Carlos Fuentes - Christopher Unborn

CIRCUSES AND CIRCUSES

and further transcending Roman demagoguery which promised, besides, bread bread the doctor’s dead, the blessèd smell of the bakery, but who likes bread without butter? yeah, but what about circuses and circuses? Ah, sighed Don Homero, the meaning of Catholic carnival was to abolish terror, even if our relative Benítez would say that among our Indians it’s the devil who organizes the carnival.

Don Fernando Benítez rapidly sketched out a map of the republic on one of the blackboards in the Tlalpan house. He made Don Homero Fagoaga, dressed as always in red-striped pajamas and barefoot, sit down in front of it as if he were the class dunce.

“Where are we?” asked Benítez, marking an X with green chalk on the blackboard.

“In Tepatepec Hidalgo,” huffed Homero, “prepared to give our lives so that the peasant organization shall be respected.”

“And now?” asked Uncle Fernando, marking another spot on his map.

“In Pichátaro Michoacán. We’ve just walked into Pichátaro to defend the workers’ cooperative.”

“Look — and don’t shut your eyes, fatso — where’s this?”

“I’m in Cotepec de Harinas, struggling to have the municipal election respected.” Homero stood up with his eyes closed and grabbed Benítez by the throat. “I’m going to send you to jail for life, your honor”—Benítez shaken about by the furious Uncle Homero—“for allowing yourself to be suborned so you’d be on the good side of the stronger party”—and Benítez slams his elbow into Homero’s paunch. “It’s you who’s going to prison, your honor, because unless the judiciary is independent everything else is an illusion.” And Benítez raised his miner’s-boot-covered foot to squash Homero’s bare toes. “Listen here, your honor,” snorted Homero, hanging on to the neck of the semi-asphyxiated Benítez, “we Mexicans can practice democracy without any need for hit men, or crimes, or bribes, or hucksters!” and Don Fernando had doubts about what to do: “Do I allow him to go on living out my teaching with such conviction, or do I stop him from strangling me?” He stopped doubting and let his miner’s boot fall on Homero’s bare toes, the fat man shrieked and sat down in his dunce’s seat once again, rubbing his smashed toe. Benítez straightened his tie and went on, coughing from time to time:

“You shall walk the byways of Mexico untiringly, shedding those extra pounds, ready to give your life so that in Tepatepec Hidalgo the peasant organization shall be respec…”

* * *

My father, an apostle (though now he was somewhat reluctant about it) of disorder, then imagined a diabolical play in which laughter and fear would coexist perfectly: the humor would not annihilate what is individual in terror, only what is finite in it. My mother did not understand this, later on, in bed, my father pointed toward a photo from the Cristero war, taken around 1928, which they had tacked up next to their bed: a religious guerrilla wearing a felt hat, open shirt, vest, riding trousers, and boots with spurs, stands against a wall and waits for his death. The government rifles are already cocked. But he holds a dry cigarette in his stained fingers and bends a knee forward as if he were expecting his girlfriend and not death (and who said what?) and he smiles the way no one has ever smiled. Baby, I swear: can you imagine yourself smiling like that when you’re about to die, when they’re going to shoot you? Could you do it? Would you like to try? She said no; things like that were macho myths, magic ceremonies for jerks; she wasn’t interested in dying, with or without dignity.

He says how hard it is to die.

She says how hard it is to be free.

And that’s what he wants too, he says, but if he has to take his revolt to the edge of life and not the edge of ideology, that means taking it to the edge of death (he says to my mother in secret this dry night of mid-April the ***est month under the sheets that isolate them from the part of their space occupied by Homero Fagoaga: during the day he swills, at night he snores, he’s always pushing his way in, what a pain this uncle is!), but she repeats, I do not accept death, even with dignity: if you die on me you’ll create a void in the world, a woman’s left alone and anything can be pulled in to fill her void; she said she didn’t want a void left by him and he answered that she mustn’t forget she’s expecting a son; that — he laughed — should fill all her voids. But, without wanting to, he dreamed about something (he dreamed when he pulled away from my mother and fell asleep with his knees touching hers) that walks into a discotheque bathed in the cold light of the spots and covered with sequins: she has eyes like two cloudy butterflies and as she dances she raises her leg and, without wanting to, reveals her thigh under her short skirt, a crease of down, a moist little copper coin: my father dreams, without wanting to, of her.

In the meantime, my eyes close. But my ears open.

* * *

My mother dreams while she’s asleep (because sometimes she dreams while she’s awake, the divine diviner): she’s already missed two periods, sleeping like this with her hair down, hiding her light-olive-complected face, sleeping deeply with me now, breathing deeply, hot under her arms and on her nape and between her legs: hot and me there all complete now, as if to make up for my sudden blindness: all complete now in myself, small, I don’t need anything more, too many cooks spoil the broth: I am already a tiny little person who from now on will do nothing but grow and perfect my functions: do you know my heart’s been BEATING for a month? That my muscles have begun their exercises? My mother wakes in surprise; she wants to tell my father Angel; she smiles and keeps her secret; I feel happy knowing she’s happy, and in the marvelous pool she’s given me, I, out of pure pleasure, do a few aquatic flips, like the little seal that I am: but I am already beginning to acquire my human face, and my priest-like hands invite prayer and peace. My face is human, I say, but my eyelids have closed up tight. And I don’t know if I’m going to fall asleep or if I’m going to wake up. But if I say all this it’s because I want to convince myself quickly that I am becoming the artist of my own creation, and I say this big fat lie only to protect myself from the suspicion that my father can believe I am not his son, that I am no longer his son or that I was never his son, after that gang of thugs had free run of my mommy’s guadalcanal: now I depend more than ever on her convincing him that I was made before then and that what happened in Malinaltzin doesn’t affect me, but suppose it affects him, suppose it turns him into a Mexican macho, and even if he was buggered by Matamoros Moreno himself, in this sibylization it’s the men who are priests and their auguries say permit all and forgive all men all things, but the women, the eternal vestals, no way: is that how it’s going to be? Well then, I’m already screwed, Readers, and for that reason my fetal scream in this instant of my return (all right, my arrival) in Makesicko Seedy is:

Give time and tenderness to your little Christopher!

Sing ballads to one another!

Remember one another!

Screw yourselves into Siamese twins!

Love each other, Mom and Dad!

Says my father: Time out. I have to explain to my son who he is, who we Angeles and I are: his unknown soldiers: I say it right into Angeles’s tummy: in you Angeles I see everything opposite to me, everything that completes me and the hope that we become equal without ceasing to be different: I say to you give me things to think about at night which is exactly what you are going to ask of me: the most important thing we can think about each other now is that I believe in you because I believe that the good should recur someday, it cannot remain behind, and only if I accept that, my love, can I admit that I am not what I would like to be. Help me, Angeles, to be what I want to be even if it is something very different from what you want, that would be good: say something just for me, don’t just stand there immobile and silent, and she (my mother, that is) will smile and say Angel we met each other when we were very young and incomplete, I’ll give you what you ask of me, we can form each other (share our formation) after we know each other: would it have been better to meet when we were already mature?