“Is that the latest fashion?”
“For moths, yes, the very latest.”
“They say she’s a real knockout.”
The guests fell silent. The judge said the usual things and read an abbreviated version of Melchor Ocampos’s epistle: Obligations, Rights, Mutual Support. All shared, in sickness and in health, joy and suffering — the bed, time, the times. Bodies. Stares. The witnesses signed. The bride and groom signed. Don Leonardo lifted Michelina’s veil and brought Mariano’s face close to that of his bride. Michelina could not supress an expression of disgust. Then Leonardo kissed the two of them. First, he held his son’s face in his hands and brought those lips so esteemed by Michelina, so sexy and so fickle, close to his son’s mouth, kissed him with the same intensity Michelina attributed to the father’s eyes: I fall in love seriously, I know how to ask for everything because I also know how to give it.
The lips separated, and Don Leonardo caressed his son’s head, kissed him on that disgusting mouth, Normita, while Dona Lucila turned pale and wished she were dead, and then, showing off his daring and his personality — not for nothing is he Leonardo Barroso — with his son’s drool still on his lips, he raised again the lowered veil of the bride — a real beauty, Rosalba, you were right! — and gave her a long and terrible kiss that frankly, my dear, had absolutely nothing of the father-in-law (or godfather, for that matter) in it.
What a morning, I tell you, what a morning! I wouldn’t have missed it for the world! Campazas will never be the same after this wedding!
The Lincoln convertible, this time with its top up, rapidly crossed the cold, silent evening desert, filling it with the noise of tires and motor, frightening the hares, which leapt far away from the straight highway, the uninterrupted line to the frontier — crossed the desert in order to break the illusory crystal divider, the glass membrane between Mexico and the United States, and continue along the superhighways of the north to the enchanted city, temptation in the desert, illuminated, brilliant, with a Neiman Marcus, a Saks, a Cartier, and a Marriott, where a luxury suite awaited the bride and groom: champagne and baskets of fruit, a sitting room, spacious closets, a king-size bed, lots of mirrors in which to admire Michelina, a pink marble bath tub in which to bathe with her — her buttocks were larger than they seemed, her legs thinner, like a thrush’s — oh, woman of tempestuous eyes, immobile little nose, and nervous nostrils through which night escapes from you, parted lips, moist, through which my tongue gets lost without finding coral reefs or stalactite caves or ruined Gothic vaults — there is only the tickle of your cleft chin, my precious, the announcement of your other duplicities. Those I know I caress slowly so that nothing fades between us, so that everything lasts amid expectation, surprise, the desire for more and more, yes, Godfather, give me more, nothing can separate us now, Godfather, you said so, remember? Every time you see me I want it to be the first. Oh, Leonardo, it’s that I fell in love with your eyes because they said so many things.
“I know how to ask for everything because I also know how to give everything. What do you say to me, capital girl?”
“That same thing, Godfather, that…”
Through the half-opened window came a song sung by Luis Miguel, “I need you, need you a lot, I don’t know you …” How could Leonardo and Michelina know that that music was coming from an “erased” Indian village, Pacuaches, where Mariano read books and listened to music and went into ecstasy guessing which birds were singing at four o’clock in the morning. That morning, a jet crossed the heavens, and the birds fell silent forever. She was no longer there …
2. Pain
For Julio Ortega
Juan Zamora asked me to tell this story while he kept his back turned. What he means is that he wants to have his back to the reader the whole time. He says he’s ashamed. Or, as he puts it himself, “I’m in pain.” “Pain” as a synonym for “shame” is a peculiarity of Mexican speech, comparable to saying “senior citizens” for “old people”—so as not to offend — or saying “He’s in a bad way” to soften the idea that someone’s illness is terminal. Shame causes pain; sometimes pain causes shame.
So Juan Zamora will not offer you a view of his face over the course of this story. You’ll be able to see only the nape of his neck, his back. I won’t say “his ass,” because that, too, is a loaded term in Mexico. Especially in the sense of “offering” your ass to someone, the lowest act of cowardice, a yielding or a type of abject courtesy. That’s not the case with Juan Zamora. He wears a big university sweatshirt, size XXL, decorated in front with the emblem of the university in question, the kind of sweatshirt that hangs down to your thighs (though he wears it tucked into his jeans). No, Juan Zamora insists I tell you he won’t be offering anything. He only wants to emphasize that his shame is equal to his pain. He doesn’t blame anyone. It is true that he touched a world and that the world touched him.
But after all, everything that happened passed through him and happened inside him. This is what counts.
The story takes place during the time of the Mexican oil boom, at the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s. Right from the start, that explains part of the pain-shame identification Juan Zamora is talking about. Shame because we celebrated the boom like a bunch of nouveaux riches. Pain because the wealth was badly used. Shame because the president said our problem now was to administer our wealth. Pain because the poor kept on getting poorer. Shame because we became frivolous spendthrifts, slaves of vulgar whims and our comic macho posturing. Pain because we were incapable of administering even our shame. Pain and shame because we were no good at being rich; the only things appropriate for us are poverty, dignity, effort. In Mexico, there have always been corrupt authoritarian figures with too much power. But they are forgiven everything if they are at least serious. (Is there one corruption that’s serious and another that’s frivolous?) Frivolity is intolerable, unforgivable, the mockery of all those who’ve been screwed. That’s the source of the pain and the shame of those years when we were millionaires for a day, then woke up broke, out in the street, tears of laughter pouring down our faces before we began to laugh with pain.
Juan Zamora has his back to you. When he was twenty-three, he got to study at Cornell, thanks to a scholarship. He was a dedicated pre-med student at the National Preparatory School and then at the National University, and he swears to you that that would have been enough for him if his mother hadn’t got it into her head that during the Mexican boom period it was necessary to do some postgrad work at a Yankee university.
“Your father never knew how to take advantage of an opportunity. He was Don Leonardo Barroso’s administrative lawyer for twenty years and died without a penny to his name. What could he have been thinking about? Well, not about you or me, Juanito, you can be sure of that.”
“What did he say to you?”
“That honesty is its own reward. That he was an honorable professional. That he wasn’t going to betray Mario de la Cueva and his other professors at the law school. That he’d been taught that law is an honorable profession. That you cannot defend the law if you’re corrupt yourself. ‘But it’s not illegal, Gonzalo,’ I’d say to your father,‘ to accept a payment for doing favors. It’s no crime drawing a matter to the attention of Minister Barroso. Everyone in government gets rich but you!’
“‘That’s called a bribe, Lelia. It’s a triple deception, besides being a lie. If the matter develops, it looks as if I was paid to move it along. If it fails, I look like a crook. In either case, I deceive the minister, the nation, and myself.’