Carlos Fuentes - Happy Families

Thanks.

But not the first time. With you, I had to get used to you. With him, I was afraid so much pleasure right away could only produce a kind of backlash of reduced sensations as time passed and we became accustomed to being together.

The law of diminishing returns.

But no. The truth was that the initial excitement lasted a long time. Danger helps, of course. Trysts, places that are nice but of necessity secret, fear of being discovered.

One’s companion always viewed as a temptation, not as a habit.

Exactly. Heaven on earth, isn’t it? Everything’s so unpredictable, so risky, so destructive to everyone if you’re discovered, that. . Well, I admit it all feeds the vanity of a woman who feels herself needed, admired, without the humiliating sensation of just being there like a piece of furniture.

It’s the good thing about being the mistress and not the wife.

Why?

The wife makes the bed after love. The mistress has a maid who makes it for her.

Don’t kid around, Leo. I’m talking to you seriously.

Like a piece of furniture, you were saying. .

Waiting for the man to sit on you, eat on you, urinate on you without even looking at you. Cristóbal made me feel unique. Queen of a kingdom with only two subjects, he and I, both subject to the desires — all the desires — of the other, which, because it was what the other wanted, belonged to both and to each, to me, to him. .

Fornication is a universal and inalienable right.

At first he filled me with enthusiasm. He made me ecstatic. He told me things like “You have a fragile beauty and an intense sadness.” How could I not love him? It’s an ornate sentence, vulgar perhaps, but you’re not told that every day, Leo, you’re told what time we’ll see each other, I’ll be back at seven, order me some tacos, where did you leave the keys, you’re not told that your beauty is fragile and your sadness profound, no, not that. . Nobody but a passionate man tells you he doesn’t know if you’re beautiful because you’re proud or proud because you’re beautiful, things like that. I would watch him combing his hair and get terribly excited. He combed his hair with his fingernails, you know? I spied on him when he tidied up in front of the mirror alone pushing his hair back alone before returning alone to the bedroom alone with the strength of an animal and with my own secret animality maintaining the very human love of the looks I gave him without his knowing I was looking at him. We made love, and he called me whore bitch in heat shameless tight cunt with a clit as cute as a golf course he told me all that with no shame and finally:

“If you deceive me, I want you to be faithful to me. If you’re faithful to me, I want you to deceive me.”

In everything, almost, you’re very frank. And you have a good memory.

What? Do you think something like this can be forgotten?

Not everyone knows how to mix memory and desire. When the second ends, the first goes away.

Leo, the most attractive vanity can become repellent. Habitual surprise can stop surprising one day. No, he’s always given me the best. The best hotels, the best restaurants, the most beautiful trips, everything first class, always. I have nothing to complain about. But do you know something, Leo? Even the unexpected became routine. I can’t reproach him for his desire to pay attention to me, to always take me to the most elegant places. The moment came when I wanted everything except the exceptional. Because I began to anticipate the extraordinary, you know? Then the ordinary threatened to come back. With indomitable strength, the strength of the exceptional. Normalcy began to appear in every first-class section of Air France, every suite at every Ritz, every table at El Bodegón, truffles began to make me itch, pheasants left me cross-eyed, lobsters grabbed at my hands to pull me back to the ocean floor. . Love can suffocate us, Leo. It’s like eating candy all the time. You have to give tedium its due. You have to be grateful for the boring moments in a relationship. You have to. . You have to stop anticipating the extraordinary. You have to learn to foresee the foreseeable.

It’s the best thing about love.

You said it! What happens is that nobody foresees the moment when you no longer want to be as happy as you were and you desire a little of that unhappiness called ordinary life. Well, what you give me, Leo.

X kills Y and Z kills X.

You pay attention to me—

I’m referring to proofs.

You never talk about yourself. You listen to me.

I pay attention only to you, Lavinia.

Aren’t you ever offended?

You and I never had to pretend. Not before, not now.

I admit there are confidences I don’t like to hear.

I’m just the opposite, Lavinia, I love hearing yours. Please go on.

Do you know what I began to detest in him?

No.

His laugh. The way he laughed. At first I thought it was part of his charm. You’re pretty solemn, if truth be told.

Just serious. A little serious.

He had an elegant laugh. Spontaneous. Joyful. Everything well rehearsed.

Have you ever heard sad laughs?

Something worse. There are laughs with significance.

I don’t understand.

Of course you do, you know. Those people who never laugh at somebody else’s jokes and die laughing at their own, though nobody else finds them funny. I mean, Cristóbal began to laugh to redeem his defects. I realized he wasn’t only laughing at a joke or to lighten a tiresome situation. Not to liven up the conversation and even life itself. He laughed to excuse himself. When he did something wrong. When he said something inopportune. When he forgot an anniversary. When he was late for an appointment. When he fired a servant without consulting me first. When he didn’t like my makeup, my dress, the book or magazine I was reading, he laughed. He laughed at me. He excused himself for throwing out my lipstick or giving half my wardrobe to the Red Cross or grabbing away the book by Dan Brown or my copy of Hola! laughing as he said bad taste, trash, I have to educate you.

What did you say?

Hey, don’t play Pygmalion with me. That popped out. It was our first disagreement. After that, he enjoyed criticizing me with an eyedropper, always smiling.

Did you say anything to him?

I’m untorturable. That’s what I told him. It was a mistake. He began to annoy me more and more. I didn’t let him. Your successes bore me, I told him. Don’t tell me about them anymore. Stop presenting yourself to me as a man who makes important decisions every half hour. Your decisions bore me. Every night you come into my bedroom shouting “Land ho!” You had a good time colonizing me, Cristobalito. Don’t you ever put off a decision? Don’t you ever reflect, don’t you ever take your time? And not only that, Leo. Slowly I began to realize that behind the boasting about successes, Cristóbal wanted to impress me with a very powerful love, bigger than any affection for me. Love of manipulation. Loyalty to lies. That’s what was behind his boasting.

How did you find out?

It was incredible, Leo. Priscila Barradas, my best friend, you know, the fat woman, made a date with me at the bar in the lobby of the Camino Real. We were drinking margaritas and gossiping very happily when suddenly, fat Pris very calmly stood up and walked out to the lobby. Cristóbal came into the hotel, and she stopped him, holding his arm, whispered something into his ear with her nasty bean breath, and he looked toward the bar nervously, not meeting my eyes — not like the first time, you see? — and hurried away. Shameless Priscila went after him, leaving me flat, sitting in front of a margarita getting warmer and warmer. Oh yes, and leaving me to push up daisies, the old bitch.