Happy Families_ Stories - Carlos Fuentes [110]
It is a peculiarity of this city that the arches and the canal that once ran through here celebrate the memory of an old lacustrine capital whose springs began to dry up until the entire valley was transformed into a saucer of dust surrounded by thirst and dead trees. Not long ago they finished setting up here one of those fairs that in every neighborhood of the immense capital of Mexico are, at times, the only solace of people of no means, which are the immense majority. My father and I see the numerous reality of our people in the Zócalo on the night of September 15, in the Villa de Guadalupe on December 12, on Sundays in Chapultepec, at any hour in the great human serpent of Tacuba in the center, of Andrés Molina in Santa Anita, of the Highway de la Piedad, the Highway de Tlalpan, the Highway Ignacio Zaragoza going to Puebla, and the Indios Verdes going north.
There are people.
There is an audience.
The fair at the Arcos de Belén has been assembling all kinds of attractions, from the wheel of fortune to the octopus, from the carousel to fortune-telling birds, from hawkers of remedies—sciatica, impotence, nightmares, calluses, bad blood, good life—to the wizards and diviners stationed at the corners with their crystal balls and starcovered pointed hats and several mariachi groups (the young star of the ranchera Maximiliano Batalla) and bolero singers (the retired songstress Elvira Morales). Weight lifters, failed tenors, big-bellied odalisques, certified veterans of the Revolution and improbable horsemen of the Empire, declaimers of immensely popular verses (Toast of the Bohemian; Nocturne for Rosario; Margarita, the Sea Is Beautiful). Reciters of the Constitution, memorizers of the telephone book, voices with the singsong of the lottery, with the buzz of neighborhood gossip, the acidity of balcony slanderers, the tears of unemployed circus clowns.
People come here five times a week, five nights in a row (the authorities don’t give seven-day permits in order to exercise authority in something). They come to have a good time with the spectacle of the armless teenager who, with long, strong legs, trips the old musketeer who threatens him with a little aluminum sword, and each time the old man attacks the boy, he extends his leg and makes the musketeer ostentatiously take a tremendous fall, to the delight of the audience. Applause whistles and shouts.
“How much?”
“Whatever you wish.”
6. In this way, my father and I managed to save enough to buy a VCR, and now the two of us can enjoy old movies brought back to life, clean, remastered, and in Dolby Digital, together we can see Edmundo Dantés escape the Castle of If in the shroud of Abbot Faria, D’Artagnan presenting the jewels of the Duke of Buckingham to the queen, Emilio de Rocabruna approaching the coast of Maracaibo under the black flags of the corsairs.
“Who’s the girl who falls in love with Zorro, Father?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I think she’s very pretty.”
“She’s just a foreigner, Sandokán, a bit player, a soubrette, as they used to say in the old days. She’s of no importance.”
Chorus of the Children of Good Families
Fito bored sunday afternoon
he’s unfailing
he doesn’t pass unnoticed
he’s good-looking
he’s superfine
a terrific time incredibly stoned
high as an eagle
cool cool cool
but he’s bored
he comes from a decent family nice fine
he has manners
he has servants
his mom and dad call them rude coarse untrustworthy trash bums
indians
but would never say it
his mommy and daddy feel more than disgusting
disgust: mexica louts
that’s why he organizes the group of pissers
to water the roses for them and give enough to their vegetables
the ones who are unfailing the nice ones the crème