Carlos Fuentes
Hydra Head
To the memory of
(in strict order of disappearance)
Conrad Veidt
Sydney Greenstreet
Peter Lorre
Claude Rains
Une tête coupée en fait renaître mille
PART ONE. HIS OWN HOST
1
AT EXACTLY 8 a.m. Felix Maldonado arrived at the Sanborns on Madero. Years had passed since he had set foot inside the famous House of Tiles. It had gone out of style like all of downtown Mexico City, the historic center Hernán Cortés had ordered built upon the ruins of the Aztec capital after personally drawing up the plans. This was in Felix’s mind as he pushed the wood-and-glass revolving door, made a full turn, and emerged again into the street. He felt guilty about arriving late for an appointment. He was known for his punctuality. He was the most punctual official in the entire Mexican bureaucracy. Easy, some said, no competition. Extremely difficult, Felix’s wife, Ruth, said, easier to let yourself drift with the current in a country governed by the law of least resistance.
This morning Felix could not withstand the temptation to waste a couple of minutes. He paused on the sidewalk across the street and for a long moment admired the magnificence of the blue- and white-tiled façade of the ancient colonial palace, with its wooden balconies and churrigueresque cresting outlining the flat roof. Again he crossed the street, quickly entered Sanborns, hurried through the sales area, and pushed open the beveled glass door leading to the translucent glass-roofed patio restaurant. One of the tables was occupied by Professor Bernstein.
Felix Maldonado attended a political breakfast every morning. A pretext for exchanging impressions, ordering world affairs, plotting intrigue, conspiring, and organizing cabals. Small early-morning fraternities that serve, above all, as a source of information that would otherwise remain unknown. When Felix spied the professor reading a political journal, he said to himself that no one would ever understand the articles and editorials if he was not a devoted regular at the hundreds of political breakfasts celebrated daily in chains of American-style quick-food restaurants — Sanborns, Wimpys, Dennys, Vips.
He greeted the professor. Bernstein half rose and then let his massive body fall again onto the rickety chair. He offered a soft fat hand to Felix and questioned him with a look, as he stuffed the journal in his jacket pocket. Handing an envelope to Felix, he reminded him that the annual National Prizes in the Arts and Sciences would be awarded at the National Palace tomorrow. The President of the Republic himself, so the invitation read, would honor the recipients. Felix congratulated Professor Bernstein for winning the Economics Prize and thanked him for the invitation.
“Please don’t fail to be there, Felix.”
“How could I, Professor? I’d die first.”
“I’m not asking that much.”
“I know. But, besides being your disciple and your friend, I’m a public official. You don’t refuse an invitation from the President. What luck to be able to shake his hand.”
“Have you met him?” asked Bernstein, staring at the water-clear stone sparkling in the ring on his sausage finger.
“A couple of months ago I attended a work session on oil reserves at the Palace. The President came at the end of the meeting to hear our conclusions.”
“Ah, the famous Mexican oil reserves! The great mystery. Why did you leave Petróleos Mexicanos?”
“They transferred me,” Felix responded. “They have some idea that an official gets stale if he stays in one post too long.”
“But you’ve spent your whole career with Pemex, you’re a specialist, what idiocy to waste your experience. You know a lot about the reserves, don’t you?”
Maldonado smiled and remarked how odd it was to find himself in the Sanborns on Madero. Actually, he hoped to change the subject, and he blamed himself for having brought it up, even with someone he respected as much as Bernstein, his old economics professor. Almost no one ever ate here now, he said. Everyone preferred the restaurants in the newer residential areas. The professor looked at him soberly and agreed. He suggested that Felix order, and a girl in a native Indian costume wrote down orange juice, waffles with maple syrup, and American coffee, weak.
“I saw you reading a journal,” said Felix, believing that Professor Bernstein wanted to talk politics.
But Bernstein said nothing.
“Just now, as I came in,” Felix went on, “I was thinking how you can’t understand anything the Mexican press says unless you attend political breakfasts. That’s the only way you can understand all the allusions and veiled attacks and unprintable names hinted at in the newspapers.”
“Neither do they print important news like the sum total of our oil reserves. It’s curious how news about Mexico appears first in foreign newspapers.”
“Right.” Felix’s tone was neutral.
“But that’s how the system works. Anyway, it isn’t classy any more to come to this Sanborns,” the professor replied in the same tone.
“But we come to these breakfasts to be seen by other people, to make it clear that we and our circle know something no one else knows.” Felix smiled.
Professor Bernstein was in the habit of sopping up his eggs-and-hot-sauce with a piece of tortilla and then slurping noisily. Sometimes he even spattered his rimless spectacles, two thick, naked lenses that seemed to float before the professor’s invisible eyes.
“This isn’t a political breakfast,” Bernstein said.
“And that’s why you invited me here?”
“That’s unimportant. What matters is that Sara’s returning today.”
“Sara Klein?”
“Yes. That’s why I asked you to come. She’s returning today. I want to ask you a great favor.”
“Of course, Professor.”
“I don’t want you to see her.”
“You know we haven’t seen each other in twelve years, ever since she went to live in Israel.”
“Precisely. I’m afraid you’ll have a strong desire to see each other after such a long time.”
“Why do you say ‘afraid’? You know very well there was never anything between us. It was a platonic affair.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of. That it will cease to be platonic.”
The costumed waitress placed Felix’s breakfast before him. He seized the opportunity to look away, so as not to offend Bernstein. At that moment he disliked the professor intensely for interfering in his private affairs. Furthermore, he suspected that Bernstein had favored him with the invitation to the Palace to blackmail him.
“Look, Professor. Sara was my ideal love. You know that better than anyone. But maybe you still don’t understand. If Sara had a husband, it would be a different story. But she never married. She’s still my ideal, and I’m not about to destroy my own idea of what’s beautiful. Don’t worry.”
“It was a simple warning. Since we’ll all be together for dinner tonight, I preferred to speak to you first.”
“Thanks. You needn’t worry.”
The sunlight beaming through the glass roof was intense. Within a few minutes, the dazzling patio of Sanborns would be an oven. Felix said goodbye to the professor and stepped out onto Madero. He checked the time by the clock in the Latin American Tower. It was too early to go to the Ministry. And it had been years since he’d walked down Madero toward the Plaza de la Constitución. Like the nation, he mused, this city had both developed and underdeveloped areas. Frankly, he didn’t care for the latter. The old center was a special case. If you kept your eyes above the swarming crowds, you didn’t have to focus on all the misery and poverty but could, instead, enjoy the beauty of certain façades and roof lines. The Templo de la Profesa, for example, was very beautiful, as well as the Convento de San Francisco and the Palacio de Iturbide, all of red volcanic stone, with their baroque façades of pale marble. Felix reflected that this was a city designed for gentlemen and slaves, whether Aztec or Spaniard, never for the indecisive muddle of people who’d recently abandoned the peasant’s white shirt and pants and the worker’s blue denim to dress so badly, imitating middle-class styles but, at best, only half successfully. The Indians, so handsome in the lands of their origin, so slim and spotless and secret, in the city became ugly, filthy, and bloated by carbonated drinks.