Carlos Fuentes - Destiny and Desire

Then why did this man refuse to be free, perpetuate his prison, and almost boast of being a prisoner? It was enough for me to look at him to understand that Miguel Aparecido did not deliver his truths just like that. It was enough to see how he looked at me to know I needed to respond with patience to his mystery, and this pawned a portion of my future and my own freedom to the life of this strange individual who finally, once the time periods imposed by life imprisonment were understood, told me something concrete and asked me for something explicit.

“You leave here for only three reasons. Because you die. Because you complete your sentence. Or because you escape.”

If I looked at him in a questioning way, it was unintentional.

“And again, you escape only if you don’t die, or because you’re a badass for running away, or because you have powerful connections,” he continued. “Yesterday a convict left here only because of his connections. And that makes me very angry.”

I believe that if the Devil exists, at that moment Miguel Aparecido appeared to me as Lucifer, Satan, Mephistopheles, the Prince of Darkness enveloped in the shadows of an immense history of accumulated vengeances, violent desires, delayed wishes, arbitrary destinies, and nights without light.

“The man and the woman who freed him unjustly must be punished.”

I still don’t know how I survived that morning in the diabolical presence of Miguel Aparecido.

“Find your friend Errol Esparza. Tell him he ought to take his revenge.”

The order resounded for me in the vast hollowness of prison silences.

“He ought to take his revenge.”

“On whom?”

“The man is Nazario Esparza. The woman is Sara Pérez, Sarape, she used to be a whore in La Hetara’s house.”

THE VENDETTA ORDERED by Miguel Aparecido was postponed because of other pressing matters. Sanginés sent Jericó to Los Pinos as a young aide in the presidential office. And me he directed to collaborate in the management of the powerful Max Monroy’s enterprises, out toward Santa Fe, in a new border area of a troglodytic Mexico City.

The distances between remote neighborhoods of the capital can involve as much as two hours of travel. The distance from the apartment on Praga to Cerrada de Chimalpopoca and now to my unexpected destination of Santa Fe was the same as the distance from Rotterdam to The Hague and from The Hague to Amsterdam, without taking into account my visits to San Juan de Aragón prison.

What could I do? My bewilderment suggested a way out: another visit to the señora buried in the nameless grave, whose location I did not know, to ask her for advice. The dead don’t have schedules. Unless eternity is the clock without hands where time melts.

I said these words to myself as I walked along Paseo de la Reforma, hesitant about my destination or destinations, when the sky darkened, the angel flew down from the top of the Columna de la Independencia, grasped me by the collar, rose up with a howl or sob or sigh-all at the same time-and taunted me as he asked, breaking my concentration:

“Do you know the sex of angels?”

I wanted to reply they have none, that’s why they can be angels, except that the creature carrying me through the air silenced my words and spoke to me in a man’s voice, and I recognized that voice, it belonged to my old friend Ezekiel, the prophet enveloped in a turbulent wind that flew me over castles and skyscrapers, magnificent slopes and bare hills, neighborhoods of mud and gardens of roses, stating his recommendations as we flew: be on your guard, don’t fear them, speak to them even though they don’t listen, fast, inform them a prophet will come among them, tell them to listen to the voices of the multitude, and I heard a great laugh when the prophet Ezekiel, who was also, in his free time and when he had a yen for transvestism, the Angel of Independence, let me go, and I saw that one of his feet gleamed but it was a calf’s foot.

The storm steered my fall. A sudden ground blocked it. Green foliage softened it.

I fell on my face.

In front of me, once again the grave of

ANTIGUA CONCEPCIÓN

And the familiar voice:

Walk around my grave three times, Josué. Thank you for coming alone. We live in a guarded world. Nobody moves without a bodyguard. They say it’s for security. Pure potatoes. It’s pure fear. We live in fear. We tighten our asshole, to put it politely.

Her sigh made the earth tremble.

Not you, she continued. You’re not afraid. That’s why you come to see me alone. I’m grateful. Alone with your soul. Because even though you don’t believe it, you have a soul, my boy. Take care of it. Don’t trade it for a plate of lentils or bean soup.

“Señora,” I said, “I’m going to work in the office of Max Monroy. Your son, Señora…”

I know that.

“Who told you?”

The earth trembles. It’s her way of speaking. I receive messages each time it trembles.

“Ah!”

I suppressed my own astonishment and quickly added:

“What kinds of messages, Señora?”

That you’re going to enter a new world, silly. Before, in the world I knew, it was the president of the republic who dispensed justice, listened to complaints, and received petitions, the old king! Once I came with my complaints and petitions to President Adolfo Ruiz Cortines, the last president. He didn’t even look at me. All he said was: Don’t bother me. Then, I answered, don’t be president. He looked up and in his eyes drunk with the sun I saw what power was: a tiger’s gaze that made you lower your eyes and feel fear and shame.

I believe at that moment the earth where the señora was buried was the enormous eye of a hurricane.

She must have read my mind.

Don’t be an asshole, she said with the arrogant vulgarity I was already familiar with. If you’re going to work with my son, be careful. Max Monroy is my heir. He’s another breed of creature. Mine. Earlier millionaires are beggars beside Max Monroy. Look, I knew them all. They became rich thanks to the revolution, which raised them up from nothing, opening opportunities for them that had once been denied to those at the bottom. Federico Robles fought in Celaya with Obregón against Villa, and from then on One-arm pampered him, directing him into politics, and when politics became dangerous or stopped producing, he guided him into business, which was then virgin territory, or as Robles himself said-a strong but sentimental man who decided to build on desolate battlefields, and even to stain his conscience-one had to sacrifice ideals to build a country, to feel that one had a right to everything for having made the revolution, established the foundations of capitalism, created a stable middle class, and invented true Mexican power, which “consists,” Federico Robles would say, “of nothing but grabbing the country by the back of the neck” and being “one big badass,” and that same man, she declares, was capable of portraying a woman he loved, respecting her, loving her without raising her up or sinking her, offering her a sweet brutality, the strength that a woman-she, Hortensia Chacón-needed in order to love and deserve her life. This I know. Or the case of Artemio Cruz, another millionaire who came from nothing, from a miserable hovel, and made a fortune changing sides, moving at just the right time from one faction to another, betraying thousands to take over a newspaper and dedicate himself to making a fortune by serving the powerful man on duty at the time… who was, when all was said and done, himself, Artemio Cruz and no one else…

Another seismic sigh.

Ay! And yet he was a man, had loves, lost them, Artemio Cruz had a wound, kid, do you have any? I don’t see scars on your body…