Inez

by Carlos Fuentes

  Two sea-dwellers, as long as two yous laid end to end, will roil the sea with their battle, at times feinting and at times direct and lethal, now that the two fish use their mouths the way the monkey will use its club, attacking with sharp teeth. This you will see.

  You will not understand why they battle in this way. You, hom, will feel abandoned and lonely and sad when you walk along the rocky beach and you find small fish on the rocks identical to the large ones but for their size, their bodies mangled and the mark of the teeth of the large fish imprinted on them like the symbols—and like a light from the sky that memory will return—scratched with stone in the protective hollows in the mountainsides.

  You will see the largest fish attack each other in the ocean until one is killed or flees, and you will think you understand that battle but not the death of the fish-babies murdered by their own progenitors—you will see them attack their young again and again—abandoning them, dead, on the beaches …

  Other times, those same large white lighthearted fish will frolic in the waves, making gigantic leaps and taking the sea as their playground. You will seek a way to have thoughts, feeling that if you think you will have to remember. There will be things you do want to remember and others you would like, or that you will need, to forget.

  Forget and remember, facing the sea, there will be two moments in your head difficult to tell apart—instinctively you will put a hand to your forehead every time you think this—because until very recently there will have been no before or after for you, fem, only this, the moment and the place where you will find yourself doing what you will have to do, losing all your memories the more you begin to imagine that one day you will be a different age, you will be small like those dead little fish, you will live close to a protective woman, all that you will forget, fem, at times you will believe that you have done all these things this very minute on this rocky beach, that you will not do anything before or after this moment—it will take a great effort for you to imagine “before” or “after”—but this dark morning with an opaque sun, you will watch the large white fish leap, see them frolic in the sea after killing their offspring and abandoning them on the beach, and for the first time you will tell yourself that this cannot be, this will not be, feeling something flooding inside you like the waves where the lighthearted, murderous fish will be playing.

  Then something within you will drive you to move along the beach, twisting and writhing, lifting your arms, clenching your fists, shaking your breasts, parting your legs, squatting as if you were going to give birth, or urinate, or let yourself be loved.

  You will cry out.

  You will cry out because you will feel that what your body wants to say here by the sea and the game of the white fish and the death of the slaughtered fish will be too violent and impulsive if you do not express it somehow. You will feel this: you will rage explosively while summing up what must happen to you—the monkey will again kill the serpent, the serpent will again be devoured by the porcupine, you will climb down from the tree and you will cross the river; panting, you will fall asleep, and you will wake on the drum of the plain, where the herds of hairy aurochs will scatter and the deer will skirmish to establish their territory and mount their females, and you will wake by the sea watching the fish fight each other and kill their offspring and then happily play—if you do not cry like the bird that you will never be, if you do not give voice to a strange song, throaty and guttural, if you do not cry out to say that you are fem, alone, that the movements of your dance will not be enough, that you will long to go beyond your gestures and say something, shout something beyond your instantaneous gestures by the shore, that you want to shout and sing passionately something that says you will be here, present, available, you …

  For a long time, alone, you will wander across the solitary land fearing that no one is like you, fem …

  “Long time” is very difficult to think, but when you say those two words you will always see yourself living beside the immobile woman, in one place and in one moment.

  Now, as soon as you begin to walk, you will feel bad that you are not with anyone, and this will fall into your life with the force of brutal abandonment, as if everything you see, feel, or touch is not true.

  Now there will be no protective woman. Now there will be no warmth. Now there will be no food.

  You will look about you.

  There will be only what surrounds you, and that will not be you, because you will be only what you would like to be again.

  You will go back toward the trees, because you will be hungry. You will understand that need brought you from the jungle to look for sustenance, and that now the same need will send you back into the thicket with empty hands. You will be thirsty, and you will have learned that the sea where the lighthearted fish will always be playing does not calm you. You will return to the muddy river. On the way you will find blood-colored fruit that you will devour, and then later you will find your hands stained. You will realize that you will walk, eat, stop, and sleep in silence.

  You will not understand why you repeat the dance by the sea now, the impetuous movement of body, hips, arms, neck, knees, fingertips …

  Who will see you? Who will pay attention to you? Who will send the anguished call, the call that will finally be torn from your throat when you run to plunge again among the trees? You are raked by thorns, you are panting as you come out onto a new barren clearing, you run uphill, summoned by the heights of a rock cliff, you close your eyes to relieve the length and the pain of the climb, and then a cry will stop you, you will open your eyes, and what will you see at the edge of the precipice? The cliff sliced away, with emptiness at your feet. A deep ravine, and on the other side, on a high white stony shelf, a figure that will shout to you, that will wave both arms in the air, that will jump up and down to catch your attention, that will say with every movement of his body but especially with the strength of his voice: Stop, don’t fall, danger …

  He will be naked, as naked as you. Something will happen to you for the first time. You will see another moment in which both of you will be covered, but not now, now nakedness will identify you, and he will be the color of sand, all over, skin, body hair, the hair of his head; a pale man will shout to you, Stop, danger, and you will understand the sounds—eh-dé, eh-mé, aidez, aimez, help, love—that are rapidly transformed in your look and your gestures and your voice into something that only in this moment, as you call to the man on the other side, you will recognize in yourself: He is looking at me, I am looking at him, I am calling to him, he is calling to me, and if there were no one there where he is standing I would not have cried out, I would have shouted to frighten a flock of black birds or out of fear of a beast lurking in ambush, but now I will call for the first time to ask something of or thank that other being like me but different from me, and now he will not call out of necessity, he will call because he wants to, eh-dé, eh-mé, help me, love me …

  You will want to thank him for the cry that kept you from falling into empty space and crashing onto the rock mass at the bottom of the cliff, but since your voice does not carry to him if you do not shout and you do not know how to call the man who will save you, you will have to call more loudly if he is to hear you from the other side of the void, but the sound that will come from your breast, your throat, and your mouth to thank him is a sound you will never have heard during all those moons and suns that spill over you suddenly at the sound of your voice, your solitary wandering finally ended thanks to a cry that you yourself would be slow to call a “cry” if cry were only an immediate reaction to pain, surprise, fear, hunger …

  Now, when you shout, something unforeseen will happen. Now you will not raise your voice because you need something but because you want something. Your cry will no longer be an imitation of what you will have always heard: reeds rustling in the river, a wave breaking, a monkey announcing its location, a bird preparing to leave the cold far behind, deer bawling as leaves begin to fall, bisons mol
ting when the suns last very long, the rhinoceros easing the folds of its hide into the water, or the boar devouring the remains of carcasses discarded by the lion …

  Farther and further, you will know that he will answer with very brief sounds, not like the warbling of the birds or the bellowing of the aurochs—ah aaaaah, o, oooooh, em emmmm, e, eeeeee—but you will feel a warmth in your breast, you will first call it “feel you are more than him,” then “same as what he can come to be,” you put together the short sounds ah-o, ah-em, ah-nel, ah-nel, that simple cry across the void, above the animal skeletons lying at the bottom of the cliff in the cemetery on the rocks; you will cry out, but now your cry will be something else, it will not be the need of before, there will be something new, ah-nel, that simple cry joined to a simple gesture that will consist of opening your arms and then folding them across your breast with your hands open, and then offering those extended hands to the man on the other side, ah-nel, ah-nel, and of that voice and that gesture will be born something different, you will know that, but you will not know what to name it, perhaps if he helps you, you will come to give a name to what you are doing …

  You will feel hunger, and you will pick the small red fruit that will be growing in a nearby forest. But when you return to your place on the edge of the cliff, it will be night, and you will lie down and sleep, as you will have done forever.

  Except that, this night, there will be ghosts in your sleep that you will never have dreamed of before. A voice will say to you: You will be again.

  When the sun rises, you will get up, agitated because you will fear you have lost him. What you will search for will be the presence of the man separated from you by the abyss.

  There he will be, raising his arm, waving.

  You will answer in the same way.

  But this time he will not shout. He will do the same as you in the afternoon.

  He will speak more softly, he will repeat ah-nel, ah-nel, pointing to you and then, with his finger pointing to his own chest, he will say with a new, gentle, unfamiliar strength, neh-el, neh-el …

  At first you will not know how to answer, you will feel that your voice will not be enough, you will repeat the moments by the sea, the contortions of your body, and he will only watch you, not imitating you, with a strange gesture of disapproval, distant or distanced; he will cross his arms, he will lift his voice, ah-nel, ah-nel, you will understand, you will stop dancing, you will repeat, in your voice, higher but also softer, the song of the birds, the sound of the sea, the swaying trees, the playful monkeys, the battling reindeer, the running river; the sounds will join together, strung together one after another like something that someone will wear around his neck, something, someone, you will be fem protector, fem forgotten, fem that must be found again.

  Ah-nel.

  That will be you.

  You will repeat it, and you will say, I will be me, he will say I am me.

  He will point to a path, but his voice will check yours with another voice closer to flesh than to earth, you will hear in the voice of the man—neh-el?—a call to the voice of the skin.

  A carnal song. A song. How will the word be said that now will not be just a cry?

  Song.

  Now it will not be just voice.

  You will say those words, and the shrieks will be left behind, the screeches, the bawls, the waves, the storms, the grains of sand.

  He—neh-el?—will climb down the rock, making an inviting gesture that you will imitate, making disconcerting cries that will orient you both, forgetting in your visible urgency to meet the gentle modulations of the names ah-nel and neh-el and, unable to avoid it, regressing to grunt, howl, and caw, but both feeling in the rapid trembling of your bodies that now, in order to come together more quickly, in order to meet, you both must move from where you are, and in the hurrying toward the encounter so desired now by both, there will be a return to earlier cries and gestures, but it will not matter, and in saying ah-nel and neh-el you will also have said eh-dé and eh-mé, and that will be the good part, but you also will have done something terrible, something forbidden: you will have given another moment to the moment you are living and are going to live, you have distorted time, you have opened a forbidden field to what you already lived before.

  This scene will send you back to the before and after you longed for. There you will re-create how first the reindeer will have paraded themselves, staking out territory beneath the steadily rising sun, prowling about the plain, gathering in large numbers, until combat erupts amid streaming sweat and salt-colored slaver and inflamed eyes and crashing antlers, and you flat on the ground of the plain, longing for the protection of the trees, and the antlered beasts battling all day until there are only as many left as you can count on your hands, each the possessor of a section of the plain.

  This sensation will be so vivid that it will dissipate instantly, as if its profound truth will not tolerate lingering reflection. The moment will drive you both to act, to move, to call out.

  But both violent action and inarticulate cry will be lost at the moment when, in the dust that will be like the valley floor between the two mountains that will have separated you, you and he will look at one another, will contemplate one another, and then each will shout individually, will move individually, and you will raise your arms and leave your footprints in the dust, then, squatted down, both of you tracing circles with your fingers until physical action is exhausted and you regard one another intently, saying first wordlessly, eh-dé, eh-mé, we will need each other, we will love each other, and now we will never be what we were before we met.

  “Will it … be again?” she will venture with words first very low, then lifting her voice, until she is repeating what both one day will call a “song.” Has, has …

  Then he will offer you a crystal stone and you will weep and you will press it to your lips and then you will place it between your breasts and that will be your only adornment.

  Has, has, merondor dirikolitz, he will say.

  Has, has, fory mi dinikolitz, you will reply, singing.

  Now, exhausted, you will sleep together at the base of the cliff. But he will stretch out on his back, rigid, and you will go back to your only position for sleeping, curled up on your side, your knees pulled up close to your chin, and neh-el offering his extended arm for you to rest your head on.

  Dawn will come, and the two of you will walk together; he will guide you, and now it will not be as it was when you walked alone. Now the way you once walked will seem clumsy and ugly, because by his side your body will move with a different rhythm, which will begin to seem more natural to you. You will return to the seashore, and you will be aware that once again your movements are violent and impetuous, as if something inside you wanted to burst out, but not now, the hand of neh-el will calm you, and the sounds that come from your mouth will resonate with the new emotions you feel thanks to the man’s rhythm.

  You will walk together and you will look for water and food in silence.

  The two of you will move forward haphazardly, not in a straight line but guided by your sense of smell.

  At the edge of the plain you will come across the cadaver of a deer at the moment that a lion will be moving away, still devouring the soft viscera of the antlered beast. Neh-el will rush to tear off pieces of what will be left of the gutted body, making signs to you to help take everything the impatient lion forgot, first the remaining fatty parts immediately behind the shoulder bone, a square, dry bone that neh-el will clutch to his chest with one hand, scrambling away from the spoils, and the two of you will hide in the underbrush moments before the boar will appear to devour the discarded remains of the reindeer, russet in time of rut.

  Carrying the bone, neh-el will lead you to the cave.

  You will go through forests and meadows growing as tall as your line of sight and past swift, roaring rivers before you reach the entrance to a shadowy space.

  You will go in the dark through a passage that he will know,
you will stop, and neh-el will rub something in the darkness, and then a silver, thorny torch will cast trembling light on the walls, giving life to figures that he will point out to you and that you will stare at with startled eyes, your breast thudding.

  They will be the same deer of the plain of combat, two of them, but not as you remember them, the male haughty and proprietary and pugnacious, the female submissive and indifferent.

  These two beasts will be facing, mating, he lowering his antlered head toward hers, she lovingly offering him hers, he licking her forehead, the male dropped to his knees, the female lying facing him.

  The image in the cave will leave you astounded, ah-nel, and you will weep, seeing this thing that first will cause you amazement but then will force you to think of something you will have lost, forgotten and needed always, and at the same time something you will want to have forever, grateful to neh-el for bringing you here to experience this bewilderment before something that will be so new for you that you will not be able to attribute it to the hands that release yours to take up their task again.

  The fat torn from the deer will make the thorny torch flare.

  It will burn slowly, trembling, making the amorous figures of the deer seem to move, it will prolong their tenderness, which is identical, ah-nel, to the strange emotion that now will cause you to speak, trying to find the words and the rhythm that celebrate or reproduce or complete the painting—you cannot explain it—which neh-el will continue to sketch and color with fingers smeared with a color like dried blood, like the hide of the deer.

  You will feel agitated and happy, allowing something inside you to take form in your voice, things you will never have imagined, a new strength that will begin in your breast and rise to your lips and emerge, resonant, to celebrate everything that pulses within you, things you have never suspected.