Carlos Fuentes - Destiny and Desire

“She says, ‘Yes, but I won’t be able to love again without you.’ ”

The car braked at a green light because the opposite light was also green and cars screeched to a halt, blowing impotent horns.

“The end of life is sudden and inexplicable,” Sanginés managed to say over the noise.

“Of power or of force?” I said in a voice so quiet he perhaps didn’t hear me, because he continued unperturbed.

“Believe me that one lives a final moment in which one’s life slips away in taking more and more pills, not for relief, not even to survive, Josué, but just to urinate. Like a-”

“An animal,” I interrupted brutally.

“The thing is… The thing…” murmured Sanginés as if he doubted what he would say next. “The thing is…”

He didn’t look at me. He didn’t want to look at me. I obstructed his gaze.

“Miguel Aparecido isn’t an animal. He isn’t a thing. He’s the son of Max Monroy. Why don’t you talk to me about that, Maestro? That abandonment, that irresponsibility, just tell me this: Doesn’t that abandonment condemn Max Monroy’s entire life, doesn’t it disqualify him as a man and as a father?”

The noise of maddened car horns, police whistles, furious voices did not mitigate my own inflamed voice, as if, in the name of my friend Miguel Aparecido, I had acquired a recriminatory tone stronger than all the city’s cacophony, the din that penetrated in dissipated form all the way to Miguel Aparecido’s cell, as if México D.F. would not grant peace even to prisoners-or the dead.

He decided to look at me. I wish I had avoided that. Because in Antonio Sanginés’s gaze, when he and I were enclosed in a car stopped at the intersection of Chapultepec and Bucareli, I saw my own postponed truth, my own destiny deflected and eventually recovered, the lost origin of a child who lived on Calle de Berlín in the care of a tyrannical governess…

Sanginés said calmly: “An entire life looking for one’s own place, one’s personal position. That’s what Max says. And he adds: I don’t want to give anything to anybody. Let them struggle. Let them stand on their own feet.”

“Who?”

“His sons,” said Sanginés with a certain repentant brutality.

“His son, Miguel Aparecido,” I corrected him spontaneously.

“The hope that the courage and will demonstrated by him are repeated in his sons. That’s what you mean.”

“His son,” I repeated. “That’s what I mean-”

“Otherwise, the silver platter is the same as the silver bridge your enemy runs away on,” he insisted.

“I’ve visited Miguel Aparecido. You know that, Maestro. You allowed me to enter the Aragón prison. I know Miguel’s story. I know his father treated him with contempt and cruelty. I know Miguel left prison prepared to kill Monroy. I know he returned to prison in order not to do it, to distance himself from the temptation of parricide… I understand him, Don Antonio, I understand Miguel, I swear I do.”

“Instead”-I don’t know if Sanginés smiled or if the play of lights turned on suddenly along the avenue feigned the smile-“let the boys stand on their own feet. Let them know difficulties. Let them achieve happiness and power on their own. But don’t let the destiny of Miguel Aparecido be repeated, the abandonment and crime determined by my powerful, invincible mother, Doña Concepción.

“Do not let it be repeated,” Sanginés said two or three times. “Let my sons be formed alone but not forsaken. Let them count on everything, house, servants, monthly allowances, but not with the deadly cushioning of a rich father, not with lassitude, abandon, frivolity, the unfortunate security of not having to do anything in order to have everything. Let them have something in order to have something. I’ll put them to the test. You send them the money each month, Licenciado. Let them lack for nothing. But not have too much of anything. I want their own life for my sons, without guilt or hatred…”

Clearly Sanginés, for the first time, confronted his emotion, abandoned the upright gravity of a discreet lawyer and prudent adviser, freed himself for a kind of catharsis that moved more quickly than the car when it left the traffic circle at Insurgentes to take Florencia to the Paseo de la Reforma.

I looked at him with amazement. He wanted to abandon discretion, gravity, not simply rein them in.

“He left them free, without the intolerable pressures and distorted affections of a mother,” Sanginés said in his new emotional tessitura.

“He left them? Who?” I tried unsuccessfully to clarify. “Them…? Who…?”

“He left them free so they could be themselves and not a projection of Max Monroy…”

“Free? Who, Maestro? Who is it you’re talking about?” I insisted, calmly.

“Let my sons not repeat my life…”

“My sons? Who, please? Who?”

“Let them create their life and not be content with inheriting it. Let them never believe there is nothing left to do…”

The Mercedes stopped in front of the apartment building on Calle de Praga. A feeling of malaise, of uneasiness, together with a humiliating sensation of having been used, impelled me out of the car.

“Goodbye, Maestro…”

Sanginés got out too. I took out the key and opened the door. Sanginés followed me, disturbed and nervous. I began to climb the stairs up to the top floor. Sanginés followed warily, impatiently, with something resembling pain. I didn’t recognize him. I imagined his actions were driven by a duty perhaps not his own. Actions driven by someone else. Such was the nervous preoccupation of his behavior.

The stairway was dark. On my floor the light was not turned on. Everything was shadows and reflections of shadows, as if total darkness did not exist and our eyes, don’t they eventually become accustomed to the blackness, in the end denying its dominion?

“He didn’t want to leave them adrift in crime, like Miguel Aparecido,” Sanginés said urgently.

I didn’t reply. I began to walk up. He came behind me, like an unexpected ghost in need of the attention I denied him, perhaps because I feared what he was telling me now and could reveal to me later. But there was no later, the lawyer wanted to talk now, he pursued me from step to step, he didn’t leave me alone, he wanted to snatch away my peace…

“They let Max Monroy into the asylum.”

“The asylum?” I managed to say without stopping, compelled to reach the sanctuary of my garret, astonished by the lack of logical continuity in a man who taught the theory of the state with the precision of a Kelsen.

“He maintained the asylum, he gave them money.”

“I understand.” In spite of everything, I wanted to be courteous.

“They let him in. They left him alone with the woman.”

“Who? With whom?”

“Sibila Sarmiento. Max Monroy.”

I was going to stop. The name halted my movements but hurried my thoughts. Sibila Sarmiento, Max Monroy’s young bride, locked away in the madhouse by the wickedness of Antigua Concepción.

“Miguel Aparecido’s mother…” I murmured.

Sanginés took my arm. I wanted to pull away. He didn’t let me.

“The mother of Jericó Monroy Sarmiento one year and of Josué Monroy Sarmiento the next.”

“HE’S IN A safe place.” The phrase repeated by Sanginés and Asunta regarding Jericó’s destiny tormented me now. It referred to my brother. It brought up huge questions associated with memories of our first meeting at the Jalisco School, El Presbiterio… Was that encounter prepared beforehand too, wasn’t it simple chance that brought my brother and me together? To what extent had Max Monroy’s desire directed our lives? Beyond the monthly allowances each of us received without ever finding out where they came from. Who argues with good luck? Beyond the coincidences we didn’t want to question because we took them as a natural part of friendship. Through my memory passed all the acts of a fraternity that, I knew now, were spontaneous in us but watched over and sponsored by third parties. And this was a violation of our freedom. We had been used by Max Monroy’s feelings of guilt.