Free Distant Relations by Carlos Fuentes

André’s voice was of an incomparable sweetness, midway between childhood and puberty, but free of the unmusical tones that often accompany this transition. His voice had retained the purity of childhood into adolescence, but at the same time it heralded a virile beauty in which the shyness, selfishness, and egotism of childhood were absent.
    â€œCapital of Argentina.”
    â€œBuenos Aires.”
    â€œCapital of Holland.”
    â€œAmsterdam.”
    â€œCapital of Serbia.”
    â€œBelgrade.”
    â€œCapital of Norway.”
    â€œOslo.”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œSorry. Christiania.”
    â€œCapital of Mexico.”
    â€œThat’s silly! Mexico City. That’s like my asking you what the capital of France is, André.”
    â€œEnghien!”
    Both boys laughed boisterously, as Branly sank back into sleep, lulled by the game that was like counting sheep, and remembering his own childhood, the games amid the columns, the triumphs in mock wars of the Parc Monceau in a time when the children knew him and he was not importuned by his past as he was now. In his childhood he had simply existed, unburdened by the mountain of IOU’s that harass a being once content to exist without a conscious—even hostile—awareness of self. He fell asleep thinking that he was going to enjoy these days at the Clos des Renards more than he had imagined. He believed that he had found the real, if slightly painful, reason for his presence there.
    When he awakened again, it was night and an early autumnal chill was seeping through the open window. The room was dark; Branly groped for his cane, and, without success, tried to close one of the windows. Another hand was helping him, taking his hand and guiding it toward the window pull. He felt the touch of rough skin guiding his hand toward the copper latch.
    The window closed, and the intoxicating odor of leather returned, now mingled with an ancient perfume that Branly, even in his fascinated stupor, struggled to identify with a texture or with an odor half-wood, half-leather, a flexible, fragile wood, or if not quite skin, at least the leather of a glove: sandalwood, tanned hide, perfumed wood.
    He awakened with a start. The light was on and Heredia—slightly ill-humored but with no sign of the vulgarity that secretly irritated his guest, now gripped by a strange vertigo—was offering him a tray holding wine, half a French loaf, and cold meats. Branly, still enervated, looked toward the window. It was tightly shut. The head of his cane rested beside the head of his bed.
    â€œI hope you’re hungry. You’ve been sleeping like a baby, M. le Comte.”
    â€œThank you. Who closed the window?”
    â€œI did. A moment ago. We don’t want you to catch pneumonia on top of everything else. At your age…”
    â€œYes, yes, Heredia, I know. Do you have a servant?”
    â€œWhy do you ask?”
    â€œI don’t want to trouble you with bringing up my tray three times a day.”
    â€œIt’s no trouble. There’s a dumbwaiter. Anyway, it’s a privilege to serve a count. I wouldn’t want to pass off that honor to a servant, now would I?”
    These last words were spoken with the resentful self-assurance my friend found so annoying, but he made up his mind to contain his irritation. To a degree, Heredia was an open book, with the singular exception that what one read had to be taken in reverse and then subjected to a literal reading that canceled the original interpretation. This course, Branly told himself, was pointless, as pointless as the police inquiries in Poe’s “The Purloined Letter.” The searched-for object was always in full view. The “purloined letter” of Victor Heredia, Branly knew in that instant, was his son. He did not need to see the boy to know that the unique voice, the joy, that had moved him so deeply that afternoon belonged to a nature very different from