Carlos Fuentes - A Change of Skin

“You must forgive us, sir,” Boston Boy replies just as gravely. “We did not know that a tenant had moved into the trunk.”

I remove the little man’s gloves and make his courteous but inquisitive eyes pass around the room. I squeeze his diaphragm lightly, and he sighs.

“So we meet again, my young friend.”

“Yes,” says Boston Boy, nodding. The little man on my knee sighs again. His legs dance in the air as he stretches his small boots, protected by spats, as if he were trying to reach the floor.

“I was asking myself what had happened to you. I wondered what you and your friend had done with my dolls and my paintings.”

“As you see for yourself, Herr Urs, they are still with you, there in the trunk. No one touched anything.”

“Yes, so I have observed, and with a certain relief, I confess. Yet it is true that I was thinking of presenting everything to you, young sir, to you and your friend, as a remembrance of your neighbor, myself. But the attack came upon me too suddenly. I miscalculated and in the end did not have sufficient time. I had told myself: I shall present my works to these young gentlemen who are so polite, well-reared, and understanding. But it need not be done until the last moment. Then, when I lie upon my deathbed, it will be not less a gift but will become also an inheritance, and they will understand it as such. But I didn’t have time. I miscalculated.”

“It doesn’t matter, Herr Urs. I have often dreamed of your dolls and paintings.”

“Yes, my young friend, that would be only natural. Perhaps after so many years you see things clearly. Do you chance, perhaps, to recall what I said to you then?”

“Certainly, Herr Urs. You told us that you wanted to reproduce, on canvas, the old buildings and the old streets, so that something would…”

“Yes, so that something would remain after they had been demolished and forgotten.”

“Exactly, sir. You also said that you painted each of your works twice. First when you looked upon your scene with the eyes of repose. The second time when your vision was exalted. And that between the two views, we could be sure, there existed a great abyss.”

“Indeed. And now as then, time must be left to decide the destiny of my work. It could not be judged then. Or even today. Heroism is comprehended only when its embittered enemies have disappeared. Then, finally, judgment can be made without prejudice. And I must confess, dear young friend, that as I repaired each little doll and painted each of my paintings, I felt myself heroic. I ceased to be poor and deformed and alone and became…”

“A small god, Herr Urs. A household god, one of the family.”

“Thank you, sir, thank you. I would never have ventured to put it quite so myself, but you are right. Let me tell you something. When I was very young, like all of us I was a believer. But the faith that I had sucked in with my mother’s milk merely returned to me a clear reflection of my deformity, for our faith is a mirror that reflects ourselves, it is a shadow we cast, one that follows us so persistently that we can escape it only by great effort. Faith makes us, therefore, place our reliance and even our very being upon the fundament of appearances, and takes its conviction not from the invisible but precisely from what is always seen. And for me, obviously, such dependency would have been fatal. For a time I consoled myself with the thought that perhaps I had been chosen for a miracle of transfiguration. But eventually I came to the end of my patience and decided to renounce entirely the possibility that some day I might be a guest at a wedding where there would be only water and I would turn it into wine. I abandoned my childhood faith, in exchange for knowledge. And I discovered then that knowledge is secret, that it has two faces, one of which, twisted and deformed perhaps as my body or perhaps as strong and beautiful as my hands, has been kept hidden by what we call civilization since the very beginning of what we call civilization. That therefore knowledge asks questions that cannot be answered, for half of existence is denied it, unless it descends into the buried world where the truth of creation is yet to be found, even after so many centuries. It was a surprising discovery, young sir. It changed my whole life.”

“A contagious discovery, Herr Urs. When Ulrich and I went to your room, we felt ourselves surrounded by something infectious that we could neither touch nor name.”

“Freedom, young sir, simply courageous human freedom. The freedom of the committed and dedicated rebel, which someday will infect the entire world.” My little man moved his fingers rapidly, delicately, as if he were playing a piano. “Full liberty induces sickness in us, of course, for we have always believed that we are healthy only when our liberty is limited.”

“You weren’t free, none of you, goddamn you!” Jakob shouts at Boston Boy or maybe at the manikin on my knee or maybe at myself, I am not sure which. “You were slaves! You were Germans, Germans! Phantoms hunting across the wasteland armed with the asinine jawbones of a sheep Volk!”

“Ach,” the little man smiles sadly, “why are your friends always so raucous? Things are not quite so simple as he seems to think. I suggest that you avoid most firmly the road that he has chosen. One must keep in mind, after all, that there are certain risks which if we dare to hazard them lead to reward far greater than any wealth. I left my works hanging in the room where I died, my only gift to the world, the sum and meaning of all my days, yet without the slightest expectation that they would be greeted by applause. The idea of triumphant success was altogether foreign to me. Do you believe that I wanted to evangelize the world, tempt it, bribe it, convert it? Oh, no, no, never, my young friend. I never offered youth a change of soul, nor did I suggest to the cities of the desert that they abandon their obeisant servility. I believe, quite the contrary, that everything that survives feasts eventually, when the opportune moment comes, upon the fruits of its tenacity. My triumph was not, is not in the noisy world but far from it, alien and isolated. My freedom is precisely my isolation and my victory is to hold myself apart, identifying with no one and with nothing except, perhaps, nothingness itself. I am, so to speak, young sir, a dark star that wanders along through the darkness of space casting invisible light upon those who are far away and bathed in the stolid sun, contaminating them, infecting them, as you so aptly put it. If I should allow myself to be touched by other lives, to mix and fuse into their mass, I would instantly cease to be who I am. I can tempt only because no one can recognize me. I die the moment I am discovered moving through this emotional chaos with which men comfort themselves for their misery and console themselves for my apartness. For I have done what none of them has ever dared to do. And no one knows, nor will I tell, whether my punishment may not be my reward.”

White Rabbit slowly advances in her glistening brocade robes, her hair mussed and her eyes vacant. As she passes Jakob, he stops and holds her. “No, Jeanne. Don’t go near him.”

My little man stretches out his beautiful hands. “She need not come near me. I laugh at distance, my friend.” I make his small fingers caress the satin of his dressing gown. “Ah,” he says softly to White Rabbit. “So we meet again.”

“Jeanne. Jeanne.” Jakob seems shaken by confusion. He searches for words while the little man on my knee polishes his tiny fingernails on the quilted silk lapels of his dressing gown. “Jeanne,” Jakob says finally, “don’t be afraid of your visions. Love your menstruation and your seizures, Jeanne, your orgasms give you life and health. I swear that, Jeanne. And they give life and health to me, too. Don’t feel ashamed. Don’t be afraid. Don’t run away to that false world of words that can be mastered so easily. What is hard, Jeanne, is to master the real, damned, unfortunate world of horrible shame and silence and defeat et cetera.”