Carlos Fuentes - Adam in Eden

The Siegfried commandos arrive on flights from Frankfurt to São Paulo to Cancun to Toluca, to throw anyone off their trail. I’ve prepared everything for them. The guns. The instructions. The uniforms.

They act fast. They act efficiently. Gas masks conceal their faces. The Siegfrieds are almost all tall and blond as their Wagnerian name implies. Those who are almost as short as dwarves, and are called Alberichs, command the troops.

The troops go into battle.

They have a list of Mexican criminals, with their last known addresses, and the names of people in their families, from the elderly to the infants. Including women.

They attack by surprise with overwhelming force.

They kidnap the old.

They steal the children.

They murder the men.

The Siegfrieds leave behind a trail of blood and pain among the families of the major criminals. No one is spared. No one is exempt. The oldest. The youngest. In a couple of weeks, they are all orphaned, widowed, childless.

The campaign is horrible, I have to admit, simply awful.

A child is found one morning hanging from a telephone pole.

An old man is discovered drowned in his backyard swimming pool.

There are stories in the news:

That a woman has been kidnapped — at your service, sir — forever. Für immer .

That within two weeks no criminal has escaped being the victim of crime.

That funerals follow each other like a carnival parade of death. That the cemeteries fill.

That nobody can identify the Siegfrieds.

That the government is responsible.

That the gangs are massacring each other.

That they are out to get revenge.

That they are waging war over territory, money, and drugs.

Now, now is when I tell Abelardo, you can count on the money, count it, but make sure that tonight the Holy-Boy proclaims from his pulpit at the intersection of Insurgentes and Quintana Roo that no, it is not the government, nor are the gangs killing each other, that these are not acts of revenge between men.

“This is heaven’s revenge! The angels have descended to Earth brandishing fiery swords of justice! Don’t blame anyone! This is the work of God’s Providence! Behold God’s wrath!”

There is nothing people admire more than an vengeful interventionist God sitting in judgment, indiscriminately laying waste to the families of criminals who only yesterday kidnapped, murdered, and extorted money in exchange for children they had already killed, and who are now dying, murdered, penniless, and helpless against the horrible acts of the Siegfrieds: the death of an entire class. An apocalypse live and in person.

When I see Adam Góngora hanging by his ankles, like a cut of meat, from a telephone pole in front of my house, I believe that I’ve fulfilled a healthful plan. Let no one doubt: power went to his head.

When I see my wife, Priscila, look out the window of her bedroom and scream in horror (inaudible behind the glass) at seeing Góngora turned into a piñata, I can hardly conceal my satisfaction.

When I see my father-in-law Don Celestino, the King of Bakery, leave the house without even glancing up at Góngora’s hanged corpse, I can finally admire the old man’s character. Now I know why I’ve lived under your roof ever since I married your daughter, you old bastard, secret ally, my semblance, but not my brother!

When I sit down in the café and give Abelardo the stipend for the Boy and the Virgin to continue their work, I think of it as money very well spent.

When I look at the street and see the Holy-Boy and the Virgin deceiving my country once again, as has been going on for centuries, I am grateful for the powerful distraction of faith, the millennial deception that brings the majority to its knees at the Basilica of Guadalupe and inspires a minority to hang portraits of the Virgin in their bedrooms and moves a select few to forgive the sins of others.

My associates have put away their dark sunglasses.

And when I return to L’s apartment, and L and I undress, nobody but my lover and me knows that I lack a bellybutton.

I am the first man.

On the night when my gardener Don Xocoyotzín’s walk took him to the Chapultepec Zoo, he approached the eagle’s cage and felt pity. The great bird of prey, the rapacious and strong, diurnal, majestic eagle, a harpy eagle of the tropics with feathered talons, fluttered in desperation around the confined space. Don Xocoyotzín, a trustworthy man of the people, took pity on the captive bird, and taking advantage of the night’s solitude (when he likes to walk around the city), he drew his machete (the weapon he uses to defend himself during his urban walks) and hacked open the door of the cage. Only then did he see lying there, motionless — perhaps dead — a large serpent.

The eagle, without even thanking the gardener, flew out of his prison, extended his giant, six-foot-seven-and-half-inch wingspan, and flew in search of the open air, the sunny skies, the mountain heights, far from the pesticides, far from hunters and their shotguns, far from the city’s smog-filled air. .

Don Xocoyotzín picked up the serpent and took it home in the hope of nursing it back to health.

He forgot to open the tiger’s cage. The animal growled threaten-ingly.

The next day, a comet shot across the sky as it had in the year. .

CARLOS FUENTES(1928–2012) was Mexico’s most celebrated novelist and critic, the author of more than a dozen novels and collections of stories and essays, including Terra Nostra, Christopher Unborn, Where the Air Is Clear, Distant Relations and Vlad (all available from Dalkey Archive Press). He received numerous honors and awards throughout his lifetime, including the Miguel de Cervantes Prize and the Latin Literary Prize.

E. SHASKAN BUMASwrote the story collection The Price of Tea in China, a finalist for PEN America West Fiction Book of the Year. He teaches at New Jersey City University.

ALEJANDRO BRANGERis a writer and filmmaker. He lives in New York City.