Carlos Fuentes - Destiny and Desire

“Except workers,” I said.

“And grief,” Miguel added.

“So then”-I wanted to speed up the story-“what did Maximiliano Batalla do that you couldn’t forgive?”

“He killed,” Miguel Aparecido said very serenely.

“Whom?”

“Señora Estrella Rosales de Esparza. Errol Esparza’s mother. Nazario Esparza’s wife.”

Then Miguel Aparecido, as if it had no importance, moved on to other subjects or returned to earlier ones. I was stunned. I remembered Doña Estrellita’s body laid out in the Pedregal house on the day of the wake. I remembered the sinister Don Nazario and knew him capable of anything. I evoked the new lady of the house and did not know what she was capable of. My truest, most tender memory was of Errol, our old buddy from secondary school, with his head like an egg. I repressed my feelings. I wanted to listen to the prisoner of San Juan de Aragón.

“Do you know what hope means?” he asked.

I said I didn’t.

“You’re right. Hope brings nothing but sorrow, trouble, and disappointment.”

I thought I was going to see him being sentimental for the first time. I shouldn’t have had false hopes.

“What would happen if you were to escape?” I dared to ask him.

“Here, chaos. Outside, who knows. Here, people wither. But if I weren’t here, the streets would be filled with corpses.”

“More? I don’t follow.”

“Don’t look at the moon’s ass, prick.”

I was a law clerk. I was a young employee in the companies of Max Monroy. I was bold.

“I’d like to free you.”

“Freedom is only the desire to be free.”

“Free of what, Miguel?” I asked, I confess, with a feeling of growing tenderness toward this man who, without either one of us wanting it, was becoming my friend.

“Of the furies.”

The fury of success. The fury of failure. The fury of sex. The fury of resentment. The fury of anger. The fury of love. All this passed through my head.

“Free, free.”

With an impulse I would call fraternal, the prisoner and I embraced.

“The Mariachi has left here, free. Nazario Esparza’s influence freed him. Maximiliano Batalla is a dangerous criminal. He shouldn’t be walking around.”

He sneezed.

“You know, Josué? Among the criminals in San Juan de Aragón, there aren’t only thieves, there aren’t only innocents, or kids who must be saved, or old men who die here or are killed by a violence I sometimes can’t control. They fill the pool without letting me know. Some kids drown. My power has limits, boy.”

The tiger looked at me.

“There are also killers.”

He tried to look down. He couldn’t.

“They’re killers because they have no other recourse. I mean, if you examine the circumstances, you understand they were obliged to kill. They had no other way out. Crime was their destiny. I accept that. Others kill because they lose the ability to endure. I’m being frank. They put up with a boss, a wife, a crying baby, damn it, listen to me, what I’m telling you is terrifying, I know, laugh, Josué, you tolerate a bitch of a mother-in-law but one day you explode, no more, death urges them on: Kill and death itself appears just behind them. I understand the attraction and horror of crime. I live with crime every day. I don’t dare condemn the man who kills because he has no other recourse. There are those who kill because they’re hungry, don’t forget that…”

His pause frightened me. His entire body quivered without weakness. That’s what made me afraid.

“But not the gratuitous crime. The crime that doesn’t involve you. The crime they pay you for. The crime of Judas. Not that. Absolutely not that.”

He looked at me again.

“Maximiliano Batalla came here and I couldn’t read his face. His face of a criminal on the payroll of a millionaire coward. I reproach myself for that, kid. I entrust you with it.”

“How did you find out?”

“A prisoner came in who knew him. He told me. In the end I control everything. The Mariachi doesn’t even control his own dick. He’s an asshole. But a dangerous asshole. He has to be done away with.”

Then Miguel Aparecido stripped away any shred of tenderness or serenity and presented himself to me as a true exterminating angel, filled with sacred rage, as if he were looking into an abyss where he did not recognize himself, as if obedience were lacking in the cosmos, as if a demon had been born in him who demanded form, only that, the form that would permit him to act.

“The criminal left without my permission.”

He looked at me and changed suddenly, became imploring.

“Help me. You and your friends.”

I felt exasperated.

“If you left here, you could take revenge yourself, Miguel. I don’t know for what. You could take action.”

And his final words that day were at once a defeat and a victory.

“I’m a loyal man only if I remain here. Forever.”

THE SECRET OF Max Monroy-Asunta gave me a class as she sat backlit in her office aquarium, seated so her super-legs would distract me, her most reliable test-is knowing how to anticipate.

“Just like his mother,” I said only to be meddlesome.

“What do you know about that?”

“What everybody knows, don’t be so mysterious.” I returned her smile. “History exists, you know?”

“Max was ahead of everybody.”

Asunta proceeded to give me a class on what I already knew from the mouth of Antigua Concepción. Except that what was spontaneous and lively in Max Monroy’s mother was, in the mouth of Asunta, Max Monroy’s executive secretary, contrived and dull, as if Asunta were repeating a class for beginners: me.

I decided, however, to be a good pupil for her (I admit it), the most attractive woman I had ever met. Elvira Ríos, the whore with the bee, my current ball-and-chain, Lucha Zapata, paled in comparison with this woman-object, this beautiful thing, attractive, sophisticated, elegant, and supremely desirable, giving me little classes on the businessman’s genius. I realized she was repeating a lesson she had memorized. I forgave her because she was good-looking.

What did Max Monroy do? asks an Asunta whose mind, I observe, bursts into flame when she mentions super-boss.

“What has Max Monroy’s secret been?”

According to Asunta, there is not just one secret but rather a kind of constellation of truths. He was not the first, she tells me, to put the modern telephone within reach of everyone. He was the first to foresee a possible clogging of lines because of short supply and excess demand, opening the possibility of buy now pay later but on condition you sign up with us, the companies of Max Monroy.

“Why? Not only because Max Monroy offered in one package telephone, computer, Vodafone, O2, the entire package, Josué, but without deceptive contracts or onerous clauses. Max didn’t care about hiding costs, he didn’t want to exploit or add clauses in illegible print. Everything in big letters, understand? Instead of high prices and high utilities, he proposed low prices and constant utilities with a gesture of freedom, understand? Max Monroy is who he is because he respects the consumer’s freedom, that’s the difference. When Max asked the consumer to abandon networks established earlier, his offer was freedom. Max told each consumer: Choose your own basic monthly package. I’ll give it to you at a fixed price. I’ll permit you to use whatever you want from our network, films, telephone, information, whatever you like and the way you like it. Max addressed specific groups offering them a fixed price in exchange for a constellation of services, assuming the operating costs and subsidizing operations when necessary.”

Asunta adjusted the navy blue pinstripe jacket that was her uniform, which must have moved her to say that Max Monroy was a great tailor.