Distant Relations

by Carlos Fuentes

  That adults almost always triumph, he tells me, toying with the stem of his wine goblet as he had that afternoon during luncheon with Victor, makes all the greater the victory of those who have preserved the well-being the mature world calls sickness: childhood and its private domains.

  “You see,” he said during our long luncheon at the club, “there was a reason for the hospitality I extended to the Heredias, no less compelling for being cunningly conceived by my subconscious and hidden from my conscious mind. To put it simply, I wanted Victor to let me live his childhood with him before we both lost it; he because he was growing up, I because I was going to die.”

  I am accustomed to my friend’s stoicism; although befitting his age, it is still admirable. But now there was something more than stoicism in his words. That morning, he said, Victor had invited him to join in his game and, stupidly, he had nearly missed the opportunity, nearly rejected it because of his passion for the order and reason that wear the solemn mask of maturity and veil one’s fear that one may recover one’s lost imagination. They ate in silence. Later, my friend passed the afternoon in his austere but comfortable bedchamber, a refuge from the Napoleonic delirium the Countess had imposed on the remainder of the mansion.

  A rigorous delirium, rather than a delirious rigor, Branly thought as, following his custom, he gazed at the faded photograph of the thirty-year-old man who had been his father. A handsome man, the son thought now, his best feature the profile, at least in this sepia photograph in which the photographer, as if privy to the still undiscovered potential of his art, had transcended the sharp relief of the stiff family portraits of the epoch to create a diffused light of his own, a nimbus seemingly born of the intensely clear eyes of my friend’s father. In fact, I say to myself when again I have the opportunity to examine that admirable photograph, he possessed the secret of being able to create an atmosphere around his subject, in the very way the suspended dusk of Paris, at this hour when my friend and I are being served our café filtre, is the distillation of all the dusks of all the epochs of our city. The atmosphere, I say to Branly, can evoke a time that is not our own, invisible, without end, and as secret as the ageless voices which, according to another of my friends, have remained suspended throughout time, awaiting the person who will rediscover and rearrange them.

  My friend says that he inherited from his mother his least refined, but also his most resilient, qualities, the essence of stony, storm-hewn Breton stock. From his father he inherited only the hands—clasped under a cleft chin in the photograph—as if this Captain de Branly were praying with singular verve, given the fact that he’s dressed as a soldier. He had not inherited his father’s eyes, or the long wavy blond hair of this reserve officer, photographed before his death in 1900—not a death in battle but in a hospital room, and for causes that penicillin would have eradicated in twenty-four of our hours.

  With measured affection my friend runs his hand across the face of his father, dead at thirty, as if wishing to close the eyelids and forget the eyes that in the photo look as if they were silver. Born in 1870. Now, that was a year for a soldier. The son, in 1914, would live and win battles, unlike the father, who could neither win nor lose during the three decades of peace he was fated to live following the triumphant return from Tonkin and the inglorious return from Mexico, the humiliation of Bazaine by Moltke and the bloody insurrection of the Paris Commune. He covered his father’s eyes and closed his own.

  He says that beside the father’s photo he keeps a volume of the poems of Jules Supervielle, because in the presence of his father’s likeness he always reads a few verses he is deeply convinced are appropriate. This isn’t something he could explain, he adds, and asks whether I have ever had a similar experience with a book, say, or a painting.

  “No. In my case it’s a score, Branly, Haydn’s Emperor Quartet. It isn’t, as it is with you, that I associate it with a person, even less with someone dead. It’s my way of relating to myself. When I listen to that quartet, I gain serenity or strength or forgetfulness, I experience the emotion I need at any given moment.”

  Branly smiled and said that perhaps it was the same with him, and that associating the poem with his father was more homage than mystery. Maybe I was right, maybe Supervielle’s poem made use of the photograph of the father to reach the son.

  Voyez-vous pas qu’il sépare

  Mal le jour d’avec la nuit,

  Et les cieux les plus profonds

  Du coeur sans fond qui l’agite?

  Branly murmured, adding: “Supervielle, of course, was born in Uruguay; he comes from your world.”

  “Oh, Buenos Aires and Montevideo are my lost cities, they are dead to me. I shall never see them again. France is the final homeland of every Latin American. Paris will never be a lost city.”

  That afternoon Hugo Heredia arrived, without complications.

  “Should I follow Master Victor’s orders?” Etienne, the chauffeur, asked as my friend was overseeing the transfer of Hugo’s luggage from the Citroën to the house.

  “Of course. They are my guests. I am surprised by your question, Etienne.”

  “But, M. le Comte, you were inconvenienced by having to come from the station by taxi while I was taking the Spaniards shopping. That is not my custom.”

  “I repeat, they are my guests. Follow their instructions as if they were my own.”

  “The young gentleman’s as well?”

  Branly nodded, but something kept him from actually enunciating the word “yes.” In spite of himself, his eyes questioned Etienne. The chauffeur realized it, and so that Etienne would not have to avert his eyes in embarrassment every time Branly gazed unblinkingly at him, my friend had no recourse but to ask if there was a reason for such a question.

  “They won’t tell you,” the chauffeur said.

  “Who are ‘they,’ Etienne?”

  “The two Spaniards. José and Florencio. They’re afraid to lose their jobs. They don’t want to go back to Spain, you know.”

  “But what happened to José and Florencio?”

  “Well, you know how Florencio looks out for José. Yesterday José was unpacking the boy’s suitcases, as any good man would, hanging things up and putting his belongings in the drawers. Then young Victor came in and, according to José, flew into a rage for no reason at all. He whipped off his belt and began beating José; he drove him to his knees. Then he said never to touch his suitcases, not ever, unless he himself gave the order—and not before.”

  José, he added, had gone weeping to the kitchen and Florencio had said he’d go up and give that arrogant young man a good thrashing, who did he think he was? But José had smoothed things over. He reminded Florencio of how young Master Lope had treated them in Zaragoza, that’s how young gentlemen were in Spain, and across the ocean, well! there they were young lords of gibbet and blade. Then they’d thought over their precarious status as immigrant workers and decided to leave things alone.

  “You know how they are, M. le Comte. They know how to console one another.”

  A vulgar spark glinted from Etienne’s rimless glasses, and this time Branly glared at him sternly, unblinkingly, until the robust Celt reddened, coughed, and asked to be excused.

  My friend was not surprised by the fact that while tea was being served in the great hall of the candelabra the father and son pored over the telephone directory of the Parisian metropolitan area.

  “It’s a game we play,” the father said pleasantly. “Everywhere we go, we look to see if we can find our names in the directory. The one who wins claims a prize from the one who loses.”

  “You were lucky in Puebla,” said Victor, scanning the thick book.

  “But you won in Monterrey and in Mérida,” said Hugo, patting his son’s dark lank hair.

  “And in Paris, too, Papa.” The boy laughed happily. “Look.”

  Father and son, arms about one another’s shoulders, peered closely at the small print of the directory.

  “Heredia, Vi
ctor,” they read together, laughing, the son more quickly and gaily than his father. “Heredia, Victor, 54 Clos des Renards, Enghien-les-Bains.”

  “Where is that?” asked Victor.

  My friend was still not quite at ease in the world the Heredias had opened to him, a world he consciously desired, though unconsciously—he knew now, free of the confusion of the morning—he was alarmed by the kinship that seemed to him in danger of closing a too-perfect circle, the union of alpha and omega. He replied with equanimity, not totally immersed in the game, nor totally outside it.

  “North of Paris.”

  “Is it easy to get there?” Victor asked.

  “Yes, you take exit 3 on the A-1 highway to Beauvais and Chantilly.”

  “Papa, I want Etienne to take me there!”

  “That would be a waste of time. There’s so much to see in Paris.”

  “But you lost, Papa. I want my prize.”

  “Isn’t it enough to beat me?”

  “No. I want my prize. I want to go there. You promised. We promised we’d give each other prizes, don’t you remember?”

  “But wouldn’t it be a good idea to telephone your Victor Heredia first?” Hugo suggested with a certain resignation.

  “Remember how surprised the old man in Monterrey was when we showed up without warning?” Victor parried. “Remember?”

  With his arm still around his son’s shoulder, Hugo cupped his chin in his hand and forced the boy to look into his eyes. “No. I don’t remember. You went alone.”

  The boy hung his head and his ears flamed crimson.

  “He thought we were some long-lost relations coming to claim part of the inheritance,” Victor added weakly, a tremor in his deliberately lighthearted voice. “The hereditary Heredias.”

  “Victor,” Hugo said severely. “I’m delighted to play these games with you, but if they are to have any value we must never lie. Neither of us. Yes, we both looked up the name in the Monterrey directory.”

  The boy, with a hint of desperation that alarmed my friend, quickly explained that in Mexico the people of Monterrey have the reputation of being misers, like the Scots in Europe. That was the joke, did he see?

  “But we did not go to his house together,” his father said with a tone of finality. “You went alone. I allowed you to go alone. That was your prize.”

  Victor looked at my friend beseechingly and Branly said that of course one would have to telephone first; he would be happy to do it. He got up to avoid Victor’s pained expression, and with the directory in one hand and his spectacles in the other walked to the library adjoining the great salon. He left the door half-open as he called the number in Enghien-les-Bains and heard first the firm but calm voice of Hugo, then the reproachful voice of Victor, followed by the angry voices of both and simultaneously the voice of the person who lifted the receiver to answer. As my friend spoke, the quarreling voices of the Heredias were stilled.

  “Monsieur Heredia? Victor Heredia?” my friend asked, and the voice replied, “Who wants him?”

  It is an old man’s voice, my friend thought, and he says that in that instant he wondered if the Heredias were playing a game within a game, seeking, in addition to their names, and complementing that game, a correspondence between ages as well. He had just learned that the Victor Heredia in Monterrey was an old man; he guessed that the Victor Heredia of Enghien was also old. Had the names and ages of the Hugo in Puebla and the Victor in Mérida coincided, so that the father, who was the loser in names, was winner in the category of ages? Or it could be, ironically, that the ones with Victor’s name were to be old, and those with the father’s name young. The inherent nonsense of these combinations piqued Branly’s curiosity and his sense of humor; it also occurred to him that this might be the reason for Hugo’s unexpected irritation. Was my friend going to reward him with the news that this time the person who bore his son’s name was a young man? He disliked having to disillusion him.

  “I hope you will accept what I am going to say in good humor. Two foreign friends of mine looked up your name in the telephone directory…”

  “My name?”

  “Please bear with me. Actually, they were looking for their names and found yours.”

  “How is that?”

  “It’s a kind of game, please don’t take offense…”

  “Tell them to go play games with their bitch of a mother,” spat the voice, and the line went dead.

  My friend returned to the salon and reported the failure of a mission he should have realized was absurd but had carried out because of an overrationalization of his keenness to participate in Victor Heredia’s games. This initial failure, he tells me, made him doubt his capacity to enter fully into the game, a game which even Hugo Heredia, at least a moment before, and to my friend’s surprise, had seemed reluctant to join in. Branly was aware of the Heredias’ restrained expectancy. My friend told them that he had failed, without going into detail. He waited, savoring the satisfaction of news withheld, certain that at any moment Hugo would ask the age of the man who had answered the phone. Was he old? Young? But the jesses of those questions were never loosed; they bound Hugo’s lips and his son’s as the falconer’s jesses immobilize his falcon. My friend finally broke the uneasy silence to say that he was sure they would be interested to know that the man who answered, who had said he was Victor Heredia, had the voice of an old or at least a tired man.

  Hugo displayed no glimmer of reaction. It was Victor who looked at his father expectantly and asked: “Then may I go tomorrow, Papa? Will you let me?”

  The father removed his spectacles, as if to suggest that eyes can be as tired as a voice, old or not. But he nodded in acquiescence, as if finally conceding that fatigue and old age are synonymous. My friend sipped his tea and wondered where the line lay that divided the unity of the father and son from their efforts to dominate one another. Victor accepted Hugo’s intellectual instruction; Hugo was not disturbed that his son whipped a servant. Both played the game of names together from the beginning, but Hugo refused to follow it to its conclusion and, if the occasion arose, to visit the man who bore his name. It was impossible to know which of the two was lying—the father, who perhaps wanted to protect his son from a risky encounter but not spoil an innocent game, or the son, who perhaps did not understand his father’s unwillingness to participate in the conclusion of the game, and so, though only in his imagination, included him in it.

  But that was not my friend’s problem. He repeated this to himself the following morning as Hugo left for the opening meeting of the conference on the Place Fontenoy, and Etienne drove them along the Seine toward Epinay and then plunged through a succession of the monotonous, haphazardly redeveloped towns of the Val d’Oise.

  Branly attempted to entertain Victor with some comments about the countryside; Etienne barely masked his yawns. The thought crossed my friend’s mind that he would have to find a more respectful and reserved chauffeur. He explained to Victor that they were approaching the region that from ancient times had been called the Pays de France, quite different from the neighboring provinces of Parisis, Sanlisis, Valois, Île de France, and Brie champenois; but all the time he was talking and entertaining Victor, believing he was concentrating on what he was saying, his mind actually was on what he is now telling me.

  “It was only by a miracle that this lad and I happened to meet. I don’t mean because we were separated by geography, but because in the normal course of events I would have died before I met him, or even before he was born. Or possibly the boy might have died before I could meet him.”

  He says he almost asked Victor to describe his brother, but just then Etienne, who in spite of everything, honest ham face and rimless spectacles, was very proficient at the wheel, turned from the highway and drove into the narrow business streets of Enghien, past the esplanade of the casino, the lake and the hot baths, beneath the railroad bridges, until he came to one of those magic, unexpected woods that redeem the ugliness of Parisian suburbs
and obliterate not only the reality but even the memory of everything but these oaks lining the road, these arching chestnut trees filtering the fading September light.

  As the Citroën turned into the private avenue of the Clos des Renards, my friend felt as if he were sinking into a world of undersea greenness. Once the automobile left behind the stone and iron arch displaying the name of the property, the avenue descended swiftly but smoothly and the trees, in conjugal embrace overhead, seemed to rise even taller. Below, lifting fingers of ivy covered the bed of this vegetal ocean. Cherry trees lent fiery grace to the deep, breathless coolness. Branly felt a sense of suffocation, as if in approaching this villa in Enghien he were descending in a submarine; the sea, too, cools as it drowns.

  The car proceeded slowly over the thin layer of dead leaves. At the end of the avenue my friend could see a clearing, like the light at the end of a tunnel. He was eager, he confesses, to leave behind the suffocating darkness of the woods for what he could glimpse ahead, a French park, a garden of intelligence, a chessboard where the wild woods of a surely romantic imagination had been checkmated by a geometric precision of shrubs, greensward, pansies, and stone urns placed in perfect symmetry, like a brief prologue to the manor house, whose solitary façade rose as symmetrical as the garden, as if garden and house were reflecting one another, Branly says, in a nonexistent pool. In vain he looked for the element of order that as it duplicated would accentuate the symmetry: a mirror of water. The solid mansion rose from the level of the warning gravel—now crushed by an equally solid Etienne as he circled the garden and came to a stop before the entrance steps—to the crown of three slate-colored mansards and twin brick chimneys. And as if transported from the world of the forest, the villa became an undersea fortress, the useless barbican of a forgotten battle at the bottom of the sea.

  A date was inscribed on the molding above the doorway: A.D. 1870. Etienne thought it was the number of the house and that he had made a wrong turn; he muttered curses against a municipal system that would assign two numbers to one house. My friend knew it was a date, not only by the reference to the Year of our Lord, which meant nothing to Etienne, but also because as he preceded Victor out of the car he glanced toward the second story of the house, where he saw hovering in the window a silhouette whose sail, like that of an ancient schooner, blended into indistinct waves of flowing hair—sail, fluttering curtains, white gown, all glimpsed fleetingly yet as one in the impression of antiquity they made on a man, my old, my dear friend, who had arrived with his young foreign pupil at what he thought was the end of a game but really was only the beginning.