Carlos Fuentes - Adam in Eden

Worse, saying “Shut up, Priscila. You don’t know what you’re talking about” was an inappropriate airing of my bad relationship with my wife. My unacceptable faux pas must have made me seem, at the very least, a rotten person to the Toms, Dicks, and Harrys. My exclamation, “Shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about,” implied a lack of necessary control over my wife and her explosions, and my own lack of discretion and self-control when the skies thundered, though (and only at the expense of poor Priscila) I had shown my presence of mind in covering up the situation and moving on to something else. As a result, I inspired admiration for my quickness, but also surprise that my reaction was a veiled chastisement of Priscila, known for flouting the law of cause and effect.

“Tomorrow is Sunday.”

Because I don’t accompany her to many dinners in society, I can’t be certain if Priscila’s flatulence is rare or part of her normal digestion at such events. How often has Priscila challenged the environmental purity of a dinner like this one without any reports reaching me? Do they hear her? Are her sonorities lost in the midst of animated conversation? Are they heard and ignored? Do people comment with sarcastic giggles, “Counseler Adam Gorozpe’s wife is Queen of the Fart?”

Feeling, despite myself, like a latter-day Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas, I withdrew, complimenting myself on own ability to turn physical nastiness into literary reference.

For, back in the Golden Age of Spanish literature, in the seventeenth century, did not the great Quevedo write that the glory of the asshole is evident because it is “round like a sphere,” and “its place is in the center, like that of the sun,” and that “as it is such a necessary, precious, and beautiful thing, we keep it hidden away in the safest part of our body, protected between two soft walls. . so that even light can’t touch it,” explaining “why we say: ‘Kiss me where the sun don’t shine,’” and adding “that joy reigns between the buttocks,” especially in the case of “the fart. . which is a merry thing, because whenever a fart is cut, laughter and joking ensue, bringing down the house,” even if the other guests at the dinner table don’t accept that thesis when they ignore Priscila’s sonorities, forgetting (or ignoring) Quevedo and his pun: “Between a rock and a rock, the apricot booms.”

I then evoked the aromas of a sliced lime with its juice dripping, fresh-cut grass, and a foamy cup of hot chocolate: smells that go directly to the pleasure centers, avoiding the obstacles of reason, smell as a reminder of emotion.

Where do all these people come from? I look at photos of them arranged on the tabletop, and I try to picture their origins , the only clue being their mansions, brand new or recently acquired from people who were until recently rich, mansions distorted by doors better suited for a prison, colored bunting, barricaded windows, men with concealed machine guns on the rooftops, gardeners who mow the lawn while looking around, on the alert, their overalls bulging with weapons.

Where do all the weapons come from? I receive a report. In Houston, Texas alone there are fifteen-hundred gun shops. A customer can purchase more than a hundred guns in one spree by touring dozens of legitimate stores willing to sell them, no questions asked. There are also gunrunners who smuggle contraband arms from the United States to Mexico. Buying rifles, shotguns, and handguns in the land of our northern neighbors does not require a license. Most of the pistols and rifles confiscated in Mexico come from stores and gun shows in Texas and Arizona.

The possession of guns — according to the report I read this morning — is legal in the United States, and if a suspicious shipment is detained between the store and the border, the trafficker is exercising, in any case, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms,” established in the second amendment to the Constitution, part of the Bill of Rights, predicated on the existence of “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State.” I wonder how that well-regulated militia is working out.

An arms dealer, when questioned, responded that he didn’t keep a record of what he had sold to someone else, and that he had sold his business. So how does he make a living now? “I live off my savings,” he said from the porch of his mansion in Houston. “When were you audited before you retired?” “Well, they’re allowed to audit you once a year, but there aren’t enough auditors to go around, so sometimes every three years, or every six. .” “What kinds of weapons did you sell?” “Guns, just guns.” “What about AK-47 rifles?” “Achy whats? Doesn’t ring a bell.” “Maybe this’ll ring a bell. We sent a plant to your store to buy twelve AK-47s, and you sold them to him. Didn’t you think that was a suspicious request?” “The customer is always right. Listen, I’m just a simple retailer.”

“I have the right to buy guns to go hunting. That’s a Constitutional right.”

“I have the right to sell guns. The Constitution. .”

“I let the authorities know when there’s a suspicious gun sale in my store. That’s my professional obligation. .”

“I don’t say anything to anybody, because one word and the drug traffickers will. .”

I receive reports about weapons confiscated in Mexico. A rifle in Acapulco was found after an attack on the offices of the Attorney General that left three secretaries dead. Two rifles confiscated on federal highways. A rifle found in Miahuatlán after an attack on army personnel at the local botanical garden.

I do the math.

Four weapons recovered by the authorities in Mexico. Four.

Thousands of guns imported by the drug cartels. Thousands.

Mansions with metal doors, colored bunting, barricaded windows, gunmen on the rooftops, armed gardeners.

“You can fit any number of things in a pair of overalls. .”

Where did they come from? Who were they before? Can they be punished by being sent back to where they came from? By jailing or interrogating their women?

As so many times before, I take the bull by the horns and send undercover Jenaro Rubalcava, an accomplished cross-dresser doing time in the underground jail of San Juan de Aragón, to Santa Catita Prison to uncover information and, with luck, to get lucky. (I calculate the times that the distinguished Mr. Rubalcava has served in exchange for a reduction in his prison sentence.) Why don’t I send a woman? Because I believe implicitly that women make up a fervent sisterhood that sticks together to defend itself from the intrusive, malevolent male, who on top of everything else, is a player if he can get away with it, and a bitch if he gives himself to another man.

The redeemed prisoner Rubalcava informs me that in Santa Catita there is an area dedicated to women drug traffickers, kidnappers, and serial killers. The Queen of Mambo is there, a busty and longhaired young woman who wears jeans, white sneakers, and a loose sweatshirt, as though to conceal her virtues. She manages Boss Big Snake’s money on a computer in her cell, even though a guard accompanies her at all times. Pumped up, she walks around the prison courtyard, where about a hundred people are heaped together, including those who come in from the outside with food and clothing for the prisoners. There is Chachacha, accused of stabbing a banker: an attractive woman, in Rubalcava’s estimation, whose low-cut blouse, combined with her tied-back hair, shows off the whiteness of her skin and distracts people from her cynical expression of satisfaction with her crime. Then there’s Major Alberta, accused of kidnapping and murdering young millionaires. There are the two “dynamiters,” accused of planting bombs willy-nilly throughout the capital. They are both cross-eyed and wear too much lipstick.