Carlos Fuentes: Adam in Eden

“But of course!” he clucks, sprinkling an imaginary handkerchief. “The young gentleman excuses himself from labor. The señorito has, listen to this, a vo-ca-tion . The little lord of the manor refuses to work—”

“No father, I am not refusing to—”

“Hush, you insolent brat! I am speaking!”

“And I am right.”

“What did you say? You’re what? What. .? Do my ears deceive me?”

“I don’t want to run a business. I want to be a writer.”

“You what? You want to what? And what will you be able to afford to eat, scoundrel? Alphabet soup? Paper enchiladas? A mole sauce made of ink? Who are you making fun of, Don Shakespearito? Show a little more respect to your lord father, the man who raised you, yes sir, who gave you everything, an education, a roof over your head, and clothing, to whom you come now with this nonsense about wanting to be a wrrrri-ter! Little Don Fauntleroy, tell me, do I have the word idiot written across my forehead?”

“I’m not asking you for anything.”

“You don’t need to. I already gave you everything. And this is how you pay me back, you miserable parasite!”

“Verbena!” Priscila says timidly from the fourth step of the staircase. “Doves!”

Nobody pays her any mind.“You ought to learn from your brother-in-law Adam” (That’s me and now I am a weapon).

“I admire Adam,” Abelardo dares to comment.

“Good! Because Adam married your sister so he could move up in the world; he hit the jackpot; he was Mr. Nobody, a beggar, not a pot to piss in, and you see, he knew how to take advantage of my position and my fortune, the rascal! He knew how to move up, and he got to where he is because he married your sister. .”

“Hymen,” Priscila moans skillfully, but nobody pays her any mind.

“And look at him now: he’s a big shot, he’s the cream of the crop. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Aren’t you embarrassed?”

“I am not—” Abelardo mutters.

“You’re not anything, you’re nothing,” Don Celes says raising his hand in a threatening manner. “You’re not what?” he asks without making any sense. “You—?” he interrupts himself when he turns to see me looking at him sternly, unapologetically. I walk over to Abelardo and offer him my hand.

“Don’t let yourself be humiliated, my brother-in-law.”

“I’m not. .” he stammers.

“Hold onto your self-respect.”

“I. .”

“Move on from this house. Make your own way.”

“You. .”

“Nothing. Expect nothing from me. You’ll make your own way in the world.”

My words silence the family.

With my usual self-restraint, I avoid all stares. I am my own boss. No quarreling. No mocking. No patronizing airs. No triumphalism. Don Celes is frozen into a statue. Priscila is cold and motionless. Abelardo is struggling between a kind smile and a grateful embrace.

I’d only intervened in the first place because I was recognized in the street and couldn’t go where I wanted to be, in L’s arms.

Priscila slaps the maid across the face as she carries a tray upstairs, announcing the resumption of normal life.

“Adam, did you see?”

“What?”

“That boy.”

“What boy?”

“The Boy-God.”

“The boy what ?”

He appeared where he was least expected, I am told by L, who along with my secretaries, keeps me apprised of the human-interest news that isn’t reported on in the briefings I receive.

At the intersection of Quintana Roo and Insurgentes Avenue. He stands on a little platform, dominating the traffic on the avenue. And it’s not some open space, but full of fast-moving cars except when there’re those horrible traffic jams, and it’s all impatient honks and insults. It’s a place where arteries converge, and where impatient speed alternates with even more impatient gridlock.

“You’ve got to see him — I went to see him,” L said. “Stopping traffic, wearing a white tunic, standing on his box like that desert hermit on his pillar, remember that Buñuel film? No? Well, it was Saint Simeon preaching in the desert: his congregation was dwarves, his mother, and the Devil. But this child addresses the traffic of Insurgentes and Quintana Roo, and what’s remarkable, Adam, is that first people honk their horns at him, but then they stop, get out of their cars, make fun of him, tell him to burn in hell for causing a traffic jam, I’m running late, get out of the way you little pipsqueak. .”

“Pipsqueak?”

“He can’t be older than eleven, Adam. You’ve got to see him. .”

“I see him in your eyes. What’d he give you, a little loco weed?”

“Come on Adam, I’m being serious. First the drivers were all pissed off. Then some of them start paying attention to him. It’s like he mesmerizes them, you know what I mean?”

I gestured that I didn’t, but listened attentively to that story. .

“Attention,” L repeated. “You know? I just realized that our great defect is that we don’t pay attention.”

“L, don’t lose your thread. Get on with your story.”

“It’s my story, okay. We don’t pay attention to others. We don’t pay attention to ourselves . We let things happen like the wind blowing — am I right? — and other people happen by.”

I asked if that entire speech was a way of reproaching me for not knowing that there was a preacher on the corner of Insurgentes and. .

“An eleven-year-old preacher.”

“Right.”

“A Boy-God.”

“You’re talking nuts.”

“But I’m not nuts. You have to listen to me, because you can’t go there to see what’s happening. I can. Nobody knows me from. . nobody recognizes me.”

If this was a reproach about having to be a secret lover, the reproach did not register with me at the time.

“What does he say?”

“Stop running around, that’s mainly what he says. Don’t rush. Where are you going in such a hurry? Where’s the fire? Can’t you just wait one single minute? Don’t you want to hear the voice of God?

“At first they heckled the Boy. Until that child’s gaze silenced the crowd.

“If only you could have seen him, Adam. His very gaze conferred authority. It was a gaze full of veiled threats. A loving gaze, too. A powerful love mixed with a great authority and a trace of menace. All this in a ten- or eleven-year-old boy.”

“Is he blond? Ugly?” I said, wanting to lower L’s admiring tone, which was getting on my nerves.

“He’s, I don’t know, luminous. Yes. He shines, but it’s like he really sees us.”

“Rhymes with Jesus ,” I tried to joke.

“No, no, no, no,” L said, “not that, that would be like a parody, wouldn’t it? No, this child isn’t God, he’s not Jesus, he is, I don’t know, Adam. What’s the word? He’s a messenger . .”

“How do you know?”

“Adam. He had wings on his ankles. Wings on his ankles. You see where I’m going with this?”

“Yes, not very far. Anybody can glue a pair of little wings to their ankles, to their back, to their. .”

“But nobody admits it. .”

I gave her a questioning look. “He took off the wings from his feet, do you hear me?”

“So even he admits he’s a fraud.”

“Just the opposite! He said that he was a schoolboy. He would go to school every morning, where he learned to read, to write, to sing, to do math, and to draw. But after school, he would transform. He followed his heart, he said, and he’d put on the white gown, and stick the little wings to his ankles, and put on the wig of golden curls, and he’d go preach at this intersection of busy avenues, nobody told him to do it, just his heart, the need of his soul, he said, he was a schoolboy, nothing more, he was not deceiving anybody, he would rather go play marbles, but he did what he had to do, not because he had to obey an order, but because he could follow no other path , that’s what he told us.”