“Ah, dearly beloved niece and nephew, don’t gape at me in such an astonished fashion.” Don Homero laughed musically. “Rather, you should repeat as the sublime poet Don Luis de Góngora said in disquieted contemplation of these Fabio, oh grief, you see before you, fields of solitude, faded hills were once famous Cempoala, or as his worthy successor, the poet Don Octavio Paz, in the same place but three centuries later: Only the fat academic is immortal! Here I am, and as your favorite poet might say (Homero said, wagging his censorious sausage finger), you seek Acapulco in Oaxaca, oh pilgrim! and Acapulco in Oaxaca you do not find because Acapulco turns out to be in Acapulco, and, oh Quevedo, grandfather of terrorist dynamiters, only the ephemeral remains and lasts! Which is to say, niece and nephew, October 12 is coming and with it the Quincentennial of our discovery, or as the Indians of Guanahaní said when they saw the caravels approach, Hurray, hurray, we’ve been discovered! But I, modest man that I am, only desire that the child of our blood, destined to win, if God wills it, the national contest of the little Christophers, come into this world with comforts and auguries worthy of his high destiny, for which I place at your and your comrades’ disposal my humble carriage — and inside the limousine my parents saw with horror Egg seated between Homero’s little sisters Capitolina and Farnesia, they full of smiles, kind, of course, wearing summery flowered dresses and wide-brimmed straw hats with ribbons, Scarlett O’Horror style, beckoning with maternal solicitude to my mother (with their hands) and to my father (with their eyes), and Egg with a gesture that said there’s no way out! shrugging his shoulders and Baby Ba is not there, she is no longer there, SHE IS NO LONGER THERE! I shout from my solar center invisible but no one pays me any mind — in order to travel to Acapulco and await the blessed event in my house, whose rustic comforts you will have to excuse (as my singular friend Don Enrique Larreta said, sipping at the straw in his hierba mate in a smoky little ranch near Paysandú) but whose austere virtues you know only too well.
And since he detected that my parents were somewhat hesitant he imperiously and impatiently tapped them with his walking stick lightly, on the shoulders (the very shoulders my father had been kissing only a few minutes earlier), on the knuckles (the very hands in which my mother had held the water she had offered to my father only a few minutes earlier) (and this gentle rapping reminded my father of the sado-erotic spankings that his uncle had given him with a lady’s shoe when he was a boy), and said come along now, my patience is limited as is my time, my little sisters here, Capitolina and Farnesia, certified virgins both, will gladly play the part of midwife: holy little hands! Acapulco is being reconstructed slowly but surely, under new and more propitious patronage than that of that deplorable petty political boss Ulises López, and it is important for our future (which is also that of your baby, beloved niece and nephew!) that the little Christopher come into the world there, that Acapulco be the site of the Grand Celebration of the Quincentennial, and that our face, which received the Illustrious Navigator, who was coming from his East which was our West, search another East that was still farther off. Let us now turn toward the true, classical Orient, the Pacific, which in reality is our nearest Occident, as we, by God, are their true Orient! But, in a word, I don’t know what I’m saying, except this: that the child be born on October 12 in the port of Acapulco, which faces the new constellation of the Pacific. Let’s declare our faith in the future at this opportune moment, upward and onward, Tomasito, as Our Candidate exclaimed as he raised on high our PRIstine banners in the Far-Off Campaign of 1970, because tonight we must sleep in Pichilinque, on the eve of October 12, and go, all of us, to ask a blessing and to give thanks in the Cathedral of Acapulco.
My parents took their place on the car’s jump seats, staring at the smiling faces of Capitolina and Farnesia as well as the ovoid face of our astonished buddy while Don Homero assumed his place in front next to the chauffeur Tomasito.
“How easy it is to see that our brother is of the same blood as we”—Farnesia sighed—“just as we call all our maids Servilia, he calls all his drivers Tomasito…”
“Enough of these vagaries, Farnesita,” Capitolina interrupted her. “Better make the Sign of the Cross quickly because this is indeed a cardinal sin, being out of our house two days in a row, and traipsing around these mountains, filled with who knows what dangers, and ending up as midwives in Acapulco, that capital of vice, the Babylon of the Pacific coast…”
“Oh, Capitita, they were right in the convent, no doubt about it, and in the first place…”
My father Angel brutally dropped the silver bracelet with the initials FF and FB separated by a heart he’d saved from the Veracruz jungle into Farnesia’s lap.
Miss Farnesia Fagoaga’s eyes almost jumped out of her head; she trembled and then wept with her head hung low. Capitolina bit her lip and hugged her, little sister, little sister … My mother raised her thaumaturgical eyes and looked at my father. I know what she thought:
Angel Palomar, you finally learned to use your violence to humanize your fellow man.
Girls were strolling around the plaza hand in hand, with a resignation overflowing with rage. Night fell suddenly on that city of greens and blacks and golds, which is eternally sculpting itself.
2. I Love You Not As a Myth
(The three of us alone back in Acapulco: She, I, He.)
I searched for Agueda and I did not find her.
I searched for the Sweet Fatherland and I did not find it.
I found Angeles, your mother.
I found her in the same way I lost Agueda.
“Let’s never hurt each other. We’re all here together.”
And when you met him, Mom, when you found out who he really was, when you followed him to Acapulco, to Oaxaca, to Mamadoc’s contest in Mexico City, when you played the passive part in his adventure, the destruction of Aca, Uncle Homero’s campaign, the encounter with Matamoros Moreno, the return to Maksicko City, the search for the city in the city, the Boulevard, the conch-shaped chariot, the contest offices, the … When you finished up living all of it, then what, Mom, what remained of your first impression or your first illusion, what did you say to yourself, Mom?
This is what I said to myself, Christopher. From the moment I met your father I never again doubted: I have a body, my son, look touch me, I have two breasts bursting with milk, I have hard, heavy buttocks, touch them, son, caress my neck, son, feel how it pulses my waist exists, it’s flesh and movement and heat, touch my navel, son, caress my sex and hold your little hand over the hot lock of the uterus through which you will leave: go ahead, son, I’m your mother, it’s your last chance to be inside your mother, look upward, from your position, now that you’re about to be born, tell me what you see, tell me, please.
Who are we? Who are you, Mom? Angeles? Agueda?
Both of them, son, both. I learned to be both.
How many of us are there, Mom?
Just three, son, the three of us, reconciled, with fewer illusions but with infinitely more tenderness.
Where are we, Mom?