Carlos Fuentes - Christopher Unborn

Tomasito tried once again — at the worst possible moment — to serve our uncle a Cointreau on the rocks with Pepsi-Cola (“Your Merry Blizzard, massster!), but Don Homero went on, carried away by the inertia of his eloquence, evoking beaches piled high with fish, first nervous, then dead, then rotten, what does it matter, millions and millions of lost proteins on the exuberant coast of our shrinking (ay!) national territory, while this deluded Don Diego Palomar was fabricating an eternal taco, because his genes carried him away, just as Ganymede was carried aloft by the eagle …

“No speak evil, master!” interjected a shocked Tomasito.

“What, you Rabelaisian monkey?”

“Rabble east?” queried the perplexed Filipino. “No, master, no rabble here, east or west! Only very fine people, yes?”

Don Homero regained his composure: “Now, where was I? Yes, your progenitor, Don Angel Palomar, perpetrated a frontal attack on the entire concept of supply and demand, on national progress itself, a taco with a mortgage is what I call it, but it was mortal for the only two people who ever dared ingest such a poisonous dish, your father and mother, may they rest in peace.”

He breathed deeply, he swelled up, his eyes seemed to pop out of their sockets, and he instantly closed them, fearing some new Filipino gaffe, may he rest in peace, as he recovered the beauty of the artificial oasis (was there ever a natural oasis? Homero thinks not; creation was born subverted) constructed by him at Port Marquee Bay in Paramount style — shady islets surrounded by crystalline brooks that babbled among coconut and date palms, and a band of araguato monkeys trained to throw coconuts from the high branches of these not so tristes tropiques: Aaaaaah! Someone’s going to interrupt him, the Filipino, Angel, or Angeles, may they rest in peace, one of them is going to say something, but no, they are strangely quiet for people their age, for people so famous as jokers and (above all) rebels, why are they so quiet? why are they letting him speak so badly of that pair of obtuse illuminati, Diego and Isabella Palomar?

And so, in the silence of niece and nephew, Homero Fagoaga savored a triumph which he knew was Pyrrhic. He was defeated in victory, ay Tomasito, you would have to take out of the white pocket of your fine Filipino shirt a black-fringed photograph of Elpidio Quirino, the deceased Father of the Islands. Just what Uncle H. had feared. He did not have to open his eyes to say:

“I, as your testamentary tutor, had and still have the obligation to bring your excesses to heel, to put order in your life, to force you to think about your wife, and also, perhaps, if God so ordains it, your child, your children!”

“Tartuffe,” murmured Angeles, almost biting her champagne glass out of rage, “may God not so ordain children because they all get a share in the inheritance, and then what will you get, you old hypocritamus? Tartuffe! Tartuffe!” She began to raise her voice, but she fell silent because Tomasito entered just then with the dessert of the same name, and Uncle Homero did not become enraged with him because he had not caught Mom’s allusion to Molière. He simply exclaimed:

“Both of you must learn, please allow me to say so, the virtues of our national dialectic, which, once we’ve assimilated it, makes us the Mexicans we are because we are progressive because we are revolutionary because we are reactionary because we are liberal because we are reformists because we are positivists because we are insurgents because we follow the Virgin of Guadalupe because we are Catholic because we are conservatives because we are Spaniards because we are Indians because we are mestizos.”

“And are you a member of PRI, Uncle Homero?” asked my mother without looking at him, looking instead at the sea, looking Homero, looksee, lacksee, lackadaisical. Oh mère, oh merde, Homère.

“At your service,” the avuncular personage says automatically, but Angel and Angeles fall silent because Tomasito enters a second time to serve the Tartuffe (or to serve the Tartuffe the Tartuffe), and Uncle Homero declares, as he looks up at the black sky as if to show he knew how to be a good loser and to celebrate such a happy reconciliation worthy of other embraces in the state of Guerrero, Acatempan, he invited them to spend this New Year’s Eve in the floating discotheque Divan the Terrible unless

they would prefer to stay here and fight the night away over the legal problems related to the suit for being a spendthrift

they would prefer to let Tomasito babble, since he was quite capable of filling an entire night with vaudeville at the slightest semantic provocation

they would prefer to return in indignation to Mexico City because Uncle H. had spoken ill of Angel’s father

they would prefer to spank Uncle Homero for being naughty

they would prefer to drown him in the pool of his tropical fortress

the dessert had been poisoned by Uncle Homero

the dessert had been poisoned by Angel and Angeles

Tomasito got drunk in the kitchen on Merry Blizzard and forgot to serve dessert

Angeles memorized Plato’s Cratylus, which she’d studied in the classic university edition with green binding published by

Homero had drugged Angel’s drink and, naked, would chase his delectable niece along the beach

Homero had only drugged Angeles and ordered Tomasito to tie Angel up so he could watch his wife being raped by his satyr uncle

the Three Wise Men entered Don Homero’s coastal compound mounted on camels

it rained unexpectedly in January

all of them just went to sleep.

Angel and Angeles arrived at Ada Ching’s floating disco at approximately 10 p.m., singing the John Donne One by Mao Tsar. The breeze was rattling the inflatable rubber Byzantine cupolas, and He — Don Homero Fagoaga Labastida Pacheco y Montes de Oca — insolently posed on the deck as if the sea, the moon, the distant shore, and the great globe itself owed their existence to Him alone. He was once again in public, performing, exhibited for the delight of the unfortunate masses, perpetually fanned by Tomasito: Io non voglio più servir!

But then, with terrifying ill-will blazing in his eyes, with a gesture of permanent hatred, he looked at the three boys who helped him up from the launch while Angel and Angeles pushed his buttocks up from below. He stared at the lads with rancor; first he saw the three pairs of legs, let’s see which ones he liked, and four of the six feet were in one way or another deformed, eddyfeet, yes Eddy Alien Toes says my pundit pop, feet deformed by that protective layer of human rubber that has been appearing on the feet of city kids: some feet shredding as if charred (Uncle Homero averts his eyes in disgust), others white and milky like those of Uncle H. himself (disgusting, disgusting!), still others svelte, golden brown, firm, well shaped, eddypolinean, in that case, and on those lawyer Fagoaga fixes his hungry gaze, raising it slowly without seeing all he wants. To calm the Filipino, my parents hummed the aria Io non voglio più servir sung by the servant of Don Joe Vanni, the capo of the Sevillian mafia, and the lawyer Fagoaga absorbed the detestable though desired presence of those cabaret waiters dressed in extraordinary bikinis stamped with the lamented effigies of Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong. The waiters wore huaraches, the one with the nice legs was strangely familiar: his face was fighting to get out of Uncle’s drawer of deliberately forgotten things, where the boy was wearing a brimless, bottle-cap-encrusted borsalino on his filthy black head of stiff hair; Uncle H. felt as if he’d seen him, fleetingly, before, where, where, David Campo de Cobre? Lost Boy? Olivo Torcido? If you twist the olive branch in fields of copper, you will only create a pip of a problem.