The Crystal Frontier (6 page)

It's hard for Juan Zamora to accept Jim's statements, accept something that breaks his rule about ingratiating himself with the Wingates, being accepted by them and, through them, by American society. But the criticism is coming from his lover, the being Juan loves most in the world, and his lover proclaims it in an implacable, angry tone, not caring how anyone, even Juan, reacts.

The Mexican student had feared something like this, something that would break their perfect, cloistered intimacy, the self-sufficiency of lovers. He hates the world, the busybody world, the cruel world, which gains nothing by poking its nose into the lives of lovers except that—the malicious pleasure of distancing them from each other. Could they ever enjoy the same sense of fullness they experienced before this little incident? Juan was confident they could, and he multiplied the proofs of his affection and loyalty to Lord Jim, his little pamperings, his attention. Perhaps the desire to reconstruct something so perfect it had to crack one day was all too obvious.

6

Once again they are together, wearing their white masks, their gloves, dissecting another woman's body, this time an old one's. Lord Jim asks Juan to remember that place, the palace of the Inquisition in Mexico that became the medical school. He's amused by the idea of the same building's being used for torture one day and to bring relief to bodies the next. The Mexican student subtly changes the subject and tells him about the Plaza de Santo Domingo and the ancient tradition of the “evangelists,” old men with old typewriters who sit in the doorways and type out the dictation of the illiterates who want to send letters to their parents, lovers, friends.

“How do they know these scribes are reliable?”

“They don't. They have to have faith.”

“Confidence, Juan.”

“Right.”

Jim took off his mask and Juan gestured for him to be careful—they had to take precautions. Once before, the first time, they had kissed next to a cadaver, but the bacteria of the dead have killed more than one careless doctor. Jim gave him a strange look. He asked Juan to tell him the truth. About what? About his family, his house. Jim knew what people said around the university, that Juan was the scion of a rich family, hacienda owners, and so forth. Juan had never told Jim that, because they never talked about the past. Now Jim asked him to send a spoken letter, as if he, the gringo, were the “evangelist” in the plaza and Juan the illiterate.

“It's all lies,” said Juan. His back was turned once again, but he spoke without hesitation. “Pure lies. We live in a very modest apartment. My father was a very honorable man who died penniless. My mother always threw it in his face. She'll die reproaching him. I feel pain and shame for the two of them. I feel pain for my father's useless morality, which no one remembers or values and which wasn't worth shit. On the other hand, people certainly would have celebrated him if he'd been rich. I'm ashamed that he didn't steal, that he was a poor devil. But I'd be just as ashamed if he were a thief. My dad. My poor, poor dad.”

He felt relieved, clean. He'd been faithful to Lord Jim. From now on, there wouldn't be a single lie between them. He thought that and fleetingly he felt ill at ease. Lord Jim could be sincere with him as well.

“Explain to me ‘pain and shame,' as you call them—which would be something like ‘pity and shame' in English,” said the American.

“My mother causes me pain, always complaining about what never was, heartsick about her life, which she should accept because it will never be different. I'm ashamed of her self-pity, you're right, that horrible sin of inflicting pain on yourself all day long. Yes, I think you're right. You've got to have compassion to cover the pain and shame you feel toward others.”

He squeezed Lord Jim's hand and told him they shouldn't talk about the past because they understood each other so well in the present. The American shot him a strange look that he almost associated with the dead woman who would not resign herself to closing her eyes, the woman they never finished dissecting.

“I feel awful saying this to you, Juan, but we have to talk about the future.”

The Mexican student made an involuntary but dramatic gesture, two swift and simultaneous, though repeated, movements, one hand raised to his mouth, as if he were begging silence and another extended forward, denying, stopping what was coming.

“I'm sorry, Juan. It really pains me to say this. It even shames me. You understand that no one controls his destiny absolutely.”

7

Juan turned his back—this time literally—on Cornell. He stopped studying and courteously said good-bye to the Wingates, who were surprised and upset, asking him why, did it have anything to do with them, with the way they'd treated him? But there was relief in their eyes and secret certainty: this had to end badly. He hoped to see them again someday. He would love to take them on a tour of the hacienda on horseback. Look me up if you come to Mexico.

The American family felt relieved but also guilty. Tarleton and Charlotte discussed the matter several times. The boy must have noticed the change in his hosts' attitude when he started to go out with Jim Rowlands. Had they broken the rules of hospitality? Had they allowed themselves to succumb to irrational prejudice? They certainly had. But prejudices could not be removed over night; they were very old, they had more reality—they did—than a political party or a bank account. Blacks, homosexuals, poor people, old people, women, foreigners: the list was interminable. And Becky—why expose her to a bad influence, a scandalous relationship? She was innocent. And innocence should be protected. Becky listened to them whisper while they imagined she was watching television, and she tried to keep a straight face. If they only knew. Thirteen years old and in a private school. How could they blame anything on her? What was money for? Day after day, all day, every day, the litany of the Me Generation was entitlement to every caprice, every pleasure; there was only one value: Me. Weren't her parents that way? Weren't they successful because they were that way? What did they want from her? For her to be a Puritan from the days of the Salem witch hunts? Then the girl immersed herself in what was happening on the screen so she wouldn't hear the voices of her parents, who didn't want to be heard, and she asked herself a question that confused her greatly: How can you enjoy everything and still seem a very moral, very puritanical person? Her blood tickled her, her body was changing, and Becky was anguished not to have answers. She hugged her stuffed rabbit and dared to ask him: What about you, Bunny, do you understand anything?

Up in the clouds, Juan, en route to Mexico City in his tourist-class seat on Eastern Airlines, tried to imagine a future without Lord Jim and accepted it with bitterness, desolation, as if his life had been canceled. The bad thing was to have admitted first the past, then the future. It was the painful act of leaving the moment when they loved each other without explanations, possessors of a single time, a single space, the Eden of a loving youth that excluded parents friends, professors, bosses. But not other lovers.

Suspended in midair, Juan Zamora tried to remember everything, the good and the bad, once more and then to cancel it forever, never again think about what happened. Never again feel hatred, pain, shame, compassion for the past his poor parents lived. And never feel pity, shame for himself or for Lord Jim, for the future they were both going to live, separated forever: Juan Zamora's desolate future, Lord Jim's happy, comfortable, secure one, his marriage having been arranged since God knows when, since before he knew Juan. That was what the families of the rich professional class did in Seattle, on the other side of the continent, where it was expected that a young doctor with a future would marry and have children—things that would inspire respect and confidence. And anyway, in the Anglo-Saxon tradition a homosexual experience was an accepted part of a gentleman's education—there wasn't an Englishman at Oxford who hadn't had one, he'd say, if something about them should leak out. Cornell and Seattle were far apart, the country was immense, loves were fragile and small.

“And we rich people, I'll tell you by quoting a good writer, are not like other people,” said Lord Jim, pounding in the final nail.

Juan remembered Jim's being angry only once, over Tarleton Wingate's hypocrisy. That's the Lord Jim he wanted to remember.

He pressed his burning head against the frozen window and turned his back on everything. Below, the Cornell gorge seemed insignificant to him, it didn't say anything to him, was not for him.

8

Four years later, the Wingates decided to take a vacation in Cancún. They stopped over in Mexico City so Becky could visit the marvelous Museum of Anthropology. Becky, now seventeen, was rather colorless even though she imitated her mother by dyeing her hair blond. Very curious, even liberated, she found herself a little Mexican boyfriend in the hotel lobby, and they went to spend a day in Cuernavaca. He was a very passionate boy, which seemed to annoy the driver, an angry, insecure man who tried to terrify tourists by taking curves at top speed.

It was Becky who encouraged her parents to pay a surprise visit on Juan Zamora, the Mexican student who'd lived with them in 1981. Did they remember him? How could they not remember Juan Zamora? And since Tarleton and Charlotte Wingate were still ashamed about the way in which Juan left their house, they accepted their daughter's idea. Besides, Juan Zamora himself had invited them to visit him.

Tarleton called Cornell and asked for Juan's address. The university computer instantly provided it, but it was not a country address. “But I want to see a hacienda,” said Becky. “This must be his town house,” said Charlotte. “Should we call him?” “No,” Becky said excitedly, “let's surprise him.” “You're a spoiled brat,” answered her father, “but I agree. If we call him, he might figure out a way not to see us. I have the feeling he was angry when he left us.”

The same driver who brought Becky to Cuernavaca now drove her along with her parents. The driver had a huge mocking smile on his face. If they'd only seen her the day before, kissing her face off with that low-life slob. Now, quite the young lady, the hypocrite, with that pair of distinguished gringos—sometimes even weirder things happen—searching for an impossible place.

“Colonia Santa María?” asked the driver, almost laughing. Leandro Reyes, Tarleton read on the chauffeur's license and noted mentally—just in case. “This is the first time anyone's ever asked me to take them there.”

They crossed the densest urban spaces, spaces swirling around them noisy as a river made entirely of loose stones; they cut through the brown crust of polluted air; and they also crossed the time zones of Mexico City, disordered, anarchic, immortal—time overlapping its past and its future, like a child who will be father to his posterity, like a grandson who will be the only proof that his grandfather walked through these streets; they moved steadily north, along Mariano Escobedo to Ejército Nacional, to Puente de Alvarado, and Buenavista station, beyond San Rafael, which was increasingly underneath everything, uncertain if under construction or in collapse. What is new, what's old, what is being born in this city, what's dying—are they all the same thing?

The Wingates looked at one another, shocked, pained.

“Perhaps there's been a mistake.”

“No,” said the driver. “This is it. It's that apartment house right over there.”

“Maybe it would be better if we just went back to the hotel,” said Tarleton.

“No,” Becky practically shouted. “We're here. I'm dying of curiosity.”

“In that case, you can go in by yourself,” said her mother.

They waited a while outside the lime-green building. Three stories high, it was in dire need of a good coat of paint. Clothes were hanging on the balconies to dry, and there was a TV antenna. At a soft-drink stand by the entrance, a red-cheeked girl wearing an apron but also sporting a permanent was busy putting bottles in the cooler. A wrinkled little old man in a straw hat poked his head out the door and stared at them curiously. On either side, a repair shop. A tamale vendor passed by shouting, Red, green, with chile, sweet, lard. The driver, Leandro Reyes, went on and on in English about debts, inflation, the cost of living, devaluations of the peso, pay cuts, useless pensions, everything messed up.

Becky reappeared and quickly got back in the car. “He wasn't there, but his mother was. She said it's been a long time since anyone's visited her. Juan's fine. He's working in a hospital. I made her swear she wouldn't tell him we were here.”

9

Every night, Juan Zamora has exactly the same dream. Occasionally he wishes he could dream something else. He goes to bed thinking about something else, but no matter how hard he tries, the dream always comes back punctually. Then he gives up and concedes the power of the dream, turning it into the inevitable comrade of his nights: a lover-dream, a dream that should adore the person it visits because it won't allow itself to be expelled from that second body of the former student and now young doctor in the social security system, Juan Zamora.

Night after night, it returns until it inhabits him, his twin, his double, the mythological shirt that can't be taken off without also pulling off the dreamer's skin. He dreams with a mixture of confusion, gratitude, rejection, and love. When he wishes to escape the dream, he does so by intensely desiring to be possessed again by it; when he wants to take control of the dream, his daily life appears with the bitter smile of all of Juan Zamora's dawns, sequestering him in the hospitals, ambulances, and morgues of his urban geography. Kidnapped by life, hostage of the dream, Juan Zamora returns each night to Cornell and walks hand in hand with Lord Jim toward the bridge over the gorge. It's fall, and the trees again look as bare as black needles. The sky has descended a bit, but the gorge is deeper than the firmament and summons the two young lovers with a false promise: heaven is down here, heaven is here, face up, breathing underbrush and brambles; its breath is green, its arms spiny. You have to earn heaven by giving yourself over to it: paradise, if it does exist, is in the very guts of the earth, its humid embrace awaiting us where flesh and clay mix, where the great maternal womb mixes with the mud of creation and life is born and reborn from its great reproductive depth, but never from its airy illusion, never from the airlines falsely connecting New York and Mexico, Atlantic and Pacific, in fact separating the lovers, breaking the marvelous unity of their perfect androgyny, their Siamese identity, their beautiful abnormality, their monstrous perfection, casting them to incompatible destinies, to opposite horizons. What time is it in Seattle when night falls in Mexico? Why does Jim's city face a panting sea while Juan's faces nervous dust? Why is the coastal air like crystal and the air of the plateau like excrement?