Happy Families Part 17

She wiped her nose with a dishcloth. "I wanted to be a stepmother, not a mother. A she-wolf, not a grandmother. Use your son to get out of the prison of my old movies."

Sagrario Algarra a.s.sumed facial features illuminated by a strong nocturnal radiance. It was her best part (her bespart). Innocent granny transformed into stony Medusa.

"And what did you tell him about me?"

"That you would come to see him one day. What did you expect me to say?"

"And it was true. I did come, Sagrario."

"But you always pretended to be somebody else. The musketeer, the corsair."

"It was to amuse him. A child's fantasy is-"

"You confused him. One year you made him think that Christmas was December 28, another year that it was November 20, taking advantage of the sports parade, all depending on your convenience, a bad man, a bad father."

"Take it easy, Sagrario, this isn't a movie."

Was the old actress so shrewd that she knew to announce her departure from the apartment in the Cuauhtemoc district on the same day Mexigrama told Alejandro Sevilla his career no longer had a future?

Exit Sagrario. Enter Alejandro.

Sandokan looked at his father without surprise. Sagrario had taken him to see all of Alejandro Sevilla's films from the time the boy was five until now, when he was turning sixteen. Still, when you entered the huge room with no separating walls, remodeled so the boy would not have to open doors or go up and down stairs-an apartment that opened onto a small garden of flowerpots and unmovable tiles, a kind of penthouse on the roof of the building, hermetically separated from the lower floors by a private elevator-you saw that your son did not know or recognize you. His glance had more rationality than the voice of the producers: "Retire, Alejandro, don't be a fool."

You can never describe to anyone, Alejandro, the embarra.s.sing difficulty of that reencounter, if not first encounter, with a boy whom you hadn't seen for five years, when Sandokan had not yet entered p.u.b.erty and you didn't know what to say to prepare him as you supposed a good father should. The fact is, you knew only the lines of the parts you hated most-the mature father of the family giving advice to his rebellious, carousing, rock-and-roll children-and a strange delicacy never before seen in you kept you from talking to your son. You had imagined him as a deformed replacement for James Dean.

You shouldn't have been afraid. The boy began to speak as if he had waited a long time for this moment to arrive-because the time of the encounter was exactly that, an apparition, a phantom, a ghost that brought together in an instant all the dead hours, resuscitated all the defeated calendars only for the reality of this moment, and moved all the clocks ahead just to move them back to the time that had been lost.

You looked at each other without saying anything. Your son's eyes were directed at the wall.

"Thank you for the Christmas present, Papa."

It was a mobile in the style of Calder, and Sandokan's eyes said clearly that nothing had occupied more of his time than the observation of the always distinct movements of the large, multicolored toy that gave a second air to the very atmosphere of the uniform room. A s.p.a.ce without obstacles between the bed and the chairs, the table and the terrace, the electronic equipment whose use Sandokan immediately demonstrated with the agility that his condition gave to his bare feet. He was dressed in a long white unders.h.i.+rt that covered his s.e.x and b.u.t.tocks, allowing him to urinate and defecate without using his hands.

The boy laughed and turned on a kind of mechanized roll of towels, letting it be understood that this was enough to clean himself.

Embarra.s.sed, you went to help your son. Sandokan rejected you. His initial friendly smile had turned into a grimace.

"You told me to hang the mobile from the ceiling just to frighten me, didn't you?" You couldn't even mutter a reply. You choked on the words, and there was no immediate correspondence with the dialogues appropriate to an encounter between father and son in the movies.

You said nothing, looked for the bed that Sagrario Algarra had abandoned, opened your suitcase, and began to arrange your things. Sandokan watched you in silence. You moved forward as if you were entering a new life, which is why you find yourself at this moment looking at yourself in the mirror of the small bathroom adjoining the large room, looking there for D'Artagnan, for the Count of Monte Cristo, and finding only a sixty-one-year-old man who is losing everything, his hair, his teeth, the firmness of his flesh, the impetuosity of his glance . . .

Your fame, was it the truth or a lie for your own son? You didn't know. You had to discover your son beginning with a deluded question: Does my son know me only through my fame? Said another way: Does my son love or hate me?

Things began to reach their level and proportion during the weeks that followed. Sandokan mocked you, warned you, "Be careful, Papa, I put a needle in the soup" or "Watch out, I put gla.s.s in the orange juice." It wasn't true. Sandokan could not do anything in the kitchen. From now on that was your job. In a single stroke, you came down from the illusory world of fict.i.tious adventures to the unfortunate world of small domestic misadventures. You did not have the money to pay a full-time maid, you had barely enough for a weekly cleaner, a dark-skinned young girl in flip-flops who didn't recognize you, or even look at you, no matter how ridiculously you a.s.sumed a musketeer's poses with a broom in your fist in front of her.

In the meantime, you realized that Sandokan put on an innocent face, but a malevolent intention lodged between his eyes and his mouth. If there is hatred in Sandokan's expression, you surprise yourself discovering that if hatred is a manifestation of evil, it is possible to find unexpected beauty in the face of someone who absolutely does not wish you well. You surprise yourself, Alejandro, formulating a clear idea that becomes an outgrowth of your long speeches in the movies.

Your idea of the boy distracted by his physical deformity, you hadn't noticed the cla.s.sic beauty of his face. Now you know why. Sandokan is identical to his mother, your Nica wife Cielo de la Mora. The jet-black hair. The transparent white skin. Even the birthmark beside his mouth.

Naturally, you didn't want to find your wife in your son. The young man had never seen a photograph of his mother. The only woman he had seen up close was the sour Sagrario. He can't compare-and if he knew, if he knew that his mother had reappeared in the living portrait of her son, would Sandokan be more lovable, more understanding with the papa who had come home without a cent, my boy, because I threw it all away on tramps and traveling, on the great spree of my life, dammit, even on Sagrario's salary, I didn't know how to save, I didn't know how to invest, for me there was no tomorrow.

"Because there was the moment of your pictures, Father, there time doesn't pa.s.s, there you never grow old."

You attribute this to your son. You think that if what you think he thinks is true, your son has seen your movies, it isn't Sagrario's pious lie.

"Yes, Sagrario took me to see you whenever you were showing." Sandokan laughed. "I never thought I'd know you in person."

"But I've come a few times, son."

"Always in disguise. Not now. Now I see you for the first time. I don't know"-he stopped smiling-"if I prefer the truth to the lie."

At that moment you decide you are not going to surrender, Alejandro. Something new in you-abandoning the play, leaving representation behind-sprang up in you unexpectedly, guiding you in an imperfect way toward your son's personality, which was the path of affection. And for you this was a huge, joyful revelation.

"Know something, Papa? I had a dream that I'd escape, run away from the house. But I couldn't do it alone. Then . . . look . . . open . . ."

He indicated a suitcase under his bed. You opened it. It was filled with postcards.

"I asked Sagrario to find me cards from everywhere. She knows a lot of strange people. Look. Istanbul, Paris, Rio de Janeiro . . ."

He smiled in satisfaction. "I've been everywhere, Papa, and besides . . ."

He sat down in front of a lectern. A volume lay open on it. Sandokan pressed a pedal, and the pages moved.

" 'On February 24, 1813, the lookout in the port of Ma.r.s.eille announced the arrival of the Faraon, Faraon, proceeding from Smyrna, Trieste, and Naples . . .' " proceeding from Smyrna, Trieste, and Naples . . .' "

He looked at you. "You see? I've been to the same places you have. Except the book is earlier than the movie. I beat you!"

Sometimes Sandokan isn't lovable. He tries to hurt you.

"What have you given me, Papa? What do you want me to give to you? How are you going to pay me for being abandoned? Just tell me that."

"Don't repeat my dialogues," you say irritably.

"Seriously, Father, do you understand? You had everything, I've had nothing."

The boy says this with a wooden face.

At other times you're busy doing what you have never done. You cook. You keep the house clean. You pretend this is another role, just as if you were-it might have happened-the headwaiter at a restaurant.

Sandokan interrupts. You tell him to let you work. He turns his back.

"Whenever I want to tell you something that matters to me, you say you're in a hurry."

Where have you heard that same complaint before?

Your son wants to join you, aggressively. He falls flat on his face. You run to help him. He resists. He struggles with you. In the end he embraces you. You embrace each other.

"You ought to be dead," the son tells the father, and you refrain from repeating the phrase because it compromises Cielo, your wife, Sandokan's mother, who also tried to kill her son in the cradle before she fled.

"Have pity on me," you say instead to your son, knowing that these are, in turn, the words the boy wants to say and cannot.

Sandokan looks at you with unexpected, invasive tenderness. "You know? Now both our feelings are hurt."

He culminated his remark by extending his leg in order to trip you. This becomes Sandokan's greatest diversion. Making you fall. At first you are resigned. It is difficult for you to scold him. You don't dare to slap him. Little by little, you prefer to accept the prank. Finally, you celebrate it. You laugh each time Sandokan, with the agility of a pirate from the Island of Tortuga, extends his leg and makes you fall. The strength the boy has developed in his legs is surprising. Beneath the comfortable s.h.i.+rt he always wears, you see two robust limbs, very developed, almost hairless, statuesque, almost marble-like, streaked with blue veins. So that half of his body lives intensely, from the neck up and from his navel down. So that perhaps you were right to stop Cielo de la Mora from drowning your son in the bath or throwing him into a trash can or . . .

This means you will let Sandokan make you fall, and you will laugh because in this way, you celebrate the life of the boy, his presence in the world. Nothing less than that: his presence in the world. And little by little, Alejandro, you begin to realize that your son's individuality was the most faithful mirror of the life that still was yours, that leaving the movie sets was not a death certificate, as you believed before, but a window that opened to let air, sun, birds, rain, pollen, bees into the closed tomb of a movie set reeking of sawdust, cardboard, glue, the hair of wigs made with the tresses of corpses, period costumes never sent to the cleaner, stained under the arms and between the legs, the clothing of extras, the others, the surplus, the replaceable, the dispensable.

Now you're the extra in your final film, Alejandro. Except that your secret resignation-or can it be your will?-to disappear into the vast anonymous nation of failure has been frustrated by the encounter with your son, by the spirit of comedy comedy that Sandokan displays in a situation that, instead of causing pity, he transforms into a prelude to a limited though hoped-for adventure: that of reuniting with you and initiating your real life together. that Sandokan displays in a situation that, instead of causing pity, he transforms into a prelude to a limited though hoped-for adventure: that of reuniting with you and initiating your real life together.

Hoped for and despaired over: Each fall that Sandokan makes you take is an invitation to the pending adventure. Is the child in fact father to the man? Where did you read that? Who said it to you? You confuse your dialogues on the screen with your words in life. You look in the mirror and accept that you'll never escape this dilemma: speaking as if you were acting, acting as if you were speaking. Now, when you fulfill the rite of shaving each morning, you begin to believe that your old face is being lost, though not in a ba.n.a.l way because of the simple pa.s.sage of time, but in another, more mysterious way, closer to both real life and theatrical representation. You feel that you have surpa.s.sed all the faces of your life, those of the actor and those of the man, those of the star and those of the lover, those of the role and those of flesh and blood.

All your faces are becoming superimposed in this poor, worn mirror with the rusting frame and insincere reflections. You are, in this moment you live through with fear like a throbbing announcement of approaching death, everything you have been. You are resigned to this fatality. You are grateful for it as well. You never imagined that the perfect film-simultaneous and successive, instantaneous and discursive-of all your moments would be presented to you in life. You enjoy this, even if you are resigned to the fatality of summarizing your entire past. Even if you suspect it signifies that you won't have a future.

It is the moment when your son appears behind you in the mirror and looks at you looking at yourself. And you look at him looking at you. He looks at himself in you. He places his small, stunted hand on your shoulder. You feel the pressure of his cold fingers as part of your own flesh.

5. The Plaza de los Arcos de Belen near the Salto del Agua attracts the same working-cla.s.s audience that frequents the so-called frivolous theaters in the center of the city as well as the anonymous bars, the dens where they still sing boleros, the dance halls where the danzon and the cha-cha-cha survive, the old lunchrooms with awnings that serve pozole, the few Chinese cafes that remain.

It is a peculiarity of this city that the arches and the ca.n.a.l that once ran through here celebrate the memory of an old lacustrine capital whose springs began to dry up until the entire valley was transformed into a saucer of dust surrounded by thirst and dead trees. Not long ago they finished setting up here one of those fairs that in every neighborhood of the immense capital of Mexico are, at times, the only solace of people of no means, which are the immense majority. My father and I see the numerous reality of our people in the Zocalo on the night of September 15, in the Villa de Guadalupe on December 12, on Sundays in Chapultepec, at any hour in the great human serpent of Tacuba in the center, of Andres Molina in Santa Anita, of the Highway de la Piedad, the Highway de Tlalpan, the Highway Ignacio Zaragoza going to Puebla, and the Indios Verdes going north.

There are people.

There is an audience.

The fair at the Arcos de Belen has been a.s.sembling all kinds of attractions, from the wheel of fortune to the octopus, from the carousel to fortune-telling birds, from hawkers of remedies-sciatica, impotence, nightmares, calluses, bad blood, good life-to the wizards and diviners stationed at the corners with their crystal b.a.l.l.s and starcovered pointed hats and several mariachi groups (the young star of the ranchera Maximiliano Batalla) and bolero singers (the retired songstress Elvira Morales). Weight lifters, failed tenors, big-bellied odalisques, certified veterans of the Revolution and improbable hors.e.m.e.n of the Empire, declaimers of immensely popular verses (Toast of the Bohemian; Nocturne for Rosario; Margarita, the Sea Is Beautiful). Reciters of the Const.i.tution, memorizers of the telephone book, voices with the singsong of the lottery, with the buzz of neighborhood gossip, the acidity of balcony slanderers, the tears of unemployed circus clowns.

People come here five times a week, five nights in a row (the authorities don't give seven-day permits in order to exercise authority in something). They come to have a good time with the spectacle of the armless teenager who, with long, strong legs, trips the old musketeer who threatens him with a little aluminum sword, and each time the old man attacks the boy, he extends his leg and makes the musketeer ostentatiously take a tremendous fall, to the delight of the audience. Applause whistles and shouts.

"How much?"

"Whatever you wish."

6. In this way, my father and I managed to save enough to buy a VCR, and now the two of us can enjoy old movies brought back to life, clean, remastered, and in Dolby Digital, together we can see Edmundo Dantes escape the Castle of If in the shroud of Abbot Faria, D'Artagnan presenting the jewels of the Duke of Buckingham to the queen, Emilio de Rocabruna approaching the coast of Maracaibo under the black flags of the corsairs.

"Who's the girl who falls in love with Zorro, Father?"

"Why do you ask?"

"I think she's very pretty."

"She's just a foreigner, Sandokan, a bit player, a soubrette, as they used to say in the old days. She's of no importance."

Chorus of the Children of Good Families

Fito bored sunday afternoon he's unfailing he doesn't pa.s.s unnoticed he's good-looking he's superfine a terrific time incredibly stoned high as an eagle cool cool cool but he's bored he comes from a decent family nice fine he has manners he has servants his mom and dad call them rude coa.r.s.e untrustworthy trash b.u.ms indians but would never say it his mommy and daddy feel more than disgusting disgust: mexica louts that's why he organizes the group of p.i.s.sers to water the roses for them and give enough to their vegetables the ones who are unfailing the nice ones the creme hey hey now guys we fly over the wall don't fly over it, better aim at it wanna see who has better aim hey?

no Fito my friend, hold on a little, drink another magnum all by yourself and when you can't hold it anymore we'll aim at the wall but just remember that first we drink until we die and before we die we aim at the wall to see who p.i.s.ses more and better because Fito got bored with sunday afternoons with the society girls at the cool parties where he's very good-looking and superfine where everybody has a terrific time except him he wants strong sensations to tell all the nice people like him to go to h.e.l.l all the society girls and that's why he comes to pee on his father-in-law's wall with his golden buddies aiming at the wall whoever pees the farthest wins a trip to las vegas with babes who make you stand up and salute hey hey and that noise?

and that noise ay?

and that ay-dammit!

naco guys with their knives and machetes a.s.saulting the children of good families hey where'd they come from?

from penitenciaria and heroe de nacozari and albaniles and ca.n.a.l del norte how did they get here?

by subway my fella citzens since there's been a subway we come out like ants scorpions moles from the black holes of the siddy with knives and machetes to a.s.sault come to cut in one slice the ones that have stopped to slash the ones that are sleepy to cut c.o.c.k you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds now get them together the pigs let the boars in and the dogs let the animals eat sausages let them bleed look at them vomit look at them covering the wounds look at the blood running down their thighs look at them look at them look at them sunday afternoon what a handsome birthday boy in the show on the tube everything very lively a terrific time an unbelievable time at the father-in-law's wall and whoever shouts put his own chile in his mouth you never thought about that b.a.s.t.a.r.d about sucking yourself bleeding b.a.s.t.a.r.d and now what will your girlfriends say a bunch of rich f.u.c.kers and now how will you father more f.u.c.king children rich castrated f.u.c.kers sons of muf.u.c.kin it's a dream right?

it's a nightmare isn't it?

seal off all the subway exits let's go with the cute girls for the weekend let's run away to get married have children go to the club fly to nuyor send the children to school fondle their nursemaids and now the only children will be ours f.u.c.king children there are millions of us n.o.body can stop us

The Discomfiting Brother

1. Don Luis Albarran had his house in order. When his wife, Dona Matilde Cousino, died, he was afraid that as a widower, his life would become disorganized. At the age of sixty-five, he felt more than enough drive to continue at the head of the construction company La Piramide. What he feared was that the rear guard of that other security, Dona Matilde's domestic front, would collapse, affecting his life at home as well as his professional activities.

Now he realized there was nothing to fear. He transferred the same discipline he used in conducting his business to domestic arrangements. Dona Matilde had left a well-trained staff, and it was enough for Don Luis to repeat the orders of his deceased wife to have the household machinery continue to function like clockwork. Not only that: At first the replacement of the Senora by the Senor caused a healthy panic among the servants. Soon fear gave way to respect. But Don Luis not only made himself respected, he made himself loved. For example, he found out the birthday of all his employees and gave each one a gift and the day off.

The truth is that now Don Luis Albarran did not know if he felt prouder of his efficiency in business or his efficiency at home. He gave thanks to Dona Matilde and her memory that a mansion in the Polanco district, built in the 1940s when neocolonial residences became fas.h.i.+onable in Mexico City, had preserved not only its semi-Baroque style but also the harmony of a punctual, chronometric domesticity in which everything was in its place and everything was done at the correct time. From the garden to the kitchen, from the garage to the bathroom, from the dining room to the bedroom, when he returned from the office, Don Luis found everything just as he had left it when he went to work.

The cook, Maria Bonifacia, the chambermaid, Pepita, the butler, Truchuela, the chauffeur, Jehova, the gardener, Candido . . . The staff was not only perfect but silent. Senor Albarran did not need to exchange words with a single servant to have everything in its place at the correct time. He did not even need to look at them.

At nine in the evening, in pajamas, robe, and slippers, when he sat in the wingback chair in his bedroom to eat a modest light meal of foaming hot chocolate and a sweet roll, Don Luis Albarran could antic.i.p.ate a night of recuperative sleep with the spiritual serenity of having honored, for another day, the sweet memory of his loyal companion, Matilde Cousino, a Chilean who had until the day of her death a southern beauty with those green eyes that rivaled the cold of the South Pacific and were all that had been left to her of a body slowly defeated by the relentless advance of cancer.

Matilde: Illness only renewed her firm spirit, her character immune to any defeat. She said that Chilean women (she p.r.o.nounced it "wimmen") were like that, strong and decisive. They made up for-this was her theory-a certain weak sweetness in the men of her country, so cordial until the day their treble voices turned into commanding, cruel voices. Then the woman's word would appear with all its gift for finding a balance between tenderness and strength.

They had a happy love life in bed, a "carousing" counterpoint, Don Luis would say, in two daily lives that were so serious and orderly until the illness and death of his wife left the widower momentarily disconcerted, possessed of all obligations-office and home-and bereft of all pleasures.

The staff responded. They all knew the routine. Dona Matilde Cousino came from an old Chilean family and was trained in ruling over the estates of the south and the elegant mansions of Providencia, and she inculcated in her Mexican staff virtues with which they, the domestic crew of the Polanco district, were not unfamiliar and normally accepted. The only novelty for Don Luis was having, when he returned home, elevenses, the amiable Chilean version of British afternoon tea: cups of verbena with teacakes, dulce de leche, and almond pastries. Don Luis told himself that this and a good wine cellar of Chilean reds were the only exotic details Dona Matilde Cousino introduced into the mansion in Polanco. The staff continued the Chilean custom. Given Mexican schedules, however (office from ten to two, dinner from two to four, final business items from four to six), Don Luis had elevenses a little later, at seven in the evening, though this sweet custom cut his appet.i.te for even the monastic meal he ate at nine.

Dona Matilde Cousino, as it turned out, died on Christmas Eve, so for Don Luis, December 24 was a day of mourning, solitude, and remembrance. Between the night of the twenty-fourth and the morning of the twenty-fifth, Senor Albarran dismissed the servants and remained alone, recalling the details of life with Matilde, perusing the objects and rooms of the house, kneeling at the bed his wife occupied at the end of her life, playing records of old Chilean tunes and Mexican boleros that choked him with romantic and s.e.xual nostalgia, going through photograph alb.u.ms, and preparing rudimentary meals with odds and ends, gringo cereals and spoonfuls of Coronado jelly. He had a sweet tooth, it was true, he saw nothing wrong in sweetening his bitterness and something sinful in stopping at a mirror hoping to see the face of his lost love, and the sorrow that ensued when he discovered only a closely shaved face, an aquiline nose, eyes with increasingly drooping lids, a broad forehead, and graying hair vigorously brushed straight back.

The doorbell rang at eight on the evening of December 24. Don Luis was surprised. The entire staff had left. The days of asking for lodgings were over, destroyed by the city's dangers, and still the voice on the other side of the door of corrugated gla.s.s and wrought iron sang the Christmas song, iiiiin the name of heaaaaa-ven I ask yoooou for loooodging . . .

Don Luis, incapable of admitting his incipient deafness, approached the door, trying to make out the silhouette outlined behind the opaque panes. The voice, obviously, was a caricature of childish tones; the height of the silhouette was that of an adult.

"Who is it?"