Christopher Unborn (15 page)

“Does your boss really know French, or is he just a disgusting snob?” asked Uncle Fernando, taking the stick and hat that Tomasito, the perfect though perplexed servant, handed him before he went to help his master, who was shouting, “Benítez, you Russophile! You café Marxist! You salon Commie!” His extravagant list went on, my mother noted, and every item pointed to the exact moment in which his political education had taken place and dated him.

Tomasito, after saving his master with vacuum cleaners, massage, and even corkscrews, withdrew to pray to a potted palm he carried around with him. He begged the gods of his country that he never again confuse his master with the relatives, confidants, or friends of his master, that he never again allow them to enter the domicile of his master, or that he ever serve more than one master at any one time.

Then, sobbing, he went back to Don Homero Fagoaga, prostrate in his canopied bed, to squeeze him out a bit more and beg his forgiveness.

“I think there's still some gelatine in his ears and nose,” said my father Angel, but my mother merely repeated these words:

“What will my son breathe when he is born?”

“Perhaps I'd better answer your question about which language the boy will speak first. Didn't you ask about that, too?”

“Okay. Which language will he speak? That was my third question.”

3

It's a Wonderful Life

Child, girl, woman, hag, sorceress, witch, and hypocrite, the devil takes her.

Quevedo

 

1

My circumstance consists of certainties and uncertainties. One certainty: the boy has been conceived under the sign of Aquarius. One uncertainty: his chances of becoming a Mexican fetus are one in one hundred and eighty-three trillion six hundred and seventy-five billion nine hundred million four hundred thousand fifty-three hundred and forty-eight, according to my father's calculations, which he made as he waded into the Pacific Ocean with my mom to wash away the shit that rained on them from the sky that midday of my cuntception. First day of the c(o)untdown they called it. I call it my first swing in the cemetery, as I moved toward the ovarian reading lesson, because even though they remember now what happened that day, I knew it absolutely and totally from the moment in which my dad's microserpent knocked over my mom's corona radiata (no, not a corona corona, Dad's was an exploding cigar, a MIRV, come to think of it) as if it were made of rose petals, while the survivors I've already mentioned of the great battle of Hairy Gulch invaded the gelatinous membrane, de profundis clamavimus—but nobody was home: which of us will have the honor to fertilize Doña Angeles (no last name), wife of Don Angel Palomar y Fagoaga Labastida Pacheco y Montes de Oca, descendant of the most exclusive families of Puebla, Veracruz, Guadalajara, and Mexico City?; one in a million, the lucky little guy, the fortunate hunchback. All madly trying to penetrate, break the barrier, perforate the shell, and overcome the fidelity of this Penelope who will not invite just any old dick to dinner, only one, the champ, the Ulyssex returned from the wars, the greatest, the Muhammad Ali of the chromosomes, número uno:

YOU MEAN LITTLE OLD ME
?

I, admirable and full of portents, I allowed in, bombarded by voices and memories, oh dear me, places and times, names and songs, dinners and fucks, speeches and stutterings, rememberings and forgettings, this unique
I CHRISTOPHER
and what they call genes.

“Hey, genes are to blame for everything,” said Uncle Fernando.

“Of course,” agreed Uncle Homero Fagoaga, “Hegels are to blame for everything.”

Why did two men who hated each other, who were so unalike in everything, my Uncles Fernando and Homero, have to be together, colliding, interrupting each other? What impels us to do what we don't want to do, to self-destruction? Is it that we prefer an insult, a humiliation, even a crime—murder—to being alone?

My father and mother, for example, are no longer alone: they live together and they have just conceived me—
ME.
I will listen to them throughout this story and I shall learn, little by little, that their union, their true love, does not exclude a constant struggle between what they are and what they would like to be, between what they have and what they would like to have. I state here and now that what I have just said without breaking any rules of narrative (know it well, your mercies benz) because the difference between my father and my mother is that you'll know all there is to know about Angel at the beginning, while about Angeles you'll know a little at the end. There are people like that, and I don't lose anything by stating it outright at the start. It's more important to note the opposing forces within them: what I am and what I want to be; what I have and what I want to have. I, so solitary in the solar center of my narrative, I understand well what I'm telling you, Gentile Readers. Since I am so alone, I have to wonder incessantly: what is it I need in order not to be alone; who is the other I need most in order to be myself, the one and only Christopher Unborn?

My answer is clear and forthright: I need you, Reader.

2

At any hour of the day, in any social class, in any of the infernal circles of this selva selvaggia, there are two problems: how to be alone or, alternatively, how to be in good company. But in Makesicko City, the city where my father grew up, the problem is saving oneself from pests (Angel told Angeles).

They tell me that in other countries a person with manners would never dare interrupt someone's morning work time or his well-earned leisure time without setting up a date in advance and then showing up at the exact time; they send blue pneumatiques (or used to until pneumatiques died prematurely in 1984) or at the least call. Not in Mexico. The D.F. is a village with village manners disguised as a megalopolis. “Hey, man, get over here right now.” “Listen, I'm coming right over, okay?” Complete with kings, tombs, tribes, and leeches.

The most virulent form of this social disease known as the leech is the “parachutist,” who “drops in” at any hour of the day or night without calling, interrupting a dinner (if it's the gate-crasher variety, it wants to be invited to join in), interrupting sex (if it's a refined voyeur and sniffs out the hours when others take their pleasure), interrupting reading (if it happens to suffer acute agraphia and feels annoyed if someone settles down to cohabitate with words).

Which language will the child speak? asks my mother insistently, and my father answers that our language is dying on us, and only because they know that will they (Mom and Dad) pardon the existence of my Uncle Homero. We just saw all that.

But for the parachuting or interrupting pest no pardon is possible: its language is pure chatter, yakitiyak, gossip, tongue-wagging, and championship bouts of chin-wagging, although these creatures often invent dramatic pretexts to justify their undesired intrusion to the victim: during his adolescence, my father Angel (he tells us) attracted these creatures (of both sexes), especially those wandering around loose in Colonia Juárez or Colonia Cuauhtémoc.

In this city, then, populated by perpetually invading hordes (si j'ai bien compris) that arrive from anywhere at any hour of the day or night without being called or desired, who knock at the door (bambambam, Anybody home? knockknockknock, It's the devil! Nobody home? Am I interrupting? Could you lend me your maracas? Don't you have a little
tepache
in the fridge? For whatever reason, says my father Angel: in this city, he believes that when he was a young man he was sought out more than any of his friends or acquaintances because they all still lived at home or because of inflation they all went back to live with their parents or had to rent rooms in uncomfortable, promiscuous boardinghouses, fearful of ending up in old neighborhoods or the new, lost neighborhoods, and by contrast, Angel was an orphan, but an orphan with a nice place; and all of them were suffering under revived nineteenth-century discipline (or earlier: the interregnum of disorder in Mexico was born with the Rolling Stones and ended with the austerity of Rollover Debts: on the crumbling corners, the saddest song was once again the one about there being only four thousand pesos left from all the oil that was mine
ay
ayayayay; the happiest song, the one about the death of the petropeso, the death of conceit, you want a tiger in your tank?/ well money talks and bullshit walks): someone knocked on the door of his grandparents' house, a beggar dressed as a monk, asking for alms:

“Please contribute to my grandmother's funeral.”

Angel's grandma, Doña Susana Rentería, pulled off her wedding ring and, trembling, handed it to the monk. Then she shut the door, embraced Angel, and begged: “Please don't tell my Rigo what I just did.”

Okay, the pest rarely sets up a date and when it does it invariably arrives late; on the other hand, if it comes without warning, it always arrives (by definition) right on time: such was the case of the myriad parachutists who dropped in on my father when he was living—more freely than anyone in his generation as far as coming and going were concerned—in the coach house annexed to the house of his grandparents, Don Rigoberto Palomar (ninety-one years old) and Doña Susana Rentería de Palomar (sixty-seven years old) on Calle Génova. Having emancipated himself from the tyranny of Don Homero Fagoaga and his sisters Capitolina and Farnesia, my father enjoyed a unique reputation: if he lived alone—so the story went—it was because he was more respectable, more mature, more trustworthy than any other boy or girl in his public school:
HEROES OF
1982. The school, originally private, was founded by Don Mamelín Mártir de Madrazo (better known in financial circles as Jolly Roger), who created it as proof of his public-spiritedness. Of course, Don Mártir, the most expropriated banker in Mexico before he was kidnapped and murdered, never imagined that this last bulwark of his civic prestige would also be expropriated. They never even bothered to change the school's name, since
HEROES OF
1982 by definition could apply just as well to the expropriators as to those expropriated—all the better, in fact, since those who expropriated the school would one day leave government for private industry, where they would in their turn be expropriated by the next government, revolutionarily ad infinitum. The net result was that at school Angel Palomar y Fagoaga paid dearly for his fame because pests dropped in at all hours to tell him their troubles, using metaphysical or physical anguish as a pretext: I'll commit suicide if I don't talk to someone, which actually meant: If I don't commit suicide I'll talk to someone, and by the way do you have anything in the fridge (an ocean), what are you reading (
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, gent.
), how tired I am (go to bed, baby), aren't you? (sure I am and here I come), what record should I put on (the last one put out by my favorite group, Immanuel Can't), well, Kan't you sing me something?

The life of the turkey vulture

is a wretched sort of life

All the year he flies and flies

his head as bald as a knife

insult me: slut! will you pull off my peplum, my chlamys, my fibula, strip me bare and help me with the homework? I've got such a pain right here, what could it be? I thought you might be sad—with nothing to do—screwing around as usual—as alienated as I am—jerking off, pig—on your way out, eating, sleeping, don't you like me to visit you?—is it true that they told you that you told them to tell me?—I came over so you could tell me what you mean—got any dope?—could you introduce me into your sister?—I need bread, man—lend me a few rubbers—do you guys know of anyone who might need a fireworks expert for November 2? a paid insultant?—money, man? unless you have influence they won't lend you any money at the bank, know any bank directors, Angelito?—lend me your comb—lend me your cock—wasn't it you who had the recipe for those tamales wrapped in banana leaves?—lend me—lend me—could you call up—couldn't you have an Equanil sent up from the pharmacy on the corner?—looks like the revolution starts tomorrow—the fascist coup—the military coup—the Communist coup—lay in lots of canned goods, Angel, let's get to the state of siege right away—nail polish at the perfume counter, right?—where are those cold beers, bartender? what? are you turning cheapskate on us, what happened?—could you store my mint collection of
Playboy
for me: they just don't understand at my place, ya know?—my collection of stuffed toys, Angelote, at my place, if my mom sees them, you know—could I leave my Toyota Super XXX here in your patio, Angel, at my place my dad is so strict, that stuff about moral renovation—capisc'—let me leave my valise here in case I take a trip—my collection of Almazán posters?—my Avelina Landín records?—my book of López Portillo's favorite metaphors?—my collection of tops?

Between his sixteenth and his twentieth year the pests pestered him and the parachutists rained on him, as if the independence of his generation (which grew progressively more disciplined under paternal tutelage) depended on Angel in his house, from which it was possible to see the Angel of Independence on Paseo de la Reforma. It was as if that were the price of the unsettled, excited twenty years of death, repression, opening, reform, triumph, collapse, and austerity in which Angel and his friends had the good fortune to be born and grow up: they saw their own coming-of-age postponed again when they were between eighteen and twenty-two and the effective control of their parents extended and strengthened to a degree worthy of the most severe household of the prerevolutionary Porfirio Díaz era—until, thought my father Angel, privileged spectator that he was, the time for the inevitable reaction came, the helplessness, solitude, escape, and nomadism that began after the Disaster of 1990.

But one might also say that the very illusion of liberty depended on Angel's isle of autonomy, on that and something else: as if the eventual resurrection (oh, vain illusion!) of the moribund city, where by now all the worst prophecies about it come true, without anyone's ever having raised a finger to stop them, depended on the wobbly survival of Colonia Juárez, the only urban oasis that still maintained a certain veneer of civilization. In the ears of Angel, in the ears of his genes, and in the ears of his descendants in limbo, there rumbles the sound of filthy water, pumped in and out, pestilential, a gigantic parallel to the beats and vulnerabilities of his own heart.