Then this tall, thin dark man, who resembled a question mark, pointed to a place far away on the plain where a mirage appeared, that is, it had to be a mirage: a circus tent, a papier-mâché Arc de Triomphe, a circle of flags fluttered by the wind blowing over the prairie. The tall, sleepless man called the two Baltic poets, the extremely pale man and woman, so that they could help the blind Indians. Take them to live in the round house and then bring them to the Grand Theater so they can tell their dreams there, said the man with the bowler and walking stick, who had ears like Nosferatu, trembling as if he already knew that the two Indians from the plateau of the blind tribe dreamed everything they could not see:
“I hope you get your heart’s desire, that you reach your goal, that your dreams become reality!” said the man in the bowler.
“Let’s go to the round house,” said the Baltic poet in Nahuatl to the Indian.
“Let’s go,” answered the Indian. “Let’s go with my wife and my unborn son.”
“Let’s go,” said the woman poet, taking the new arrivals by the hand in the Baja Oklahoma night, the mirages dissipated by now. “We’re going to your house. My name is Astrid. My husband’s is Ivar. But that’s another story. Let’s go.”
And the Indian couple: We have nothing, we’ve come home, this land was always ours, we passed through here on our way south, one day a long time ago when we first walked on this land, do you remember, woman? We’ve brought our son to be born on our land, not strange land, not the frontier: our land, the North, the place of meetings.
13. It turns out that I, Christopher
It turns out that I, Christopher, am capable of finding relationships and analogies (I don’t divine things: I relate things, make things similar!) others don’t see because they have forgotten them. For example, all I have to do is establish the relationship between a couple on the run, two blind Indians from the mesa visited one day by my Uncle Fernando, she pregnant like my mother, he in search of something better like my father (see how I keep my faith in you, pro-gen-i-tor!), and the Indian fetus perhaps imagining my parents just as I imagine his. Accordingly, I establish the relationship between that couple in flight and the disunited couple constituted by my dad and mom: looking at the two Indians on the frontier between Mexamerica and Baja Oklahoma, I see my parents crossing other frontiers, and thus I conclude, in the first place, that we are always in frontier situations, either exiting or entering, as in stage directions — enter Hamlet and Ophelia — exeunt Quijote and Dulcinea, etc. But, the reader exclaims indignantly, your parents aren’t even together, each one is in a different corner of the woods, one in Montesinos’s cave, the other in El Toboso, we left your mother a hostage in the bosom of Hipi Toltec’s Nahuatl-speaking family, with you (inevitably) in her belly, sharing with them (with Them) a dinner of cactus salad and orange slices (Plato’s banquet in a somber thieves’ den: by the way, what page are you on, Mom?), while your father climbed up into the truck of the albino driver, Bubble Gómez, which Colasa Sánchez had flagged down with tricks worthy of Claudette Colbert, of enchanting memory: your father in the company of the Discalced Carmelite dazzled by the jukebox lights and the pictures of Guadalupe, Virgin, Thatcher, Margaret, and of Doctor and Mother, so where’s the comparison, Christopher (finally you wake up, Reader, and you ask me something!)? Only this one, I note, I newt:
We’re all different, but it’s good that we resemble one another as well. In this world, everything is different, but only if everything is related to everything else. Readers, I don’t know another secret to be truer after my eight months of gestation: we’ve always got to be in the situation where difference is in tension with sameness. We are recognized because we are different, but also because we are similar I, Christopher, am likely to be recognized because of the form in which I share and admit the sameness of my gestures and my words with those of others. We human beings are not the only animals who need and recognize the scattered members of our species: the lamb, ladies and gentlemen, can always recognize his mother (who happens to be a female) in an anonymous flock of one hundred animals.
In the same way, I recognize, from my solar center, which orders establishes hierarchies, yet is most free, my distant father and my infinitely close mother and I join them in my vision as one with the pair of illegal Indians, and I’ll stake my reputation on it:
My mother Angeles is sitting in the cave of tin water tubs and cardboard that belongs to Hipi & Family, bereft of hope, when suddenly an unusual disturbance resounds in the jailed night and the fires of the circular wall of garbage join together and run like the proverbial scalded cat. (Do proverbial cats have nine lives?) (Or should those who keep proverbial cats as pets be tickled with a cat-o’-nine-tales?) Don’t forget, dear Readers, that the vast Cittá del Messico is totally surrounded by garbage dumps, its genetic chain is a circular mountain of trash dumps all linked together as if to announce to the city: Garbage is Your Destiny. And now it seems that the foreseeable is happening:
The fire burst into life at the very door of Hipi’s family’s house, and everyone ran to put it out, all of them (the old, the babies, the huehuetiliztli and the xocoyotzin grab what they can); the suffocating smoke billows, asphyxia is imminent, there is no water, so one man quickly makes some orange juice and throws it on the blaze, another man shouts, laughs, and urinates powerfully on the fire (my mother remembers the day she reached the city and peed on the flame in the monument to the Revolution, remembers her dream about urinating until she refills the Lake Texcoconut; she remembers and I dream about the lost city of lakes! the place where the air is clear!), but it isn’t enough, they all scatter through the thief-ridden slum (dolorous city, lost city, city without a name), all except one old man as stubborn as a stone. He remains seated in the cave when our buddy Egg rushes nervously in and pulls my mother to her feet (and me along with her, horrified — it goes without saying!), telling her, Angeles, get a move on, if this fire really catches, it’ll consume all the oxygen in the city, the city will suffocate, and then they see the old veteran sitting there, immobile, waiting for the catastrophe, immutable, his face fixed, the inexpressive screen of the play of lights and shadows, and the philanthropic Egg tries to pull him to his feet as well, he warns him about the danger, but the old man is wrapped in his serape, and with his immobile face he says something in Nahuatl and our buddy Egg abandons him and swiftly guides my mother (and me, Readers, and me!) out of the dark shack to an Army jeep, where the grandparents, Rigoberto and Susana, wait and hug my mother and the general does the driving, throws it into reverse, gets stuck for an instant in the garbage. Hipi Toltec fighting the fire, but when he sees us, he becomes disconsolate. He picks up a long stick, sets it on fire, raises it as if to threaten us, then acts as if he were going to toss it on the garbage pyre, but instead he smiles in an ugly way, blows out the burning point of his javelin, and throws it at us. It looks like he’s let us get away, let us save ourselves, my mother and I, Egg, and the grandparents, in an Army jeep, vintage 1944, about which General Palomar says: “This relic has finally come in handy! You drive, Mr. Egg, all right? I’m getting too old, and get us out of here, head for Oaxaca! Aaaaah, the city is burning! Let’s head for the pure air, Susy, don’t be afraid of anything. I’ve been in worse situations! Don’t be afraid, Miss Angeles! Or your unborn baby!”