Happy Families_ Stories - Carlos Fuentes [0]
Contents
Title Page
Epigraph
A Family Like Any Other
Chorus of the Street Gossips
The Disobedient Son
Chorus of Rival Buddies
A Cousin Without Charm
Chorus of the Threatened Daughter
Conjugal Ties (1)
Chorus of the Father of Rock
Mater Dolorosa
Chorus of the Perfect Wife
The Mariachi’s Mother
Chorus of the Naked Honeymoon
Sweethearts
Chorus of the Murdered Family
The Armed Family
Chorus of the Suffering Children
The Gay Divorcee
Chorus of a Son of the Sea
The Official Family
Chorus of the Family from the Neighborhood
The Father’s Servant
Chorus of Rancorous Families
The Secret Marriage
Chorus of the Daughter Who Killed Herself
The Star’s Son
Chorus of the Children of Good Families
The Discomfiting Brother
Chorus of the Inspected Family
Conjugal Ties (2)
Chorus of the Savage Families
Eternal Father
Choruscodaconrad
About the Author
Also by Carlos Fuentes
Copyright
Happy families are all alike;
every unhappy family is
unhappy in its own way.
LEO TOLSTOY,
Anna Karenina
HAPPY FAMILIES
A Family Like
Any Other
THE FATHER. Pastor Pagán knows how to wink. He’s a professional at winking. For him, winking an eye—just one—is a way to be courteous. All the people he deals with conclude their business with a wink. The bank manager when he approves a loan. The teller when he cashes a check. The administrator when he hands it to him. The cashier when he plays the fool and doesn’t inspect it. The chief’s assistant when he tells him to go to the bank. The porter. The chauffeur. The gardener. The maid. Everybody winks at him. Headlights on cars wink, traffic lights, lightning in the sky, grass in the ground, eagles in the air, not to mention the planes that fly over the house of Pastor Pagán and his family the whole blessed day. The feline purr of the engines is interrupted only by the winking of the traffic on Avenida Revolución. Pastor responds to them with his own wink, moved by the certainty that this is dictated by good manners. Now that he’s on a pension, he thinks of himself as a professional winker who never opened both eyes at the same time, and when he did, it was already too late. One wink too many, he thinks in self-recrimination, one wink too many. He didn’t retire. He was retired at the age of fifty-two. What could he complain about? Instead of punishing him, they gave him nice compensation. Along with early retirement came the gift of this house, not a great mansion but a decent place to live. A relic of the distant “Aztec” period in Mexico City, when the nationalistic architects of the 1930s decided to build houses that looked like Indian pyramids. In other words, the house tapered between the ground floor and the third floor, which was so narrow it was uninhabitable. But his daughter, Alma, found it ideal for her equally narrow life, devoted to surfing on the Internet and finding in its virtual world a necessary—or sufficient—amount of life so she did not have to leave the house but felt herself part of a vast invisible tribe connected to her, as she was connected to and stimulated by a universe that she thought the only one worthy to take possession of “culture.” The ground floor, really the basement, is occupied now by his son, Abel, who rejoined the family at the age of thirty-two after a failed attempt at leading an independent life. He came back proudly in order not to show that he was coming back contrite. Pastor received him without saying a word. As if nothing had happened. But Elvira, Pastor’s wife, reclaimed her son with signs of jubilation. No one remarked that Abel, by coming home, was admitting that at his age, the only way he could live was free of charge in the bosom of his family. Like a child. Except that the child accepts his situation with no problems. With joy.
THE MOTHER. Elvira Morales sang boleros. That was where Pastor Pagán met her, in a second-rate club near the Monumento a la Madre, on Avenida Villalongín. From the time she was very young, Elvira sang boleros at home, when she took a bath or helped to clean, and