The Crystal Frontier Read online

  Don Leonardo patted his son’s head, envying the boy his bronzed, lion-colored hair. He himself had gone bald so early. He kissed him on the forehead and helped him settle down in bed, rocked him as he did when Mariano was a little boy, did not bless him because he didn’t believe in that stuff, but was on the verge of lulling him to sleep with a song. It seemed ridiculous to sing him a lullaby. The truth was, he only remembered boleros, and all of them talked about humiliated men and hypocritical women.

  “You screwed her, right? Tell me you did.”

  4

  The welcome party for Michelina was a complete success, especially because Doña Lucila ordered the men of the house—Don Leonardo and Marianito—to make themselves scarce.

  “Go out to the ranch and don’t come back until late. We want a party just for us girls, so we can relax and gossip to our heart’s content.”

  Leonardo girded his loins. He knew Michelina wouldn’t be able to take the drivel that pack of old bitches spewed whenever they got together. Marianito was in no condition to travel, but his father said nothing to Lucila; anyway, the kid never let himself be noticed. He was so discreet, he was a shadow … Don Leonardo went alone to have dinner with some gringos on the other side of the border. Dinner at six o’clock in the afternoon, how crude. When he got back, the party was in full swing, so he put his finger over his lips to tell the young Indian servant to say nothing. It didn’t matter: the boy was a Pacuache who didn’t speak Spanish, which was why Doña Lucila had hired him, so the ladies could say whatever they liked without eavesdroppers. Besides, this little Indian boy was as slim and handsome as a desert god, made not of white marble but of ebony instead, and when the highballs had gone to their heads, the ladies would collectively undress him and make him walk around naked with a tray on his head. They were soul sisters, completely uninhibited, or did the ladies in the capital think that just because they were from the north they had to be hicks? No way! With the border a mere step away, you could be in a Neiman Marcus, a Saks, a Cartier in half an hour. What right did these women from the capital have to brag, when they were condemned to buy their clothes at Perisur? Okay now, keep it down—Doña Lucila put her finger to her lips—here comes Leonardo’s goddaughter. They say she’s really conceited, that she’s traveled a lot, and that she’s very chic (as they say), so just be yourselves, but don’t offend her.

  Michelina was the only one who didn’t have a face-lift. She sat down, smiling and amiable, among the twenty or so rich and perfumed women, all of them outfitted on the other side of the border, bejewelled, most with mahogany-tinted locks, some wearing Venetian fantasy glasses, others watery-eyed trying out their contact lenses, but all liberated. And if this girl from the capital wanted to join them, fine, but if she turned out to be a tight-ass, they’d just ignore her … This was the girls’ gang, and they drank supersweet liqueurs because they got you stoned faster and were tastier, as if life were an eternal dessert (desert? dessert? postre? desierto?). They would drink sweet aníse on ice, a so-called nun, a cloudy drink that got you drunk fast. (Oh, Lucilita, how I’m screwing up—and it’s only my first little nun …) Like drinking the sky, girls, like getting drunk on clouds. They began singing: You and the clouds have driven me crazy, you and the clouds will be my death …

  They all laughed and drank more nuns and someone told Michelina to loosen up, that she really looked like a nun sitting there in the middle of the room on a puff covered in lilac brocade, all symmetrical. But isn’t your goddaughter crooked anywhere, Lucilita? Hey, she’s only my husband’s goddaughter, not mine. Anyway, what perfection, her eyes along one line, her nose another straight line, her chin cleft, her lips so…! Some laughed because they were sorry for Lucila, staring at her and blushing, but Lucila let it all go by, turned inward; their comments rolled off her like water off a duck, as if nothing had happened. They were here celebrating the absence of men—well, except for that little Indian boy who doesn’t count. And there’s my husband’s goddaughter, who’s oh so refined and courteous. Now, don’t make her uncomfortable. Let her be just as she is and let us be the way we are. After all, we all came from the convent, don’t forget. All of us went to school with the nuns and one day we all got liberated, so don’t make Michelina feel funny. But come on, we’re all back in the convent, Lucilita, said a lady whose glasses were encrusted with diamonds, all alone, without men, but sure thinking about them!

  This set off a verbal Ping-Pong game about men, their evils, their cheapness, their indifference, their adeptness at avoiding responsibility (work the usual pretext), their fear of physical pain (I’d like to see a single one of those bastards give birth just once), their limited sexual skill (so how could they not look for lovers?). Hey, hey, what do you know, Rosalba? Don’t be a bunch of jerks now—all I know is what you all tell me, and me, well, I’m a saint, my saint. And they sang a little again, and then they started laughing at men once more (“Ambrosio’s gone nuts: he makes the maid shave under her arms and wear perfume. Can you beat that? The poor bitch’s going to start thinking she’s someone”; “He makes out that he’s so generous because we have a joint account in New York, but I found out about the secret account in Switzerland. I got the number and everything. I seduced the lawyer. Let’s see that wiseass Nicolás pull a fast one on me”; “They all think we shouldn’t get the cash until they kick off. You’ve got to know all the bank accounts and have access to all the credit cards just in case they dump you”; “In one shot, I ripped off my first husband’s Optima card for $100,000 before he knew what hit him”; “We have to watch porno films together for that little thing to happen”; “First it’s ‘The president called me,’ then it’s ‘The president told me, confided in me, distinguished me with an embrace.’ ‘So why don’t you marry him?’ I said.”) But they didn’t have the nerve to strip the Pacuache with Michelina there. She went along politely with their laughter, toying with her pearl necklace and nodding sweetly at the jokes the women made; her position—not distant yet not right in among them—was perfect, though she was fearful it would all end in the usual group embrace, the great unbosoming of feelings, the sweat, the tears, the repentance, the desire, vibrant and suppressed, the terrible admission: there is absolutely nothing of interest in Campazas for anyone, outsider or native, city person or northerner. Lord, how they wanted to get in the Grumman and fly off to Vail right now. But why? Just to run into more dissatisfied Mexicans, horrified at the idea that all the money in the world isn’t worth shit because there’s always something more, and more, and more, something unattainable—to be the queen of England, the sultan of Brunei, be a piece like Kim Basinger or have a piece like Tom Cruise. They started giggling, imitating the movements of skiers, but they weren’t on the Colorado slopes but in the desert of northern Mexico, which suddenly exploded in the firmament at sunset and passed through the leaded windows of the Tudor-Norman mansion, illuminating the faces of the twenty women, painting them satanic red, blinding the contact-lens wearers, and forcing all of them to look at the daily spectacle of the sun disappearing amid the fire, carrying their treasures into the underworld, exhibiting them one last time on the bald mountains and rocky plains, leaving only the prickly pears as the crowns of the night, carrying everything else away: life, beauty, ambition, envy, fortune. Would the sun rise again?

  All eyes concentrated on the sunset. Except those of two people.

  Leonardo Barroso watched everything from behind a scarlet curtain.

  Michelina Laborde e Ycaza watched him until he saw her.

  Their eyes met at the exact instant when no one had any interest in seeing where the young lady from the capital was looking or finding out if Leonardo had returned. The twenty women silently watched the sunset as if, in tears, they were attending their own funerals.

  Then the northern troupe came in, banging drums and playing trumpets and guitars, and the place filled with men wearing Stetsons and short jackets. The spell was broken and all the women howled with pleasure. No one even noti
ced when Michelina excused herself, walked to the curtain, and, among its thick folds, found her godfather’s burning hand.

  5

  Only Lucila heard with what a desperate sound, with what a screech of burning rubber, the Lincoln convertible pulled out of the garage. But she paid no attention because, no matter how fast it went, the car would never reach the limits of the red horizon. To Mrs. Barroso, that seemed like a very neat poetic idea—“We shall never reach the horizon”—but she had no words to communicate it to her pals, who, in any case, were all drunk. Perhaps she only imagined the engine’s noise, which might have been nothing more than the echo of the guitar in her crazed head.

  Leonardo was not drunk. His horizon did have a limit: the border between Mexico and the United States. The night air cleared his head even more, clarified both his ideas and his eyes. He drove with only one hand on the wheel. With his other hand, he squeezed Michelina’s. He told her he regretted having to say it to her, but she should understand that she would have anything she wanted. He didn’t want to brag, but she would get all the money, all the power; now she was seeing only the naked desert, but her life could be like that enchanted city on the other side of the frontier: golden towers, crystal palaces.

  Yes, she said, I know, I accept it.

  Leonardo slammed on the brakes, exiting the straight desert highway. In the distance, the monuments of cathedrallike stone, which seemed now like fragile paper silhouettes, watched over them.

  He looked at her as if he, too, could read in the dark. The girl’s eyes shone brightly enough. At least Marianito and she would have that in common, the gift of penetrating the darkness, of seeing into the night. Perhaps without that penumbra he wouldn’t have clearly seen what he recognized in his goddaughter’s eyes. Daylight would surely have dazzled his vision. Night was necessary for seeing clearly the soul of this woman.

  Yes, she said, I know and accept.

  Leonardo held onto the Lincoln’s steering wheel as if it were the rock of his most intimate being. He was money. He was power. The desired love, he realized, was his own.

  “No, not me.”

  “You,” Michelina said. “You are what I want.”

  She kissed him with those perfect lips, and against his beard, earlier shaved close but stubbly at that hour, he felt the depth of Michelina’s cleft chin. He sank into the open mouth of his goddaughter, as if all light had no other origin but that tongue, those teeth, that saliva. He closed his eyes to kiss and saw all the light of the world. But he never let go of the wheel. His fingers had a voice and shouted to get closer to Michelina’s body, to dig among her buttons, to find and caress and stiffen her nipples, the next symmetry of that perfect beauty.

  He kissed her for a long time, exploring the girl’s perfectly formed, uncleft palate with his tongue, and then God and the devil, once again allies, made him feel he was kissing his own son, that the father’s tongue cut itself and bled in the jagged cleft of the palate, broken like a coral reef, that the smoothness of Michelina’s mouth had been brutally replaced by his son’s swollen, irritated, reddish carnality, wounded, smeared with mucus, dripping thick phlegm.

  Is that what she felt when he screwed her last night without wanting to confess it? Why was she telling him now that she wanted him, the father, when it was obvious she was here to seduce the son incapable of seducing anyone? Wasn’t she here to conclude the family pact, to acknowledge the unlimited protection the powerful politician Leonardo Barroso gave to the impoverished Laborde e Ycaza family, to thank him for a few marvelous days in Paris—wines, restaurants, monuments? Was that what made working, getting rich, worthwhile? Paris was the reward, and now she was Paris; she incarnated the world, Europe, good taste, and he was offering her the complement to her elegance and beauty, the money without which she would quickly cease to be elegant and beautiful and become merely an eccentric aristocrat like her ancient grandmother, bent over the collectible curios of the past.

  He invited her to conclude the pact. He became her godfather in order to single out her family. Now he was offering her his son in matrimony. The gold seal.

  “But I’ve already got a boyfriend in the capital.”

  Leonardo stared fixedly until he lost his own eyes in the desert.

  “No more.”

  “I’m not lying to you, godfather.”

  “Everything and everyone has a price. That punk was more interested in money than in you.”

  “You did it for me, didn’t you? You love me, too, isn’t that true?”

  “You don’t get it. You just don’t get it.”

  Together with his promise, the invisible line of the frontier passed through his head. He was well-known in the luxury hotels on the other side; they never asked him for identification or baggage and simply rented him the most luxurious suite for a night or a few hours, making sure there was a basket of fruit and a bottle of champagne in the room before he stepped out of the elevator. A sitting room. A bedroom. A bathroom. The two of them showering together, lathering each other up, caressing …

  Leonardo turned the key in the ignition, started the car, and headed back to Campazas.

  6

  Grandmother Doña Zarina agreed with her granddaughter. Michelina would be dressed for her marriage in the old-fashioned way, in authentic clothes the old lady had naturally been collecting for generations. The girl could choose.

  A crinoline, said the young woman, I’ve always dreamed of wearing a crinoline so everyone could wonder about me, could imagine me, and not know clearly what the bride was like. In that case, the grandmother said cheerfully, you’ll need a veil.

  One night, she tried on her wedding outfit, the crinoline and the veil, and went to bed to sleep alone for the last time. She dreamed she was in a convent, strolling through patios and arcades, chapels and corridors, while the other nuns, locked in, peered out like animals through the bars on their cells, shouted obscenities at her because she was getting married, because she preferred the love of a man to wedding Christ. They insulted her for violating her vows, for leaving her religious order, her social class.

  Michelina tried to escape from her dream, whose space was identical to that of the convent, but all the nuns, crowded in front of the altar, blocked her way. The black maids tore the habits off the sisters, stripping them naked to the waist, and then the nuns screamed imploringly for the whip to suppress the devil in the flesh and to give an example for Sister Michelina. Others immodestly menstruated on the tiled floor, then licked their own blood and marked crosses on the icy stone. Others lay next to the prostrate, bleeding, wounded, thorn-pierced Christs, and here Michelina’s dream in Mexico City fused with Mariano’s in the lightless bedroom in Campazas. The boy, too, dreamed of one of those dolorous Christs in Mexican churches, more dolorous than their Virgin Mothers, the Son laid out in a crystal coffin surrounded by dusty flowers, He Himself turning to dust, disappearing on His homeward journey to the spirit, leaving only the evidence of a few nails, a lance, a crown of thorns, a rag dipped in vinegar … how he longed to leave behind the miseries of this ephemeral body!

  That was only for Christ, and how Mariano envied Him! If the suffering, mocked, wounded Christ had been left in holy peace, why not him? All he wanted was to live on his parents’ ranch, reading all day with no other company than the Indians, who were natural and indifferent to the perversions of nature, Indians some called Pacuaches and others “erased Indians.” Like him: invisible Indians, beings who copied that great canvas of imitations and metamorphoses, the desert. Was he more confined, more isolated out there on the desert ranch than his family was in Disneyland, out of touch as they were with Campazas, with the nation, ignoring everything that occurred outside their high walls, consuming only imported things, watching only cable television? Why was he denied his solitude, his isolation, when he was indifferent to theirs? He who read so much, things that were so beautiful, worlds as perfect as his imagination could desire, infinitely new pasts, futures foretold and already, already e
njoyed.

  He dreamed of a hare.

  A hare is a wild quadruped with long ears and a short tail.

  Its fur is reddish, and its offspring are born hairy.

  Its feet are longer than those of the rabbit. It runs very quickly because it is very timid.

  It does not dig, as other members of the species do. It makes nests, seeking out a stable, warm, respected space where it will be left in peace.

  It’s a mammal. It’s born from milk, desires it again, wants to suckle in darkness, to be sucked, in a nest with no surprises and no one to watch it enjoy itself.

  There wasn’t a woman in the world who could tolerate his desire. Mariano only wanted, finally, to live physically where he’d always wanted to live by will and where he’d always lived in spirit. On a ranch. With little money, many books, and a few “erased Indians” as silent as he. Alone, because where in the world was there a woman who could eclipse all space but the bedroom, where space and presence coincided. Was Michelina such a woman? Would she respect his solitude? Would she liberate him forever from ambition, inheritance, social obligations, the need to make public appearances?

  It wasn’t his fault that inside his mouth there lived a blind, hairy, swift, and voracious hare, nesting permanently on his tongue.

  7

  On her wedding day, Michelina entered the living room of the Tudor-Norman mansion wearing her beautiful old dress, her crinoline, flat-heeled white velvet slippers, and a heavy white veil that completely hid her features. And above the veil, a crown of orange blossoms. She was on the arm of her father, the retired ambassador Don Herminio Laborde. Michelina’s mother was unwilling to make the trip north (gossip had it that she disapproved of the marriage but lacked the means to stop it). The grandmother, old as she was, would have made the trip with pleasure.

  “I’ve seen every type of crossbreeding imaginable, and one more, even if it’s between a tigress and a gorilla, much less between a dove and a rabbit, isn’t going to shock me.”