Carlos Fuentes: The Crystal Frontier

That was only for Christ, and how Mariano envied Him! If the suffering, mocked, wounded Christ had been left in holy peace, why not him? All he wanted was to live on his parents’ ranch, reading all day with no other company than the Indians, who were natural and indifferent to the perversions of nature, Indians some called Pacuaches and others “erased Indians.” Like him: invisible Indians, beings who copied that great canvas of imitations and metamorphoses, the desert. Was he more confined, more isolated out there on the desert ranch than his family was in Disneyland, out of touch as they were with Campazas, with the nation, ignoring everything that occurred outside their high walls, consuming only imported things, watching only cable television? Why was he denied his solitude, his isolation, when he was indifferent to theirs? He who read so much, things that were so beautiful, worlds as perfect as his imagination could desire, infinitely new pasts, futures foretold and already, already enjoyed.

He dreamed of a hare.

A hare is a wild quadruped with long ears and a short tail.

Its fur is reddish, and its offspring are born hairy.

Its feet are longer than those of the rabbit. It runs very quickly because it is very timid.

It does not dig, as other members of the species do. It makes nests, seeking out a stable, warm, respected space where it will be left in peace.

It’s a mammal. It’s born from milk, desires it again, wants to suckle in darkness, to be sucked, in a nest with no surprises and no one to watch it enjoy itself.

There wasn’t a woman in the world who could tolerate his desire. Mariano only wanted, finally, to live physically where he’d always wanted to live by will and where he’d always lived in spirit. On a ranch. With little money, many books, and a few “erased Indians” as silent as he. Alone, because where in the world was there a woman who could eclipse all space but the bedroom, where space and presence coincided. Was Michelina such a woman? Would she respect his solitude? Would she liberate him forever from ambition, inheritance, social obligations, the need to make public appearances?

It wasn’t his fault that inside his mouth there lived a blind, hairy, swift, and voracious hare, nesting permanently on his tongue.

On her wedding day, Michelina entered the living room of the Tudor-Norman mansion wearing her beautiful old dress, her crinoline, flat-heeled white velvet slippers, and a heavy white veil that completely hid her features. And above the veil, a crown of orange blossoms. She was on the arm of her father, the retired ambassador Don Herminio Laborde. Michelina’s mother was unwilling to make the trip north (gossip had it that she disapproved of the marriage but lacked the means to stop it). The grandmother, old as she was, would have made the trip with pleasure.

“I’ve seen every type of crossbreeding imaginable, and one more, even if it’s between a tigress and a gorilla, much less between a dove and a rabbit, isn’t going to shock me.”

Her ailments kept her from traveling; somehow, though, she was present in the crinoline, in the veil… Dona Lucila spent a whole month in Houston outfitting herself as if she were the bride, and today she looked like something from a pastry shop. She embodied the wedding cake itself: triangular like a cream pyramid, she was crowned with a cherry hat, her hair a caramel delight, her face a huge, smiling meringue, her breasts a wave of crème Chantilly. And then the dress: draped over her like a burial shroud, it had all the tones of blackberry jam spread over marzipan.

But she did not offer her arm to her son, Mariano. No, it was Leonardo Barroso himself who wrapped Mariano’s shoulders in a big embrace. The young man was simply dressed: a beige suit, a blue shirt, and a string tie. Doña Lucila did not lean on her son until the party, the gathering of a multitude of friends, acquaintances, curiosity seekers, all there to attend the wedding of the son of one of the most powerful men, et cetera. Properties, customs offices, real estate deals, wealth and power provided by control over an illusory, crystal border, a porous frontier through which each year pass millions of people, ideas, products — in short, everything (sotto voce: contraband, drugs, counterfeit money, et cetera).

Was there anyone who didn’t have something to do with or didn’t depend on or hope to serve Don Leonardo Barroso, tsar of the northern frontier? What a shame about his son. There has to be a balance in this life. The son humanizes the father. But the young lady from the capital sold herself, don’t tell me otherwise. Human beings are bought, Don Enrique. Put it this way: the buying and selling are humanized, Don Raúl.

Although in those years every possible concession had been made to the Catholic Church, Don Leonardo Barroso maintained his liberal Jacobinism, the old tradition of nineteenth-century Mexican reform and revolution: “I’m a liberal, but I respect religion.”

In their bedroom (to the horror of Doña Lucila), he had a reproduction of Picasso’s Guernica instead of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. “What ugly scrawls! A child could draw better than that.” Luckily, by then they were sleeping in separate bedrooms, so they each had their own icons over the bed: Pope Paul VI and Jesus, united in their vision of sacrifice, death, and redemption. Don Leonardo never entered a church and held the civil part of the nuptial ceremony in his own house — of course, where else? Even so, the bride’s outfit infused the act with a mysterious severity, sacred rather than ecclesiastical.

“Think she’s a witch?”

“No, man, just one of those snooty bitches from the capital who come up here to make us look like hicks.”

“Is that the latest fashion?”

“For moths, yes, the very latest.”

“They say she’s a real knockout.”

The guests fell silent. The judge said the usual things and read an abbreviated version of Melchor Ocampos’s epistle: Obligations, Rights, Mutual Support. All shared, in sickness and in health, joy and suffering — the bed, time, the times. Bodies. Stares. The witnesses signed. The bride and groom signed. Don Leonardo lifted Michelina’s veil and brought Mariano’s face close to that of his bride. Michelina could not supress an expression of disgust. Then Leonardo kissed the two of them. First, he held his son’s face in his hands and brought those lips so esteemed by Michelina, so sexy and so fickle, close to his son’s mouth, kissed him with the same intensity Michelina attributed to the father’s eyes: I fall in love seriously, I know how to ask for everything because I also know how to give it.

The lips separated, and Don Leonardo caressed his son’s head, kissed him on that disgusting mouth, Normita, while Dona Lucila turned pale and wished she were dead, and then, showing off his daring and his personality — not for nothing is he Leonardo Barroso — with his son’s drool still on his lips, he raised again the lowered veil of the bride — a real beauty, Rosalba, you were right! — and gave her a long and terrible kiss that frankly, my dear, had absolutely nothing of the father-in-law (or godfather, for that matter) in it.

What a morning, I tell you, what a morning! I wouldn’t have missed it for the world! Campazas will never be the same after this wedding!

The Lincoln convertible, this time with its top up, rapidly crossed the cold, silent evening desert, filling it with the noise of tires and motor, frightening the hares, which leapt far away from the straight highway, the uninterrupted line to the frontier — crossed the desert in order to break the illusory crystal divider, the glass membrane between Mexico and the United States, and continue along the superhighways of the north to the enchanted city, temptation in the desert, illuminated, brilliant, with a Neiman Marcus, a Saks, a Cartier, and a Marriott, where a luxury suite awaited the bride and groom: champagne and baskets of fruit, a sitting room, spacious closets, a king-size bed, lots of mirrors in which to admire Michelina, a pink marble bath tub in which to bathe with her — her buttocks were larger than they seemed, her legs thinner, like a thrush’s — oh, woman of tempestuous eyes, immobile little nose, and nervous nostrils through which night escapes from you, parted lips, moist, through which my tongue gets lost without finding coral reefs or stalactite caves or ruined Gothic vaults — there is only the tickle of your cleft chin, my precious, the announcement of your other duplicities. Those I know I caress slowly so that nothing fades between us, so that everything lasts amid expectation, surprise, the desire for more and more, yes, Godfather, give me more, nothing can separate us now, Godfather, you said so, remember? Every time you see me I want it to be the first. Oh, Leonardo, it’s that I fell in love with your eyes because they said so many things.