Christopher Unborn (74 page)

they told me there wouldn't be any killing! exclaims Professor Gingerich they recruited me to help the cause of peace to avoid a war between the United States and Mexico I got out of the Acapulco catastrophe and they told me in the U.S. Embassy that the way to work for peace was to do some intelligence investigation in Veracruz the alternative? we send you to Texas to work on the border I'm a professor in Dartmouth College it doesn't matter it says here that you're a Texan it doesn't matter where you work but where you're from as far as repatriation is concerned Professor Gingerich the honorable way out of this fix is an intelligence mission in Veracruz our reward to you will be to send you back to Dartmouth College where Christmases are indeed white and the mountains are green and the summers are as slow and hot as deep lakes and the pale dahlias and yellow jasmines flower: don't worry Professor there won't be any killing it's a reconnaissance-intelligence mission: we've got to find a reason, Professor Gingerich: why are we in Veracruz? Reverend Royall Payne gets into his black helicopter, which is like a spider a caterpillar a hidden diamond a diabolical crown the devil's cloven hooves the anus of the vampire as black as the night of the day in which the sun set in the east and the cats closed their eyes and the dogs did not dare to bark / the Reverend gets into his Apache attack helicopter, which he learned to fly on direct orders from President Rambold Ranger who told him: “Royall, you are God's co-pilot. If I weren't here, you would make the Big Decision in my place”: the President personally gave him this marvelous apparatus, which can fly at 327 miles per hour for six consecutive hours at thirty thousand feet detecting and calibrating the distance to every aircraft that comes within three hundred miles: capable of locating more than 250 targets and making thirty air interceptions: but the most beautiful aspect of Royall Payne's chopper is its rotodome, the disk that holds the radar and radio antennas of the craft with a range that duplicates that of the most advanced systems currently known—it looks like a white emblem mounted on top of the helicopter and thinking about the decals stamped with the death's-head and the anxious difference between stamping the skull on the name of Mexico and adding the address of the newest decal:
CANADA NEXT COLOMBIA NEXT TRINIDAD NEXT
said Royall Payne, who had decided in that instant to speak to the world through the microphone of his trusty Apache broadcasting his message of war and salvation with each steel pulse of the blades of his helicopter blades that shine like the shining blades that every six hours shave the shining cheeks of the man of steel the Priest of Death striking fear into the air of the old Totonaca cemeteries bending the trunks of the palm trees beating the zinc roofs against the cardboard walls shortening the life of the
CAT HUTS
, which are already on the point of disintegration: someday you'll thank me the Reverend whines as if in a stellar sermon but the voice from the radio says don't come back Roy go back to your base no roars Reverend Royall someday you'll thank me he shouted in pain biting his hands on which was tattooed

DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR

but the voice from the radio a distant faggy voice paid by the reds an anti-American insolent Massachusetts voice Roy don't forget that we are only here to protect the oil supply we do what we have to do we follow orders Roy we apply the instructions of the CIA pamphlet we try to neutralize all Mexicans within a radius of ten miles around Villa Cardel and the banks of the Chachalacas but we cannot go any farther there is an agreement with the Mexican government not to go any farther you can't launch your missiles against Mexico City not even against Jalapa Roy: pay attention to the Gulf of Campeche Resolution! Then we're involved in the same old thing we won't win this war either! shouted the preacher, his hands bleeding bitten by his own teeth don't be stupid Roy remember that this little war is only a media event an informative show covered by TV and the press to prove to the world but above all to ourselves that we really are macho and it's also being staged so that the Mexican government can prove to its people that they have to unite in order to defend this shitty country it's important for both of us don't forget that what are you going to do Roy where are you going Roy Roy! don't forget how the script goes don't do anything weird remember that at the end we're going to say we won the war then we get out we win and we get out Roy don't forget that everything's already set
WE WIN AND WE GET OUT ROY
!

A river appears in the middle of the night it flows luminous and slow like a caress a distant guitar is heard and Will Gingerich wonders why all this makes him afraid Christopher don't you ever feel terror amid the placental pleasures and protection of your mother Angeles's womb?

She doesn't move Nat told Macho Nacho the chink told you that she's asleep go on open the curtain Nat one mosquito net after another sure so she can sleep in peace but if my black dingaling doesn't wake her up I don't know how yours will better measure mine why do you black guys always think that God gave you bigger bananas than anybody else? okay set her up so we can have some fun with you in front and me in back then we switch listen look at her lift up her legs and look at her she's not very young see around here who cares if they're young or old the important thing is a piece of ass forget if it's young or old Macho it isn't that her legs weigh a lot heavy sleep Nat try to turn her over I'm telling you she weighs a ton the equivalent of 250 tons of TNT

BACKPACK NUKE

FRONT-ROW DICK

NEVER LEAVE HOME WITHOUT THEM

and her arms are real stiff let's see these marble tits frozen spread her legs and what about her ass? frozen too frozen and locked tighter than a safety-deposit box at Chase Manhattan Bank stick your finger in it doesn't go in Nat this ass is a dry
CAT BOX
! no one's gone through there in a hundred years and what about behind?
BACK DOOR
! something's going on back here and the face what's it like Harry made of porcelain it looks like a doll's face made of Chinese porcelain it's pretty but it's old white real white with closed eyes powdered and with red hair touch her hair Nat do it for me I'm looking down here Nat it isn't hair it's a wig what the fuck it slipped off there's a liquid running out her ears what's she got in her nose cotton wads holy shit Harry what she's got running down her ass stinks like hell like disinfectant it smells like formaldehyde holy shit she just now opened her eyes Macho Nacho but she isn't moving them they're made of glass holy papaya this bitch is sick Nat this bitch's got something wrong with her this bitch is dead don't be a moron this fucking bitch is spoiled cold cuts don't shout like that Macho for the sake of Luis Rafael I beg you Sánchez don't make such a racket that's right be careful watch out what you're doing don't clench your teeth don't clench fists don't move your
BACKPACK NUKE
like that if you pull on that string shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit

someday you'll thank me

the greasers breed like rats so they can go for the good life

so they can end up the way everybody wants to end up

as in a stellar sermon

TV and refrigerators and football stadiums and

white asses and things that work and hospitals

and cereals that snap crackle and pop and bread without flies

and American cars Akutagawas and Togos and Meijis and Kabuki 2002s

each one of your little brothers who stays here means one red-blooded

American home saved thanks to me!

Cardel Chachalacas Tajín Totonacas

Reverend Royall Payne looks at the vision of the Peak of Orizaba which is rapidly approaching his whitish-blue eyes reverberating looking at the frozen peak of the volcano an image of his own gaze as if the humble toiler in the Lord's work could transform himself into nature

tall white eternal rock and ice: permanent

NO MORE DEFEATS! MORE DEFEATS MEAN MORE REVENGE
!

NO MORE VIETNAMS! LETHAL FORCE IS AUTHORIZED
!

NO MORE DEFEATS
!

in the river crossing the river under the water masked by the fiery water imagining that his pantheistic anthropologist's dream is finally going to resolve itself in the nightmare of dying and becoming hamburger repeats Will Gingerich under the slow and flaming river but the flames only consume the town of Cardel the river is a border and the professor of Dartmouth College crosses to the other side and falls face-down on the fertile mud of the river

the United States lost its innocence in Veracruz muttered Professor Gingerich when the hands of others (friendly? unfriendly?) grabbed him under the armpits and pulled him out of his mud bed on the banks of the slow river surrounded by tigers with golden eyes and backs of fire the butterflies crowning the waters the ghost of the moon in the eternal blue black night

in Veracruz

in Vietnam

in Korea

in Hiroshima

in Dresden

in Santo Domingo

in Bluefields

in Managua

in Port-au-Prince

in Santiago de Cuba

in Manila

in Andersonville

in the Little Bighorn

in Tripoli

in Chapultepec

in Chapultepec

in Chapultepec

and in El Tajín

the broken clay

bells of the moon

hummingbird magician

serpent skirts

stars of the south

the tiger said: fire in half of the night

the clay said: mirror of smoke

I said crisscrossed with voices:

17. The Other Bank of the River

After he'd been rescued from the mud on the floodplain, Professor Gingerich said all these things as he was eating some hamburgers cooked up by the albino trucker. My father and the girl dressed as a Discalced Carmelite listened to him.

The Yankee spoke to her, raising his voice slightly above the din behind us, endless said my father: Gingerich only stared at the girl, recognizing her, as he spoke near the low, hospitable fire in this forest clearing.

He stopped occasionally to chew the hamburger. Then he revealed, staring at Colasa Sánchez, that he was speaking and imagining at the same time; such was the scope of his gaze. When I am born, I may perhaps have a better opportunity to understand how people look at things and persons and to read in looks the names of desire. Although from this moment on I do know (my father looks for me, you understand, Reader) that if desire is only the imitation of another desire it's because when we want something we want at the same time to be wanted. That's the way Gingerich and Colasa look at each other. Both know what the Professor heard from the lips of his deceased friend D. C. Buckley. Be careful with that woman. Use a wooden penis. Penis du bois.

Tonight my father divines in the trembling of Gingerich's features, a man just saved from death in the jungle, an availability in the face of another's desire. An aperture. She needs no introduction: Colasa Sánchez, Matamoros Moreno's bastard. He says simply, as she swallows a piece of hamburger, which she holds delicately between her fingers, the way one might pick up a host, that he came from the other bank. What did he want? Something huge, something very difficult, for him to have risked death by crossing over.

The other bank: my father was going to interrupt, by saying something banal: he swam. He stopped just in time. The night, the light of the fire, the clamor behind us (I am my father! you are the reader!) transformed her; Colasa Sánchez was a necessary being, she revealed herself as a daughter of necessity, more even than her father Matamoros Moreno and her mother Anónima Sánchez. She needed; that was her supplication that night.

The other bank: Will Gingerich stretched out his hand and touched Colasa Sánchez's fingers with his own. Cinnamon-colored skin, tea-colored, Carmelite-colored. Guess: where are the scapularies? Will closed his eyes and accepted the necessity of Colasa. Desire is necessary and it must run the risk of transformation. We desire what we desire not only in order to have it but also in order to change into the image of our desire: into our own image.

Would the object of desire resist?

Would it admit its own need, the need of the other, even at the cost of transformation?

When my father saw their fingers touch and when he imagined the cruel union of their sexes, he stood up trembling, masked his emotion in the frontier darkness, and said to himself what he would say to my mother and me, turbid and luminous in her bosom, when he found us once again:

“I saw this couple take that risk and I saw things clearly in the darkness of the jungle. I am not risking anything by returning to you, who are my love, Angeles, and to our about-to-be-born son. Accept my return. Let me explain why I love you and how much I desire you.”

Colasa and Will, holding hands, staring at each other with passion, conscious of the danger, laughing at the myth, at Matamoros dead, at the bitten Manhattanite's wooden dildo, at the Mexican Ms., the mortal manuscript: Will Gingerich had no book, Matamoros's words would not be eaten: he was the owner of a body,

“My body is yours,” said the girl Colasa, free at last.

9

The Discovery of America

… why do I have to find you if I never lost you …

Gabriel García Márquez
The Autumn of the Patriarch

 

1. Your Truth of Blessed Bread

Pay attention now, Reader: wait for me because I'm going to need you more than ever, don't hide from me, don't go away: you have to be
there
when I need you to lend me a hand so that I can recover everything I shall lose, I'm certain of it, when I abandon my mother; not yet: my mother is alive and I am inside her during these last days of my gestation, my mother is alive, sitting in the Church of San Felipe Neri in Oaxaca, surrounded by fleurons and looking (since she still can't look at me!) at a Holy Child of Atocha dressed in brocade and rose-colored feathers and as she looks at the Holy Child our buddy Egg looks at her with a mixture of melancholy and unbounded passion but she and I know that something is going to happen, a tremulous premonition makes both of us see you, Dad, blazing along the highway on a broken-down Kurosawa motorcycle ripped away from the body of a Yankee sentinel, far from the temptations of sweet tropical Veracruz, far away and returned to the sacred highlands, rapidly along the road from Orizaba and Tierra Blanca and the Tuxtepec River, over hill over dale, through Cuicatlán toward Oaxaca. My father, who left Bubble Gómez and his refrigerated truck full of edible cadavers as well as Colasa Sánchez with Professor Will Gingerich united for better or for worse, while you, Dad, you have no reason to doubt it, it's for better, for better it will be that you ride toward us, toward my mother and toward me, certain of the place where we're all going to meet come on, where else could it be?