You will stand fast. You've probably made a secret vow: not to acknowledge your debts. You will have wrapped Teresa and Gerardo in the same oblivion, an oblivion you will justify because you know nothing about them, because the girl will grow up at her mother's side, far from you, you who will have life only for your son, because Teresa will marry that boy whose face you can never fix in your memory, that vague boy, that gray man who will not waste or occupy the grace period granted to your memory. And Sebastián: you will not want to remember those square hands which pull you by the ears, which spank you with a ruler. You will not want to remember your painful knuckles, your fingers white with chalk dust, the hours standing at the blackboard learning to write, to multiply, to draw elementary things-houses and circles. You will not want to: that is your debt.
You scream and arms hold you down: you want to get up and walk to ease your pain.
You smell the incense.
You smell the enclosed garden.
You think that it's impossible to choose, that no one should choose, that you didn't choose on that day. You let things happen, you weren't responsible, you didn't create either of the moral codes which made their claim on you that day. You couldn't be responsible for options you didn't create. You dream, away from your body which screams and twists, away from the machete jabbed into your stomach until it forces out your tears. You dream about that ordering of life that you yourself created, that you will never be able to reveal because the world will not give you the chance, because the world will offer you only its established tables, its codes in conflict, which you will not dream of, which you will not think about, which you will not live.
The incense will be a smell with time, a smell that talks.
Father Páez will live in your house, will be hidden in the cellar by Catalina: it will not be your fault, it will not be your fault.
You will not remember what you say, you and he, that night in the cellar. You will not remember if he, if you say it. What's the name of the monster who voluntarily dresses up as a woman, who voluntarily castrates himself, who voluntarily gets drunk on the fictitious blood of a God? who will say that? but who loves, I swear it, because the love of God is great indeed and inhabits all bodies, justifies them. We have our bodies by the grace of God and with his benediction, to give them the minutes of love which life would like to strip from us. Don't feel ashamed, don't feel anything; instead, forget your troubles. It can't be a sin, because all the words and all the acts of our short, hasty love, of today and never of tomorrow, are only a consolation that you and I give each other, an acceptance of the necessary evils of life which later justifies our contrition. After all, how could there be real contrition without the recognition of the real evil in us? How can we understand sin, pardon for which we are to beg on our knees, if beforehand we don't commit sin? Forget your life, let me put out the light, forget everything, and later we will pray together for forgiveness and we will say a prayer that will erase our minutes of love. In order to consecrate this body which was created by God and which says God in every desire, unsatisfied or satisfied, which says God in every secret caress, says God in the gift of the semen God planted between your thighs.
To live is to betray your God. Every act in life, every act that affirms us as living beings, requires that the commandments of your God be broken.
In a whorehouse that night, you will speak with Major, Gavilán, with all your old comrades, and you will not remember what they said that night, you will not remember if they say it, if you say it, with the cold voice that will not be the voice of the men, the cold voice of power and self-interest: We want the greatest good for the nation, as long as it's compatible with our personal well-being. Let's be intelligent: we can go far. Let's do what's necessary, not the impossible. Let's determine once and for all all the acts to power and cruelty that will be useful to us, in order not to have to repeat them. Let's scale the benefits so that the people enjoy every taste they get. We can make a revolution very quickly, but tomorrow they'll demand more and more and more, and then we'll have nothing to give if we've already done and given everything-except, perhaps, our personal sacrifice. Why die if we aren't going to see the fruits of our heroism? Let's always keep something in reserve. We are men, not martyrs; everything will be allowed us if we hold on to power. Lose power and they'll screw you. Just think how lucky we are: we're young but we're haloed, wearing the halo of the armed, triumphant Revolution. Why did we fight? to die of hunger? When it's necessary, force is just. You don't share power."
And tomorrow? We'll be dead, Congressman Cruz. Let those who follow us make their own deals.
Domine, non sum dignus. Domine, non sum dignus: yes, a man can speak painfully with god, a man who can forgive sin because he as committed sin, a priest who has the right to be priest because his human misery allows him to act out redemption in his own body before granting it to others. Domine, non sum dignus.
You reject guilt. You will not be guilty of sins against a morality you did not create, which you found already made. You would have wanted
wanted
wanted
wanted
oh, how happy those days were with your teacher Sebastián,
whom you will not want to remember anymore. You sat at his knee, learning those simple things with which you must begin in order to be a free man, not a slave of commandments written without your even being consulted. Oh, how happy those apprenticeship days were, learning the tasks which he taught you so you could earn a living: days at the forge with the hammers, when your teacher Sebastián would return tired but begin classes only for you, so that you could be something in life and make your own rules, you the rebel, you free, you unique and new. You will not want to remember him. He ordered you, you went to the Revolution: this memory does not leave me, it will not reach you.
You will have no answer for the opposing, imposed codes,
you innocent,
you will want to be innocent,
you did not choose on that night.
(1927: November 23)
His green eyes turned toward the window, and the other man asked him if he wanted anything; he blinked and kept his green eyes on the window. The other man, who had been very, very calm until then, tore his pistol out of his belt and slammed it on the table. He felt the shaking of glasses and bottles and reached out his hand, but before he could give a name to the physical sensation that brusque gesture caused in the pit of his stomach-the impact of the pistol on the table, and its effect on the blue glasses and white bottles-the other man was already smiling. An automobile roared down the street, to a chorus of jeers and curses, its headlights illuminating the other man's round head. The other man spun the cylinder in the revolver and showed him that it contained only two bullets; he spun it again, pulled back the hammer, and pointed the barrel directly at his temple. He tried to avert his eyes, but the small room gave him no place to fix his attention: naked walls painted indigo blue, ark tezontle-stone floor, tables, two chairs, two men. The other man waited until the green eyes stopped wavering around the room and returned to his hand, the revolver, his temple. The other man smiled, but he was sweating. So was he. In the silence he listened for the tick, tick, tick of the watch he'd put in the right-hand pocket of his vest. Perhaps it was making less noise than his heart, but it was all the same, because the detonation of the pistol was already in his ears, beforehand. At the same time, the silence was dominated over all sound, even the possible-not yet actual-sound of the revolver. The other man waited. He watched. The other man squeezed the trigger, and a dry, metallic click was lost in the silence, and, outside, the night went on, uniform and moonless. The other man stood there with the weapon aimed at his temple and began to smile, to laugh aloud: his fat body shook from within, like custard, from within, because outwardly it was motionless. Both remained frozen for some seconds. Again, he breathed the smell of incense that had followed him everywhere since morning; through that imaginary smoke, he made out the other man's face. The other man was still laughing inwardly as he put the pistol back on the table and slowly pushed the weapon toward him with short, yellowed fingers. The turbid mirth in the other man's face might reflect the tears he was holding back; he didn't try to find out. The memory, not yet a memory, of the other man with the gun to his head, the fear in that obese figure, the fear kept him from speaking. If he was found here in this room with the fat man dead, and if charges were pressed against him, it would be all over. He'd recognized his own pistol, which he kept in the dresser drawer; he realized that the fat man was pushing it toward him with his short fingers, its butt wrapped in a handkerchief which might perhaps have slipped out of the other man's hands if he had…But even if it didn't slip off, it was a clear case of suicide. Clear to whom? A police commander dies in an empty room, sitting opposite his enemy. Who was getting rid of whom? The other man loosened his belt and drank off his drink in one gulp. Sweat stained his armpits, ran down his neck. The other man's fingers, which looked as though thay'd been cropped, insistently pushed the pistol nearer. What would he say? That they had checked him out completely. He'd never squeal, would he? He asked just what it was they'd checked out about him, and the other man said he was fine, that he'd passed; if there was dying to do, he wouldn't falter, but he wasn't going to waste him time going over the same ground again and again, and that was how things stood. If this didn't convince him, well, he didn't know what would. It was proof-the other man told him-that he should come over to their side; or did he think anyone from his side would risk his life to show him how much they wanted him on their side? He lit a cigarette and offered the other man one; the other man lit his own; he brought his lighted match right to the coffee-colored face of the fat man, and the fat man blew it out. He felt surrounded. He balanced his cigarette precariously on the edge of his glass, without noticing that the ashes were falling into the tequila, setting to the bottom. He picked up the pistol. He pressed the muzzle to his temple and felt it had no temperature whatever, although he imagined it should feel cold as he recalled that he was thirty-eight years old, but that fact didn't matter to anyone, not to the fat man and much less to himself.