Happy Families_ Stories - Carlos Fuentes [55]
Of course not, Señor. Only you. You who were twenty when she was forty, and every man in the neighborhood followed her because of her fresh, dark beauty, guided by the black braid that reached down to Medea’s buttocks, don’t you remember, licentiate, Señor Stuckup? Did you lose your memory, Don Fop? Don’t you remember anymore how pretty Medea was and the decision she made to have a son only with you, the father of the mariachi? Have some shame. Only you can come to save her. Don’t be a prick. Acknowledge him. Take responsibility. For once in your damn life, Señor. Forget about who you are and become the man you were. For your mother’s sake.
And don’t give me the same old story:
“We’re in Mexico. Pray.”
You’d be better off taking a snake rattle.
Chorus of the Naked Honeymoon
Regino and Regina came to complain at the lost-luggage office at the airport, traveling on their honeymoon from Tuxtla Gutiérrez to Acapulco by way of Mexico City, how can they go without their suitcases, what’s going on, where are they, whew, sir, madam—Regino, Regina—don’t be impatient, in half an hour we’ll have them, in the meantime why don’t you have a nice cup of coffee, listen, the thirty minutes are up, what happened? where are they? and Regina thinking about the gorgeous underthings her girlfriends gave her with erotic intentions at the shower in Tuxtla and the airport, well, the suitcases haven’t come yet, you know, a car crash, where? in Chiapas on the runway at the airport so they never got on the plane no but the news is that the suitcases were destroyed but it was all new clothes, a bride’s clothes, do you know what I’m saying? ay, Señorita, what I recommend, please, I’m Señora, Señora, is that you don’t pack anything you’ll miss, but it’s my bridal trousseau, ay, if you only knew the kinds of things that get lost here, who knows what happened to your truss but sometimes what disappears are artificial limbs, medieval armor, even contraband dolls with drugs hidden in the removable head, what haven’t we seen here! and you’re complaining about losing a night-gown, show my wife more respect, yes Señor it’s just that, you know, there are more than two million people who lose suitcases every year at the airport so our advice is that people travel wearing what they’ll need I mean underwear shirts and socks and a small bag for packing what the family doesn’t want to lose and if you like take pictures of what you’re carrying in the suitcase and this way there’s no loss, you know, all the suitcases are the same all of them are black because that’s what’s fashionable and thank your lucky stars because once more than five hundred suitcases arrived for a Mr. Mazatlán because the gringos in Los Angeles thought it was a passenger and not an airport so if you want you can file a complaint with the warehouse in Scottsboro Alabama which is the cemetery for all lost suitcases in North America and listen what’s this couple complaining about as if they needed clothes for a honeymoon in Acapulco, what do they need that for
Sweethearts
Manuel Toledano boarded the ship in Venice to travel Trieste-Split-Dubrovnik for the next five days. The vaporetto took him from the hotel on the Grand Canal to the inner harbor, but in the traveler’s eyes, the ducal city remained an enduring, duplicated mirage. Leaving Venice behind, Manuel moved away from a fantasy that was transformed in his memory into a ghost of itself. He thought for a moment that perhaps the specter of Venice had more reality than the illusory municipal reality of streets, canals, squares, and churches.
The established dogana was a memory that all the trappings of Venice—the magnificence of the Pearl of the Adriatic—were the fruit of an ancestral simulation, a long-lasting taste for Italian theatricality. Venice wagered its dramatic stage setting—a sumptuous backdrop—on something that in the end was a commercial center as naked as the dock where Toledano set foot this morning with the sensation of stepping on forgotten solid ground, confirming in this way that Venice was floating, and