Carlos Fuentes - A Change of Skin

“What else do you remember?” asked Isabel.

“Negroes seated on their porches watching cars go by on the superhighways, just as if they were looking at cemeteries or the mountainous junk heaps. And then I saw some men standing behind a warehouse fence staring at the train as it passed, and I asked myself, ‘Who are they? Who can they be?’ I believe that’s all.”

“Because that was all you wanted to see,” you smiled. “As for me, I get a kick out of places like Terre Haute or Indianapolis. I like to read the big signs over the factories. ‘This is the home of Goodyear Tires.’ ‘Here Shredded Wheat is manufactured.’ Those are the monuments of this century, just as Gothic cathedrals were monuments of another century. Or am I wrong?”

No one replied and you turned on the radio and it sang: Help, I need somebody …”

“Some time I’d like to go back to Europe,” Franz said.

“How long have you been away?” said Javier.

“Since the end of the war.”

“Then why don’t you go back?”

“They won’t give me a visa.”

“Who won’t?” asked Isabel.

“The Czechs. When I say Europe I mean Prague. That’s my home.”

“Did you choose freedom?” Javier asked dryly.

Franz laughed. Isabel hummed to the music of the Beatles: Not just anybody …

“There you have an interesting thesis, Ligeia, if you want one,” Javier said after a moment. “Today the tone comes from England. Fashions, the times, everything. The Beatles. The Rolling Stones. Petula Clark. Agent 007.”

“Well, someone has to take revenge for the Thirteen Colonies.” You yawned.

Isabel fell asleep with her head on Javier’s shoulder. Franz tried to see her in the rearview mirror.

* * *

Δ You stretched out like a lizard on Franz’s body, supporting your face on the open palms of your hand, and looked at his face.

“Tell me a new story, Franz, a true one. One about youth and young love. What you used to like to do, how you were, where you went. Anything, everything, so long as it’s true. What did you study?”

“You know already, Lisbeth.”

“That doesn’t matter, tell me again. Where did you live? Who did you love? What was Prague like?”

Franz laughed and squeezed your shoulder and pulled you down on his chest again. He rubbed your head and said quietly, “I think sometimes that cities don’t exist. If you love a city as I loved Prague, you can come to believe that it is your own creation and that when you leave it, it disappears. It stops.”

“Why?”

“It’s another way of saying that cities are kept alive by love. No, not quite that. I don’t know … Well, if a city were a human body, and we could open it with a scapel…”

“Hold it. That scares me a little,” you laughed.

“A city is a place where people are together. That’s all. Think about what it conceals and what it allows to live. The rubbish, the sewers, the garbage cans. The places where the things we eat come and go. The things we drink and love. The cemeteries.”

You curled up. “No,” you said. “I don’t see it like that.”

“How then?”

You shook your head. “I can’t explain it very clearly. But it seems to me that cities have an unconscious too, just as we do, an unconscious that is joined to ours. I believe that we try to defend ourselves against that unconscious. The songs, the neon lights, the advertisements in windows, the touch of the people we pass in the street or stand next to in the subway. Do you see what I mean? I am what I am because I lived in New York and carry inside me a song that says any time at all and an ad that says don’t be this way when you can be that way. Contacts I neither wanted nor consciously accepted with someone’s sweaty skin, someone’s jacket or blouse. All that.”

He kissed your cheek and smiled. “Yes. Prague is clean. That’s why I love it. It’s pure, it doesn’t take liberties with your privacy. The city and its people are one there. Or at least that’s how it used to be. That’s why I can’t understand a place like Xochicalco. I can’t imagine that living men ever loved that frozen stone.”

“I think I understand. Maybe they didn’t love it but were afraid of it.”

“I don’t know. Lie back, Elizabeth. I don’t like your breath on my chest.”

“That better?”

“Yes. In the old days when I used to cross the Karlsbrücke, when I was about nineteen, whether it was winter or summer I always left the city behind me wrapped in fog. Fog in Prague is different in the morning and the evening. And in winter it’s gray, almost white. As if the breath from the statues on the bridge were condensing in clouds. In summer it’s yellow and seems to come from far away. From the headwaters of the river. I used to stand in the middle of the bridge in those days, going and coming from my classes, with the fog wrapped around me. I felt myself at the same time both in the city and away from it. The fog surrounded me and carried me away. Or it took me back, just as I willed. From the Karlsbrücke you can see the entire city but still be in the city.”

“Like taking the ferry to Staten Island and looking at Manhattan.”

“No, that’s not the same. There you’ve left the city. On the bridge, you see, it’s still all around you. You can reach out and touch the Mala Strana and Hradcany on one side. On the other, St. Mesto and the hills of Bubeneč.”

“Those are your names, Franz. They don’t mean anything to me.”

And from the ends of the bridge you can see the channels of the Vltava. They run beside yellow houses and from the bridge you look down on the grass of the river in the background, tones of green that change as the hours change and the season changes. There are barges anchored the length of the canals that flow into the river and under the bridge there are fishing skiffs. The walls of the houses that face the river are decorated with white figures on a dark ground. It’s a tranquil river, flanked by ocher-colored palaces. There are willows along the banks and the shores are pebbled and lined sometimes with fishermen, stubborn old men who use two lines and wear berets and canvas coats. Farther down, toward Hradcany, the castle of Prague with its heaped, asymmetrical roofs. Skylights and chimneys, church towers, Catholic spires, Byzantine domes, Protestant stained glass. The bells of Mala Strana are heard and you can smell the laurels and cypresses in the courtyards hidden behind the houses. You can also smell the stagnant water and the rotting leaves in clumps at the mouths of the drains, and the wild scent of the chestnut trees.

“I walked across the bridge every day toward Mala Strana, where Professor Maher lived.”

“Who walked with you?”

“No one. I went alone. Lisbeth, it’s very hot. Open the window.”

You got out of bed, nude and willowy, and walked to the window. You opened it and spread your arms. And with your arms extended like wands you turned on your heels so that Franz could look at you. His eyes moved up and down your body appreciatively. A slender body, curiously short without high heels, a little loose-jointed. Your ash-dyed hair and the graying hair at your pubis. The depression of the muscles between your chest and umbilicus, the pale blue line of your stomach.

“Don’t move, Lisbeth. Just stand there.”

“I think I can feel a breeze beginning.”

“You look lovely.”

“Do I, Franz? I like to show myself to you like this. It’s like a little secret voyage. Ship ahoy. It’s a slap in the face of these super-modest Mexicans. I play the bitch with these people as often as I can. Their hypocrisy about sex makes me sick. Do you know that Javier’s grandmother used to sleep in a nightgown down to her ankles with an embroidered hole in it for screwing? And before they made love, they would kneel down in front of a candle and recite a little poem Javier told me.” You knelt beside the bed and rolled your eyes up and struck your chest with your fist: