Carlos Fuentes - Happy Families

I thought I had been born to bother others and now I am going to think I am loved because I am different

and because you are ugly Valentina and also because you are ugly

don’t you want me to feel beautiful because of you?

no Valentina feel ugly so I can adore you for what nobody else would dare to tell you

I am ugly Jesús

ugly ugly ugly you’re my perversion and my longed-for adventure an unforeseen love first give me a minute Valentina then let me spend the night with you then my whole life

ugly

offer me to your soul Valentina and I will give you mine

whom shall I tell that I love you?

whom, that we love each other?

3. Everyone withdrew after dinner. Only Valentina remained in the living room. Only for her the night had not ended.

Then he comes in.

Everyone has gone. They have all hidden themselves away to gossip.

Except Valentina still waiting for the sight that is the attraction: Jesús Aníbal.

His eyes tell her, “I want to find you alone again.”

Only they look at each other.

The others try to avoid others’ eyes.

She knows how a protective attraction is being transformed into a physical attraction.

She returns to her first moment with Jesús Aníbal.

She ignores everyone else.

She does not listen to the gossip.

The pretty woman desires the ugly woman’s luck.

It seems a travesty.

Only a blind man would marry her.

It happens in the best of families.

And Ana Fernanda to Jesús Aníbal: “You traded me for that scare crow? I don’t have to pretend to despise you. But you are my husband in the eyes of God and man. I will never leave you. I will never give you a divorce. Get used to the idea. Dare to tell me I have done something wrong. Tell me something. Did you choose her because of your immense vanity, so you would know you are better-looking than she is? Because you could not stand being less good-looking than me, your wife? It was an unlucky day that we fixed up the house.”

The relatives left.

Doña Piedita took to her bed, preparing, in her words, to go to “the hacienda in the sky.”

Ana Fernanda did not invite anyone again and dedicated herself to bringing up her daughter, Luisa Fernanda, in accordance with the strictest Catholic morality.

either you pay or we kill you

they say she was a very good student a good daughter she had

a boyfriend and everything they skated together they went on the ferris

wheel the merry-go-round the octopus

the fair smelled of muégano candy and popcorn peanuts cotton candy

sticky sodas

the wheel turned and her boyfriend took advantage of the girl’s fear

to put his arms around her and tell her if you don’t kiss me I’ll throw you

out and to please him she opened his fly and

there were sticky candies there too

who pays for the fair?

don’t they pay you for Sunday?

I don’t have enough

oh well then find another cheaper boyfriend

don’tsqueezeit

mayyourotthere

what would happen to me without the fair on saturdays or without the sodas

the popcorn the tamales

how will you pay for the fair without money

wait for me love I’ll invite you to the fair don’t rush

put a hundred clips of drugs in your knapsack

you’ll sell them when school lets out

we’ll give you a hundred pesos for every hundred clips you sell and you’ll

give us three thousand

she goes out

we can go together to skate here in perisur mall away from the neighborhood

and the dusty streets and the whistle of drug

buyers and thieves when school lets out

some pickpockets stole my knapsack

it had the three thousand pesos I owed you

either you pay or we kill you

she covered everything but her head in blankets

if I don’t pay them they’ll kill me

they hit me all over look at the bruises papamama

they robbed me

they didn’t kill me

I killed myself

because if I didn’t kill myself they said they’d kill you papamama

for the three thousand pesos I owe them

ferris wheel merry-go-round drug dealers cocaine

popcorn marijuana sodas straw hats of glue

terrific

YOU’RE STILL WITH ME because there’s nobody left but me who remembers your beauty. Only I have your young eyes in my old ones.

TIME belongs to me. He doesn’t understand it. I close my eyes and time belongs to me.

WE’RE ALONE. You and I. Husband and wife. Newly-weds. We don’t need anything. You don’t let anyone in. Other people spoil everything. Only you and I, lost in an endless embrace. Chained dog barking in the courtyard. Only sound in the area. Your yellow dress tossed over a chair. The only light.

I DON’T HAVE the words.

How strange. We talk a great deal.

Inside I’m silent.

THERE WERE MISUNDERSTANDINGS. I made a date with you for twelve o’clock. What? You said two. No, twelve. Write down your dates. Dates? How many do you have in a day? With whom? With how many people? Why do you provoke my jealousy with equivocal answers? You always knew I was jealous. You even liked it. I like to feel jealous. That’s what you told me. And why didn’t you ever make me feel jealous with another woman? What? You were always faithful? Or didn’t you have the imagination? I was busy with my career. I never had time for chasing after women. I was absorbed in my work. You know that. I wanted to get ahead. For you. For me. For our marriage. For the two of us. I had ambitions. My greatest ambition was to be director general. You held me back. What did I do? Nothing. That was the problem. No, tell me, really, what did I do? Your behavior. Your wanton behavior. But if I’m tied to you, do you think I have time to deceive you? Ah, then, if you had the time. . But you watch me like a jailer. That’s what brought you down. Hovering over me the whole day. First those phone calls from the office. Then you’d show up unannounced. Then the absurdity of opening closet doors, looking under the bed, saying aha! in front of an open window. Finally, you wouldn’t leave the house. You watched over me day and night. And instead of calming down, you grew more and more jealous. Of what? Of whom? And you don’t remember that jealousy inflamed my desire, the more I had you, the more I laid siege to you, like an enemy city, I laid siege to you with my tenderness and my eyes and my skin until you surrendered and then felt disgust for me and disgust for yourself for having done everything you shouldn’t have what was forbidden what was dirty what degrades us to ourselves but not you, you took it for granted, it was natural, you had no idea of sin, my disgust wasn’t yours, you felt something like ecstasy, whore, you displayed it to me, you didn’t share my anguish, you laughed at me, where did you get all that business about “existential anguish,” Álvaro, what did you think, that I was a book or a student thirsty for knowledge? why didn’t you accept all sexual experiences, the most daring, the most calculated, but especially the most spontaneous, the ones that came to us out of the night, the postponed dawn, the unexpected afternoon? why did you interrupt my orgasm to tell me to look at the horrifying sight of two roosters slashing each other to death in a pit? where did you get the idea that a cockfight would excite me more than your sex? why give me explanations? cockfights always excited me, I had my first erection watching a fighting cock slash another fighting cock in an imaginary pit, no, it was in San Marcos, at the fair, but I wasn’t there, the pit was the sand of my imagination, Cordelia, the battle took place in my head and you were incapable of penetrating it that’s why I said to myself as long as she doesn’t penetrate my imagination, I won’t penetrate her body again, that’s the simple truth, enough explanations, let’s not give any cause for gossip, fire the maids, don’t invite anyone to the house, I don’t want busybodies in my life, I want the freedom to imagine the worst and make you pay for your sins, they’re imaginary Álvaro, nothing of what you imagine has happened but it can happen, you can’t deny that Cordelia.