2. Bibliography: My principal sources regarding the life of Scipio Aemilianus and the siege of Numantia are: Appian, Iberica, book six of his History of Rome; Polybius, Histories; Cicero, “Scipio’s Dream,” in his Republic; and, of course, Miguel de Cervantes’s play The Siege of Numantia.
Apollo and the Whores
TO CARLOS PAYÁN AND FEDERICO REYES HEROLES, COMPANIONS ON AN INNOCENT TRIP
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face …
Et le temps m’engloutit minute par minute …
17:45
AS the Delta DC-9 begins its descent into the Acapulco airport, the instructions are announced by a voice so peaceful and polite that it seems hypocritical. Why don’t they tell us this is the most dangerous part of the flight — the landing? Up above, there are never any accidents. Unless the increasing congestion ends up multiplying midair collisions. I’m from California, so I know that Ronald Reagan cut off aid to the mentally ill, who then wound up in jails, as they did during the Middle Ages. He also devastated the air traffic controllers’ union. Maybe we’ll go back to traveling in caravels, while the planes smash into each other in the skies.
The dangerous part is taking off and landing. But for once, I wish the plane would go into a nosedive, giving the lie to that sugar-pie voice caressing us like a glove and urging us not to smoke, to fasten our seat belts, and to straighten our seat backs. All the while, I long for a drama that would restore me, at least for an instant, to celebrity status and shout in every headline in every paper: FAMOUS HOLLYWOOD STAR DIES IN FATAL CRASH OVER ACAPULCO BAY.
Instead, the bay itself, as if it were sorry for me, unable even to laugh at me, flashes its afternoon postcard image up to the plane. The bad thing is that this glory of scattered gold, this cocktail of orange, lemon, and grape is identical to the immutable sunset waiting for me at the Universal set, always prepared to be a sunset, the background to a duel, a serenade, or a final kiss. I prefer a catnap, even if I know the recurring dream I’ve been having these past few months will return. In it, someone places a mask over my immobile face and a feminine voice whispers into my ear: This is the face of your ideal beauty.
18:30
All planes smell alike. Plastic, disinfectant, metal, stagnant air, reheated food, recycled microbes. Air in a tube. There must be an invisible factory worth millions dedicated to making airplane air, canning it, and selling it to all airlines. But now I’m the first at the locked door of the immobile machine, waiting to escape like an animal from a laboratory squirrel cage with all my baggage in one hand — an airline bag with the few shirts, underwear, sandals, and shaving kit I need, a comfortable airline bag I always carry with me, with two outside pockets where I can carelessly stick a copy of the Los Angeles Times, my plane tickets, my passport, and Yeats’s poems. The Times announces, to the relief of the entire world, the defeat of Bush the wimp in the presidential election; the tickets, roundtrip in first class, LAX-ACA-LAX; the passport, a name, Vincente Valera, born in Dublin, Irish Republic, on September 11, 1937, naturalized U.S. citizen at the age of seven, black hair, bushy brows, five feet ten inches tall, one hundred and fifty pounds, no scars. In case of death, notify Cindy Valera, 1321 Pico Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA. And the underlined poem says:
… and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep
The door opens, and I am the first to receive the blast of blazing air, the contrast with the cold but stagnant air of the plane. The afflicted air of the cabin, an air that seems bereaved. A furnace blast in the face is Acapulco’s greeting as I walk down the gangway, an air that burns but is alive, that smells of mangrove, of rotten bananas, of melted tar. Everything the interior of the plane denies, isolates, renders aseptic. But this radical change of temperature, as I instinctively grab the metal handrail on the gangway in order not to trip, brings me another memory I’d like to avoid. My burning hand when I received the Oscar for best actor of the year. My burning hand and the frozen little doll, as if I were being handed a statuette made of ice that would never melt.
Ever since that Oscar presentation, my hand has been afraid of the cold; it seeks heat, touch, a moist, burning, hiding place. So it’s only natural I’m here this afternoon, in the tropics, eager for contact with everything that burns.
19:40
As I register in the hotel, I order a boat so I can go out fishing the next morning. The receptionist asks me if I will be sailing it alone, and I answer that I will. “At what time?” “I don’t know, sometime after 6:00 a.m. would be fine, the important thing is that I want a ketch or if you don’t have that then a small sloop or a yawl.” The receptionist is a dark-skinned little man with almost Oriental features. He looks as if he were dusted with coffee, but his high cheekbones shine, and in his slanty eyes there is a touch of doubt about his own mask. Should he be obsequious to the point of being vile or abjectly mocking? His mustache, as fine as the feet of a fly, gives him away. But his white, starched guayabera shirt hides a torso I judge to be strong, muscular, used to swimming. Maybe he’s an ex-Quebrada cliff diver. You don’t usually associate a man tied to a reception desk with adventures on the high seas. A hidden part of his nature overwhelms him. “Yes,” he says mellifluously, “there is a ketch, but its name is The Two Americas.”
“So what?”
“Well, many North Americans get annoyed.”
“It doesn’t matter to me what the boat’s name is.”
“It bothers them to know there is more than one America.”
“Just so it doesn’t sink.” I tried to be friendly, smiled.
“You aren’t the only Americans, see? All of us on this continent are Americans.”
“Okay, just give me my key. You’re right.”
“The United States of America. That’s a joke. You aren’t the only states, and you aren’t the only Americans.”
“If you’d just give me the key, please.”
“‘The United States of America’ isn’t a name; it’s a description, a false description … a joke.”
“The key,” I said, grabbing him violently by the shoulders.
“There are two Americas, yours and ours,” he stammered. “Would you like us to carry up your bags?”
I picked up my airline bag and smiled.
“Excuse me. I hope you won’t tell on me.” That was the last thing he said.
“I can’t contain myself,” I heard him say, like a refrain hanging in the heat of the reception area, as I walked away with the key in one hand and my bag in the other.
20:00
I’m up to my neck in a lighted pool more decked out with gardenias than a funeral parlor. I was tempted to call the desk: Get these gardenias out of the pool. But the idea of having to deal with the little man in the guayabera made me forget about it. Besides, what the hell, the maid who turned down my bed (scattering gardenia petals all over it, of course) stood staring at the illuminated pool and the flowers for quite a while. She hugged the towels against her pink apron, and her stare was so melancholy, so self-absorbed that it would have been a personal betrayal to ask them to take away what certainly delighted her.