Christopher Unborn

  CIRCUSES AND CIRCUSES

  and further transcending Roman demagoguery which promised, besides, bread bread the doctor’s dead, the blessèd smell of the bakery, but who likes bread without butter? yeah, but what about circuses and circuses? Ah, sighed Don Homero, the meaning of Catholic carnival was to abolish terror, even if our relative Benítez would say that among our Indians it’s the devil who organizes the carnival.

  Don Fernando Benítez rapidly sketched out a map of the republic on one of the blackboards in the Tlalpan house. He made Don Homero Fagoaga, dressed as always in red-striped pajamas and barefoot, sit down in front of it as if he were the class dunce.

  “Where are we?” asked Benítez, marking an X with green chalk on the blackboard.

  “In Tepatepec Hidalgo,” huffed Homero, “prepared to give our lives so that the peasant organization shall be respected.”

  “And now?” asked Uncle Fernando, marking another spot on his map.

  “In Pichátaro Michoacán. We’ve just walked into Pichátaro to defend the workers’ cooperative.”

  “Look—and don’t shut your eyes, fatso—where’s this?”

  “I’m in Cotepec de Harinas, struggling to have the municipal election respected.” Homero stood up with his eyes closed and grabbed Benítez by the throat. “I’m going to send you to jail for life, your honor”—Benítez shaken about by the furious Uncle Homero—“for allowing yourself to be suborned so you’d be on the good side of the stronger party”—and Benítez slams his elbow into Homero’s paunch. “It’s you who’s going to prison, your honor, because unless the judiciary is independent everything else is an illusion.” And Benítez raised his miner’s-boot-covered foot to squash Homero’s bare toes. “Listen here, your honor,” snorted Homero, hanging on to the neck of the semi-asphyxiated Benítez, “we Mexicans can practice democracy without any need for hit men, or crimes, or bribes, or hucksters!” and Don Fernando had doubts about what to do: “Do I allow him to go on living out my teaching with such conviction, or do I stop him from strangling me?” He stopped doubting and let his miner’s boot fall on Homero’s bare toes, the fat man shrieked and sat down in his dunce’s seat once again, rubbing his smashed toe. Benítez straightened his tie and went on, coughing from time to time:

  “You shall walk the byways of Mexico untiringly, shedding those extra pounds, ready to give your life so that in Tepatepec Hidalgo the peasant organization shall be respec…”

  * * *

  My father, an apostle (though now he was somewhat reluctant about it) of disorder, then imagined a diabolical play in which laughter and fear would coexist perfectly: the humor would not annihilate what is individual in terror, only what is finite in it. My mother did not understand this, later on, in bed, my father pointed toward a photo from the Cristero war, taken around 1928, which they had tacked up next to their bed: a religious guerrilla wearing a felt hat, open shirt, vest, riding trousers, and boots with spurs, stands against a wall and waits for his death. The government rifles are already cocked. But he holds a dry cigarette in his stained fingers and bends a knee forward as if he were expecting his girlfriend and not death (and who said what?) and he smiles the way no one has ever smiled. Baby, I swear: can you imagine yourself smiling like that when you’re about to die, when they’re going to shoot you? Could you do it? Would you like to try? She said no; things like that were macho myths, magic ceremonies for jerks; she wasn’t interested in dying, with or without dignity.

  He says how hard it is to die.

  She says how hard it is to be free.

  And that’s what he wants too, he says, but if he has to take his revolt to the edge of life and not the edge of ideology, that means taking it to the edge of death (he says to my mother in secret this dry night of mid-April the ***est month under the sheets that isolate them from the part of their space occupied by Homero Fagoaga: during the day he swills, at night he snores, he’s always pushing his way in, what a pain this uncle is!), but she repeats, I do not accept death, even with dignity: if you die on me you’ll create a void in the world, a woman’s left alone and anything can be pulled in to fill her void; she said she didn’t want a void left by him and he answered that she mustn’t forget she’s expecting a son; that—he laughed—should fill all her voids. But, without wanting to, he dreamed about something (he dreamed when he pulled away from my mother and fell asleep with his knees touching hers) that walks into a discotheque bathed in the cold light of the spots and covered with sequins: she has eyes like two cloudy butterflies and as she dances she raises her leg and, without wanting to, reveals her thigh under her short skirt, a crease of down, a moist little copper coin: my father dreams, without wanting to, of her.

  In the meantime, my eyes close. But my ears open.

  * * *

  My mother dreams while she’s asleep (because sometimes she dreams while she’s awake, the divine diviner): she’s already missed two periods, sleeping like this with her hair down, hiding her light-olive-complected face, sleeping deeply with me now, breathing deeply, hot under her arms and on her nape and between her legs: hot and me there all complete now, as if to make up for my sudden blindness: all complete now in myself, small, I don’t need anything more, too many cooks spoil the broth: I am already a tiny little person who from now on will do nothing but grow and perfect my functions: do you know my heart’s been BEATING for a month? That my muscles have begun their exercises? My mother wakes in surprise; she wants to tell my father Angel; she smiles and keeps her secret; I feel happy knowing she’s happy, and in the marvelous pool she’s given me, I, out of pure pleasure, do a few aquatic flips, like the little seal that I am: but I am already beginning to acquire my human face, and my priest-like hands invite prayer and peace. My face is human, I say, but my eyelids have closed up tight. And I don’t know if I’m going to fall asleep or if I’m going to wake up. But if I say all this it’s because I want to convince myself quickly that I am becoming the artist of my own creation, and I say this big fat lie only to protect myself from the suspicion that my father can believe I am not his son, that I am no longer his son or that I was never his son, after that gang of thugs had free run of my mommy’s guadalcanal: now I depend more than ever on her convincing him that I was made before then and that what happened in Malinaltzin doesn’t affect me, but suppose it affects him, suppose it turns him into a Mexican macho, and even if he was buggered by Matamoros Moreno himself, in this sibylization it’s the men who are priests and their auguries say permit all and forgive all men all things, but the women, the eternal vestals, no way: is that how it’s going to be? Well then, I’m already screwed, Readers, and for that reason my fetal scream in this instant of my return (all right, my arrival) in Makesicko Seedy is:

  Give time and tenderness to your little Christopher!

  Sing ballads to one another!

  Remember one another!

  Screw yourselves into Siamese twins!

  Love each other, Mom and Dad!

  5. Ballad of the Cruellest Month

  Says my father: Time out. I have to explain to my son who he is, who we Angeles and I are: his unknown soldiers: I say it right into Angeles’s tummy: in you Angeles I see everything opposite to me, everything that completes me and the hope that we become equal without ceasing to be different: I say to you give me things to think about at night which is exactly what you are going to ask of me: the most important thing we can think about each other now is that I believe in you because I believe that the good should recur someday, it cannot remain behind, and only if I accept that, my love, can I admit that I am not what I would like to be. Help me, Angeles, to be what I want to be even if it is something very different from what you want, that would be good: say something just for me, don’t just stand there immobile and silent, and she (my mother, that is) will smile and say Angel we met each other when we were very young and incomplete, I’ll give you what you ask of me, we can form each other (share our formation) after we know each other: would it have been better
to meet when we were already mature?

  I interrupt the ballad of the month of April; or perhaps I merely add a voice to the dialogue, turning it into a chorus: Mommy, remember you swore that in April you’d tell me how you and my daddy met, don’t let the month go by without telling me: Mom!

  “Angeles. I found you because I looked for you. That afternoon on the Juárez monument was no accident.”

  “You think not?”

  “I want you to know for a fact that I did not find you by chance or because I lost Agueda or because you are so different from Agueda that I perversely came up to you…”

  “It doesn’t matter. Our first meeting happened; it’s done. Why bother bringing up that moment so often?”

  (Is she saying it to him? Is she saying it to me?)

  “It’s that only by remembering it can you understand that if I lose you or if we separate, I will look for you again: I’m leaving nothing to chance, my love…”

  “Okay. Now we live together, perhaps we’ll have a son in October; for the moment we’re performing together. Okay. What page of your book are you on?”

  “Look: on the page where Plato says that we’re living in the post-Marxist, post-Freudian, and post-industrial era.”

  “We’ve had enough wise Jews already, now we need a few asshole Christians. Go on quoting Plato.”

  “What about death?”

  “Isn’t it a long way off?” My father laughed.

  “That’s why I love you, because you’re a mass of contradictions.”

  * * *

  Angel romantically reinvents himself as a conservative rebel. He would be an assassin if he could get out of himself completely. He can’t. His memory won’t let him. We would all be assassins if we had no memory. Memory reminds us: Cain. The Tiger of Yautepec. Caryl Chessman. Dr. Crippen. Goyito Cárdenas. But you just can’t say to crime because of memory I will not make you mine. I want Angel to be able to say that no one would dare judge me betting on my dishonesty or on my virtue even though I do as I please and not what people think proper. I want a world (with me, Angeles) in which the proper thing is not to do the proper thing but what we please: doing what we please would then be the proper thing. Is it possible? Angel is not what he’d like to be. I want him to need me in order to be it. I know that all this is impossible. But I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts and I’m going to try to make it last, without his finding out about my secret: I am in love with my love for Angel, I love loving him, I don’t want him to find out. Angel, on the other hand, is going to find out that love is a matter of pure will: we love what we want to love. Understanding that is going to make him very sad. But for a while he won’t have the power to fight that power: he’ll love whatever he wants. Angeles will be in love with her love for Angel. Angel will be in love with his will to love. When Angeles understands this, she’ll want his will to be to love her, to concentrate in her all the power of his will to love. This cannot happen, gentle Readers, until Angel unfurls his will to love, imagining that the variety of the will is the proof of its existence; he will confuse the will to love with the different kinds of love and the different kinds of love with the imagination of love. Poor guy: he’ll have to eliminate the different kinds so that imagination and love really see each other face to face, kiss, screw: the singularity of sexual love between man and woman is that we see each other’s face and animals turn their backs on each other to screw; you and I, my love, can look into each other’s eyes but we are like animals in that we can never see ourselves as others see us making love: are we good for love or are we bad? How can we compare? How can we know? Is it true when she says: you screw divinely, Angel, who taught you? Is it true when he answers: you taught me everything, aren’t you the one who screws like a queen? Why do my parents say these things? to screw around? to dominate? or because it’s true? to love each other more? can people love each other without dominating each other? screw around without screwing up? My father’s love takes place within what he is and what he believes: He loves my mother as part of what he wants: an order. And he knows very well that no order will ever be sufficient. My mother on the other hand (we’re in April, the ***est month) loves love but knows very well that love is only the search for love. How the hell can they understand each other? She proves to him that she’s right: no order is sufficient if the value is to love and to love is to search for love. He proves to her that he is right: love cannot be part of an established order, it questions it and passes it by and transforms it every time two lips touch two lips and one hand stretches out to touch a sex as if it were its own that belongs to another: domination has begun, Angeles, it’s inevitable that you women generate guilt, that you persecute us so that we feel guilty, the bitches are not happy unless they see us accepting that we are guilty and for that reason I accept what happened in Malinaltzin: I won’t make you take the blame today so that you never make me feel blameworthy and let’s be that way, my love, the first happy couple in history hip hip hurray! hip hip my rib!

  “Is it true or not?”

  And Angeles: if you accuse me of something which I think but don’t do, I cannot deny it. That isn’t guilt. But desiring even if it isn’t carried out, is that blameworthy for you? Don’t just sit there without speaking, say something. Angeles dreamed she urinated and urinated until she refilled Texcoco Lake, and refloated the damned dried-out city, restored its canals, its water traffic, its liquid death. Angeles dreamed that they returned to Mexico City and lived again in the house of bright colors and I asked them, please:

  Give time and tenderness to your little Christopher.

  What a lack of imagination! They don’t listen to me.

  6. Hollow-Eyed and Made Up

  I don’t know if I’m going to sleep or waking up.

  But my big old ears grow and listen.

  I hear someone say that the domestic situation has become impossible. My parents have never been examples of Calvinist parsimony; no matter how postmodern, post-industrial, enlightened, conservative, Freudian, Marxist, or ecologist they declare or have declared themselves to be over the course of their brief and disturbed existences, Angel and Angeles are Catholic–Hispanic–baroque prodigals, spendthrifts, anachronisms: it’s impossible to be modern without being Protestant, even if you happen to be Catholic, Angel muses again as he watches Uncle Homero devour the groceries of the young married couple in the house of bright colors: he wouldn’t dream of asking permission or saying thank you or offering to raise a finger, that is, until my mother says to my father Angel one April morning:

  “I’ve just smashed the last piggy bank, honey. What a pain. What do we do now?”

  In a certain sense they exempted Uncle Homero because, after all, he did say that he would withdraw the suit against Angel, and, in this world of great expectations and perpetual illusions which is Mexico ’92, that means that the kids (my parents) had in their possession forty million in gold pesos. Just like that. The fact is that the cupboard was bare, and they, looking seriously into one another’s eyes, declared the primary truth: we’ve got to get jobs. The secondary truth was that, without the help of the Four Fuckups, they didn’t stand a chance in the job market.

  Their logical conclusion, after hearing what Uncle Homero said in Malinaltzin, was that their buddies, Egg, Orphan Huerta, Hipi Toltec, and the Baby Ba (despite the fact that she was invisible) had perished in the hecatomb arranged by the government in Acapulco and blamed on the victims.

  My parents were vegetating as they watched the alternative reality offered on television, when suddenly two things happened. The Last Playboy Centerfold Contest, a hard one to win because that enterprising Chicago-based magazine hadn’t yet given up the ghost, not even in the face of the puritanical reaction of the eighties (monogamy, condoms, herpes, and AIDS), not even in the face of the change of generations, not even in the face of geographical distances—statistics proved they’d photographed more than 80 percent of the cunts on the planet. No: the magazine had defied age and, some susp
ected, would defy death itself. But the file of dead beauties in the safes facing windy Lake Michigan, in the iron-steel axis that ran from Chicago to Philadelphia, was closed to public scrutiny, even as the photos of naked crones began to be peddled around in a very discreet fashion. Who would win? The postmortem centerfold of the divine Swede, Lola-Lola, sitting astride a gravestone, or the venerable grandma of the bobbing breasts, Doña Sara García, posing naked as a jaybird?