He didn’t know whether Felix heard him; Felix was quietly delirious. True madness, thought the man with the pince-nez as violet as Mary Benjamin’s eyes, is always serene madness, madness that doesn’t interfere with what one calls normal life, madness that rises, bathes, eats breakfast, goes to work, eats, returns home, brushes its teeth, sleeps, and again rises at the sound of the alarm clock. The madness of someone named Felix Maldonado.
“She came here to see you, can you hear me? That’s the only reason she came, to see you one last time. That should matter to you, but you never asked yourself that question, you never tried to find out. She loved you more than you loved her; her love for you was real, not nostalgia, or an equally impossible promise. Do you hear me?”
But Felix was sinking into sleep, repeating the question, I give up, who is it who rules the world? What can I do? I can’t fight them, who are they? Who do all of you obey? I give up.
He would never remember clearly the words of the Director General. I would repeat them should he come again to my house in Coyoacán, if he ever decided that, after all, I was the lesser evil, the friend from his college days and the Museum of Modern Art film series and the Ontario Shakespeare Festival, the Castor who with Pollux shared the sofa-bed in the Century Apartments overlooking the Hudson. I would repeat exactly what the Director General had said that night as Felix Maldonado, a serene madman, sank rapidly into sleep, the sleep/dream that with all its powers, when it is dream and not merely sleep, rêve and not merely sommeil, can transform man:
“You are but one head of the Hydra. Cut off one and a thousand will replace it. You are governed by your passions, they defeat you. The eagle knows that. The two-headed eagle. One head is called the CIA and the other, the KGB. Two heads, but only one body. Almost the Holy Trinity of our age. Whether we know it, whether or not we want it, we cannot help but serve the ends of one of the two heads of that cold monster. But as it has only one body, in serving one head we serve the other, and vice versa. There’s no escape. The Hydra of our passions is trapped in the talons of the bicephalous eagle. The bloody eagle that is the origin of all the world’s violence, the eagle that murders a Trotsky and a Diem, that attempts more than once to assassinate Castro and then weeps crocodile tears because the world has become so violent and the Palestinians violently demand a homeland. At times, it is the beak of the Washington eagle that cuts off our head and eats it; at times, it is the beak of Moscow. But the intestines of the winged beast are the same, and the excretory passages are the same. We are the excrement of that monster. When the Russians supported the creation of the state of Israel in the forties, Bernstein served the KGB. He served the CIA as long as the North Americans gave unconditional support to the Jews. Now he is playing one against the other and hopes to use both as both use the Israelis: Soviet tanks so that Israel can suppress the Palestinians in the south of Lebanon; North American oil so that Israel can combat the Arab armies with North American tanks and planes. The Director General served the KGB during the period of Arab-Moscow cordiality, and the CIA when El Rais Nasser died and Sadat sought Yankee support and the Saudis and Kissinger reached an accord to create the oil crisis. Any day, the alliances can change radically. The two-headed eagle laughs and devours, devours and laughs, digests and shits, shits and laughs at our Hydra passions…”
The face of the Director General was disappearing behind the veils of sleep, until only two eyes of black glass glittered deep in a white skull.
At one o’clock in the afternoon, a waiter entered without knocking and wakened him. He was pushing a wheeled table with covered breakfast dishes, a newspaper, and an envelope. He left without speaking.
Diego Velázquez got up, dazed, coughing and sneezing. He pulled the table to the bedside. He drank the orange juice and lifted the cover from the steaming plate of eggs with hot sauce. The eggs nauseated him and quickly he re-covered them. He poured himself a cup of coffee and read the inscription on the envelope, Señor Licenciado Diego Velázquez, Chief of the Bureau of Cost Analysis of the Ministry of Economic Development, Hilton Hotel, City. He removed the card. The Mexican Academy of Economics is pleased to invite you to a colloquium to be held on September 31 at ten o’clock in the morning in the Salón del Perdón in the National Palace of Mexico. The President of the Republic will honor us with his presence. You are requested to arrive promptly.
The newspaper was open and folded to an inside page. In a black box beneath the Star of David was the announcement of the regrettable death of Abraham Benjamin Rosenberg. The burial will take place at 5 p.m. in the Jewish Cemetery. His wife, his children, and other relatives share with you their profound grief. Hebrew rites will be observed. The family requests no flowers.
At five o’clock, Diego Velázquez joined the hundred or so persons gathered in the chapel at the cemetery. They stood in line to file past the body of Abie Benjamin, incessantly chanting Shema Yisrael Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echod. That morning, Abie’s body had been washed, his fingernails had been cut, and they had combed his hair over the hole burned in his head. He looked serene in his shroud, the yarmulke on his head, the tallith he’d worn the day of his wedding covering his shoulders and face, the cotton stockings hiding his icy feet. Diego smiled at the thought that this man was being buried in a pocketless white shroud so as not to carry with him any of the wealth of this world.
The person standing behind Diego Velázquez nudged him gently as he lingered before the body. Diego left the line and sat down to wait for the procession to the grave. He saw Mary’s veiled, bowed head in the first row of mourners. There were no flowers or wreaths in the chapel.
He waited until everyone had left to follow the black sheet-draped coffin borne by ten men. Then he followed. A black-bearded man dressed in black and wearing a black hat was sweeping the ground behind the coffin. Perhaps he’d bought the broom in one of Abie’s chain of supermarkets.
They reached the empty grave. The rabbi, a heavily veiled Mary, and the couple’s children recited the Kaddish. Then Mary removed the black sheet and the coffin was lowered into the grave. It thudded dryly, then settled into the mud of the summer’s intense rains. Mary took a handful of earth and threw it onto the coffin. Then the gravediggers took over, spading vigorously.
When earth completely filled the grave, the rabbi cleared his throat and began his eulogy of Abie Benjamin. Only then did Mary lift her dark veils, and her eyes with the golden sparks shone more brightly than the silvery sun of the hazy but rainless afternoon. At the last moment, God had been merciful to Abie. The heavens did not weep. The God of Israel is compassionate only when He is severe.
Mary sought the eyes of Diego Velázquez.
They stared at one another for a long moment, deaf to the rabbi’s eulogy.
Mary smiled at Diego; she ran a moist tongue over her palely painted lips and half closed her violet eyes. She didn’t move, but her body was that of a black panther, lustful and now pursued, beautiful because she was pursued and because she knew it. In spite of the black dress buttoned to her neck, Diego could imagine the deep décolletage of her brassiere, and the oil between her breasts to make the cleavage more noticeable.
He turned his back on Mary and walked slowly from the cemetery.
49
AT NINE O’CLOCK, he crossed the lobby of the Hilton and walked to the parklike grass-and-cement strip in front of the University Club to wait for a taxi. It was the worst hour. Taxi after taxi passed without stopping, ignoring the uplifted finger that signaled he was waiting for a one-peso cab.