Carlos Fuentes - Constancia and Other Stories for Virgins

I approached them. Or, rather, the old patriarch who had also decided to be immortal came to me, and the old man almost forced me to join them, to embrace them. I looked at the pretty girl, dark, ripe as those sweet oranges, oranges with an exciting navel and juices slowly evaporating in the sun. I took her dark arm and thought of Lala. Only this girl didn’t smell of perfume, she smelled of soap. These, then, were her people, I repeated. This, then, was all that remained of her, of her feline grace, her fantastic capacity for learning conventions and mimicking fashions, speaking languages, being independent, loving herself and loving me, letting go her beautiful body with its rhythmic hips, shaking her small sweet breasts, looking at me orgasmically, as if a tropical river suddenly flowed through her eyes at the moment she desired me, oh my adored Lala, only this remains of you: your rebel land, your peasant forebears and fellows, your province as a genetic pool, bloody as the pool where you died, Lala, your land as an immense liquid pool of cheap arms for cutting cane and tending the moist rows of rice, your land as the ever-flowing fountain of workers for industry and servants for Las Lomas residences and secretary-typists for ministries and clerks in department stores and salesgirls in markets and garbage collectors and chorus girls in the Margo Theater and starlets in the national cinema and assembly-line workers in the border factories and counter help in Texas Taco Huts and servants in mansions like mine in Beverly Hills and young housewives in Chicago and young lawyers like me in Detroit and young journalists in New York: all swept in a dark flow from Morelos, Oaxaca, Guanajuanto, Michoacán, and Potosí, all tossed about the world in currents of revolution, war, liberation, the glory of some, the poverty of others, the audacity of a few, the contempt of many … liberty and crime.

Lala, after all, had a past. But I had not imagined it.

11

It wasn’t necessary to formalize our agreement. It all started long ago, when the father of my sainted fiancée, Buenaventura del Rey, gave me the key to blackmail General Prisciliano Nieves in his hospital bed and force him to bequeath me his large house in Las Lomas in exchange for his honor as hero of Santa Eulalia. Like me, you have probably asked yourselves: Why didn’t Buenaventura’s father use that same information? And you know the answer as well as I. In our modern world, things come only to those who know how to use information. That’s the recipe for power now, and those who let information slip through their fingers will fail miserably. On one side, weak-knees like the papa of Buenaventura del Rey. On the other side, sharks like Nicolás Sarmiento your servant. And in between, these poor, decent people who don’t have any information, who have only memory, a memory that brings them suffering.

Sometimes, audaciously, I cast pebbles into that genetic pool, just to study the ripples. Santa Eulalia? La Zapotera? General Nieves, whose old house in Las Lomas we all inhabit, they unaware and me well informed, naturally? What did they know? In my computer were entered the names and birthplaces of this sea of people who served me, most from the state of Morelos, which is, after all, the size of Switzerland. What information did Dimas Palmero possess?

(So you come from La Zapotera in Morelos. Yes, Don Nico. Then you know the hacienda of Santa Eulalia? Of course, Don Nico, but to call it a hacienda … you know, there’s only a burnt-out shell. It’s what they called a sugar mill. Ah yes, you probably played in it as a child, Dimas. That’s right, señor. And you heard stories about it? Yes, of course. The wall where the Escalona family was lined up in front of a firing squad must still be there? Yes, my grandfather was one of those who was going to be shot. But your grandfather was not a landowner. No, but the colonel said he was going to wipe out both the owners and those who served them. And then what happened? Then another commander said no, Mexican soldiers don’t murder the people, because they are the people. And then, Dimas? Then they say that the first officer gave the order to fire on the masters and the servants, but the second officer gave a counterorder. Then the soldiers shot the first officer, and then the Escalona family. They didn’t fire at the servants. And then? Then they say the soldiers and the servants embraced and cheered, señor. But you don’t remember the names of those officers, Dimas? No, even the old ones no longer remember. But if you like I can try to find out, Don Nico. Thank you, Dimas. At your service, sir.)

12

Yes, I imagine that Dimas Palmero had some information, who knows — but I’m sure that his relatives, crammed into my garden, kept the memory alive.

I approached them. Or, rather, I approached the old patriarch and he practically forced me to join them, to greet the others. I looked at the pretty, dark girl. I touched her dark arm. I thought of Lala. Doña Lupe had her arm around the girl. The bluish-haired grandfather, that old man as wrinkled as an old piece of silk, supported by the solid body of the cook, playing with the braids of the red-cheeked girl, all looking together toward the barranca of Las Lomas de Chapultepec: I was anxious to find out if they had a collective memory, however faint, of their own land, the same land about which I had information exclusively for my advantage; I asked them if someone had told them the names, did the old men remember the names? Nieves? Does that name mean anything to you — Nieves? Solomillo? Do you remember these old names? I asked, smiling, in an offhand manner, to see if the laws of probability projected by my computer would hold: the officers, the death of the Escalona family, Santa Eulalia, the Zapotera … One of those you mention said he was going to free us from servitude, the old man said very evenly, but when the other one put all of us, masters and servants, in front of a wall, Prisciliano, yes, Prisciliano, now I remember, said, “Mexican soldiers don’t murder the people, because they are the people,” and the other officer gave the order to fire, Prisciliano gave the counterorder, and the soldiers fired first at Prisciliano, then at the landowners, and finally at the second officer.

— Solomillo? Andrés Solomillo.

— No, Papa, you’re getting mixed up. First they shot the landowners, then the revolutionary leaders began to shoot each other.

— Anyway, they all died, said the old survivor with something like resigned sadness.

— Oh, it was a long time ago, Papa.

— And you, what happened to you?

— The soldiers shouted hurray and threw their caps in the air, we tossed our sombreros in the air too, we all embraced, and I swear, sir, no one who was present that morning in Santa Eulalia will ever forget that famous line, “The soldiers are the people…” Well, the important thing, really, was that we’d gotten rid of the landowners first and the generals after.

He paused a moment, looking at the barranca, and said: And it didn’t do us a bit of good.

The old man shrugged, his memory was beginning to fail him, surely; besides, they told so many different stories about what happened at Santa Eulalia, you could just about believe them all; it was the only way not to lie, and the old man laughed.

— But in the midst of so much death, there’s no way to know who survived and who didn’t.

— No, Papa, if you don’t remember, who is going to?

— You are, said the old man. That is why I tell you. That is how it has always been. The children remember for you.

— Does Dimas know this story? I ventured to ask, immediately biting my tongue for my audacity, my haste, my … The old man showed no reaction.

— It all happened a long time ago. I was a child then and the soldier just told us: You’re free, there’s no more hacienda, or landowners, or bosses, nothing but freedom, our chains were removed, patrón, we were free as air. And now see how we end up, serving still, or in jail.