Carlos Fuentes - Happy Families

He did not identify those two bodies. They were not familiar. He noticed that he did not recognize the colors offered him by the world of the painting. They were too new, perhaps happy, in any case, frighteningly pure. The colors were pure and bold. The figures, on the other hand, seemed impure and uncertain.

Leo shook his head. He looked directly at the painting. It was pure glass. It was transparent. It was the perfect work of art. Each person put in it what he or she wanted to see. Nothing more. And nothing less. That was the miracle of the Japanese painting. It was a virtual work. It was pure emptiness as liquid as the air, as aerial as the ocean. It was an invisible mirror. It was an eternally renewed story. .

10. When he went into the bathroom, he found the mirror smeared with toothpaste and the tube, used up, tossed carelessly into the wastebasket.

Leo shrugged. He did not want to calculate which of the two had used this bathroom.

they come from the north

they occupy the city of nuestra señora de la porciúncula de

los ángeles on the border with mexico

they come from the south

they occupy the city of tapatatapachula south of chiapas on the border

with guatemala

they divide up the city of los ángeles

the mexican mafia are the southsiders

the salvadoran mara sansalvatrucha are in control from thirteenth street

to central venice

the mestizos from venice thirteen to south central

the mexican wetbacks wherever night finds them

they invade the city of tapachula

they cross the coatán river

they vandalize silversmiths goldsmiths as they please

they steal orange saddles still redolent of

sacrificed cattle

they take off their pants to feel the down on the saddle

mix with the hair of their sex

the clicas confront the gangas of los ángeles

the salvadoran marassansalvatruchas against the

mexican mafia

the confrontation

each crew sends its big guys in front

its giant headbreaking fighters

the clash takes place at the devil’s corner calle

666 and eighteen

the raza endures

the maras break your head stomp on you fuck you up

but the mexican babes reward you with kisses after the brawl

the maras announce their attacks in tapachula

they close the schools

but nobody can run away

the maras come down whistling from the volcanoes

they walk like spiders with spiders

they pull out sawed-off shotguns and daggers that they saw off

they control the train run from chiapas to tabasco

they tie their victims to the train track

the train cuts off their legs

the gang members disappear in the forest

they reappear in los ángeles

they specialize in drive-by shootings

firing at random from their cars

at their mexican rivals

they pretend to be mexicans their accent gives them away

captain bobby of the LAPD the los ángeles police

force is capturing them one by one

they come from the wars of ronaldanger ronaldranger

ronaldanger in central america

sons of

grandsons of

exiles who identify themselves with a tattoo on the arm and they

give themselves away with a false mexican accent

they hate mexico

the captain smiles he knows

send them back to salvador captain bobby?

no way

fly them back home?

no way

they say they are mexicans? send them back through mexico

let mexico deal with them

from the south

from soconusco

from the north

from california

they advance toward the center mexicocity greattenochtitlán

baptismal water of the nahuas from sacramento to nicaragua

an interminable pilgrimage

from south to north from north to south

the mara salvatrucha gang and the mara dieciocho gang

rivals united by death

a hundred thousand members on the two borders

a hundred thousand gangs in mexico city

between pensil norte and los indios verdes

they announce themselves with graffiti in all the urban centers

black spray paint stylized letters

they dress like hoods heads shaved and tattooed

they have their hole in lost cities

lairs in iztapalapa

refuges in gustavo madero

they attack kill extort rape murder

leave mutilated bodies in the streets

their leaders are called commanders of the clica

their head is called “the sinister one”

they wait for christmas for their great slaughter

twenty-eight people murdered on the D.F. subway

twenty-one wounded

six children

they want the land burned from border to border

“let them be afraid of us”

they murder to frighten

they free to tell about it

they have dry skin and foaming mouths

they are the army of silence

they never speak

they communicate by signs

CALLE 8

CALLE 18

FLY AWAY,

BIRDS

1. Each anniversary the father made an appointment with them in this old place next to the sunken park. The sunken park was not its official name, but Parque Luis G. Urbina, in honor of a poet of the last century. The popular name has survived the fame of the poet, and everybody gives as a direction “Take me to the sunken park,” which is a cool, shaded urban depression in the midst of countless avenues and mute skyscrapers. Not a fierce oasis but a shadowy refuge. A green roof for lovers greener still. Even when you climb up from the park, you have the feeling that you’re climbing down. The park is sinking, and the city is sinking along with it.

The three sisters — Julia, Genara, and Augusta — respond to their father’s call on the day of the anniversary. For the rest of the year, they don’t see or speak to one another. Genara makes pottery. Julia plays the violin. Augusta manages a bank, but she compensates for this lack of modesty with social work in working-class neighborhoods. Even though they don’t search one another out, they are joined by the fact that they are daughters of the same father, and they do what they do in order to show their father that they don’t need the inheritance. They refuse to receive a fatal inheritance because of the fact that they are their father’s daughters. The three work as if they are not going to receive anything. Or perhaps as if they deserve to inherit only if they demonstrate from now on that with or without an inheritance, they can earn a living. Besides — except for Augusta — they do it with a humility calculated to offend or at least disconcert their father. Except for Augusta.

Is an inheritance won or lost? Augusta smiles at the thought. Do the sisters know which their father prefers? To offer the inheritance, although the three of them are perfect idlers? Or to save it until he finds out that the three of them are not waiting for the comfort of a promised bequest but are earning their livings without worrying about their father’s desire? Or would their father be irritated if the sisters, instead of waiting idly for the testamentary period to be over, find occupations?

Their father is very severe. He would tell his daughters that the richer the family, the more ungrateful the descendants.

“You don’t know how to value things. You didn’t work your way up, like me. You feel like destiny’s pampered darlings. Bah! Keep guessing whether you’ll inherit or will be disinherited. And if you inherit, try to imagine how much I’ll leave you.”