You kept to our arrangement, our rendezvous in front of my window, just as you did in January.
Did it hurt to see me last night in the window?
Did it hurt to see me naked again?
Did it hurt to see me in the arms of another man?
Did you hear, confused with the weeping of the trees, my sighs of orgasm, my moans of pleasure?
You postponed things. Forgive me. You always told me how much you liked him. You shouldn’t have. I took him away from you. You played your cards well — all of them except that one.
Should I thank you for having introduced me to the best, most beautiful lover I’ve ever known, someone who shamelessly licks my ass, my clitoris, puts his fingers inside, and makes me come twice, with his tongue and with his cock, crying out to me, begging me to stroke his anus, which is what all men secretly wish for, to help them come faster and harder — the anus, closest to the prostate, the hole of the most secret, least confessed, least demanded pleasure.
He asks me for it.
“Your finger. Up my ass, María del Rosario. Please, make me come. . ”
Dark, tall, muscular, tender, rough, passionate, and young. .
What a marvelous lover you gave me, Nicolás! From the beginning he spoke to me in the familiar!
But be very wary of him.
Jesús Ricardo Magón is convinced that you want to kill him.
This is my final piece of advice. I think you’re the one who should make sure that he doesn’t kill you.
Crimes committed out of the fear of being killed are far more common than crimes committed from a desire to kill.
Forget about me as your lover. Fear me as your political rival.
And go. You’re searching in vain for a crack in my soul. You’ll never find it because it doesn’t exist. Am I different from everyone else? Who is master of his own soul? The man who believes he is is only deluding himself. We can’t be. We are in the process of being. We don’t submit ourselves to reality. We create it. Go, little creature, mon choux. .
64. MARÍA DEL ROSARIO GALVÁN TO BERNAL HERRERA
I know there’s a hint of mockery in your smile, Bernal, but there’s affection in your eyes, an affection we’ve always shared. By “always” I mean since we were young.
Since then we’ve never hidden anything from each other, you and I. We know each other’s personal history and family history, which in the end are one and the same. In fact — you know this better than anyone — the most mysterious thing, and perhaps the most exciting, is that ever since childhood we’ve learned to create an interior world, and we’ve developed a kind of double commitment: to our objective environment and to our subjective one. The exterior world changes and so does the interior. On the one hand, there are the things that are outside us and contain us; on the other are the things inside us that we contain. All of life is a struggle between these two forces. Sometimes it’s harmonious, as it’s been mostly for you. Other times it’s an uphill battle, like swimming upstream, difficult as mine’s been.
How lucky we were to have met when we were young, and to have known instantly that we each gave what the other lacked. Your steadfast nature comes from your parents. You’re the son of humble and honest social activists, Bernal and Candelaria Herrera,3 labor organizers at a factory up in the north. You owe them your solidarity with the people who most need to know that they too count and that they have the shelter of a political roof. That is the mission of the eternal left, you say, to tell people, “You’re not alone. You have a roof here.”
From your parents you also understood that purity of ideals is not enough in itself. That in order to gain half of what we want, sometimes we have to sacrifice the other half. Your parents never accepted that compromise. They were heroes of the labor movement and their sacrifice was surely not in vain. Who deceived them? Who made them cross the Rio Grande by night, making them believe they were saving a group of illegal immigrants, only to fall into the hands of the U.S. immigration service? They were shot in the back as they fled and subjected to the “Fleeing Fugitives Law,” Bernal — the unjust and searing lie — you who knew your parents, Bernal and Candelaria, so well. They never ran from anyone. They never turned their backs on anyone.
The “Fleeing Fugitives Law.” How can they call such an abominable act a law?
When we met in Paris, you told me all about your life and about how your parents had been sacrificed because of a sinister conspiracy hatched by the drug traffickers in the north, the corrupt politicians on both sides of the border — Chihuahua and Texas — and the corruptible forces of law and order in Mexico and the United States.
You told me, “I’m not going to be a pure idealist like my parents. I’m going to be able to tell the difference between the lesser evil and the greater good. I’ll serve the greater good by making concessions to the lesser evil.”
I envy you those parents, Bernal. I said it then and I’ll say it again now as I look back on the farce and tragedy that was my family life. I wasn’t born into poverty like you. I didn’t have to escape hardship as you did. On the contrary. I had to overcome wealth. The table was set. I was born into privilege. My father made me a rebel; I had to oppose him, be different from him, ignore his cynical tirades, his rather admirable lack of hypocrisy as he openly talked of his frauds, his illegal schemes, his business acumen. In politics, one must pretend. In business, one can be openly brutal and cynical.
My father frightened me so much I had to spy on him if I wanted to see him at all. I began listening in on his telephone conversations from a phone in the hall.
“Sell the fleet of old trucks to the Ascent to Heaven Company for the highest price you can. . ”
“But Ascent to Heaven is our company, sir.”
“Exactly. We claim the capital profit as earnings and then sell shares at the highest price possible.”
“The Herreras are stirring up trouble in the north, demanding legislation for job security in your factories, sir. . ”
“Well, let’s do the same as we did when they wanted to save that ecological mountain site full of birds and ocelots. No laws protecting the environment, no laws protecting job security, Domínguez. Buy as many legislators as you have to.”
“Buy?”
“All right, persuade. Pardon my brutality.”
“There is one legislator, pretty stubborn, who wants to pass a law that sanctions lawsuits against fraudulent investments. . ”
“Look, Ruiz, you just worry about inflating the value of those bull-shit shares so that we can sell them and make a profit. That’s our business. Don’t confuse the issue.”
“The company in Mérida is reporting losses, sir.”
“No company of mine reports losses if I don’t want it to. With Mérida, hide them by selling the subsidiary at a high price.”
“Who is going to want to buy it?”
“We will, stupid, the company in Quintana Roo. . ”
“How is that going to happen?”
“With a loan from us. That way we keep it in the family, our companies finance one another, we hide the losses and attract more investors. . ”
“And what happens when we can’t do that anymore?”
“Look, Silva, only when we’ve made ten times our personal holdings, only then will we declare bankruptcy and let the shareholders take the hit. Meanwhile, I need you to make everyone think that we’re doing just terrific, take the idea and stretch it like chewing gum, as far as it’ll go, so that the shareholders keep on investing, so they don’t catch on that we’re about to go bankrupt. Understood?”