Christopher Unborn (11 page)

The modest truth is that the bugle boy, Rigoberto Palomar, accompanied by his faithful mascot, a retriever named Moses, found the arm, which the dog sniffed and took up in his jaws. Rigo kept the dog from gnawing the bone. Alvaro Obregón's white flesh and blond hair made the famous arm stand out; the bugle boy delivered it personally to Obregón; he was instantly promoted to general. Out of gratitude, the brand-new boy brigadier shot Moses dead so no witnesses would remain—not even a mute one—to the fact that a dog was about to dine on the limb, which, as everyone knows, was preserved in a bottle of formaldehyde and buried along with the general, who, on July 28, 1928, a few days after his election, was treacherously murdered by a religious fanatic during a banquet held in a restaurant called the Lightbulb. Only General Palomar kept the secret of the President-elect's last words: Obregón, as he died, dragged his one remaining hand over the tablecloth, his blue eyes fading and his voice imploring, “More corn muffins, more corn muffins,” before his inert body collapsed. Today, a monument to his memory stands on Avenida de los Insurgentes, in the very place where he died. Sweethearts meet there by day and marijuana smokers by night.

The guardian of all these scenes, both public and secret, General Rigoberto Palomar, was a national treasure: the last survivor of the Revolution in a political system excessively eager for legitimacy. All of which contributed to making Don Rigo—who was sane on all other matters—insane on the subject of the Mexican Revolution. He simultaneously held two contradictory beliefs: (1) The Revolution was not over; and (2) the Revolution had triumphed and carried out all its promises.

Steadfast between these pillars, Don Rigo, who grew up in the anticlerical cyclone of the Agua Prieta government, fiercely upheld secularism. Let no priest come near him: then Don Rigo showed that the Revolution was indeed on the march by committing some undescribable atrocity or other, from stripping a priest, mounting him on a burro, and leading him through town, to summoning a firing squad to the patio of his house on Calle Génova and pretending to go through a formal execution.

On afternoons, accompanied by his wife Doña Susana Rentería, Grandfather Palomar would climb up to the crest of a ridge with a stone in his hand. He would then toss the stone down the ravine and say to his wife: “Look at that stone, the way it goes on and on.”

This madness of General Palomar made him part of the national patrimony: the government named him Eponymous Hero of the Republic and the PRI gave orders that he never be touched or bothered in any way, an indispensable requirement in a regime where unwritten law, as always, was the personal whim of the man in power. The fact is that my great-grandfather lived a quiet life: he dedicated himself to administering wisely the goods and chattels he'd acquired honestly and lived out his life in perfect sanity, except as regards this matter of his revolutionary madness and his strange love for Doña Susana, who was left to him in the will of a landowner from Jalisco who had supported the Cristero revolt. His name was Páramo and he'd been arrested and murdered by General Palomar's troops. His last wish was that Don Rigo take his daughter Susana Rentería under his protection, that he symbolically marry her, that he bring her up, and that he consummate their marriage when the girl turned sixteen. The girl, Susana Rentería, was only five years old when her landowning Cristero father was killed, but Don Rigo respected the idea of a last wish, above all that of an enemy, and accepted Pedro Páramo's inheritance.

He brought Susy (as he came to call her) to his house in Mexico City, where he took care of her, dressing her as if she were a doll, in old-fashioned shifts and velvet slippers. When she was sixteen, he married her. There was a twenty-year difference in age between them, so that when Susy married Rigo, he was about thirty-six years old, and Cárdenas had just forced the Maximum Chief Plutarco Elías Calles out of Mexico.

None of the people who knew them had ever met a couple more in love, more considerate of each other, or more tender. Susy learned very quickly that her husband was an extraordinarily reasonable man in all matters except the Revolution, and she learned over the years to humor him and to say yes, Rigo, you're right, there isn't a single priest left alive in Mexico, not a single piece of land that hasn't been returned to the peasants, not a single parcel of communal land that isn't a success, not a single archbishop who doesn't walk about dressed in mufti, not a single nun wearing a habit, not a single gringo company that hasn't been nationalized, not a single worker who hasn't been unionized. Elections are free, the Congress calls the President to account, the press is independent and responsible, democracy blazes forth, the national wealth is justly distributed, but there is corruption, Rigo, there is corruption, and it is a revolutionary obligation to wipe it out. The general turned the artillery of his revolution, simultaneously triumphant and permanent, against corruption, Rome, and Washington. Imagine, my tumultuous and elective genes, my Great-grandfather Rigoberto's dismay when no one could hide from him the fact that the Holy Father, the Vicar of Christ, the Pope himself (and Polish into the bargain!) was in Mexico, dressed as a pontiff and not as an office worker, walking with all due pomp through the streets, welcomed by millions and millions of citizens of the Republic, celebrating Mass and giving blessings right out in public. Don Rigoberto collapsed, took to his bed, howling against the betrayal. He preferred to die rather than admit that Article 3 of the Constitution had been violated: why had all those men died fighting the Cristeros? Why did you have to die on us, General Obregón? Where are you when we need you most, General Calles? You may fire when ready, General Cruz!

Susy called the doctors and advised the family—including Capitolina and Farnesia, who saw a golden opportunity: charity begins at home. They dragged along with them the priest from the Holy Family and my poor twelve-year-old father, so he would experience the hard reality of life. They walked in scattering incense and holy water, calling for the salvation of wayward General Palomar's soul and warning my young dad not to be surprised that, if Rigoberto did not repent of his sins, horns popped out of his head right then and there and Satan in person might appear to drag him by the heels to hell.

General Rigoberto Palomar, sunk in his soft but rumpled bed, was taking his last breaths when the Fagoaga sisters walked in with the priest and the boy. His wild, bloodshot eyes, his emaciated, tremulous nose, his palpitating throat, his half-open mouth, his entire face as purple as an aubergine, were not softened by his liberty cap with its tricolor (green, white, and red) cockade that he wore as a nightcap to cover his shaved head.

All the general had to do was see the sisters, the priest waving the sacrament on high, and the boy tossing the censer around like a ball-and-cup toy and he instantly recovered from his attack. He jumped up on the bed, cocked his cap coquettishly over one eye, raised his nightshirt to his waist, and waved a nicely stiffened phallus at the Misses Fagoaga, the boy, and the priest.

“This is the sacrament I'm going to give you if you come one step closer!”

Stunned, Farnesia walked toward Grandfather's bed, murmuring vague phrases and holding her hands in front of her, as if she were expecting a ripe fruit to fall into them or a sacrament administered to her.

“Besides … In the first place … After all … In the second place … We…”

But her domineering sister stretched out her parasol and with the hooked handle caught her straying sister at the same time she declared: “To hell, that's where you're going, Rigoberto Palomar, but before that you shall suffer the torments of death. I'm telling you here and now! Now cover yourself, you've got nothing to brag about!”

The old man looked at the boy, winked, and said to him: “Learn, kid. What this pair of witches needs is to feel the whole rigor of the penis. I know who you are. When you can't put up with these old bags, you have a place to live right here.”

“You are going to die, you scoundrel!” shouted Capitolina.

“And in the third place,” Farnesia managed to say.

General Rigoberto Palomar never had another sick day. Balancing out the shock of John Paul II's visit, he renewed his vows in the permanent revolution—there was so much more to be done!

After this experience, my father Angel was never the same. He began to realize things, some of them quite small. For example, when he kissed Aunt Capitolina's hand every morning, he discovered that she always had flour and jalapeño pepper on the tips of her fingers and under her nails, while Aunt Farnesia's hand smelled strongly of fish. The Misses Fagoaga ordered their domestic life according to purposes my father did not understand very well. He began to notice their manias. Their household staff changed constantly and for reasons Angel could not fathom. But they always called the maids by the same name: Servilia; Servilia do this, Servilia do that, Servilia on your knees svp, Servilia I want my corn-flour soup at 3 a.m., Servilia don't use rags to clean out my chamber pot, which is very delicate and might break, use your smooth Indian hands. They were more particular in this than their brother Don Homero, although they all shared that creole vice. They needed someone to humiliate every day. The sisters sometimes accomplished this by organizing intimate suppers in which they did their utmost to confuse, annoy, or insult their guests. It wouldn't have mattered to them if their guests ever returned, but the fact was, they observed, that the majority were delighted to return for more, eager for more punishment.

Miss Capitolina would fire off her irrefutable arguments:

“So you doubted the probity of Viceroy Revillagigedo? Ingrate!”

These arguments were received with stupefaction by the guests, who had never said a word about the viceroy, but Capitolina was once again on the attack:

“They make jam in Celaya and sugar candy in Puebla. Are you going to deny it! I dare you!”

The shock of the guests was not assuaged by Farnesia, who interrupted her sister's conversation with verbal inconsequentialities of all sorts:

“It doesn't matter. We shall never accept an invitation from you, sir, but we will give you the pleasure of receiving you in our salon. We are not cruel.”

“Now that you mention tacos,” Capitolina pronounced, “I can't talk about tacos without thinking of tortillas.”

“But I…” the guest would say.

“Never mind, never mind, you are a Jew and a Bulgarian, judging by your appearance, don't try to deny it,” Capitolina would assert, one of her manias being to attribute to others whatever religion and nationality came into her head.

“No, the truth is that…”

“Ah!” Farnesia sighed, on the verge of fainting on the shoulder of the man sitting next to her. “We understand the pleasure it must give you just to have met us.”

“Who is that ugly old dumb woman you brought, sir?” Capitolina went on.

“Miss Fagoaga! She's my wife.”

“Damn the parvenu. Who invited her to my house?”

“You did, miss.”

“A strumpet, I tell you, and I'll say it to her face, strumpet, gatecrasher, vulgarian, how could you ever marry her!”

“Ah, Mauricio, take me home…”

“Incidentally,” Farnesia commented, “and in the third place, we never…”

“Miss: your attitude is highly rude.”

“Isn't it, though?” Doña Capitolina would say, opening her tremendous eyes.

“Mauricio, I'm going to faint…”

“And you just can't imagine what happened yesterday,” Farnesia would immediately say, one of her other specialties being to accumulate inconsequential information and breathlessly communicate it. “It was just six o'clock in the afternoon and we naturally were getting ready to take care of our obligations because you should never leave for today what you can do tomorrow, the doorbell was ringing so insistently and we remembered the open window and we went running upstairs to find out if from the roof we could see what was going on and our cat walked right in front of us and from the kitchen came a smell of cabbage that, my God, you know we're getting too old for these surprises and after all either you drink in manners with your mother's milk or your mother learns manners, we never know and we're about to go mad!”

These suppers were discussed by the sisters with great satisfaction. One of their ideas was that only people of their social class should live in Mexico. They cherished the idea that the poor should be run out of the country and the rest of the lower orders be thrown into jail.

“Oh, Farnecita, je veux un Mexique plus cossu,” Capitolina would say in the French she reserved for grand moments.

“Cozy, cozy, a cozy little country,” her sister complemented her in English, and when they said these little things, the two of them felt comforted, warm, sure of themselves, just like their quilted tea cozy.

These enjoyable intermezzi, nevertheless, gave way more and more to tensions my father discovered as he advanced into adolescence: the aunts looked at him in a different way, whispered to each other, and instead of kneeling alone, grabbed him, each one taking an arm at the most unexpected moments, forcing him to kneel with them and strike his chest.

One night, some horrifying shouts woke him up, and my father ran around in confusion, looking for the source of the noise. He tripped over innumerable bibelots and display cases, knocking them down and breaking things, and then he stopped at the locked door of Capitolina's room. He tried to look through the keyhole but it was blocked by a handkerchief redolent of cloves. All he could hear were the terrible shouts of the two sisters:

“Christ, belovèd body!”

“Brides of the Lord, Farnesia, we are the brides of the Lord!”

“Husband!”

“You are a virgin, but I am not!”

“Isabella our sister was happy to give birth!”