Happy Families Part 16

Your marriage?

Yes. It was inevitable.

Believe that, Lavinia. Continue with Cristobal. I swear that our being the lovers we are depends on it. Be faithful to your husband.

Faithful?

In the deepest sense. Continue with him faithfully so you and I can always love each other in secret, with the excitement of the first hour.

Poor Cristobal . . . I don't know. I don't know if . . .

Don't finish the sentence, Lavinia. You and I don't need to finish sentences.

It was a mistake for us to meet.

Suspension points . . .

Forget it . . .

Chorus of the Daughter Who Killed Herself

The girl went to the cemetery with the pistol that belonged to her papa who abused her the pistol was blacker and harder than her father's c.o.c.k I hope he understood that after the girl put a bullet through her head and then (just like in the movies) stood up revived (just like daffy duck road runner the crazy bird and tom the cat who falls from a skysc.r.a.per smashes into a mountain is folded into an accordion is flattened into a tortilla is s.h.i.t on and always revives resumes his usual form pursues pursues pursues the mouse jerry) just like in the movies to tell him what's up you old p.r.i.c.k you thought I wasn't capable of killing myself killing myself look at me dead and learn your lesson daddy and don't punish your little girl because she broke the vase and hung from the towel rack and don't fight anymore papa and mama because then papa comes in with smoke coming from his nostrils and drool from his mouth to take his revenge on me for his argument with mama don't fight anymore because I swear I'll throw myself off the roof don't make me desperate anymore daddymommy do you think I'm made of wood?

I touch my skin I pinch myself I feel don't you know that I feel?

there are four hundred of us kids who kill ourselves every year in the Rep Mex Wanna bet you didn't know that?

The Star's Son

1. You stand at the mirror in your bathroom. You look at yourself in the mirror. You look for D'Artagnan leaping from the balcony to the back of the horse waiting for him in the lane. You hope to see the Black Corsair swinging from the mast of the Folgore Folgore at the attack on Maracaibo. You imagine, in your mirror, the Count of Monte Cristo-you yourself, young, with those motionless gray hairs daubed at your temples like a sea of stone-and you see in your mirror Alejandro Sevilla, yourself, filming at the attack on Maracaibo. You imagine, in your mirror, the Count of Monte Cristo-you yourself, young, with those motionless gray hairs daubed at your temples like a sea of stone-and you see in your mirror Alejandro Sevilla, yourself, filming The Seven Boys from Ecija, The Seven Boys from Ecija, and you are all seven of them, you alone are all you need to incarnate the seven generous Spanish bandits of the eighteenth century. You are the hunchback Enrique de Lagardere, the gentleman in disguise to deceive the court of Louis XIII and save the honor of Blanche de Nevers . . . except that now, Alejandro, you can't shake off the imaginary hump, it's stuck to your body, the deformity isn't made of rubber anymore, it's made of bone, and then you shake your head so the mirror will give back to you the dashing figure of the masked Zorro, ready to defend violated justice in Old California. and you are all seven of them, you alone are all you need to incarnate the seven generous Spanish bandits of the eighteenth century. You are the hunchback Enrique de Lagardere, the gentleman in disguise to deceive the court of Louis XIII and save the honor of Blanche de Nevers . . . except that now, Alejandro, you can't shake off the imaginary hump, it's stuck to your body, the deformity isn't made of rubber anymore, it's made of bone, and then you shake your head so the mirror will give back to you the dashing figure of the masked Zorro, ready to defend violated justice in Old California.

You no longer are.

No matter how much you shake your head.

Neither Zorro nor the count of Lagardere comes back. You can no longer be the third or fourth musketeer, and the last time you tried to do D'Artagnan, you leaped from the balcony of your beautiful Constance, and instead of landing gallantly in the saddle (as in the old days), your bones dropped like a sack onto the mattress that divine mercy (the film studio Mexigrama) placed there to prevent accidents.

"Alejandro, give up making costume adventure movies."

You refrained from telling them that you are the star, that the films were the colossal image of your life, and the studio never offered you a production worthy of your person. You are not the producer's servant or the director's valet. You are Alejandro Sevilla, the top star of Mexican film. You have been for thirty years. You dubbed the voice of Charles Boyer. You made inroads into Hollywood films. You were famous for having been Marlene Dietrich's lover, and whether it was true or not doesn't matter: Marlene has been forgotten, Boyer is dead, and you refuse to believe you have loved a ghost or dubbed the voice of a corpse.

The image makes you believe, Alejandro, that you will always be young and will live forever . . . except that in the past, no beginning starlet refused when you asked for her sweet siren's a.s.s and now even the extras turn you down, or laugh at you, or give you a tremendous slap when you say, "Give me your furry diadem." And didn't Peggy Silvester, the Hollywood actress, say she wouldn't work with you, that you were a has-been, a relic of the past, and besides, you had bad breath?

"We can offer you a mature actor's roles. You know, the understanding paterfamilias to the younger generation. Or a misunderstood neurotic of the older generation."

You laughed. The studio depended on you, you didn't depend on the studio.

You were the first to demand-and obtain-a portable dressing room so you could relax with the sirens and their diadems, rest, memorize lines, drink just a little . . . Now they have to put your dialogue on a large placard, and sometimes your movements, the placards, and the cameras don't coincide, and disconcerted, you look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself, I am D'Artagnan, Zorro, and the Seven Boys of Ecija all in one, and you know you are the great impersonator, a shadow without his own profile, you are Alejandro Sevilla only because you are the Black Corsair, and when in the end you fall from the mast and suspect they are laughing at you behind the scenes, you go to the movies in a scarf and dark gla.s.ses to see yourself on the big screen and there it's true that the audience is laughing out loud, they shout, "Get off, you old b.u.m, go to the home for mummies, vegetate vegetarian," and the producer of all your pictures since your debut in He Suffers for Love, He Suffers for Love, your longtime friend, does not bite his tongue and tells you, "Alejandro, the actor first has to be in order to seem, but in the end he has to disappear in order to go on being." your longtime friend, does not bite his tongue and tells you, "Alejandro, the actor first has to be in order to seem, but in the end he has to disappear in order to go on being."

You answer that at least your voice, your voice that is so characteristic, so melodious, so well enunciated (you dubbed for Charles Boyer) could be used, you don't know, for newsreels, for travelogues like Fitzpatrick's, no, Alejandro, the voice has wrinkles, too.

Every door was being closed. You weren't even offered roles as a maitre d'hotel. At least I know how to put on a tuxedo, you contended. Then let a luxury restaurant hire you, was the reply. Today restaurants aren't what they used to be, you sighed to yourself, because n.o.body else would understand. The Amba.s.sadeurs closed, its old patrons died . . . The 1-2-3 closed, its bartender drowned in Acapulco . . . The Rivoli closed, destroyed in the earthquake of 1985 . . .

"Either you change your generation, or this generation will trade you in for another star who's younger."

You leaped from the balcony of Constance Bonacieux, the horse ran off, you contended, the horse should not have moved but it moved, you had a terrible fall, they took you off the picture and your only recourse was to think either you stay inside your mobile dressing room, disguised as a musketeer, mummified forever . . . or you go back, after so many years, to your house.

After so many years.

Then your face disappears from the mirror and other faces return to it, as if emerged from the quicksilver, as if born of the mist . . .

2. You had all the women, Alejandro. All of them. But you loved only one. Cielo de la Mora. She was very young when she came to the studio. She was from Nicaragua. They were filming The Return of Zorro, The Return of Zorro, and she fit perfectly into the colonial California setting, adorned with a high, elegant comb and ringlets, dressed in a crinoline. And with a birthmark next to her mouth. You took advantage of the romantic scenes to move in with the iron rod (to use your peculiar expression) and gauge the response. Even the most indignant succ.u.mbed. Who knows why, but you respected Cielo de la Mora from the very beginning. You dared only to sing into her ear, "that birthmark you have, my sweet heaven, next to your mouth, don't give it to anyone else . . ." and she fit perfectly into the colonial California setting, adorned with a high, elegant comb and ringlets, dressed in a crinoline. And with a birthmark next to her mouth. You took advantage of the romantic scenes to move in with the iron rod (to use your peculiar expression) and gauge the response. Even the most indignant succ.u.mbed. Who knows why, but you respected Cielo de la Mora from the very beginning. You dared only to sing into her ear, "that birthmark you have, my sweet heaven, next to your mouth, don't give it to anyone else . . ."

"It belongs to me," she completed the stanza.

In other words, from that moment on you felt in charge.

There was mystery in her, veiled by a somber though striking beauty, eyes half closed but alert. A look you didn't dare decipher. The others, yes, they were legible. Actresses accepted your advances in order to advance themselves. They were using you, and you knew it. You gave singular value to each "lay." Sincere or insincere, unique or unrepeatable, it made no difference. Other women loved you for yourself, for being a leading man, for being handsome (you look in the mirror and give yourself a satisfied pat on the jaw, recalling Alejandro Sevilla at the age of thirty, when a man is in his prime, the irresistible Alejandro Sevilla, magnetic, athletic, magical, poetic, sarcastic, master of the world, the star of Mexico).

You knew how to intuit women, read them, guess their weaknesses, not take them seriously, discard them without mercy. They were your babes, your cuties, broads, dames, in the long run anonymous, forgettable because they were decipherable. Only Cielo de la Mora appeared to you as a mystery, she herself an enigma. You had no illusions. Behind the mysterious eyes of the splendid woman with very black hair and very white skin, was there another mystery that wasn't simply the mystery of her eyes?

As a screen star, you had in your favor what an actor in the theater doesn't have. The great close-up, the approach to your face and especially your eyes. You believed you were-you told yourself-a specialist in "a woman's glances." You would intone, with a slight change in lyrics, the famous bolero while you shaved first in the morning and again at eight at night, to avoid five o'clock shadow, as the Gillette commercial called it.

A woman's glances that I saw close to me . . .

Some were shamelessly flirtatious, the glance of "come close, what are you waiting for?" and there were some, equally shameless, as chaste as a nun's. Glances that announced an experience their owners hadn't had and glances that feigned an innocence that wasn't theirs, either. Rarely, very rarely, indifferent glances. The opposite s.e.x was never indifferent to Alejandro Sevilla. And at times the masculine gender paid you homage, Alejandro, imitating your postures, your words, the clothes you wore on the street when you stopped being a musketeer.

"Your ambiguous att.i.tudes kindle the flame of my jealousy."

"Frankly, darling, you leave no mark on my personality."

"I suffer from a twilight love."

"It's of no importance."

"Keep the change, waiter."

Cielo de la Mora was different. It isn't that she had no mystery (for you, all women have it, and if not, you invent it for them) but that she maintained an imperturbable calm in the face of your advances and amatory acrobatics. It isn't that she didn't take you seriously. And you couldn't say she was mocking you. She was your normalcy. Serene, worthy of her luminous name, she was completely blue inside and out. No siren's a.s.s or furry diadem. She was attractive because of her contemplative serenity, a seriousness and sobriety in her manner.

She didn't resemble any other woman.

That's why you fell in love with her.

Cielo didn't ask for matrimony, and neither did you. Marriages between film actors were only for publicity, and you didn't need promotion or have a reason to give any to Cielo. In the end, you wanted her, with her face of a waning moon, to depend only on you, her sun. You would take care of giving her parts in your movies. With high combs for Zorro, crinolines for D'Artagnan, high Napoleonic b.r.e.a.s.t.s for Monte Cristo, red shawls for the Black Corsair: Cielo de la Mora was your chromatic partner. She obeyed you in everything, letting it be known that a prior agreement existed between you and her.

She disobeyed you only twice.

She decided to have a child with you. Surprised, you weighed the pros and cons of paternity. The most favorable part was increasing your following, both feminine and masculine. Irresistible images for both s.e.xes. The doting father carrying a baby, showing him off proudly, lifting him high in the midst of the flashbulbs of the boys in the press.

Besides, Cielo would be out of action for five months. Eliminated from the cast and offering you a magnificent excuse to take up again the conquests your celebrated union with Cielo implicitly denied to you. You'd be careful to keep your adventures discreet. You'd threaten talkative starlets with a sudden end to their careers.

"You know, gorgeous, my word will always be worth more than yours. s.e.x and silence or s.e.x and being fired. It's up to you, babe . . ."

It wasn't that Cielo de la Mora would have been upset to learn about another of Alejandro Sevilla's infidelities. After all, they weren't married. And in the end, who else had decided to have the baby? Who else had stopped using birth control? Who else had taken the sedative for her nerves?

"I really was very nervous, even though I didn't show it."

Which was why, when the baby was born, the mother blamed only herself. She tried to a.s.similate her horror by watching Roman Polanski's film Rosemary's Baby Rosemary's Baby over and over again and trying to imitate Mia Farrow's maternal feelings. Each gesture of maternal love, however, repelled Cielo de la Mora in the deepest part of her being, obliged her to falsify her desire for serene distance before the world, to openly choose the mother's love expected of her or the s.e.xual repugnance that had returned to the place of conception. To love or hate. Cielo felt cornered, obliged to make drastic resolutions, abandoning her preferred role as serene (and even submissive) observer of the world. over and over again and trying to imitate Mia Farrow's maternal feelings. Each gesture of maternal love, however, repelled Cielo de la Mora in the deepest part of her being, obliged her to falsify her desire for serene distance before the world, to openly choose the mother's love expected of her or the s.e.xual repugnance that had returned to the place of conception. To love or hate. Cielo felt cornered, obliged to make drastic resolutions, abandoning her preferred role as serene (and even submissive) observer of the world.

"Forgive me, Alejandro. Don't touch me."

"Control yourself, Senora. That little problem won't be repeated."

"Don't touch me, I'm telling you."

"Let's give time a little time."

The national film industry brought her to you. The national film industry separated her from you. Once she had recuperated from the birth, though not from her melancholy, you included Cielo in the cast of your first contemporary movie. You gave in to the pleas of the producer, the public wants to see you dressed in ordinary clothes, by now they think that even at home you walk around like a musketeer, don't f.u.c.k around, Alejandro, you owe it to your public . . .

One scene in the movie took place in an opera house. Cielo de la Mora was sitting in a box. You looked at her with your binoculars, and she looked away. She was wearing a very low-cut strapless lame gown. When the performance was over, you approached her on the street. You were wearing a heavy overcoat in addition to the indispensable gray felt hat. But she appeared without a coat, with her bare shoulders and Olympic diver's neckline. The director hit the ceiling and shouted. Where was the mink, the fur coat the actress was supposed to be wearing?

"It's very hot," Cielo said.

"It doesn't matter. The script says, 'She comes out carefully b.u.t.toned up against the cold north wind on a wintry night.' "

"It's ridiculous. It's hot. Only in Nicaragua do women wear fox to the opera in spite of the heat."

"Darling," you intervened, carefully b.u.t.toned up, "it's precisely to give the impression that Mexico isn't a tropical country, a banana republic, but that it's cold here, like in Europe."

She laughed at you, turned, and got into a taxi while you murmured: "It's to show that we're civilized-"

"It's to hide what we really are," she said from the taxi.

3. In her goodbye letter, Cielo de la Mora said things like these. She had fallen in love with a photograph. "Even before I met you, even before I had seen you on the screen. An actor has to be admired from a distance. The truth is, fame muddies ordinary affection. At least let's save the child from our quarrels. From hostility. From humiliations."

You remembered other things you had forgotten.

"Whenever I want to tell you something that matters to me, Alejandro, you say you're in a hurry, you leave, you don't listen to me."

And now she was writing to say she was leaving you for good.

"How can I explain my desire to get away, to stop being the woman I was with you, to begin a new life?"

She didn't take the child with her. Everything else was an excuse. The truth is, she abandoned the child. Before Sandokan was born (given this name in homage to the adventure novels of Emilio Salgari), you told yourself in secret that you wouldn't marry Cielo.

"Suppose I marry her and she gets a divorce and then leaves Mexico with the child."

Now she had gone, but without the child. Free. Like a bird that knows only the calendar of the seasons, the call of warm air, the rejection of the cold habitat. Leaving three-month-old Sandokan in your care.

You deceived yourself. You thought, like a good father, that you would tend to your son with affection. It was another of your interminable stupidities, Alejandro. You don't realize the number of moronic things you do. They're like the idiotic rosary of your existence. I know you'll never accept this. You beat yourself up. How are you going to admit that your life is a farce, that it exists only in the way it exists for Cielo de la Mora, as an inert portrait of celebrity? Now you had a great chance to redeem yourself as a man, as a father, as a human being: Let it all go, Alejandro, leave your career and dedicate yourself to your son, Sandokan.

If at some moment this idea pa.s.sed through your mind (and I believe it pa.s.sed, it's clear to you it did), it lasted less time than the proverbial winter swallow. Your good intentions did not survive fortyeight hours. An invalid child, monstrous and deformed, did not fit in the big screen of your life. Now you could put the blame on Cielo de la Mora for having taken thalidomide, her innocent pills for her nerves. There was no valid justification. There is none for the deficiencies of a son. The mother had abandoned father and son. She fled in exchange for nothing, because nothing was waiting for her: no fame or money, no (perhaps) new boyfriend (at least you wanted to believe that). The mother could not bear (malgre Mia Farrow) the company in a concealed cradle of the baby with little arms sprouting out of his armpits, the child condemned to depend on others, his tiny hands close only to his face but not to his s.e.x, or his a.s.s, or a cup, or a knife, or a movie script. The pages of the most recent script-Sandokan the Tiger of Malaysia, your son's h.o.m.onym-were opening in your hands. You felt immense anguish (unusual for you). The pirate leaps from one ship to another, fights with his sword, cuts the mooring lines of his own vessel, rescues Honorata van Gould, makes her his, fornicates with her, Alejandro, you say, Honorata give me your sweet siren's a.s.s Honorata let me kiss your furry diadem, you can, Alejandro, he, your son, never, not ever. Life was your son's h.o.m.onym-were opening in your hands. You felt immense anguish (unusual for you). The pirate leaps from one ship to another, fights with his sword, cuts the mooring lines of his own vessel, rescues Honorata van Gould, makes her his, fornicates with her, Alejandro, you say, Honorata give me your sweet siren's a.s.s Honorata let me kiss your furry diadem, you can, Alejandro, he, your son, never, not ever. Life was denied denied to him. At that moment you understood why Cielo de la Mora had left. She feared the death of Sandokan. She feared it because she herself wanted to offer it to him: Die, little baby, so you won't suffer in life, I'm drowning you, baby, so you can go back to heaven, I'm abandoning you, honey, so you won't blame your mother or know her or even know her name. to him. At that moment you understood why Cielo de la Mora had left. She feared the death of Sandokan. She feared it because she herself wanted to offer it to him: Die, little baby, so you won't suffer in life, I'm drowning you, baby, so you can go back to heaven, I'm abandoning you, honey, so you won't blame your mother or know her or even know her name.

4. "Never talk to him about his mama."

You said that to Sagrario Algarra, the old character actress of Mexican movies, who was prepared to take care of Sandokan Sevilla de la Mora while you took care of film.o.f.ornication, and the mother, well, consider her dead.

As a young woman, Sagrario Algarra had played the long-suffering mother and the loving grandmother. She became celebrated-indispensable-as the "featherbrained woman" in old melodramas. Paradoxically, when she aged, she could no longer play-because she feared being identical to them-old women's roles. She became coquettish. She decided to rejuvenate. Perhaps she wanted to avenge her antic.i.p.ated old age in the movies and recover in her own biographical seniority the illusion of the youth "that art denied me."

She would say this with a sigh.

"Your career is over, Sagrario," you would reply with compa.s.sion.

"Yours, too, Alejandro, it's just that you don't know it yet."

You're tenacious, it's true. You're stubborn. It's difficult for you to abandon what you have been, what fame has given you, money and the capacity for squandering both things: fame and money. What isn't at all difficult for you is to abandon your son, leaving him in the care of Sagrario Algarra, be frank, Alejandro, you keep Sandokan at a distance because you don't tolerate disease in any of its forms, especially if it deforms. How could it be otherwise? You represent virile health, duels with a blade, pursuits on horseback, leaps from one mast to another, the sword that marks the walls of California with your eponymous Z.

Besides, you agonize over the difficulty of approaching your son and explaining to him the absence of his mother; what could you tell the child when he believed that Sagrario was his mama and Sagrario protested that she was not a mother because she had no grandmother?

"Your mama abandoned us, she went off with another man, that's why I abandoned her, too, Sandokan, I wasn't going to be less than her, I'm Alejandro Sevilla the superstar, I'm the one who abandons women, no woman abandons me."

And resigned: "I abandoned her. I wasn't going to be less than her. I'm not some dumb p.r.i.c.k."

Sagrario Algarra laughed at him: "Don't be stupid, Alejandro. Don't say that to your son."

"Then what? Where do I begin?"

"Tell him the truth. You aren't a great star anymore. Understand? You're in the same situation as your son. Both of you have been abandoned."

"We still have you, my faithful Sagrario."

"The h.e.l.l with that faithful bulls.h.i.t. I've had enough. I'm leaving. You stay with your little monster."

"In any event, thanks for taking care of him for me."

"Thanks? Ask the kid if he thanks me for watching him while he sleeps, visiting him every night with a light in my hand, curious, Alejandro, sick to know what he did at night with those little hands that couldn't reach his s.e.x, how he m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.ed, if he rubbed up against the mattress or maybe under the shower, you know, waiting for the running water to excite his p.e.n.i.s and punishing myself, Alejandro, for my lack of courage, for not taking his s.e.x in my hands, jerking him off myself, or sucking it, Alejandro, and since I didn't have the courage, I punished him and I punished myself, I was violent with him, at midnight I would take him to the bathroom so a cold shower would drive out his bad thoughts, humiliating him, Alejandro, laughing out loud and asking him, 'Who ties your shoes for you?' Go on, try it yourself."