Now was the worst time. Benito — grandson of the younger Fortunato and the son of Salvador, descendant of the founder of the exodus, the first Fortunato — knew that any period is difficult, but this more than any other. Because there was still need. But also hatred.
“Did they hate you too?” Benito asked his father, Salvador.
“The way they’re going to hate you? No.”
He didn’t know the reasons, but he felt it. Stopping for the night on the Mexican side of the Río Bravo, he felt the fear of all the others and the hatred on the other side. He was going to cross, no matter what. He thought about all those who depended on him in Purísima del Rincón.
He stretched his arms in a cross, as far as he could, clenching his fists, showing that his body was ready to work, asking for a little love and compassion, not knowing if he was clenching his fists out of anger, as a challenge, or in resignation and despondency.
this was never the land without men: for thirty thousand years the people have been following the course of the río grande, río bravo, they cross the straits from Asia, they descend from the north, migrate south, seek new hunting grounds, in the process they really discover America, feel the attraction and hostility of the new world, don’t rest until they explore it all and find out if it’s friendly or unfriendly, until they reach the other pole, land that has a placenta of copper, land that will have the name of silver, lands of the hugest migration known to man, from Alaska to Patagonia, lands baptized by migration: accompanied, America, by flights and images, metaphors and metamorphoses that make the going bearable, that save the peoples from fatigue, discouragement, distance, time, the centuries necessary to travel America from pole to pole:
I will not speak their names, only those who know how to listen to silence know them,
I will not recount their deeds, only the dusty stars of the paths repeat them,
I will not recall their sufferings, the hurricane of birds shouts them,
I will not mention their calendars, they are all a river of ashes,
only the dog accompanied them, the only animal friendly to the Indian,
but then they tired of traveling so long, let loose their dogs in ferocious wild packs, and they stopped, decided that the center of the world was right here, where their feet were planted that instant, this was the center of the world, the land of the río grande, río bravo:
the world had sprung forth from the invisible springs of the desert waters: the underground rivers, the Indians say, are the music of God,
thanks to them the corn grows, the bean, the squash, and cotton, and each time a plant grows and yields its fruits, the Indian is transformed, the Indian becomes a star, oblivion, bird, mesquite, pot, membrane, arrow, incense, rain, smell of rain, earth, earthquake, extinguished fire, whistle in the mountain, secret kiss, the Indian becomes all this when the seed dies, becomes child and grandfather of the child, memory, bark, scorpion, buzzard, cloud, and table, broken vessel of birth, repentant tunic of death,
becomes a mask, ladder, rodent,
becomes a horse,
becomes a rifle,
becomes a target:
the Indian dreams and his dream becomes a prophecy, all the dreams of the Indians become reality, incarnate, tell them they are right, fill them with fear and for that reason make them suspicious, arrogant, jealous, proud but horrified of always knowing the future, suspicious that the only thing that becomes reality is that which should be a nightmare: the white man, the horse, the firearm,
oh, they had stopped moving, the great migrations were over, the grass grew over the roads, the mountains separated the people, languages were no longer understood, the people decided not to move anymore from where they were, from birth to death, but to weave a great mantle of loyalties, obligations, values in order to protect themselves
until the river caught fire and the earth moved again
Thin and pale but muscular and agile, he bragged that even though he lived on the border he never exposed himself to the sun. He had the pale complexion of his European ancestors, immigrants who were badly received, discriminated against, treated like garbage. Dan remembered his grandparents’ complaints. The savage discrimination to which they were subjected because they spoke differently, ate differently, looked different. They smelled different. The Anglos covered their noses when they passed those old people who were young but looked old, with their beards and black clothes smelling of onion and sauerkraut. But the immigrants persisted, assimilated, became citizens. No one would defend their nation better than they, Dan thought as he stared across to the Mexican side of the river.
“Seen Air Force yet?” his grandfather Adam Polonsky asked, and since Dan was too young to have seen World War II pictures, the old man gave him a video so he’d see how the air force was made up of ethnic heroes, not only Anglos but descendants of Poles, Italians, Jews, Russians, Irish. Never a Japanese, it’s true; he was the enemy. But never a Latino, a Mexican. A few blacks; they say the blacks did go to war. But never Mexicans. They weren’t citizens. They were cowards, mosquitoes that sucked the blood of the USA and ran back home to support their lazy countrymen.
“Seen Air Force yet? John Garfield. His real name was Julius Garfinkle. A kid from the ghetto, like you, the son of immigrants, Danny boy.”
They gave their lives in two world wars and also in Korea and Vietnam. They almost equaled the sacrifices of the Anglo-Saxon generations of the previous century, the conquerors of the West. Why didn’t anyone ever say so? Why did they still feel shame at having an immigrant past? Dan felt proud looking at a map and seeing that the USA had acquired more territory than any other power in the last century. Louisiana. Florida. Half of Mexico. Alaska. Cuba. Puerto Rico. The Philippines. Hawaii. The Panama Canal. A stream of little islands in the Pacific. The Virgin Islands. The Virgin Islands! That’s where he’d like to go on vacation. Just for the name, so seductive, so sexy, so improbable. And for the challenge. To take a vacation in the Caribbean and not get a tan. To come back as white as his grandparents from Pomerania. To conquer color. Not let himself blacken for any reason, not by contact with a Negro or a Mexican, not by the sun.
He requested night duty for that secret reason, which he communicated to no one — he was afraid of being ridiculed. There was a cult of the tan. A man with such white skin even seemed suspect. “Are you sick?” another officer asked, and the only reason he didn’t punch him was because he knew the consequences of attacking an officer and Dan Polonsky did not want for anything in the world to lose his job — it satisfied him too much. From the moment when they positioned the equipment to detect the nighttime passage of illegal immigrants across the Rio Grande, Dan requested and was granted assignment to the details that saw the night world illuminated through movie-style robot glasses, night-scopes that spotted illegals as if they glowed, heat detectors that picked up the warmth of the human body … The bad thing was that so many Border Patrol agents, even if they were Texans, were of Mexican origin and Polonsky sometimes made mistakes; looking through his infrared goggles he would spot someone dark-skinned and it would turn out the person was carrying Border Patrol ID, even if he had the face of a wetback … The good thing was that it was easy to sucker those Tex-Mex agents, exploit their divided loyalties, demand they prove — Let’s see — that they were good Americans and not Mexicans in disguise… Polonsky laughed at them. He felt pity for them but manipulated them like laboratory rats.