Christopher Unborn (46 page)

The diminutive statistician dressed in his tuxedo cleaned his breath and drool off the bottom of the glass table in the French office of the minister:

“No, sir, because rats breed every twenty-one days.”

He got to his feet with difficulty, adding, as he smoothed his hair into place, “Perhaps the importers simply contribute to the…”

“Statistics, no moral judgments,” said the minister to the statistician as he slammed the closet door closed in his face and sat down to chew on a Minnie Mouse lollipop.

*   *   *

The city lights up and goes out like a Christmas tree without presents.

“What a national hangover!” someone shouts from the intersection of Patriotismo and Industria.

“Pay the bill. And nobody take off without paying the bill!”

“But the bankers already done it, gone from Mexico to Grand Cayman, cash in hand.”

“What about that banker Don Mamelín Mártir de Madrazo? Made everybody think he was kidnapped so he could send his ransom money to the Bahamas.”

“And all that foreign money poured in here poured out again to safe countries.”

“Let's hear it for safe Paraguay.”

“Oil glut.”

“Foreign debt.”

“Population explosion.”

Bodily functions are going backward. The smell of the people in the swirling mass at the corner of Tacubaya and Avenida Jalisco, where the Hermita building is slowly turning into sand, is like flatulent breath, an anal breathing. Everywhere there are more people than fit. The roofs have become a second plateau, surrounded by dark abysses, canyons where the dark rain drips. Signs of antennas and tubs are barely visible now. Horrified ladies wrapped in rebozos run with their shopping carts filled with bank notes, they form lines, there are neighborhood guards (adolescent boys with clubs and lengths of pipe) who protect them on the long lines leading to the tortilla vendors and pharmacies, the crackling stands. A shout from a grocery store in Mixcoac: “We only sell sugar for dollars.” A mango skin splatters against Angel and Angeles's windshield.

“Devastated city.”

“Screwed city.”

Angel points to the old men in threadbare shit-colored jackets and ties playing guitars at stop lights,

only once in my life did I love anybody

and they run huffing and puffing, their Buskin shoes worn through, their Arrow shirts frayed, their High Life ties stained, to pick up the thankyoumisterlady as they doff their old Tardán borsalinos now devoid of band (in their melted brains the advertising slogan of their youth and of national promise rings out incessantly: From Sonora to Yucatán/ Gentlemen all wear hats by Tardán/ Twenty million Mexicans can't be wrong: when the entire nation had fewer inhabitants than the capital in 1992: 1932), clean old men spitting on the windshield then cleaning it off with the remnants of towels purchased at the Iron Palace before the lights change. The Mixcoac stones reflect and project what's left of the daylight. Along Avenida Revolución, a barter economy flourishes: underwear for combs, marjoram for tobacco, brass knuckles for Barbie dolls, condoms with feather crests for pictures of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, two Madonna cassettes for a sack of beans: I worked in an office, I was a student, I was a pharmacist, I imported grain, I was a chorus girl; now all of us are on the Street, check-out clerks in the black market scatter along Altavista toward Insurgentes, in the little plaza in front of the Obregón monument the hoods set up their illegal, swift, the-hand-is-quicker-than-the-eye games, under the walnut shells, in between the curtains of the deeds of the Revolution, in the confusion of pots, papier-mâché Judases, funny money only worth what the market says it's worth today next to the graffiti smearing the monument of the Hero of Celaya.

LENIN OR LENNON
?

The street theater for the city of thirty million people spreads toward San José Insurgentes, flamethrowers, shoeshine boys, lottery vendors, car washers, strolling musicians, beggars, people selling all kinds of things, mix with clowns, dancers, people giving recitals in the eternal night.

“So, what did you assholes expect?”

“Don't delude yourselves.”

“So, what did you bastards expect?”

“We killed the water.”

“We killed the air.”

“We killed the forests.”

“Die, damned city!”

“Come on and die: fucked-up city, what are you waiting for?”

The people push their way along Taxqueña, yo asshole watch where you walkin' man / fuckin' old lady whut you need dat cane fo'? Give it here so ah can play golf wit' yer doggy's head / look dis cripple Nureyev's pushin' / why you wanna get in front of me, lady, go fuck youself old fart / yo blindman len' me your glasses chuck dat nonseer in front of dat truck getta moveon fuckers he look like a wad o'phlegm someone done stepped on / a car stops at the intersection of Quevedo and Revolución / got to get movin' / who's stoppin' / dis meat wagon don't move / a thousand vendors suddenly surround the car it doesn't move anymore / it's a whale beached in an asphalt gulf on which descends the interminable banquet of things to buy an asphyxia of secret languages offering useless objects and unserviceable services hyperbolically described:

“Here you are, sir, awzom chewing gum.”

“Yo, I'm the kool kat wit the winning ticket.”

“I swear man, dese cigs is the real thing.”

“Take a look, lady, genuine humongous bras.”

“Check it out, man, look at these galoshes here.”

“Wanna learn to French kiss, got da bes' book right here, man.”

Angel and Angeles stared at the rows of young people with no future, the long rows of bored people on guard before the nothingness, expecting nothing from the nothingness, Mexico City, decrepit and moribund and the street theater set up on tubs and broken-down trucks representing everything, reason and unreason:

AFTER THE FIESTA THE SIESTA

Step inside, step inside, just see how the oil prices plummeted

THE OPEC-AND-ONE NIGHTS

Step inside, step inside, see how the border was closed to wetbacks

TALES FROM THE TACO CURTAIN

Right this way to see how Mexicans bred until they exploded demographically

NO SECTS PLEASE WE'RE CATHOLIC

Right here on the big stage, ladies and gentlemen, events in Central America, or how President Trigger Trader made the worst prophecies come true just by saying them out loud

WELCOME TO SAIGONCITO

Ladies and gentlemen, don't miss these scenes of virile violence in which President Rambold Rager widens the war to include Mexico and Panama

IF I PAY THEM THEY ARE MY FREEDOM FIGHTERS

Step inside, don't miss the extraordinary comedy about the rise in import duties

IS THAT A GATT YOU'RE CARRYING OR ARE YOU JUST HAPPY TO SEE ME
?

Right here on the big stage: in 3-D and Cinerama, back up your optimism with the complete history of our foreign debt, or how we beat out Brazil and Argentina in the race to disaster!

AFTER THE FIESTA THE SIESTA

and from car to car along the Beltway, the shouts of the city of gossip, the nation of rumors:

“The peso's dropping to thirty thousand per dollar.”

“Did you hear that Mamadoc got fed up and is quitting tomorrow?”

“What I hear is that it's Mamadoc
and
the President.”

“No, what Mamadoc wants is for Colonel Inclán to fuck her.”

“Get out, man, where'd you hear that?”

“I've got a brother-in-law in SEPAFU.”

“He's lyin', man.”

“That minister Don Ulises is a wife-beater.”

“They say he broke his wife's legs.”

“How'd you find out?”

“Ask the lady herself, there she is coming out of Sanborn's.”

“They say President Paredes took a billion pesos to Switzerland.”

“Who told you that?”

“They say it came out in the
Gall Street Journal.
”

“Since when do you know English?”

“I've got people to translate for me. But it's box populi, box dei.”

“Didya hear that Mamadoc had a copy of the Petite Trianon built for her in El Pedregal?”

“Some people saw Don Ulises López in Las Vegas.”

“Yeah, and he lost three million dollars in one shot playing baccarat.”

“And we don't even have enough for a trip to Xochimilco.”

“I hear Robles Chacón can't get it up, and that's why he loves power so much. Just like women.”

“Colonel Inclán's really a queer.”

“And Mamadoc's a transvestite.”

“No, man, she's supposed to be Julio Iglesias wearing a wig.”

“Wrong, man. It's that old group Menudo under one big skirt.”

“Yeah, I hear she only likes to sleep with dwarfs.”

“Robles Chacón's a junkie.”

“Apparently the Minatitlán wells went dry, but nobody's saying anything.”

“Wheredya hear that?”

“My brother-in-law has access to Pemex.”

“Well, someone told me that Guatemala just occupied the entire state of Chiapas and nobody even noticed.”

“No way. My nephew was just drafted and he says the real war is with Australia over the Revillagegedo islands.”

“Right. It's about that nodule thing.”

“Whatsat?”

“Instead of oil, it's nodules now, didn't you hear?”

“Never heard of it.”

“With these manganese nodules, man, we're gonna take off again.”

“All have to do is administer our wealth!”

“But President Jomajeezus wantsa sell the islands to the Vatican.”

“No way. Who toldya?”

“I got an uncle who's a sacristan in the Basilica.”

“I don't believe anything anymore.”

“I'm telling you tomorrow they're gonna announce another nationalization.”

“But there's nothing left to nationalize.”

“There sure is: the air.”

“But who wants it?”

“They're gonna make a window tax, just the way Santa Anna did.”

“Tomorrow they declare a moratorium.”

“You'd better get your savings out while you can.”

“Sell everything.”

“Spend it all.”

“The whole thing's going down the tubes.”

“How many people are here?”

“Enough.”

and along Emita–Ixtapalapa an army of impostors and con men besieged each other, besieged each other trying to make deals, if you want to get into Los Pinos / I was just named superintendent of the Tuxpan refinery / I'm on my way to be ambassador to Ruanda-Urundi / I'm writing Mamadoc's memoirs / the President has commissioned me to / the IMF has ordered me to / I have the job of bringing Dr. Barnard to operate on private individuals, just sign here / I've been offered a corner on the U.S. corn crop / the Rockerfeller Foundation has assigned me the job of distributing scholarships in Mex / would you be interested in spending a month free at the Ritz Hotel in Paris? Just sign here / I'm selling a condo in Beverly Hills at a hundred Mexican pesos the square yard: just sign here / the New York production company PornoCorno would be very innarested in offering you a contract, baby: just sign here /

The women selling shrimp tacos in the snack bar for Churubusco Studios note:

“Look here now, Sadie, my only contribution to the crisis of confidence we're suffering is, as Don Paul Volcker declared recently, the U.S. deficit undermines confidence there, too.”

“Can you imagine, Frannie, the U.S. is asking for loans of $100 billion out of foreign savings accounts every year now, isn't that incredible?”

“Well, Sadie, all I know is that when the dollar's high it means high interest rates.”

“Frannie, you just said a mouthful. Gimme another shrimp taco / and the Van Gogh plods along the Tlalpan causeway, where the dwarfs, eccentrics, and scribes the provinces export in large numbers to the capital in order to raise cash meet and offer their services to their urban clientele. The van stops in the little plaza of the San Pedro Apóstol Church, about one hundred and fifty feet from the house of bright colors. The seashell-shaped coach drawn by horses also stops there: the meeting place was their own house, it was here the Bulevar was to be today, they'd gone around a big old circle, everyone making a sincere effort to keep up a certain style, to restore the romantic image, make dark suits, high hats, feather boas, crinolines, Nankin trousers, embroidered vests, ostrich feathers, suffocating chokers, and Derbys fashionable, today they're parading here, they can't avoid all the urban gangrene, but they do avoid some of it, yes, the carriage doors open and out tumble the Orphan Huerta (very much changed), Hipi Toltec (with a tiny electric fan in his hand), and Egg asking Baby Ba not to get left behind, now baby, we're almost there, look: Angel and Angeles, our buddies …

“Serbus!” shouted the Orphan by way of greeting.

“In ixtli, in yóllotl!” said Hipi Toltec.

“Animus intelligence,” answered my mom.

“Buffalo,” synthesized the Orphan.

“We thought we'd never see each other again,” said my dad.

“You thought the Four Fuckups were