Carlos Fuentes - Happy Families

Instead, they asked themselves: Why wasn’t an obituary published in the papers? Wasn’t that your obligation, Augusta? No, you said you’d do it, Genara. Don’t look at me, said Julia.

5. Later, Augusta wondered if there was a difference between conscience and memory. She thought there was. Memory happens today. We remember today. Conscience is always repentance buried in the past. We prefer to forget.

She didn’t say this because then she feels guilty for saying what she shouldn’t only because her words dictate themselves and demand to be spoken even though Augusta does not know how to and cannot measure the reach of speaking. At times she felt that someone was speaking through her, someone who did understand the difference between conscience and memory, not her, the simple vehicle of a mysterious voice that demanded to be heard.

Whose voice was it?

Was it she herself at another stage of her life, a past or future time when Augusta could understand why her recollections of the past all occurred today but her conscious present always happened in another time, never in the present?

“His demands were excessive,” murmured Genara. “He made the three of us face all the temptations and asked us to beg him for the power to resist them.”

“Speak clearly,” said Julia. “Who was going to resist the temptation, he or us?”

“Who knows? He was very capricious.” Genara shook her head.

“He was a tyrant,” Julia said abruptly, and Genara looked at her in astonishment, Augusta with anticipatory resignation.

Julia had been the pampered little girl and then the defender of their father’s image. This abrupt change was inexplicable unless, Augusta thought, Julia is trying to tell us that her devotion to Papa wasn’t foolishness but an act of conscious will that still led to faith. Augusta took advantage of the moment.

“Did you ever see Papa naked?”

Julia became embarrassed. Then she assented. “And you?” she said to Augusta.

“I don’t know if I saw him.” The older sister smiled maliciously. “I have the impression that I smelled him. He smelled of dirt, of crusted shit, of sweaty armpits, of crotch, of—”

“That’s not true.” Julia covered her sister’s mouth with her hand. “His body smelled of Yardley cologne, his hair of Barry’s Tricopherous—”

“He smelled of urine,” Augusta said with a smile, pleased by Julia’s reaction, her instantaneous fall into the cult to their father, her weakness. “He was a disgusting, miserly, tyrannical old man.”

“Generous, sweet, loving.” Julia sobbed with a fictitious air of repentance.

“A miser,” Augusta continued with repressed ferocity. “He was buried with his gold. He forbade us the comfort that was our right. He was like a wicked king. He would have liked to be buried with his servants and his cattle. And look how he achieved it. He saw our faces. He buried the three of us in his pyramid, like vile concubines. You’re right, Julia, he was a tyrant.”

“A good tyrant, a humane tyrant.” Julia lowered her eyes.

“An authoritarian father,” added Genara. “Isn’t that what we wanted? A strong man who would tell us ‘Do this, don’t do that. .’ Without him, we would have been lost in the world.”

“And he knew it.” Augusta’s response was biting. “That’s why he abused his authority. What did he imagine? That if we were independent, we would steal his power? Why didn’t he understand that our being free would make him stronger?” She looked at Julia scornfully. “He knew that you, Julia, had a vocation for slavery.”

“And you didn’t?” Julia moaned. “You did, too. That’s why you’re here, that’s why the three of us are still here. . because we’re slaves. ”

“Don’t be dense. You still haven’t learned that being a tyrant is a courtesy that frees us from freedom.”

Augusta kept the next thought to herself: Being a tyrant is also being a pedant. And a teacher: A pedant is before anything else the one who educates little boys. And girls. A pedagogue.

This was a pedantic pedagogical prelude to what obsessed Augusta. The fear that they had been the ones who created the tyrant, though he hadn’t wanted it. He’d simply walked by naked. They were the ones who had dressed him. Because they themselves needed power but were afraid of exercising it. They preferred to give it to a poor passerby who was dumbfounded when the crown and ermine cape fell on him. They breathed a sigh of relief. They were rid of the burden.

Power is cowardice, it is our cowardice, Augusta wanted to say aloud and did not dare because she was assailed by the conviction that her sisters would not understand her words. And did not deserve them. Power is cowardice because we do not dare to be powerful. Power is the hot potato we have to pass to a poor, defenseless, naked, mediocre, unimaginative, spiritually disconsolate individual, a stupid creature whom we anoint with the crown and cover with the ermine that we ourselves do not have the courage to wear. The emperor is the distorted reflection of our impotence. The trouble is that once we hand him the scepter, the chosen one believes himself to be truly powerful. He does not know his strength is borrowed. He assumes it without responsibility because we are the responsible ones. We can no longer replace the chief. Only by killing him. Hanging him by the feet in a public square. Cornering him like a rat in a gloomy courtyard. Condemning him to oblivion in the most forsaken part of a prison filled with chronic ailments and deprived of words.

Then a great laugh sounds in Augusta’s hollow skull. You’re wrong, you innocent. I’ll end my days on the Riviera. I’ll occupy an entire floor of a New York hotel. I’ll sail around the Caribbean on my yacht. A Roman legion of tough guys will protect me. I won’t need more than twenty dollars in my pocket. My credit will be unlimited. Just like my laugh. Etcetera.

It made no sense to explain this to her sisters. Why disillusion them? Why deprive them of the illusion of an autonomous, powerful father capable of performing miracles, above all, the miracle of loving his daughters with infinite tenderness and compassion? Why drive them away from their annual visit around the paternal coffin? Why, as a matter of fact, bring them happiness?

Augusta shrugged discreetly. Let us continue to believe that when we gave all our power to our father, we would be exempt not only from responsibility. We would be exempt from blame.

How to explain this to her sisters when Genara was saying foolishness?

“I asked him to say I was all white inside. And he saw me black.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“His eyes said it all. ‘You have a black soul, Genara. Try to redeem yourself. Confess your sins.’ ”

“Which ones?” an irritated Augusta intervened.

“His,” Genara continued. “When I knelt to make my confession, what came out of my mouth was an inventory of Papa’s sins, old conservative, aristocratic, tiresome, you’re not a decadent noble, as you imagine, you’re shameless and arrogant, you’re the worst kind of tyrant, you’re the plebeian climber who doesn’t know how to enjoy the goods of the world because he reverts to his low origins and isn’t accustomed to controlling from above. He staggers. He stumbles. And he reacts by punishing. He abuses his impunity. Doesn’t recognize his errors. Punishes others because he can’t punish himself.”

Genara dissolved into something resembling a gentle spring rain, though her weeping was acute, repeating “Errors, errors,” until she had stripped the word of meaning.

“Which errors, Genara?” Julia looked at her sister, but it was Augusta who spoke, fearing too lifeless a response from Genara, the potter unaccustomed to giving free rein to her feelings beyond a certain limit, as if the world were a large clay vase that could become misshapen with one turn too many of the wheel. The truth is, she felt challenged, displaced by the unexpected vigor of Genara’s words.