Happy Families_ Stories - Carlos Fuentes [84]
him, nothing that creates storms of publicity or causes any gossip, I’m not complaining about anything, life has been good to me, I could have been a little provincial woman for the rest of my life, I never had any ambition except to support my husband and understand his passion to serve Mexico, and he’s so all alone, as he never tires of telling me, alone and with no true friends, only accomplices, as he says, the president doesn’t have friends, the president doesn’t love anybody but he uses them all but what about my son? don’t I have the right, after so much sacrifice, to love my own son, to indulge him a little, to protect him from his father’s severity? doesn’t my son deserve, precisely because he likes the wild life so much, a little of the tenderness his father and his friends and his women don’t give him? I want to be a reserve of tenderness for my son, they’ve assigned me the works of charity appropriate for an honorable first lady who knows her place, but I need to give charity to my husband so he at least learns to love at home and to my son so he doesn’t get trapped in the dead end of being angry with his parents, why do I protect my son, I ask myself when I’m alone, does he even deserve my protection? maybe I do it for egotistical reasons, I don’t open my eyes to avoid my current face in the mirror while they style my hair because that way I can be another woman, I save myself from the politics that make us dirty and the power that steals our souls and I protect the most authentic thing I have left today and that’s my memory of youth, my nostalgia for the provinces, for beauty, for youth, the coast of Sinaloa, the evocative names of Navolato and La Noria, El Dorado and El Quelite, Mocorito and the Mesa de San Miguel, late afternoons on the Sea of Cortés the five rivers that flow to the sea, the valleys of sugar and rice, the music of La Tambora in the little square of Santiago Ixcuintla, everything I knew as a girl and never forget because without childhood there’s no nostalgia, without youth there are no memories, and my love for the man who tore me away from tranquility and carried me in his strong arms up the mountain, whispering to me, Justo Mayorga whispering to me, Luz Pardo, his sweetheart from Mazatlán, be happy my love, hope for everything and don’t understand anything and I’m not complaining because I lived the warmth of life with him, hoping for everything though I didn’t understand anything but always telling myself, Luz, you have the right to happiness whatever happens try to be happy today don’t let power make you think that everything beautiful and interesting in life, everything nice in life, is in the past, don’t lose your private self Lucecita because if you let it escape it will never come back no matter how much power you have, don’t give in to that secret desire of yours, the desire to be absent, don’t become completely invisible, make people think you share your husband’s dream of giving hope again to Mexico after all the calamities that have happened to us, return their faith to Mexicans, I want to help the president my husband in that though I know very well the two of us he and I are only actors in a farce, he smiling and optimistic though reality denies it, I smiling and discreet so the people forget about so much failure and hold on to the dream that Mexico can be happy, that’s what we’re working for, that’s why we smile at the cameras, to make people believe the ongoing lie, the dream renewed every six years and now we did it this time everything will turn out fine, oh I’m complaining, yes, how quickly everything passes and what else can I hold on to except love of my husband performing the eternal comedy of the happy orderly stable country and my poor son not understanding anything, trying to break the order established by his father, not realizing that this lasts only six years and wanting him not to know that if he doesn’t make the most of things now he’ll go back afterward to that small ranch which means being a nobody after being everything on a big ranch, I have to maintain