Happy Families (35 page)

Did her sisters realize the number of things they didn’t do because they feared Papa? Did they realize that with this story about the day of the anniversary, they continued to defer their lives like old cars in a parking lot without a meter?

“Just count the demands he made on us from the time we were little girls. Didn’t it give us a mischievous joy to do the opposite of what he asked? Isn’t that what he expected of us, the pleasure of disobedience followed by redemptive penance? He condemned us. We condemned him. He treated us like simple things in his greenhouse, like little seeds subject to the temperature of his glance, the ice of his disapproval. He kept us in a larval state.”

“He has us,” Genara interrupted. “I mean in a larval state.”

Augusta stopped speaking. She withdrew into herself again. She did not know if her silence was hers alone or had joined the clamor of everything not said by the sisters who had gathered tonight, for the last time, in the garage in the sunken park where Papa had been born.

6. Augusta looked with judicious cruelty at Julia. She thought the innocence of the youngest sister was—or could become—only the mask of a profound malice. She had her doubts. Did Julia get what she wanted? Had she used the restrictions of the inheritance to do the only thing she was interested in doing: playing the violin? Augusta did not want to believe in Julia’s virginal appearance. She was always surrounded by men, in every orchestra. Perhaps she did not give the men her name. Perhaps she did not give her real name: Julia. Perhaps she went to bed with the clarinetist, let herself be fingered by the cellist, strummed with the guitarist, pulled out the stops with the man who played saxophone, blew with the piccolo player, all in a vast, harmonic, anonymous concupiscence. Julia had arranged things so her true life would be impenetrable.

Genara, on the other hand, was transparent. If she were to insinuate love affairs—something she had never done—her lies would have more weight than any truth. Possibly she had temptations. What she did not have were opportunities. All day at the wheel, with muddied hands and a stained brown apron. A woman with her sleeves rolled up and her hair pulled back. A strand falling over her forehead. Her legs spread as if she were giving birth to clay.

She once said about their father: “He watched over us as if we were his dolls.” This passivity of a toy was the nature, not second but first and who knows if original, of the sister who was a potter. Waiting for the anniversary was by now part of her customary life. What would she do without this expectation? Genara was not a woman capable of living without the routine of her calendar. In her heart, she wanted this situation to go on until the end of time. Not doing anything but ceramics. Being the potter to a vast world of clay by rescuing the clay and giving it the shape of human work. Was each worker a rival of God?

Genara would never accept this reasoning. She did not want to do anything that might contradict Papa’s wishes, though the contradiction in those wishes was that whatever she did, she would be both good and evil. Good if she obeyed instead of rebelling but evil because she disobeyed Papa. Genara wondered if this was the father’s policy—leave his daughters in permanent suspense, condemn them if they acted and also if they did not act? Genara felt very sad about having this conflict. Julia at least deceived others. Genara deceived herself. She continued to be a doll sitting on their father’s quilted bed, surrounded by flickering candles beneath a crucifix without nails where the figure of Our Lord seemed to be flying toward heaven.

Then their father came out of the bathroom, freshly shaved, smelling of Yardley lavender, of Barry’s Tricopherous, of Mum deodorant, with his colorless eyes and his hair of a yearning albino, to say: “I’m going to show you something you’ve never seen before.”

He always says it and disappears into the remains of the steam in the sauna.

None of them dares enter the sauna. Not even their father’s bathroom.

All the cosmetics and lavenders cannot lubricate the dry skin of the father who disappears walking backward, at a turtle’s pace, into the mists of his daily grooming routine.

A ceremonious man.

A rigid man.

The regularity of our lives.

A man who simultaneously represents the fantasy and the business of the world. Etcetera.

“Give us peace,” Genara says in a frightened voice.

“That depends on us, not on him,” interjects Augusta. “We shouldn’t give him a minute’s peace. We have to criticize him, question him, unmask him, pull the rabbits out of the hat, take the deck of cards out of his hands. Look, our father is a carnival magician, a theatrical wizard, a sorcerer at a fair. He is an illusion. A phantom. A sheet blown by the wind.”

Julia again collapsed into tears, her arms around the coffin. Like a
Pietà
among sisters, the group composed itself when Genara and Augusta embraced Julia, dissolved when they separated, somewhat confused about their own attitudes, and embraced again as if a decisive warning—night falling, a period of time about to conclude, the end of the plot—obliged them to defend themselves, united, against their father’s terrorist wishes, whatever they might be.

Augusta looked at them with a measure of scorn. The ten years would be over tonight. They had obeyed Papa’s posthumous decision. And then what? Would they never meet again? Would they consider the test decade concluded, the time in which each one had done as she wished knowing that this was what their father wanted, for them to do what he didn’t want them to do only in order to blame them and in this way oblige them to continue, as they had for the past ten years, this ceremony determined by him, almost as an act of contrition?

Is this what their father wanted? To have daughters who were free but poor (Genara), free but modest (Julia), prosperous but in the end obedient (Augusta)? And what were the three sisters looking for? To prove to their father that they could live without the inheritance even though they lived waiting for the inheritance? Because otherwise, why would they come to the annual appointment in the sunken park? Had none of them thought about rebelling against the command of their damn paterfamilias? Excluding herself from the ceremony? Telling him to go to hell?

“Did you ever think about disobeying Papa? Did one of you ever say to yourself: ‘Enough, I’ve had it up to here. That’s it. We don’t know if this is a game or a punishment? In any case, it’s tyranny.’ Did you ever think that?” Augusta spoke in a moderate way. She looked at her sisters without emotion. “Let’s see who is capable, right now, of leaving here,” she continued.

“And be left not knowing the secret?” Julia said again.

“Never finding out how it all ended?” Genara supported her again. “Nobody leaves a movie without finding out how it all turned out. We can’t even stand for somebody to tell us about it later.”

“No matter the consequences?” Julia asked with the timidity of a novice.

Augusta did not reply. It was better, she thought, to leave the answer in the air. Or in the heart of each sister. She made a calculation. Genara could go. Julia and Augusta would remain. Julia and Genara could go. Augusta would remain alone.

The mere idea broke her impassivity. She felt real terror. Terror of absence. Knowing herself absent. Alone. Absent: stripped of inspiration or speculation. Incapable of even commemorating her own death.

How was she going to flee their father? Didn’t she know that ten years after his death, as soon as the secret of the inheritance was revealed, their father would impose a new time period? And what new surprise was waiting for them when they completed this one, and the next, and the next? Didn’t he once say before he went in for his daily sauna, “If I begin something, I don’t stop”?

The twelve strokes of midnight sounded in San José Insurgentes.

7. Six in the morning had sounded. Genara stretched. She had fallen asleep against her will. The beach chair was comfortable.

Poor Julia, sitting all night on a piano stool. She wasn’t there. Genara looked for her. Julia was putting on makeup, looking at herself in a pocket mirror. Pink powder. Purple lipstick. Eyeliner. Mascara. All arranged on top of the coffin.

Julia fluffed out her hair. She adjusted her bra. “Well, the next appointment is with the notary. We’ll see one another then. This business of a conditional will is so annoying! Well, we’ve fulfilled the condition. Now we’ll execute the will. Though we never lost our rights . . . did we?”

“Unless we’re disinherited,” Augusta said from the shadows in the garage.

“What are you talking about!” Julia laughed. “It’s obvious you two didn’t know Papa. He’s a saint.”

Julia pushed the clanking metal door. Light from the sunken park came in. Birds were chirping. Julia went out. A Mustang convertible was parked in front of the garage. A boy in a short-sleeved shirt with the collar open whistled at Julia and opened the door for her. He didn’t have the courtesy to get out of the car. This didn’t seem to bother Julia. She got in, sat down beside the handsome young man, and gave him a peck on the cheek.

Julia looked young and agile, as if she had shed a gigantic bearskin.

She did not look back. The car took off. She had forgotten the revolving stool.

Genara smoothed her skirt and arranged her blouse. She looked at Augusta, wanting to ask her questions. She felt a hunger to understand. Julia would not explain anything to her. Julia’s world was resolved, free of problems. She was sure about inheriting. She had left.

Would Augusta explain things to her?

Genara took her handbag, a Gucci copy, and went toward the metal door. She insisted on looking at Augusta. The oldest sister did not return her look. Disorientation was etched on Genara’s features. She knew she could not expect anything of Augusta. She armed herself with patience. She was prepared to continue living her life decorously. In solitude. In front of the wheel. And then in front of the television set. With a cold supper on a tray.

“The three of us will see one another with the notary, won’t we?”

She put a foot outside the garage.

The foot stopped in midair.

8. Augusta did not see the actions of her sisters. Let them leave. Let them feel free. Let them run from their father. As if they could get away from him. As if the executors weren’t loyal to their father. What an idea.

Augusta will remain beside the father’s coffin. She will fulfill the funeral ritual until she herself occupies the father’s coffin.

She is the heir.

Choruscodaconrad

the violence, the violence

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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.

ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

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 Spanishlanguage authors, including Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Mayra Montero, and Álvaro Mutis, as well as Carlos Fuentes. Her translation of Miguel de Cervantes’s
Don Quixote
was published to great acclaim in 2003.

Also by Carlos Fuentes

Aura
The Buried Mirror
Burnt Water
The Campaign
A Change of Skin
Christopher Unborn
Constancia and Other Stories for Virgins
The Crystal Frontier
The Death of Artemio Cruz
Diana: The Goddess Who Hunts Alone
Distant Relations
The Eagle’s Throne
The Good Conscience
The Hydra Head
Inez
Myself with Others
A New Time for Mexico
The Old Gringo
The Orange Tree
Terra Nostra
This I Believe: An A to Z of a Life
Where the Air Is Clear
The Years with Laura Diaz

Footnotes

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The Discomfiting Brother

¹
The Mexican Luis G. Barreiro or the Englishman Alan Mowbray—Author’s note.
Return to text.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2006 by Carlos Fuentes
English translation copyright © 2008 by Edith Grossman
All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

R
ANDOM
H
OUSE
and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This work was originally published in Spanish as
Todas las familias felices
by Alfaguara,
Mexico City, Mexico, in 2006.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Fuentes, Carlos.
[Todas las familias felices. English]
Happy families : fiction / Carlos Fuentes ; translated by Edith Grossman.
p.                  cm.
I. Grossman, Edith.                                    II. Title.
PQ7297.F793T5913 2008
863’.64—dc22                                    2008002335

www.atrandom.com

eISBN: 978-1-58836-814-0

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