Carlos Fuentes - Adam in Eden

Dog, bird, child, this evening I approach the house where L lives.

I have no desire to show my wounds. I relax and am, as always, whole, affectionate, personable, without visible scars, without unnecessary explanations, because I follow the saying so little appreciated by Latin American women who are cheated on and by the men who cheat on them: Never complain. Never explain.

L never asks for explanations and has never heard me complain. That’s our arrangement. L is just a mix of lovely attributes, forgivable pettiness, and understandable vices, and gives me so much that I cannot credit a single defect. L is aware of them and flaunts them.

Does L wear those imperfections as so many badges of honor?

L bores easily, so needs entertainment and frequent surprises. In order to love another person, L says, you have to love yourself first. L loves L. L’s not afraid to show weakness out of the belief that if our lovers know who we are, the possibility of astounding them increases because they are not expecting surprises. I have to let myself be deciphered, but not to tell all, so that I might not just be loved but also be loved for the things that I have not yet revealed.

L wants to be a mystery, and for me to be a mystery, too.

I know more or less zilch about L. We’re like in the song: “Don’t talk to me anymore, let me imagine that the past doesn’t exist and in the moment we met, we were born.”

I know nothing about L except for what I know about our life ever since “the moment we met,” and L knows only the same about me, as well as the part of my life that’s in the public domain. When I offer myself to L, there is an opaque curtain drawn over my life before my marriage to Priscila, when the baking family put me on the national stage. That’s something L and I have in common. We love each other here and now, without any reference to our pasts. We don’t discuss lovers, children, or ambitions, and we don’t make promises. Our relationship exists in the here and now. While I sometimes give in to the temptation of memory, that only happens in my secret, unpublishable communication— with you , reader. Unpublishable? What possessed me to say such a thing?

I allow myself to be surprised.

L must be aware of my public position but never mentions it, which makes me feel like a new man every time I come over, willing to renew myself on these nights of untold love with L, who does not know my family situation beyond what everybody knows (my marriage to the Queen of Spring in the house of the King of Bakery). The facts are irrelevant to a free spirit like L.

A free spirit? Can such a thing exist? Is there a single human being who is not tied, in some way, to his or her past and origin and family? Or to his or her profession, job, responsibility?

Yes, there is such a free spirit, a free spirit whose name is L. That’s what I believe.

I do not know anything about L’s past ( cue bolero ), nor do I want to know. Even if I did want to know, I couldn’t find out, and not just because L knows how to keep a secret. L is a secret. Everything that L says and does is spontaneous, without precedent (or at least without any significant precedent). I’ve never come across anyone who lives so completely for the moment. And in spite of that, L has eyes full of wisdom, gestures connoting experience, and words that draw from a well of mystery. But none of these qualities can be attributed to a past that doesn’t exist, because in each moment, L assumes that the past is present, and that the future is as well. I mean, when L remembers, what is important is not the memory, but the fact of remembering right now. And if L desires, this desire takes place in the here and now. L cancels out the past and the future, combining them into an eternal present: here and now, everything here and now, with an intensity that not only explains L, but that explains me, my passion for this unique being who takes me out of the ridiculous comedy of my household and the funereal solemnity of my office to place me in the radical moment — so beautiful, so rare, so everything! — in which I am with L, alive with L, in love with L.

Here and now all the problems, obligations, and ridiculousness of private life, and all the masquerades of public life, disappear. L redeems me, returns me to myself, to that part of my person that would otherwise remain hidden, latent, and perhaps lost forever.

I breathe into L’s ear, while we hold each other close, and L breathes into my mouth. Life not only returns, it has been here all along, and I don’t know what keeps me from abandoning everything to give myself unconditionally and without guilt to L’s love.

Love interrupted. I chose L’s apartment. Requirements: a place where I could come and go without being seen, centrally located, yet isolated. Result: a downtown building letting out onto a narrow alley on Oslo Street between Nice and Copenhagen.

Context: the Zona Rosa district, motley crowds day and night, distractions. Actions: leave the car on Hamburg Street. Walk a couple of blocks hidden among the crowds, knowing that the best disguise is oneself. I appear so often on TV, in the newspapers, and at public events, that nobody would suspect that the ordinary guy walking alone between Genoa and Antwerp streets is me.

It’s a gamble.

And it’s paid off. Until this night I had excitedly planned to enjoy with L.

Somebody recognizes me, says hello, stops me.

“Sir! It’s you!”

Then everybody else recognizes me. “What an honor!”

“What a thrill!”

“Can I have your autograph?”

“A man of the people!”

“A regular guy!”

“Not at all, not at all,” I say, moving my hands to indicate a total lack of pretension, an impervious will, a normality, “not at all, not at all, like any other citizen, walking around, watching the world, you know. Living locked up in an office surrounded by bodyguards makes you lose touch, get self-important. I have to step out a little, anonymously, with other people, like you. Thank you, great to meet you, now I have to run, they’re waiting for me, see you later, see you soon!”

“What a modest guy!”

“What a democrat!”

I knew I would eventually be recognized in the Zona Rosa. I have to skip going to L’s alley on Oslo and instead return to the parking lot in front of the Bellinghausen restaurant and from there head back home.

What awaits me there?

On this night that I had set aside to be with L, returning instead to Lomas Virreyes, I happen onto a huge family fight. Don Celestino, flying into a rage (or a rage flying into him, because our vices and virtues precede and survive us), rebukes his son Abelardo in the middle of the living room. Poor Priscila whimpers halfway up the staircase, and stoic but disappointed (or the other way around), I enter the house at the worst possible moment.

“You’re a drone!” shouts Don Celes. “You just want to bum around at my expense.”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying,” says Abelardo calmly. “I want to pursue my vocation.”

“Vocation, vocation! There is no vocation here. Vocation is a vacation,” exclaims Don Celes with a literary turn of phrase that I didn’t think he had in him. “Here we do our jobs. Here we work hard. Here there’s a fortune that has to be managed.”

“But father, that’s not my vocation.”

“Of course it isn’t your vocation, you little bum, it’s your obligation . Do you understand? We all have ob-li-ga-tions. We don’t screw around here! This is no joke! So just stop this talking this nonsense!”

Don Celes mocks the young man by affecting the manner of a dandy or a fop, though he mostly succeeds in making himself seem a cretin. .