Happy Families_ Stories - Carlos Fuentes [76]
“Promiscuity is taking pleasure in yourself.”
“Sex doesn’t bring happiness, but it does calm the nerves.”
“Amity is so drunk she’s even drinking from the vases.”
“Nothing’s as exciting as exposing yourself to a man in church.”
“The problem with Rudy is that he’s orthopedic.”
“Gustavito has a bore inside his head.”
These malicious witticisms were received with laughter, Guy’s happier than that of José Luis, who—as he confessed to his lover—was beginning to weary of Curly’s verbal excesses.
“He can be very impertinent. That isn’t our style.”
“Don’t pay attention to him, José Luis. Impertinence only hides his vacuousness. Did you expect profundity from a boy like that?”
“Not profundity. Not impertinence, either.”
“Let it pass. Who would replace this blessed Rigoletto fallen from heaven?”
“Or come up from a sulfurous pit, how can anyone tell . . .”
They felt sorry for him one night when they were having supper together in a restaurant on Calle de Havre, and Curly’s eyes became dangerously distracted. Guy’s back was to the dining room. José Luis, beside Curly, could appreciate the obscure object of desire.
A dark-skinned boy went back and forth with ancestral agility, as if a remote ancestor of his had been responsible for bringing fresh fish from the coast to Emperor Moctezuma in his palace on the plateau.
He was nimble, swift, graceful, without an extra gram on his face or body. Curly looked at him with a desire that was increasingly difficult to hide, to the point where he stopped chatting with his friends and absently committed the unforgivable error of sitting with his mouth open, his gaze lost in the waiter’s movements, something that provoked José Luis to laugh and remark that a “closed mouth catches no boys,” which provoked Curly’s irritation followed by this action that revealed, to whomever wishes to measure it, the nature, naturata and naturante, of the witty fat man.
The fact is that Curly, as the young indigenous waiter walked past, dropped his napkin to the floor and looked at the boy with a mixture of indignation and scorn.
“What are you waiting for?” said Curly.
“Excuse me?” responded the waiter.
“Stupid Indian. Pick up the napkin.”
The waiter bent over and picked up the napkin lightly spotted with lipstick, as Guy and José Luis could observe with smiles, but not the servile object of Curly’s wounded contempt. The servant.
“Learn to serve,” Curly continued. “Learn to differentiate.” And stressing the two words, he concluded: “I am a gentleman.”
He said it with an insufferable arrogance that mortified Guy and José Luis, whose glances, one directed at Curly and the other at the waiter, were both filled with someone else’s excuses and sorrow. The boy bowed gravely to Curly and withdrew to continue his work.
“They’re our only aristocrats,” José Luis commented when the waters had calmed.
“Who?” asked a red-faced Curly.
José Luis did not respond, and in Curly’s eyes, this registered as a serious offense.
“Did you realize?” said José Luis, holding a New Yorker when they were back home. “Since he couldn’t punish you for seeing him turned into an imbecile with his mouth hanging open, he turned on the weak one, the waiter.”
Guy buttoned his pajamas and said nothing.
“He’s a shameful coward” was José Luis’s judgment. “I don’t know if it’s worthwhile to keep cultivating him.”
“Yes,” Guy said with a yawn. “Probably he’s already served his purpose.”
“Which was?” suggested José Luis, setting aside the magazine.
Guy shrugged. “Frankly, it’s all the same to me if we see him or not.”
“Ah,” exclaimed José Luis, accustomed to less ambiguous or contradictory answers from his companion. “Then you think it’s a matter of one of those surmountable incidents.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a statement.
The conversation was following brand-new paths. Generally, Guy and José Luis were in agreement because they knew they were united against a world that would have liked to be hostile if they themselves did not make it habitable. The couple’s agreement in the face of society translated