“It isn’t a matter of their liking it or disliking it. To the contrary.”
“You mean they didn’t understand my Latin allusions, is that it?”
“No, sir. They didn’t understand anything. Not one of these Indians speaks Spanish.”
Don Homero had no time to show shock, fury, or disdain, much less to get on his horse and hightail it; impossible to know if it was excessive hatred, outrage, or fascination, or perhaps a love incapable of showing itself in any other way, that was moving five thousand Mixtec men, women, and children from the Guerrero mountains who, beyond communication, incapable of communication, reached the bandstand, stretched out their hands, pulled down the tricolor paper flags, the tricolor rosettes, and the PRI posters, then the eyeglasses belonging to the state delegate from Cuajinicuilapa, buck-toothed and myopic, the daisy in the lapel of the m.c. and the old politico’s suspenders, which snapped back against his feeble chest, and that’s when the panic began: the hierarchy turned its back on the people and went running into the church, shouting sanctuary, sanctuary!: the trembling candles were extinguished by their stampeding feet and their screams and my father, still wearing his rain poncho and with his face covered by four days’ growth of beard, led my mother, still on her burro and wrapped in a blue shawl and with me in the center of the universe, and the Indians gave way, they let us pass and my father made a sign with his hand and said come here Homero, you shall pass through the eye of a needle because that’s exactly how wide our mercy is: but virtue is measured in magnitude, not things, and of course our Uncle Don Fernando translated these holy words into Mixtec and all of them stood aside without uttering a word, like the waters of the watermelon-colored sea while the sixty-three hierarchs locked the church doors, and braced themselves against them to add to the bolts the weight of each one of their sixty-three years of political predominance, and Don Bernardino Gutiérrez, first and foremost supporter of President Calles in the state of Guerrero, exclaimed that you can’t get milk from an ox but that when it’s time to fry beans what you need is grease, and Elijo Raíz, LL.D., who came in in 1940 with Avila Camacho, added that it all had to end the way it began, in the bosom of the Holy Mother Church, hallelujah, amen, push, pull, and national unity!
6. Curiously enough, the first things we feel
Curiously enough, the first things we feel, even as mere monozygotes inside the maternal womb, are the fluctuations in the exterior dynamics that surround us and in which our mothers participate; for instance, the apprehensions entailed in our flight from the holy places of Igualistlahuaca when we were going against the tide of the masses who listened to my Uncle Homero’s discourse as they pressed up against the locked doors of the rose-colored church with its double cut-stone towers, against which doors sixty-three leaders of the Revolutionary Institutional Party of Guerrero were pushing with all their might, shoulders, hands, hips, and backsides to keep the aforesaid masses from entering, since those masses had just scared them out of their wits by moving without them and they didn’t understand (nor did we, the group running away) whether what the citizens, the faithful, the plebes, the helots, the great unwashed, the redskins (each of the sixty-three was muttering what he really thought about them as he pushed against the splintering door), wanted to show was a great love, a concentrated hatred, or an explosive despair devoid of hatred or love.
The first things we feeclass="underline" the bustle, the ambition, the obstacles — other bodies — that impede our own movement, my mom’s and mine for instance, our tensions, our fear of everything around us that moves with or against us, said my mother and I. Don’t, your worships, jump to conclusions because I was there and you weren’t, as we were once again on burro or on foot heading for the hills and the mountains that Uncle Fernando knows like the back of his hand, as he heads for Malinaltzin, he tells us, because there is very little landscape left and even less land left in this land of ours: where are we Mexicans going to walk around? North of the Temazcal is off-limits because there’s a war on there, east of Perote is out of bounds because that’s where the oil is, north of the Infiernillo is out of bounds because that’s where …
“Pacífica is…” says my father in a low voice, but Uncle H. was not listening, neither to my father nor to my Uncle Fernando, as he snorted in rage astride the longest-suffering burro in burrodom: the rotund personage whines and regurgitates, not even listening to what my father and my other uncle, Don Fernando, are saying.
“Oh, Lord, what could I have done to deserve this humiliation, I, saved twice in the same year by my nephew Angel to whom I have done so much evil? Oh, I beg forgiveness, a thousand times I beg forgiveness.”
Homero Fagoaga slipped off his burro as they went down a mountainside and kissed the feet of my father — ramrod-straight, bearded, green-eyed, and Guelfish. Forgive me, nephew, I am in your hands, you saved me from the Acapulco mob by sending Tomasito to warn me in time so I could escape by speedboat and parachute instead of using the minisub I had prepared (they didn’t take my etc. into account) …
“It was Tomasito who warned you?” groans my mother.
“Precisely. And because of his loyalty the heroic son of the archipelago died, died, I say, at the hand of pimpish types whose faces and manners I seemed to recognize,” said Uncle H., staring at us with eyes that said I’m holding a royal flush too, but we’re all pals here, right? “Who will ever be able to explain what makes some people completely loyal?” he added, wagging his tremendous Tartuffesque jowls. “Tomasito is dead!”
“And you are alive, Uncle.”
“Thanks to you. And I had time to prepare my campaign and call my plane from Mexico City, so that I could keep my appointment with our well-beloved Mexican soil. Now you have saved me from those monolingual aborigines, oh how can I ever pay you for doing me such favors?”
“You miserable fat slob,” interrupted Uncle Fernando, “what are you running away from?”
“My best speech, dear oh dear, the one I’d worked over most, the one I’d virtually chiseled out of Parian marble, the most eloquent, the most erudite, my most heartfelt one as well, lost in the face of five thousand sandal-wearing plebes who didn’t understand a word! Mexico in a nutshell, my dear, dear relatives! Everything for nothing and nothing for everyone! But doubt, doubt is what’s consuming me! Did they love me? Did they hate me? Please, don’t take my doubt away from me!” said Homero, standing up with dignity.
“The one thing there can be no doubt about is what your buddies from the PRI will be thinking about you, you pudding on legs,” Uncle Fernando declared.
“Bah, after all that confusion they’ll understand my reasons just as I’ll understand theirs,” said Uncle H. with diminishing haughtiness, as he mounted his burro with bizarre agility.
“Well, my dear Uncle, it seems to me that even as we speak the tribe has probably already chopped up the hierarchs who vainly sought refuge in the religious sanctuary. Dear me, yes, Uncle. The purest tamale. Just you think about that.”
“All sixty-three, nephew?”
“But of course, Uncle.”
“Elijo Raíz, the delegate born in Cuajinicuilapa?”
“Ground up fine.”
“Don Bernardino Gutiérrez, first and foremost supporter of President Calles in the state of Guerrero?”
“Ground up fine.”
“But just yesterday, as we were leaving the airport for the hotel, I asked him, listen, Don Bernardino, you who’ve been in national politics since the days of General Calles, how have you managed to survive and adapt yourself to so many changes, fluctuations, and shake-ups? Think of me as a humble apprentice and let your experience illuminate my hope. Then Don Bernardino stuck his index finger in his mouth and stuck it out of the car window to tell which way the wind was blowing.”