Carlos Fuentes - Christopher Unborn

You are to blame

For all my anguish

And all my grief …

and after this solitary cure for one year and three months, without knowing what was going on outside, came the army of hairdressers, makeup artists, seamstresses, dressmakers, and hat makers who invaded everything, dressed the house with models and stoles, clouds of crepe and chests filled with sequins, platinum wigs, and snakeskin bustles.

One day they all left her alone. Then Robles Chacón returned with all his people. They stared at her in astonishment. But she was more astonished still. What were they looking at?

They hadn’t let her see herself. The minister said that she needed no mirrors just now, she would have to get used to them later on, little by little: mirrors not allowed in the mansion of blindness in El Pedregal, just boleros. She could only see herself in the others’ astonishment, above and beyond the always energetic words of Robles Chacón.

“Gentlemen: the deeper the national crisis gets, the more obvious it becomes that we cannot be satisfied with quick-fix solutions. Mexico has always managed to save herself because she has known how to turn everything into an institution — even her vices, alas. Poor Argentina can’t even manage that; even its vices are chaotic and insignificant. Not here. Now we see it. In ancient times, when the people’s spirits were low, the emperors would give them bread and circuses. In these parts, two sporadic solutions have recently provided the circus if not the bread when discontent has run rampant: a visit by the Pope or a fight with the gringos. Even the most hardheaded agnostic would have to admit that the successive visits of Wojtyla not only have generated euphoria among the people — which only goes to show that no one can beat us for being pragmatic Marxists, and that even if the opium comes from Poland it’s still opium — but have created unforeseen commercial opportunities as well: hats, balloons, beach towels, deck chairs, bottles, records, and TV exclusives. But discontent is spreading, and there are no solutions in sight, not even if we had the Pope here for a whole year. The fight with the United States, well, we’ve escalated it into a war with the entire state of Veracruz occupied by battalions of Marines, who’ve penetrated as far as Huamantla and Apzaco. I know, I know: no one has to tell me we worked that one out with the gringos to stabilize and direct anti-U.S. sentiment in Mexico. Other, less generous people have insinuated that we invited the Marines in to wipe out an agrarian-socialist rebellion in Veracruz. If that was true, we would have achieved all our objectives. Those battles are already less violent than a flat bottle of seltzer — as my teacher Flores de la Peña used to say. Gentlemen, I’m offering you something better: an institution all our own. A sorceress. A witch doctor. A nurse for the poor:

(and they opened the door to her boudoir and someone pushed the poor little thing out)

a Doña Bárbara in a helicopter

(and they led her by the hand to the unbelievably expensive ladder made of white, blinding acrylic)

a woman who can fill the empty pitcher of national legitimacy: a new Mother for Mexico

(and they let her go, they left her alone, and she felt she was falling from the top of the spiral staircase down a bottomless ravine, with no sisterly hands to save her)

An ancient Mother was Our Lady Coatlicue, she of the serpent skirt

(but she managed to control herself, she shut her eyes, not knowing if she could open them again because of so much mascara, so much eye makeup, so much Stardust on her eyelids, on her bedaubed eyelashes)

An impure Mother was Our Lady la Malinche, the traitorous lover of the conquistador Cortés, the motherfucker who created the first fucked mother who created the first Mexican

(and with each step she descended, her breasts shook more: injected, inflated, sillyconized breasts surgically manipulated to achieve the consistency, the rhythm, and the balance necessary to bounce as they bounced now even though they were squeezed and raised and revealed as they were now under the cascade of diamond chokers)

A pure Mother was Our Lady of Guadalupe, redeemer of the humble Indian: from Babylon to Bethlehem with a bouquet of instant roses, Nescaflowers, gentlemen: we’ve got our holy little mommy

(and so for a year and three months they taught her, swing those hips, girl, shake your ass, baby, now you’re talking, honey, bend that waist as if you were the seawall in Havana, your ace is your ass, and don’t you forget it, bitch)

A rebellious Mother was Our Lady la Adelita, the darling Clementine, the fairy godmother of the revolution

(corseted, cinched, swaying, full of secrets only she knew, they told her, a ruby encrusted in her belly button that no one would ever see, and between her legs a white bulge and curled foam, not that slack, gawky mop she showed up with, even there they gave her a permanent and a marcelling, her vulva sewn up with golden thread and embellished with two dozen diamonds sharpened like tiny shark teeth, like hussars guarding the entrance closed to all; they told her that her temptation would be to offer hatred as a hope; that she should think that she was not real, that she’d been invented, screwed together with precious stones, a Frankedenic monster with forty-carat cathodes: the guy who gets inside you, baby, is gonna be fried, pulverized, and cut like a deck of cards)

and secret Mothers all the women from whose image we descend, but whom we can never touch: the movie stars, the devouring women, the vampire women, the great rumba and exotic dancers of our immense adolescent dreams, Ninon Sevilla, Mapy Cortés, Marie Antoinette Pons, Dinah, Rosa la Más Hermosa, Iris Chachachacón

(but barefoot, she’d never use shoes they told her, they ordered her, always barefoot like the little Virgin of the humble, barefoot like the Indian porters and the slaves, Holy Mother, look at yourself, as naked as a poem: you shall not return, your slave’s feet will return; the people will love your feet because they walked on the earth and on the wind and the water until they found me, Little Mother, your feet went out looking and found your lost child, Mamacita, the soles of your feet were not made for the world’s frivolous dancing but to ascend the calvaries of the world, your naked feet, bleeding, on a thorny path, Little Mother, bend your waist, I can’t go on, but never put on shoes: think about your sons Eddypoes, Oddyshoes, Lost Children)

and supersecret Mothers all the gringas of our masturbatory dreams, Lana, Marilyn, and Ava, but, above all others, the tits of the town, teatanic Mae West from the Big Apple, when she was good she was good but when she was bad she was better, Occidental Mother, your splendid tinsel lost inside your white flesh, your secret depths: to screw you, Stepmother of the West, is to avenge our entire history of insecurity and submission, White Ass, come on your Black Prick, go on, fart so I can orient, Occident, accident, crank it up blondie, your short, Daddy says so

(those lips like a scarlet satin sofa, yes, señora, that you will show — they stopped calling her girl just at the end, only señora: step out onto the balcony, señora, go down the white acrylic ladder without looking at your feet, wave without seeing anyone, señora)

superimposed on all women, gentlemen, we are finally free from the cloying sweetness of some, the nocturnal terror of others, the inaccessible distance of these, the familiar and intimate disdain of those, here is our final legitimation, our permanent prize, the fountain of all power in Mexico, the supreme edifice of machista supremacy, boys,

the perfect mix of Mae West, Coatlicue, and the Virgin of Guadalupe. A symbol,