You will utter it: it's your word, and your word is my word; word of honor, a word between men: wheel word: mill word: imprecation, intention, greeting, life project, affiliation, memory, the voice of those in despair, liberation of the poor, order of the powerful, invitation to fight and to work, epigraph of love, astrological sign, threat, jeer, word under oath, pal at parties, and when you get drunk, sword of courage, throne of power, tooth of the cunning, coat of arms for the race, life preserver when you've reached your limits, summary of history: Mexico's password: your word:
Motherfucker
We're the number-one motherfuckers around here
Quit fucking around
Now I'm gonna fuck him up
Get outta here, you little fucker
Don't ever let anyone fuck you over
I fucked the shit out of that bitch
Fuck you, asshole
When it's time to fuck, take potluck
Fuck and the world fucks with you
I fucked him out of a thousand pesos
The boss fucked me over
You could fuck up a free lunch
Whaddya say we get fucked up
The Indians really got fucked over
The Spaniards fucked us up
The gringos give me a fucking headache
Viva Mexico, motherfuckers!!!!
Sadness, dawn, toasted, smudged, guava, troubled sleep: sons of the word. Born of the fucked mother, dead fucked up, alive because they know how to fuck up others: womb and shroud, hidden in the fucked mother. She stands up for us, she deals the cards, she runs the risk, she conceals our reticence, our double dealing, she reveals our struggles and our courage, she gets us drunk, shouts, succumbs, lives in every bed, presides over the rites of friendship, hatred, and power. Our word. You and I, members of this secret society: the order of the fucked mother. You are who you are because you knew how to fuck up other people and not let yourself get fucked over; you are who you are because you didn't know how to fuck up other people and you let yourself get fucked over. The chain of the fucked mother that binds all of us: one link up, one link down, linked to all the sons of the fucked mother who preceded us and all who will follow us. You will inherit the fucked mother from above; you will bequeath her down below. You are the son of the sons of the fucked mother; you will be the father of more sons of the fucked mother. Our word, behind every face, every sign, every tasteless action. Cum of the fucked mother, prick of the fucked mother, asshole of the fucked mother: the fucked mother runs your errands, the fucked mother clears your chest when you've got whooping cough, you fuck up the fucked mother, the fucked mother cleans you out, you may not have a mother but you've always got your fucked mother, she's your buddy, your partner, your little sister, your piece, your better half: the fucked mother. You blow your mind with the fucked mother; you're on top of things with the fucked mother, you lay some Hiroshima farts with the fucked mother, your skin puckers with the fucked mother, you put your best balls forward with the fucked mother: you don't give up with fucked mother: you suck the fucked mother's tit.
Where the fuck are you going with the fucked mother?
Oh mystery, oh illusion, oh nostalgia: you think that with her you can return to the origin: to which origin? Not you: no one wants to return to the phony golden age, to the sinister origins, the bestial grunt, the struggle for bear meat, for the cave, for the flint, return to sacrifice and madness, to the nameless terror of the origin, the burned fetish, fear of the sun, fear of masks, to the terror of the idols, fear of puberty, fear of water, fear of hunger, fear of being homeless, cosmic terror: fucked mother, pyramid of negations, teocalli of horror.
Oh mystery, oh illusion, oh mirage: you think that with her you will walk forward, you affirm yourself: to which future? Not you: no one wants to walk burdened with a curse, with suspicion, frustration, resentment, hatred, envy, rancor, disdain, insecurity, misery, abuse, insult, intimidation, the false pride of machismo, corruption, your fucked fucked mother.
Abandon her on the road, murder her with weapons that aren't her own. Let's kill her: let's kill that word that separates us, petrifies us, rots us with its double venom of idol and cross. Let her not be either our answer or our fatality.
Now, while that priest smears your lips, nose, eyelids, arms, legs, and sex in Extreme Unction: pray: let her not be either our answer or our fatality: the fucked mother, sons of the fucked mother, the fucked mother who poisons love, dissolves friendship, smashes tenderness, the fucked mother who divides, who separates, who destroys, who poisons: the cunt bristling with serpents and metal belonging to the mother of stone, the fucked mother: the drunken belch of the priest on the pyramid, of the lord on his throne, of the hierarch in the Cathedral: smoke, Spain and Anahuac, smoke, the fucked mother's stocks, the fucked mother's excrement, the fucked mother's plateaus, the fucked mother's sacrifices, the fucked mother's honors, the fucked mother's slavery, the fucked mother's temples, the fucked mother's tongues. Who will you fuck over today in order to exist? Who tomorrow? Who will you use: the sons of the fucked mother are these objects, these beings that you will transform into objects for your own use, your pleasure, your domination, your disdain, your victory, your life: the son of the fucked mother is a thing you use: better than nothing
you get tried
you don't overcome her
you hear the murmuring of other prayers which do not listen to your prayer: may it not be either our answer or our fatality: wash the fucked mother off yourself:
you get tired
you don't overcome her
you've been dragging her around your entire life: that thing:
you're a son of the fucked mother
of the outrage you washed clean by outraging other men
of the oblivion you need in order to remember
of that endless chain of our injustice
you get tired
you make me tired; you overcome me; you force me to descend into that hell with you; you want to remember other things, not that: you make me forget that things will be, but never are, never were: you overcome me with the fucked mother
you get tired
rest
dream about your innocence
say you tired, that you will try: that one day rape will pay your back in the same coin, will turn its other face to you: when you want to ravage as a young man what you should be thankful for as an old man: the day when you realize something, the end of something: a day in which you will awaken—I overcome you—and you will look at yourself in the mirror and will see, at last, that you've left something behind. You will remember it: your first day without youth, first day of a new time. Fix it in your mind, you will fix it as if it were as statue, in order to see it from all sides. You will open the curtains so that an early-morning breeze can come in. Ah, how it will fill you up, ah, it will make you forget that smell of incense, the smell that pursues you, ah, how the breeze will cleanse you: it will not allow you even to insinuate doubt: it will not lead you to the edge of that first doubt.
(1947: September 11)
He opened the curtains and inhaled the clean air. The early breeze had already come in, shaking those same curtains, as if to announce itself. He looked out: sunrise was the best time of day, the clearest, a daily springtime. Soon the day would be suffocated by the pounding sun. But at seven in the morning the beach across from his balcony glowed with a cool peace and a silent face. The waves barely whispered, and the voices of the few swimmers did not disturb the solitary encounter of the rising sun, the tranquil ocean, and the sand brushed smooth by the tide. He spread the curtains wide and took a deep breath of the clean air. Three small children were walking along the beach with their pails, picking up the night's treasures: starfish, shells, driftwood. A sailboat rocked near the shore; the transparent sky projected itself over the earth through a filter of a paler green. No cars ran along the avenue that separated the hotel from the beach.
He dropped the curtain and walked toward the bath
room with its Moorish-style tiles. He looked into the mirror at that face swollen by a sleep that could hardly be called sleep, it had been so brief, so different. He closed the door quietly. He turned on the water and put the sink plug in. He tossed his pajama top on the toilet seat. He selected a new blade, taking it out of its wax-paper wrapper and inserting it in the gilt razor. Then he dropped it into the hot water, moistened a towel and covered his face with it. The steam clouded the mirror. He cleaned it with one hand while he turned on the fluorescent light above it with the other. He squeezed the tube containing some new American product, brushless shaving cream; he spread the white, refreshing substance over his cheeks, chin, and neck. He scalded his fingers taking the razor out of the water. He frowned, then stretched his cheek flat and began to shave, from top to bottom, very carefully, twisting his mouth. The steam made him sweat; he could feel the droplets running down his ribs. Slowly he shaved himself clean and then rubbed his chin to make sure it was smooth. He turned on the water again to soak the towel and covered his face with it. He cleaned his ears and splashed his face with a stimulating lotion that made him exhale with pleasure. He cleaned the blade and put it back on the razor, returning the razor to its leather pouch. He pulled out the plug and for an instant contemplated the gray stream of soap and whiskers. He studied his features: he wanted to see the same man in the mirror he'd always found there, because after cleaning off the steam that clouded the mirror again, he felt without knowing it—at that early hour, with its insignificant but indispensable chores, its gastric disturbances and indefinite hungers, its undesired smells that permeated the unconscious life of sleep—that even though he looked at himself in the bathroom mirror every day, a long time had gone by since he'd actually seen himself. A rectangle of mercury and glass, the only true portrait of this face with its green eyes, energetic mouth, wide forehead, and prominent cheekbones. He opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue, which looked ragged, covered with white points; then he searched his reflection for the holes where his lost teeth used to be. He opened the medicine chest and took out the dentures that rested at the bottom of a glass of water. He rinsed them quickly, turned his back to the mirror, and put them in. He squeezed the greenish toothpaste on the brush and brushed his teeth. He gargled, then took off his pajama bottom. He turned on the shower. He checked the water temperature with the palm of his hand and felt the uneven shower on the back of his neck as he rubbed the soap over his thin body with its conspicuous ribs, its flaccid stomach, and its muscles that still managed to conserve a certain nervous tautness, but which now tended to sag in a way he thought grotesque unless he paid false and energetic attention to them…and only when he was observed, as he was these days, by impertinent eyes in the hotel and on the beach. He put his face under the shower, turned off the water, and dried himself with the towel. He felt happy again when he doused his chest and underarms with cologne and ran his comb through his curly hair. He took the blue bathing suit and the white polo shirt out of the closet. He put on the Italian sandals made of canvas and string and slowly opened the bathroom door.
The breeze was still billowing the curtains, and the sun had not stopped shining: it would be a genuine shame to waste a day like this. In September, the weather changes so quickly. He glanced over at the bed. Lilia was still sleeping in that spontaneous, free position of hers: her head leaning on her shoulder and her arm stretched over the pillow, her shoulder bare and one knee bent, poking out of the sheet. He walked over to the young body on which that first light was gracefully playing, illuminating the golden down on her arms and the moist corners of her eyelids, her lips her blond underarms. He bent over to examine the pearls of sweat on her lips and to feel the warmth that rose from this body of a small animal at rest, burned by the sun, innocently lewd. Wishing to turn her over so he could see her body from the front, he reached out his arms. Her half-opened lips closed, and she sighed. He went down to breakfast.
When he finished his coffee, he wiped his lips with his napkin and looked around. It seemed that only children and their nannies had breakfast at this hour. The smooth, still-dripping heads belonged to the ones own hadn't resisted the temptation of a pre-breakfast swim, who were now getting ready, wet bathing suits and all, to go back to the beach, the beach that offered a time without time in which the imagination of each child would impose its own rhythm on the hours, long or short, of castles and walls under construction, of happy preludes to burials, of splashing strolls, and wrestling in the surf, of bodies stretched out without time in the time of the sun, of shrieks in the intangible wrapping of the water. It was strange to see them, at such a tender age, already looking at the hole they'd dug as the bizarre shelter of a fictitious burial, for a sand palace. Now the children were leaving, and the adult hotel guests were coming in.
He lit a cigarette and got ready for the slight vertigo that for the past few months had accompanied his first smoke of the day. He looked far away from the dining room, toward the well-defined curve of the beach that snaked its foamy way from its farthest point on the open sea along the calm half-moon arc of the bay, which was now dotted with sailboats and the growing noise of activity. A couple he knew passed his table, and he waved hello to them. Then he bent his head and inhaled his cigarette again.
The noise level in the dining room rose: forks and knives on plates, teaspoons banged against cups; bottles uncapped and mineral water beginning to bubble, chairs moved, and conversations taking place between couples and among groups of tourists. There was also the growing noise of the surf, which did not resign itself to being overwhelmed by human clamor. From his table, he could see the esplanade of Acapulco's new frontage, which had been hastily erected to provide comfort for the huge influx of travelers from the United States, which the war had taken from Waikiki, Portofino, and Biarritz, and to mask the squalid, muddy land behind it where naked fishermen lived in shacks with their swollen-bellied children, their mangy dogs, streams of sewage, trichinosis, and bacteria. Two ages are always present in this Janus-like community with its double face, so far from what it once was, and so far from what it would like to be.
Seated, he went on smoking, feeling a slight swelling in his legs, which even at eleven o'clock in the morning could not stand this summer clothing. Surreptitiously, he massaged his knee. It must have been the cold inside him, because the morning was bursting into a single round light, and the skull of the sun was burning with an orange plume. And Lilia walked in, her eyes hidden behind dark glasses. He stood up and helped her into her chair. He motioned to the waiter. He took note of the married couple's whispers. Lilia asked for papaya and coffee.
"Get a good night's sleep?"
She nodded, smiled without parting her lips, and patted the man's dark hand, which stood out against the white tablecloth.
"Do you think the Mexico City papers are here yet?" she asked as she cut her slice of papaya into tiny pieces. "Why don't you find out?"
"Right away. But hurry, because we're expected on the yacht at twelve."
"Where will we eat?"
"At the club."
He walked over to the desk. Yes, it was going to be another day like yesterday, with difficult conversations consisting of pointless questions and answers. But the nights, when there were no more words, were a different matter entirely. Why should he ask for more? The wordless contact between them did not require true love, not even the semblance of personal interest. He wanted a girl for his vacation. He got her. On Monday it would all be over, and he'd never see her again. Who could ask for more? He bought the papers and went to his room to put on his flannel slacks.
In the car, Lilia immersed herself in the papers and commented on some movie reviews. She crossed her tan legs and dangled one shoe. He lit his third cigarette of the morning, neglected to tell her that he was the editor of the paper she was reading, and let his mind wander as he read the billboards on the new buildings and observed the strange transition from the fifteen-story hotel and the hamburger joint to the bald mount
ain that spilled, red-bellied, onto the highway, its guts torn open by a steam shovel.
When Lilia leapt gracefully onto the deck and he tried to keep his balance as he cautiously stepped aboard, the other man was already there. It was he who lent them a hand so they could get off the swaying pier.
"Xavier Adame."
Almost naked, wearing the briefest bathing suit, his face dark, suntan oil glistening around his blue eyes and his bushy, playful brows. He offered his hand with a movement that recalled that of an innocent wolf: audacious, candid, secret.
The Death of Artemio Cruz Page 15