Free Christopher Unborn by Carlos Fuentes

one else ever spoke: she liked that and that’s why she’d come. And she’d read his books.
    He told the authorities she was his niece and defended her with all the sophistry of a good Mexican lawyer—even if he had no degree, Fernando Benítez, like all literate Mexicans, had a jurist locked in his bosom, just dying to get out into the world. While Angeles was being held, Don Fernando Benítez sent his agile young ally, the Orphan Huerta, to reignite the flame; by the time Angeles appeared before the magistrate, it was impossible to prove that the flame had ever been extinguished, and Benítez could declare the following: Are you saying, your honor, that the flame of the Mexican Revolution can be put out just like that—as declared by these two exemplars of the best police force money can buy, even if they were in all probability a bit tipsy at the time and for all practical purposes merely concupiscent, the miserable nobodies! The truth of the matter is that my niece did feel an urge, that’s so, was seen and chased by these fleet-footed minions of justice, which heightened her nervousness and its effects on her bladder, so she eliminated where she could—but to put out the flame of our permanent revolution? With a mere squirt of wee-wee? Who could do it? Not her, not me, not even you, your honor!
    And Angel? Will you describe him, Mom?
    Also green, very much a gypsy. Tall, a boy from this new generation of skinny, tall Mexicans. Both of us are dark and green, me with black eyes and he with lime-green eyes. We looked at each other: he’s shortsighted, knows how to whistle all of Don Giovanni, and says that I would have been a perfect courtesan in an opera if I’d been born a hundred years ago, and if I hadn’t begun reading the complete works of Plato. The set with green covers. Vasconcelos. The National Autonomous University of Mexico. God, it’s the only thing that lets me look at myself in the mirror and say to myself: There you are. Your name is Angeles. You love Angel. You are going to have a baby. What makes you think I won’t read the whole Cratylus, which is a book about names: Angel, Angeles, Christopher: Are they the names that really belong to us (my love, my man, my name, my son)? Or are the names ourselves, are we the names? Do we name or are we named? Are our names a pure convention? Did the gods give us our names, but by saying them (our own and the others) do we wear them out and pervert them? When we name ourselves, do we burn ourselves? None of this matters to me: I intuit that if I have a name and I name you (Angel/Angeles) it’s so I can discover little by little your nature and my own. Isn’t that what’s most important? What does it matter then that I have no past or that I don’t remember it, which is the same thing. Take me as I am, Angel, and don’t ask me any more questions. This is our pact. Name me. Discover me. I am going to have a son and I’m going to read Plato. What makes you think I won’t, despite all the accidents that in Mexico make intellectual endeavor impossible, all the distractions, the pleasant climate, the deteriorating environment, let’s take a walk, the coffee klatches, the gossip, the parties, there isn’t a real summer, the winter is invisible, politics are taken care of for us every six years, nothing works but everything survives, you was born, you dies, you don’ reads, you don’ write nothin’. What makes you think I won’t? Do you understand why I’m memorizing Plato? Those books are those men, Angel, the others, the people, the ones who did something, read, spoke, listened: Angel, I have no other connection with the others, not even with a past, not even with a family or anyone else. I have no past, Angel my love, that’s why everything that falls on me sticks to me, all causes, all ideas, feminism, the left, third world, ecology, ban-the-bomb, Karl and Sigi,