Happy Families_ Stories - Carlos Fuentes [20]
Chorus of Rival Buddies
Don Pedro was fifty-two years old
His compadre Don Félix fifty-four
The baptismal font joined them
Pedro was godfather to Félix’s son
Félix was godfather to Pedro’s daughter
They got together on Sundays for a family barbecue
They were both supporters of the PRI they felt nostalgic for the PRI because with the PRI there was order progress security for people like
Don Pedro and Don Félix
Not now without the PRI
They became annoyed with each other only once
In the line to vote for the PRI
“I got up first”
“You’re wrong I was here before anybody”
“What difference does it make Félix if in the end we’re both voting for the PRI”
“Are you sure Pedro? Suppose I change my vote?”
“But the vote is secret”
“Then don’t get in front of me Félix I got here first get in line compadre asshole”
And the second time was on the highway to Cuernavaca
They were going to celebrate the fifteenth birthday of the daughter of their boss
The undersecretary
But on the curves Félix passed Pedro and Pedro got mad and decided to speed past Félix
And the races began
We’ll see who’s more of a fucker
Félix or Pedro
Who’s more macho
The cars ran side by side
Pedro gives Félix the finger
Félix comes back at Pedro with five insulting blasts on the horn
Shave and a haircut, dum-dum
Pedro pulls his car alongside Félix’s
Félix accelerates
Pedro spits on the steering wheel
Félix feels his macho hormone-amen rising up
Pedro reflects hormones are idiots
The dog lifts his leg and urinates
The dog behind him tries to urinate more than the first one
In the sacred space where men piss
Félix jumps the median
Pedro goes over the cliff
The dogs urinate
They’re served with parsley at the undersecretary’s barbecue.
A Cousin
Without Charm
1. We didn’t talk about “That Woman” in this house. Even her name was forgotten. She was simply “That Woman.” Some crossed themselves when she was mentioned; some sneered; some took offense. It was very difficult to convince the matriarch, Doña Piedad Quiroz de Sorolla, that “That Woman” was no longer here, and Doña Piedita could get out of bed and move around the desolate house in El Desierto de los Leones with no danger of running into the wicked “That Woman.”
“There’s no reason anymore to fulfill your vow, Doña Piedita. You can get up and walk. You can even change your dress.”
Because the “vow” that Widow de Sorolla had imposed on herself consisted of two decisions. First, to take to her bed, and second, to take to her bed dressed without getting up or changing her “clothes” until “That Woman” had left.
The truth is that life was better before, or at least bearable. The big old house in El Desierto, submerged in mourning since the death of the patriarch, Don Fermín Sorolla, revived when the daughter of the family, Ana Fernanda Sorolla, contracted matrimony with a young accountant, Jesús Aníbal de Lillo. The wedding caused a great stir, and everyone remarked on what a good-looking couple they were: Ana Fernanda—tall, very white-skinned, with luxuriant black hair and a suggestive mixture of willfulness and affection in her eyes, lips always partially open to show off her teeth, her Indian cheekbones, high and hard under skin that was so Spanish, and her walk, also intriguing, tip-toeing and stepping hard at the same time—all of which seemed to support as well as complement the serious, dry personality of the bridegroom, as if the severe manner and amiable but distant smile of CPA Jesús Aníbal de Lillo served to toughen the barely “virile” physical beauty of a twenty-seven-year-old man who had kept the look of a beardless adolescent: impeccable skin and pale cheeks on which the long blond mustache could not erase the impression that Jesús Aníbal was a young Asturian Apollo with curly blond hair and a bearing not at all athletic, almost consumed in