We were approaching Pedregal Gardens, the mansions that must all have been the same behind their walls, Japan with a touch of Bauhaus, modern, one-floor, low roofs, wide picture windows, swimming pools, rock gardens. Do you remember, Grandfather? The perimeter of the development was encircled by walls, and access was limited to a certain number of orange wrought-iron gates tended by guards. What a pitiful attempt at urban chastity in a capital like ours, wake up, Grandfather, look at it by night, Mexico City, voluntarily a cancerous city, hungry for uncontrolled expansion, a hodgepodge of styles, a city that confuses democracy with possessions, and egalitarianism with vulgarity, look at it now, Grandfather, how we saw it that night we spent with the mariachis and the whores, look at it now that you’re dead and I’m over thirty, bound by its broad belts of poverty, legions of unemployed, immigrants from the countryside, and millions of babies conceived, Grandfather, between a howl and a sigh: our city, Grandfather, it won’t long tolerate oases of exclusiveness. Keeping Pedregal Gardens in good condition was like fixing your fingernails while your body rots of gangrene. The gates collapsed, the guards disappeared, the caprice of construction broke forever the quarantine of our elegant leprosarium, and my grandfather’s face was as gray as the concrete walls of the ring road. He’d fallen asleep, and when we reached the house I had to lift him out of the car like a child. How light he was, emaciated, just skin and bones, and what a strange grimace of forgetfulness on a face laden with memories. I carried him to his bed. My father was waiting for me at the door.
He signaled me to follow him through the marble halls to the library. He opened the cabinet filled with crystal ware and mirrors and bottles. He offered me a cognac and I shook my head no. I prayed he wouldn’t ask me where we’d gone, what we’d done, because I would have had to give him an answer he wouldn’t understand, and that, as I’ve already said, hurt me more than it did him. I rejected the cognac as I would have rejected his questions. It was the night of my liberation and I wasn’t going to lose it by acknowledging that my father had the right to interrogate me. I had my silver platter, hadn’t I, why try once more to find out, for myself alone, what love was, what it was to be courageous, to be free.
“What is it you hold against me, Plutarco?”
“That you left me out of everything, even pain.”
I felt sorry for my father as I said it. He stood there for a moment, then walked to the picture window overlooking an interior patio, glass-enclosed, a marble fountain in the center. He drew back the curtains with a melodramatic gesture at the very moment Nicomedes turned on the fountain; it was as if they’d rehearsed it. I felt sorry for him; these were gestures he’d learned at the movies. Every move he made he’d learned at the movies. Everything he did was learned, and pompous. I compared his actions to the spontaneous hell my grandfather knew how to raise. My father for years had been hobnobbing with gringo millionaires and marquises with invented titles. His own certificate of nobility was his appearance in the society pages, his English mustache carefully brushed upward, graying hair, discreet gray suit, a showy handkerchief sprouting from his breast pocket like the dry plants from the Pedregal. Like many vulgar rich Mexicans of his generation, he modeled himself on the Duke of Windsor, a large knot in the necktie, but they never found their Mrs. Simpsons. Pitiful creatures: hobnobbing with some vulgar Texan who’d come to buy a hotel in Acapulco, or a Spanish sardine seller who’d bought his aristocracy from Franco, people like that. He was a very busy man.
He parted the curtains and said he knew his arguments wouldn’t sway me, that my mother had not taken proper care of me, she’d been dazzled by the social scene, it was the time when the European emigres were arriving, King Carol and Madame Lupescu with valets and Pekingese, and for the first time Mexico City felt itself to be an exciting cosmopolitan capital, not a petty town of Indians and military coups. It was inevitable that it would impress Evangelina, a beautiful girl from the provinces who’d had a gold tooth when he first met her, one of those girls from the coast of Sinaloa who become women while still very young, tall and fair, with eyes like silk, and long black hair, whose bodies hold both night and day, Plutarco, night and day glowing in the same body, all the promises, all of them, Plutarco.
He’d gone to the carnival in Mazatlán with some friends, young lawyers like himself, and Evangelina was the Queen. She was paraded along the seawall called Olas Altas in an open car adorned with gladiolas, everyone was courting her, the orchestras were playing “Little sweetheart mine, pure as a newborn child,” she’d preferred him, she’d chosen him, chosen happiness with him, life with him, he hadn’t forced her, he hadn’t offered any more than the others, the way the General had with your grandmother Clotilde, who had no recourse but to accept the protection of a powerful and courageous man. Not Evangelina. Evangelina had kissed him for the first time one night on the beach, and said, I like you, you’re the tenderest, you have handsome hands. And I was the most tender, I was, Plutarco, that’s the truth, I wanted to love. The sea was as young as she, they’d been born together that very minute, Evangelina your mother and the sea, owing nothing to anyone, no obligations, unlike your grandmother Clotilde. I didn’t have to force her, I didn’t have to teach her to love me, as your grandfather had to teach his Clotilde.
In his heart the General knew that, and his veneration for my mother Clotilde pained him, Plutarco, he was like the old saying, he never lost, but if he lost, he took it with him, my mother was part of his war booty, no matter how hard he tried to hide it, she hadn’t loved him, she had had to learn to love him, but Evangelina chose me, I wanted to love, your grandfather wants people to love him, and that’s why he determined that Evangelina should stop loving me, the reverse of what happened to him, do you understand? all day long he compared her to his sainted Clotilde, everything was my dear dead Clotilde wouldn’t have done it that way, when my Clotilde was alive — my Clotilde, may she rest in peace — she knew how to run a household, she was modest, she never raised her voice to me, my Clotilde was so well-mannered, she’d never had her picture taken showing her legs, and the same, even more, when you were born, Plutarco, take my Clotilde, now there was a real Mexican mother, there was a woman who knew how to care for a baby.
“Why don’t you nurse Plutarco? Are you afraid it’ll ruin those beautiful boobs? Well, what do you want them for? To show the men? Carnival’s over, miss, it’s time to be a decent mother.”
If my father succeeded in making me hate the memory of my mother Clotilde, imagine how it exasperated Evangelina, it’s no wonder your mother felt isolated, and then driven out of the house, going to the dentist, looking for parties to go to, looking for another man, my Evangelina was so simple, leave your father, Agustín, let’s go live by ourselves, let’s love each other the way we did at first, and the General, don’t let that woman get on your back, you let her get her own way just once and she’ll dominate you forever, but in his heart he was hoping she would stop loving me so I would have to force her to love me, the way it had been with him, so I wouldn’t have any advantage he hadn’t had. So no one would have the freedom he’d missed. If he’d had to work hard for everything, then we’d have to, too — first me and then you, that’s how he sees things, his own way, he gave us everything on a silver platter as he always says, and there wasn’t going to be another Revolution where a man could win at a stroke both love and valor, not any more, now we have to prove ourselves in other ways, why should he pay for everything and us for nothing? he’s our eternal dictator, don’t you see? see if we dare show we don’t need him, that we can live without his memories, his heritage, his tyranny of sentiment. He wants people to love him, General Vicente Vergara is our father, by God, and we’re obliged to love him and emulate him, to see if we can do what he did, now that it’s more difficult.