At exactly nine o’clock, the great lady arrived. Only male guests had been invited so that the actress would have no feeling of competition. They all stared at her, tongue-tied. There were four painters, two writers, a film director, a banker, three important lawyers, and me — a theater director whom the others seemed to regard as a visitor from another planet. Chiki, who detested this sort of event, had taken refuge with his children and the Hornas in the red shadows of the photography lab. The resplendent painting, covered with a veil, was set on an easel in the middle of the room.
In person, Maria Félix was far more impressive than on the screen. Her luxurious, jet-black hair; her fine features; her queenly bearing; her potent, castrating regard; her intoxicating Mexican beauty; her baroque jewelry; her splendid evening gown; and especially the imperious flash in her eyes were breathtaking. A palpable testosterone silence hung in the room like a pall. Leonora broke it by whipping away the veil from the canvas dramatically and tossing it into the air so that it flew like a bird over our heads and struck a window before falling out of sight.
With a gasp of admiration, Señora Félix stood in front of the painting, her naked back toward us. Then she turned slowly around to face us, as if gazing upon her audience from a high throne. An invisible flame seemed to shoot out from her pupils as she looked at each of us fully in the eyes, one by one, with the clear intention of arousing us. Finally, her gaze strayed to the dog, Eldra. With great satisfaction, the señora pronounced these sultry words, which slithered through the air like a snake:
“Even the dog desires me!”
When I heard this, I felt a ripping sensation deep inside me. I remembered the terrible words my mother, Sara Felicidad, had said to me when I was seven years old: “After giving me a black eye because he imagined I had flirted with a customer in the shop, your father raped me and got me pregnant. I have hated him ever since, and I cannot love you. After you were born, I had my tubes tied.”
It is a cruel blow to know that your birth was not desired. This is why I had always lived with the feeling that nothing really belonged to me; in order for the world to belong to us, we must believe that the world desires us. Only that which desires us can be ours. By feeling that she was desired even by the dog, Maria Félix was a queen who possessed everything.
From that moment on, I began to work on myself: to affirm the conviction that the world desires my existence. This world includes all of humanity, past, present, and future. My father and mother identified themselves with their acquired personalities, their families, and social and cultural influences. Their insane ideas (inherited from their parents and ancestors) gave rise to negative emotions, unhealthy desires, and false needs. They believed that they had not desired me, had not loved me. They saw me more as a tumor in my mother’s stomach than as an embryo. I was protected by the placenta from the attacks of antibodies that wanted to destroy me. The life that had been granted me was able to resist these assaults. Something mysterious, immense, and profound had already decided, since the beginning of time, that I would exist. Because they desired my presence in this world, all the forces of the universe cooperated so that I could be born. Thus every living being represents a victory of cosmic desire.
I had come to Leonora wanting to be loved, seeking the perfect mother, which arose from the same need as my infant cries and weeping in the cradle. I was demanding and needy. Yet how could I give, for nothing was really mine? If the world did not desire me, how could it receive my love? I had only learned to desire myself, which split me in two — or more.
I escaped to the kitchen. The frivolous aspect of Leonora’s world had become cloying to me. A few minutes later she entered wearing a doe’s head as a hat.
“Don’t lie to me, Sebastian. I have heard the temple veil tearing. A force now inhabits you that is foreign to me. Please excuse me, but I must withdraw. I’m afraid you will let loose a bee in my secret spaces.”
I understood: our relationship had arrived at an end. Without a word, without looking back, I walked down the stairs, out of the house, and into the street. In those days, the sky of Mexico City was still clear, and the stars lit up the sky almost like a full moon. I was stopped in my tracks by a cry like the wailing of a bird being slain. It was Leonora.
“Stop, Sebastian!” she called, running to catch up with me, her clothes falling from her little by little as she approached me. Her body, bathed in the starlight, was silver. With a voice so soft it seemed to emerge from a beehive deeper than the earth, she spoke:
“Before you go, I want you to know that your appearance has been absolutely essential for me. It goes beyond personal limits, beyond the celestial bodies that shine in the caverns of animal gods, beyond the murmurings of the praying mantis in my hair. It goes beyond that, and yet perhaps, even more, it is still under threat by the human body. I speak as one submerged in time. This umbilical cord exists only if we allow it to exist. You can always cut it, but as long as you want it, it will be there. For you, I am exactly what you desire, but never believe that you can lose me, because my role changes relative to you. That could happen — I could also become your bearded, toothless grandmother or your ghost or even an undefined place. If I withdraw someday, for human or nonhuman reasons, you should never fear to look for me, because you must know always that you will find me when you wish it. Later, we will communicate in such a perfect way that all our terrors and weaknesses will become bridges. Meanwhile, the ways remain warm and open. If by chance you sever ordinary communication for a period, I will be here each time you wish to find me, because the subterranean elements do not depend in the slightest on our personal will.”
Worried about her public nudity, I said, “Cover yourself, Leonora; someone might come by.” She bent double, as if I had struck her in the stomach.
“You do not yet understand,” she groaned. “I am the moon!”
Chiki arrived, carrying an astrakhan cloak. Without deigning to look at me, he covered her, lifted her delicately in his arms as if she were an amphora full of precious liquid, and bore her away.
Dawn was breaking. Ejo Takata would be arising right now to prepare for his morning meditation. I took a bus full of schoolchildren. With little toy bows they shot small paper arrows at me. Suddenly an idea formed in my mind: “I am like St. Sebastian being shot through by koans.”
Furious, I returned to the zendo.
4. A Step in the Void
“This is a sacred place,” moaned the shepherd.
“So much the better. The silence will make the bullet even louder.”
SILVER KANE, ¡NO HABRÁ TIROS!
(THERE WILL BE NO GUNSHOTS!)
Ejo received me with a small bow. “Leonora has put you on the very top of the highest mast. What will you do to go farther?”
I was so angry that I could feel the blood rising to my face. I replied: “With lowered head, I will descend until I reach the ground.”
In Japanese style, he hesitated between approval and disapproval. “Your answer would be correct if you had the impression that your climb up the mast was an illusory quest. You would be thinking: ‘There is no beyond; all that is must be here.’ But what is the true nature of this here? Is not the world an illusion? On the other hand, at the extreme pinnacle of the mast, where the thinkable dissolves into the unthinkable, if you were afraid of the darkness of the soul and therefore came back down, then you deserve several blows from my stick.”
“Ejo, stop playing cat and mouse with me and tell me right now how your own teachers would reply!”