Carlos Fuentes - Happy Families

Leo contemplates the painting for hours. He is convinced that he sees in it what he wishes to see, not what the painting attempts to represent. He wonders if Hokusai has the same power over other viewers. How do women see it? “My women,” says Leo in a quiet voice. “My two women.” How?

2. The good thing about a mobile phone is that it allows you to lie, let us say, with mobility. You’re not tied to the umbilical cord of a precise place. If your husband suspects, he answers the mobile; my husband leaves the message or I, the liar, answer it. Not a soul can find out. I was with you but told him I’m in the car on the way to the hairdresser.

Adultery was never so easy, Lavinia.

Don’t use that ugly word.

What, then?

The affaire. You know, you just say the affaire.

My affaire, our affaire ? And what will happen on the day when not only the number you’re calling from but your face appears on the screen of your husband’s telephone?

Shut up! I’ll have to wear makeup even in the shower! But that isn’t the point, Leo. Do you think Cristóbal will care if he finds out?

Please don’t play with me. The danger is that he will care, and then he’ll decide to conquer you.

Reconquer me, you mean.

Lavinia, forget about the arithmetic of coitus. A modern woman ought to deceive her husband as many times as he deceives her. Do you care?

I don’t know. I’d like to take the lead. You understand.

What’s stopping you?

You, my love. I’m unfaithful to you only with Cristóbal, no one else. Why am I telling you that! I’m unfaithful to you, and that’s the truth.

Am I enough for you?

Look, Leo, a woman is always prepared to be adored. What counts is the intensity of the adoration, not the number of adorers. What a mess! You and my husband are more than enough for me, I swear.

Still, he and I give you different things.

Don’t tempt me, Leo. I’m here in your arms, and the only thing that makes me feel I’m right is everything I despise in my husband. It’s clear as crystal.

It’s not very exciting to know you’re the better-than-nothing of a discontented wife.

Don’t be an idiot. Listen to me. You know how to talk. You know how to seduce with your tongue, aha! Cristóbal is the master of flat conversation. “What did you say?” “Why didn’t you tell me?” “What were you going to say?” It’s exasperating. To be waiting for a dialogue that never happens.

Does your husband make up for his silences in some way?

It isn’t silence. It’s repetition.

In other words, it’s silence with noise.

Sometimes I don’t follow you, Leo. All I know is that Cristóbal is an excessive, arrogant, pedantic man who thinks he’s the papa of all jokesters. Let me tell you. If I want to take him to a party and he doesn’t want to go, I say, “Come on, Cristóbal, everybody’s going,” and he just gives me an icy look and says: “No, I’m not going.” Do you believe his petulance? Another thing: I’m so tired of the phrases he repeats over and over again. “I’m not asking you to believe me, Lavinia.” “It would be better for you, Lavinia.” “It’s all right with me, Lavinia.” “Seeing is believing, Lavinia.” “Just in case, Lavinia.” “The man hasn’t been born, Lavinia.” He’s a balloon of self-esteem. Tarzan’s papa. Let me tell you.

Why don’t you deflate him?

I don’t think he’s deflatable.

Make him think it would be cruelty on your part to resist him.

Shall I tell you how he’d respond? He’d treat me with contempt in public. He’s already done it. If he thinks I’m doing well with him, he becomes irritated inside and waits for the opportunity to humiliate me in front of others. Then he feels victorious.

Of course, you don’t dare attack him in public.

You know I don’t. My upbringing wouldn’t let me.

And in private? Don’t you ever break your rule of conjugal perfection to criticize him in private?

I can’t. Cristóbal has a terrible weapon against me. He threatens to make me a witness of what I can’t see. That silences me.

Do you suspect?

I imagine. I imagine something intolerable that I don’t want to be exposed to. Leo, I don’t know anymore what I should feel, being married. With you, I do know what I feel.

Well, instead of matrimonial red tape, I give you love and admiration.

But you can’t make them public.

In your heart, what do you reproach your husband for, Lavinia?

For not being able to hold me. There it is. The truth, what do you think? He could only oblige me. Understand? I’m tied to obligation. Pure and simple.

Can’t you break off your relationship to your husband?

Don’t be cynical, Leo. I’ve proposed leaving him and living with you. You’ve told me a thousand times not to, that living together would ruin what we have—

A perfect affaire !

That’s what you say. How can you ask me now to leave my husband if I know you wouldn’t accept me as your wife?

Darling, who told you to leave your husband and marry me?

Who’s talking about marrying? Living together, that’s all, my love.

You don’t understand, Lavinia. I’m talking about you leaving your husband, not for me but for another husband.

Then what about you and me?

The same as always, darling. You married to Monsieur Quelconque, Mr. Nobody, and you and I free lovers forever after, with no domestic deadweight.

Really, just like now.

Except with a different partenaire.

Does that excite you, you cynic?

We’d be lovers and not create problems for anybody.

We wouldn’t gain anything.

We wouldn’t lose anything, either.

Then tell me what we gain if we don’t lose.

Being apart so we want each other more. Distance increases desire. It’s almost a Church dogma. Abelard and Heloise. Tristan and Isolde. You know.

I say we already have that. Explain what we would gain if I change husbands but continue as your lover.

I’ll tell you later.

You’re pushing me, Leo.

Toward what?

I’m just letting you know. Don’t push me too much, my love.

3. Leo looks intently at the painting by Hokusai. That Oriental sea — the rougher it becomes, the more cold it gives off. A white sail rises from the waves, which are so intense, and the sail so fragile, that one would doubt the existence of anything else: the undiscovered country, said the Bard, from whose bourn no traveler returns. Is that sail tossed on the agitation of the elements an act of mercy? Does it keep us from seeing the imaginary land hidden by the fog? Not to mention landing on it? Is the mist a friendly invitation to remain where we are, not to go beyond, to that làbas of the imagination where temptation and danger, satisfaction and disappointment, the life of death tremble like flames? Beyond. Taking the next step. Not settling for the crooning hush of the sea and its white sirens. Hush: crush. Crush the song of the sirens with drowned resonances and hostile foam. Hush the streams that come down from the sierra looking for the way to the sea. Crush the sirens so they don’t daze us. Daze and detain. Leo would have liked to set foot on the coast. Would he dare? Had he lived his life so far as a delicious conjuring trick, not daring to take the next step, the step from game to life, from shadow to wall, from appearance to touch, from touch to true absence? From observation of the sea to the certainties of terra firma, where all imaginary dangers are transformed into the greatest danger: no longer sensing any danger at all?

4. It’s all true, Leo. Álvaro insults me, abuses me, doesn’t appreciate me, mistreats me, but at the same time he complains violently that the world insults him, people abuse him, injustice victimizes him, and destiny mistreats him. That’s his posture. He’s simply giving me what the world, destiny, and people have given him. The worst thing is that deep inside, he believes this identifies us and, in a way, makes us partners in misfortune, so to speak. He makes us depend on each other in unhappiness. He and I. He creates an effect filled with blame.