Carlos Fuentes - Christopher Unborn

“Just one look at your callused proletarian hands tells me that only a divisive, murderous faction could detour you away from the route of workers’ internationalism. But I am here to remind you that in the proletarian struggle the real enemy is the enemy within, always the one inside us.”

He glowered in a sinister way at the workers; one of them put his index finger to his temple and made a circle with it. My father tried to interrupt with a shout, as if he’d been impelled to do so by Angeles’s foreboding: “We’ve come about the keys! Who’s got the keys to the church?” he shouted, trying to speed things to their conclusion.

But Don Homero Fagoaga, master of distraction and fraud, would not allow himself to be distracted or defrauded, especially after what had happened in Igualistlahuaca.

He went on intrepidly: “The front line of the left-wing parties is made up of groups so divergent that they will never manage to form a single party unless we first search our bosoms for the vermin hidden there whose divisiveness will ultimately succeed in chaining us to the chariot of the upper classes who, even though they have been conquered, nevertheless cannot resign themselves to disappearing forever from the stage of history. But as soon as you unite, expel the turncoats, discover and break up the network of traitors and provocateurs that exists right here among you”—and here Uncle Homero’s ill-fated rhetorical impulse caused him to point his finger at this man, that man, the other man, all of whom raised their eyes from their tacos, left their bottles in peace, and wiped their mouths (which were smeared with dark plums) on their sleeves—“because, comrade, we don’t know if you, or you, or even you, comrade, have the perverted intention of sniping against the working class and the revolutionary movement.” And now the first plum splattered against Uncle Homero Fagoaga’s already ill-used jacket, another plum to the stomach, plum to the knees, plum to the backside when Homero uselessly tried to retreat. A final plum caught Uncle Homero right in the face, a black flower splattered along his nose and cheeks while our brave Uncle Fernando walked right up to the man standing with his arms crossed and his face covered by the brim of his hat, the man Fernando had intuitively singled out as the leader of the group.

“Tell this bunch of jerks to knock it off. All we came to ask you to do is form a union if you haven’t already done so, so you can better defend the rights you should enjoy under a democracy.”

“We don’t need any union,” said the man slowly.

“You work by subcontract and for a lump sum, so don’t let yourselves be exploited.”

“Now listen up, you old jerk,” said the chief impatiently, “get off our backs.”

Barely had he spoken these fierce words to my bantam-rooster Uncle Fernando when Fernando was all over him with two punches that were so well delivered to the aforementioned leader that the surprise of the attack knocked off his hat and revealed his face, which looked like a photo of a guerrillero. Surprised and angry, my father instantly recognized the face as that of his literary pursuer, the frustrated author Matamoros, father of Colasa Sánchez. However, that discovery was itself obliterated by a rapid series of events: first, the plums were replaced by stones and Uncle Homero did a belly flop into the freshly poured tar; this was followed by an outcry from the twelve workers, who cursed Homero up and down for ruining their day’s work; then some of them picked up sticks to defend their leader Matamoros and beat Uncle Fernando; still others were busy kicking Uncle Homero out of the mud pond the tar they had poured and leveled that morning had become, which tar was to have been the road President Jesús María y José Paredes would have driven over two days later, thinking that a highway had been built linking Chilpancingo to Malinaltzin, even though the President knew full well that the funds allotted to the project had been divided in not precisely even lots among the state governor (50 %), Minister Ulises López (20 %), the contractor (another 20 %), and a few other local officials (5 %), leaving only 5 % for actually building the national highway. So the President will certainly be the most surprised of all to see, when they point it out to him from the governor’s swift Fujiyama limousine, that a highway really does exist, but these poor workers, what do they know about all this; all they know is that their job won’t be finished on time and all because of this miserable, fat, progressive or synarchist or sonofabitchist tub of shit, and others are looking at my father, who has rushed to defend the octogenarian Don Fernando, who is shouting to Matamoros and his gang:

“Calm down, boys, I swear I never slept with your sisters.”

“It’s only because you’re an old asshole that I don’t beat you to death,” said Matamoros Moreno truculently. “I wouldn’t care even if you were my father, damned old fool.”

“I could have been your father, but I didn’t choose to be,” said Don Fernando Benítez, at the crest of a wave of sarcastic dignity, all of which only made the men beat him all the harder, while the others were tugging Uncle Homero out of his lake of pitch and then tossing him, all three hundred pounds of him, until they let him fall in a death cry that blended with Uncle Fernando’s peremptory threats, just as my father arrived to rescue them like a knight in shining armor. He and Matamoros glared at each other, eyeball to eyeball, as they used to say about nuclear confrontations, and Don Fernando blared out:

“Unions! Democracy! Justice!”

To which the workers, laughing their heads off, responded:

“Food, Clothing, Shelter, wherever they come from, wherever they are, a place to sleep, a girl to sleep with!

All eyes turned toward my mother sitting on her burro; then they saw Don Fernando stumbling blindly along the highway looking for his glasses and shouting, Miserable rats, all we did was bring you a democratic message, left-wing pep talk, poor lost people, degraded people, foul mongrels, scarecrow beggars, and poor Homero was lying black and sticky in the tar.

The eyes of the work team turned toward their leader and Matamoros gave them permission with his eyes. Four of the workers pinioned my father, the rest grabbed my mother. A red, foreign light, unrecognizable, alien, belligerent, so strong and so horrible, so without even a by-your-leave, so long and oiled and without ears like a garrotted worm, as ruddy as someone totally drunk, that only I could shout to my own inner self, I don’t know you, I don’t know you, you are not the same one who approached Guanahaní, who upset Fernandina, who took Veragua, who took Honduras, who collared Tabasco, who landed in Puerto Rico and tossed me into my first voyage of discovery, into my infinite sailing in the uterine sea, twinkle, twinkle little star / how I wonder what you are, but she didn’t care whether I felt like a foreigner in the bosom of my own gestation, I exiled within the womb of my own mother, my golden age: kaput, my noble savage: ciao, ciao! my happy age all fucked up: this is where the age of iron took its toll, and the bubble of my conception was burst by these detestable times of ours and the enclosure law closed up throughout my refuge, pushing me inside, until I hit my head against a wall: this was a refuge no longer; it was a desert; no longer a cloister; it was an avenue passed first by a strong man who seemed to push me, my mother, and the world as if we were cannonballs; then the rest, less strong but more avid, each one taking his turn to visit little Chris: my debut in society, 1992 style, the reminder that we are not alone, see? the bastard solidarity of my destiny if by chance I still believed in the illustrious solitude of my destiny: welcome to Christopher’s egg, afflicted working masses of Mexico!