Carlos Fuentes - Distant Relations

My friend tried to follow the direction of that gaze. Heredia was telephoning for the ambulance; Etienne was gritting his teeth, cradling the injured, iodine-swabbed, bandaged hand. Branly moved toward the glass panes to observe the motionless boy, who was staring at the grove of birches suspended between the soothing mist of dream and the fading light of dusk that outlined the boy’s slim whiteness seemingly born of the germinal mist. The sleek silvery trunks were the perfect recapitulation of the mist and the light of the setting sun — the sun, satisfied; the mist, indecisive. At that hour the woods were a misty curtain of light, wispy as the tree trunks, white as chiffon, against which one could barely see — interrupting the vertical symmetry of the trunks and as vague as the horizontal mist that veiled it and the oblique light that revealed it — the silhouette of a motionless figure observed by the motionless boy observed by my motionless friend from behind the half-opened French doors.

The spell was broken. The figure in the woods moved toward the house, whistling. The Mexican youth dropped his arm and then covered his face with both hands, as if trying to hide it. His back was turned to Branly, but my friend clearly recognized that gesture, as he heard on the lips of the figure moving toward them from the woods the tune of the timeless madrigal of the clear fountain and the beautiful waters.

The French Heredia said they must take Etienne to the hospital on the Boulevard d’Ormesson; he was afraid the fingers were broken. That wasn’t the greatest thing that could happen to a chauffeur, he added. As Branly heard him say this, he avoided the eyes of the young Mexican, who at that moment was entering the house for the first time. My friend did not want to think the French Heredia was reprimanding the youth who bore his name; even less did he want the boy to think he was a partner in what was at the very least a premature accusation.

Similarly incapable of expressing overt disapproval, however, Branly glanced at his new host, and then said quietly: “Don’t worry, Etienne. It isn’t anything that won’t respond to treatment.”

“I suggest that you follow us in your car,” said Heredia.

Branly again checked the irritation provoked by such freely offered advice. There was a peremptory tone in the Frenchman’s voice, as if in counseling Branly to follow he were ironically acknowledging in the master a concern for his servant that he, Heredia, would never be so weak as to feel, certainly not to reveal. But the behavior my friend was beginning to perceive, as evidence of a common upbringing, was not so much worthy of disapproval as something to be overlooked; it seemed, even before such rationalization, undeserving of any comment. His attention was absorbed by a more serious reality. The young Heredia, like a character in a silent movie, had paused as he crossed the threshold, enveloped in silence, framed in a shimmering light that changed him into a trembling flame. If his eyes were not closed, they were nearly so. He was breathing deeply, and seemed tense, but content. It was the contentment that impressed Branly.

As the boy breathed in that aroma of leather pervading the entrance to the manor house, his breathing became more and more agitated. My friend felt that he could take the boy’s agitation as the delayed reaction to the terrible act he had committed against the chauffeur, and he was about to point this out to the master of the Clos des Renards as courteous proof of the boy’s repentance, but something stopped him, something intimately linked to his growing perceptions about the man with Victor’s name. He shook his head, he tells me, with the certainty that the less one knew about what was happening, the better. Once more, the same feeling prevented him from introducing the two Heredias. With any luck, Branly told himself, the boy’s natural curiosity, particularly in view of recent events, would be satisfied simply with seeing Heredia. After all, it was Victor’s actions that had shifted attention from names, however closely related, to the injured chauffeur, whom the French Heredia, ignoring the Mexican youth’s presence, was urging they take to a hospital. He would go with Etienne in the ambulance, the Frenchman repeated, adding on second thought that he could look after the chauffeur himself and the others could drive back to Paris. He would inform them in the morning of the poor fellow’s condition.

“Not at all. Etienne is my employee, and any responsibility for looking after him is mine,” said my friend, following a brief pause which at the time seemed natural to him but which in retrospect he considered deceitful. He still had not fathomed the French Heredia’s intentions, and he had stumbled over an obstacle lying in the path of his inherent sense of propriety: the French Victor Heredia talked like a tradesman; his speech was in marked contrast to the nobility of his classic features, a contrast greater even than the physical contrast between the handsome leonine head and the squat body with its sturdy, squarish torso and the common, stubby-fingered hands.

As if to dispel any doubt about the extent of the responsibilities he was prepared to assume, my friend said he would accompany Etienne in the ambulance. But Heredia insisted. He knew the doctors on duty and that would facilitate the process. Branly did not want to tell anyone what he now admits to me, that he was trying to avoid having to drive at night on the always dangerous highways that by dawn are like battlefields, no less horrible for their repetitiousness; he is blinded by the aggressive headlights of drivers who view themselves as combatants in a modern joust. Visions of overturned trucks, little 2CV’s flattened like the tin from which they are assembled, stretchers, ambulance sirens, and the flashing lights of patrol cars in the bloody gray dawn of the highways were suddenly fused into the single ululating tone of the ambulance coming to a stop behind the Citroën parked beside the terrace of the lions.

There was no time, Branly tells me, for discussion; it was as if everything had been planned, choreographed like a ballet. The boy would be all right, Heredia said. His own son would be arriving soon and the boys could keep each other company until the men returned from taking the unfortunate Etienne to the hospital.

“Yes, yes, yes,” said Heredia. “I insist on it. You must spend the night here with my son and me. Tomorrow, M. Branly, you can drop by the hospital to see how this fellow is getting along; believe me, it’s no bother; I’m a very late riser. You can just make yourself at home, my son André will look after you. Don’t worry, the larder is well stocked, my friend; this isn’t your common Spanish inn, eh?”

As they helped Etienne into the ambulance, he said: “I wouldn’t want M. le Comte to put himself out on my account.”

“Don’t worry, Etienne,” said Branly. “I repeat, everything will be all right.”

Branly and Heredia followed the ambulance, my friend driving the Citroën very gingerly, and during the brief ride to the hospital he had an opportunity to clarify the reason for their visit and to explain the coincidence of the names. The Frenchman laughed, and begged my friend to forgive him for the language he had used over the phone. He hadn’t known that such a distinguished person, a count no less, was calling; he’d thought it was some clown, it was almost an everyday thing these days to get that kind of call at any hour of the night or day, and when he’d answered that particular call — that is, the Count’s — he was still half asleep. He’d already told him he slept late. Would M. le Comte de Branly forgive him? He wanted to apologize for that, too. He hadn’t known he was a count or he would have used “de,” de Branly.