The Crystal Frontier (27 page)

but the distance, their ignorance of the land and the people are nothing compared with the hunger, the thirst, the exposure, the nights without cover, the days without shade, their bodies more and more naked, darker, until the fifteen Spaniards left can't be told from the Pueblos, the Alabamas, and the Apaches:

only the black servant, Estebanico, is darker than the others, but his dreams are luminous, golden, he sees the cities of gold in the distance while Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca looks at himself in the mirror of his memory and tries to see himself reflected there as the hidalgo he was, the Spanish gentleman he no longer is; the only mirror of his person are the Indians he finds, he has become identical to them, but he misses the chance to be one of them, he is equal to them but does not understand the opportunity he has to be the only Spaniard who could understand the Indians and translate their souls into Spanish:

Cabeza de Vaca cannot understand a history of wind, an endless migratory chronicle that takes the Indian from the hot hunt of the plains to the tepee of the snows, from the tanned and naked body of summer to the body wrapped in blankets and skins of winter,

he does not want to rule over this world; nomadism attracts him but he denies it because here no one moves to conquer but simply to survive,

he does not understand the Indians, the Indians don't understand him: they see the Spaniards as shamans, witch doctors, sorcerers, and Cabeza de Vaca acts out the only role assigned him, he becomes a cut-rate medicine man, he cures by means of suction, blowing of breath, laying on of hands, Our Fathers, and abundant signs of the cross,

but in reality he fights, horrified, against the loss, layer by layer, of the skin and clothes of his European soul, he clings to it, pays no heed to the advice of his internal voice: God brought us naked to know men identical to ourselves in their nakedness …

which God? Cabeza de Vaca wanders the corridors and bedrooms of the great houses of the Pueblos, sees a god he doesn't recognize fleeing from floor to floor up hand ladders that at night it pulls up in order to isolate itself as it pleases from the moon, death, the stranger …

eight years of wandering, of involuntary pilgrimage, until he finds the compass of the río grande, río bravo and takes again the road from Chihuahua to Sinaloa and the Pacific and inland to Mexico City, where he and his comrades are received as heroes by Viceroy Mendoza and the conquistador Cortés:

only four survivors are left of the four hundred who departed Sanlúcar for Florida—Cabeza de Vaca, Andrés Dorantes, Alonso del Castillo Maldonado, and the black servant, Estebanico:

they are celebrated, they are questioned: where did you go, what did you see, what do you promise?

Cabeza de Vaca, the two Spaniards, and the black tell not what they saw but what they dreamed,

they were saved to tell a mirage,

they were given turquoises and sumptuous skins torn from the backs of the strange gray cattle of the plains, the buffalo,

they glimpsed the seven cities of gold of Cibola,

they heard word of the incalculable wealth of Quivira, they propagate the illusion of Eldorado, another Mexico, another Peru, beyond the río grande, río bravo,

an immortal dream of wealth, power, gold, happiness that compensates for all our sufferings, for the thirst, the hunger, and the shipwrecks and the Indian attacks,

they survived in order to lie,

death would have fused them with the truth of the desert,

poor, hostile, underpopulated lands,

life gave them the opulent wealth of lies,

they can fool everyone because they survived:

río grande, río bravo, frontier of mirages from then on

where men survive so that they can lie

SERAFÍN ROMERO

Mr. Stud, that's what they called him from the time he was a kid because of his shiny black hair like patent leather and his long eyelashes, but he called himself Mr. Shit because that's how he always felt, growing up surrounded by the mountains of garbage in Chalco, dedicated since childhood to digging around in the disfigured mass of rotten meat, vomited beans, rags, dead cats, scraps of unrecognizable existence, giving thanks when something kept its form—a bottle, a condom—and could be brought home. An acrid cloud accompanied Serafín from his earliest days, and when he left the cloud of refuse, the smell was so sweet, so pure, that it made him dizzy and even a little nauseated: his country was the mud streets, the puddles, the children with screwed-up knees, unable to walk properly, stray dogs fucking, affirming their lives, telling us in barks that everything can survive despite everything, despite the pushers who get eight-year-old kids started on drugs, despite the extortionist cops who kill at night and then turn up by day to count the bodies and add them to the gigantic rolls of urban death, forever overcome by the fertility of the bitches, the rats, the mothers. Everything can survive because the government and the party organize corruption, allow it to flourish a bit, and then organize it as improvement so everyone will accept the notion that it's the PRI or anarchy, which do you prefer? By the time hair had sprouted in Serafín's armpits, he already knew everything about the evil of the city, no one could teach him anything. The problem was survival. How do you survive? By giving in to the masters of thievery, voting for the PRI, attending meetings like a jerk, seeing how the kings of the garbage got rich—what the fuck—or by saying no and joining a rock band that dares to sing about what a pisser it is to live in Mexico, D.F., in an underground network of rebel kids, or by speaking up even louder, refusing to vote for the PRI, and running the risk, as he and his family did, of having to take refuge in a half-built school, almost a thousand of them huddled together there, their shacks demolished by the cops, their miserable possessions stolen by the cops, all because they said, We're going to vote the way we feel like voting?

At the age of twenty, Serafín headed north. He told his people, Get out of here, this country is beyond salvation, the PRI alone is more than enough reason to leave Mexico. I swear I'll figure out a way to help you up north. I've got relatives in Juárez, guys, you'll hear from me …

On this night of clenched fists and arms opened in a cross, Serafín, now twenty-six, expects nothing from anyone. He's spent two years organizing the gang that crosses the border almost every night, thirty armed Mexicans who pile up wooden boxes, old scrap iron, roof tiles, and abandoned car bodies on the tracks of the Southern Pacific in New Mexico, change the switches, stop the train, steal everything they can to sell it in Mexico, then fill the cars with Mexican illegals. How many nights like this does Serafín Romero remember as he drives off in his truck from the train stopped in the desert, the truck filled with stolen goods, the train filled with peasants who need work, the stolen goods all brand-new, still in their packages, shiny—washing machines, toasters, vacuum cleaners, all brand-new, none turned yet to garbage that will end up on a mountain of trash in Chalco … Now he really is Mr. Stud, now he really has stopped being Mr. Shit. And Serafín Romero thought, leaving the stopped train behind, that the only thing missing for him to be a hero was a whinnying stallion … and oh yes, the night air of the desert was so dry, so clean.

*   *   *

no one lives more opulently in opulent Mexico City than Juan de Oñate, son of the conquistador Cristóbal of the same name, who discovered the Zacatecas mines, infinite hives of silver, a man who reached the Villa Rica de la Veracruz without a doubloon and now is able to bequeath to his son one of the greatest fortunes in the Indies, an inexhaustible vein of silver that allows Juan de Oñate to be named price regulator in the capital of New Spain, to roll through that city in the best carriages, surrounded by the best women, the best pages, to be attended in his palace by squads of majordomos and priests praying all the livelong day so Oñate will end up in heaven:

why does this man leave all his luxury, shake off his indolence, and go off to the unknown territories of the río grande, río bravo?

was he so stuffed with old silver that he wanted new gold?

did he want to owe nothing to his father?

did he want to begin like him, poor and defiant?

or did he want to show that there is no greater wealth than that which we cannot attain?

look at Juan de Oñate plant his black boot on the brown bank of the río grande, río bravo:

he's fat, bald, moustachioed, a turtle with an iron shell and Dutch lace frills at his neck and wrists, a robust potbelly and weak feet and between the two the indispensable sac of his scrotum so he can pee whenever he pleases amid the conquests and battles, his indispensable silver helmet, topped off with a crest, proclaims:

he comes to the río grande with a hundred and thirty soldiers and five hundred settlers, women, children, servants:

he founds El Paso del Norte and claims Spanish dominion over all things, from the leaves on the trees to the rocks and sand in the river: nothing stops him, the founding of El Paso is merely the springboard for his grand imperial dream, fat, bald, moustachioed, fortified by steel and softened by lace, Juan de Oñate is a private contractor, a businessman who believed Cabeza de Vaca's lies and paid no heed to the expeditions of Fray Marcos de Niza or to the death of the ill-fated, stubborn black Estebanico, who disappeared in a quest for his own lie, the cities of gold: Oñate came not to find gold but to invent it, to create wealth, to discover what's left to discover of the new world, the mines yet to find, the empires yet to be founded, the passage to Asia, the ports in both oceans: to realize his dream he embarks on a campaign of death, he reaches Acama, the center of the Indian world (center of creation, navel of the universe), and there he destroys the city, kills half a thousand men, three hundred women and children, and takes the rest captive: the boys between twelve and twenty will be servants: the twenty-five-year-old men will have a foot chopped off in public:

this is a matter of founding, in truth, a new world, of creating, in truth, a new order, where Juan de Oñate rules as he pleases, capriciously, not owing anyone anything, intent on losing everything as long as he's infinitely free to impose his will, to be his own king and perhaps his own creator:

here there was nothing before Oñate arrived, here there was no history, no culture: he founded them

but here there was distance, enormous distance, and distance, after all was said and done, defeated him

ELOÍNO AND MARIO

Polonsky told Mario that tonight more illegals than ever would try to cross the river, taking advantage of the squabble about the bridge, but Mario knew very well that as long as a poor country lived next to the richest country in the world, what they, the Border Patrol, were doing was squeezing a balloon: what you squeezed here only swelled out over there. There was no solution, and even though Mario was amused by his job at first, almost as if it were a kids' game like hide-and-seek, exasperation was starting to get the better of him because the violence was increasing and because Polonsky was implacable in his hatred of Mexicans. If you wanted to stay on his good side, it wasn't enough to act professionally; you had to show real hate and that was hard for Mario Islas, the son of Mexicans, after all, even though he was born on this side of the Río Grande. But that fact aroused the suspicion of his superior, Polonsky. One night Mario caught him in the tavern saying that Mexicans were all cowards, and he was on the verge of punching him. Polonsky noticed. It's likely he had deliberately provoked him, which is why he then took the chance to say, “Let me be frank, Mario, you Mexicans who serve in the Border Patrol have to show your loyalty more convincingly than we real Americans do—”

“I was born here, Dan. I'm as American as you. And don't tell me the Polonskys came over on the
Mayflower.
'”

“You'd better watch your mouth, boy.”

“I'm an officer. Don't call me boy. I respect you. You respect me.”

“I mean, we're white, Europeans, savvy?”

“Spain isn't in Europe? I'm of Spanish descent, you're of Polish descent, we're Europeans…”

“You speak Spanish. The blacks speak English. That doesn't make them English or you Spanish.”

“Dan, this conversation doesn't make any sense.” Mario smiled, shrugging his shoulders. “Let's just do our job well.”

“Not hard for me. For you it is.”

“You see everything like a racist. I'm not going to change you, Polonsky. Let's just do our job well. Forget that I'm as American as you.”

During the long nights on the Río Grande, Río Bravo, Mario Islas told himself that maybe Dan Polonsky was right to have his doubts about him. These poor people only came looking for work. They weren't taking work away from anyone. Was it the Mexicans' fault the defense plants were closed and there was more unemployment? They should have continued the war against the evil empire, as Reagan called it.

These doubts passed very quickly through Mario's alert mind. The nights were long and dangerous and sometimes he wished the whole Río Grande, Río Bravo really were divided by an iron curtain, a deep, deep ditch, or at least a simple fence that would keep the illegals from passing. Instead, the night was filling with something he knew only too well, the trills and whistles of nonexistent birds, the sounds the coyotes, the men who guided illegals across, used to communicate with one another. Though they gave themselves away, sometimes it was all a trick and the coyotes used their whistles the way a hunter uses a decoy duck; the real crossing was taking place elsewhere, far from there, with no whistles at all.