Happy Families (32 page)

“It’s a win-win situation,” Leo murmured, summarizing what he knew they also knew, because after all, in fragments, here and there, over time, each couple (Leo-Lavinia, Leo-Cordelia) had said it or intuited it or thought it. Except that even in the most perfect geometry of joy deferred or premeditated cruelty, the demon of pleasure puts in an appearance, and Leo was doing battle with him now in order to stare at the painting and avoid looking at or being looked at by them.

“Of course beauty exists,” he said in a very quiet voice. “But only for a moment.”

The imperfect actuality of the beautiful had to be sacrificed. He thought about it. Did they know? Leo felt on the verge of an almost supernatural happiness and of too physical a misfortune. He felt doubts. The women revealed nothing. It had been easy to concentrate on each one separately. Would it be difficult to pay attention to both at the same time? In what order would the pleasures of each occur, the inevitable couple, the potential trio? Was the orgasm the little death or a transitory suicide? At that moment suicide and death attempted to personalize themselves in the feverish yet lucid mind of Leo. What did he want? To be rid of the husbands, Cristóbal and Álvaro? Or of the wives, Lavinia and Cordelia? Leo had prepared this scene in order to take the next step, to put to the test not the conjugal fidelity he knew had been overcome but the intensity of emotions, which he imagined had been postponed. He did not have to look at Lavinia (naked?) or Cordelia (caftan?) to know that the situation did not eliminate the villain of the piece, the green monster of jealousy. He did not need to see them to know this because he felt it in his own heart.

This was what alarmed him. That he imagined the step following the ménage à trois. It was the step toward reconstituting the couples. Not the return to conjugal ties. Not even the permanence of the trio but an alliance of the two women against him, against Leo, the two of them alone against the solitary man who proposed tonight to make love to both women only to reach the culminating point and abort the ecstasy, interrupt the pleasure in order to exasperate both and oblige them to desire once more, again, and again, and again . . .

He did not want to look at them just then. He would have liked to tell them that blind distance maintains the mystery, that he wanted them both far from him in order to continue to read them. He realized he had already said that. That instead of advancing in his purpose, he was moving backward, like a crab. That his imagination obliged him to go forward in order to overthrow any habit past, present, or future, to move toward perhaps unreachable possibilities without understanding that his desire for them could be a desire to begin all over again in order to love better.

Knowing what he already knows?

Forgetting everything?

What was the next step?

Everything configured an imperfect duel. Leo refused to look at them. He prayed that this scene would not make them tired of him, of themselves, of the irretrievable earlier situation. All of this flashed through his head; accepting habit was the greatest defeat, unacceptable to him. True, in the end, it was all an imperfect duel between desire and its consummation: repeatable or unrepeatable. Leo, with almost Edenic innocence (that’s right, with fragile compassion for himself, he thought), wanted only today’s satisfaction to leave us unsatisfied so we could desire and achieve the next day’s satisfaction.

Would the women understand it this way? Why didn’t they say anything? Why didn’t they move? Would one of them—Cordelia or Lavinia—dare to destroy the proposed trio, tacitly believing that in this way they would return to the earlier couple? Or had he, Leo, destroyed forever all possible relations with them? Did they (Lavinia, Cordelia) realize that Leo had done them the favor of showing each one that her life was false, that the artifice offered by Leo was
the truth,
in spite of the artifice, just as in the Japanese painting?

“Everything I’ve done is for the sake of happy families.”

How was he going to say this if he himself was incapable of believing it? Of believing
anything
? Even that these women might be happier with their husbands than with him?

This idea provoked irrepressible laughter in him. He decided to face them, laughing, gauging them, the two women. He, triumphant. This would be the propitious moment to bring the situation to a head. A laugh to absolve them and absolve himself, dispelling everything as a huge joke, an
exquisite corpse
of Leo’s surrealist spirit. Or perhaps dazzling, almost diabolical laughter, defying the women’s imagination, a fatal invitation to a shared copulation that would renew and even exceed relations among the three. The great pact, euphoric, gallant, transgressive, of Leo, Lavinia, and Cordelia.

He let them look at the Japanese painting. He turned on his heel to face the two women he had just imagined behind him, immobile, each one coming out of a bathroom, walking toward the bed they would share. Or moving away from the bed, returning to the bathrooms, disappearing . . .

“You need to have a great lack of imagination to break off an amorous relationship,” Leo said to himself in a very low voice.

9. Sitting on the sofa in front of the picture of the turbulent sea and the immobile cliff, Leo smoked a light-tobacco cigarette, breaking his New Year’s resolution: to give up all secondary vices. He allowed the spirals to add a transparent, fleeting coat to the painting. Why was the sea turbulent if the cliff did not move? Why was the physical world so capricious? In Leo’s desire, on that night everything had to be transformed, crossed, multiplied. The sea would become calm. The coast would rise up murmuring, trembling, to culminate in a vast barren plain populated with unknown bodies that would advance naked but wrapped in transparent black veils, like the figures of Manuel Rodríguez Lozano in the main room of the apartment on Calle de Schiller.

He did not identify those two bodies. They were not familiar. He noticed that he did not recognize the colors offered him by the world of the painting. They were too new, perhaps happy, in any case, frighteningly pure. The colors were pure and bold. The figures, on the other hand, seemed impure and uncertain.

Leo shook his head. He looked directly at the painting. It was pure glass. It was transparent. It was the perfect work of art. Each person put in it what he or she wanted to see. Nothing more. And nothing less. That was the miracle of the Japanese painting. It was a virtual work. It was pure emptiness as liquid as the air, as aerial as the ocean. It was an invisible mirror. It was an eternally renewed story . . .

10. When he went into the bathroom, he found the mirror smeared with toothpaste and the tube, used up, tossed carelessly into the wastebasket.

Leo shrugged. He did not want to calculate which of the two had used this bathroom.

Chorus of the Savage Families

they come from the north

they occupy the city of nuestra señora de la porciúncula de

los ángeles on the border with mexico

they come from the south

they occupy the city of tapatatapachula south of chiapas on the border

with guatemala

they divide up the city of los ángeles

the mexican mafia are the southsiders

the salvadoran mara sansalvatrucha are in control from thirteenth street

to central venice

the mestizos from venice thirteen to south central

the mexican wetbacks wherever night finds them

they invade the city of tapachula

they cross the coatán river

they vandalize silversmiths goldsmiths as they please

they steal orange saddles still redolent of

sacrificed cattle

they take off their pants to feel the down on the saddle

mix with the hair of their sex

the clicas confront the gangas of los ángeles

the salvadoran marassansalvatruchas against the

mexican mafia

the confrontation

each crew sends its big guys in front

its giant headbreaking fighters

the clash takes place at the devil’s corner calle

666 and eighteen

the raza endures

the maras break your head stomp on you fuck you up

but the mexican babes reward you with kisses after the brawl

the maras announce their attacks in tapachula

they close the schools

but nobody can run away

the maras come down whistling from the volcanoes

they walk like spiders with spiders

they pull out sawed-off shotguns and daggers that they saw off

they control the train run from chiapas to tabasco

they tie their victims to the train track

the train cuts off their legs

the gang members disappear in the forest

they reappear in los ángeles

they specialize in drive-by shootings

firing at random from their cars

at their mexican rivals

they pretend to be mexicans their accent gives them away

captain bobby of the LAPD the los ángeles police

force is capturing them one by one

they come from the wars of ronaldanger ronaldranger

ronaldanger in central america

sons of

grandsons of

exiles who identify themselves with a tattoo on the arm and they

give themselves away with a false mexican accent

they hate mexico

the captain smiles he knows

send them back to salvador captain bobby?

no way

fly them back home?

no way

they say they are mexicans? send them back through mexico

let mexico deal with them

from the south

from soconusco

from the north

from california

they advance toward the center mexicocity greattenochtitlán

baptismal water of the nahuas from sacramento to nicaragua

an interminable pilgrimage

from south to north from north to south

the mara salvatrucha gang and the mara dieciocho gang

rivals united by death

a hundred thousand members on the two borders

a hundred thousand gangs in mexico city

between pensil norte and los indios verdes

they announce themselves with graffiti in all the urban centers

black spray paint stylized letters

they dress like hoods heads shaved and tattooed

they have their hole in lost cities

lairs in iztapalapa

refuges in gustavo madero

they attack kill extort rape murder

leave mutilated bodies in the streets

their leaders are called commanders of the clica

their head is called “the sinister one”

they wait for christmas for their great slaughter

twenty-eight people murdered on the D.F. subway

twenty-one wounded

six children

they want the land burned from border to border

“let them be afraid of us”

they murder to frighten

they free to tell about it

they have dry skin and foaming mouths

they are the army of silence

they never speak

they communicate by signs

CALLE 8

CALLE 18

FLY AWAY,

BIRDS

Eternal Father

1. Each anniversary the father made an appointment with them in this old place next to the sunken park. The sunken park was not its official name, but Parque Luis G. Urbina, in honor of a poet of the last century. The popular name has survived the fame of the poet, and everybody gives as a direction “Take me to the sunken park,” which is a cool, shaded urban depression in the midst of countless avenues and mute skyscrapers. Not a fierce oasis but a shadowy refuge. A green roof for lovers greener still. Even when you climb up from the park, you have the feeling that you’re climbing down. The park is sinking, and the city is sinking along with it.

The three sisters—Julia, Genara, and Augusta—respond to their father’s call on the day of the anniversary. For the rest of the year, they don’t see or speak to one another. Genara makes pottery. Julia plays the violin. Augusta manages a bank, but she compensates for this lack of modesty with social work in working-class neighborhoods. Even though they don’t search one another out, they are joined by the fact that they are daughters of the same father, and they do what they do in order to show their father that they don’t need the inheritance. They refuse to receive a fatal inheritance because of the fact that they are their father’s daughters. The three work as if they are not going to receive anything. Or perhaps as if they deserve to inherit only if they demonstrate from now on that with or without an inheritance, they can earn a living. Besides—except for Augusta—they do it with a humility calculated to offend or at least disconcert their father. Except for Augusta.

Is an inheritance won or lost? Augusta smiles at the thought. Do the sisters know which their father prefers? To offer the inheritance, although the three of them are perfect idlers? Or to save it until he finds out that the three of them are not waiting for the comfort of a promised bequest but are earning their livings without worrying about their father’s desire? Or would their father be irritated if the sisters, instead of waiting idly for the testamentary period to be over, find occupations?

Their father is very severe. He would tell his daughters that the richer the family, the more ungrateful the descendants.

“You don’t know how to value things. You didn’t work your way up, like me. You feel like destiny’s pampered darlings. Bah! Keep guessing whether you’ll inherit or will be disinherited. And if you inherit, try to imagine how much I’ll leave you.”

He said that when children know how much they’re going to inherit, they become ungrateful and stop calling.

“But you can revoke the inheritance at any moment, Papa.”

Their father’s gestures were somewhat truculent. “Who says I didn’t do that already? You just keep sucking up to me if you don’t want to starve.”

“Let them wait,” the father murmured before he went into the bathroom each morning. “What do you think? You should never hand over your money before you die. Have faith! Have hope! Be patient. Wait until I die.”

He would say this and cackle before going in for his daily sauna. Augusta imagined him dissolving in sour vapors until he was changed into pure spirit.

“He was the regularity in our lives,” Augusta said to Julia and Genara.

Julia had always thought her vocation was music. With or without the approval of her father, God willing, she would devote her life to playing the violin, indifferent to the famous inheritance. Genara says she prefers making pottery to the inheritance. A sum of money or owning real estate can’t compare to the joy of creating a useful and beautiful object from essential clay: earth. And Augusta, the most disobedient, does not want to concede the game to humility or pride. She presides over a successful banking enterprise but pays her tribute to what she considers the ambiguous paternal inheritance with the rebellion of doing social work in proletarian districts.

Each sister knows what the other two have done. Only on the night of the anniversary, however, do the three see one another’s faces, calculate how much they have aged, imagine what has happened to them during the past year, predict what the new one will bring: change, permanence, going backward, moving forward, kilos, wrinkles, hair color, contact lenses, fleeting styles . . .

On the anniversary, the three show up dressed in black. The three meet, at the new year, around a coffin.

2. The house in the sunken park scarcely deserves the name “house.” It is an old bare garage with a sliding metal door and an improvised toilet on one side. The kitchen is part of the garage. An electric stove and a disconnected refrigerator. The adobe walls show weariness and a wounded color. The door clangs and sounds like prison bars. The sisters, familiar with the ritual, have each brought a seat. Julia a revolving piano stool. Genara a complicated beach chair with faded cloth strips. Augusta an easily transported folding chair.

They know they are going to spend many hours here without moving.

This was the testamentary decision of their father. For the ten years following my death, you will hold a wake for me on each anniversary of my birth in the same humble place where I was born: an old garage next to the sunken park.

This is my last will and testament. I want you to remember where the fortune comes from that you will inherit. From down below. Thanks to my effort. In virtue of—if you’ll permit the irony—the vices you attribute to me. At the end of the decade, each one will receive her corresponding portion. I have no other condition but this one: to hold a respectful wake for me on each day of my birth. I don’t care what you do for the rest of the year. Earn your living, not to oppose me but for your own good. I tell you this: There is no greater satisfaction than earning your bread by the etcetera. I could have left you the estate when I died. I would have condemned you to the idleness that is mother of all the etceteras. Now you are going to feel that inheriting is something more than a privilege. It is a reward. Not alms. In short, do what you want. Don’t please me by doing what I would have wanted or not wanted you to do. In short, you know my condition: Do what you want, but don’t get married. I don’t want some loafer in trousers to enjoy my money and enslave you in the hope of filling his pockets. And don’t have children. I’m a frustrated mathematician, and my calculations concern only three people. You, Augusta, Julia, and Genara. I don’t need barnacles on my ship. I want to reach the final port unencumbered: I and my three adored daughters, sole possessors of all my affection, the love I give them, the love they give me, incomparable, incompatible.

3. Tonight the ten years prescribed as a condition of their father’s will are over, and the three daughters prepare for the outcome. They arrived punctually (at nightfall), though Julia came early to light a long candle at each corner of the coffin. They arrive and give one another light, rapid, purely ceremonial kisses on the cheek. Each one knows she doesn’t love the other two. No matter how Julia dissimulates with sweet gestures of affection. Genara disguises displeasure—real—as well as love—nonexistent. Only Augusta appears with a sour face and crosses her arms.

The sisters don’t speak to one another for a long time. Julia fusses over making certain the candles are lit. That they don’t go out in spite of being very long. Augusta looks at her nails and doesn’t say a word. Genara observes the ceiling of the garage as if it were the starry sky on a cold, clear winter night. Augusta, who knows her very well, murmurs quietly, “Tropics, we’re in the tropics, fool.”

Augusta doesn’t hide the fact that her sisters bore her. Though her father bored her even more. The severe daughter corrects herself immediately. Saying “bored me” is a cheap way to debase her father. The truth is, he enervated her, made her uncomfortable. It has always been Augusta’s opinion that their father was like flies. He had so many eyes he could see everything and wouldn’t let himself be flattened by a slap. She would like to believe that recollection is all that remains of her father. He took care not to be simply a pious memory. This annual ceremony keeps him alive. Above all because of the unsettling question—more like a threat—that at the end of ten years, something will happen. And it won’t be anything good, about that Augusta feels certain.

On the other hand, thinks the guileless Genara, after ten years the inheritance will be established. This doesn’t concern her. She knows that the condition, which suspends for only a certain period of time the execution of the will, does not stop the daughters from acquiring a right to the inheritance. She looks at Augusta and understands that the oldest sister can read her thoughts. She considers her naive. To think that today, tonight, their father is going to resolve the enigma of his will is not to know the man.

Augusta would like to say to her sisters:

“Papa is deceiving us. He always deceived us. Deceit is his profession. He’s like a smiling cardsharp.” (There’s a reason Genara always crossed herself when she saw her father.) (Genara avoids the piercing eyes of her older sister.) (Genara is superstitious.)

(Genara believes in the stars, lucky dates, black cats.) Augusta knows this and makes fun of her in secret. Their father also knows the power of superstition. He counts on it to keep the daughters unsettled year after year.

“Don’t be superstitious,” Augusta suddenly springs on Genara.

“What? What did you say?”

“Nothing.”

“That’s too bad,” Julia gently intervenes.

“What?” Genara repeats.

“I said that’s too bad. We ought to talk to one another. At least once a year.”

“Do you know why we don’t talk to one another?” Augusta interrupts inconsiderately.

Julia shakes her blond head.

“So Papa won’t catch us.”

Julia and Genara don’t understand Augusta, and Augusta doesn’t deign to clarify her words. She keeps her reasons to herself. The sisters exhaust her. They believe their father eventually will grow tired, and today, after a decade, he will free them of mourning so he himself can rest in peace.

This is a thought that, in a very different way, Julia and Genara share. Julia out of simple charity. That everything will conclude and everyone will be at peace. Be able to wear spring flower prints again. A pretty cream-colored dress with an asparagus print. A tailored dress with orchids on the lapel. Leave behind the mourning imposed by their father.

Julia believes more, much more, in the kindnesses of memory that her sisters, for different reasons, reject or malign. Julia selects the best moments from her recollection and puts them together in nosegays of happiness. Games, affections, roses. Her father’s arms lifting her high. Her father’s lap receiving the curled-up little girl. The father’s hands . . .

“I was my father’s little bird.” The young woman smiles. “I was always at his side. In silence. I never contradicted him. I never was disrespectful. I never raised my voice to him.”

Julia curbs her recollections as if her sisters can hear what she is thinking. She imagines that each of them at these moments does one of two things: She remembers or eliminates memories. Genara struggles against the memory of their father. She even makes the mistake of humming some tune from her childhood, revealing in this way what she does not wish to show.

Their father would accuse her: “You’re a full-fledged lazy thing.”

No, she wasn’t lazy. She was indolent, which isn’t the same thing. It isn’t that she wouldn’t or couldn’t do things. She believed that in the end everything would work out, more or less, with no need for her to act. Perhaps she was a contented girl who, since she did not know how to lie, thought it better to be quiet. How could she call her father “daddy dear,” like that hypocrite Julia, if she didn’t believe it? No, she wasn’t lazy. She avoided contradicting her father or fulfilling his expectations with regard to the affection he deserved. Perhaps Genara was simply walled inside her own childhood, distrustful of growing up in a world determined by the will of her father. What was wrong with that?

Only Augusta has sealed off her memory, carrying in her head a ridiculous mnemonic: the numbers of her bank accounts. But it is she, unexpectedly, who breaks the round of their silences by placing a hand on the coffin.

“He spent his life putting us to the test. How good that this is over.”

The sisters look at her with disbelief, amazement, and grievance.

“It’s true,” wails Genara. “It’s true. He’s dead.”

“He died,” Julia insists without wanting to. “What a shame.”

“Died, yes,” Augusta concludes. She insists, “Do you remember? Do you remember that list of prohibitions he wrote out by hand and tacked at the entrance to the bathroom?”

“You don’t remember that,” Julia said with easy tolerance.

“I remember, and so do you, Julia,” Augusta continued with the air of a gardener who cuts the overgrown grass and can’t interrupt the work without changing the rhythm or destroying a bed of roses by mistake. “Don’t touch yourself, don’t look at yourself. Avoid mirrors. Get dressed in the dark. Bathe in your shift. Don’t touch yourself. Don’t look at yourself. Don’t look at a man. Don’t let anyone touch you. Don’t go out alone. Sit in the first row at the movies even if it makes you cross-eyed. Don’t let yourself be looked at. Put a fig leaf on the art prints at school. Better yet: Don’t go to school anymore. I’ll be your school. Come, Augusta, sit on my lap so I can teach you. Go on, Genara, let me dress and undress you while you close your eyes and imagine I’m the sweetheart I forbid you to have. Lie down, Julia, I’ll sing you to sleep. You girls don’t have a mother. I’ll be father and mother both, I’ll—”