Carlos Fuentes - Christopher Unborn

“At least the ventilation’s good,” said Buckley, brushing the reddish dust off his hands.

Buckley was alluding to the fact that the stairs went up past stucco pilasters badly in need of painting and windows devoid of glass; but then the deep blue of the windows made the night seem even darker. They stopped in a hallway whose only light came from a solitary, immobile bulb that hung over a nondescript door.

“Nothing worthwhile in Mexico is announced anymore,” Will Gingerich explained. “But the institute does send its pamphlets abroad.”

He knocked at the door, involuntarily letting himself be carried away by a forgotten jazz phrase.

“Is this proof that the institute is not worthwhile?” insisted D.C. courteously.

The door opened, and a man of perhaps thirty-two years of age, tall, powerful, wearing a large mustache, with eyes like the chief of an unconquered tribe photographed by Mathew Brady c. 1867, stared at them with no expression whatsoever on his face. Because of the heat, he was wearing Bermuda shorts. Despite the heat, he wore a thick turtleneck sweater. The professor gave his name and introduced D. C. Buckley as his assistant.

“Matamoros Moreno, pleased to serve Quetzalcoatl and you.” He nodded his huge head, and D. C. Buckley felt a tremor run down his spine: he, who had come to Mexico following the tracks of D. H. Lawrence, to receive this gift … and so out of nowhere! He thanked the professor for his liberality with a glance — thanks, old salt!

But he had no time to say anything because Matamoros Moreno ushered them in with a gesture of hospitality, closed the rachitic door of the Acapulco Institute, and shuffled into the naked space as if he were wearing a ball and chain. He slumped his gorilla shoulders and sat in a metal chair facing an ocote table finished in red lacquer.

The professor sat down in the other metal chair, with D.C., modestly adapting to his role as assistant, standing behind him, tall and distant from the terrestrial eyes of Matamoros, who even when sitting seemed to be pushing a cannon uphill. With no preamble, Matamoros said, “As you know, the ancient myth of the vagina dentata only survived in sixteenth-century texts thanks to the missionaries who took the time to listen to the oral histories of the conquered and wrote them down to use them in the Indian colleges. But those texts were soon destroyed by the colonial authorities, both civil and ecclesiastical, because they were deemed lascivious and impure.”

He paused, perhaps to show himself under the light of another bulb that deepened the shadows on a face that was threatening in its immobile simplicity. That face, D. C. Buckley said to himself, merely announces the danger of his body: anyone who doesn’t avoid those eyes runs the risk of not avoiding the body and of being demolished by it. Buckley decided to avoid both.

“The text and the illustration I possess”—now he looked only and terribly at Gingerich—“are the only ones on the vaginal myth saved from the estate of Don Fernando de Alva Ixtilxóchitl, the Indian prince transformed into a writer in the Spanish language, even though he descended from Prince Nezahualpilli of Texcoco.”

Like a cobra about to strike, Matamoros stared fixedly at Will Gingerich. The professor made a face of the kind he only remembered making at muggers in obscure residential streets in Cambridge, Mass., where he was assaulted sometime around 1985. Matamoros’s face simply expressed one thing: that payment was required for his information. But Gingerich said nothing — even a fish wouldn’t get into trouble if he learned to keep his mouth shut. Buckley, too, remained silent. His eyes had wandered a few minutes before from Mr. Moreno and were seeking the swift, hidden eyes lurking in the darkness of the Acapulco Institute.

“I make two conditions for showing you the documents, Professor,” said the president of the aforementioned institute in very grand, very Mexican style.

Gingerich did not ask; he merely waited.

“The first is that you try to publish what I’ve written in some prestigious magazine in the neighboring republics to the north.”

Matamoros’s eyes were nothing compared with his tremendous teeth, which he was now showing. Buckley did not see them because he was looking at the doe-like eyes of a woman in the darkness, behind a door with opaque glass panels, a door that led to…?

“I will certainly try to do that, Mr. Moreno.”

The professor cleared his throat and then went on in the face of Don Matamoros’s obstinate silence, “Of course, the publishing crisis in North America even affects the most powerful publishers, as you no doubt know. It will be very difficult…”

“I don’t give a fuck about any crisis,” said the fearsome Matamoros. “You figure out how to publish my stuff — with a powerful publisher or a weak one, I don’t care. You swear you’ll get me published, my dear professor, or you will never find out about the myth of the vagina dentata in Fernando Ixtilxóchitl.”

“In that case, I swear,” said Gingerich serenely.

“And if you don’t”—Matamoros Moreno smiled through his knife-sharp teeth—“may the fatherland call you to account.”

He blew his nose noisily, then looked at Gingerich, his handkerchief still covering his nose and mouth.

“And if the fatherland doesn’t call you to account, rest assured, my professorial friend, that your humble servant will.”

Gingerich swallowed hard in order to be able to say, “And the second point, Mr. Matamoros?”

“No, pal, it’s not a point, it’s a condition. ”

Gingerich could not withstand Matamoros Moreno’s stare. He concentrated on the mustache of the director of the Acapulco Institute: it was not merely a bushy mustache; it was a bush. Matamoros soaked his mustache and covered his ears — it was the only way (said the professor) he could free himself from the din out on the terrace. Was he blind as well? Gingerich then realized that Buckley was no longer in the room.

The citizen of New York and Adjacent Islands was not looking at or listening to this supposed exchange between mythographers. Buckley had stealthily followed the doe’s eyes, which slowly but surely had withdrawn from behind the door with glass panels.

“ Condition, of course, Mr. Moreno,” Gingerich agreed, swallowing again.

“This is it: once my work has been published in North America, you personally will take a copy, with the cover, The Myth of the Notched Cunt by Matamoros Moreno, clearly visible, and you will seek out, wherever he may be, a certain Angel Palomar y Fagoaga, Mexican citizen, resident of the capital. You will find him, Professor, somehow and you will force him, in your presence, to eat the paper on which my ideas are printed.”

“Page by page?”

“Ground up like confetti,” answered Matamoros with a truculent gesture.

“But I don’t know this Angel Palomar person.”

“You’ll find him.”

“May I delegate this function? Umm, to my assistant, for example? (Where are you when I need you, you Gothamite bastard?!)”

“You have to do it yourself. You have to be there.”

“What if I’m not.”

“There are other professors willing to accept my conditions. Here’s a letter from the University of El Paso, for instance…”

“I accept,” said Professor Gingerich hurriedly, his mind on the honor of Dartmouth College.

D. C. Buckley followed the little doe in the darkness, smelling her, stepping on the coffee-colored clothing she tossed onto the tiles, while Will Gingerich avidly read the document Matamoros Moreno set before him like some special treat. Despite his impatience, Matamoros’s eyes never left the professor. Buckley touched the girl’s shoulder. It was as smooth as a glass of eggnog with cinnamon. He touched her face. He dared to bring his finger to her mouth. She nipped Buckley’s finger and laughed. The New Yorker got used to the darkness. The naked girl got into a barrel, and invited him to join her. She opened her mouth until it was incredibly wide and cleansed the sky of storm clouds. Buckley lowered himself into the barrel next to her.