To which Tomasito immediately responds by feigning a yawn, checking his watch, and saying good night, as he serves Uncle H. a slice of Gorgonzola, following the ancient Mexican custom of serving cheese before dinner.
No! I said head, not bed. My God, this is the end of language as communication: no one understands me. With that he drank down his piña colada in one gulp and instantly felt, as our friend Ada Ching (whom the reader will meet shortly) would have said, “soulaged.” He was admiring my parents’ outfits: my mother dressed Tehuanastyle, with a sleeveless blouse and skirt made of virtually transparent cloth, and my father decked out in railroad-worker blues, complete with red neckerchief: who knows what images of sin and revolution, Demetrio Vallejo and Frida Kahlo, folly and finality, passed through the carefully combed, plastered-down, parted-down-the-middle mind of Our Relative; his manner, from the moment he opened his door to them, had been, come to me, you innocent doves.
He said this was just not his day as far as servants, local or imported, were concerned. Nothing, decidedly nothing, had gone well for him from the moment one of these somber servants crossed his path, he sighed. Nothing at all had gone well, belovèd niece and nephew, but he felt better, like Perón safe-at-home, as Don Eduardo Mallea had so wittily written. Mallea, who maintained the proud purity of our language with Argentine passion from his bay of silence. He (Uncle H.) was happy to have his niece and nephew here with him on vacation, all useless rancor dissipated, no bad memories, once again one big happy family as Tolstoy or Tolstuá (his name can and should be pronounced both ways) might have said; ah Federico, Federico, you were the last poet to say Understand me for I understand you, now, as you can plainly see, no one understands anyone and this is my challenge, my mission: as Antonio de Nebrija the grammarian said to Queen Isabella the Catholic, Language is always the companion of Empire and Empire (he pointed to himself with a butter knife) is one Monarch and one Sword: Tomasito, pour out the nectar.
Instantly, the Filipino snatched off his own bow tie and tried to fasten it onto our stupefied uncle, whose imperial discourse died, along with his fallen glass, on the cement of the tiny island. You said pull off necktie, masssster. Moron, monkey from Manila, let go of me, get that thing off my neck. He sneezed, swallowed, gagged, his round red eyes darting toward Angel and Angeles, and he saw what he did not want to see: no one got up to pat him on the back, to fill his glass, or to attempt the Heimlich maneuver on him. Angeles = dark eyes, those of a child who has never been treated tenderly, Angel = green, serene eyes, like a lake, green how I love you green, the black night spread its mantle, the mist rose, the light died: dark eyes and green eyes full of what Don Homero did not expect to find there in response to his call for aiuto! help! au secours! auxilio!
“Ah,” coughed our uncle, “ah, hatred persists, as the enlightened Venezuelan despot Don Juan Vicente Gómez said once in a jocular mood—when he publicly announced his death in order to arrest and then punish those who dared to celebrate it, ah yes, so this is the way…?”
He pounded his delicate fist into his open palm.
“I have right on my side, nephew. If I sued you for being a spendthrift when you turned twenty-one, it was not, as God is my witness, to increase my own personal fortune, but to save yours, that is, what remains of it after your father, my poor brother-in-law, embarked on that mad enterprise, the Inconsumable Taco.”
“Leave my old man out of this, Uncle H. He’s dead and never hurt a fly.”
“Ah, my little sister Isabella Fagoaga is also dead. And a dark day it was when she linked her destiny, as the superb Chilean bard Pablo de Rokha said, in a rare metaphor, to that of an enemy of the national economy like your father, Diego Palomar. An inconsumable taco! A taco that grows as you eat it! The solution to the problems of national nutrition! The greatest idea since the invention of mole in Puebla de los Angeles by a dyspeptic nun!”
Tomasito tried once again—at the worst possible moment—to serve our uncle a Cointreau on the rocks with Pepsi-Cola (“Your Merry Blizzard, massster!), but Don Homero went on, carried away by the inertia of his eloquence, evoking beaches piled high with fish, first nervous, then dead, then rotten, what does it matter, millions and millions of lost proteins on the exuberant coast of our shrinking (ay!) national territory, while this deluded Don Diego Palomar was fabricating an eternal taco, because his genes carried him away, just as Ganymede was carried aloft by the eagle …
“No speak evil, master!” interjected a shocked Tomasito.
“What, you Rabelaisian monkey?”
“Rabble east?” queried the perplexed Filipino. “No, master, no rabble here, east or west! Only very fine people, yes?”
Don Homero regained his composure: “Now, where was I? Yes, your progenitor, Don Angel Palomar, perpetrated a frontal attack on the entire concept of supply and demand, on national progress itself, a taco with a mortgage is what I call it, but it was mortal for the only two people who ever dared ingest such a poisonous dish, your father and mother, may they rest in peace.”
He breathed deeply, he swelled up, his eyes seemed to pop out of their sockets, and he instantly closed them, fearing some new Filipino gaffe, may he rest in peace, as he recovered the beauty of the artificial oasis (was there ever a natural oasis? Homero thinks not; creation was born subverted) constructed by him at Port Marquee Bay in Paramount style—shady islets surrounded by crystalline brooks that babbled among coconut and date palms, and a band of araguato monkeys trained to throw coconuts from the high branches of these not so tristes tropiques: Aaaaaah! Someone’s going to interrupt him, the Filipino, Angel, or Angeles, may they rest in peace, one of them is going to say something, but no, they are strangely quiet for people their age, for people so famous as jokers and (above all) rebels, why are they so quiet? why are they letting him speak so badly of that pair of obtuse illuminati, Diego and Isabella Palomar?
And so, in the silence of niece and nephew, Homero Fagoaga savored a triumph which he knew was Pyrrhic. He was defeated in victory, ay Tomasito, you would have to take out of the white pocket of your fine Filipino shirt a black-fringed photograph of Elpidio Quirino, the deceased Father of the Islands. Just what Uncle H. had feared. He did not have to open his eyes to say:
“I, as your testamentary tutor, had and still have the obligation to bring your excesses to heel, to put order in your life, to force you to think about your wife, and also, perhaps, if God so ordains it, your child, your children!”
“Tartuffe,” murmured Angeles, almost biting her champagne glass out of rage, “may God not so ordain children because they all get a share in the inheritance, and then what will you get, you old hypocritamus? Tartuffe! Tartuffe!” She began to raise her voice, but she fell silent because Tomasito entered just then with the dessert of the same name, and Uncle Homero did not become enraged with him because he had not caught Mom’s allusion to Molière. He simply exclaimed:
“Both of you must learn, please allow me to say so, the virtues of our national dialectic, which, once we’ve assimilated it, makes us the Mexicans we are because we are progressive because we are revolutionary because we are reactionary because we are liberal because we are reformists because we are positivists because we are insurgents because we follow the Virgin of Guadalupe because we are Catholic because we are conservatives because we are Spaniards because we are Indians because we are mestizos.”
“And are you a member of PRI, Uncle Homero?” asked my mother without looking at him, looking instead at the sea, looking Homero, looksee, lacksee, lackadaisical. Oh mère, oh merde, Homère.
“At your service,” the avuncular personage says automatically, but Angel and Angeles fall silent because Tomasito enters a second time to serve the Tartuffe (or to serve the Tartuffe the Tartuffe), and Uncle Homero declares, as he looks up at the black sky as if to show he knew how to be a good loser and to celebrate such a happy reconciliation worthy of other embraces in the state of Guerrero, Acatempan, he invited them to spend this New Year’s Eve in the f
loating discotheque Divan the Terrible unless
they would prefer to stay here and fight the night away over the legal problems related to the suit for being a spendthrift
they would prefer to let Tomasito babble, since he was quite capable of filling an entire night with vaudeville at the slightest semantic provocation
they would prefer to return in indignation to Mexico City because Uncle H. had spoken ill of Angel’s father
they would prefer to spank Uncle Homero for being naughty
they would prefer to drown him in the pool of his tropical fortress
the dessert had been poisoned by Uncle Homero
the dessert had been poisoned by Angel and Angeles
Tomasito got drunk in the kitchen on Merry Blizzard and forgot to serve dessert
Angeles memorized Plato’s Cratylus, which she’d studied in the classic university edition with green binding published by
Homero had drugged Angel’s drink and, naked, would chase his delectable niece along the beach
Homero had only drugged Angeles and ordered Tomasito to tie Angel up so he could watch his wife being raped by his satyr uncle
the Three Wise Men entered Don Homero’s coastal compound mounted on camels
it rained unexpectedly in January
all of them just went to sleep.
4
Festive Intermezzo
1. I Don’t Want to Serve Anymore
Angel and Angeles arrived at Ada Ching’s floating disco at approximately 10 p.m., singing the John Donne One by Mao Tsar. The breeze was rattling the inflatable rubber Byzantine cupolas, and He—Don Homero Fagoaga Labastida Pacheco y Montes de Oca—insolently posed on the deck as if the sea, the moon, the distant shore, and the great globe itself owed their existence to Him alone. He was once again in public, performing, exhibited for the delight of the unfortunate masses, perpetually fanned by Tomasito: Io non voglio più servir!
But then, with terrifying ill-will blazing in his eyes, with a gesture of permanent hatred, he looked at the three boys who helped him up from the launch while Angel and Angeles pushed his buttocks up from below. He stared at the lads with rancor; first he saw the three pairs of legs, let’s see which ones he liked, and four of the six feet were in one way or another deformed, eddyfeet, yes Eddy Alien Toes says my pundit pop, feet deformed by that protective layer of human rubber that has been appearing on the feet of city kids: some feet shredding as if charred (Uncle Homero averts his eyes in disgust), others white and milky like those of Uncle H. himself (disgusting, disgusting!), still others svelte, golden brown, firm, well shaped, eddypolinean, in that case, and on those lawyer Fagoaga fixes his hungry gaze, raising it slowly without seeing all he wants. To calm the Filipino, my parents hummed the aria Io non voglio più servir sung by the servant of Don Joe Vanni, the capo of the Sevillian mafia, and the lawyer Fagoaga absorbed the detestable though desired presence of those cabaret waiters dressed in extraordinary bikinis stamped with the lamented effigies of Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong. The waiters wore huaraches, the one with the nice legs was strangely familiar: his face was fighting to get out of Uncle’s drawer of deliberately forgotten things, where the boy was wearing a brimless, bottle-cap-encrusted borsalino on his filthy black head of stiff hair; Uncle H. felt as if he’d seen him, fleetingly, before, where, where, David Campo de Cobre? Lost Boy? Olivo Torcido? If you twist the olive branch in fields of copper, you will only create a pip of a problem.
He looked homerically at the face of the Orphan Huerta with a confused feeling of desire and hatred he simply could not repress. He did not even see the faces that corresponded to the other two pairs of legs, the chubby ones and the tattered ones, nor did he hear what one said to the other, listen, bro’, where’s the girl, and the other answered that he hadn’t seen her and the bottle-capped one don’t worry, Baby Ba will turn up when she feels like it, all that matters is that she does her flute accompaniment for us.
Homero was both inconsolable and uncontrollable, almost attacking the Orphan Huerta bodily; the three boys scattered and only two pairs of hands were left clutching Uncle Homero’s equally tiny hands. Angeles thought they were even smaller in proportion to the fagoagean hulk that weighed in at three hundred and ten pounds; my Uncle Homero’s Vienna sausage-pink hands blended with the yellow lemon-colored hands of the little man whose smile was as tenacious as his grip and who refused to let go of our uncle and kept him from pursuing his object of desire with passion and hatred.
“I’m the psychialtlic pianist, Deng Chopin. I takey velly good care patients by coming down hatch next to galley storage cupboard. I telly you maybe you need selvices.”
“Well, as the Procurator Pontius P. once asked on a memorable occasion—where can I wash my hands around here? Oh yes, please decamp instantly, oh Mongolian minihorde,” said Don Homero, not deigning to look at the little man.
But Deng Chopin (short hands, indefinite age, long fingers, shaved head, dark eye shadows, redolent of opium) refused to release him and forced our relative to bend over until his cheeks brushed his Sino-Polish lips.
“Only fool or drunkard no see water when in ocean,” said Deng. “Set me free. I do not understand your argot,” said Don H., but he could not break that iron grip.
“Oh”—Deng Chopin smiled—“must go on deck, hear noise of lain or voice of God. Rust mean tears, and preasure is seed of pain because pain is seed of preasure.”
In his uncomfortable and undignified pose—he looked like an elephant kneeling to hear the advice of a mouse—Homero, his eyes ablaze with the sparkle of awakened desire, inquired, “Preasure? Pleasure?” he asked, confirmed, and desired. “Pain? Is that what you said?”
“Ah, I see you understand. Mouth is door of disaster. No speak more.” Deng scurried away with the rapid steps of a Mademoiselle Butterfly (maid in Japan), summoning, with a mandarinesque wave of the hand, our panting, polecat-scented Uncle Homero, who once again saw the Orphan Huerta pass by, this time with an electric balalaika in his hands:
“Careful,” murmured Deng. “Even Devil handsome when only fifteen. Better you come me, Homelo. Lemember, good deeds stay at home; evil deeds travel around world.”
Homero followed Deng through a hatch. Angel and Angeles glowed, phosphorescent in the tropical night, looking from the deck of the floating disco at the nocturnal world of Dockapulco, itself dominated by this ominous symbol: a gigantic pleasure raft with four Byzantine onion cupolas made of rubber and inflated with gas, all floating over a sea of oil (don’t put your hands in the water, Mom and Dad; all of Neptune’s waters could not wash your oil-blackened hands clean) (WELCOME TO BLACAPULCO GOLD) itself floating on the liquified shit of an Imaginary Fatherland: Oil of Olé! Welcome! It is here where all the oil pipes, the wells, the refineries, the motor of progress, the circulation of our wealth, the end of mortmain disgorge: an Acapulco discotheque! Welcome! WE HAVE ENERGY TO BURN and the sewage from one hundred hotels, shit, piss, bottles, orange peels, rotten papaya skins, chicken bones, Kotex, condoms, tubes from various kinds of cream, the creams themselves, the bubbles from bubble bath, used gargles, the liquid, oily equivalent of what Angel had in his garage on Calle Génova was bobbing around on the black waves.
“Welcome!” shouted the owner, Ada Ching (fifty-five years old), “and merci, merci,” Ada thanked Angel and Angeles for having sent her the Four Fuckups, “a success,” gestured Ada, as she cheered on the arrival of the New Year’s celebrants, the launches, the fashionable gondolas, and the humble rowboats bobbing around the disco. She was dressed in a slate-blue tunic and elephant trousers, which hid her imaginably tiny feet. “Most esteemed guests,” Ada Ching said breathlessly to Angel and Angeles, gently pushing them toward another hatch on the ever more crowded raft, “great keeds, these minettes, thanks for envoying them to me,” she said: Ada Ching, the last remaining supporter of the Sino-Soviet alliance, armed with a portentous French accent which enabled her to communicate with reporters from Le Monde, the only people interested in
her case, as personal as it was peculiar, and “come along, my infants,” she said to my parents, “did you know that your ongle, your oncle sent his valet to find out if there was a sadomaso cabaret here in Aca? Since we’re here to serve our customers because the customer has always reason, well, just regard, sacred blue! Enter please the cathedral of S & M! Formal attire required: Rubber, Leather, or Skin!”
The dark cabin Ada Ching led them to was fitted with a two-way mirror through which they saw Uncle Homero, on his knees, entering through a narrow little door, a comfortable enough passageway for his Sino-Polish host, but not so for this fattest of sausages, sweating away on his knees. Uncle Homero stands up, brushing the sawdust from his knees; Deng Chopin’s sadomasochistic cabaret looks like a stable—it’s filled with cows. Homero pinches his long, thin nose between two of his fingers as he stands there amid the slaughterhouse gear, looks at his knees smeared with manure, then sits down at a table. Deng, with a napkin over his arm, takes his order, what you rike, Mr. Homero? I would like lobster, says Don H., In that case, you’ll have a steak, asshole, says Deng, delivering our astounded uncle a smart slap in the face, and from behind the tail of a cow leaps a blue dwarf wearing an orange-and-black banner from Princeton University, who sits down on the aforementioned fat knees of Our Relative. And what does this mean? asks Homero, seeing that the painted dwarf is staining his white safari jacket blue. It to piss you off, asshole, answers Deng, and next to my folks in the penumbra of the mirrors, Ada Ching repeats, biting her nails in excitement: “Pour t’embêter, pauvre con,” as she admires the performance of her lover, the psychiatrist/pianist.