Distant Relations (29 page)

Sculpted in this struggle between the righteousness of the calendar and the savagery of the physical world, the profile of the city stands out like a bas-relief of time-become-flesh. I do not know the identity of this being, unborn, or returned from the dead, who accompanies me, but, because of it, I know that on this balcony Musset took the sun as a respite from the paleness of the secluded Princess Belgiojoso, and that an anguished, tormented Gérard de Nerval hurried along this wet alleyway, and that from that bridge, at the very moment Nerval was writing
“El desdichado,”
Cesar Vallejo was gazing at his reflection in the rushing waters; on the Boulevard La Tour-Maubourg I will hear the voice of Pablo Neruda; on the Rue de Longchamp, that of Octavio Paz; along with my specter I will walk across the footbridge of the Passerelle Debilly across the Seine; dry leaves will hang suspended above the statues in the Galliéra park; the warm night will reverberate along the Avenue Montaigne; a thwarted autumn will seek refuge in the cellars of the Rue Boissy-d'Anglas; as I feared, we come to the Place de la Concorde, the infinite crossroad, the fatal space where one day, one noon in this month of November, I had approached my friend Branly in the dining room of the Automobile Club and suggested we have lunch together.

Do I have a right to the answers to the enigma that has pursued me during my nocturnal walk from the Avenue de Saxe to the Place de la Concorde? How had Lucie recognized me? Was it because she knew that her husband Hugo Heredia, a man my own age, had waited for me in vain in front of the baroque façade of the Escuela de Mascarones? waited to walk with me to the French Book Shop on the Paseo de la Reforma, to have a cup of coffee with Huguette Balzola in the manager's office on the mezzanine, to leave with the most recent issue of
France Observateur
or Mauriac's latest novel, to walk toward the French Institute on Nazas Street through the restless dust of a Mexican twilight, to see an old Renoir or Buñuel film, to talk for hours, to compare notes on exile and belonging, on possessions and dispossession, on fatalism and freedom, on beings and non-beings, on tenderness and cruelty, on accord and discord: on resentment rescued by recognition? Because I chose to live in Argentina, did Hugo Heredia never have the friend he needed? Was he the friend I never knew in the lonely crowds of my youth beside the River Plate?

As I cross the square toward Gabriel's
pavillon,
the night grows measurably warmer. I don't know whether to trust what my eyes tell me. I hurry forward, and a breath of air from the Tuileries gardens carries the scent of magnolias in bloom. I see windows in the Hôtel Crillon being thrown open in the suffocating heat, guests peering with disbelief into the night of this St. Martin's summer.

Normally, the club concierge would not have admitted me at this hour. Tonight, however, I find him in his shirtsleeves, lounging against the black iron grating of the unlocked vestibule door. He has the look of a prisoner who can't decide whether to escape or choose the security of what he knows.

He recognizes me, and, panting from the heat, allows me to enter. He sniffs something uncommon on the air, and I, at least, am a known factor. He feels he must say the obvious: “What a scorcher! Not your ordinary night, eh?”

I tell him that I had carelessly left some important papers in the pool dressing room. I can find the way. He had better tend to the door. Indeed, this is not an ordinary night.

I know my destination, know where I am being propelled by my invisible companion. I can smell freshly cut pineapple slices, black-splotched ripe plantains, the buttery red flesh of the mamey. My mouth waters with forgotten, anticipated flavors melting on my burning tongue.

I think I hear the faint sound of singing. I expect to hear the madrigal of the clear fountain, but instead there is only the melancholy Mexican ballad sung to the
llorona,
the weeping woman who wanders the night like a soul in pain,
ay llorona,
how cruel the years have been,
ay de mí, llorona, llorona de ayer y hoy, ayer era maravilla, llorona, y ahora ni sombra soy,
today less than a shadow am I.

I walk through the bar to the swimming pool. The pool itself is obscured in a tangle of lush plants, ivy-covered trees with fragrant bark, climbing vines curling from the green mosaic pillars up to the great dome of iron and glass blinded by matted foliage. There is an overpowering aroma of venomous, ravenous flowers. Gunpowder trees: I had forgotten them, and now the scent reminds me that their bark was used to make the munitions of the Indies.

I make my way down a few steps toward the pool concealed behind the profuse greenery. I seem to be dislodging nests of tiny hummingbirds. I startle parrots into flight, and suddenly find myself face to face with a monkey whose visage is an exact replica of my own. He mirrors my movements, and then scampers off through the branches. I tread on the moulting body of a huge snake swollen with the mass of its own eggs. My feet sink into the moist earth, the yellow mud of the edge of the swimming pool of the Automobile Club de France. Suddenly there is no sound but the chatter of howler monkeys deep in the jungle.

Quickly I climb to the catwalk above the pool, where a young servant with a feral face had watched a rehearsal of Branly's death.

A hush descends over the deathlike stillness of the water. A film, which could be the fumes of the jungle, covers the verdant pool. In the middle of that sperm-colored scum float two bodies, embraced, two fetuses curled upon themselves like Siamese twins, joined by their umbilicus, floating with a placidity that repudiates all past, all history, all repentance.

The faces are ancient. I stare at them from the iron catwalk. These are preternaturally old fetuses, as if they had swum nine centuries in their mother's womb. I strain to see the wrinkled features, and if in the fleeing simian I had seen my own reflection, I see now, with photographic clarity, the faces of two boys become old men in the floating fetuses.

I had never known them. But the voice beside me whispers into my ear not who they are but who I am.

“Heredia. You are Heredia.”

Heavy of heart, I retreat, never turning my back, as if bidding a last farewell to an imprisoned hero, to a god interred in life, to drowned angels. The voice of my phantom pursues me to the iron door of the vestibule and to the square where autumn is beginning to recover its fleetingly usurped rights.

The St. Martin's summer is dying. No one remembers the whole story.

Books By Carlos Fuentes

Where the Air Is Clear

The Good Conscience

Aura

The Death of Artemio Cruz

A Change of Skin

Terra Nostra

The Hydra Head

Burnt Water

Distant Relations

Myself with Others

Translation copyright © 1982 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc.

All rights reserved

Originally published in Spanish under the title

Una familia lejana, copyright © 1980 by Ediciones Era, S.A., Mexico

Library of Congress catalog card number: 81-9904

Published in Canada by Collins Publishers, Toronto

First edition, 1982

Farrar, Straus and Giroux paperback edition, 1983

eISBN 9781466840119

First eBook edition: February 2013