Carlos Fuentes - Happy Families

AND YOU, ÁLVARO, don’t urinate outside the bowl just look at the drops you’ve left on the floor. .

ÁLVARO was obsessed with presenting himself as the éminence grise of powerful figures, he would come home full of himself and tell me:

“I proposed to the secretary. .”

“I suggested to the subsecretary. .”

“I made the senior official see. .”

“The secretary’s secretary, thanks to me. .”

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

HOW DID IT HAPPEN? Was there a cause of all causes? What was first, what came later? Desire or jealousy? Ecstasy or disillusion? Misunderstandings or explanations? Suspicions or gossip? Desires or jealousy? Longing or disgust? Plenitude or rejection?

WHERE WERE YOU all afternoon? I’ve been waiting for you. You know I desire you in an untimely way.

Yes, you say I’m an untimely woman.

That’s why I want you to be here when I desire you.

I’m sorry to disillusion you.

Bah, a man can’t lose his illusions if he doesn’t have any.

I don’t understand you.

There are too many explanations.

That’s true. Never complain. Never explain.

Not knowing where you are causes me tremendous anguish.

But I’m always at your side, you know that, my presence is in your imagination, in your desire, you always say that, I’m a prisoner in your head, I never leave there. .

Your presence, darling, is only a bloody Kotex tossed in the toilet. Next time please pull the chain. Or send your menstrual filth to the cleaners, pig.

WHEN HE FOUND OUT, he didn’t know what to do. Ignore it. Retaliate. Go out and kill him. He expected everything except her response.

You’ve violated my privacy. Those letters belonged only to me.

Álvaro couldn’t believe it.

Only to you? Did the Holy Spirit write them? Did you write them to yourself? How long have you been quoting poems by Neruda?

Ha ha.

They’re my letters. Mine. Understand that. Respect my privacy.

And if you found love letters sent to me by another woman, would you respect “my privacy”?

It’s different, Álvaro. You have a profession, a public life, you go to work. You’re in the world. But I live alone in this house.

Alone? Writing and receiving letters from a stranger?

Understand that I’m alone, alone deep inside. You don’t give me all your time. I’m not reproaching you. But please understand that I need my time and my company, too. Yes, I need my privacy violated by your unhealthy curiosity. And everything going so well, my God. .

Tell me, tell me what you’re reproaching me for, Cordelia. .

I’ll tell you. You talk only about yourself, your career, your magnificent plans, your intelligence, your brilliance, the applause you receive. You’re an applause meter. You’re a valiant knight errant. Don Quixote. I’m your Sanchita Panzona. Well, no. Just as you live your life, I have the right to live mine.

I don’t have a mistress, Cordelia.

Well, you ought to find one. Then we’d be even and no recriminations.

Is that all you can say to me?

No, of course not. Just imagine. I have my lover every day and you whenever I feel like it.

You’ve become a cynic.

Not a cynic. Desperate. How many times, beside you, did I have to pinch myself and tell myself, “I’m alive. I think. I want. .”

Cordelia doesn’t look away. He can’t conquer her eyes.

That drives him mad.

I can bear only one tyrant. Myself, Álvaro.

All right. What’s the point of telling you how it irritates me that you’re so pleased with yourself.

What do you expect. I’m too alive.

She doesn’t look away. He can’t conquer her eyes.

This drives him mad.

NO, he didn’t even give her the satisfaction of finding himself a mistress. He didn’t want her to have any excuses. He wanted her to know that his cruelty was gratuitous and undeserved. He ties her to the bed. He gags her and asks what are you thinking? He chokes her and asks her to sing “Amapola.” He says he wants to reduce her until the torments of curiosity (his) are lost completely.

You won’t have any life but this one, locked up. At my side. Sequestered in your own house.

He let it be understood — he never said so explicitly — that this was the price she had to pay for his forgetting. Álvaro will forget Cordelia’s guilt if Cordelia accepts gratuitous punishment, as if there were no sin between them. It was a painful way, she said to herself only because he said it first, “of beginning over.”

I DON’T WANT anybody to think you’re married to me out of loyalty, love, or habit. I want to know and for you to know, too, that you’re here against your will.

What do you say out in the world, Álvaro?

That you prefer never to leave the house.

HE’LL CHAIN HER to the foot of the bed and tell her that this will be the punishment she deserved for the mere fact of becoming old and losing her looks. He’ll gag her and ask what are you thinking about? He’ll choke her while he asks her to sing “Amapola.” He’ll tell her there’s no difference between the morgue and the bed. Lie down like a corpse! You’ll close your eyes. You’ll spare me your detestable vindictive gaze. You won’t tell me that death is the maximum aggression against us because I’ll keep you alive so you have no excuses. Until the final moment. I’ll make you feel that death is only your possibility, not your reality. My malice will postpone your death. I’ll prepare your death, dear wife. I’ll separate you from death by prolonging your pain. I’ll prepare your death. You won’t be my phantom. You’ll be my wife. Do you realize that I survive only to make you suffer?

WHEN I DARED to tell him —Reforma, Adriana Pérez Cañedo — that the secretary had done the opposite of what Álvaro told me he told him he should have done, he ripped the paper, kicked the TV, and began to isolate himself, to not go out, to look at me reproachfully: I knew his secret, I paid no attention to him, his airs were pure smoke, I condemned myself, if he no longer had power outside, he would show me he had it in the house.

AT THE LAST DINNER the two of them—Álvaro and Cordelia — attended together, they heard the honorable secretary say in a very low but exceedingly ill-intentioned voice:

Álvaro Meneses is a lethal bureaucrat. He’s becoming redundant.

YOU HAVE LESS fizz than a Coca-Cola that’s been open for a month. .

I have an enormous empty space. That’s what I have.

He said this and stumbled, falling on his face over the rug that still smelled of urine, and at that moment the dog was exiled to live tied up, howling with melancholy, in the courtyard.

HE BEGAN DISPUTING TERRITORIES WITH ME. He began extending his control over the closet, the bed, the bathroom, the TV, and I kept telling him your seclusion doesn’t free you from the big cold world Álvaro (but really tell him that Cordelia) you’re a child (don’t be afraid of him Cordelia) you let yourself be judged too easily (you pick up the sections of the paper tossed to the floor and put them in order so you can feel victorious) you go around imagining what they’re saying about you (tell him) what they think of you (think about it).

I’M AT A LOSS FOR WORDS.

You talk a great deal.

Inside, I’m silent.

HE MADE A POINT of masturbating in front of her. He laughed. He said, pleasures known to Onan unknown to Don Juan.

Did you think convention would control me? he said when he was finished.

No. What an idea. Not even love subjugates you, Álvaro.

I told him many things.

Will you let me tell you the truth?