Carlos Fuentes - Constancia and Other Stories for Virgins

— Long live our chains! Marco Aurelio gave a laugh, a cross between sorrow and cynicism, as he passed by, hoisting a Dos Equis, and I watched him, thinking of Eduarda as a child, how she must have struggled to reach my arms, and I thought of Dimas Palmero in prison and of how he would stay there, with his memory, not realizing that memory was information, Dimas in his cell knowing the same story as everyone, conforming to the memory of the world and not the memory of his people — Prisciliano Nieves was the hero of Santa Eulalia — while the old man knew what Dimas forgot, didn’t know, or rejected: Prisciliano Nieves had died in Santa Eulalia; but neither of them knew how to convert his memory into information, and my life depended on their doing nothing, on their memory, accurate or not, remaining frozen forever, an imprisoned memory, you understand, my accomplices? Memory their prisoner, information my prisoner, and both of us here, not moving from the house, both of us immobile, both prisoners, and everyone happy, so I immediately said to Marco Aurelio: Listen, when you visit your brother, tell him he’ll lack for nothing, you hear me? Tell him that they’ll take good care of him, I promise, he can get married, have conjugal visits, you know: I’ve heard it said in the house that he likes this red-cheeked girl with the bare arms, well, he can marry her, she’s not going to run off with one of these bandits, you’ve seen what they’re like, Marco Aurelio, but tell Dimas not to worry, he can count on me, I’ll pay for the wedding and give the girl a dowry, tell him I’m taking him, and all of you, into my care, you will all be well cared for, I’ll see to it that you’ll never lack for anything, neither you here nor Dimas in the pen, he won’t have to work, or you either, I’ll look after the family, resigned to the fact that the real criminal will never be found: Who killed Eduarda? We’ll never know, I swear, when a girl like that comes to the city and becomes independent, neither you nor I, nobody, is guilty of anything …

That was my decision. I preferred to remain with them and leave Dimas in jail rather than declare myself guilty or pin the crime on someone else. They understood. I thought of Dimas Palmero locked up and also of the day I presented myself to Brigadier Prisciliano Nieves in his hospital room.

— Sign here, my general. I promise to take care of your servants and your honor. You can rest in peace. Your reputation is in my hands. I wouldn’t want it to be lost, believe me. I will be as silent as the grave; I will be your heir.

The dying Brigadier Prisciliano Nieves looked at me with enormous brazenness. I knew then that his possessions no longer mattered to him, that he wouldn’t bat an eyelash.

— Do you have any heirs, other than your servants, I asked, and the old man surely had not expected that question, which I put to him as I took a hand mirror from the table next to the bed and held it in front of the sick face of the general, in this way registering his surprise.

Who knows what the false Prisciliano saw there.

— No, I have no one.

Well informed, I already knew that. The old man ceased to look at his death’s face and looked instead at mine, young, alert, perhaps resembling his own anonymous youthful look.

— My general, you are not you. Sign here, please, and die in peace.

To each his own memory. To each his own information. The world believed that Prisciliano Nieves killed Andrés Solomillo at Santa Eulalia. The old patriarch installed in my house knew that they had all killed each other. My first sweetheart Buenaventura del Rey’s papa, paymaster of the constitutionalist army, knew that as well. Between the two memories lay my twenty-five years of prosperity. But Dimas Palmero, in jail, believed like everyone else that Prisciliano Nieves was the hero of Santa Eulalia, its survivor and its enforcer of justice. His information was the world’s. The old men, by contrast, held the world’s information, which isn’t the same. Prisciliano Nieves died, along with Andrés Solomillo, at Santa Eulalia, when the former said that the soldiers, being the people, would not kill the people, and the latter proved the contrary right there, and barely had Prisciliano fallen when Solomillo, too, was cut down by the troops. Who usurped the legend of Prisciliano Nieves? What had been that man’s name? Who profited from the slaughter of the leaders? No doubt, someone just as anonymous as those who had invaded my garden and surrounded my house. That was the man I visited one morning in the hospital and blackmailed. I converted memory to information. Buenaventura’s papa and the ragged old man residing in my garden retained memory but lacked information. Only I had both, but as yet I could do nothing with them except to ensure that everything would go on the same as always, that nothing would be questioned, that it would never occur to Dimas Palmero to translate the memory of his clan into information, that neither the information nor the memory would ever do anyone any good anymore, except for me. But the price of that deadlock was that I would remain forever in my house in Las Lomas, Dimas Palmero in jail, and his family in my garden.

In the final analysis, was it I who won, he who lost? That I leave for you to decide. Over my telephone lines, you have heard all I’ve said. I’ve been completely honest with you. I’ve put all my cards on the table. If there are loose ends in my story, you can gather them up and tie them in a bow yourselves. My memory and my information are now yours. You have the right to criticize to finish the story, to reverse the tapestry and change the weave to point out the lapses of logic, to imagine you have resolved all the mysteries that I, the narrator crushed under the press of reality, have let escape through the net of my telephones, which is the net of my words.

And still I’ll bet you won’t know what to do with what you know. Didn’t I say so from the beginning? My story is hard to believe.

Now I no longer had to take risks and struggle. Now I had my place in the world, my house, my servants, and my secrets. I no longer had the guts to go see Dimas Palmero in prison and ask him what he knew about Prisciliano Nieves or what he knew about Lala: Why did you kill her? On your own? Because the old man ordered you to? For the honor of the family? Or for your own?

— Lala, I sighed, my Lala …

Then through the gardens of Virreyes came the girls on pogo sticks, hopping like nubile kangaroos, wearing sweatshirts with the names of Yankee universities on them and acid-washed jeans with Walkmans hooked between blue jean and belt and the fantastic look of Martians, radio operators, telephone operators, aviators all rolled into one, with their black earphones over their ears, hopping on their springy pogo sticks over the hedges that separate the properties of Las Lomas — spectacular, Olympic leaps — waving to me, inviting me to follow them, to find myself through others, to join the party, to take a chance with them: Let’s all crash the parties, they say, that’s more fun, hopping by like hares, like fairies, like Amazons, like Furies, making private property moot, seizing their right to happiness, community, entertainment, and God knows what … Free, they would never make any demands on me, ask for marriage, dig into my affairs, discover my secrets, the way the alert Lala did … Oh, Lala, why were you so ambitious?

I wave to them from a distance, surrounded by servants, goodbye, goodbye, I toss them kisses and they smile at me, free, carefree, dazzling, dazzled, inviting me to follow them, to abandon my prison, and I wave and would like to tell them no, I am not the prisoner of Las Lomas, no, they are my prisoners, an entire people …

I enter the house and disconnect my bank of telephones. The fifty-seven lines on which you’re listening to me. I have nothing else to tell you. Soon there will be no one to repeat these fictions, and they will all be true. I thank you for listening.