Carlos Fuentes - Christopher Unborn

My answer is clear and forthright: I need you, Reader.

At any hour of the day, in any social class, in any of the infernal circles of this selva selvaggia, there are two problems: how to be alone or, alternatively, how to be in good company. But in Makesicko City, the city where my father grew up, the problem is saving oneself from pests (Angel told Angeles).

They tell me that in other countries a person with manners would never dare interrupt someone’s morning work time or his well-earned leisure time without setting up a date in advance and then showing up at the exact time; they send blue pneumatiques (or used to until pneumatiques died prematurely in 1984) or at the least call. Not in Mexico. The D.F. is a village with village manners disguised as a megalopolis. “Hey, man, get over here right now.” “Listen, I’m coming right over, okay?” Complete with kings, tombs, tribes, and leeches.

The most virulent form of this social disease known as the leech is the “parachutist,” who “drops in” at any hour of the day or night without calling, interrupting a dinner (if it’s the gate-crasher variety, it wants to be invited to join in), interrupting sex (if it’s a refined voyeur and sniffs out the hours when others take their pleasure), interrupting reading (if it happens to suffer acute agraphia and feels annoyed if someone settles down to cohabitate with words).

Which language will the child speak? asks my mother insistently, and my father answers that our language is dying on us, and only because they know that will they (Mom and Dad) pardon the existence of my Uncle Homero. We just saw all that.

But for the parachuting or interrupting pest no pardon is possible: its language is pure chatter, yakitiyak, gossip, tongue-wagging, and championship bouts of chin-wagging, although these creatures often invent dramatic pretexts to justify their undesired intrusion to the victim: during his adolescence, my father Angel (he tells us) attracted these creatures (of both sexes), especially those wandering around loose in Colonia Juárez or Colonia Cuauhtémoc.

In this city, then, populated by perpetually invading hordes (si j’ai bien compris) that arrive from anywhere at any hour of the day or night without being called or desired, who knock at the door (bambambam, Anybody home? knockknockknock, It’s the devil! Nobody home? Am I interrupting? Could you lend me your maracas? Don’t you have a little tepache in the fridge? For whatever reason, says my father Angel: in this city, he believes that when he was a young man he was sought out more than any of his friends or acquaintances because they all still lived at home or because of inflation they all went back to live with their parents or had to rent rooms in uncomfortable, promiscuous boardinghouses, fearful of ending up in old neighborhoods or the new, lost neighborhoods, and by contrast, Angel was an orphan, but an orphan with a nice place; and all of them were suffering under revived nineteenth-century discipline (or earlier: the interregnum of disorder in Mexico was born with the Rolling Stones and ended with the austerity of Rollover Debts: on the crumbling corners, the saddest song was once again the one about there being only four thousand pesos left from all the oil that was mine ay ayayayay; the happiest song, the one about the death of the petropeso, the death of conceit, you want a tiger in your tank?/ well money talks and bullshit walks): someone knocked on the door of his grandparents’ house, a beggar dressed as a monk, asking for alms:

“Please contribute to my grandmother’s funeral.”

Angel’s grandma, Doña Susana Rentería, pulled off her wedding ring and, trembling, handed it to the monk. Then she shut the door, embraced Angel, and begged: “Please don’t tell my Rigo what I just did.”

Okay, the pest rarely sets up a date and when it does it invariably arrives late; on the other hand, if it comes without warning, it always arrives (by definition) right on time: such was the case of the myriad parachutists who dropped in on my father when he was living — more freely than anyone in his generation as far as coming and going were concerned — in the coach house annexed to the house of his grandparents, Don Rigoberto Palomar (ninety-one years old) and Doña Susana Rentería de Palomar (sixty-seven years old) on Calle Génova. Having emancipated himself from the tyranny of Don Homero Fagoaga and his sisters Capitolina and Farnesia, my father enjoyed a unique reputation: if he lived alone — so the story went — it was because he was more respectable, more mature, more trustworthy than any other boy or girl in his public school: HEROES OF 1982. The school, originally private, was founded by Don Mamelín Mártir de Madrazo (better known in financial circles as Jolly Roger), who created it as proof of his public-spiritedness. Of course, Don Mártir, the most expropriated banker in Mexico before he was kidnapped and murdered, never imagined that this last bulwark of his civic prestige would also be expropriated. They never even bothered to change the school’s name, since HEROES OF 1982 by definition could apply just as well to the expropriators as to those expropriated — all the better, in fact, since those who expropriated the school would one day leave government for private industry, where they would in their turn be expropriated by the next government, revolutionarily ad infinitum. The net result was that at school Angel Palomar y Fagoaga paid dearly for his fame because pests dropped in at all hours to tell him their troubles, using metaphysical or physical anguish as a pretext: I’ll commit suicide if I don’t talk to someone, which actually meant: If I don’t commit suicide I’ll talk to someone, and by the way do you have anything in the fridge (an ocean), what are you reading ( The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, gent. ), how tired I am (go to bed, baby), aren’t you? (sure I am and here I come), what record should I put on (the last one put out by my favorite group, Immanuel Can’t), well, Kan’t you sing me something?

The life of the turkey vulture

is a wretched sort of life

All the year he flies and flies

his head as bald as a knife

insult me: slut! will you pull off my peplum, my chlamys, my fibula, strip me bare and help me with the homework? I’ve got such a pain right here, what could it be? I thought you might be sad — with nothing to do — screwing around as usual — as alienated as I am — jerking off, pig — on your way out, eating, sleeping, don’t you like me to visit you? — is it true that they told you that you told them to tell me? — I came over so you could tell me what you mean — got any dope? — could you introduce me into your sister? — I need bread, man — lend me a few rubbers — do you guys know of anyone who might need a fireworks expert for November 2? a paid insultant? — money, man? unless you have influence they won’t lend you any money at the bank, know any bank directors, Angelito? — lend me your comb — lend me your cock — wasn’t it you who had the recipe for those tamales wrapped in banana leaves? — lend me — lend me — could you call up — couldn’t you have an Equanil sent up from the pharmacy on the corner? — looks like the revolution starts tomorrow — the fascist coup — the military coup — the Communist coup — lay in lots of canned goods, Angel, let’s get to the state of siege right away — nail polish at the perfume counter, right? — where are those cold beers, bartender? what? are you turning cheapskate on us, what happened? — could you store my mint collection of Playboy for me: they just don’t understand at my place, ya know? — my collection of stuffed toys, Angelote, at my place, if my mom sees them, you know — could I leave my Toyota Super XXX here in your patio, Angel, at my place my dad is so strict, that stuff about moral renovation — capisc’—let me leave my valise here in case I take a trip — my collection of Almazán posters? — my Avelina Landín records? — my book of López Portillo’s favorite metaphors? — my collection of tops?