Adam in Eden. Carlos Fuentes
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again showed off their dark sunglasses. And they showed something more troubling: an inquisitive audacity. Behind the dark lenses, I imagined their defiant stares masking fear. Their isolation from me was at once a barrier to overcome and an opportunity to seize. My antennae vibrated as I perceived a shift of power. The power of the weakness that I imposed on them. The weakness of the power that they returned to me. When one of them rose and left for the restroom, I noticed for the first time the creaking of floorboards. I pressed my legs together.
What was happening?
I wasn’t about to let them explain the situation to me. I moved on with a vertiginous feeling, as though I was walking along the edge of an abyss. My associates’ attitude, whether rebellious or disrespectful, was so unbearable that it forced my hand. Without considering the consequences, I gave an order.
“Take off your glasses, comets. The sun is out.”
They all looked at me with astonishment.
I knew that I had won this game.
This office rebellion had shattered a piece of the security with which, until then, I had governed them and in governing them, I had governed myself.
The insubordinates kept their dark sunglasses on.
But that’s another story.
Chapter 7
Everybody needs comfort. The stray dog seeks a master to rescue him, bathe him, and take care of him: food and shelter, even more precious to those who depend on the kindness of others. The caged bird appreciates its birdseed but yearns for the freedom to fly; when it escapes and flies away, it yearns for the never-ending supply of birdseed. According to popular wisdom, teenagers rebel against their parents, go out into the world, and return, contrite, begging for shelter, food, comfort, and unconditional affection. This was the case of an old friend of mine, Abel Pagán, who rebelled, left home, and was forced by circumstance to return humbled. Nobody knows how things will turn out. I have everything I need right now. But how about Mexico? If the peso’s devalued? If the drug traffickers take over? If the city floods once and for all, the shit rising to the Heights? If the highways become impassable and filled with bandits, the way they were in the nineteenth century? If Zapata rises from the dead? If the captured legendary soldier Valentín, as in the equally legendary corrido, refuses to talk? If the fat lady sings? If the next big earthquake leaves the country in ruins? . . .
Dog, bird, child, this evening I approach the house where L lives.
I have no desire to show my wounds. I relax and am, as always, whole, affectionate, personable, without visible scars, without unnecessary explanations, because I follow the saying so little appreciated by Latin American women who are cheated on and by the men who cheat on them: Never complain. Never explain.
L never asks for explanations and has never heard me complain. That’s our arrangement. L is just a mix of lovely attributes, forgivable pettiness, and understandable vices, and gives me so much that I cannot credit a single defect. L is aware of them and flaunts them.
Does L wear those imperfections as so many badges of honor?
L bores easily, so needs entertainment and frequent surprises. In order to love another person, L says, you have to love yourself first. L loves L. L’s not afraid to show weakness out of the belief that if our lovers know who we are, the possibility of astounding them increases because they are not expecting surprises. I have to let myself be deciphered, but not to tell all, so that I might not just be loved but also be loved for the things that I have not yet revealed.
L wants to be a mystery, and for me to be a mystery, too.
I know more or less zilch about L. We’re like in the song: “Don’t talk to me anymore, let me imagine that the past doesn’t exist and in the moment we met, we were born.”
I know nothing about L except for what I know about our life ever since “the moment we met,” and L knows only the same about me, as well as the part of my life that’s in the public domain. When I offer myself to L, there is an opaque curtain drawn over my life before my marriage to Priscila, when the baking family put me on the national stage. That’s something L and I have in common. We love each other here and now, without any reference to our pasts. We don’t discuss lovers, children, or ambitions, and we don’t make promises. Our relationship exists in the here and now. While I sometimes give in to the temptation of memory, that only happens in my secret, unpublishable communication—with you, reader. Unpublishable? What possessed me to say such a thing?
I allow myself to be surprised.
L must be aware of my public position but never mentions it, which makes me feel like a new man every time I come over, willing to renew myself on these nights of untold love with L, who does not know my family situation beyond what everybody knows (my marriage to the Queen of Spring in the house of the King of Bakery). The facts are irrelevant to a free spirit like L.
A free spirit? Can such a thing exist? Is there a single human being who is not tied, in some way, to his or her past and origin and family? Or to his or her profession, job, responsibility?
Yes, there is such a free spirit, a free spirit whose name is L. That’s what I believe.
I do not know anything about L’s past (cue bolero), nor do I want to know. Even if I did want to know, I couldn’t find out, and not just because L knows how to keep a secret. L is a secret. Everything that L says and does is spontaneous, without precedent (or at least without any significant precedent). I’ve never come across anyone who lives so completely for the moment. And in spite of that, L has eyes full of wisdom, gestures connoting experience, and words that draw from a well of mystery. But none of these qualities can be attributed to a past that doesn’t exist, because in each moment, L assumes that the past is present, and that the future is as well. I mean, when L remembers, what is important is not the memory, but the fact of remembering right now. And if L desires, this desire takes place in the here and now. L cancels out the past and the future, combining them into an eternal present: here and now, everything here and now, with an intensity that not only explains L, but that explains me, my passion for this unique being who takes me out of the ridiculous comedy of my household and the funereal solemnity of my office to place me in the radical moment—so beautiful, so rare, so everything!—in which I am with L, alive with L, in love with L.
Here and now all the problems, obligations, and ridiculousness of private life, and all the masquerades of public life, disappear. L redeems me, returns me to myself, to that part of my person that would otherwise remain hidden, latent, and perhaps lost forever.
I breathe into L’s ear, while we hold each other close, and L breathes into my mouth. Life not only returns, it has been here all along, and I don’t know what keeps me from abandoning everything to give myself unconditionally and without guilt to L’s love.
Chapter 8
Love interrupted. I chose L’s apartment. Requirements: a place where I could come and go without being seen, centrally located, yet isolated. Result: a downtown building letting out onto a narrow alley on Oslo Street between Nice and Copenhagen.
Context: the Zona Rosa district, motley crowds day and night, distractions. Actions: leave the car on Hamburg Street. Walk a couple of blocks hidden among the crowds, knowing that the best disguise is oneself. I appear so often on TV, in the newspapers, and at public events, that nobody would suspect that the ordinary guy walking alone between Genoa and Antwerp streets is me.
It’s a gamble.
And it’s paid off. Until this night I had excitedly planned to enjoy with L.
Somebody recognizes me, says hello, stops me.
“Sir! It’s you!”
Then everybody else recognizes me. “What an honor!”
“What a thrill!”
“Can I have your autograph?”
“A man of the people!”
“A regular guy!”