Carlos Fuentes - Christopher Unborn

* * *

“Come on now, ma’am, hate me a little!”

“The worse you treat me, the more I love you. And if you were to treat me nicely I would love you even more. There’s no escape for you, Angel, my cherub!”

“All right, all right. I think about your daughter when I’m inside you, like that idea?”

“I just love the thought of it, my little cherub! The mere idea gets me hot! Come over here!”

“Your husband let me look at you naked, ma’am, should I remind him of the fact? Don’t you hate him?”

“I love him more than ever. I owe having you to him!”

“I hate you, ma’am, you disgust me, you’re like Miss Piggy with all that cellulite, terminal halitosis, your ass looks like a dish of cottage cheese, you’ve got dandruff, and you’ve always got little pieces of tortilla stuck in your teeth!”

“And, despite all that, you still get hard! You love me, you love me, don’t deny it!”

In effect, that was my priapic father’s problem: his masculine vanity was stronger than his disgust in potentia, and even if he didn’t want to, precisely because he didn’t like Mrs. López, he would think about other things, about the unreachable Penny, about my mother when she excited him, and all that got him ready for Doña Lucha, who, as she said, didn’t give a damn about what made it hard just as long as it stayed hard.

“Look! It’s hard as a rock! Again! Don’t you ever get tired?”

“It’s not hard because of you, I swear.”

“Well, I don’t see anyone else in this bedroom, do you? There’s only me, your worn-out but loving old pelican!”

“I think about other women.”

“Let ’em eat cake! You’re locked in with me.”

“I am not. I can leave whenever I please.”

“There’s the door, cherub!”

“You know very well that my passion for your daughter won’t let me leave.”

“Well then, why don’t you go conquer her?”

“You know very well she won’t give me the time of day.”

“She doesn’t give anybody the time of day.”

“I know it, and that’s why I’m going to keep on screwing her through you.”

“Well, charity begins at home, lover boy!”

“Mein Kampf!”

“I do as I please!”

The current Servilia served tea (was it a Lapsang Suchong smuggled in by their little brother Homero from Mexamerica and/or

Pacífica?)

to Capitolina and Farnesia, who were dressed in robes that made them look like cocottes in a Feydeau farce: all silk, wide sleeves, feather boas at neck and cuffs, velvet slippers. Both said that at least during breakfast in their shared boudoir they could dress with a certain frivolity (man does not live by religion alone; nor do women). Their multiple social obligations forced them to be ready for last rites, wakes, and funerals, so they wore black almost all the time, because, as Capitolina was in the habit of declaring:

“Mourning is what you wear on the outside.”

Morning was also the time in which they exchanged their most intimate confidences, but this particular morning in July of 1992, ten years after the catastrophes of the López Portillo era (the greatest of which, for the two sisters, had been the flight of their nephew Angel Palomar y Fagoaga, on whom they’d set their fondest hopes), there was malice in the eyes of the decisive Capitolina, which, if not unusual, was more energetic and, at the same time, more restrained, hungrier to show itself and implacably astonish the younger sister, who was usually plagued by vagueness:

“Besides…” was the first word either uttered that morning, and naturally it was Farnesia who said it, but Capitolina simply cast that penetrating and intelligent look on her that seriously upset the younger sibling.

“How silly, I’m falling asleep,” Farnesia suddenly said in order to cover up her lapse as she sat in her favorite love seat and covered her eyes with a dark hand, which resembled nothing so much as a dark swan. Capitolina slowly sipped her tea (reclining in very very Madame Récamier style in her favorite chaise longue, her chubby little feet crossed) and stared with indecipherable intentions at Farnesia.

“You seem upset this morning,” said Capitolina inquisitorially. “What’s wrong? Tell me!”

“Oh dear!” Farnesia sighed. “It’s something you already know about.”

She swiftly got up out of the love seat, threw herself at the feet of her sister, and rested her head on those knees Julien Sorel might have envied.

“Swear,” said Farnesia, forgetting for once her habitual use of the first-person plural, “swear, Capitita, that when I’m dying you won’t let the old ladies into the house to go through all my boxes and chests.”

“Is that what’s bothering you today?”

“Yes.” Farnesia sobbed, with her head nestled in Capitolina’s lap. “Today and always.”

“Are you still afraid that someone will discover your secret?”

“Yes, yes, that’s what we’re afraid of!” Lapsing into her usual form of address, Farnesia wept.

“Aren’t you even more afraid of dying without sharing it?”

“Oh dear, wouldn’t that be a gift! We don’t have any right to hope for so much: to have a secret and nevertheless be able to find someone worthy of sharing it with!”

“We almost had it with little Angel when he was a boy.”

“Almost, little sister, almost. But there you have it … In the first place…”

“Of course, of course,” interrupted Capitolina, taking her sister’s head in her hands and forcing her to raise her face. “And what if I were to tell you that we can achieve that desire?”

Farnesia’s huge, round, dark Kewpie-doll eyes opened questioningly.

“Now I’m going to tell you what should be upsetting you most this morning, little sister. Our nephew Angel is going to have a child.”

“With whom, with whom? Do we know her? Are they married? Tell me, tell me … I’m fainting from curiosity, in the second place and finally, I’m fainting!”

“Don’t faint, Farnecita. Her name is Angeles. We don’t know her. They aren’t married. Now get a hold of yourself: he’s abandoned her to chase after that nouveau-riche Penelope López who lives in one of those brand-new developments where they just put in the septic tank yesterday.”

“But tell us more!” said Farnesia breathlessly.

Miss Capitolina Fagoaga had never had such an opportunity for drama before, so she played it for all it was worth, standing up (so suddenly that Farnesia’s head bounced off the Récamier armrest), walking toward the high French window in the house on Durango Street, and playing with the curtain strings, closing the curtains bit by bit until the boudoir lay in darkness.

“More, more…” (The shadows were swallowing Farnesia’s voice.)

Capitolina paused majestically, her silhouette barely visible in a thin line of light.

“Sister: we have managed to defend this home against all the horrors of the past fifty years.”

“And we’re still young and vigorous, we can…” said Farnesia without finishing, jumping back into her love seat.

“That’s not the problem. We have to ask ourselves who is going to get custody of the child when he’s born.”

“Well, of course it would be his mother…”

“And did you bring up your baby when it was born?” said Capitolina ferociously, snapping open the curtains so that the light would blind Farnesia, who covered her eyes, burst into tears, and said, “Things were different in those days, I was a Fagoaga Labastida Pacheco y Monies de Oca, with a name, a position, a family. How was I going to raise an illegitimate child, how…?”

“But our nephew’s trollop can?”