Carlos Fuentes - Burnt Water

I own an imaginary apartment house in the center of Mexico City. The penthouse is occupied by an old revolutionary turned profiteer, Artemio Cruz. In the basement lives a ghostly sorceress, Aura. On the eleven intermediary floors you will find the characters of the stories that are now collected here. True, some have fled to the countryside, others are living abroad, some have even been evicted and now wander in the internal exile of the “belt of misery” surrounding this great, cancerous stain of a smog-ridden, traffic-snarled metropolis of seventeen million people. By the end of the century it will, fatally, be the largest city in the world: the capital of underdevelopment.

My imaginary building is sinking into the uneasy mud where the humid god, the Chac-Mool, lives. There, a birth is recalled, that of the oldest city in the Americas, Tenochtitlán, founded in 1325 by the wandering Aztecs on a high lagoon guarded by sparkling volcanoes, and conquered in 1521 by the Spanish, who there erected the viceregal city of Mexico on the burnt water of the ancient Indian lake. Burnt water, atl tlachinolli: the paradox of the creation is also the paradox of the destruction. The Mexican character never separates life from death, and this too is the sign of the burnt water that has presided over the city’s destiny in birth and rebirth.

CARLOS FUENTES

Princeton, June 1980

It was only recently that Filiberto drowned in Acapulco. It happened during Easter Week. Even though he’d been fired from his government job, Filiberto couldn’t resist the bureaucratic temptation to make his annual pilgrimage to the small German hotel, to eat sauerkraut sweetened by the sweat of the tropical cuisine, dance away Holy Saturday on La Quebrada, and feel he was one of the “beautiful people” in the dim anonymity of dusk on Hornos Beach. Of course we all knew he’d been a good swimmer when he was young, but now, at forty, and the shape he was in, to try to swim that distance, at midnight! Frau Müller wouldn’t allow a wake in her hotel — steady client or not; just the opposite, she held a dance on her stifling little terrace while Filiberto, very pale in his coffin, awaited the departure of the first morning bus from the terminal, spending the first night of his new life surrounded by crates and parcels. When I arrived, early in the morning, to supervise the loading of the casket, I found Filiberto buried beneath a mound of coconuts; the driver wanted to get him in the luggage compartment as quickly as possible, covered with canvas in order not to upset the passengers and to avoid bad luck on the trip.

When we left Acapulco there was still a good breeze. Near Tierra Colorada it began it get hot and bright. As I was eating my breakfast eggs and sausage, I had opened Filiberto’s satchel, collected the day before along with his other personal belongings from the Müllers’ hotel. Two hundred pesos. An old newspaper; expired lottery tickets; a one-way ticket to Acapulco — one way? — and a cheap notebook with graph-paper pages and marbleized-paper binding.

On the bus I ventured to read it, in spite of the sharp curves, the stench of vomit, and a certain natural feeling of respect for the private life of a deceased friend. It should be a record — yes, it began that way — of our daily office routine; maybe I’d find out what caused him to neglect his duties, why he’d written memoranda without rhyme or reason or any authorization. The reasons, in short, for his being fired, his seniority ignored and his pension lost.

* * *

“Today I went to see about my pension. Lawyer extremely pleasant. I was so happy when I left that I decided to blow five pesos at a café. The same café we used to go to when we were young and where I never go now because it reminds me that I lived better at twenty than I do at forty. We were all equals then, energetically discouraging any unfavorable remarks about our classmates. In fact, we’d open fire on anyone in the house who so much as mentioned inferior background or lack of elegance. I knew that many of us (perhaps those of most humble origin) would go far, and that here in school we were forging lasting friendships; together we would brave the stormy seas of life. But it didn’t work out that way. Someone didn’t follow the rules. Many of the lowly were left behind, though some climbed higher even than we could have predicted in those high-spirited, affable get-togethers. Some who seemed to have the most promise got stuck somewhere along the way, cut down in some extracurricular activity, isolated by an invisible chasm from those who’d triumphed and those who’d gone nowhere at all. Today, after all this time, I again sat in the chairs — remodeled, as well as the soda fountain, a kind of barricade against invasion — and pretended to read some business papers. I saw many of the old faces, amnesiac, changed in the neon light, prosperous. Like the café, which I barely recognized, along with the city itself, they’d been chipping away at a pace different from my own. No, they didn’t recognize me now, or didn’t want to. At most, one or two clapped a quick, fat hand on my shoulder. So long, old friend, how’s it been going? Between us stretched the eighteen holes of the Country Club. I buried myself in my papers. The years of my dreams, the optimistic predictions, filed before my eyes, along with the obstacles that had kept me from achieving them. I felt frustrated that I couldn’t dig my fingers into the past and put together the pieces of some long-forgotten puzzle. But one’s toy chest is a part of the past, and when all’s said and done, who knows where his lead soldiers went, his helmets and wooden swords. The make-believe we loved so much was only that, make-believe. Still, I’d been diligent, disciplined, devoted to duty. Wasn’t that enough? Was it too much? Often, I was assaulted by the recollection of Rilke: the great reward for the adventure of youth is death; we should die young, taking all our secrets with us. Today I wouldn’t be looking back at a city of salt. Five pesos? Two pesos tip.”

* * *

“In addition to his passion for corporation law, Pepe likes to theorize. He saw me coming out of the Cathedral, and we walked together toward the National Palace. He’s not a believer, but he’s not content to stop at that: within half a block he had to propose a theory. If I weren’t a Mexican, I wouldn’t worship Christ, and … No, look, it’s obvious. The Spanish arrive and say, Adore this God who died a bloody death nailed to a cross with a bleeding wound in his side. Sacrificed. Made an offering. What could be more natural than to accept something so close to your own ritual, your own life…? Imagine, on the other hand, if Mexico had been conquered by Buddhists or Moslems. It’s not conceivable that our Indians would have worshipped some person who died of indigestion. But a God that’s not only sacrificed for you but has his heart torn out, God Almighty, checkmate to Huitzilopochtli! Christianity, with its emotion, its bloody sacrifice and ritual, becomes a natural and novel extension of the native religion. The qualities of charity, love, and turn-the-other-cheek, however, are rejected. And that’s what Mexico is all about: you have to kill a man in order to believe in him.

“Pepe knew that ever since I was young I’ve been mad for certain pieces of Mexican Indian art. I collect small statues, idols, pots. I spend my weekends in Tlaxcala, or in Teotihuacán. That may be why he likes to relate to indigenous themes all the theories he concocts for me. Pepe knows that I’ve been looking for a reasonable replica of the Chac-Mool for a long time, and today he told me about a little shop in the flea market of La Lagunilla where they’re selling one, apparently at a good price. I’ll go Sunday.