Carlos Fuentes - Destiny and Desire

I could, then, deceive discreet readers and still ask them, as an act of faith in me, my life, my book, to believe that in the very act of saying goodbye to Jericó in Terminal One of the Mexico City Airport, in the midst of the infernal din characteristic of that elephantiastic building that extends in all directions, exits, entrances, cafés, restaurants, liquor stores, sarapes, trinkets, mariachi hats, books and magazines, pharmacies, silverware shops, sweets shops, sports shoes, baby clothes, and the life you live from day to day, like a lottery ticket, my country, admitting and expelling thousands of national and foreign tourists, the curious, pickpockets, cabdrivers, porters, police, customs officials, airline employees, in uniform, out of uniform, until in that enormous bowl of oats a second, simultaneously local and foreign city was formed, and I encountered an accident that changed my life.

In an instant a clamor was added to the aforementioned din, which I’ll tell you about now. That’s what happens at the airport, everyone’s city: You think you’re there for one thing and it turns out you were there for something very different. You think you know the direction, the route of your destination within the belly of the aerial ogre, and suddenly the unexpected erupts without requesting permission. You think you have everything with you, and in an instant madness takes the place reserved for reason.

The fact is I was walking calmly though sadly back to the Metro that would take me to my neighborhood, when a person fell into my arms. I don’t say man, I don’t say woman, because this individual was all leather-at least that’s what I felt as I embraced without wishing to the person whose face was hidden behind goggles-or rather, aviator glasses that came down from the leather helmet covering the head of the person who kicked, embraced me in order to escape the police who were holding her, and screamed so they would know her sex. A woman’s piercing voice shouted insults, called the police pricks, pigs, bums, dogs, half-breeds, brutes, sons of the original great whore, first among whores, Mother Evarista, Matildona in person (the name sounded familiar), bastards of all bastardom and of bastardly bastardhood, to make a long story short.

I embraced her. The police had their hands on her back.

“Let her go, please,” I said, carried away by an instinct for sympathy.

“Do you know her?”

“She’s my wife.”

“Well, take better care of her, young man.”

“Lock her up in La Castañeda,” said the oldest and most outdated of the policemen.

“My colleague meant to say she’s crazy.”

“What did she do?” I summoned the courage to ask while the woman clutched at me as if I were a pillar in a storm.

“She wanted to take off in her own small plane on the runway reserved for the Er Franz flight.”

Which was my friend Jericó’s flight to Paris.

“What happened?”

“We stopped her in time.”

“We confiscated the plane.”

“Aren’t you going to charge her?”

“I’m telling you we confiscated the plane.”

I’m not sure if the policeman winked when he said this. His eyes with no cornea, the eyes of an idol, did not move, his lips traced an unwanted complicity. I did not have enough money for a “taste,” and bribery repelled me morally though not philosophically. They made my life easier. All they wanted was to get rid of the woman, and the gods of the Aztec Subterranean, Airport stop, had sent me. I couldn’t imagine, as the Untouchables turned their backs on me, the fate of the requisitioned plane, the tribal division of spoils.

“My name’s Lucha Zapata.”

I embraced her and moved away through the crowd at the air marketplace. I exchanged glances with another woman walking behind a young porter who made gallant gestures, as if pushing a cart of luggage in an airport were the most glamorous piece of acting imaginable. I didn’t know why this modern, young, nimble, elegant woman who moved like a panther, like an animal restlessly tracking the porter, looked at me with such fleeting and intense interest.

“My name’s Lucha Zapata,” my companion repeated. “Take me with you.”

I stopped looking at the elegant girl. I was conquered by minimal solidarity.

THE ENTIRE NEIGHBORHOOD of San Juan de Aragón, at least from Oceanía to Río Consulado, had been razed in a joint action of the City and the Federation in order to erect right there, in the heart of the capital and a few blocks from the lawless district of Ciudad Neza, the largest penitentiary in the republic. It was an act of defiance: The law would not go to distant wastelands where new prison cities with their own regulations are formed. It was a provocation: The law would be installed in the center of the center, within reach, so criminals would know once and for all that they are not a race apart but citizens of prison, with ears that hear the movement of traffic, with noses that smell the aroma of frying food, with hands that touch the walls of the nation’s ha-ha history, with feet a few meters from extinct rivers and the dead lagoon of México-Tenochtitlán.

I understood, continuing my pragmatic forensics course, that minors were kept between life and death in the great subterranean pool, left to the accident of death by water or a Tarzanesque survival. Now I learned that older criminals were confined on the upper floor, with devices that meticulously picked up the sounds of the city outside, a true metropolis of liberties and joy compared to the Dantesque city of sorrow-the cittá dolente -that awaited me on the upper floor, where it was difficult to hear the voices of the convicts over the snare of urban sounds, horns, motors, the squeal of tires, insults, the shouts of vendors, the silences of beggars, offers of sex, sighs of love, childish songs, school choruses, kneeling prayers, all amplified by perverse loudspeakers intent on torturing the prisoners with the memory of freedom.

I armed myself with courage to complete not only the requirements of the university course-“forensic practice”-but also to honor the decision of my respected teacher Sanginés. The upper prison of San Juan de Aragón, above the children’s pool, was a large space on one floor. “Here nobody empties chamber pots down on us,” said the unsmiling guard who was my guide now, but on whose shoulders a polished and repolished cleanliness shone with a faint perfume of shit.

Siboney Peralta was a Cuban mulatto about thirty years old with long hair arranged in twisted braids, naked to his navel with the clear intention not only to display his musculature but to frighten or forestall with the power of his biceps, the profound throb of his pectorals, and the menacing hunger of his guts. He wore no shoes and his trousers were rags wrapped around an indistinct sex that could just as easily have been a long hose or a little knob. His crime was not one of passion. It was, according to Siboney, an enigma, a mystery, chico.

“A small mystery?”

“No, very big, chico.”

Siboney didn’t know why he was in prison. He loved music, so much it turned his head, he said, flexing all his muscles, to the point where he couldn’t help doing what the music said.

“I’m a child of the bolero, compay.”

Siboney obeyed the bolero. If the words said “Look at me” and the woman didn’t look at him, Siboney filled with holy rage and strangled her. If the song indicated “Tell me if you love me as I adore you” and the woman didn’t turn around to look at him, the least she received was a Siboneyera beating. If he asked her at a distance if she had a thought for him and if at a distance she remained silent, the mulatto attacked with chairs, windows, plates, flowerpots, what he found at hand in the silent universe of his desire.