QUASIMODO CITY
SAMSAVILLE
HUITZILOPOCHTLIBURG
a misshapen and bloody cockroach, I receive you like the eucharist this violent morning, sacrament of dying, plague communion: I haven’t been born yet and you already threaten to transform me: I’ll be a scientific exhibit, numbered and classified, like the Mexican salamander: under different conditions, I’ll take on different forms; if I had remained in the waters of Kafkapulco forever, I would have developed scales and gills and a tail for swimming; what will I develop if I stay in this neighborhood of garbage and thieves, this cemetery for automobiles where Hipi Toltec has brought us after the night of the Ayatollah, claiming that my father had sent him to get us? Will I be like the Orphan Huerta, rubber feet, leather soles, the Little Rascals, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, Little Dorrit of D.F., Eddypoe, Eddyfuss?
My class intelligence, genetically uncertain, rebels against all this: I am not now nor have I ever been a plebe, a lumpen, or a vulgar swine: I am Don Christopher the Classy, you might as well know it here and now, your Mercedes-Benz, no matter who it hurts, and now I remember a smell, I recall a sound, we’ve left the sick air in order to enter the sickness of the air, what a misty jail, how close the zinc ceilings are and the cement water tubs, burning and hostile like a bath in lava, how close we are to a ravine in the garbage belt that surrounds the city, what a mass of people there, people who are invisible but who are kissed, spoken to, and greeted by Hipi:
“Ne netilztli!”
“Xocoyotzin!”
“Ollohiuhqui, ollohiuhqui!”
“Cíhuatl!” Hipi points to my mother.
“Xocoyotzin, ixcluintli!” An old man points to my mom’s belly, to me!
“Toci, toci.” Hipi points to my mother and then points to himself.
They speak a bit more, and then Hipi tells us that his family is happy he’s gotten married and that very soon he will have his first child. Amid so much misery and slaughter, they are happy to see that life goes on. Welcome to the wife and soon-to-be-born son of our young pup Xipe!
The old folks offer us their house along with all the electric appliances Hipi has been bringing them over the years: let the offerings be ours, translates the flayed boy. He asks my mother to sit down near the old folks, between the smoke and the stench, and to make ourselves comfortable, because we will be staying here until the child is born.
“Ixcluintli, ixcluintli,” the old folks say, announcing our evening meal, raw, smoky dog — without hair.
“We greet the young son of the gods who is about to be born.”
Take note, your mercies, take careful note, dear Readers: these oldsters are referring to ME when they say these things, THEY REFER TO ME! Just think how frightened I am, trapped you know where, consulting my genetic chain like a madman to see if something was condemning me to be born in a hut belonging to some tipsy Aztecs and to incarnate, who knows? the sun, sacrifice, and who knows what the fuck else! NOTHING, Readers, exactly NOTHING. If a kind of proto-Quetzalcoatl is going to be born in this miserable hut, it isn’t going to be me, maybe my fraternal twin, born from my mother at the same time as I will be but formed from an egg different from mine, fertilized by another sperm than the one I call my own: ladies and gentlemen, I feel around in the fetal night that surrounds me to see if this fraternal twin, dizzygothic (gothic and dizzy!), is within reach, coexisting near me in the womb of Doña Angeles Palomar my mother, and if it’s that way, just understand, because of what might happen later, that this dizzygothic twin was not created by the same father who created me, that we inhabit different placentas and that the only thing we share is the same time within Mom’s womb: only that, nothing more, not paternal origin, not destiny in the world, he is not the OTHER CHRISTOPHER, in any case he’s probably the other Hipi Toltec, and good luck to him: so keep your eyes open, gentle Readers: listen to what I say, watch out for my face, my gestures, my words: we’ve been getting to know each other now over hundreds of pages, don’t fail me now, in the moment of truth, of Baby Ruth, of the Bambino! Anagnorisis is what it’s called: recognize me, it all depends on you, so when Hipi and his paleototonacs come to claim me: I am Christopher Palomar, not the (bastard) Son of the Gods!
11. No sooner had Grandfather Rigoberto Palomar
No sooner had Grandfather Rigoberto Palomar slammed the door in the faces of the Fagoaga sisters than his spirits began to soar: he turned to face his wife, Doña Susana Rentería, leaned against the door, closed his eyes, and tilted his aged head back.
“Su, dearest Su,” said the old man, with his eyes closed.
“What is it, Rigo? Here I am.”
He opened his eyes, kissed his wife passionately, and smiled as he stepped back. “Do you remember when your father handed you over to me and you were a little girl and I’d tuck you in every night?”
“And you were thirty, but you liked being called ‘old fellow’ by a girl because in those days all the young men wanted to look old so people would take them seriously. You were such a young soldier.”
“Things go in circles! It’s the same now. Look: Angel and Angeles dress the way you and I did when we were young.”
“Fashions that come to us from the North,” said Doña Susana Rentería. “Don’t pay any attention to it. Twenty years ago — remember? — everybody wanted to look like a teenager.”
“Ah, those barbarians to the North!”
They laughed at all this, looking tenderly at one another. After a moment, she took him in her arms.
“Did you hear the President?” Don Rigo asked her. “We have to fight again. Of course, nothing is perfect, Su, and I’ll tell you again that I’m not mistaken. It doesn’t matter to me that Mexico is all fucked up, but what does matter to me is that Mexico exists. We shouldn’t give up on the country just because it’s in a bad period. To reform a country you have to have a country. I know people think I’m crazy, but just tell me if you and I could have had a better life than being taken for lunatics by everyone and only being crazy on a single point, which I chose, while being sane on all the rest. If I weren’t insane about the Revolution, they wouldn’t let me be sane about the rest, namely the love I have for you, and the skill with which I manage my affairs, and how well I know how to use my leisure time and have friends. It’s a concession, sweetie.”
“I understand you, old boy. Nothing is perfect.”
“Su: when I was a boy, there was nothing here but a little boastful elite and the mass of peons. I’m right; we didn’t fail, my madness is reasonable. What had to be done was done; this country had no roads, no dams, no telephones, no schools, no industry, no freedom of movement. All that we accomplished. You say that nothing is perfect. Ask those who came after us why they were so irresponsible with what we created, those who worked from 1915 to 1940, when I was young and you a little girl. Anyway, the problem with a revolution is not to betray it. It’s not going through with it for fear of betraying it.”
“What are you trying to tell me, old man?”
“Susy. Once again, I have a mission in life. I don’t have to lie to myself and say that the Revolution is not over. You heard the President. The Yankees have invaded us! We have to defend the fatherland!”
“Let me remind you of a mission a bit closer to home. Our granddaughter has been kidnapped. Along with our unborn great-grandson.”