Carlos Fuentes - Christopher Unborn

Who, in person, got up, put on the glasses broken during the skirmish with Matamoros and his men, looked at Uncle Homero in a neutral fashion, and declared before exiting the sacred space: travel is broadening but constipating.

Homero’s eyes filled with pious sweetness and he knelt down at the altar, where he buried his face in his hands, as if in profound prayer. The light in the church changed. An intense perfume spread from the stucco flowers; a mist of incense drove away the kneeling figure of Uncle Homero and pushed Angel’s body closer to Angeles’s, both covered by this sacred fog — a ceremonious mourning — which did not prevent my father from kissing my mother’s nape and feeling a desire to weep on her shoulder: a copious, liquid weeping. She took my father’s hand and told him just what she said the first time they’d touched, I couldn’t sleep all night, because I was so happy I’d met you.

It all happened in a flash; Homero approached my parents and lowered his voice to a whisper; now they, who had lived under his protection in Acapulco, had to know the whole truth — he said — before they returned to the capital and protected him.

“It’s a very serious matter,” said Uncle Fagoaga, playing the part, so natural to all Mexicans, of political conspirator. “It is imperative,” he went on after a hiatus punctuated by penetrating looks and pregnant pauses, “that the three of us, relatives after all and all well-born, that we all come to an understanding.”

He took a deep breath and let the cat out of the bag: the federal government wanted to kill off Acapulco in order to clean it out; if it didn’t, it could never touch its vested interests, drugs, alcohol, the peasants pushed off the communal lands, the squatters expelled from the peaks, the unlicensed condominia, the graft involved in contracts arranged with foreign companies that excluded members of the federal government, and all of it flowing into the pockets and building the power of Don Ulises López.

That was the first thing.

Second, the federal government was at odds with the mayor of Acapulco and the governor of the state of Guerrero, who were rabid separatists. The myth of Acapulco, the tide of dollars that rolled into it, our most important source of foreign exchange since we lost our oil, the value of land, all of it: the federal government was not going to allow all that to go on slipping through its fingers just so it would finance a separatist stunt. The only problem was that even though the mayor and the governor wanted to separate from the Republic of Mexico (or what remained of it) they had nothing to join.

The third — Uncle Homero was now going full tilt — is that it was the police, who took orders only from their chief, Colonel Inclán, who had put Operation Knockapulco into action. They let the revolutionaries out in the hills and, according to what they’ve told me, a gang from the capital set a pack of hungry coyotes on the city and poisoned a few tourists. Which was of no importance. The troublemakers and the gang, whoever they may have been, unwittingly did the job of the federal police. On their own, the poor jerks wouldn’t have been capable of poisoning a parrot. The important thing is that, under the pretext of reestablishing order, the Armed Forces entered the city and saw to it that both the rebels and the local authorities were taken care of.

“A brilliant maneuver!” snorted the ineffable Uncle Homero. “No one knows for whom he works, as the intrepid labor leader Don Fidel Velázquez once said in the marble halls of the IOO in Geneva. The central government, once again, liquidated the local leaders, and Minister Robles Chacón, to whom I tip my hat, practically eliminated his rival, Minister Ulises López, who until now I esteemed highly. But as Don Bernardino Gutiérrez, first supporter of President Calles in the state of Guerrero, says, every once in a while you’ve got to wet your thumb and stick it out the window to see which way the wind’s blowing!”

But the last straw was this: our government is such a benevolently back-stabbing government that it never told a soul about anything.

Acapulco has disappeared from the face of the earth, and there is no information available. Or, as Minister Ulises López said in better times: Information Is Power. No Information Is More Power.

That’s the whole story: anyone who tries to find out anything gets stonewalled.

CBS could air a program in New York called “Whatever Happened to Beautiful Acapulco?” and it would never be seen in Mexico.

In these parts, anyone who has questions knows he’ll never get answers. And no one’s going to dig too deeply: after all, there’s something comforting (even though we might not want to admit it) about knowing that something no longer exists or no longer is where it was or where it existed. The same thing happens in our collective conscience: unexplained disappearances weigh lightly on our individual consciences. Ruperto the canary, our sickly Aunt Doloritas, or, for that matter, the sunny port of Acapulco. Bravo!

And since no one except you and me — alas! not even faithful Tomasito, who died doing his duty, fighting against that lowlife mob — no one, not to mention the canary or poor Aunty, survived the Acapulco catastrophe, on this radiant Mixtec morning, as the Colombian bard León de Grieff said during a fleeting visit, I am authorized to tell you that if you keep your mouths shut about what you know or have guessed about this matter, you may return in peace to Mexico City with me, all three of us, it goes without saying, keeping a low profile in terms of our activities, our notoriety, our very presence, as Senator Patrick Moynihan said when — Ireland in the clutches of Luther — he stood in as social coordinator at the White House during the term of President Dickson Danger, before the Watergate Waterloo!”

He took a breath of air and gazed in puzzled joy at his niece and nephew. Then, sighing, he lit a candle to St. Anthony.

“But why are you so down in the mouth, children?” he asked, turning his back to them. “You look as though you’d seen a ghost! Come on now, let’s forget our little differences, remember your promise to put me up until sufficient time passes for my merits again to outshine my possible defects, just think that the tropical paradise of our dreams, Acapulco, where we had such a wonderful time, has not disappeared and that it will return in all its former splendor in such a way that it will benefit the federal government and not a mafia of local bosses and that, as you know full well after having spent almost two months there, my tropical Fort Zinderneuf was not and will not be affected by mobs of soldiers, or gangs of chain-swinging delinquents from Mexico City; and so, up, up, and away, as the ebony-hued singer Dionne Warwicke, with her opulent figure and her silky voice, said as she boarded a TWA L1011. Don’t lose your serenity!”

At that moment, Don Fernando Benítez rejoined them, zipping his fly, catching Don Homero Fagoaga’s last word, and noting Angel’s and Angeles’s gray faces:

“I don’t know what this mound of flesh told you, but don’t let yourselves be taken in by his siren song.”

“La Serena,” responded Homero with equanimity, “is the capital of the province of Coquimbo, as Don Miguel Cruchaga y Tocornal moderately asserted.”

“The Siren!”

“La Sirena”

“Lazaretto!”

“Lazarillo!”

“The chippy!”

“The cherry!”

“The cheerio?”

“The cherry-nose!”

“Santa Claus?”

“Satan’s Claws!”

“An insanity clause?”

“An Oedipus rex!”

“An Eddy Poe nose?”

“No Goody Two-shoes!”

“Las Sirenas!”

“Las Serenas!”