Carlos Fuentes - The Years With Laura Diaz

“And give me a calm and satisfied old age. I think I deserve one, after all my years of work.”

He spoke with one hand in the side pocket of his blue pin-striped double-breasted suit, the other caressing his lapel. His face was like his suit: buttoned up, double-breasted, striped, with his bluish beard and brows and still-black hair. He was, altogether, a midnight blue man. He never looked at his shoes. They glistened. No need to look.

The third Santiago did not dispute the chart drawn for him by his father until he fell in love with Lourdes, when Danton reacted with a brutality and lack of elegance that the son, from that moment, began to see as attributes of a father he’d loved and whom he’d thanked for so much — the allowance, the four-door Renault, the novelty of the American Express card (with a spending limit), the freedom to wear Macazaga suits (though Santiago preferred leather jackets and jeans) — without judging the motives, acts, justifications or errors in the “that’s the way things are” mode of his father’s words; his father was a man anchored in the security of his economic position and his personal morals, with the nerve to say to his son, “You will follow my path,” and to his son’s girlfriend, “You’re nothing but a stone in the road, get out of the way or I’ll kick you out of the way.”

His father’s attitude riled the young Santiago, enraged him at first, but then encouraged him to do things that had never occurred to him before. He became aware of his own moral nature, and aware that Lourdes too was aware of it: they wouldn’t sleep together until the situation was quite clear; they wouldn’t cheat each other, either with a baby “by mistake” or with sex as mere defiance. Santiago began to ponder, Who is my father, what has my father got that he should have this absolute power over people and this self-confidence?

He told Lourdes, Let’s outsmart him, mi amor, let’s stop seeing each other every day, only in secret on Friday evenings, so the old boy doesn’t get suspicious.

Santiago told Danton, fine, he’d study law, but he also wanted to learn practical things, and to do that he should work in his father’s office. Danton’s satisfaction with his son’s attitude blinded him. He couldn’t imagine any danger in letting his own son into the offices of Cooperative Resource Allotment Partnership (CRAP), a building of glittering glass and stainless steel on Paseo de la Reforma, a few yards from the statue of Christopher Columbus and the Monument to the Revolution. It had once been the site of the Paris-style house with the mansard roof where Butt del Rosal had awaited snow in Mexico — that old aristocrat of the Don Porfirio days whose trick was to eat his gelatin monocle at Carmen Cortina’s soirees. But Paseo de la Reforma — the avenue that the Empress Carlota had created to connect her residence in Chapultepec Castle as Maximilian’s consort with the center of the city (she conceived it as a reproduction of the Avenue Louise in her native Brussels) — was coming to resemble a street in Houston or Dallas, lined with more and more skyscrapers, parking lots, and fast-food outlets.

There, Santiago would learn the business, let him explore every floor, get to know everything, he’s the boss’s son …

He became friends with the file clerk who was mad about bullfighting by giving him season tickets — that year Joselito Huerta and Manuel Capetillo were the stars. He became friends with the telephone operators by getting them passes to the Churubusco Studios so they could watch Libertad Lamarque make her movies: the same Argentine tango singer who’d brought tears to the eyes of Harry Jaffe in Cuernavaca.

Who was this Miss Artemisa who called Don Danton every day? Why did they treat her so deferentially when Santiago wasn’t there and so secretively when he was around? Who was the man his father treated with respect bordering on servility, yes, sir, we’re here to serve you, sir, whatever you say, sir, so strikingly different from those who received only his usual rapid, implacable, and unadorned commands: I need it this minute, Gutierritos, don’t fall asleep on me now, there’s no room for lazy fuckers here and you look like the laziest fucker I’ve ever seen, what’s wrong with you, Fonseca, did the sheets stick to your skin or what, I expect you in a half minute or you’d better start thinking about another job; which differed in turn from those who got the more serious threats, If you have any consideration for your wife and children, I’d recommend you do what I tell you, no, I’m not giving you some orders, I’m commanding you, that’s the way I deal with errand boys, and you, Reynoso, just remember the papers are in my possession and all I have to do is give them to Excelsior to publish and you’ll be up shit’s creek.

“As you say, sir.”

“Get that report up to me on the double.”

“Don’t stick your nose in someone else’s business, you bastard, or you’re going to wake up someday with your balls in your mouth and your tongue up your ass.”

As he penetrated the metal-and-glass labyrinth his father dominated, Santiago searched with equal tenderness and voracity — two names of need but also of love — for Lourdes’ affection. They held hands at the movies, they stared deep into each other’s eyes in cafeterias, they kissed in Santiago’s car, they petted in the darkness, but they waited until they could live together to join completely. They agreed on that, no matter how strange and at times even ridiculous it might seem, sometimes to one, sometimes to the other, sometimes to both. They had something in common. Postponing the act excited them. Imagining each other.

Who was Miss Artemisa?

She had a deep sugary voice, and the finishing touch was when she’d say on the telephone to Danton, “I wuve wou, Tonton, I wuve wou, my widdle sugar pwum.” Santiago almost died laughing when he listened illicitly to this saccharine dialogue, and his laughter redoubled when the severe Don Danton said to his widdle sugar pwum, “What are my little titties up to, how’s my little lazy balls, what does my little Tricky eat to make her kisses taste so pricky?” “I suck bananas every Thursday,” answered the hoarse, professionally tender voice. Lourdes, said Santiago, this is really getting good, let’s find out who this Artemisa or Tricky is and what she really tastes like. My old man takes the cake, I swear!

Santiago wasn’t thinking about the fact that the forgotten Doña Magdalena was being cheated on, he wasn’t a puritan, but I’m curious, Lourdes, and so am I, laughed the fresh and nubile girl from Oaxaca as the two of them waited for Danton to leave the office one Thursday night, when dear old Papa took the inconspicuous Chevrolet out alone, with no chauffeur, and drove to Darwin Street in the Nueva Anzures neighborhood, followed by Santiago and Lourdes in a rented Ford so no one would notice.

Danton parked and went into a house with plaster statues of Apollo and Venus in the entry way. The door closed, and mystery reigned. After a while, music and laughter could be heard. The lights went on and off capriciously.

They came back one morning when a gardener was clipping hedges around the entrance and a maid was dusting the erotic statues. The front door was ajar. Lourdes and Santiago caught a glimpse of a normal bourgeois living room with brocade armchairs and vases filled with calla lilies, marble floors, and a staircase right out of a Mexican movie.

Suddenly at the top of the stairs appeared an arrogant young man with closely cropped hair wearing a silk dressing gown, a cravat at the neck, and — an extravagant detail — putting on white gloves.

“What do you want?” he asked, his brow highly arched and very well plucked, in contrast to his hoarse voice. “Who are you?”