Christopher Unborn (67 page)

The minister didn't blink an eye. The Ayatollah shouted, save my girlfriend! save my daughter! save…!

Robles Chacón just laughed. So many requests! The lover, the daughter, what about that albino truck driver, a lost grandma, who was Colasa's mother? who were Matamoros Moreno's parents? the poor little orphan boy, son (of a bitch) of the morning, do you suppose that his unknown parents might be among the dead? Did he think that before he opened the doors to this bastard of a country, this savage Mexico, this sleeping tiger, did he think about that and about all those who, in addition to his daughter and his lover, came to his mind? Did he dare to condemn the albino, for example? Or was Matamoros Moreno incapable of thinking about death in the singular, was he incapable of saying “Colasa's death,” “Galvarinaconchadollymanés's death,” “the albino's death,” was that it? That's what Robles Chacón icily said to him as he imagined all those victims. But Robles Chacón did not fool himself for an instant: he, Federico Robles, fils, was the principal victim of this day of blood, just one more on a long list of bloodstained days, wasn't that right? Can you only imagine collective death, the death you asked me for, you bastard?

We know everything, said Robles Chacón, after a pause. He smiled. Didn't you want to save that overstuffed Judas, Don Homero Fagoaga, your King Momus? How many of your people did you want to save? All he had to do was push a button on his Mikado wrist radar to show that he could sentence all of them to death …

The minister let the Ayatollah stew in his own juices for an instant and then he protected him with his own arm, a buddy's arm that he put around his shoulders in order to hug him close, the minister would give him anything, not one more murder, if the Ayatollah agreed to appear on the night of September 15, 1992, on the balcony of the National Palace, at Mamadoc's side, not one death more if he did them the favor of illustrating and incarnating the reality of national unity. The Ayatollah would not have to request amnesty for those who might not accept the deal or call him a Judas, and Robles Chacón didn't point out that those who might not respect the deal hadn't been taken into account: it was not necessary to worry about these details, there was no reason to humiliate anyone, facts are facts, I'll put myself to the test: the Ayatollah looked down on the bloody intersection, the people running for their lives, the weeping, the wail of ambulances, scattered shots, and the noise of water being sprayed over everything, as if a gigantic oilcloth throat couldn't manage to swallow all the dirty water running over the surface of the bloody city.

That water pump was like the city's heart, my father said to himself, and in a bakery he found Hipi and the Orphan happily distributing loaves of bread, rolls, Campeche cakes and powdered-sugar cookies, crackers, and pastries to the mob, who would have taken them even if our two friends weren't there giving them out, but the two of them were so happy to be taking part in things, as if they were washing themselves clean of all the grime and disaster of Aca, and the manipulation they'd learned of later, and now they thought they were acting on their own but this time for everyone, and they shouted to my father, join in! we need more bakeries like this one! they laughed it was their mission: let them eat bread!

Angel Palomar shook his head.

Would they meet later with Egg and Angeles over at his grandparents' house?

Who knows, let's see, my father shrugged his shoulders.

8

On the night of the Ayatollah, Mexico City once again witnessed everything it could bear: only the memory (extinct) of the fall of the Aztec capital or the forgetting (voluntary) of the memory of the earthquake of September 19, 1985, could be compared to this new disaster. Nevertheless, amid the smoke and blood of the defeat of Tenochtitlán or in the thick of the devastation of the collapse and burning that had put the capital into mourning seven years before, no one ever saw two figures like these, who are now running in a low crouch, their heads covered with woolen shawls, virtually smeared along the leprous walls, between Avenida Durango and Calle Génova; they stop on every corner, look around, move along if they detect no danger, retreat if they see or suspect any.

“I know that all we've ever wanted is peace and quiet,” said Capitolina, delicately—but showing her disgust—detouring her sister around a mass of slaughtered animals in front of the aqueduct on Avenida Chapultepec.

“Peace first and finally quiet, and in the second place…” began Farnesia, but her sister interrupted her, excuse me Farnecita, excuse me, little sister, for exposing you to this violence, I who have so faithfully tried to fulfill my promise to our dear parents that I would protect and defend you. Careful now, don't step on that dead cat …

“In the first place, let's set the record straight, finally zero catastrophes, in the third place no crisis,” whimpered Farnesia.

“We thought things would always turn out that way…”

“Just as our dear parents taught us…”

“May they rest in peace…”

“In peace, amen, in peace!”

But stealing a look filled with palpable fear at the city of quickly dug trenches overflowing with dead bodies, the rows of men hung from the lampposts along Paseo de la Reforma in front of the Social Security Building, the burning of the fried-food stands along the avenue and the shacks of the jugglers and fire-eaters on the traffic islands, the Fagoaga sisters finally looked at each other out of the corners of their eyes and burst into raucous laughter until they had to quickly cover their mouths, the small and decisive Capitolina with her pudgy little hand, the tall and tremulous Farnesia with her black shawl: they had always imagined the worst—a lie, a lie: they had always fervently desired the worst: accidents, sickness, revolution, earthquakes, death … And here it was! No one would escape! All of them ground into dust! This was the finishing touch to a decade of disasters, and it's true the sisters both believed what their wise and experienced older brother, Dr. Homero, told them: all that was needed was a little push, barely a flick of a fingertip to cast down the abysmal metropolis: its destiny was now its image, there was no need for any soothsayer to cut open a bird, and columns of fire, weeping women, or mirrors that reflected the stars in broad daylight were all unnecessary.

How many times had the Misses Fagoaga made a dinner unpleasant by warning an unwary guest:

“If I were you, I wouldn't eat that, sir.”

That's how they survived.

Until today. Bankruptcy and devaluations didn't touch them: they had property, savings, and high interest here, dollar accounts across the frontier. The earthquake of '85, which flattened their neighborhood, providentially left them unscathed, as it had their brother Homero: God loves the Fagoagas! The evidence speaks for itself! Until today, until today when death became general not out of error or natural catastrophe or divine will, now death was policy, enacted from above, and Capitolina was realistic enough to imagine that not even they would survive the disaster.

An ambulance, its siren howling, passed along the deserted avenue. It was dawn, the hour chosen by the Fagoaga sisters to carry out their final mission. Walking rapidly in fits and starts, feeling their velvet slippers grow thinner and wetter as they walked on the dust of the footpath soaked with blood and Coca-Cola, sighing, they crossed Florencia Street, until they turned onto Génova and headed toward the modest one-story residence that belonged to General Rigoberto Palomar, which was protected by the kind of iron gate found on garages, which might make the uncertain visitor confuse the house where Angel my father grew up with a vulgar shop.

The dawn negated the death of the Mexican vespers.

The morning light blazed like a pearl in a pigsty.

The air of the tree-covered mountains and the snow-covered volcanoes whisked away the layer of dust, along with the smell of blood and garbage. But soon the crystal would break again; the mask of sickness would reappear.

Capitolina and Farnesia approached the door of the general's house. General Palomar opened the door before they made even the slightest attempt to enter or knock. The old man had put on his belt, strapped his .45 around his waist, and clapped his red liberty cap on his shaved head.

Capitolina said: “We want to see the girl.”

“What girl?”

“You know, the one amorously linked with our nephew.”

“Does she have a name, so far as you vultures know?”

“Angeles, someone said it was.”

“Well, and what do you spinsters want to find out?”

“Nothing, General, merely to ascertain the degree of her pregnancy.”

“We have only come to say hello and then we'll be on our way,” said Farnesia, taking note of the murderous light in my great-granddaddy's eyes.

“We have come for her,” declared Capitolina, “so that she may deliver the child properly and so that the new member of our family may come into the world protected, loved, and in a Christian cradle.”

“Are you saying that the devil would get him here?” Don Rigoberto laughed quietly.

“Well, that's what my little sister and I fear most.”

“You'd turn him into a holy little hypocrite of a pharisee son of a bitch like you two…”

“Sticks and stones, General, sticks and stones!” Capitolina shrugged her shoulders. “Humph!” chimed in Farnesia.

“And in the process you'd have yourselves named heirs of the heir, the Palomar fortune would come to you, you pair of grave robbers.”

“Our considerations are of a purely moral nature!” Capitolina shook her finger directly into the general's nose. Farnesia, who had eaten an extremely early breakfast in order to fortify herself for the day's vicissitudes, tried to copy her sister but gave up when she realized that on her finger there glistened a few drops of rich blackberry jam, so she quickly licked her finger instead.

“Moral my ball bearings!” shouted the general, but just then there appeared behind him, her shoulders trembling with cold, his wife, Doña Susana Rentería.

“Tell them the truth,” said Great-grandmother Palomar serenely.

“You tell them.”

“Angeles disappeared yesterday in the riot.”

“You're hiding her from us!” Capitolina managed to shout before the general slammed the door in their faces. Farnesia, standing on the sidewalk, burst into laughter, a laughter that did not seem to be caused by the events but rather by the absence of any cause, a distant torment, a foreseeable humiliation, as if the immediate cause, the disappearance of my mother Angeles with me (quite frightened, I might add, your mercies), meant absolutely nothing to her.

Capitolina silenced her with a slap in the face: “Sniveling fool.”

The elder sister turned her face toward the Paseo de la Reforma, and the younger, shocked, ran after her, wrapped in her shawl, laughingly observing that the destiny of an unmarried woman is to be a leader of monkeys in hell.

“A tour guide for monkeys!”

Both thought the same thing; both felt (I shall feel, I shall know when I feel, I shall feel when I know, I shall know) the immense pain of the lost child (that's why I feel and know: all of us fetuses are like the Corsican brothers for all those who have been born or who are about to be born): the lost child, one more, again without a child, women alone, empty houses, lost children.

They took each other by the hand and felt like dying.

Where can my child be, with his bracelet around his ankle? whimpered Farnesia.

Where can the child about to be born be? sighed Capitolina.

Where can
I
be?

9

The din of the loudspeakers was only made worse by the lugubrious silence that weighed on the city that September 1, 1992. Buoyed up by the acclamations of Congress, President Jesús María y José Paredes stood at the tribune of the National Assembly and released these messenger pigeons—or were they doves of light?—one after another:

The threats to the nation had been extinguished; the obstacles to Mexican progress had been overcome; the extremist riot had been violently repressed because it was born of violence; but the heroic actions of the police, whom we salute here and now (ovation; Colonel Inclán stands at attention, does not smile, is wearing his black glasses, the green spittle runs down his chin; he sits stiffly down), protected us from having to surrender our civil government to the armed forces: neither anarchy nor tyranny, only Mexico! Her institutions saved! Her revolution permanent! Neither order without liberty nor liberty without order, neither progress without tradition nor tradition without progress, neither justice without authority nor authority without justice! exclaimed our Chuchema at the climax of what was in effect a chiasmic delirium in Mexican politics, and he exclaimed it so loud over all the loudspeakers of the Mexican Republic (or what's left of it) that even I, within the maternal womb, heard it: Let us honor Colonel Nemesio Inclán (second ovation; this time the man in black glasses, either modest or annoyed, who knows? doesn't even stand up), who subordinated his personal ambition to the triumph of institutional order; glory to the Lady, Mother, and Doctor (she is not present; she is looking at herself in the mirror; she only shows herself to give the cry, to proclaim a contest; she neither steals nor shares the show: she, the Lady Pharaoh, works alone!), who held on high the symbols of the nation threatened by chaotic licentiousness disguised as freedom for the majority which so crudely sought to wrest from the Mexican people their own symbols, conquered with so much difficulty over five centuries of national experience. President Paredes, after excoriating the duped and criminal anarchists, topped off his speech by assuring one and all that the time for reconciliation and unity had come. He admitted that the nation had been threatened; he revealed to the astonished nation that since last January the United States Military Command (Caribbean) had asked permission to land twenty thousand Marines at Veracruz to carry out maneuvers that would put pressure on the totalitarian tyrants of Costaguana and protect the oil refineries of the Chitacam Trusteeship, threatened like mere dominos by the red tide but essential to the strategic health of the free world. Permission was granted in accordance with the prior commitments of Mexico within the Modified and Reaffirmed Inter-American Rio Treaty (MORE-RIOT), but when the time allotted for the maneuvers had passed, the twenty thousand Marines had refused to withdraw from the state of Veracruz, saying that they'd never actually been there since not a single one of them had remained longer than 175 days in Mexico, and that they would, according to the treaty, have to be there for a minimum of 180 days in order to be considered fully transferred from their home base in Honduras. How could the Marines pull out if, legally, they had never arrived: rotated, transferred quickly to the neighboring Republic of Shadows, relieved by replacements who in turn never remained the full 180 days. There were twenty thousand Marines in Mexico, but there were not twenty thousand Marines in Mexico: what were we going to do? And those nonexistent Marines had already advanced to Perote and scattered in the mountains, and even though President Rambolt Ranger had assured President Jesús María y José Paredes (with whom he maintains a most cordial relationship) over the red hot-line telephone that the Marines are on their own, not under orders from Washington, motivated exclusively by their autonomous decision to defend democracy wherever and however they can, it is also true that the U.S. President does not want to disavow them publicly as long as they are objectively serving the interests of the United States and the will-to-greatness of the people of the United States, and President Paredes is announcing today to the Congress that, despite all, it is incumbent on Mexico to expel those troops, which are, after all, an invasion force, to which end it is essential that the national unity be renewed, and what better example than the one proposed by the President in this moment in which all of us (even me in my ultrasonic and impermeable cabin) are listening: this is no time for selfish party politics, we must all militate in one single party, the Party of Mexico!!