Lost in the daily passage of life, perhaps you did not realize, Josué, that someone met you and from then on accompanied you, even in absence, invisible but always present: your woman-demon, your personal she-devil … Because when you lived, violence and habit, habit interrupted by violence, or vice versa, Josué, prevented you from distinguishing, until very late, until the final hour of your life, between the good and evil demon. Your ruthless guardian María Egipciaca, your fleeting nurse Elvira Ríos. Your contradictory, wise, and accommodating teacher Antonio Sanginés. Your dark brother Miguel Aparecido, imprisoned by himself and in himself. Your other brother Jericó, whom you loved so well, hated so well, and who in the midst of it all served you so well in measuring the infinite degrees of a man between love and hate. Your unknown mother Sibila Sarmiento to whom you can dedicate only the requiem of pity. Your distant father Max Monroy, so impenetrable because he is his own political party, the only party, so sure of never losing, turning lies into truth and truth into lies in order to move from there and affirm the power of the old, fearful the young threaten them, turning upside down the proven origin of all the things they created: This is what Max feared, he did not put you and your brother to the test to see if you waged war counting on all the comforts except that of knowing who you were, not because he wanted to avoid the brutal, inhuman destiny he imposed on Miguel Aparecido, no, but because of his fear of you if he set you free without the ties that eventually, with crumbling sophistry, he imposed on you: I will give you everything to live except what threatens me. Asunta knew this, you know? She knew the old man was afraid of you and perhaps, if she annihilated the two of you so you would not inherit, Max would understand it as another act of her loyalty: not so you would not inherit, only so you would not present yourselves as what you were and Jericó once was: the sons of Monroy whom Monroy did not put in prison, because in Miguel Aparecido’s destiny you and your brother Jericó must see not what did not happen to you but what could happen: fathers and sons devour one another, the rebel house will sit on scorpions, desolate hearths will be extinguished, corpses will bow before idols, and houses will be beacon lights …
“And Lucha Zapata?”
We were flying over the mountains of Mexico, destination unknown. The waters rushed from the hills to the sea, laying waste to the high mesetas. I looked at salt marshes and swamps. I saw the birds fleeing and the herds of bulls in the valleys and she-goats on the rocks, we flew over a valley of bones, and Ezekiel said to himself, prophesy upon these bones, such is the command of God, enveloped in a fierce sound of thunder and lightning, flying over the mountains: prophesy, Josué, prophesy that all these bones will be your house, and I rebelled, even at the cost of my life, because Ezekiel could let me go and I didn’t want to die twice without repeating:
“Lucha Zapata.”
Perhaps it was a response to my plea—for Lucha Zapata was now my final prayer—: in a cumulus of clouds I could see people I knew; approaching me on our flight, I saw Alberto-Albertina returned to her condition as girl: naked, with the languid V of her thighs displaying the limpid ↓ of her sex, she recognized me, greeted me, and was joined by the waving hands of the children drowned in the pool in San Juan de Aragón, naked Chuchita, delighted not to have to dress anymore, Merlín who was part of the band of idiots used to sneak into affluent houses, his head shaved, an idiot now but happy, his mouth half-open and the snot running, Félix with the sad face, stripped now of the ancient guilt I saw in his face when I walked through the prison, but with his teeth always full of the remains of tortilla and egg. They greeted me with rejoicing, as if celebrating that I would be joining them, their condition still mysterious to me, though the rapid transformation of the cumulus clouds into luminous, dying cirrus clouds like a sunset and the announcement of the dispersal of the clouds into strata indicated that the angelic vision would not be seen here, that this sky was deceptive, that in the end clouds are only ice in suspension, water vapor ready to return to its origin and destiny, which is the immense embrace of the sea, from which I come, which I no longer know if I left, and to which I don’t know if I will return.
The children greet me and this makes me happy. It irritates me that out of a half-ruined hovel on the side of a volcano, crouching, dressed in black, holding a baseball bat in her hand, part of the volcanic landscape of black sand, comes my ancient nemesis María Egipciaca, the jailer of my childhood, waving the bat and shouting or screeching or whistling, a little old woman died shuffling the deck, a little old woman died shuffling the deck …
I gave thanks. Elvira Ríos and Lucha Zapata were not to be found in the cemetery of the air.
Neither was Jericó.
Neither was Asunta Jordán.
“Lucha Zapata!”
But Ezekiel paid no attention to me. We flew over the Meseta de Anáhuac and from a place hidden among stones and underbrush, leafy pirul trees and weeping willows, the voice I recognized rose up, now with plaintive accents, now authoritarian, the voice of Antigua Concepción surviving the disasters enumerated by Ezekiel and in open combat with the prophet, don’t believe him, my boy, Josué, you who have given me your companionship, now I hope nothing more separates us, don’t believe the false prophet who brings you rushing through the air, damn charlatan, don’t believe anything he says, power is exercised wherever it can be exercised, in life or in death, it is exercised wherever it can be, not wherever you want it to be, that’s my argument with this meddling busybody Don Ezekiel with the big mouth and the black wings, ask him if there are any politics with ethics, just ask him, ask him if something exists outside the palace of politics and the temple of money … ask him, Josué …
Ezekiel beat his wings too late, he said, not paying attention to Antigua Concepción who addressed us from her grave, be quiet old woman, there is no need to recruit troops at sunset, and she responded with a vast burst of laughter, the rights of a supplicant are sacred, since the beginning of the world, I beg you to return my grandson to me, let him fall, ill-omened bastard, damn prophet, let loose your prey, he is my grandson, he is mine, he is free to fall, or isn’t he?
He is free to open the way to death, Ezekiel said with a sigh without driving back Antigua Concepción, let my children go, they are no longer Cain and Abel, they no longer fight with each other but with the necessity to which they must submit, do you hear me, wet-winged Indian? Each man is merely seafoam while he lives, grandeur is an accident death does not forgive because she is greater than everything, do you understand me, blubbermouth with wings? What are you going to give Josué? Not a totopo or a tortilla or a cake from the Shrine of Guadalupe? Miserable matinee magician, give me back my grandson, have pity, be fair! And the prophet: It is unfair not to know you are mortal and death is the justice of immortality, he is necessarily mine, shouts Antigua Concepción, necessity overflows you, Ezekiel responds, give me back Cain and Abel so they can reconcile in my bosom, the perverse grandmother wails now and Ezekiel: They are not battling each other but the desire and the destiny to which they will have to submit.
“They are sleepwalkers,” the old woman shouted. “I’ll wake them.”
“They are destiny,” murmurs Ezekiel, and he begins an even higher flight that leaves behind the grave where Antigua Concepción lies, shouting all is lost, don’t deceive Josué, don’t tell lies, don’t weep and moan, look to your own house, leave another’s alone …
The voice was dying out surrounded by smog and motors.
I insisted: “Lucha Zapata?” as if to dissipate the events that were suffocating me.
Then Ezekiel picked me up by the back of my neck and said she, she was your good demon, your companion, he said when we left the mountains behind and reached the height of the meseta and Mexico City stretched into infinity, brilliant in the lights of dusk as it was gray in the light of day, and Ezekiel murmured the words of God I will pursue your blood, blood will pursue you, blood will not hate you, and Lucha Zapata will be your avenging angel, Lucha Zapata is the only person
who never betrayed you, now she will avenge you, look at her from on high, look at her go into the Utopia building without shouting, without naming you with each pulse of her heart and each beat of her lungs, at last sowing terror in the building, no one stops her, not even Ensenada de Ensenada, this breaks all the rules, this is not foreseen, Lucha is pulled in by the wind, no one can distinguish her from the air though everyone feels the fire of the hurricane until Lucha Zapata, breaking glass and splintering doors, enters the sanctuary of Asunta Jordán and surprises her with her nose in the computer and Asunta does not have time to resist the stab of a knife and another and another and another, stab of ice stab of dream stab of desperate wakefulness stab tearing the air to drive into the neck back breasts eyes of Asunta Jordán who resists by waving her arms, covers her skirt as if the stab had reached her sex, tries to clean herself off and falls facedown onto the computer that transmits a senseless prayer with no addressee …
They rush at Lucha Zapata.
They take her.
Don’t look anymore, Josué. Don’t look. Your destiny on earth has been fulfilled. The exterminating arrows have been shot. The names of the ghosts have been pronounced. Endure the crimes of the city. Prophesy against the city. And now, Josué, forget the great noise at your back and take a roll of paper to recount an incomplete narration …
These are the names of the tribes: They are spoken from the Aragón prison by your brother Miguel Aparecido, who still lives.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CARLOS FUENTES, Mexico’s leading novelist, was born in Panama City in 1928 and educated in Mexico, the United States, Geneva, and various cities in South America. He has been his country’s ambassador to France and is the author of more than ten novels, including The Eagle’s Throne, The Death of Artemio Cruz, Terra Nostra, The Old Gringo, The Years with Laura Diaz, Diana: The Goddess Who Hunts Alone, and Inez. His nonfiction includes The Crystal Frontier and This I Believe: An A to Z of a Life. He has received many awards for his accomplishments, among them the Mexican National Award for Literature in 1984, the Cervantes Prize in 1987, and the Légion d’Honneur in 1992. He was nominated for the Man Booker International Prize in 2007.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
EDITH GROSSMAN, the winner of a number of translating awards, most notably the 2006 PEN Ralph Manheim Medal, is the distinguished translator of works by major Spanish-language authors including Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Mayra Montero, and Alvaro Mutis as well as Carlos Fuentes. Her translation of Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote was published to great acclaim in 2003. She received an award in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2008 and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009, the same year in which she held a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2010 she published the book Why Translation Matters.
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