Carlos Fuentes - Christopher Unborn

“The problem is water,” said Don Fernando Benítez to Minister Robles Chacón. “You make people think it’s the air just to distract their attention from the real problem, then you make up this Disneyland story about the Dome that’s going to protect us from pollution and give a fair share of pure air to every inhabitant of the city. You miserable rats lie and lie and lie! The problem is the water, because every single drop of water that reaches this city costs millions of pesos.”

“Don’t you worry about it, Don Fernando,” answered the minister in a calm, friendly voice. “We know how to distribute our reserves and how to ration out that precious liquid. How are your water tubs doing, tell me. Have you had any problems? Haven’t we taken care of you just as you deserve?”

“Like everyone else, I’m saving as much water in them as I can, so my tubs are just fine,” said Benítez despondently. Then he quickly recovered his fighting spirit: “And how’s your mom?”

“Blind and buried,” said Robles Chacón unflinchingly.

“Well, let’s hope you have enough water to keep the flowers on her grave alive,” said Benítez before leaving.

“We forgive writers all their excesses! Ah, legitimization, history, all that’s left!” The minister resignedly sighed. He looked incredulously at his feet and called his aide-de-camp, the statistician he kept hidden in the armoire:

“Let’s see now”—Minister Robles Chacón snapped his fingers explosively—“get out here and catch me that rat, and make it snappy! A rat in the office of the Secretary of Patrimony and Vehiculi … But get a move on, you jerk, what’s your problem?” shouted the minister to the little man who’d emerged from the closet at the sound of that betitled and superior snap, and who then skulked his way through the furniture bought in Roche-Bobois, hunting for the rat and explaining that Mexico City has 30 million human inhabitants, but it has 128 million rats. He fell on his knees and stretched his hand under a table made of aluminum and transparent glass, a model people in the luxury market called the New York Table — they inhabit sewers, Mr. Secretary, drains, and mountains of garbage, every year they contaminate more than ten million people with parasitosis — he looked at his own white hand under the glass, floating under the transparent crystal, the hand gesturing in its search for the invisible rat — and other intestinal ailments.

“And they consume thirty tons of corn and other cereals every two weeks. These rats are murderers, sir, but they themselves die mysteriously when they eat certain grains that cause the death of the very rats that eat them.”

“Stop hiding in your damn statistics. I’m telling you to catch this specific rat that’s gotten into my office, damn your soul!” shouted the minister.

But the statistician lacked the strength to get up, so instead he put his head under the New York Table and flattened his nose against the glass, moistening it with his breath.

“Mounds of dead rodents have been found, dead from eating imported corn. And the cats, coyotes, and other animals that eat those dead rats also suffer serious sicknesses.”

“Then aren’t those grain importers taking part in the deratification campaign?” inquired Robles Chacón.

The diminutive statistician dressed in his tuxedo cleaned his breath and drool off the bottom of the glass table in the French office of the minister:

“No, sir, because rats breed every twenty-one days.”

He got to his feet with difficulty, adding, as he smoothed his hair into place, “Perhaps the importers simply contribute to the…”

“Statistics, no moral judgments,” said the minister to the statistician as he slammed the closet door closed in his face and sat down to chew on a Minnie Mouse lollipop.

* * *

The city lights up and goes out like a Christmas tree without presents.

“What a national hangover!” someone shouts from the intersection of Patriotismo and Industria.

“Pay the bill. And nobody take off without paying the bill!”

“But the bankers already done it, gone from Mexico to Grand Cayman, cash in hand.”

“What about that banker Don Mamelín Mártir de Madrazo? Made everybody think he was kidnapped so he could send his ransom money to the Bahamas.”

“And all that foreign money poured in here poured out again to safe countries.”

“Let’s hear it for safe Paraguay.”

“Oil glut.”

“Foreign debt.”

“Population explosion.”

Bodily functions are going backward. The smell of the people in the swirling mass at the corner of Tacubaya and Avenida Jalisco, where the Hermita building is slowly turning into sand, is like flatulent breath, an anal breathing. Everywhere there are more people than fit. The roofs have become a second plateau, surrounded by dark abysses, canyons where the dark rain drips. Signs of antennas and tubs are barely visible now. Horrified ladies wrapped in rebozos run with their shopping carts filled with bank notes, they form lines, there are neighborhood guards (adolescent boys with clubs and lengths of pipe) who protect them on the long lines leading to the tortilla vendors and pharmacies, the crackling stands. A shout from a grocery store in Mixcoac: “We only sell sugar for dollars.” A mango skin splatters against Angel and Angeles’s windshield.

“Devastated city.”

“Screwed city.”

Angel points to the old men in threadbare shit-colored jackets and ties playing guitars at stop lights,

only once in my life did I love anybody

and they run huffing and puffing, their Buskin shoes worn through, their Arrow shirts frayed, their High Life ties stained, to pick up the thankyoumisterlady as they doff their old Tardán borsalinos now devoid of band (in their melted brains the advertising slogan of their youth and of national promise rings out incessantly: From Sonora to Yucatán/ Gentlemen all wear hats by Tardán/ Twenty million Mexicans can’t be wrong: when the entire nation had fewer inhabitants than the capital in 1992: 1932), clean old men spitting on the windshield then cleaning it off with the remnants of towels purchased at the Iron Palace before the lights change. The Mixcoac stones reflect and project what’s left of the daylight. Along Avenida Revolución, a barter economy flourishes: underwear for combs, marjoram for tobacco, brass knuckles for Barbie dolls, condoms with feather crests for pictures of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, two Madonna cassettes for a sack of beans: I worked in an office, I was a student, I was a pharmacist, I imported grain, I was a chorus girl; now all of us are on the Street, check-out clerks in the black market scatter along Altavista toward Insurgentes, in the little plaza in front of the Obregón monument the hoods set up their illegal, swift, the-hand-is-quicker-than-the-eye games, under the walnut shells, in between the curtains of the deeds of the Revolution, in the confusion of pots, papier-mâché Judases, funny money only worth what the market says it’s worth today next to the graffiti smearing the monument of the Hero of Celaya.

LENIN OR LENNON?

The street theater for the city of thirty million people spreads toward San José Insurgentes, flamethrowers, shoeshine boys, lottery vendors, car washers, strolling musicians, beggars, people selling all kinds of things, mix with clowns, dancers, people giving recitals in the eternal night.

“So, what did you assholes expect?”

“Don’t delude yourselves.”

“So, what did you bastards expect?”

“We killed the water.”

“We killed the air.”

“We killed the forests.”

“Die, damned city!”

“Come on and die: fucked-up city, what are you waiting for?”

The people push their way along Taxqueña, yo asshole watch where you walkin’ man / fuckin’ old lady whut you need dat cane fo’? Give it here so ah can play golf wit’ yer doggy’s head / look dis cripple Nureyev’s pushin’ / why you wanna get in front of me, lady, go fuck youself old fart / yo blindman len’ me your glasses chuck dat nonseer in front of dat truck getta moveon fuckers he look like a wad o’phlegm someone done stepped on / a car stops at the intersection of Quevedo and Revolución / got to get movin’ / who’s stoppin’ / dis meat wagon don’t move / a thousand vendors suddenly surround the car it doesn’t move anymore / it’s a whale beached in an asphalt gulf on which descends the interminable banquet of things to buy an asphyxia of secret languages offering useless objects and unserviceable services hyperbolically described: