Carlos Fuentes - Christopher Unborn

I declare that he asks her, Did you see, Angeles? and each time he does it he swears he sees my mother’s eyes change: they change color or place or perhaps they only change intention, which is like changing color or place: each time he embraces her, an icy, blue, clear, foamy splinter of ice passes through my mother’s eyes.

I declare that my father takes my mother’s hand in order to resist the temptation to kiss her perfumed nape, the acidity of her underarms, the oven of her tiny feet.

I declare that my father says to her, Angeles, give me time to get to know you.

I declare that when he touches her she screams: Death is a long way off!

Behind Deng Chopin he emerged, hahaing and hungry, Uncle Homero Fagoaga, just when the dance was breaking up in exhaustion; Don Homero collapsed listlessly onto a curule chair screwed to the deck opposite the table covered with a paper tablecloth where Angel and Angeles were sitting. Behind him, as rigid as a statue, Tomasito took up his place. Uncle turned his veiled, febrile eyes, like those of a wise tortoise, upward, where the scarlet sails decorated with Chinese ideograms were fluttering in the ominous silence of the tropical night; peering through the masts, he could see the Byzantine cupolas that marked the dominions of Ada and Deng.

Let’s get cracking! Mrs. Ching imperiously ordered the musicians, I pay them more than anyone so they think they have the right to rest between sets, no way! see what the gentlemen and the lady want: no, Homero imperiously said to Hipi Toltec, who was arranging the table, no, not a fourth seat: don’t sit down, Tomasito, fan, Tomasito, you shall dine when we get back to the house.

“Yes, master.”

“Io non voglio più servir.”

Our buddy Egg looked under the table, asking in a complaining voice, “Baby Ba, where are you? Don’t hide anymore, sweetie, come out so we can give you some candy…”

Our homeric uncle looked at this bizarre waiter, who was as white as an egg, as hairless as an egg, depilated to the point of avarice, depilated till death us do part, and then he looked at the other waiter: he was shredding, his skin was peeling off right before their very eyes. When the waiter with the porcupine hair and the bottle-capped hat approached the table of our suspicious Uncle Homero, Uncle H. simply did not look at him: he smelled him, he smelled the sweat and grime the boy had had the misfortune to possess since birth. Where? Tell us now, little orphan boy, little boy lost, an irrepressible tide of repulsion seemed to drown our uncle’s eyes: “Why is it that we have to be served by these stinking inferiors?” he exclaimed, his rage, his age, this page at its highest pitch. “What we’re paying for here in crisp dollar bills is a fine meal beautifully served by people as elegant as we are! Why do we have to go on putting up with being served by our inferiors? Don’t we have enough power to be served by our equals?” he shouted in a delirium to which the imperturbable chanting of the waiter with the bottle-capped hat served as a musical accompaniment, while his peeling colleague went on setting the table, while the fat one was down on all fours looking for the girl, and while the selfsame bottle-capped Ganymede waited patiently to take the order of the Palomar y Fagoaga family.

“Now then, boy,” said Uncle Homero, lolling on the curule seat opposite my parents, perpendicular to the nocturnal breeze fanned by Tomasito, and beneath the rubber cupolas floating on the rolling sea.

“Wha’ chu’ wan’, sir?” said the boy in a nasal, whining voice.

“Wha’ chu’ wan’, sir?” he who gives purity and splendor to our tongue mimicked him in atrocious disdain. “Now then, boy, bring me a dry, straight-up twist of lemon.”

“Oliver Twist?” inquired my father.

“This is no time for silly jokes,” said the President of the Academy severely, focusing his eyes ambivalently on the waiter/crooner. “Don’t mess around, you damned darky.” (The waiter with the sleepy eyes and the whisk-broom hair, naturally, screwed up his order completely, bringing him a lemonade and straw along with a Canada Dry, instead of a dry martini. Uncle Homero swept the lot off the table onto the floor, scattering cherries and olives to the four winds, and said to the waiter, “Down on your knees, slavey, mop up that slime, you mountain monkey, then come back, use your brain, if you can, cretin, and then bring me, let’s see if you can get it right this time, what I ordered, you poor illiterate donkey, and learn how to serve a gentleman!”)

He paused as if to congratulate himself — you’ve rarely been in such great form, Homero — and then stared with redoubled fury at the waiter, who was bent down, picking up the cherries and olives: where did you stick your fingers before you put your cherries in my lemonade, slimebag? Just as I thought, as that great Argentine educator Hugo Wast remarked to his intimates, implacably remarked as he took his place in the Argentine military cabinet, this is no time for modesty, there can be no doubt, I repeat, no doubt that he’s scratched his testicles or picked his nose or wiped his tushy before he touched and served my food. Don’t you ever think about things like that when you eat in a restaurant?

He raised his voice so that everyone could hear him clearly, above all the filthy boy, who was now bringing him a sumptuously arranged pineapple sorbet.

“The boss lady sends it to you,” said the boy, trying to overcome the powerful chortles of our robust Uncle H. “Compliments of the house, is what she said.”

“Learn how to serve a gentleman, you grimy slavey!” intoned Uncle Homero. “Hold on there, servant, you used condom, you demented lollipop!”

Don Homero looked the waiter up and down: he was no longer sporting his bottle-cap hat, just his tangled broom, as if he wanted to upset everyone’s concept of zoology by wearing a sea urchin as a toupee, standing there with his arms crossed after serving our uncle his sorbet, while Homero surveyed the chaos the floating disco had become that New Year’s Eve.

He raised his spoon to attack the sorbet: “People like me are used to living with beggars but not with proles. No one has a greater sense of honor than a Mexican beggar. When you offer a nickel to an authentic beggar, he responds by refusing to take it: ‘A man’s hunger is his castle.’ An authentic beggar is a poor man in the classic style, that is, with no place in the world to rest his head, but possessing the whole Spanish-American code of honor intact.”

With his nervously avid nails, Don Homero incised the poor tablecloth, on which alternated pop icons and the faces of Steely Joe and Mighty Mao.

“These waiters, you see, and this one in particular, are crooks, thieves who work by night and lurk in the shadows, bandits disguised as waiters. They don’t ask you for money honorably the way beggars do, certainly not! they mug you, my dear niece. They’re con men, they rile up the people who are happy in honorable poverty and organize them into unions. They embitter them with their utopian ideas, and they end up by stealing private estates, saying they were communal lands during the times of King Cuauhtémoc. They produce nothing, they scare off tourists, they ruin the nation, and they should be jailed, the sooner the better. This is my social philosophy, as we are entering, my dear niece and nephew, 1992, which promises to be quite a turbulent year. For ages now, we, the gentry, have defended ourselves from the Indians and the peasants — after all, we’ve been in charge of them since 1521. But these filthy brutes who pop up out of nowhere, how are we going to dominate them?” he asked with some anxiety.