Carlos Fuentes - Christopher Unborn

“Pacífica is…” says my father in a low voice, but Uncle H. was not listening, neither to my father nor to my Uncle Fernando, as he snorted in rage astride the longest-suffering burro in burrodom: the rotund personage whines and regurgitates, not even listening to what my father and my other uncle, Don Fernando, are saying.

“Oh, Lord, what could I have done to deserve this humiliation, I, saved twice in the same year by my nephew Angel to whom I have done so much evil? Oh, I beg forgiveness, a thousand times I beg forgiveness.”

Homero Fagoaga slipped off his burro as they went down a mountainside and kissed the feet of my father — ramrod-straight, bearded, green-eyed, and Guelfish. Forgive me, nephew, I am in your hands, you saved me from the Acapulco mob by sending Tomasito to warn me in time so I could escape by speedboat and parachute instead of using the minisub I had prepared (they didn’t take my etc. into account) …

“It was Tomasito who warned you?” groans my mother.

“Precisely. And because of his loyalty the heroic son of the archipelago died, died, I say, at the hand of pimpish types whose faces and manners I seemed to recognize,” said Uncle H., staring at us with eyes that said I’m holding a royal flush too, but we’re all pals here, right? “Who will ever be able to explain what makes some people completely loyal?” he added, wagging his tremendous Tartuffesque jowls. “Tomasito is dead!”

“And you are alive, Uncle.”

“Thanks to you. And I had time to prepare my campaign and call my plane from Mexico City, so that I could keep my appointment with our well-beloved Mexican soil. Now you have saved me from those monolingual aborigines, oh how can I ever pay you for doing me such favors?”

“You miserable fat slob,” interrupted Uncle Fernando, “what are you running away from?”

“My best speech, dear oh dear, the one I’d worked over most, the one I’d virtually chiseled out of Parian marble, the most eloquent, the most erudite, my most heartfelt one as well, lost in the face of five thousand sandal-wearing plebes who didn’t understand a word! Mexico in a nutshell, my dear, dear relatives! Everything for nothing and nothing for everyone! But doubt, doubt is what’s consuming me! Did they love me? Did they hate me? Please, don’t take my doubt away from me!” said Homero, standing up with dignity.

“The one thing there can be no doubt about is what your buddies from the PRI will be thinking about you, you pudding on legs,” Uncle Fernando declared.

“Bah, after all that confusion they’ll understand my reasons just as I’ll understand theirs,” said Uncle H. with diminishing haughtiness, as he mounted his burro with bizarre agility.

“Well, my dear Uncle, it seems to me that even as we speak the tribe has probably already chopped up the hierarchs who vainly sought refuge in the religious sanctuary. Dear me, yes, Uncle. The purest tamale. Just you think about that.”

“All sixty-three, nephew?”

“But of course, Uncle.”

“Elijo Raíz, the delegate born in Cuajinicuilapa?”

“Ground up fine.”

“Don Bernardino Gutiérrez, first and foremost supporter of President Calles in the state of Guerrero?”

“Ground up fine.”

“But just yesterday, as we were leaving the airport for the hotel, I asked him, listen, Don Bernardino, you who’ve been in national politics since the days of General Calles, how have you managed to survive and adapt yourself to so many changes, fluctuations, and shake-ups? Think of me as a humble apprentice and let your experience illuminate my hope. Then Don Bernardino stuck his index finger in his mouth and stuck it out of the car window to tell which way the wind was blowing.”

“That’s how to do it, son.”

“Gelded like a hog.”

“And the young Tezozómoc Cuervo, pristine orator, formed like a jug and of coffeeish hue?”

“That boy, as Don Bernardino would say: now he’s a busted jug.”

“Good God, what have I set into motion?” whined Homero Fagoaga.

“The beginning of the end, you miserable swine,” interjected our guide, Don Fernando, without bothering to turn around to look at him as he drove the mules back the way we came.

“The end of the PRI?” asked Homero, about to fall off again.

“You look pale.”

“Deflated.”

“Oh! Ah!” The burro bucked, sending the not so future Senator flying through the air.

Homero hung on my father’s neck, who later said it was like being hugged by a gigantic vanilla ice-cream cone with chocolate sauce on the verge of melting.

“Hide me,” said this would-be Senator Fagoaga, desperately but alertly: “Don’t let them take their revenge on me, I’ll do anything you ask, but don’t abandon me to the revenge of the PRI!”

He stretched out his arm. “Fernando, my friend.”

“Will you be quiet, you miserable swine?” Our Uncle Fernando turned to face him. “You are going down in history as the man who destroyed the PRI! Damned if that isn’t historical irony! You, Homero Fagoaga, illustrious member of the PRI…”

“At your service!” exclaimed Homero, almost standing up, like one listening to the national anthem, but then fell instantly on his knees and begged to be hidden in the old house in Tlalpan that had belonged to my father’s parents, the house of bright colors near the Church of St. Peter the Apostle, the house the wicked fat man had ordered seized and sealed in his lawsuit against his nephew’s prodigality, but which was, said the finicky creep, the last place anyone would think to look for him. Hide me there, no one would ever think to look for me there, the enmity between him and his relatives was well known, and thus he could respect the devout modesty of his sisters, Capitolina and Farnesia, the last two certified virgins in Mexico. Sure, and put up with Uncle H. in the house in Tlalpan, which would remain sealed, cut off from profane eyes, where no one would look for him, in such proclaimed modesty, within such a frugal space …

“And what do we get out of it?”

Uncle Homero, on his knees, spread his arms like a penitent.

“I’ll stop the suit that would declare you, my nephew, Don Angel Palomar y Fagoaga, prodigal and irresponsible, I’ll pay all court costs and damages, I will return the Tlalpan property to you, I will free up the gold pesos legitimately inherited by my aforesaid nephew after the perfectly legitimate, sudden, and undeniably accidental death of his parents, Don Diego Palomar and Doña Isabella Fagoaga de Palomar, my sister, the couple who came to be known as the Mexican Curies before the accursed taco crossed their scientific path. What else do you want? More?”

“You are going to resign publicly from the PRI, Homero.”

From then on, my mommy is going to tell to anyone who might care to listen that the shock of our Uncle Homero Fagoaga was eclipsed and simultaneously magnified by the afternoon glow in the mountains, that shock of the earth as it looked at the clouds, the shock of the clouds as they looked at the cut stone, and the shock of the stone as it contemplated itself in the light, and the shock of the light as it found the flashing expanse of the field of heather. Nothing in all that could match the historical shock painted on our uncle’s face.

In the oleaginous eyes of the man kneeling before his detested saviors, in his equally oily syllables, in the very posture of his defeudalized abjection, which contrasted with the indifferent splendor of invisible nature, my mother managed to distinguish a plea for compassion, destroyed, of course, in the act by Homero’s words:

“But, Fernando … Fernando … I was born with the PRI, it’s the source of my national pride and my personal destiny, Fernando: I can’t conceive of life without the PRI, I am oriented, synchronized, plugged into the Party, I owe my language, my thoughts, my ideals, my deals, my schemes, my opportunities, my excuses, my acts of daring, Fernando: my entire existence, right down to my most intimate fibers, I swear to you, to the PRI and its system, I am Catholic because I believe in the hierarchy and the sweet dogmas of my political church; but I am a revolutionary because I believe in its slogans and its most archaic proofs of legitimacy; I am conservative because without the PRI we head directly to communism; I am liberal because without the PRI we head directly to fascism, and I am a Catholic, revolutionary, progressive, and reactionary millionaire all at the same time and for the same reasons: the PRI authorizes it. Without the PRI I wouldn’t know what to say, think, even how to act. Just think: when I was born, the Party was only three years old; it’s my brother! We grew up together; I don’t know anything else! Without the PRI I’d be an orphan of history! Can you really ask me to give that up? Have mercy! Without the PRI I don’t exist! The PRI is my cradle, my roof, my soup, my language, the nose I smell with, the palate I taste with, my eardrum, the pupil of my eyes!”