“And my indifference to everything? The nothingness? The no one?”
“You mean your self-centered narcissism, that’s all. You don’t want to risk the knockout, that’s all. Listen, Javier, the point is that my generation was born psychoanalyzed while yours hasn’t even made an appointment to see the doctor yet. You want me to tell you something? For me there’s no waiting. Do you understand that? No waiting! If I want something, I take it, do it, or drop it. You’ve really made me laugh, you know. Courting me a whole year, little by little, always strictly by the old-fashioned rules. You behaved with me like a Freddy Ainsworth-Hill. Ay, those pretty formalities. The long preparation. The holy conventions to be observed before the final beginning lay. Well, please yourself, Prof, but it’s top much for me. Neither of us has to render his account to anyone. So bang, you go your way and I’ll go mine. Goodbye, sayonara, ciao. As a friend of mine puts it, rape unto others as they would rape unto you.”
“Little girl, little girl. Let me tell you a story, so you’ll understand something. You publish a book and immediately they raise you high. You’ve given Mexican literature its new and ordained direction. You’re the greatest. You’re king of them all. You’re Big Shit. Do you know why? So that by and by they can cut your balls off next to your neck. They build you up first, so they can chop you down later. They make you into a demi-god so that when they castrate you they can feel they’ve done something. And when they do castrate you, it’s all over. Ya, the end, that’s it, period. You think I can’t speak your language, little nut? I know your language and I know more. I know the crazy logic of this country. If you fall on your ass here, it’s fuck you, friend, fuck you. But if you do something, it’s the same thing. And you never expect that. It takes you by surprise. You expect to be crushed if you fail, but not to be murdered because you succeed. But that’s Mexico. If you dare to go on living, you’re the failure of failures. If you die in time, you’ve got it made. Do you understand me, Isabel? That’s our little Mexico. And that’s all our little Mexico is. The only country in the world that hasn’t killed its gods. Everyone else, including the chicken-shit Christians wherever you find them, kills his gods so he can worship them. But here they’re still on the loose, laughing, mocking, setting everything upside down, making national heroes of the most blatant traitors, making Robin Hoods of pickpockets. Oh, I could tell you about it. But you know already.”
“Proffy, I give up trying to understand you. It’s like all that complicated nothing you wrote about the Indians, in your little notebook. So what? Who cares about the Indians? I certainly don’t. Do you think I give a damn about that stupid Pepsicoatl? I’m tight, Proffy, nothing can shake me up. Nothing, do you get that? What you just did to me, for example. For you it was a great experience. But for me, I knew it already, even though it was the first time. I’m ready … ready for everything, even when it takes me by surprise. And there you have it. That’s the difference between you and your kind and me and my kind. Don’t worry, Javier, I won’t tie you down. You can stop shaking. Relax. I’m not looking for a husband. All I’m looking for is orgasms. How’s that?”
“May God bless you, Isabel.”
“You’re impulsive, my love. That’s what you are. Impulsive.”
“Yes, I may be impulsive. And you, aren’t you tired of standing there humped like a camel?”
“Leave me alone. It still burns. For Christ’s sake, Javier, stop playing games. If you’re a son of the age of Don Porfirio and Queen Victoria, that’s what you are, don’t you understand? Please, stop fooling yourself. Do you think I don’t know you? Why did you feed me that line about working in television? Do girls fall for it? You tell them you’ll make them stars? Are you ashamed of the work you really do? God, what mediocrity! God, what a drag you are! No, Javier. No, no, stay still. Javier, Javier, not that way…”
It seems that sometimes one has to think about something that has nothing to do with the present, in order to prolong the present. Javier placed his hands on your waist and closed his eyes. When you noticed, Isabel, you were already saying:
“Second-rate, Javier. You’re just second-rate. They all say so. The whole faculty, the students.”
Javier was silent and you sighed with relief, Pussycat.
“What’s wrong, Isabel?”
“It burns, tú.”
* * *
Δ You parked your brother under a tree and he smiled and said that you could leave him there for a while. He wanted to read. You and Javier walked away down one of the paths in Central Park. It was cold, the trees were bare. You took Javier’s arm to stop for a moment and look back at Jake in his wheelchair. He waved one hand to you and with the other pulled up the zipper of his Scotch-plaid jacket. The cold had reddened his face, his eyes were dark and deep-set, his black hair was curly. He had taken after Gershon, he was clearly a Jew, while you, Elizabeth, were falsely Jewish, a blonde. Jake looked small and helpless and somber in the distance. He began to read and you and Javier walked on holding hands and you invited him to come to your home that evening and listen to records, you had a collection of Kay Kyser that he would enjoy, and afterward you could go to a movie. New York was filled with those signs: Garbo loves Taylor. You began to talk about the movies, telling him that you went two or three times a week and one of the best scenes you had ever seen was the one where James Cagney pushed a grapefruit in the face of Mae Clarke, a good way to begin the day, eh? Both of them in pajamas. You talked about love, adventure, violence in the movies, about Clark Gable on the deck of the Bounty challenging malevolent Charles Laughton, about Errol Flynn as Captain Blood dueling on a tropical beach with that English villain, Basil Rathbone, who ended up cut through by Blood’s sword and tossed aside on the sand, his face washed by waves. You told Javier that you wanted him to teach you many things. Everything, for you knew nothing except what you had learned in the movies and you didn’t want to spend your time with him telling each other “Me Tarzan, you Jane,” or repeating over and over “Lizzie loves Javier.” You stopped and the noises were the accustomed ones, the elevated in the distance, dry twigs under your feet, muffled traffic, the laughter of some girls who were singing very far away. And maybe, you weren’t sure, the voice of a radio, the music of a record player. Then you were racing back along the path with a look of disbelief on your face, your hands to your mouth as if to stifle a scream, your shawl and heavy brown coat flying, Javier right behind you unable yet to see what you saw: Jake’s wheelchair whirling toward the stone bridge pushed by black-skinned hands while Jake tried to get up, get out, and looked all around for you and your boyfriend, the wheels sliding across wet grass and mud, shouts, “Kike Christ-killer, Christ-killer,” shouts and laughter, out of sight beneath the bridge, the sound of baseball bats against flesh and metal, shouts of triumph, then the swift flight of the Negro youths, six, eight, nine, a whole gang of them who ran away as hard as they could without looking back, leather jackets, wool caps, the book lying on the path. And there, under the bridge, lying beside his overturned and smashed wheelchair in a stink of urine and sodden newspaper, Jake with his legs in their leather and steel braces raised on one of the wheels. His face white. His mouth open. His skull misshapen and bleeding from the blows of the bats. Cards with the faces of Indian chiefs strewn around him. He had died with his arms raised helplessly to protect his head. He had died at thirteen, captured, defeated. And you, Elizabeth, knelt in the water beside him and touched his red lips.