Happy Families (9 page)

LEO DIDN’T SAY A WORD
. Leo and Cordelia live together and don’t need to state that they love each other.

You know my desire is that you don’t ever see him again.

I know, and that’s why I’m explaining my reasons for going back. Once a month. It’s not too much.

I won’t say anything, love. You know your game. But to see you come back each month in that state, well . . . I . . .

She places her index finger on his lips.

Hush—she smiles. Respect conjugal ties.

He doesn’t love himself. He becomes angry with you. Don’t go back anymore.

Leo, it took me years to decide. To leave or stay. Run away. I would say to him, Álvaro, give me just one hour of peace. Just one. I’m giving you my whole life. Do you know what he answered? He said: Do you want the truth? Well, you won’t have it. I’ll give you something better. The lie. Because in the lie there can be love, but in the truth, never.

SHE TURNED TO SAY GOODBYE
. Álvaro opened the door for her and said:

I’m opening the door for you. Why don’t you leave? You’re free.

Have pity, Álvaro. Don’t look for me anymore. Why do you oblige me to come back? Why do you torture me this way?

You’re wrong—Álvaro didn’t look at her, he moved his eyes around the yellow bedroom—I don’t want to see you. Get out.

She was about to touch his hand.

I’m not afraid anymore that you’ll lock me in, really. I don’t care if I’m your slave.

Álvaro opens the door for her.

Why don’t you leave? You’re free. I’ve said it so many times. Fly away, little dove, fly away! My house is not a cage.

I’ll never leave you, Álvaro.

Go. Consider me dead.

I want to take care of you. You’re my husband.

I’m not going to think about problems anymore. When they come, I’ll know how to face them by myself. Of course I will.

He said this with a look that was not resigned but tranquil.

He seemed, Leo, to know more about what’s going to come than what already happened . . .

Why? What did he say to you?

He said he was at a crossroads because he hadn’t gotten from me the total love that lasts only one night . . .

What did you say?

Nothing. He got down on his knees. He placed his head against my belly and I caressed it.

You didn’t say anything to him?

Yes. I said, “I’ll never leave you.”

Why, Cordelia? Please tell me why you’re going back to him. You’re under no obligation. Do you want to be punished for the mere fact of having loved me?

No, Leo. It’s that only his eyes remember how I was when I was young. He tells me that. “You stay with me because nobody but me remembers your youthful beauty. Only I have your young eyes in my old ones.”

SHE TOOK OFF HER YELLOW DRESS
. She didn’t hear the barking of the yellow dog in the courtyard. She allowed him to caress her loose yellow hair for a long time. She planned never to come back.

Chorus of the Father of Rock

Father Silvestre Sánchez cries out in vain, the mass of young people shouts weeps advances like a Roman legion in togas in sandals boots and totally Palacio miniskirts with the name and likeness of the fallen idol Daddy Juan printed on their backs singing and shouting the words to his songs

think twice before you go

when the lights go out

pretty girls don’t cry

it’s too late

I told you so

while Father Silvestre attempts in vain to counter the cacophony with the ancient music of the requiem

quiet children behave this is a religious service

dona eis domine

requiem aeternam

lux perpetua

now Daddy Juan’s coffin is in the open grave let me bless it before the gravediggers cover it in earth and then seal it carefully and the world is left in peace because you youngsters don’t want your idol to be eaten by dogs or worms, isn’t that right?

locked up in makesicko seedy

drowning in the shit of the cow the muck

fuckin with the nuts the gland

dancing to the mock the zooma

you’re divine Daddy Juan you carry God on your back Idol, even though you are God

anathema let it be anathema

Ana the ma-le tit be Ana

Ana Ledibee

if you love Daddy Juan so much respect the ceremony girls respect the remains and the girls advance uncontrollably in an avalanche crying shouting Daddy Juan don’t leave Daddy Juan let me toss you my panties, take my bra, here’s my Tampax, sainted god, sweet little daddy,

only Juan said Jesús is God

before Mateo or Lucas or Marco found the courage

Daddy Juan is God

Daddy Juan is like the sun three things in one thing light heat and star

Ana Theme

Daddy Juan came like a ray of light into our lives

Christ Jesus is effluence protection and erection

Daddy Juan was created established and projected

God is the word

The word is Daddy Juan

God is the shepherd the door the truth the resurrection

Daddy Juan guide us open us tell us resuscitate

the mob at the grave passes beers from hand to hand to mitigate grief and augment goodbye singing the songs of Daddy Juan and pushing Father Silvestre let me officiate in the name of God quiet crow here there’s no other God but Daddy Juan

here is Mexico Makesicko City here where they burned the feet of Cow the Muck where they stoned Mock the Zooma to death here the city was founded on water and rock and thorn and dust storms with glands and woven baskets the city of rock and roll perpetually at twelve on the Richter scale

here there’s no other savior father but our sweet Daddy Juan surrounded by loose earth and irate dust and mute cypresses and leaden sun daddy-oh daddy-oh

until they push Father Silvestre into the open grave of Daddy Juan and the mob of fifteen-year-olds in miniskirts screaming and singing at the grave grabs the shovels away from the gravediggers and begins to shovel dirt into the pit onto the body of Father Silvestre mute now though openmouthed lying faceup on the cedar coffin with a silver guitar instead of a crucifix

it serves you right to suffer the priest murmurs under shovelfuls of earth, you sought out suffering my lord Jesus Christ, our lord Daddy Juan

when the lights go out they turn out the lights

I’m ready sings Muddy Waters in honor of Daddy John and Father Silvestre murmurs in response

it’s too late stray cats we’re underneath it all ghosts appear in the grave of the mob everything in a box, trapped in the case

I won’t stand in your way make way for death Daddy Juan stray cats tollin bells for whom the bells toll for whom the belles toil for whom the balls roll for whom the blues roll and rock baby in a deep grave death is grave from womb to tomb from the cradle to the grave the cradle will rock and roll

when the lights go out Daddy Juan it serves you right to suffer

amen Father Silvestre pulvis eris et in pulvis reverteris

Mater Dolorosa

José Nicasio: Who was my daughter? I don’t know where to begin. We all descend from someone else. We all come from somewhere else. Even the Indians aren’t from here. Not even the Indians. They came from Asia millions of years ago. Nobody was here. That’s why it’s so wonderful to sit and watch nightfall from the steps of the ruins of Monte Albán. To tell yourself the mountains were always there, welcoming the sun every twilight as it lies down behind them, sending out the light of a pardonable rest. It shone on us all day. Now it disappears. Not behind but inside the mountains. The sun makes its bed in those hills. It lays down a pallet that we call “twilight.” Capricious sunset. It changes colors every nightfall. It’s intense red one time, misty blue the next, orange one afternoon, gray and old later. And this has been happening, José Nicasio, since before human beings appeared. Nature
was
without any need to be seen. It saw itself, in any case, and celebrated in solitude. The mountains of the Sierra Madre had no name then. Today do they know they are seen? Do they know that a man and a woman sat down one afternoon six months ago to watch the spectacle of nightfall in Monte Albán? How could I not understand, José Nicasio, that a young man and woman, two human beings, would remain there, insensible to schedules, enraptured by the spectacle. The mountains in silhouette. The sun fading. The valley already submerged in darkness. And the high vantage point of the ruins, the steps of the pyramid. How could I not understand. Two young people, a man and a woman, forget about schedules. They ignore the distant routine voices of the guards. It’s time to close up. It’s time to leave. The ruins will be closed off . . . Do the kingdoms of the past close, José Nicasio? The eternal monuments of a race, do they have schedules? The builders of the pyramids, were their comings and goings checked? Look, José Nicasio, look how I’m trying to understand. I’m trying to know. I think I know that the old gods are the guardians of their temples. The gods don’t charge an entrance fee to their sacred places. Why would my daughter and you pay attention to the guard’s whistle, it’s time to go, the Monte Albán site is closing, it’s time to go back to the city of Oaxaca, to civilization, to the roof and the bed and the struggle and the shower that waits for us. Leave the site to the gods. At least at night the temple will belong only to them, not to the intruders, José Nicasio and Alessandra. Tell me, why were you there?

Señora Vanina: Thank you for your letter. I certainly didn’t expect so nice a gesture. Really so generous, Señora. In my solitude I don’t expect anyone to communicate with me. Approach me. Visit me. Imagine what it meant for me to receive your very kind letter. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to explain myself. I swear to you there was no need. What is, is. What was, is over now. Have you noticed how we Mexicans use that famous NOW? NOW it was all right. NOW it was time. NOW I grew tired of waiting. NOW I’ll leave here. NOW he died. Only that afternoon I told myself: NOW I’ve come back. NOW I can return to this place with different eyes after so long an absence. Return as if another man had gone to the place I went to, the land where I was born. Señora, how could I not be moved, agitated, Señora . . . ? When I was a boy in the village, I didn’t even know there was such a place. In the village, we spent our lives growing what we sold on market days in Tlacolula. Have you ever been there? We all worked very hard so nothing would be missing on Sundays and Thursdays, the market days. If you stop by there, you’ll see that nothing is missing. Cilantro, espazote leaf, tomatoes, sesame seeds, cheese, tree chilis, anchos, chipotles, guajillos, parsley and plantains, sapodilla fruit, melons, turkeys, even the famous edible grasshoppers of our country, everything the Lord Our God has given to Oaxaca so that we can gather the blessed fruits and take them to sell twice a week.

“God has given us everything because we’re very poor,” my father would say.

Go to the market, Señora Vanina, and try to hear Castilian in that murmur of Indian voices, which are high but sweet. They are bird voices, Señora, Zapoteca voices filled with
tlanes
and
tepecs.
We speak Castilian only to offer goods to the customers who visit us, dear customer, two pesos a dozen, this cheese shreds all by itself it’s so delicious . . . Señora, you say we all come from somewhere else, and that’s true. When I was a little boy, I began to play with colors and papers from the amate tree and then to paint on white amate wood and invent little pictures, then bigger ones, until my honored father said take them to the market, José Nicasio, and I did and began to sell my little paintings. Until the distinguished professor from the city of Oaxaca saw what I was doing and said this boy has talent and took me to live in the city (with the permission of my honored father) and there I grew up learning to read and write and paint with so much joy, Señora, as if I myself had been amate paper or an adobe wall that gradually is covered with lime and maguey sap until the wall of earth is transformed into something as soft and smooth as a woman’s back . . . It wasn’t easy, Señora, don’t think that. Something in me was always pulling back to the village, the way they say a nanny goat pulls back to the mountains. My new happiness wasn’t enough to make me forget my old happiness as a boy with no literature, no Castilian, barefoot with no clothes except drill trousers and a threadbare white shirt and mud-caked huaraches. And another white shirt stiff with starch and carefully pressed black trousers and shoes once a week so I could go to Mass like a respectable person . . . Now, in the city, I was a respectable person, I was being educated, I read, I went to school, I knew people who had come from Mexico City and friends who would visit the distinguished professor’s studio. But I swear to you that an enormous piece of my soul was still tied to the life I left behind, the village, the market, the noise of donkeys and pigs and turkeys, the straw sleeping mats, cooking in the fireplace, poor stews, rich aromas . . . Except when I returned to the village on Sundays and feast days, it was like offending those who stayed behind, throwing it in their faces that I could leave and they couldn’t. I swear it isn’t just a silly suspicion. One day I went back out of sheer feeling, Señora, what you people call “nostalgia,” and at first nobody recognized me, but when word got around,

“It’s José Nicasio, he’s come back,”

some looked at me with so much rancor, others with greed, most of them with distance, Señora, that I decided never to go back to the place I came from. But can we cut ourselves off forever from our roots? Isn’t there something left that hurts us, the way they say an amputated arm continues to hurt . . . ? I couldn’t return to my village. I could only return to the ruins of my village and from there calmly observe a world that was mine but no longer acknowledged me. The world before the world.

José Nicasio: Thank you for your letter. Thank you for having taken the time to answer me. What am I saying, when I received your message, I thought that man has all the time in the world. Will he learn to be patient? I asked myself from the beginning. Will he be able to hear me? Will he have a residue of tenderness, a thread of intelligence, to understand why I am writing to him? I believe so. I read your letter, José Nicasio, and believe I understand that you do. I also believe you are a rascal,
furbo,
as we say in Italy, sharp, as you say here in Mexico. You trumped me. You told me where you came from, the mix of luck and effort that got you out of your village and took you to the city and to success. José Nicasio: How unsatisfied you leave me. I understand you less than ever. I agonize trying to comprehend your behavior. I hope you’re not offended if I tell you that as far as I’m concerned, your letter was never received. What interests me is your knowing who my daughter, Alessandra, was. I confess with some guilt that I had little patience where you were concerned. But I realize that if I write so you’ll know who my daughter was, I’ll have to put up with your telling me who you are . . . I told you we all come from somewhere else. You from an indigenous community in Oaxaca. My family, from the European exile that followed the Civil War in Spain. My father was a Republican. He didn’t have time to escape. He ended up in prison and was shot by the fascists. My northern Italian mother, from Turin, could not leave her husband’s grave behind without even knowing where they had thrown his body.

“All of Spain is a graveyard,” she said and disappeared into the lands of Castile. I never heard from her again. A Mexican diplomat put me in a group of orphaned children, and we set sail for Veracruz. I reached the age of twelve, and a family of Spanish merchants adopted me. I married their son, who by now was completely Mexican. Diego Ferrer. A businessman. Alessandra was born of that union. You saw her. Her long honey-colored hair. Her Italian profile, with its long, slender nose, her eyes of Lombard mist, her waist that can be encircled by the fingers of two hands . . . She was distinctive. It was as if the ancestors, the dead of the house in Italy, were resurrected in her . . . Physically, she resembled my mother. But her spirit was her grandfather’s. My husband watched her with astonishment as she grew. José Nicasio, Alessandra was a woman of extraordinary intelligence. She made such rapid progress in her studies that she surpassed the top student. Her calling was philosophy, literature, art, the universe of culture. Her father, my husband, looked at her with suspicion, with disbelief. Alessandra didn’t marry. Or rather, she was married to the world of esthetic forms. Like you? Yes, but just imagine how different. She was born into a comfortable family. Do you believe that coming like you from a very low point brings greater merit to the effort to ascend? You’re wrong. When you’re born at a high point, the temptation to let yourself drift,
se laisser aller,
is very strong. Fighting comfort is more difficult than struggling against poverty. You had to achieve what you didn’t have. She had to move away from what she already had . . . Her father, my husband, was apprehensive. He wanted a “normal” daughter who would go out dancing and meet boys of her own class, marry, give him grandchildren. He didn’t have the courage to tell her this. My daughter’s gaze was so strong it forbade familiarity, at home and away from home. Her eyes said to all of us,

“Don’t come close. I love you very much, but I’m fine alone. Accept me as I am.”

Diego, my husband, was not resigned. To “normalize” her, he called her Sandy, imagine, as if my daughter worked at McDonald’s. Sandy! She was baptized Alejandra, but to emphasize her difference and irritate my husband, I always called her Alessandra.

It’s true. Alessandra didn’t participate, she didn’t make friends, she lived enclosed in a balloon of culture. She used familiar address with the thinkers and artists of the past. It made me laugh to hear her speak not only of Michelangelo and Raphael but of Marcel or Virginia as if they were her intimate friends.

I defended my daughter’s solitude. Her self-sufficiency. And above all, her promise. I told my husband, “If Alessandra does what you want and marries and has children, she’ll be a superior mother and spouse, not an ordinary, run-of-the-mill housewife.” At times my husband found consolation. The moment would come when Alejandra—“Sandy”—would settle down and lead a “normal life.” But for me, her normality was to be how she was, a voracious reader, endlessly eager to know, as if her grandfather, my father, had survived the war and Franco’s tyranny and continued, as a ghost, in the existence of his granddaughter—disciplined, focused, but ignorant of the world.

Innocent. Innocent but promising.

That was my daughter, José Nicasio. A promise inside a translucent sphere where the corrupt air of the human city could not penetrate. A promise, José Nicasio. Repeat that to yourself in your solitude. Repeat it night and day. I want these words to forever occupy the center of your life. You have to know who my daughter was. And please don’t protect yourself, as my husband does, behind the lie of Alessandra’s supposed human coldness. Ah yes, they say, she was a promising girl but barely human. She lacked warmth. She lacked emotion.

People who think that infuriate me, beginning with my husband, I’ll tell you that with all honesty. It means not understanding that the “familiar address” Alessandra used with genius—or brilliance, I don’t know—was an intense, erotic form of desire. My daughter loved, Señor. Not what everyone vulgarly attributes to that verb, physical attraction, not even the tenderness and warmth shared with other human beings. Alessandra loved Nietzsche or the Brontës because she felt them
alone,
alone in the graves of their books and their thoughts. Alessandra approached the geniuses of the past to give them life with her attention, which was the form her affection took: paying
attention.

She didn’t want to take anything from anyone. She wanted to give to the neediest. The dead? Yes, perhaps. It’s true, “The dead are so alone.” But she sought out the company of the less frequented dead. The immortals. That’s what she told me. She wanted to look after, offer her hand to so many human beings, the artists and thinkers who are the subject of studies, biographies, yes, and lectures, but not of a
love
equivalent to what we give to a close, living being. Offer her hand to the immortals. That was my daughter’s vocation. Perhaps that was why she was there, that afternoon, in Monte Albán.