Happy Families_ Stories - Carlos Fuentes [44]
Your daughter looked at me, Señora, and I would have liked to tell her:
I suffer because I cannot help anyone. What am I going to give to my old village of Indians? What am I going to give to the mestizo Mexicans who despise me because I remind them they are part Indian and run the risk of returning to the tribe? What can I give to the gringos who use me as an excuse for feeling like humanitarians? Am I partial everywhere, never an entire being: partial, a quantity between two parts, never an entire being?
Your daughter looked at me with fear. She looked at me saying, Don’t touch me, don’t come any closer, she looked at me saying, Stay where you are, don’t leave your place. What is my place? Under, my place is under, always under, no matter how high I go, I’ll always be under. And for that reason my hands rose, my arms could not restrain themselves, my nails felt like daggers, and I could only tell your daughter forcefully while I killed her with caresses, I’m your Indian, I’m the Indian you don’t want to see in yourself, I’m not killing you, I’m killing myself, I see clearly that if I kill you, I kill myself, if I condemn you, I condemn myself, but now I can’t stop, my entire life is going downhill and I’m not going to fall alone, you’re going to fall with me, you’re going to pay for your fearful look at the Indian who dared to look at you, I know I can never possess you, what’s your name, woman, call me man, call me Indian, I know you’ll have me whipped if I let you go, I want you, but that doesn’t give you the right to be afraid of me, you can feel what you like toward me, physical repugnance, social scorn, racial discrimination, but don’t feel fear, not fear, please, for the sake of your life, don’t be afraid of me, if you keep looking at me with fear, I won’t be able to let you go, pressing my hands harder and harder around your neck, don’t fear me for no reason, I’m not bad, I’m not bad, is that what you want to hear now that you can’t talk anymore and only show your tongue and can’t close your eyes filled with terror of the twilight because you know there won’t be another day, because each night is the last night in the world, Alejandra, Alejandra, I kill you without even knowing your name, Alejandra, forgive me, forgive me for the pain you made me feel when, without opening your mouth, you said:
Don’t come any closer. I’m afraid of you.
All my life I wanted to drive fear out of my head. Señora: Your daughter was afraid of me, but I was more afraid of her for fearing me, and I was afraid of myself for not knowing how to overcome my fear.
Please don’t write to me again, Señora Vanina. You say I have all the time in the world. I’m going to believe you. God bless you. Thank you for writing to me. Thank you for paying attention to me.
José Nicasio, you have nothing to thank me for. I only wanted you to know whose life you had taken. Thank you for listening to me. Thank you for paying attention to me.
Alessandra, my dear daughter. I have communicated with the man who killed you. I wanted him to know whom he had killed. I didn’t want him to go to his death without understanding who you were. I don’t know if I achieved my purpose. I felt that something closed exists in this man, a door that no one—not even he—could open. That’s why I’m writing to you. A letter with a mortal post office box. I feel dissatisfied, daughter, diminished because of everything I would have wanted to tell that man and couldn’t. I don’t know if it was a hidden contempt for his intelligence, which would damage the basis of my intuition: Señor, know who my daughter was, Alessandra, Alejandra, Sandra, Sandy. Know whom you killed. Be