The Crystal Frontier (11 page)

“Okay, chief.”

Almost no one saw them. They abandoned the Mustang in the Colorado desert, south of Death Valley. The peon lost for ten years in the mall had not lost his ancestral talent for carrying things on his back. He was the descendant of bearers—bearers of stones, corn, sugar cane, minerals, flowers, chairs, birds … Now Dionisio loaded him up with a pyramid of electrical appliances, machines to make you thin, limited-edition CDs of Hoagy Carmichael, Cathy Lee Crosby exercise videos, plates commemorating the death of Elvis, and cans, dozens of cans, the entire world in cans, metal gastronomy. Dionisio, meanwhile, gathered in his arms the catalogs, subscriptions, newspapers, specialized magazines, and coupons; and the two of them, Baco and his squire, the Don Quixote of fine cuisine and the Mexican Rip Van Winkle who slept away the Lost Decade in a shopping mall, made their way south, toward the border, toward Mexico, scattering along the U.S. desert, along earth that once belonged to Mexico, the vacuum cleaners and washing machines, the hamburgers and Dr. Peppers, the insipid beers and watery coffees, the greasy pizzas and frozen hot dogs, the magazines and coupons, the CDs and the confetti made of electronic mail. Heading toward Mexico with nothing gringo, exclaimed Dionisio, tossing all the accumulated objects into the air, onto the earth, into the burning sun, until the Mustang exploded in the distance, leaving a cloud as bloody as a mushroom of flesh. Everything, get rid of everything, Dionisio said to his companion. Get rid of your clothing, just as I'm doing, scatter everything in the desert—we're going back to Mexico, we're not bringing a single gringo thing with us, not a single one, my brother, my double. We're returning to the fatherland naked. You can already see the border. Open your eyes wide—do you see, do you feel, do you smell, can you taste?

From the border came the unmistakable scent of Mexican food, an unstoppable smell.

“It's the Puebla-style marrow tarts!” exclaimed Dionisio “Baco” Rangel jubilantly. “Five hundred grams of marrow! Two chiles! Smell it! Cilantro! It smells of cilantro! Let's get to Mexico, to the frontier, let's go, brother. Let's arrive there as naked as the day we were born, return naked from the land that has everything to the land that has nothing!”

The recipe for Puebla-style marrow tarts consists of 500 grams of marrow, a cup of water, two chiles, 600 grams of dough, 3 teaspoons of flour, and oil to cook it all in.

4

THE LINE OF OBLIVION

For Jorge Castañeda

I'm sitting. Outside. I can't move. I can't speak. But I can hear. Only I don't hear anything. Maybe because it's night. The world is asleep. Only I am awake. I can see. I see the night. I watch the darkness. I try to understand why I'm here. Who brought me here? I feel as if I'm waking from a long artificial sleep. I'm trying to figure out where I am. I would really like to know who I am. I can't ask, because I can't speak. I'm paralyzed. I'm mute. I'm sitting in a wheelchair. I feel it rock a bit. I touch the rubber wheels with the tips of my fingers. Every so often it moves forward a little. Every so often it seems to go backward. What I fear most is its turning over. To the right. To the left. I'm starting to get my bearings again. I'm dizzy. To the left. I laugh a little. To the left. That's my downfall. That's my ruin. Going to the left. I've been accused of that. Who? Everyone. It makes me laugh, I don't know why. I have no reason to laugh. I think my situation is horrible. All fucked up. I don't remember who I am. I should make an effort to remember my face. I just realized something absurd: I've never seen my own face. I should invent a name for myself. My face. My neck. But that turns out to be harder than remembering, so I'll pin my hopes on memory. Memory, not imagination. Is remembering easier than imagining? I think it is for me. But I was saying, I'm afraid of tipping over. Rolling doesn't scare me much. Going backward, though, that does frighten me. I can't see where I'm going. I don't have eyes in the back of my head. If I'm going forward, at least I have the illusion that I'm controlling something. Even if I roll into the abyss. I'll see it as I fall. I'll see the void. Now I realize I can't fall into the abyss. I'm already there. That's a relief. Also a horror. But if I can fall no farther, does that mean I'm somewhere flat? My eyes are the most mobile part of me. I try to look straight ahead, then from side to side. First to the right. Then to the left. I see only darkness. I look up, straining my poor stiff old neck. Am I in a safe place? I don't see any stars. The stars have gone away. In their place a grimy sheen covers the sky. It's darker than darkness. Is there light anywhere? I look down at my feet. A blanket covers my knees. What a nice detail. Who, in spite of everything, felt compassion for me? My scuffed shoes stick out from beneath the fringe of the blanket. Then I see what I should see. I see a line at my feet. A luminous stripe, painted a phosphorescent color. A line. A boundary. A painted stripe. It shines in the night. It's the only thing shining. What is it? What does it separate? What does it divide? I have nothing but this line to orient me. And yet I don't know what it means. Nothing says anything to me tonight. I can neither move nor speak. But the world has become like me. Mute and immobile. At least I can look. Am I looked at? Nothing identifies me. When the sun rises, maybe I can figure out where I am. With luck, I'll figure out who I am. I think of something: if someone found me abandoned in this blind, open place where there is only a painted line shining on the ground, how would that person identify me? I look at as much of myself as I can. It's easiest to see my lap. Just tip my head down. I see the blanket on my knees. It's gray. It's got a hole. Right over my right knee. I try to move my hands to cover it up, hide it. My hands are rigid on the rubber wheels. If I try hard to stretch out my crippled fingers I can figure out that the wheels are wheels. Now, I know I said the line on the ground is artificial. How do I know that? Maybe it's natural, like a gorge, a ravine. But maybe I'm an artificial being, an imaginary presence. I scream out to my memory to return and save me from destructive imagination. Where the fringe on the blanket ends I can see my shoes. I've already said they're old, scuffed, banged up. Like a miner's boots. I cling to that association. Am I imagining or remembering? Miner. Excavations. Tunnels. Gold? Silver? No. Mud. Only mud. Mud. I don't know why, but when I say “mud” I want to cry. Something terrible stirs in my stomach when I say “mud,” when I think “mud.” I don't know why. I don't know anything. I love my old shoes. They're hard but they're comfortable. They have hooks and eyes. They're like boots. A little higher than my ankles. To give me confidence. Even if I can't walk. My shoes keep me steady. Without them, I'd fall over. I'd fall on my face, go to pieces. I'd flop to one side. Left? Right? That's the worst thing that could happen to me. I'm already in the abyss. To fall to one side is what I fear most. Who'd help me up? I'd be on the ground in a real mess. My nose would smell the line. Or the line would devour my nose. My shoes rest firmly on the footrests of the chair. The chair rests on the ground. Not too firmly. I can't possibly move. But the chair could roll and tip over. I'd fall to the ground. I've already said that. But now I'll add something new. I'd cling to the ground. Is that my fate? The fluorescent line mocks me. It keeps the ground from being ground. The ground has no boundaries. The line says there are. The line says the earth has been split. The line makes the earth into something else. What? I'm so alone. I'm so cold. I feel so abandoned. Yes, I'd like to fall to the ground. Descend to the ground. Fall into its deepness. Into its real darkness. Into its sleep. Into its lullaby. Into its origin. Into its end. To start over. To finish for good. All at once. To fall into my mother—that's it. To fall into the memory of what I was before being. When I was loved. When I was desired. I know I was desired. I need to believe it. I know I'm in the world because I was loved by the world. By my mother. By my father. By my family. By those who were going to be my friends. By the children I was going to have. I say this and stop, horrified. I have spoken forbidden things. I sneak off, I hide in my thoughts. I can't bear what I've just said. My children. I can't accept it. The idea horrifies me. Disgusts me. I look at the line on the ground again and regain my cold comfort. I can't reunite with the earth, because the line stops me. The line tells me that the earth is divided. The line is something different from the earth. The earth stopped being earth. It turned into the world. The world is what loved me and brought me from the earth where I slept, one with the earth and with myself. I was taken from the earth and placed in the world. The world called to me. The world wanted me. But now it rejects me. Abandons me. Forgets me. Flings me back to the earth. But even the earth doesn't want me. Instead of opening up a protective abyss, it sets me on a line. At least an abyss would embrace me. I'd enter the true total darkness that has neither beginning nor end. Now I look at the earth and an indecent line splits it. The line possesses its own light. A painted, obscene light. Totally indifferent to my presence. I am a man. Aren't I worth more than a line? Why is the line laughing at me? Why is it sticking its tongue out at me? I think I woke from a nightmare and will fall back into it. The meanest objects, the most vile things will live longer than I. I will pass. But the line will remain. It's a trap to keep the earth from being earth and from receiving me. It's a trap for the world to hold onto me without loving me. Why does the world not love me? Why does the earth still not accept me? If I knew those two things, I'd know everything. But I know nothing. Perhaps I should be patient. I should wait for sunrise. Then two things will surely happen. Someone will approach me and recognize me. Hello there, X, he'll say. What are you doing here? Don't tell me you spent the night here? Alone, out in the open? Don't you have a home? And your children? Where are they? Why aren't they taking care of you? That's what I'm thinking. That's what I'm saying. And I howl. Like an animal. I scream as if I were imprisoned in a fragile crystal glass and my screaming could shatter it. The sky is my glass. I howl like the wolves to frighten away a single word. Children. I prefer to go quickly to my second possibility. The sun will rise and I'll recognize where I am. That will soothe me. That, perhaps, will give me the strength to take charge, to take the wheels in my hands and head off in a precise, known direction. Where? I haven't the slightest idea. Who's waiting for me? Who will protect me? These questions make me think the opposite. Who hates me? Who abandoned me here in the middle of the night? I lower the volume on my howl. No one. No one recognizes me. No one waits for me. No one abandoned me. It was the world. The world forsook me. I stop howling. Does no one love me? The questions are pure possibilities. Which means that I'm not dying yet. I'm imagining possibilities. Does death cancel all possibilities? I imagine I recognize and am recognized. I want to know where I am. I want to know who I am. I want to know who put me here. Who abandoned me at the line, in the night. If I keep asking about all this, it means I'm not dead. I'm not dead, because I'm not renouncing possibility. But no sooner do I think that than I start thinking there are many ways of being dead. Perhaps I've imagined only some of them, and this is just one. I'm sitting mute and paralyzed in a wheelchair in the middle of the night and in an unknown place. But I don't believe I'm dead. Could that be an illusion? Do we go on thinking as long as we're alive? Could that be the real death? I don't believe so. If I were really dead, I'd know that it was death. That consoles me. Since I don't know what death is, I must still be alive. And if I'm alive, it's because I imagine death in many ways. At the same time, I must be very close to it because I sense my possibilities running out. First I tell myself I'm passing on. I don't dare name my death. It frightens me. I'm just passing through, I say pleasantly, so no one gets scared. Many people appear before me to say yes, yes you're just passing through, that's all. And one day you'll have passed through. You'll be dead. They smile in the darkness when they say that. The people. It relieves them. If I don't die, because I'm only passing through, they won't die either. They'll have passed away. I find the idea repugnant. I reject it. I search for something to deny it. Something to deny its horrible hypocrisy. Let no one say of me, “X passed on.” I prefer the voice inside me that says, “X already died.” I've already died. I like that better. I hope they say that about me when I'm really dead, when I truly die. It's as if I was waiting for death and finally the day came.
Ya se murió.
But it's also as if death had been waiting for me forever, with open arms. He's already dead. That's why he was born. That's why we made him, loved him, nurtured him, taught him to walk. So he would die. Not simply so he could pass on just like that. No. We nurtured him so he'd die. I hope that's clear. I've just had a great idea, as if thinking these two things—he just passed on, he's already died—were the same as thinking everything. One voice comes from one side of the line and says to me, “You're passing away.” Another comes from the other side and says to me, “You've already died.” The first voice, the one from the side that isn't mine, behind me, speaks in English. “He passed away,” it says. The other, facing me, on my side, says, in Spanish, “Ya se murió.” He bought the farm. He kicked the bucket. He's gone west. He's pushing up daisies. “He's already died.” Who? No one says that to me. No one gives me back my name. Painfully I tilt my head back. I've already said that. My neck is stiff. It's very old. As they say, a chicken neck doesn't cook at the first boil. Suddenly, as if my ideas called them forth, the stars shine in the night. Then I do something totally unexpected, mysterious. I manage to lift an arm. I cover my eyes with my hand. I drop it to my knees. I have no idea why I do that. And no idea how I manage to do it. But when I open my eyes and look at the sky, I locate the polestar. I feel a great sense of relief. To see it, to identify it—for an instant I am back in the world. The polestar. Its presence and its name come to me. Clear, sharp. There they are, the star and the pole. They don't move. Eternally they announce the beginning of the world. Above and behind me is north. But instead of announcing the beginning the way I wanted, the voice of the star says to me, “You are going to pass away.” I will pass away. I am dust and to dust will I return. I am the master of dust. Mr. Dust. I am mud and to mud will I return. I will be the master of mud. Mr. What…? This time I don't scream. I clutch the wheels. I scratch them, furious and bewildered. I'm on the verge of knowing. I don't want to know. A horrible intuition tells me I do know. I'm going to suffer. I stop looking at the North Star. Instead I look at the darkness in the south. Downward. Toward my feet. “You're going to die now,” the half-light says to me. It speaks in Spanish. And I answer. I manage to speak. I say something. A prayer learned long ago. In Spanish. Blessed be the light. And the Holy Cross. And the Lord of Truth. And the Holy Trinity. That comforts me enormously. But it also makes me want to urinate. I suddenly remember that, when I was little, every time I prayed I felt like going to the bathroom. The way some people pee when they hear the sound of water, I have to attend to my bladder when I pray. No sooner said than done. The Holy Trinity. Wee-wee starts to flow. I'm ashamed of myself. It's going to stain my trousers. I look down at my lap, expecting a moist stain around my open fly. But nothing's wrong, even though I'm sure I just urinated. Again I move my right hand with difficulty. I stick it in my fly. I don't find my underpants or the opening that would allow me to touch my obscenely gray pubic hair, my wrinkled dick, my balls that have grown to elephant size. None of that. I find a diaper. No mistaking it. Satiny and waterproof, thick and cushioned. Someone's put a diaper on me. I feel relief and shame. Relief because I know I can pee and shit as I please without worrying. Shame for the same reason: I'm being treated like a baby. Someone thinks I'm a helpless baby. Someone's put a diaper on me and abandoned me in a wheelchair next to a line painted on the ground. If I poop, who's going to smell my shit? Will someone come help me? That would be humiliating. I prefer to go on thinking I've been abandoned and no one will come for me. No one will change my diaper. I've been abandoned. The diaper forces me to repeat that. I am the abandoned child, the foundling. The orphan. Whose orphan? I'm tempted to move the wheels of my invalid's chair. I've already explained why I don't. I'm afraid of rolling. Falling. On my face. Toward the south. On my back. Toward the north. Not to the right. Better to the left. But that word disturbs me, I've already said so. I try to avoid it. Just as I avoid the idea of mud, the notion of having children, the need to speak English. But the little word overwhelms me. Left. If I let it in, I'll let in all the others. Name. Mud. Children. Death. Language. I repeat it and I see myself, miraculously, in the precise spot where I am. Only now standing up. Now on foot. Now young. And accompanied. I'm on the line. I'm facing an armed group. Police. They wear short-sleeve khaki shirts. T-shirts underneath. Even so, the sweat from their chests and armpits stains their shirts. Americans. They stand on one side of the line. Behind me is an unarmed group. Wearing overalls. Shoes like mine. Straw hats. They have tired faces. Faces that show they've traveled a long way in arid places. They have dust on their eyelashes, ringing their mouths, in their moustaches. They look as if they've been buried alive. And brought back to life. Just saying that brings a name to mind with the same force as the polestar. Lazarus. I speak in his name. I argue. I defend. Shots ring out. The men of dust fall. Then people I should know and love surround me. They surround me to protect me from the bullets. They protect me but they rebuke me. Agitator. Who asked you? Don't butt in. You're placing us in danger. It's not right. Go home. Accept things as they are. You're endangering all of us. Your wife. Your children. Especially your brother. My brother? Why my brother? Why am I here if not to defend my brother? Look at him. He's almost stopped breathing. He's covered with dust. He's just come out of the grave. His name's Lazarus. That's my brother. I defend him here, at the line. Lazarus. They laugh at me. You look like a fighting cock on your line. A well-pecked cock, more dead than alive. Your brother is the real cock. It's his line, not yours. Don't endanger him. Between us we're going to wear you down until you give up. We're going to show you that your display of bravery is useless. We're going to move you off the line, you little rooster. We're going to wear you down, you old bird. No matter what you do, the world won't change. Those you call your brothers will keep coming. When their arms are wanted, they'll cross the line and no one will bother them. Everyone will look the other way. But when they're no longer needed, they'll be rejected. They'll be beaten up. They'll be killed in the streets in broad daylight. They'll be kicked out. The world won't change. You won't make it change. You're a drop of water in an ocean of self-interest that rolls on in huge waves, with or without you. It's your brother who moves the world. He's the owner of the whole line, from sea to sea. He creates wealth. He draws water from stones. He makes the desert bloom. He makes bread from sand. He can change the world. Not you, you poor devil. Not you, you old fool with your diaper and your wheelchair, sitting on the very line where you were a brave young man long ago. A man of the left. A brave young man of the left. A brave young man of the left with bright eyes. You aren't your brother. You have no name. You scream. You howl again. You see. You hear. You scream. You do it because you discover that it gives you strength, lets you move your crippled arms a little. Who are you? The nocturnal chorus attacks and insults me, and I wish I knew who I was so I could answer them: I am not No One, I am Someone. I click my teeth for joy. Now I know. The label in my jacket. It says there who I am. That's where my name is. My wife always wrote my name on the label in my jackets. You go to those meetings, she'd say, and you take off your jacket and talk in your shirtsleeves. Afterward, no one knows whose jacket is whose. And you come home in shirtsleeves. You get a chill. But in fact you haven't got the money to buy another jacket. Let me write your name on the label on the inside pocket, next to your heart. My name. My heart. Her. I remember her. First I remembered my real brothers. I quickly forgot my phony brother. But I remembered them in fragments, in a half-light. I should remember her whole, as she was, loving and loyal. She was a beautiful woman, strong and good, like a rock, but she smelled like a bakery. She smelled of bread. She tasted like lettuce. She was strong and blessed and fresh. She protected me. She held me in her arms. She gave me courage. She would write my name on the jacket label next to my heart. “So you don't lose it, next to your heart.” Now I raise my painful hand to that place, my empty hand, the good hand of my body split in half. I find nothing. There's no patch. No name. No heart. No label. They ripped it out, I scream to myself. They ripped out my name. They stripped me of my heart. They abandoned me without a name in the middle of the night at the line. I hate them. I must hate them. But I prefer to love her. She, too, is absent, like me. But if that's true, why don't we find each other? If we're both absent, we should meet. I hunger for her, for her company, her sex, her voice, her youth, and her old age. Why aren't you with me, Camelia? I stop. I look at the stars. I look at the night. I'm shocked. The world returns to me. The earth throbs and it summons me. I spoke the name of the woman I love. That was enough for the world to return to life. I spoke the first name in my solitude, a woman's name, a name I adore. I say and think all that and in my head the doors of a memory of water open. It's a response to the dryness that surrounds me. I smell dry earth. A stony place. Mesquite. Cactus. Thorns. Thirst. I smell an absence of rain, a distant storm. The only thing that rains is Camelia's name. Camelia. It rains on my head. It's a flower, a drop, gold. I caress that name with my eyes. I let it roll through my closed eyelids. I capture it between my lips. I savor it. I swallow it. Camelia. Her name. I bless it. And I curse it. Why weren't the others like her? Why were the others ungrateful, greedy, cruel? I detest Camelia's name because it opens the door to the names I don't want to remember. I feel shame when I think that. I can't reject Camelia's name. It's like murdering her and killing myself. Then I realize that the woman's name demands a sacrifice of me. It pulls me out of myself. Until the moment when I said the name Camelia, I'd been talking only of myself. I don't know my own name and don't need it. If I talk to myself I don't need a name. My name is for others. I talk to myself and don't need to name myself. Other people are other people. I am not “Julio,” “Héctor,” “Jorge,” or “Carlos.” My dialogue with myself is internal, integral, unbroken. The thinnest scalpel could not separate the two voices of the “I” that is the “I” speaking with myself. The others are the others. The rest. Superfluous. But I say “Camelia,” and Camelia answers me. Now I'm not talking to myself. Now you're talking to me. And if you're talking to me, I have to talk to the others. I must name the rest. Now I have to name everything so as to be able to name her. She says, Name all of them so you can name me. I do name her: Camelia. I remember her: my wife. I have to remember them: my children. My resistance is enormous. It's monstrous. I don't want to give them their names. We'd rather be alone, Camelia and I. Why did we have them? Why did we have them baptized, confirmed; why did we praise them, kiss them, make sacrifices to bring them up? So that one day they'd say to me, Why weren't you like your brother, our uncle? Why did you have to be poor and wretched? Why did you wear yourself out fighting for lost causes? How can you expect us to respect you? Why did you have to be poor and wretched?