“And so?”
“Don’t get all excited. Let life happen, Savior.”
That’s how she spoke to me, with affection and a dose of simplification that could not demolish my theoretical constructions but solidified them even more. I mean to say, reader, that Lucha’s “common sense” was necessary for my “theoretical sense” and both of them joined, perhaps, in an “esthetic sense” that was nothing other than the art of living: how one lives, why, and to what end. Big questions. Small realities. She, with a certain mystery, confronted my abstractions and I, with fewer shadows, confronted her mysteries.
Because I had no doubt that in Lucha Zapata was a mystery she did not guard zealously. She did not guard it: she canceled it. It was not possible to penetrate, in conversation with Lucha, the veil of a past revealed, perhaps, in the scars on her graceful, long-suffering body, but never in reminiscence. Lucha did not refer to her past. And I asked myself whether this wasn’t the most eloquent way to unveil it. I mean: Because of everything she did not say, I could imagine whatever I wanted and create a biography of Lucha Zapata for my own use. A piece of foolishness that, in view of the silent curtains of her nakedness, revealed her to my complete pleasure.
I believe she guessed my strategy because in the afternoons, seeing me deep in thought, she would say: “With women you never know.”
You never know … I was young and understood that youth consists of choosing what was at hand or deferring it in favor of the future. This reflection made no sense for Lucha for the simple reason that when she erased the past from her life she also eliminated the future and installed herself, as if on her mat, in an eternal present. I knew this was how she lived now: letting herself be carried along by the minute hand of life, by everything occurring in the present moment, though with references to the immediate past (the incident on the airfield, her relationship with me, so important she gave me the undeserved and somewhat absurd name of “Savior,” “Salvador”), and timid incursions into the future (“What do you want to eat, my Savior?”).
When we were lying on the mat at dawn, I liked to ask her half-captious questions to see if I could make her fall into remembering or looking ahead. What other airports have you assaulted, Lucha? Toluca, Querétaro, Guanajuato, Aguascalientes? The airport of the sun, Savior, she would reply. Didn’t you ever have a job, Lucha? I’m at leisure. I don’t need to work. Don’t you feel somehow excluded from society? I can invade society before society invades me. Do you feel an internal conflict, Lucha? I have a quarrel with the world. What do you reproach society for? I don’t want to be a perpetual debtor. That’s what you are in society. An eternal debtor.
My affection for Lucha Zapata, which by this time should be evident to the least clever reader, did not make me blind. She did everything I didn’t like. She was, let us say, a poly-drug user. Tobacco, heroin, cocaine, alcohol. When I met her she had well-stocked hiding places, so it wasn’t necessary to go out to buy anything. How had she obtained this treasure? The nugatory pact regarding the past kept me from asking what she wasn’t going to tell me. On the other hand, I came to appreciate deeply her domestic simplicity, her physical helplessness, and the mystery of her spiritual complexity.
In this way two years passed …
Once upon a time a man went down to hell and was received by a blond hostess wearing a miniskirt and a little blue cap with the English phrase WELCOME TO HELL. The hostess led the new arrival to a luxury suite with a king-size bed, marble bath, Jacuzzi, and a summer wardrobe for night and day, with labels from Madison Avenue, Calle Serrano, and Via Condotti, and sumptuous patent leather shoes, sandals, and moccasins. From there, the new arrival was led to a recreation area with an open bar and five-star restaurants along a tropical beach planted with palm trees, overflowing with stands of coconut palms and towel service.
“I was expecting something else,” said the new arrival.
The hostess smiled and led him to a spot hidden in the luxuriant growth where there was a heavy iron door that the girl lifted up, allowing to escape a terrible sudden burst of flame and the vision of a lake of fire where thousands of naked creatures writhed as they were tortured by red devils with sharp-pointed tails who taunted the damned, piercing them with pitchforks and reminding them that this prison was eternal with no possible remission: the lake, the darkness, the site of “weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 25:30), the place of “the fire that never shall be quenched” (Mark 9:43). Whoever enters here does not leave, despite heretical theories of a final redemption of souls thanks to God’s universal mercy. For if God is infinite love, eventually He has to pardon Lucifer and free the souls condemned to hell. Anathema, let it be anathema. To the devil with anyone who believes in God’s mercy.
This is the hell for Catholics, said the hostess, closing the metal door.
It isn’t true.
I, who am dead, attest to that.
What happens, then? You, readers caught in the web of my novelistic intrigue, will have to wait for the last page to find out. I, Josué, who live in another dimension, can continue the interrupted story and ask for the help of one of my new friends, Ezekiel, whom I found playing with a Spanish deck of cards in a place whose name I have forgotten and that is clearly not of this world. I asked him to move from solitaire to tute, he agreed, he lost, and as payment I requested (since dollars, euros, and pounds are not in circulation there) that he lend me a pair of wings so I could fly over the world and in this way go on with my suspended tale.
Ezekiel, who’s a real pal (a good guy, but draped in togas, that is, sheets with Grecian borders like the ones James Purefoy wears on the television series Rome), asked to go with me because, he said, his territory had been ancient Jerusalem and he had never crossed the borders of Moab, Philistia, Tivia, and Sidon, all enemies of Israel, and the deserts that lead to Riblah, a city Yahweh promised to exterminate in order to demonstrate who was top dog in the Old Testament (in the New, Jesus Christ is the superstar).
Of course he wanted to see Mexico City, a place the most ancient chronicles don’t mention, even though in questions of legends all of them end up resembling one another: Cities are founded, expand, grow, reach their high point, and fall into decadence because they were not faithful to the promise of their creation, because they wear themselves out in battles lost before they’re started, because the horse was not shod in time, because the queen bee died and the caste of drones perished with her … Because the fly flew away.
Yes, I told my new friend the prophet Ezekiel, I’ll take you to a city that goes out of its way to destroy itself but cannot succeed. It changes a great deal but never dies. Its foundation is peculiar: a lagoon (which has dried out), a rock (which was turned into a residential neighborhood), a nopal cactus (which is used to prepare lamb’s quarters and stuffed chiles), an eagle (a species on the verge of extinction), and a serpent (the only thing that survives).
I shouldn’t have said that. Ezekiel exclaimed that the serpent was the protagonist of paradise, the star of Eden, the most historic reptile in history, there are two thousand seven hundred species of serpents gathered, to simplify matters, into ten family groups, they crawl but listen, Josué, are you listening to me? the serpent is an animal that hears, it has auricular openings, eardrums, tympani, cochleae that sing and pick up the vibration of the earth: They know when there will be an earthquake, they count the shovels of earth at burials, they endure being covered over with asphalt superhighways, they survive everything and wait for us blinking, with eyes of glass. They don’t taste with their tongues, those fuckers: They detect odors, serpents have a sense of smell, Josué, in their tongues, they swallow everything because they can extend their lower jaw and catch an eagle, yes, take revenge on the flying animal that has the criminal astuteness of the animal that crawls on the ground.
Ezekiel looked at me half amused and half amazed.
“They have a double penis. Hermipenes, they’re called.”
I didn’t laugh. He became impatien
t.
“What am I good for?”
“For flying, Prophet.”
I showed him—like this, with my hand raised and the cards fanned out—my winning hand: angel poker, four angels, four faces, four wings, faces of a man, a lion, a bull, an eagle, and the four wings with their four faces joined together as in a nervous fan ready to escape my hands, taking flight with Ezekiel clutching my heels, discovering that the marvelous wings of the cards not only had faces but men’s hands to open the sky (which is a constellation of eyes, in case you didn’t know) and let us be carried by a tempestuous wind until we flew over a valley smothered in mists of burnt-out gas, surrounded by eroded mountains. A place difficult to distinguish though I knew it all too well. A noisy receptacle of fiery arrows calling from the glowering sky we pierced with our wings. Ezekiel and I, the prophet growing more and more animated, in his element, a lame biblical demon capable, I guessed, of raising the roofs of rotting tiles in Mexico Federal District Titlán de Tenoch Palaces city of the besieged City Das Kapital of the Commonwealth, Res Publica, public bull, Confined Bull, listening to the thundering voice of the not very optimistic prophet Ezekiel, move away from the appearance of your city,
go beyond your face, Josué,
scratch in the earth, my son,
get to the lost place,
scratch until you find the dirty sanctuary,
sit on top of the scorpions,
cook your impure bread on excrement,
enter the sanctuary profaned by man,
poverty, pestilence, and violence,
observe the desolation of the temples,
look at the corpses thrown at the feet of the idols,
take it, Josué, take the roll of paper,
eat the paper
in order to recount the histories of rebel houses
endure their faults
prophesy with me against the mad-
dened tribes of Mexico
stop being the enemy of your own person
for a moment, stop
they’ll put obstacles in your path
wait
your spirit rebels
they are on their guard
you endure, Josué
close off the memory of the brothel of La Hetara
(Durango between Sonora and Plaza Miravalle)
close your eyes to the misery in the house of Esparza
(somewhere between Coapa and Culhuacán)
forget forever the house of María Egipciaca
(Berlín between Hamburgo and Marsella)
forget the solitude in the house of Lucha Zapata
(Chimalpopoca to the south of Río de la Loza)
forget the faults of the great house of Aragón
(beneath the Río Consulado)
anticipate the faults of the house of Monroy
(Santa Fe de los Remedios)
and above all, Josué, absolve the faults of the youth-
ful days of Jericó …
(Praga between Reforma and Hamburgo).
Carried away by his prophetic passion (professional and innate in him), Ezekiel exclaimed they are rebel houses, founded on scorpions, they are thrones of dust, they will set obstacles before you, be on guard, endure the fault of the city, do not anticipate ruin and ignominy, rather live and let live but one day let them know the abominations of their parents, the names of the mobs, take out your roll of paper and write, Josué …
Ezekiel seized me by the back of my neck and then dropped me into the void.
I fell on my face.
I heard his voice: Lock yourself in your house.
I thought: I’m going to disobey you, Prophet.
I couldn’t because my tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth.
Then I heard the sound of wings, the great noise that moved away behind me, and though I was prostrate, I felt something that called itself spirit enter me as Ezekiel returned to heaven where prophets write, like novelists, the history of what could have been.
I had paper in my mouth. And I did not remember the face of the prophet.
I HAD PAPER and I had earth. I fell flat on my face where Ezekiel threw me: a gravestone. Blood ran from my lips onto the grave and washed off the writing. If the prophet commanded me “Write,” present circumstances now told me “Read.”
It took me some time to understand. The night was a dark fire like the aforementioned hell of the Catholics, though the light that fell where I lay foretold the coming dawn and the imminent sun urged me to be, for a few minutes, the thief of the night that the great poem of the world, written by the living for the dead but also by the dead for the living, confuses with sleep.
Look at me, readers, read with me as the dawn with its long-nailed fingers tears away the nocturnal veil and the wind of the plateau carries away the dust that covers the grave where I lie, facedown, scratching to read with difficulty the inscription that says, finally,
ANTIGUA CONCEPCIÓN
and under that, in smaller letters
Born and Died with No Date
The mystery of this stone was enough in itself. If that was the instruction of the dead woman, I immediately disputed it. The dry announcement on the grave of the so-called Antigua Concepción (was “Ancient Conception” a name, a title, an attribute, a promise, a memory?) woke in my spirit, agitated by the adventure with Ezekiel, a continuity of mystery. The prophet had placed the seed there … the “Antigua Concepción” made a tree grow in my chest. Who was it?
“Who are you?” I asked, lying there with no physical strength.
“How good that you’ve asked me,” answered the voice of the grave. “I am Antigua Concepción.”
My eyes showed not fear but an interrogating amazement for which she, Antigua Concepción, must have been grateful because she continued speaking from the depths of the earth.
I am Antigua Concepción.
I have waited in vain for someone to visit my grave.
No one comes here.
Do you know where you are?
No, I replied, except someplace in the city.
Then I won’t tell you where you are. Promise.
I promise.
Keep my story to yourself. It is this. My name is Antigua Concepción because when I was born they baptized me Inmaculada Concepción de María but ended up calling me “Concha” and what is worse, “Conchita.” Conchita, the name of a fake flamenco dancer, Concepción, the name of an afflicted virgin ignorant of who made her pregnant and when, we’re almost in Pénjamo now! Its great variety of birds! Inmaculada is the name of a sanctified and blessed ass, bah! Concepción is worse, the name of a Paraguayan who has never seen the ocean, ha! a damn Concepcionista nun serving the Panchos (the holy Franciscans, not the trio of singers). Conceiving or saying ingenious stupidities. No dogmas for me, young man! I am etymologically a he-re-tic: I choose, not she choos-es, not is chos-en, and least of all now, at a depth of one me-ter.
She sighed and the earth seemed to tremble just a little.
From the time I was a little girl I rebelled against diminutives. “Diminutives diminish,” I shouted, making a fuss, you won’t call a Julio Julito or a Rafael Falito or my Concepción Conchita. Concha cunt, motherfucker! she exclaimed with a strange guffaw.
And “Antigua”?
At the age of twenty I already knew what I wanted to be. I had no aptitude other than mystery and more mystery than greatness.
I married and assumed my eternal form.
I stopped being Conchita.
I stopped being Concepción Martínez, a decent unmarried girl. I became Concepción Martínez de Monroy, a married woman.
I wore my hair pulled back in a severe style and put a nun’s wimple on my head.
I dressed in a Carmelite habit.
I kept my key rings in the deep pockets of the habit.
I never had to wear underclothes again. I sat on cottons.
No one saw my bodily forms again, and whoever imagined them was clearly mistaken.
I
occupied a throne with no insignias.
With a hole in the seat my human necessities fell into a porcelain basin with the portrait of the president in power.
Don’t ask. Whichever one you like least.
I was born in 1904, seven years before Don Francisco Madero, Apostle of the Revolution, became president and was betrayed and killed by the usurper Victoriano Huerta in 1913. Like Allende and the little traitor Pinochet with his faggot’s voice. I was thirteen when the Constitution was proclaimed. Eighteen, when the president was General Alvaro Obregón, the one-handed man who lost his arm in Celaya beating the shit out of Pancho Villa, and nineteen when they treacherously killed Villa, and only fifteen when they treacherously killed Emiliano Zapata, and twenty-four when a right-winger dispatched Obregón with a bullet to the head as the general ate toasted tortillas in a restaurant in the southern part of the capital. More totopos! Those were his final, memorable words. I married my husband General Maximiliano Monroy because I knew they wouldn’t kill him because he was one of the top dogs who invented the revolution, the ones who shot first and asked questions later.
My husband Don Maximiliano was a real Don Juan as a young man. I took advantage of his evil ways to become strong and independent, with no need of him. I barely knew him long enough to make a baby. He was thirty years older than me. I tell you he began as a womanizer and ended up pathetic. I didn’t care. I’m just telling you about it. A person comes out of a revolution either very smart or damn stupid but never undamaged. My husband came out an absolute asshole. He took part in the last military uprising in 1936, I think just out of the habit of always being in revolt. I’m telling you, an absolute idiot. He didn’t notice that times had changed, that the revolution was becoming an institution, that the guerrillas were getting down from their horses and into Cadillacs, that the only agrarian reform was the sale of residential lots in Las Lomas, that the freedom to work eventually meant unionized workers under the control of shameless leaders, that freedom of the press would be conferred by a paper monopoly operated by our compadre Artemio Cruz, heroic times, kid! If you don’t concede you can’t succeed, living and not playing the game is living in error, and if you don’t appear in a photograph at a cocktail party, even one given by a shady character like Nazario Esparza, you’re a lost cause, you’re nobody, and if you don’t marry your daughter in a squandering of floral, ecclesiastical, banquetish, photographic, and faggotish millions, then the girl is a whore and her father’s poor and a poor politician is a poor politician, somebody dixit …