Carlos Fuentes - Happy Families

No.

Excuse me. You’re too weak for me.

Ah, you bitch. I’ll show you. .

I can endure only one tyrant. Myself. My own tyrant, Álvaro.

Shall I tell you something? Why you’re so twisted? Why you never travel a straight path?

I’ll ruminate on that, Álvaro.

This drove him crazy. He began to shout, tear his hair, ruminate, ruminate, he shouted, that’s what cows say, why do you use those highfalutin words? why do you always talk like a well-bred girl? why do you constantly want to prove your superiority to me? because I was just a promising young man and you took charge of locking me away here. .?

You locked yourself away. .

I locked myself away with you. .

Nonsense.

You frustrated my ambition.

Just realize it, that’s all.

I didn’t become what I wanted to be.

You locked yourself away, I’m telling you. .

I could have been somebody. .

You are somebody. You’re my husband. Isn’t that enough?

It’s your fault I’m a nobody.

What would you have done without me?

Become what I could have been.

Ah yes! The things I didn’t do to please you. .

Without you, Cordelia. .

DIRTY CLOTHES dropped and forgotten. Floors slippery with forgotten filth. Toilets overflowing with shit. Sheets stained with blood. Rats conspiring in the corners. Spiders keeping watch from the ceilings. Cockroaches smoking marijuana in the kitchen. The sweet stink of abandonment. Without you. Without me.

I DREAMED I met you as a young man at a dance. A far-off dance long ago. Strauss waltzes. Tails. Crinolines. Cordelia Ortiz and her dance card. The line of suitors. A continental summer dance. Warm, distant, perfumed. Cordelia Ortiz and her blond curls arranged like tassels of wheat. Ah, how I desire her. Ah, how she charms me. I’m not even on her card. But I’m in her sight. She dances with someone else but looks at me. I’m the only one not wearing tails. I came unexpectedly. I’m dressed as a peasant. I can’t stop looking at her. I get her to look at me. Now we don’t stop looking at each other. Her eyes enslave mine. My eyes magnetize hers. We don’t know if we’re living for an instant or imagining an entire life. When she dances, she’s so graceful, so fresh, so beautiful that measures of time disappear. She is now. She is always. She turns my internal clocks upside down. She concentrates all the time I’ve lived or can live. She makes me feel I don’t need to go anywhere because now I’m here. She is my years, my months, my hours, in a minute. She is my place, all the spaces I’ve traveled through or can travel through. I am no longer divided. I am entire in myself and with her. I don’t need to have her in my arms. The young Cordelia dances with others but looks at me. When I came in, I was an indeterminate man. From now on, she determines me. I understand this in a flash and already begin to hate her. With what right is this woman I don’t even know going to determine me? I argue with myself, struggle against my doubts, I know I desire her, know my desire could be satisfied but still remain desire. I am like an island adrift that would like to unite with a continent. My insular desire can leave me there, surrounded by oceans. It can also unite me with the land I look at from my island and I see beaches strewn with black pearls and impenetrable forests and mountains broken into the steps of terraces and ravines that plunge into the deepest bowels of the earth. All of this I will have to conquer, the country called Cordelia, and once I conquer it, will I stop desiring it? No, I tell myself from the isolated island, from the shore of the dance that she dominates as if the floor were the entire universe, no, I’ll obtain what I desire and will immediately want to dominate what I have desired because there is no gratuitous desire, there is no desire that does not desire to possess and dominate what is desired, make it mine, with no opening whatsoever for any possession that isn’t mine. I desire Cordelia in order to have her first and dominate her immediately because otherwise how do I satisfy my desire? how, if I already possess her, am I going to stop desiring because I already possess? She is my wife. Don’t they call a wife a “ball and chain,” the handcuffs that bind the hands of the fugitive who attempted to steal the object of desire. .? The music stops. The lights dim. The orchestra withdraws to the sound of chairs carelessly overturned, feet accelerated by haste, abandoned music stands. The beaux are leaving downhearted, their black lines whipped by the approaching storm sending albino messages to the open-air ballroom. Only she remains in a circle of light that belongs only to her, to Cordelia Ortiz, my future wife, my beautiful prisoner, so no one will take her from me, she is my dream made reality. .

WHY DO YOU PERSIST? Leo asks Cordelia and Cordelia responds: Because it is his way of showing me he lives only for me. He doesn’t love himself. He becomes furious with me. Look, I tried to love him, to save him from everything unpleasant. . I loved him once.

He hasn’t reciprocated.

That isn’t the point. The important thing is when I realized that Álvaro could love only me, I decided to put it to the test. To the point where I believed I was mad by my own will. The important thing is that by torturing me, he lives only for me. That’s what counts, Leo. Would you do as much for me?

LEO DIDN’T SAY A WORD. Leo and Cordelia live together and don’t need to state that they love each other.

You know my desire is that you don’t ever see him again.

I know, and that’s why I’m explaining my reasons for going back. Once a month. It’s not too much.

I won’t say anything, love. You know your game. But to see you come back each month in that state, well. . I. .

She places her index finger on his lips.

Hush — she smiles. Respect conjugal ties.

He doesn’t love himself. He becomes angry with you. Don’t go back anymore.

Leo, it took me years to decide. To leave or stay. Run away. I would say to him, Álvaro, give me just one hour of peace. Just one. I’m giving you my whole life. Do you know what he answered? He said: Do you want the truth? Well, you won’t have it. I’ll give you something better. The lie. Because in the lie there can be love, but in the truth, never.

SHE TURNED TO SAY GOODBYE. Álvaro opened the door for her and said:

I’m opening the door for you. Why don’t you leave? You’re free.

Have pity, Álvaro. Don’t look for me anymore. Why do you oblige me to come back? Why do you torture me this way?

You’re wrong—Álvaro didn’t look at her, he moved his eyes around the yellow bedroom — I don’t want to see you. Get out.

She was about to touch his hand.

I’m not afraid anymore that you’ll lock me in, really. I don’t care if I’m your slave.

Álvaro opens the door for her.

Why don’t you leave? You’re free. I’ve said it so many times. Fly away, little dove, fly away! My house is not a cage.

I’ll never leave you, Álvaro.

Go. Consider me dead.

I want to take care of you. You’re my husband.

I’m not going to think about problems anymore. When they come, I’ll know how to face them by myself. Of course I will.

He said this with a look that was not resigned but tranquil.

He seemed, Leo, to know more about what’s going to come than what already happened. .

Why? What did he say to you?

He said he was at a crossroads because he hadn’t gotten from me the total love that lasts only one night. .

What did you say?

Nothing. He got down on his knees. He placed his head against my belly and I caressed it.