Carlos Fuentes - The Crystal Frontier

Jim’s nervous laugh was a small break in the tension or the distance (were they the same thing?) which that simple reference to the Holy Inquisition had introduced into the way they were together, the first irruption of a past into a relationship that the two boys lived only for the present. Juan Zamora had the ungraspable but desolating feeling that at that precise moment an even more dangerous perspective was also opening — the future. They slowly covered the cadaver of a beautiful girl who’d committed suicide and whose body no one had claimed.

Juan Zamora carefully timed his meetings with Lord Jim for the afternoons so he could return to the Wingates on time, have dinner with them, watch television, and make comments. Reagan was beginning his dirty secret war against Nicaragua, which was starting to annoy Juan Zamora, though he did not understand why. Tarleton, on the other hand, celebrated Reagan’s decision to put a limit to Marxist expansion in the Americas. Perhaps that was the reason for the growing coolness of Charlotte and Tarleton Wingate and for the rather comic confusion of Becky, who was dispatched to her room as soon as Juan appeared, as if his mere appearance announced a plague. Did Juan Zamora look like a guerrilla and a Sandinista?

Of course, the Mexican student understood immediately that rumors of his homosexual association had filtered down from Parnassus to Suburbia — the community was small. But he decided not to give in and to go on normally, because his relationship was exactly that, normal, for the only people who had anything to say about it — he and Jim.

Jim was sensitive, he had good antennae, and he noticed a certain nervous malaise in his lover. He knew it had nothing to do with their relationship. In Jim’s dormitory bed, wrapped in each other’s arms, Juan tried to excuse himself because that afternoon he had not been able to perform. Jim, caressing Juan’s head as it rested against his shoulder, told him it was normal, it happened to everyone. Both of them were doctors and were well acquainted with the stereotyped ideas surrounding sexual activity of all kinds, from masturbation, which supposedly drove adolescents insane, to the perfectly normal use of pornographic material by older people. But the myths of homosexuality were the worst. He understood. The Wingates would not tolerate a gay couple. It wasn’t the racial or the social difference that bothered them. But Juan never played the role of rich boy with Jim. He said nothing. Jim wasn’t interested in the past.

Juan tried to kiss Jim, but Jim stood up, naked, enraged, and said it was he who couldn’t stand the repugnant Puritanism of these people, their disgusting disguise of goodness and their perpetual, inviolable sanctity in politics and sexuality. He turned to Juan in a fury.

“Do you know what your landlord, Mr. Tarleton Wingate, does for a living? He inflates the budgets of companies doing business with the Pentagon. Do you know how much Mr. Wingate charges the air force for lavatories for its planes? Two hundred thousand dollars each. Almost a quarter of a million dollars so someone can shit comfortably in midair! Who pays the expenses of the Defense Department and the earnings of Mr. Wingate? I do. The taxpayer.”

“But he says he adores Reagan because he’s eliminating government and lowering taxes.”

“Just ask Mr. Wingate if he wants the government to stop defense spending, stop saving failed banks, or stop subsidizing inefficient farmers. Ask him and see what he says.”

“He’d probably call me a Communist.”

“They’re a bunch of cynics. They want free enterprise in everything, except when it comes to weapons and rescuing thieving financiers.”

It’s hard for Juan Zamora to accept Jim’s statements, accept something that breaks his rule about ingratiating himself with the Wingates, being accepted by them and, through them, by American society. But the criticism is coming from his lover, the being Juan loves most in the world, and his lover proclaims it in an implacable, angry tone, not caring how anyone, even Juan, reacts.

The Mexican student had feared something like this, something that would break their perfect, cloistered intimacy, the self-sufficiency of lovers. He hates the world, the busybody world, the cruel world, which gains nothing by poking its nose into the lives of lovers except that — the malicious pleasure of distancing them from each other. Could they ever enjoy the same sense of fullness they experienced before this little incident? Juan was confident they could, and he multiplied the proofs of his affection and loyalty to Lord Jim, his little pamperings, his attention. Perhaps the desire to reconstruct something so perfect it had to crack one day was all too obvious.

Once again they are together, wearing their white masks, their gloves, dissecting another woman’s body, this time an old one’s. Lord Jim asks Juan to remember that place, the palace of the Inquisition in Mexico that became the medical school. He’s amused by the idea of the same building’s being used for torture one day and to bring relief to bodies the next. The Mexican student subtly changes the subject and tells him about the Plaza de Santo Domingo and the ancient tradition of the “evangelists,” old men with old typewriters who sit in the doorways and type out the dictation of the illiterates who want to send letters to their parents, lovers, friends.

“How do they know these scribes are reliable?”

“They don’t. They have to have faith.”

“Confidence, Juan.”

“Right.”

Jim took off his mask and Juan gestured for him to be careful — they had to take precautions. Once before, the first time, they had kissed next to a cadaver, but the bacteria of the dead have killed more than one careless doctor. Jim gave him a strange look. He asked Juan to tell him the truth. About what? About his family, his house. Jim knew what people said around the university, that Juan was the scion of a rich family, hacienda owners, and so forth. Juan had never told Jim that, because they never talked about the past. Now Jim asked him to send a spoken letter, as if he, the gringo, were the “evangelist” in the plaza and Juan the illiterate.

“It’s all lies,” said Juan. His back was turned once again, but he spoke without hesitation. “Pure lies. We live in a very modest apartment. My father was a very honorable man who died penniless. My mother always threw it in his face. She’ll die reproaching him. I feel pain and shame for the two of them. I feel pain for my father’s useless morality, which no one remembers or values and which wasn’t worth shit. On the other hand, people certainly would have celebrated him if he’d been rich. I’m ashamed that he didn’t steal, that he was a poor devil. But I’d be just as ashamed if he were a thief. My dad. My poor, poor dad.”

He felt relieved, clean. He’d been faithful to Lord Jim. From now on, there wouldn’t be a single lie between them. He thought that and fleetingly he felt ill at ease. Lord Jim could be sincere with him as well.

“Explain to me ‘pain and shame,’ as you call them— which would be something like ‘pity and shame’ in English,” said the American.

“My mother causes me pain, always complaining about what never was, heartsick about her life, which she should accept because it will never be different. I’m ashamed of her self-pity, you’re right, that horrible sin of inflicting pain on yourself all day long. Yes, I think you’re right. You’ve got to have compassion to cover the pain and shame you feel toward others.”

He squeezed Lord Jim’s hand and told him they shouldn’t talk about the past because they understood each other so well in the present. The American shot him a strange look that he almost associated with the dead woman who would not resign herself to closing her eyes, the woman they never finished dissecting.