Heavens on Earth

by Carmen Boullosa

  In One Hundred Years of Solitude, woman does not come from the rib of man, but neither does Fuensanta.

  History can be re-written, roles can change meaning, and gypsies can become honest because reality is magnificent in and of itself, because we are reborn in the young patriarch, José Arcadio Buendía, who ensures the progress of the community; because our countries are not ruled by Pedro Páramos. One Hundred Years of Solitude is the jubilant acceptance that reality is magical, that the power of the imagination creates realities. The novel is filled with an incomparable energy and a promise of the possibility of happiness: the supernatural powers of science and observation. If Melquíades’ gums can “magically” be filled with teeth, then there was hope for reality. One Hundred Years writes the past as a utopia, it re-writes our past because Latin America dreamed of following the Cuban model and “modernizing” through a socialist revolution. The Cuban dream that preceded the Cuban failure. Macondo is “a happy village” that one reaches by following the song of birds. Macondo is José Arcadio Buendía’s dream. He establishes a utopia by heading “toward the land that no one had promised them.” My generation witnessed the birth of a New Adam, a New Eve, and a New Paradise. Adam is the one who eats of the apple (of knowledge). But the word is so powerful that it destroys him. The anecdotal lust in One Hundred Years of Solitude is shocking. There is so much narrative embroidery, such a compulsion to tell a story that it seems to be an irrational yearning, the author seems to be fleeing from silence, the silence of the dead (“there haven’t been any dead here”)—he has to denounce them in order not to become a cadaver himself. It is with this lustiness that the world reinvents itself and with which, in its haste, also seems to destroy itself. Its anecdotal lust, its cornucopia of anecdotes, doesn’t protect Macondo from destruction. Eden falls. Everything seems to have been written already, and everything is condemned in the end. The liberals, creators of nonsense when it seems that they are winning the war against the conservatives, are “advancing in the opposite direction from reality,” just like the Cuban dream.

  “Look what we’ve come to,” Eva-Úrsula said to José Arcadio-Adán. “Look at the empty house, our children scattered all over the world, and the two of us alone again, the same as in the beginning.” Why does the Dream of Dreams die from the very beginning? What does One Hundred Years of Solitude strangle itself with? Sure, they can say I pull everything into my own wheelhouse, that I don’t know the true measure, and that I see everything colored by my own obsessions, but what strikes me is that the Indians are not “actors” in the garcíamarquezian Eden, in this re-creation of reality. The great-great-grandson of the criollo marries the great-great-granddaughter of the Aragonese to found the Buendía lineage. The Indians don’t participate in the re-creation of the world: they don’t achieve legitimacy despite the many anecdotes, all that happens, and everything that spills out of that magic horn from which stories endlessly flow. And, as I said, we collaborated with García Márquez in this sin. We’ve paid dearly. We preserved the colonial and colonialist structure, we lost our own power in all the stories and so much history, and we have relegated ourselves to silence, and into the worst kind of silence, the kind that reeks even worse than dead bodies: the resounding silence of the death of the Dream. One Hundred Years of Solitude, our banner, was the first and the last of this kind of narrative. It redesigned our past, but it strangled our future. In its irrational, compulsive, unhealthy desire to narrate events, Macondo fails in miraculous prosperity and García Márquez redesigns the past and has the power to look into the future. García Márquez is the beginning and the end of the Macondian narrative. He sings the praises of the imagination, but ends up with a saturation of anecdotes. The world of Pedro Páramo was a world we wanted to end. One Hundred Years of Solitude was a profession of faith for my generation and a surprise for its premonitory and utopian qualities. But we didn’t realize that we swallowed our own poison along with our banner. Many dreams died along with the big Dream. There is no utopia now. AIDS and disillusionment are here.

  I’m not going to tell any more of my own story. I’m going to satisfy myself with the fragments of Hernando’s story. I feel guilty, especially given my present reality. I feel guilty because I sinned in my dreams. Neither I, nor my generation, dreamt of anything that would erase the suicidal framework of our colonial past. So, I’ll make amends for my shame in the best way I can: I’ll dedicate myself and work hard to translate the text of an Indian from the Latin into Spanish, a text that should really be translated into Nahuatl if it was taught in school. We didn’t get that lesson because we were content with dressing in Indian clothing and admiring their traditional arts and crafts. I would even say that, huaraches on the ground, we became more blind, more deaf, more guilty. I don’t deserve to be heard. The author of One Hundred Years of Solitude had the right to the word because he spoke for thousands of dead bodies; moreover, he was a writer—that was his job. I’ll keep quiet. I’m not a writer, and we, my generation and I, didn’t earn the right to talk. I’ll continue with my translation of Hernando; the most I’ll dare to do is to repair what is illegible in the original and lie a little here and there to make his story more plausible.

  Slosos keston de Estelino

  EKFLOROS KESTON DE LEARO

  The alarm rang last night. I know this is nothing new, but then it rang again later with an urgent message for me to communicate with the Center. I opened my inbox. I expected a visual message, but instead I found these lines written in luminous letters:

  Given that egalitarian tendencies prevail like a desideratum of the times in which we live, we accept the syllabic inequality of words without reservation even though they refer to things that should be as equal as everything else. Could the sun possibly be smaller than an orange? Does it not mask the elephantiasis of some words that are surely unpleasant or leave the bad aftertaste of linguistic monarchy in regard to others, and would that not represent another ill-fated survival of the old imperial orders that today we want so ardently to abolish? Old Marx was not reborn on the third day, we know that now; but if he had been, he would have devoted himself to selecting words of equal size, proclaiming the necessary precision of verbal communism, and today his sermons would doubtless be much more irrefutable.

  I recognize these words, they’re Eugenio Montejo’s from The Notebook of Blas Coll. They quote them to convince me, as they are convinced, of the uselessness and danger of language because they don’t know how to read this text, they don’t understand it. That book is a love song to language, it’s a humorous and delightful song, and after reading it, I turned into a bit of a collística, but not in the way they had hoped I would be.

  Rosete came by first thing this morning. And because I was more asleep than awake and because it had something to do with the dream I was just coming out of, before he could say a word to me or ask about my issues, I asked him:

  —How are your quicks going?

  —What quicks?

  —The ones you were telling me about, Rosete, the ones you were working on.

  —When do I have time to work on anything? From the time I wake up until I go to sleep, I come and go delivering the mail.

  —So, you’re going to continue being the mail?

  —Why not?—He looked at me strangely. —Why wouldn’t I continue being the mail? Where did you come up with that? Are you trying to offend me?

  He furrowed his brow and the smile disappeared from his lips.

  —Forgive me, Rosete, please—I’m not trying to offend you, that’s the last thing I want to do, I promise. I misunderstood everything then, about your role with the Center.

  —There’s nothing for you to understand, it’s just that really…

  —I’m sorry, Rosete, please, I gave him a kiss. He smiled at me, and for an instant there was a real smile on his lips, innocent and sure, then it was immediately replaced by one of his characteristic big mischievous smiles. He transmitted the message to me, keeping that smile all the w
hile:

  —Be ready first thing in the morning. We’ll all go down the Punto Calpe together.

  Without saying anything else, and without losing his composure or his big mischievous smile, he quickly left and I stayed in bed, still thinking and somewhat stunned. The Language Reform is ready to go into effect then. Is it possible that we really won’t speak to each other anymore, that the people of L’Atlàntide will no longer exchange words? Nothing can be done. Is there anything that can be done?

  I didn’t ask Rosete about the ringing alarm. I looked back at the daily message sent from the Center. It said the same thing that he just told me: that the Language Reform was now in place, that the majority of the people in our community will not exchange words, but they still won’t use the new code because they don’t want to contaminate it with language. We’ll begin to use the new code on the day of the implementation ceremony. After that, the Center will no longer send verbal messages; they will send images only. And on the same day, the Center will remove, from those who authorize it, the lower part of the frontal lobe of the left hemisphere of the brain, the area that controls a person’s language capacity, causing in the people of L’Atlàntide what humans used to call Broca’s Aphasia. Now, I’ll continue with my Hernando.

  Slosos keston de Learo

  EKFLOROS KESTON DE HERNANDO

  I missed Mama most at night when the light of the lamp kept me awake. The night, and everything in it, was illuminated with suffused light of the burning orange of the lamp Miguel kept going all night. Its light enveloped us in a hostile, flickering blanket. The shadows were the most tinged by it and were thus made darker, their shapes and sizes painted the walls of our room with monstrous leaping forms that made my young soul tremble. All night long I felt threatened by the light that glowed beyond my closed eyelids. Closing them did not protect me from the light, which intensely illuminated my sense of missing Mama’s voice, her skin, her hair, her hugs. I missed everything about her, so much it hurt. That is why, and not for any other reason, and I swear again that I did not intend to sin, I somehow ended up putting my hands on my pecker to comfort myself. I did not rub it; I only held it, as if by mere contact it could heal the sharp stabbing pain of separation. It was more than just a sharp stabbing, what I felt was more like grief, a grief that pierced not only the skin of my spirit, but the skin of my body as well. I put both of my hands over my pecker, innocently, just like that—I placed them inside my underpants, it is true—but with all chastity and propriety. Not to do evil, but rather to try to hold onto a sense of well-being because, ever since I was a child, Mama was my well-being. I did not understand much about temptation, nor did I have any experience with it as it is described in Ecclesiastes. I can now say, with full knowledge of what I am talking about because I now know, that “the thirsty asp takes the form of carnal temptation and never says enough, but only more, more. It is the serpent that we all step on when we enter the world, for we were conceived by it, and it is this very serpent that we do not see or know how it has bitten us when we feel its rabid, thirsty bite and sharp stab of evil lust. Our mortal thirst is quenched and we do not die from it because God ordered the baptismal waters that somewhat suppress and temper our thirst for evil pleasure and change what was a sin into an opportunity for greater merit.”19 That is what Fray Francisco de Osuna said in The Third Spiritual Alphabet. Knowing of which I speak, I can say that it was not the asp that made me touch that part of my body; lust did not come from within or beyond me. “Let what I have said about the devil be enough because many other things that provoke and awake evil desires in us comes down to this as well; nonetheless, man is often tempted without any of this, because the thirst that remains with us from the serpent’s bite awakens us to evil, as each of us is tempted, attracted, and ensnared by its evil desire.”20

  I know “our body is a brambly blackberry bush full of sharp thorns, which are the temptations that wound the soul: and even though the fire of the evil desire that tempts us burns within us, free will burns only if it consents to do evil or if God flees. He does not abhor nature but rather the sin and he dwells in the body that is subject to temptations even though he flees from the one subject to sin.”21 I know very well what this blackberry bush is like and I will speak about its thorny nature when I come to that situation, but that is not the story I am telling now.

  One night when I had a very hard time going to sleep because I was quite upset by the grief caused from not seeing Mama, the night I slept with my hands holding onto my pecker (something that must have comforted me, since I was able to sleep), I had a horrible dream during which I started to scream from the pain of it. I did not speak any words, but a cry came from my belly, something like “Ay!” but with some h’s and m’s too, I think I remember because I heard myself as I was coming out of the dream, I listened to myself. I was still asleep when Miguel rushed to my cry, and without knowing what to do, how to bring me back to myself so that I could escape the pain that was pursuing me in my dreams, and seeing that I did not wake up to his voice, but instead kept screaming the ays with the m’s and h’s from my dream, he pulled off my blanket and discovered my two hands holding my penis.

  It was a terrible scene. When the friars came in response to what they referred to as my disturbance, I had not completely come out of the dream in which not only my life was in danger, but that of Mama’s as well (I had gone to find her). We were lost out on the road and, because everything had changed, everything was different, and as we approached a tree to take some shade, some horrific animals that were men at first, but when they got close to us looked like a cross between cows and dogs that had a sticky kind of slobber coming from their mouths with which they started to cover our faces, keeping us from waking up…The worst of the dream is that they did not completely disgust me when I saw them as people because I think I thought they were friendly, I had even taken a step toward them. What was worse was that they turned into those monstrous animals before my eyes. Even though they were not monsters, they seemed that way to me because instead of greeting me warmly, which is why I had approached them, they covered us with that slobbery substance, with that sticky material that clouded our eyes, blocked our noses, filled our mouths, and seemed like it would choke us…I still had not managed to completely escape from my terrifying nightmare when Miguel was already hitting me with the same whipping rod with which they would soon be showing me how to beat myself in order to invoke the peace provoked by prayer, and while he was hitting me, he called me a “pig” and things like that, telling me that it was the devil himself who gave me those bad dreams and allowed them to get near to me before I fell asleep…

  I was punished for three days for my non-sin. For three days they gave me nothing but water; I could not go outside to see the sun; for hours, I had to pray aloud whatever the voice ordered me to repeat and however many number of times…That was my punishment for trying to find some momentary relief from the pain that I did not know how to express and could not verbalize because, for them, my Mama was the other, my father was someone else, and my name was something else…

  The first year, Mama came to visit me every Sunday. The weeks were so long as I waited for the last day of the week to arrive. They allowed me to see her for only a few minutes after mass, as if they were getting me ready for the day they would deny me her visit. I stayed outside to talk to her because women were not allowed inside the courtyards of the Colegio. The Franciscans did not speak to women. When I did not know that they did not speak to them because they thought they were evil, I thought to myself “it seems that the Franciscans are afraid of women.” Their law says: “Because we must keep ourselves not only from evil, but also from that which has the appearance of evil, we advise each and every one to carefully avoid the company of, and familiarity and conversation with, women.” And not content with that: “He who might be persuaded by suspicious company or familiarities or imprudent conversations with women, and duly reprimanded, does not mend his ways, will be kept i
n the monastery for a period of time, will be temporarily prohibited from the exercise of his office by the Provincial Minister, or be removed from that monastery, or will be punished more seriously.” And moreover: “everything that the Popes established religiously and prudently for women not to be admitted in the houses of the Regulars, is kept inviolably even with respect to young girls of any age…He who allows women to enter into our Hospices will also be punished with a grave penalty by the Provincial Minister.” I do not want to make poor Carlos’s (who, accused of sedition and heresy, was burned at the stake) arguments my own, but he spoke something of the truth when he said that the fear of women was a bit absurd. I am not saying anything against Christianity in defending him because those same Christians gave me knowledge, as Damián de Vegas did in a sonnet about a vision of the Apocalypse in Ch. XII of his book22 Poesía Cristiana, moral y divina, a la inmaculada concepción de nuestra señora: Mulier sole et luna sub pedibus ejus, et in capite ejus corona stellarum deducím23:

  If she is clothed and adorned by the sun

  She who gave birth to the eternal sun,

  If her soles imprint the moon

  By the dapples with which she is marked;

  And if with stars she is crowned

  San Juan saw this beautiful damsel,

  With such a body, such a soul,

  Which no mortal could achieve.

  If angels have always been pure,

  And have always adored her as Queen with profound

  Respect, who in his determination,

  Of all men would be so daring,

  To blemish, as the world declares

  That under God none is equal in purity?

  The Virgin was a woman and they would not have forbidden us to speak to her. Even though my mother was not a virgin, she was pure, she was beautiful. She did not use axí, the yellow cream made of earth that low women put on in order to have pretty, lustrous skin. She did not use colors or make-up on her face because she was not fallen or worldly. She did not dye her teeth deep red. She did not let her hair down (except in front of me) to be more attractive or leave some of her hair down with the rest over her ear or shoulder. She did not perfume herself with sweet-smelling scents or rub tzcitli on her teeth to clean them. She did not walk around or spend time on the street or in the plaza. She did not go looking for vices or laugh like the low ones who never stop laughing. She was not in the habit of making suggestive expressions or gestures—making eyes at men, winking while talking, beckoning with her hand, or laughing for everyone. She did not choose whatever looked best on her, she did not want men to covet her. She did not act as a go-between for other women and men or sell other women. She did not strut around. Not all women are as corrosive as Soliman’s water, not all women are poisonous tricks. I must write here about how a religious man met his death: burning with thirst, afflicted by a fever that kept him from boarding the boat that would carry him to Spain, he confused a jug of Soliman’s water (that corrosive mercury sublimate used in the preparation of cosmetics) for a jug of water and died within a few hours of drinking it, victim of a poisonous cosmetic.