Destiny and Desire (58 page)

The children greet me and this makes me happy. It irritates me that out of a half-ruined hovel on the side of a volcano, crouching, dressed in black, holding a baseball bat in her hand, part of the volcanic landscape of black sand, comes my ancient nemesis María Egipciaca, the jailer of my childhood, waving the bat and shouting or screeching or whistling, a little old woman died shuffling the deck, a little old woman died shuffling the deck …

I gave thanks. Elvira Ríos and Lucha Zapata were not to be found in the cemetery of the air.

Neither was Jericó.

Neither was Asunta Jordán.

“Lucha Zapata!”

But Ezekiel paid no attention to me. We flew over the Meseta de Anáhuac and from a place hidden among stones and underbrush, leafy
pirul
trees and weeping willows, the voice I recognized rose up, now with plaintive accents, now authoritarian, the voice of Antigua Concepción surviving the disasters enumerated by Ezekiel and in open combat with the prophet, don’t believe him, my boy, Josué, you who have given me your companionship, now I hope nothing more separates us, don’t believe the false prophet who brings you rushing through the air, damn charlatan, don’t believe anything he says, power is exercised wherever it can be exercised, in life or in death, it is exercised wherever it can be, not wherever you want it to be, that’s my argument with this meddling busybody Don Ezekiel with the big mouth and the black wings, ask him if there are any
politics with ethics, just ask him, ask him if something exists outside the palace of politics and the temple of money … ask him, Josué …

Ezekiel beat his wings too late, he said, not paying attention to Antigua Concepción who addressed us from her grave, be quiet old woman, there is no need to recruit troops at sunset, and she responded with a vast burst of laughter, the rights of a supplicant are sacred, since the beginning of the world, I beg you to return my grandson to me, let him fall, ill-omened bastard, damn prophet, let loose your prey, he is my grandson, he is mine, he is free to fall, or isn’t he?

He is free to open the way to death, Ezekiel said with a sigh without driving back Antigua Concepción, let my children go, they are no longer Cain and Abel, they no longer fight with each other but with the necessity to which they must submit, do you hear me, wet-winged Indian? Each man is merely seafoam while he lives, grandeur is an accident death does not forgive because she is greater than everything, do you understand me, blubbermouth with wings? What are you going to give Josué? Not a
totopo
or a tortilla or a cake from the Shrine of Guadalupe? Miserable matinee magician, give me back my grandson, have pity, be fair! And the prophet: It is unfair not to know you are mortal and death is the justice of immortality, he is necessarily mine, shouts Antigua Concepción, necessity overflows you, Ezekiel responds, give me back Cain and Abel so they can reconcile in my bosom, the perverse grandmother wails now and Ezekiel: They are not battling each other but the desire and the destiny to which they will have to submit.

“They are sleepwalkers,” the old woman shouted. “I’ll wake them.”

“They are destiny,” murmurs Ezekiel, and he begins an even higher flight that leaves behind the grave where Antigua Concepción lies, shouting all is lost, don’t deceive Josué, don’t tell lies, don’t weep and moan, look to your own house, leave another’s alone …

The voice was dying out surrounded by smog and motors.

I insisted: “Lucha Zapata?” as if to dissipate the events that were suffocating me.

Then Ezekiel picked me up by the back of my neck and said she, she was your good demon, your companion, he said when we left the mountains behind and reached the height of the meseta and Mexico City stretched into infinity, brilliant in the lights of dusk as it was gray in the light of day, and Ezekiel murmured the words of God I will pursue your blood, blood will pursue you, blood will not hate you, and Lucha Zapata will be your avenging angel, Lucha Zapata is the only person who never betrayed you, now she will avenge you, look at her from on high, look at her go into the Utopia building without shouting, without naming you with each pulse of her heart and each beat of her lungs, at last sowing terror in the building, no one stops her, not even Ensenada de Ensenada, this breaks all the rules, this is not foreseen, Lucha is pulled in by the wind, no one can distinguish her from the air though everyone feels the fire of the hurricane until Lucha Zapata, breaking glass and splintering doors, enters the sanctuary of Asunta Jordán and surprises her with her nose in the computer and Asunta does not have time to resist the stab of a knife and another and another and another, stab of ice stab of dream stab of desperate wakefulness stab tearing the air to drive into the neck back breasts eyes of Asunta Jordán who resists by waving her arms, covers her skirt as if the stab had reached her sex, tries to clean herself off and falls facedown onto the computer that transmits a senseless prayer with no addressee …

They rush at Lucha Zapata.

They take her.

Don’t look anymore, Josué. Don’t look. Your destiny on earth has been fulfilled. The exterminating arrows have been shot. The names of the ghosts have been pronounced. Endure the crimes of the city. Prophesy against the city. And now, Josué, forget the great noise at your back and take a roll of paper to recount an incomplete narration …

These are the names of the tribes: They are spoken from the Aragón prison by your brother Miguel Aparecido, who still lives.

C
ARLOS
F
UENTES
, Mexico’s leading novelist, was born in Panama City in 1928 and educated in Mexico, the United States, Geneva, and various cities in South America. He has been his country’s ambassador to France and is the author of more than ten novels, including
The Eagle’s Throne, The Death of Artemio Cruz, Terra Nostra, The Old Gringo, The Years with Laura Diaz, Diana: The Goddess Who Hunts Alone
, and
Inez
. His nonfiction includes
The Crystal Frontier
and
This I Believe: An A to Z of a Life
. He has received many awards for his accomplishments, among them the Mexican National Award for Literature in 1984, the Cervantes Prize in 1987, and the Légion d’Honneur in 1992. He was nominated for the Man Booker International Prize in 2007.

E
DITH
G
ROSSMAN
, the winner of a number of translating awards, most notably the 2006 PEN Ralph Manheim Medal, is the distinguished translator of works by major Spanish-language authors including Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Mayra Montero, and Alvaro Mutis as well as Carlos Fuentes. Her translation of Miguel de Cervantes’s
Don Quixote
was published to great acclaim in 2003. She received an award in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2008 and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009, the same year in which she held a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2010 she published the book
Why Translation Matters
.