I did, because you asked me to.

Who are you?

Adviser to the secretary.

Who dismissed my husband?

The secretary, because alvaro was insubordinate.

Did you approve the dismissal?

There was nothing else I could do. It was a bureaucratic decision. Don't think it was on account of you. Besides, it isn't that he was insubordinate. He simply didn't measure up. I'm sorry.

It doesn't matter. For my husband, you're the factotum. factotum. You hire. You fire. You seduce the wives of your employees. And just as you seduce them, you can abandon them. And then, Leo, then he would be there, ready to receive me with feigned anger, with disguised tenderness, he, alvaro Meneses, who is who he is only because of favors received, becomes the giver, do you understand? The Good Samaritan, the sentimental Midas, oh, I don't know! He receives. He gives to me. That's his well-being. You hire. You fire. You seduce the wives of your employees. And just as you seduce them, you can abandon them. And then, Leo, then he would be there, ready to receive me with feigned anger, with disguised tenderness, he, alvaro Meneses, who is who he is only because of favors received, becomes the giver, do you understand? The Good Samaritan, the sentimental Midas, oh, I don't know! He receives. He gives to me. That's his well-being.

You're the object of love who ought to be unaware of it.

Do you know something? I'm tired of the comedy of pain, devotion, and fidelity. Pa.s.sion exhausts me. The problem with my husband is that things weren't as satisfactory as I hoped or as indifferent as he expected.

What did you want, Cordelia? Being a couple is an illness. It's a sickness. It isn't true that the couple is the perfect egotism between two people. The couple is shared h.e.l.l.

You and I?

The exception that proves the rule.

Aren't there three of us, if we include alvaro?

Tell me something, Cordelia: At some point in your marriage, did you ever have the feeling that you and your husband were a single person?

Yes. How horrible. As soon as I felt that, I began to step back.

Was I the way to distance yourself from the similarity to your husband?

In part. Not completely. Not always. It doesn't matter. The more you resemble yourself, the less you resemble your spouse. That's what I thought then. With you, there are no physical antipathies. Very strange. With you, there are no doubts about the amorous relationship.

Inevitable doubts?

Maybe.

Are you sure? You didn't break with alvaro. Not completely, I mean.

I love each one in his own way. You and he.

Would you take the next step?

It depends. I don't know. What are you talking about?

About egotism disguised as generosity. I'm talking about giving. About giving oneself. About giving oneself completely. About going beyond the couple . . .

5. Leo could concentrate on the painting by Hokusai. On the other hand, it was difficult for him to concentrate on the two women, Lavinia and Cordelia. In the painting, he could see what he wanted to. It was a transparent painting, pure gla.s.s open to the whim of one's eyes and the strength of one's imagination. For example: In the picture, it is raining on the landscape. To Leo's eyes, the rain is smoke. In the painting, the world floats past. To Leo's eyes, the world tends to be fixed, immobile, in the most immediate reality. Leo's daily reality? Or the reality of the imaginary painting? Aren't they, both of them-everyday reality, the virtual reality of art-permanent flux, everything flows? Leo understands it this way even though he doesn't feel it. Leo is the victim of a parceling of hours into immobile minutes that, no matter how they follow in succession, are identical among themselves or, at least, to themselves. But Hokusai's sea, though immobile in the painting (or within the painting), is like the gigantic spirit of the world. That surf along the j.a.panese coast, enclosed within the four sides of the painting, over-flows them, the sea ascends to the sky, invades the beaches, sinks to the bottom of itself, devours itself in each singular, repeated wave.

The sea, like the figures in Piero della Francesca, looks elsewhere, ailleurs, labas. elsewhere, ailleurs, labas. Leo knows there are no geographical Leo knows there are no geographical labas labas to flee to, as Gauguin and Stevenson did. Gauguin's grandchildren receive the Paris papers by plane every day. Stevenson's grandchildren watch a serialized to flee to, as Gauguin and Stevenson did. Gauguin's grandchildren receive the Paris papers by plane every day. Stevenson's grandchildren watch a serialized Treasure Island Treasure Island on television. The on television. The labas, labas, the the other place, other place, the great undiscovered country, exists only in each person's soul, but there are beings with no soul, that is, with no imagination. And even those who have more than enough, which is what Leo thinks about himself, who use it up rapidly, soon become sated with their own fantasy and then feel the need to go the great undiscovered country, exists only in each person's soul, but there are beings with no soul, that is, with no imagination. And even those who have more than enough, which is what Leo thinks about himself, who use it up rapidly, soon become sated with their own fantasy and then feel the need to go beyond, beyond, farther than where they have already gone. farther than where they have already gone.

An enormous la.s.situde invades the entire being of Leo Casares when he thinks this, and then he returns to his bedroom and continues to look at the painting. The world is floating by. Grab it!

6. First he spoke with each woman and later with both of them together in the penthouse on Calle de Schiller. He had spoken to each about the other without revealing the nature of their relationships to him. They were friends, barely acquaintances. To each-it was the most difficult point-he explained the particular beauty of the other. He admired each for her beauty-one so different from the other-and when he told this to the other, he did not add what the one listening-Lavinia, Cordelia-wanted to know, each more beautiful than the other. And since they could not say that about themselves, they waited for him to say: "She is very beautiful, but you're more beautiful." Or "not as beautiful as you." Or at least "there's no comparison to you." He kept this back. At the most, he told each one: "A woman is interesting not because she's beautiful but because she's another another beauty." beauty."

He knew, looking at each one in turn, that he was looking for a woman who would have a little of Lavinia and a little of Cordelia. Since that woman did not exist, Leo preferred having both. The problem that was becoming acute, distressing, exciting, and filled with expectation was knowing how to bring them together, put them face-to-face, and observe what would happen when the two women who were his lovers met without knowing that each was a s.e.xual partner of Leo's. Would they intuit it? Say it? When two are one, each experiences what Mallarme calls "the evil of being two." What does the poet mean? That the amorous couple would like to be a perfect, indissoluble unity, and when they achieve it, they experience evil, the absolute evil of knowing yourself a lover and knowing, fatally, that you are separated from what you desire most in spite of having it?

Leo debates this question with himself, the lover of two women who do not know each other and whom he now invites to have a drink at the same time-seven in the evening-in the apartment that each one-Cordelia, Lavinia-knows and considers hers because each one has moved from the living room to the bedroom and from the bedroom to the bathroom and each one has used the same soap, the same shower, the same towel, the same bidet, and sometimes the same toothbrush (Cordelia never forgets to bring hers, Lavinia does: "What would my husband, Cristobal, think if he found a toothbrush in my Louis Vuitton bag?").

Until now Leo has kept them apart thanks to a fortunate though hazardous act of juggling. Two b.a.l.l.s in the air. One ball in each hand. Leo becomes irritated. In his life as a great dilettante, a great enthusiast, enthusiast, each step ahead has been transformed over time into a step backward if the next step forward is not taken in time. It is what he is experiencing now. La.s.situde. Abulia. Lack of surprise. Wonder exhausted. The sea dries up. There is only a cliff that sinks to the bottom of a great cemetery of sand. A ravine whose crown is the great bare desert. The sea basin has to be filled again. Where is the surf, where are the sweet laments of the sea, where is the new, unheard-of, voracious foam that his existence demands in order to move forward? In order not to commit suicide in the name of unknown novelty? each step ahead has been transformed over time into a step backward if the next step forward is not taken in time. It is what he is experiencing now. La.s.situde. Abulia. Lack of surprise. Wonder exhausted. The sea dries up. There is only a cliff that sinks to the bottom of a great cemetery of sand. A ravine whose crown is the great bare desert. The sea basin has to be filled again. Where is the surf, where are the sweet laments of the sea, where is the new, unheard-of, voracious foam that his existence demands in order to move forward? In order not to commit suicide in the name of unknown novelty?

Leo replaces on the mantelpiece the photograph hidden during Cordelia's and Lavinia's visits. It was the portrait of a man in his forties, handsome, with a thin face, his chin resting on two hands with long, very slim fingers. The dedication read: "To my adored son Leo, your father, Manuel."

7. Leo told them the good thing about absence when a couple falls in love but lives apart is that it keeps desire alive.

Lavinia did not agree. She said that absence does not stimulate desire, it kills it. And she added picturesquely: "If you're smart, don't stay apart."

Cordelia intervened with the opinion that absence is like the sweet but unbearable reserve of the next encounter.

"I've wanted to be at a distance without desiring," Leo claimed, leaving unstated the conclusion that neither woman would or could reach.

"I'd rather say stupid things than feel sorrow," Lavinia said in an eccentric way.

"Do you mean that's why you say them?" Leo said with a nasty smile.

"I don't dare oppose older people like the two of you," Lavinia said, returning his smile.

Leo guffawed in irritation. "I like women who, in spite of being women, are different."

Cordelia shrugged and made a disapproving face. Did Leo think that being a woman was a uniform? Weren't men, in any case, more similar to one another than any two women? Lavinia laughed. "We wear feathers like savages, we raise and lower our skirts following the dictates of fashion, whatever that means, we don't become bald, we don't have to shave (our faces), and our underwear isn't predictable, we're divine!"

Leo and Lavinia wanted to break the ice emanating from Cordelia's labored breathing. Suddenly, this simple conversation (this complicated presence of the three of them in the home of a shared lover) had placed Cordelia at an age disadvantage, something she was not accustomed to accepting, especially because it was the repeated insult her husband, alvaro, threw up to her.

It was obvious that alvaro's wife was twice the age of Cristobal's. Except with Leo, Cordelia had never felt the contrast that the youthful presence of Lavinia imposed on her now. The two women were aware of the difference. They also confirmed that age did not matter to Leo.

His shaved, bluish skull, firm jawline, the spiderweb surrounding eyes by turn icy and smiling (mocking?), the impertinence of arched eyebrows, the sensuality of lips that were mocking (smiling?), everything gave this man whatever age he wanted to be, now with Lavinia, now with Cordelia.

The remarkable thing was that with both present, he did not stop being the man he was with each separately. They knew it. He knew it. Leo moved his p.a.w.ns on a board that he controlled but one on which the pieces moved with an economy of chance very similar-he reflected-to the most dangerous kind of independence. At that moment he knew it was time for him to act, boldly, even impetuously, by surprise but with no vulgarity.

That is, for the moment when they had a drink together, Leo deferred his personal movements.

The two women left at the same time, not coming to any agreement except the decorous necessity of not remaining alone with Leo.

Before they leave (they have already picked up their handbags, and one has smoothed her skirt, the other her trousers, both of them their hair), Leo asks them: "What do you think of Hokusai's painting? What does it say to you?"

Lavinia and Cordelia look at each other, disconcerted.

8. He wanted to execute everything to perfection. The distribution of s.p.a.ces allowed all kinds of combinations. Taking the large bedroom as the center of the game, one entered it through a hall door or through two bathrooms at either side of the master bedroom (nuptial chamber?), both supplied with everything necessary: closet, hangers, shoe racks, changes of clothing, caftans. The usual. The doors of the bathrooms opened to the left and the right of the bedroom. The bedroom itself was an upholstered, carpeted cave perfumed by the Persian aroma of tapestries more than by any artificial flowering, giving freedom to bodies to perspire, to smell, if necessary, to stink in order not to lose the animality of the relationship, not to sanitize it until it was extinguished in a mere required function of mental subst.i.tutions because of a lack of physical incentives.

Leo Casares put on a blue-and-white-striped robe and amused himself thinking about how the two women would come out of each bathroom into the bedroom, each with an appointment, the other not knowing, the twin bathrooms separated by a single bed. He had exercised all afternoon at the gym without taking a shower afterward. He wanted to proclaim in an olfactory way his animal masculinity. He refused to displace probable offenses with splashes of lavender. He wanted to enjoy and be enjoyed within the Augustinian precept, so inculcated in Catholic school, of s.e.x as the act of beasts. He felt the need to verify, with two women at the same time, that animal nature could coexist with the human, if Cordelia would finally accept a.n.a.l intercourse or if Lavinia would be satisfied with frontal. a.n.a.l like animals. Frontal like heroes. But pleasure among the three of them, like G.o.ds.

He guessed correctly. At ten sharp, as he had asked each one, Cordelia opened the door on the left, Lavinia the door on the right.

Lavinia, as was her custom, appeared naked. Cordelia, as was hers, came in enveloped in a white caftan. In the center of the bedroom, Leo waited for them in a robe. He looked at one, then the other. He looked at the far wall of the bedroom. Hanging there was the j.a.panese painting of sea and sky, wave and cliff. He did not look at the women. He looked at the painting. Let them act. Let them understand that this was the next step in the relationship. That Leo wasn't asking them to love another man, different from him and also from their husbands, alvaro and Cristobal. That this was no longer enough to excite him. That the new rule was this: you and I, the three of us together, two women and a man.

This was what we needed. This was the necessary step toward the unknown, toward what comes next. The meeting of land and sea and sky. Would Lavinia and Cordelia understand that from this moment on, both were hostages to the man's desire? Would they dare to consummate that desire, or would they frustrate it and consequently break everything, erase the image of the painting, return to a situation not only earlier than the couples Leo-Lavinia, Leo-Cordelia, but also solely conjugal, Lavinia-Cristobal, Cordelia-alvaro, since he, Leo, would disappear forever from the lives of both women if they did not advance toward him now?

He avoided looking at them. That was what Hokusai's painting was there for. To fix Leo's attention on a work of art untouchable by s.e.x, barely caressable by fingers, though destructible by hands. To distance Leo, at that moment, from an unhealthy curiosity to see the two women, observe their att.i.tudes, guess at their intentions, judge Lavinia's young body in contrast to Cordelia's mature one, see how the two women saw each other or know if they even looked at each other, if they avoided looking at each other, if they had eyes only for their austere, distant, perhaps incomprehensible, perhaps seductive or seducible lord and master and voluntary slave Leo Casares.

Would the two women read Leo's thoughts? Would they realize that this mise-en-scene eliminated jealousy, extinguished envy, exiled ba.n.a.l prejudices? Who would dare, here and now, in the bedroom elevated to a personal sanctuary for Leo, who would dare offend the other two? Whoever gives offense, loses. And if one leaves, the couple remains. And if yesterday's couple doesn't remain, a new couple will be found tomorrow. A new game, always beginning, culminating now or never.

"It's a win-win situation," Leo murmured, summarizing what he knew they also knew, because after all, in fragments, here and there, over time, each couple (Leo-Lavinia, Leo-Cordelia) had said it or intuited it or thought it. Except that even in the most perfect geometry of joy deferred or premeditated cruelty, the demon of pleasure puts in an appearance, and Leo was doing battle with him now in order to stare at the painting and avoid looking at or being looked at by them.

"Of course beauty exists," he said in a very quiet voice. "But only for a moment."

The imperfect actuality of the beautiful had to be sacrificed. He thought about it. Did they know? Leo felt on the verge of an almost supernatural happiness and of too physical a misfortune. He felt doubts. The women revealed nothing. It had been easy to concentrate on each one separately. Would it be difficult to pay attention to both at the same time? In what order would the pleasures of each occur, the inevitable couple, the potential trio? Was the o.r.g.a.s.m the little death or a transitory suicide? At that moment suicide and death attempted to personalize themselves in the feverish yet lucid mind of Leo. What did he want? To be rid of the husbands, Cristobal and alvaro? Or of the wives, Lavinia and Cordelia? Leo had prepared this scene in order to take the next step, to put to the test not the conjugal fidelity he knew had been overcome but the intensity of emotions, which he imagined had been postponed. He did not have to look at Lavinia (naked?) or Cordelia (caftan?) to know that the situation did not eliminate the villain of the piece, the green monster of jealousy. He did not need to see them to know this because he felt it in his own heart.

This was what alarmed him. That he imagined the step following the menage a trois. It was the step toward reconst.i.tuting the couples. Not the return to conjugal ties. Not even the permanence of the trio but an alliance of the two women against him, against Leo, the two of them alone against the solitary man who proposed tonight to make love to both women only to reach the culminating point and abort the ecstasy, interrupt the pleasure in order to exasperate both and oblige them to desire once more, again, and again, and again . . .

He did not want to look at them just then. He would have liked to tell them that blind distance maintains the mystery, that he wanted them both far from him in order to continue to read them. He realized he had already said that. That instead of advancing in his purpose, he was moving backward, like a crab. That his imagination obliged him to go forward in order to overthrow any habit past, present, or future, to move toward perhaps unreachable possibilities without understanding that his desire for them could be a desire to begin all over again in order to love better.

Knowing what he already knows?

Forgetting everything?

What was the next step?

Everything configured an imperfect duel. Leo refused to look at them. He prayed that this scene would not make them tired of him, of themselves, of the irretrievable earlier situation. All of this flashed through his head; accepting habit was the greatest defeat, unacceptable to him. True, in the end, it was all an imperfect duel between desire and its consummation: repeatable or unrepeatable. Leo, with almost Edenic innocence (that's right, with fragile compa.s.sion for himself, he thought), wanted only today's satisfaction to leave us unsatisfied so we could desire and achieve the next day's satisfaction.

Would the women understand it this way? Why didn't they say anything? Why didn't they move? Would one of them-Cordelia or Lavinia-dare to destroy the proposed trio, tacitly believing that in this way they would return to the earlier couple? Or had he, Leo, destroyed forever all possible relations with them? Did they (Lavinia, Cordelia) realize that Leo had done them the favor of showing each one that her life was false, that the artifice offered by Leo was the truth, the truth, in spite of the artifice, just as in the j.a.panese painting? in spite of the artifice, just as in the j.a.panese painting?

"Everything I've done is for the sake of happy families."

How was he going to say this if he himself was incapable of believing it? Of believing anything anything? Even that these women might be happier with their husbands than with him?

This idea provoked irrepressible laughter in him. He decided to face them, laughing, gauging them, the two women. He, triumphant. This would be the propitious moment to bring the situation to a head. A laugh to absolve them and absolve himself, dispelling everything as a huge joke, an exquisite corpse exquisite corpse of Leo's surrealist spirit. Or perhaps dazzling, almost diabolical laughter, defying the women's imagination, a fatal invitation to a shared copulation that would renew and even exceed relations among the three. The great pact, euphoric, gallant, transgressive, of Leo, Lavinia, and Cordelia. of Leo's surrealist spirit. Or perhaps dazzling, almost diabolical laughter, defying the women's imagination, a fatal invitation to a shared copulation that would renew and even exceed relations among the three. The great pact, euphoric, gallant, transgressive, of Leo, Lavinia, and Cordelia.

He let them look at the j.a.panese painting. He turned on his heel to face the two women he had just imagined behind him, immobile, each one coming out of a bathroom, walking toward the bed they would share. Or moving away from the bed, returning to the bathrooms, disappearing . . .

"You need to have a great lack of imagination to break off an amorous relationship," Leo said to himself in a very low voice.

9. Sitting on the sofa in front of the picture of the turbulent sea and the immobile cliff, Leo smoked a light-tobacco cigarette, breaking his New Year's resolution: to give up all secondary vices. He allowed the spirals to add a transparent, fleeting coat to the painting. Why was the sea turbulent if the cliff did not move? Why was the physical world so capricious? In Leo's desire, on that night everything had to be transformed, crossed, multiplied. The sea would become calm. The coast would rise up murmuring, trembling, to culminate in a vast barren plain populated with unknown bodies that would advance naked but wrapped in transparent black veils, like the figures of Manuel Rodriguez Lozano in the main room of the apartment on Calle de Schiller.

He did not identify those two bodies. They were not familiar. He noticed that he did not recognize the colors offered him by the world of the painting. They were too new, perhaps happy, in any case, frighteningly pure. The colors were pure and bold. The figures, on the other hand, seemed impure and uncertain.

Leo shook his head. He looked directly at the painting. It was pure gla.s.s. It was transparent. It was the perfect work of art. Each person put in it what he or she wanted to see. Nothing more. And nothing less. That was the miracle of the j.a.panese painting. It was a virtual work. It was pure emptiness as liquid as the air, as aerial as the ocean. It was an invisible mirror. It was an eternally renewed story . . .

10. When he went into the bathroom, he found the mirror smeared with toothpaste and the tube, used up, tossed carelessly into the wastebasket.

Leo shrugged. He did not want to calculate which of the two had used this bathroom.

Chorus of the Savage Families

they come from the north they occupy the city of nuestra senora de la porciuncula de los angeles on the border with mexico they come from the south they occupy the city of tapatatapachula south of chiapas on the border with guatemala they divide up the city of los angeles the mexican mafia are the southsiders the salvadoran mara sansalvatrucha are in control from thirteenth street to central venice the mestizos from venice thirteen to south central the mexican wetbacks wherever night finds them they invade the city of tapachula they cross the coatan river they vandalize silversmiths goldsmiths as they please they steal orange saddles still redolent of sacrificed cattle they take off their pants to feel the down on the saddle mix with the hair of their s.e.x the clicas confront the gangas of los angeles the salvadoran mara.s.sansalvatruchas against the mexican mafia the confrontation each crew sends its big guys in front its giant headbreaking fighters the clash takes place at the devil's corner calle 666 and eighteen the raza endures the maras break your head stomp on you f.u.c.k you up but the mexican babes reward you with kisses after the brawl the maras announce their attacks in tapachula they close the schools but n.o.body can run away the maras come down whistling from the volcanoes they walk like spiders with spiders they pull out sawed-off shotguns and daggers that they saw off they control the train run from chiapas to tabasco they tie their victims to the train track the train cuts off their legs the gang members disappear in the forest they reappear in los angeles they specialize in drive-by shootings firing at random from their cars at their mexican rivals they pretend to be mexicans their accent gives them away captain bobby of the LAPD the los angeles police force is capturing them one by one they come from the wars of ronaldanger ronaldranger ronaldanger in central america sons of grandsons of exiles who identify themselves with a tattoo on the arm and they give themselves away with a false mexican accent they hate mexico the captain smiles he knows send them back to salvador captain bobby?

no way fly them back home?

no way they say they are mexicans? send them back through mexico let mexico deal with them from the south from soconusco from the north from california they advance toward the center mexicocity greattenocht.i.tlan baptismal water of the nahuas from sacramento to nicaragua an interminable pilgrimage from south to north from north to south the mara salvatrucha gang and the mara dieciocho gang rivals united by death a hundred thousand members on the two borders a hundred thousand gangs in mexico city between pensil norte and los indios verdes they announce themselves with graffiti in all the urban centers black spray paint stylized letters they dress like hoods heads shaved and tattooed they have their hole in lost cities lairs in iztapalapa refuges in gustavo madero they attack kill extort rape murder leave mutilated bodies in the streets their leaders are called commanders of the clica their head is called "the sinister one"

they wait for christmas for their great slaughter twenty-eight people murdered on the D.F. subway twenty-one wounded six children they want the land burned from border to border "let them be afraid of us"

they murder to frighten they free to tell about it they have dry skin and foaming mouths they are the army of silence they never speak they communicate by signs

CALLE 8.

CALLE 18.

FLY AWAY,.

BIRDS.

Eternal Father

1. Each anniversary the father made an appointment with them in this old place next to the sunken park. The sunken park was not its official name, but Parque Luis G. Urbina, in honor of a poet of the last century. The popular name has survived the fame of the poet, and everybody gives as a direction "Take me to the sunken park," which is a cool, shaded urban depression in the midst of countless avenues and mute skysc.r.a.pers. Not a fierce oasis but a shadowy refuge. A green roof for lovers greener still. Even when you climb up from the park, you have the feeling that you're climbing down. The park is sinking, and the city is sinking along with it.

The three sisters-Julia, Genara, and Augusta-respond to their father's call on the day of the anniversary. For the rest of the year, they don't see or speak to one another. Genara makes pottery. Julia plays the violin. Augusta manages a bank, but she compensates for this lack of modesty with social work in working-cla.s.s neighborhoods. Even though they don't search one another out, they are joined by the fact that they are daughters of the same father, and they do what they do in order to show their father that they don't need the inheritance. They refuse to receive a fatal inheritance because of the fact that they are their father's daughters. The three work as if they are not going to receive anything. Or perhaps as if they deserve to inherit only if they demonstrate from now on that with or without an inheritance, they can earn a living. Besides-except for Augusta-they do it with a humility calculated to offend or at least disconcert their father. Except for Augusta.

Is an inheritance won or lost? Augusta smiles at the thought. Do the sisters know which their father prefers? To offer the inheritance, although the three of them are perfect idlers? Or to save it until he finds out that the three of them are not waiting for the comfort of a promised bequest but are earning their livings without worrying about their father's desire? Or would their father be irritated if the sisters, instead of waiting idly for the testamentary period to be over, find occupations?

Their father is very severe. He would tell his daughters that the richer the family, the more ungrateful the descendants.

"You don't know how to value things. You didn't work your way up, like me. You feel like destiny's pampered darlings. Bah! Keep guessing whether you'll inherit or will be disinherited. And if you inherit, try to imagine how much I'll leave you."