Carlos Fuentes - Happy Families

“Penance? You filthy bum, I don’t—”

“Do you even look at your servants? Have you smelled your cook up close, saturated with the aromas of your damn huevos rancheros for breakfast? Tell me the truth, brother, how many people do you know ? How many people have you really gotten close to? Do you live only for the next administrative board?”

Reyes took Luis by the shoulders and shook him violently. The businessman’s glasses fell off. With one hand, Reyes tousled Luis’s hair.

“Answer me, junior.”

Don Luis Albarrán stammered, stunned by bewilderment, injury, impotence, the mental flash that told him, “Everything I can do against my brother, my brother can do against me.”

“And even worse, Luisito. Who looks at you? Really, who looks at you?” Reyes let Luis go with a twisted smile, half boastful, half melancholy. “You live in the ruin of yourself, brother.”

“I’m a decent man.” Don Luis composed himself. “I don’t harm anybody. I’m compassionate.”

“Compassion doesn’t harm anybody?” The discomfiting brother pretended to be amazed. “Do you believe that?”

“No. Not anybody.”

“Compassion insults the one who receives it. As if I didn’t know that.”

“Cynic. You’ve shown compassion to all my servants.”

“No. I’ve given them what each one deserved. I think that’s the definition of justice, isn’t it?” Reyes walked to the door of the bedroom and turned to wink at his brother. “Isn’t it?”

7. “Permit me to express my astonishment to you, Don Luis.”

“Tell me, Truchuela.”

“Your brother—”

“Yes.”

“He’s gone.”

Don Luis sighed. “Did he say what time he’d be back?”

“No. He said, ‘Goodbye, Truchuela. Today is the Day of the Kings. The vacation’s over. Tell my brother. I’m leaving forever, goodbye.’ ”

“Did he take anything with him?” Don Luis asked in alarm.

“No, Señor. That’s the strangest part. He was wearing his beggar’s clothes. He wasn’t carrying suitcases or anything.” The butler coughed. “He smelled bad.”

“Ah yes. He smelled bad. That will be all, Truchuela.”

That was all, Don Luis Albarrán repeated to himself as he slowly climbed the stairs to his bedroom. Everything would return to its normal rhythm. Everything would go back to what it had been before.

He stopped abruptly. He turned and went down to the first floor. He walked into the kitchen with a firm step. He realized he was seeing it for the first time. The servants were eating. They got to their feet. Don Luis gestured for them to sit down. Nobody dared to. Everything would go on as it always had.

Don Luis exchanged glances with each servant, one by one, “Do you ever look at your servants?” and he saw that nothing was the same. His employees’ glances were no longer the same, the boss said to himself. How did he know if, in reality, he had never looked at them before? Precisely for that reason. They were no longer invisible. The routine had been broken. No, it wasn’t a lack of respect. Looking at each one, he was certain about that.

It was a change in spirit that he could not distinguish but that he felt with the same physical intensity as a blow to the stomach. In a mysterious way, the routine of the house, though it would be repeated punctually from then on, from then on would no longer be the same.

“Will you all believe me?” said Don Luis in a very quiet voice.

“Señor?” inquired the butler, Truchuela.

“No, nothing.” Don Luis shook his head. “What are you preparing in the oven, Bonifacia?”

“La rosca de reyes, Señor. Did you forget that today is the Day of the Kings?”

He left the kitchen on the way to his bedroom, on the way to his routine, on the way to his daily penance.

“From now on, everything will put me to the test,” he said as he closed the door, looking at the photograph of the beautiful Chilean Matilde Cousiño out of the corner of his eye.

Yes, he said to himself, yes, I have known love.

He slept peacefully again.

they gave him his death certificate on coffee-colored paper with a hammered frame a water mark and the national seal of the eagle and the serpent visible against the light

who’s going to die?

I am

in fifteen minutes we declare you dead, it costs you fifteen hundred pesos

who certifies it?

we have here the directory of medical forms, the doctor signs even though he doesn’t see the body, it’ll be another fifteen hundred pesos

three thousand?

it’s very little to die in peace, the doctor’s name and the medical document confirm your death

what will I die of?

choose, it can be because a fish bone got caught in your throat

I never eat fish

very simple, the preferred death is by infarction, it leaves no trace

but my family, where will they pray for me?

the best thing is ashes in an urn

and my family?

they can be a dog’s ashes, nobody will know

with this my widow can collect my insurance and pensions?

what, didn’t you tell us you wanted to die so you wouldn’t see your wife and children anymore because they interfered with you?

yes, but I don’t want to leave them out on the street

don’t worry, we arrange everything with “those inside”

good, now I want to come back to life

of course, in fifteen minutes we’ll have your new birth certificate, complete with official documentation and, if you like, a voting document and a taxpayer record

you pay taxes even when you’re dead?

tell us, what name do you want

let me choose

here’s a list from A to Z

well an A and a Z

Amador Zuleta

done

“Amador Zuleta” left the civil registry in Arcos de Belén renewed, breathing deeply, with a roll of bills in his pocket and a ticket on the Red Arrow line that would take him far from his former life, far from the capital, to the north, to a new life, an unknown family, loved for the mere fact that it was different and distinct from all the habits and phrases repeated ad infinitum of the family he was abandoning Mexico City — Ciudad Victoria— Monterrey — Nuevo Laredo

Amador Zuleta stood at the beginning of the longest highway in the republic and began to run to run to run

1. Leo Casares delights in the contemplation of his own space. The apartment on the top floor of an office building on Calle de Schiller. Leo chose it because by day the place is occupied by transitory employees, and by night the most absolute solitude reigns. Leo in his penthouse. Where he lives. His habitat. The private space of a bachelor with no family. The place where times meet freely. The past and the future in the present. The present in the past. The future of the present. Leo proposed to have the apartment reflect a constant will: to convoke all the moments of his life in a current of actual sensations. He spent years choosing furniture, lamps, curtains, tables, mirrors, and above all, paintings to give the sensation of permanent flow.

He would have liked each thing to be its own present on the condition of recalling and foretelling. A space like a crystal ball. Among all the objects in the apartment, Leo has chosen a painting as representative of his will. It is a work by the Japanese painter Katsushika Hokusai. It occupies an entire wall of Leo’s bedroom. It is a portrait of a changing landscape. A wave rises, hiding the fogbound line of the coast. Or perhaps it is the coast that clouds the reality of the wave. The shore is incorporated into the surf. The sea disguises itself as shore. The elements fuse and are confused. The gray of the sea might reflect the green of the coast. The dawn of the dunes might nullify the chiaroscuro of the sky.