Happy Families_ Stories - Carlos Fuentes [101]
Faithful?
In the deepest sense. Continue with him faithfully so you and I can always love each other in secret, with the excitement of the first hour.
Poor Cristóbal . . . I don’t know. I don’t know if . . .
Don’t finish the sentence, Lavinia. You and I don’t need to finish sentences.
It was a mistake for us to meet.
Suspension points . . .
Forget it . . .
Chorus of the Daughter Who Killed Herself
The girl went to the cemetery with the pistol that belonged to her papa who
abused her the pistol was blacker and harder than her father’s cock
I hope he understood that after the
girl put a bullet through her head and then
(just like in the movies)
stood up revived
(just like daffy duck road runner the crazy bird and tom the cat who falls from a skyscraper smashes into a mountain is folded into an accordion is flattened into a tortilla is shit on and always revives resumes his usual form pursues pursues pursues the mouse jerry)
just like in the movies
to tell him what’s up you old prick you thought I wasn’t capable of
killing myself killing myself
look at me dead and learn your lesson daddy and don’t punish your
little girl because she broke the vase and hung from the towel rack
and don’t fight anymore papa and mama because then papa comes in
with smoke coming from his nostrils and drool from his mouth to take his revenge
on me for his argument with mama
don’t fight anymore because I swear I’ll throw myself off the roof
don’t make me desperate anymore daddymommy do you think I’m made of wood?
I touch my skin I pinch myself I feel don’t you know that I feel?
there are four hundred of us kids who kill ourselves every year in the Rep Mex
Wanna bet you didn’t know that?
The Star’s Son
1. You stand at the mirror in your bathroom. You look at yourself in the mirror. You look for D’Artagnan leaping from the balcony to the back of the horse waiting for him in the lane. You hope to see the Black Corsair swinging from the mast of the Folgore at the attack on Maracaibo. You imagine, in your mirror, the Count of Monte Cristo—you yourself, young, with those motionless gray hairs daubed at your temples like a sea of stone—and you see in your mirror Alejandro Sevilla, yourself, filming The Seven Boys from Ecija, and you are all seven of them, you alone are all you need to incarnate the seven generous Spanish bandits of the eighteenth century. You are the hunchback Enrique de Lagardere, the gentleman in disguise to deceive the court of Louis XIII and save the honor of Blanche de Nevers . . . except that now, Alejandro, you can’t shake off the imaginary hump, it’s stuck to your body, the deformity isn’t made of rubber anymore, it’s made of bone, and then you shake your head so the mirror will give back to you the dashing figure of the masked Zorro, ready to defend violated justice in Old California.
You no longer are.
No matter how much you shake your head.
Neither Zorro nor the count of Lagardere comes back. You can no longer be the third or fourth musketeer, and the last time you tried to do D’Artagnan, you leaped from the balcony of your beautiful Constance, and instead of landing gallantly in the saddle (as in the old days), your bones dropped like a sack onto the mattress that divine mercy (the film studio Mexigrama) placed there to prevent accidents.
“Alejandro, give up making costume adventure movies.”
You refrained from telling them that you are the star, that the films were the colossal image of your life, and the studio never offered you a production worthy of your person. You are not the producer’s servant or the director’s valet. You are Alejandro Sevilla, the top star of Mexican film. You have been for thirty years. You dubbed the voice of Charles Boyer. You made inroads into Hollywood films. You were famous for having been Marlene Dietrich’s lover, and whether it was true or not doesn’t matter: Marlene has been forgotten, Boyer is dead, and you refuse to believe