AFTER THE FIESTA THE SIESTA
and from car to car along the Beltway, the shouts of the city of gossip, the nation of rumors:
“The peso’s dropping to thirty thousand per dollar.”
“Did you hear that Mamadoc got fed up and is quitting tomorrow?”
“What I hear is that it’s Mamadoc and the President.”
“No, what Mamadoc wants is for Colonel Inclán to fuck her.”
“Get out, man, where’d you hear that?”
“I’ve got a brother-in-law in SEPAFU.”
“He’s lyin’, man.”
“That minister Don Ulises is a wife-beater.”
“They say he broke his wife’s legs.”
“How’d you find out?”
“Ask the lady herself, there she is coming out of Sanborn’s.”
“They say President Paredes took a billion pesos to Switzerland.”
“Who told you that?”
“They say it came out in the Gall Street Journal.”
“Since when do you know English?”
“I’ve got people to translate for me. But it’s box populi, box dei.”
“Didya hear that Mamadoc had a copy of the Petite Trianon built for her in El Pedregal?”
“Some people saw Don Ulises López in Las Vegas.”
“Yeah, and he lost three million dollars in one shot playing baccarat.”
“And we don’t even have enough for a trip to Xochimilco.”
“I hear Robles Chacón can’t get it up, and that’s why he loves power so much. Just like women.”
“Colonel Inclán’s really a queer.”
“And Mamadoc’s a transvestite.”
“No, man, she’s supposed to be Julio Iglesias wearing a wig.”
“Wrong, man. It’s that old group Menudo under one big skirt.”
“Yeah, I hear she only likes to sleep with dwarfs.”
“Robles Chacón’s a junkie.”
“Apparently the Minatitlán wells went dry, but nobody’s saying anything.”
“Wheredya hear that?”
“My brother-in-law has access to Pemex.”
“Well, someone told me that Guatemala just occupied the entire state of Chiapas and nobody even noticed.”
“No way. My nephew was just drafted and he says the real war is with Australia over the Revillagegedo islands.”
“Right. It’s about that nodule thing.”
“Whatsat?”
“Instead of oil, it’s nodules now, didn’t you hear?”
“Never heard of it.”
“With these manganese nodules, man, we’re gonna take off again.”
“All have to do is administer our wealth!”
“But President Jomajeezus wantsa sell the islands to the Vatican.”
“No way. Who toldya?”
“I got an uncle who’s a sacristan in the Basilica.”
“I don’t believe anything anymore.”
“I’m telling you tomorrow they’re gonna announce another nationalization.”
“But there’s nothing left to nationalize.”
“There sure is: the air.”
“But who wants it?”
“They’re gonna make a window tax, just the way Santa Anna did.”
“Tomorrow they declare a moratorium.”
“You’d better get your savings out while you can.”
“Sell everything.”
“Spend it all.”
“The whole thing’s going down the tubes.”
“How many people are here?”
“Enough.”
and along Emita–Ixtapalapa an army of impostors and con men besieged each other, besieged each other trying to make deals, if you want to get into Los Pinos / I was just named superintendent of the Tuxpan refinery / I’m on my way to be ambassador to Ruanda-Urundi / I’m writing Mamadoc’s memoirs / the President has commissioned me to / the IMF has ordered me to / I have the job of bringing Dr. Barnard to operate on private individuals, just sign here / I’ve been offered a corner on the U.S. corn crop / the Rockerfeller Foundation has assigned me the job of distributing scholarships in Mex / would you be interested in spending a month free at the Ritz Hotel in Paris? Just sign here / I’m selling a condo in Beverly Hills at a hundred Mexican pesos the square yard: just sign here / the New York production company PornoCorno would be very innarested in offering you a contract, baby: just sign here /
The women selling shrimp tacos in the snack bar for Churubusco Studios note:
“Look here now, Sadie, my only contribution to the crisis of confidence we’re suffering is, as Don Paul Volcker declared recently, the U.S. deficit undermines confidence there, too.”
“Can you imagine, Frannie, the U.S. is asking for loans of $100 billion out of foreign savings accounts every year now, isn’t that incredible?”
“Well, Sadie, all I know is that when the dollar’s high it means high interest rates.”
“Frannie, you just said a mouthful. Gimme another shrimp taco / and the Van Gogh plods along the Tlalpan causeway, where the dwarfs, eccentrics, and scribes the provinces export in large numbers to the capital in order to raise cash meet and offer their services to their urban clientele. The van stops in the little plaza of the San Pedro Apóstol Church, about one hundred and fifty feet from the house of bright colors. The seashell-shaped coach drawn by horses also stops there: the meeting place was their own house, it was here the Bulevar was to be today, they’d gone around a big old circle, everyone making a sincere effort to keep up a certain style, to restore the romantic image, make dark suits, high hats, feather boas, crinolines, Nankin trousers, embroidered vests, ostrich feathers, suffocating chokers, and Derbys fashionable, today they’re parading here, they can’t avoid all the urban gangrene, but they do avoid some of it, yes, the carriage doors open and out tumble the Orphan Huerta (very much changed), Hipi Toltec (with a tiny electric fan in his hand), and Egg asking Baby Ba not to get left behind, now baby, we’re almost there, look: Angel and Angeles, our buddies …
“Serbus!” shouted the Orphan by way of greeting.
“In ixtli, in yóllotl!” said Hipi Toltec.
“Animus intelligence,” answered my mom.
“Buffalo,” synthesized the Orphan.
“We thought we’d never see each other again,” said my dad.
“You thought the Four Fuckups were
said the Orphan
“As a matter of fact, I did,” said Angeles.
A group dressed in green began clubbing the horses pulling the coach, first beating them to their knees and then continuing to pound them until they died, always shouting Equus, equus, the horses of the conquistadores. As they rolled over, the two Percherons tipped over the conch-shaped carriage.
Angel was the only one who looked. Without turning his head, Egg said: “There’s this competition to get included in the frieze on the Monument to the Heroes of Violence.”
“So they didn’t kill you in Aca?”
“Níxalo; draftearon us for to clinup Aca.”
“Under what conditions?”
“Jus juan: that we not sing for a whole year so people’d think we died wit de udders in Aca.”
“Ce Akatl!”
“Wich mean dat da Babosos Brudders gonna teikover da calpulli.”
“Disisdapits.”
“Bulook: der’s no competencia in the mágica of da marketa except da Immanuel Can’t.”
“Parvenus an home boys facetaface.”
“Awzom!”
“Don’ spase out, Orphan, an stop wit da self-flagellation, ’cause der’s broken glass anstoff.”
“Laic yunó.”
“Cheesis, man, ay mus eet seben time ahuic Damningo Loonys Madness Mercolates Hoovers Bernaise an Savagedog.”
“Good buddy.”
“Ay too mus tacofy from damningo to savagedog.”
“Baby Ba says she’s hungry: won’t you invite her to your house for dinner?”
“We ain’t
got much.”
“Except for Uncle Homero.”
“You forget it’s the first of May: he’s gone with the wind.”
“We saw him from here: he gone.”
Alone in the house of bright colors, Don Homero Fagoaga said to himself: “This is my chance.” For the first time he found himself without Angeles, who, though she did sometimes go out shopping, would leave him with Angel, who never left the television set alone; but what a time to choose to abandon him: would that missionary Benítez pop in again to catechize him about democracy? Alone and permanently dressed in red-striped pajamas: the owner of Pichilinque and Mel O’Field and Frank Wood harbored the feudal suspicion that his sister Isabella Fagoaga and her husband the inventor Diego Palomar were not as disinterested and spiritual as it seemed; aside from the forty million gold pesos that Isabella left her son Angel, there had to be something else, Homero felt sure of it this morning; he had investigated bank accounts, stocks, CDs, but had turned up nothing: there had to be a hiding place in the house, money, jewels, papers, something.
Like a teenager who takes advantage of the fact that parents and servants are out of the house to get out his pornographic magazines and excite himself, exciting himself above all with the prospect of the imminent return of those guardians and punishers, in the same way Homero threw himself into exploring the house of the Curies of Tlalpan, crammed with blackboards and portraits of famous scientists and mousetraps. Homero immediately went down to the cellar to find the family treasure, where the first thing that happened to him was that a mousetrap caught his pinkie, and the pain, the anger, and the humiliation of the uncle were so great that he came charging back upstairs, knocking over blackboards and smashing a prehensile mousetrap against the photo of Niels Bohr, as if only a human face deserved the reaction of this rage, but barely had the trap hit the glass covering the photo when the fragments reassembled themselves instantly and once again covered the benign face of the Danish scientist, who looked like the benevolent captain of a whaling ship. Don Homero fell over backward, tripping over a stepladder that instantly folded up, allowing a pail of black paint to fall on a white cat that just happened to be there searching for the house’s celebrated photogenic mice; and the cat, now transformed into a black cat, jumped on top of a cabinet and knocked a box of salt onto Homero’s shoulders. Homero grabbed an umbrella that happened to be handy in order to protect himself from the rain of objects, but as he opened it, a rainstorm hidden inside it fell on his head, and Homero in despair threw himself on a bed where there happened to be twelve top hats, which, because of the homeric obesity, snapped open, forcing our startled academic out of bed, and making him run through the halls in hopes of destroying all the other photos of scientists, but he found the frames empty, the glass all broken expressly to cut his feet, and at the end of the corridor, he found a long banquet table and twelve men sitting at it, dining by candlelight: as they had in the Sun & Fun Toltec Tour of Acapulco, under the tutelage of Will Gingerich, each guest had a name tag on his chest: E. Rutherford, Cambridge; N. Bohr, Copenhagen; M. Planck, Berlin; W. Heisenberg, Göttingen; W. Pauli, Vienna; R. Oppenheimer, Princeton; A. Einstein, Princeton; E. Fermi, Chicago; J. D. Watson, Cambridge; F. Crick, Cambridge; L. de Broglie, Paris; L. Pauling, Berkeley, and as soon as they saw Homero they all politely stood and invited him, in a friendly way, to join them and take the last seat at the table: number 13, shouted our uncle, horrified, turning his back on them, running away, tripping over blackboards, paint cans, umbrellas, top hats, cats, mice, and mousetraps intent on pinching his naked toes: he fled out into the street, in pajamas, barefoot, and those who saw him thought he was a madman escaped from the nearby Tlalpan sanatorium or perhaps an escaped convict, what with those stripes on his uniform and with no shoes on, Sadie!
8
They decided to look for jobs while everything that had to happen did happen, meaning that I had to be born on exactly October 12 in order to win the contest, and after that, watch out, baby, but how was the contest going? Did anyone know anything? Even so, it would have to be checked out and in the meantime all of them would have to stay together in the Tlalpan house, unless it turned out that our miserable Uncle Homero had flown the coop merely to order the police to keep anyone from living in it while he mended fences with the PRI, God knows what goes on behind that feverish brow. In the meantime, everybody is here in the tits of the family, so to speak—Hipi still disintegrating, portable electric fan in hand; the Orphan changed forever, my mom says that now he looks like Charlie Chaplin when Chaplin was young, an amazed look on his face, all eyebrows, with a tiny black mustache and kinky hair, and complaining that without the income from rockaztec he won’t be able to dress in style.
Woe is me, he complains as he strolls through the secondhand clothing stores with their wares hanging in huge stalls along the streets of Ejido with the monument to the Revolution in the background and under its dome dealers in products whose importation is strictly forbidden, blackmarket clothes that aren’t even in style but were ten years ago; woe is me, complains the Orphan, followed by Egg and Baby Ba among the clothes hangers on the avenue, succulently caressing the tweed and leather, the glittering hobnails, and the soft cotton of the gringo T-shirts, all forbidden because of a year of abstinence imposed by the government on the Four Fuckups. Our buddy Egg stares nostalgically at the brands of internationally produced consumer goods sold illegally but right out in the open under the dome of the monument to the Revolution, the things he’d like to buy Baby Ba so she’d look better, and he limits himself instead to serving her in secret: he makes her bed, he puts her to bed, he tucks her in, he gives her her favorite Cabbage Patch dolls: that’s how we know he’s got a past and what fucks me up about these fucked-up types is that I have just as much past (genetic info) and they, the Orphan most of all, don’t have any past, and Hipi only the past he’s invented, which isn’t even his: je suis la serpent-à-plumes, sure, buddy, with that fan in your hand.
One day, my mother (with me inside her, remember) goes out with him because Hipi wants people to think he’s got a girl and that she’s even going to have a baby. My mom is for the idea and does him this favor and he brings us to his parents’ house, which is on a roof and surrounded by water tubs near Balbuena and the Puebla highway: a shack whose walls are tubs and a crowd of people there you can’t even see because it’s so dark, but Hipi kisses all of them, talks to them in Nahuatl, repeats that greeting of his “in ixtli, in yóllotl” and my mother repeats it in Spanish (my mother would like to be minimally rational in this era in which we live), “a heart and a mind,” gravely curtsying before the shapeless old men and women wrapped in ponchos and serapes and old newspapers in the shack in the lost, nameless city built on the garbage belt, but surrounded by gadgets which, we suppose, Hipi Toltec brings them from his expeditions, because he gives his electric fan to a little old man as wrinkled up as a prune, a real prune, and the little old man carefully piles it next to his Mixmaster and his Sanyo icemaker and his Phillips TV set and his Sears toaster and his Machiko Kyo hair dryer and his Osterizer microwave oven and his Kawabata alarm radio, all stored there in that smoky, sepia-colored darkness devoid of electricity, which doesn’t even get light from the street. And my mother wonders, will they go on accumulating the trophies this prodigal son brings them forever? Like Columbus or Cortés returning to the Court of Spain loaded with coconuts and maguey, hammocks and rubber balls, gold and precious woods, feathered crowns and opal diadems, they thank him for it, he kisses their hands, they pat his long, greasy, straight hair, they all speak Aztec and say, my mother thinks they say in any case, things that are very poetic and beautiful:
“Ueuetiliztli!” (Old folks!)
“Xocoyotizin!” (Young pup!)
“Aic nel toxaxahacayan.” (We shall never be obliterated)
“On tlacemichtia.” (There everything was stolen)
“Olloliuhqui, olloliuhqui!” (How the wheel of fortune spins!) and with enormous satisfaction they look
at my pregnant mother, they look at the center of my mom, where I launch into an Olympic dive, but when we get back to Tlalpan I still cannot understand Hipi’s world as a past (I want everyone to have a conscious past so I can be born a bit better) but as something very different: he has a secret family and in it there is only a memory of silence.
Something similar is going on with the Orphan Huerta (with all of them in fact, these are their pasts, barely what passes by, nothing more, my tranquil genes tell me, the past is only the past), but the Orphan at least talks about a brother who disappeared, the Lost Boy, he calls him, and about a grandmother who lives in Chicago, where she forgot her Spanish and never learned English: so she became a mute: a memory of silence, I tell them again, this time captured between the successive infernos of wind and ice and a suffocating purgatory: Chicago, City of the Big Shoulders, says my mother, reciting something or other, and the light of reverie goes on in the eyes of all present—Egg, Orphan, Hipi, the invisible Baby Ba (who suddenly I want to see more than anything in the world, convinced suddenly that only I will be able to see her: but in order to do that, I’ll have to be born, to be born and see her, it’s not true she’s invisible, I convince myself because no one sees me either, nor do they pay me the slightest attention, unless I kick or jump around or take swan dives in the stomach of Chicago and Lake Michigan).
There was lots of talk about Chicago in those May days because that’s where the Orphan’s grandma lived, condemned to silence. But there was another reason as well: Uncle Fernando passed by the San Pedro Apóstol house with two Indians, a couple he said he’d met during his excursion in February to a land of blind people, and we saw this strange couple with light eyes and dark skin, standing like two flexible statues in the doorway of the house of bright colors, I don’t know if they were blind (I’ve already said it: they don’t see me, so how can I judge those who are also not seen and who just accumulate, if your mercies would care to do the arithmetic: Baby Ba, Hipi’s smoking family, now this couple my parents tell me are handsome, strong, with a strange determination in their clouded-over eyes).