“And I told you it was a very romantic phrase, but completely false for me, because for me death had never begun, and would never end. I told you that for me death had nothing to do with age. Felix, we knew that night why we could never marry. You were a young and melancholy Mexican. I was a sad, ageless German Jew. We suffered much. That is true. It had nothing to do with sex or our countries or our age.”
“I know. That’s why I love you, and don’t want to cause you more sorrow.”
Sara kissed Felix Maldonado. She moved away, and her eyes were no longer icy diamonds. Now they were the turbid waters of a shallow, artificial lake, uselessly and violently roiled. She withdrew until only their hands, their fingertips, were touching.
“If you truly wish not to hurt me, stop loving me, Felix.”
“That’s difficult. You see, I know that you’re Bernstein’s lover, and still I love you.”
The tense face, the dark brilliance of her eyes, were those of Bonaparte at Arcole.
“I’m not asking you to love me.”
“But how can I stop, Sara?”
“By helping me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Yes. You must help me justify what I’m doing.”
“What you and Bernstein are doing?”
“Yes. The thing that truly unites us, not sex.”
“Don’t you go to bed with him either?”
“Yes. Sometimes.”
“That’s a relief. It would be too much if you were Bernstein’s virgin.”
“I’m not. Help me justify the fact that yesterday’s victims are today’s executioners.”
Maldonado tried to step closer to the woman who was suddenly changing before his eyes. Sara Klein was shedding the image he remembered and emerging in a new, stark, candid light.
“There’s no virtue in revenge,” said Felix, “but it’s understandable.”
“Tell me how to disguise the truth, Felix.”
“The truth is clear. The former victims are now the executioners of their former victimizers. I understand that. I accept it. There’s the truth. Why do you want to disguise it? But going to bed with Bernstein seems to me a very high price for truth and revenge.”
“No, Felix,” Sara answered abruptly, as she had when they were students together, Bernstein’s disciples arguing over an economics theory they’d read in Gide or Rist. “No, Felix.”
Maldonado dropped her hand.
“No, Felix. That’s all over. We’ve found and judged all our executioners. Now we’re executing new victims.”
“Which is what your executioners wanted,” Felix said flatly.
“I believe they did,” Sara replied.
“You’re an intelligent woman. You know they did.”
“How painful, Felix.”
“Yes. It means that your executioners have triumphed over you from the grave. It’s what they wanted,” said Felix, and turned away.
Felix left the Rossettis’ house and walked the length of the Callejón del Santísimo, choked with parked automobiles, to where the cobblestones ended and the mud of the streets of San Angel began, the mud of many streets of Mexico City following a rain, as if they were country roads.
From the midnight mists emerged motionless figures huddled in the mud, like the figures in the painting by Ricardo Martínez. Felix wondered whether those shapes were actually Indians, human beings squatting in the middle of the night, wrapped in their dusk-colored sarapes, rent by the fangs of blue fog.
He didn’t know, because he had never seen anything like it before. He would never know, because he did not dare approach those figures of misery, compassion, and horror.
11
PATIENCE AND COMPASSION, patience and compassion, the rabbi who’d married them had exhorted. Felix drove rapidly along the throughway to the Petróleos fountain and there emerged as if from a cement whirlpool in the direction of a National Auditorium rising gigantic against a sleepy sky. He continued along Reforma, fresh, rain-washed, perfumed by humid eucalyptus trees, inventing meaningless sentences, dreams of reason, Sara, Sara Klein. When we were young, we thought that purity would save us from evil. We didn’t know that an evil of purity can be fed by the purity of evil. That was the complicity between Felix and Sara.
He stopped in front of the Hilton, and handed the keys of his Chevrolet to the doorman. The doorman knew what to do. Felix entered the lobby, asked for his key, and the desk clerk handed him a card, his own card, Felix Maldonado, Chief, Bureau of Cost Analysis, Ministry of Economic Development. Felix regarded the desk clerk questioningly.
“A woman left it, Señor Maldonado.”
“Mary…? Sara…? Ruth…?” first incredulous, then alarmed.
“I beg your pardon? A heavy lady carrying a large basket.”
“What did she say?” Felix was relieved.
“She said flat out she wasn’t going to make any trouble for you because it was easy to see you were a big wheel, that’s what she said.”
“She said that? How did she know I have a room here?”
“She asked. She said she saw you get out of a taxi and come in here.”
Felix Maldonado nodded, and tucked the card in his pocket.
He walked through the lime-green lobby to the elevator.
A small man sitting on one of the lobby sofas dropped the newspaper he’d been reading. Felix could smell the penetrating odor of clove.
Ever polite, Simon Ayub rose to greet Felix. “Good evening. What a pleasure. Can I buy you a drink?”
“Thank you, no. I’m too tired.”
“If you like, I can drive you home,” Ayub offered tranquilly.
“No, thank you,” Felix replied dryly. “I have some business here in the hotel.”
“Of course, Licenciado, I understand.” Always the slightly superior tone.
“You don’t understand shit.” Felix spoke through clenched teeth, but immediately he repented. He was going to end up fighting everyone he saw. “Sorry. Think whatever you want.”
“Will we be seeing each other tomorrow morning, Licenciado?” Ayub inquired cautiously.
“Ah, yes. Where?”
“The President is awarding the National Prizes at the Palace. Have you forgotten?”
“Of course I haven’t forgotten. Good night.”
Felix started to turn away, but Ayub committed the unpardonable sin, he grasped Felix’s arm. Felix looked with astonishment and anger at the well-cared-for hand, the manicured fingernails, the topaz rings with incised scimitars. The repugnant aroma of clove assailed his nostrils.
“What the fuck?” Felix flushed beet-red.
“Don’t go to the ceremony.” Ayub’s voice dripped honey. His eyelids drooped in a very Arab, very Mexican manner, veiling any intent of threat. “I’m telling you this for your own good.”
In Felix’s laugh, scorn triumphed over anger. “I swear to God this has really been my day. All I needed was for you to tell me what to do, you overdressed little runt.”
Felix jerked free of Ayub’s delicate hand.
In the elevator, the figure of the senior Hilton invited, BE MY GUEST. Felix Maldonado clutched his room key in a hand that reeked of clove, following his contact with Ayub. There are people who can be their own hosts only, never the guests of others, he responded silently to Mr. Hilton. Only a man fed up with too many hosts can finally purge himself of them all, along with all the resentments, the nostalgias, the ambitions, the cowardly acts, all the ragtags of his life, the baggage of his soul, fuck them all, anyway.
He entered his room. He didn’t have to turn on the lights: the fluorescent light above the dressing table illuminated the shambles. He started to call the desk to protest. Again he smelled the odor of clove. The locks of the drawers he had converted into filing cabinets had been forced open and ransacked. Papers were strewn across the carpet.