case, the boy should live with us so he’ll be educated: he has our name, so we should sacrifice ourselves,” opined Capitolina. “Poor little orphan.”

“Ay, little sister,” agreed Farnesia, “talking about sacrifices, how this ungrateful tot is going to pay for making me leave my house to bury his parents and come here to bring him home — you know that for me it is a sin to leave the house!”

“And you can see he doesn’t believe in God.”

“Proof of his bad upbringing, Capitolina.”

I understand you, Angel, when you tell me that when you were still very young the first thing your Aunts Capitolina and Farnesia told you when they took you in, poor little orphan, was that you were never to mention the reason why you were an orphan, it was too ridiculous, everyone would laugh at you. What will they say if they say that they said that you are the taco orphan or something else like that? What would be left of the family honor? The merest vestiges, Capitolina answered. No, no, dear Jesus, a thousand times no!

You went to your parents’ tomb doing violence to your own memory, imagining all the time that they had died of something else, of anything else, tuberculosis or cancer, a duel at dawn, drowned in a storm on the high seas, smashed up on a bad curve, romantic suicide pact, simultaneous cirrhosis of the liver, but not of indigestion after eating tacos.

Since you had to imagine death as a lie, you felt that everything around you was also a lie. If you couldn’t remember your parents’ death, how were you going to remember the promise of the resurrection of the flesh? How were you going to believe in the existence of a soul? Buried in a lie, they will never truly be resurrected. Cause and effect were missing. Death by Taco: Immortal Soul: Resurrection of the Flesh. Death by Zero: Zero Soul: Zero Flesh. Nothing comes of nothing!

You communicated your doubts to your aunts, and there was a family meeting with your tutor, Uncle Homero. Heretical child, your Aunt Capitolina berated you, even though you don’t believe in God, as your words suggest, at least say that you believe or what will become of you? You will go to hell. Worse, interrupted Farnesia, no one will invite you to their parties or give you their daughter’s hand in matrimony, heretic and remiss child, and in the second place … Go to church, added Capitolina, even if you don’t believe, so that everyone sees you there, and when you get older, Farnesia sensibly observed, go to the university or no one will know what to call you if you aren’t Dr. So-and-so: there has never been a Fagoaga who’s just been plain Mister, God forbid! And when you get older, Uncle Homero concluded politically, go to Party assemblies even if you fall asleep listening to the speeches, just so people see you there. Asleep, Uncle Homero? Bah, just look at the photos of the deputies fast asleep during the presidential report: then your sacrifice will warrant their compassion, respect, and a rising career in national politics, why not? An alert and contentious deputy would be a bad thing, like that bearded tribune Don Aurelio Manrique, who, from his Potosí seat, shouted “Fraud!” at the Maximum Hero of the Revolution, General Don Plutarco Elías Calles, who was perorating in sonorous Sonoran tones from the august rostrum of Doncelles; but a sleeping deputy can quickly become a wide-awake minister, just look at the dazzling rise of that dynamic public man from Guerrero, Don Ulises López, nephew, Don Homero Fagoaga went on, oblivious of Angel’s internal torments, don’t doubt it for a minute and learn, little nephew: how are you going to make a career for yourself, my innocent little Angel?

“Three centuries of Mexican Fagoagas and we’ve all made careers in arms and letters, in the Church and the government, always adapting ourselves to the conditions of the times: one day with the Viceroy, the next with Independence; in bed with Santa Anna and the conservatives, wide awake with Comonfort and the liberals; united with the Empire, lawyers for Lerdo; with Porfirio Díaz for nonreelection, with Porfirio Díaz for reelection; momentarily with Madero, unconditionally with Huerta, at the orders of Carranza, followers of Calles, enemies of Cárdenas, that’s right, we’d have nothing to do with him, even our oh so tall and noble glass of family water can overflow, we have our limits; and disciplined and enthusiastic supporters of the Revolution after Avila Camacho, when the President, revolutionary general that he was, declared himself a believer and a friend to capitalism and thus resolved all our contradictions: Learn, my boy.