The Crystal Frontier Read Online Free PDF Page A

life. The son humanizes the father. But the young lady from the capital sold herself, don’t tell me otherwise. Human beings are bought, Don Enrique. Put it this way: the buying and selling are humanized, Don Raúl.
    Although in those years every possible concession had been made to the Catholic Church, Don Leonardo Barroso maintained his liberal Jacobinism, the old tradition of nineteenth-century Mexican reform and revolution: “I’m a liberal, but I respect religion.”
    In their bedroom (to the horror of Doña Lucila), he had a reproduction of Picasso’s Guernica instead of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. “What ugly scrawls! A child could draw better than that.” Luckily, by then they were sleeping in separate bedrooms, so they each had their own icons over the bed: Pope Paul VI and Jesus, united in their vision of sacrifice, death, and redemption. Don Leonardo never entered a church and held the civil part of the nuptial ceremony in his own house—of course, where else? Even so, the bride’s outfit infused the act with a mysterious severity, sacred rather than ecclesiastical.
    â€œThink she’s a witch?”
    â€œNo, man, just one of those snooty bitches from the capital who come up here to make us look like hicks.”
    â€œIs that the latest fashion?”
    â€œFor moths, yes, the very latest.”
    â€œThey say she’s a real knockout.”
    The guests fell silent. The judge said the usual things and read an abbreviated version of Melchor Ocampos’s epistle: Obligations, Rights, Mutual Support. All shared, in sickness and in health, joy and suffering—the bed, time, the times. Bodies. Stares. The witnesses signed. The bride and groom signed. Don Leonardo lifted Michelina’s veil and brought Mariano’s face close to that of his bride. Michelina could not supress an expression of disgust. Then Leonardo kissed the two of them. First, he held his son’s face in his hands and brought those lips so esteemed by Michelina, so sexy and so fickle, close to his son’s mouth, kissed him with the same intensity Michelina attributed to the father’s eyes: I fall in love seriously, I know how to ask for everything because I also know how to give it.
    The lips separated, and Don Leonardo caressed his son’s head, kissed him on that disgusting mouth, Normita, while Doña Lucila turned pale and wished she were dead, and then, showing off his daring and his personality—not for nothing is he Leonardo Barroso—with his son’s drool still on his lips, he raised again the lowered veil of the bride—a real beauty, Rosalba, you were right!—and gave her a long and terrible kiss that frankly, my dear, had absolutely nothing of the father-in-law (or godfather, for that matter) in it.
    What a morning, I tell you, what a morning! I wouldn’t have missed it for the world! Campazas will never be the same after this wedding!
    8
    The Lincoln convertible, this time with its top up, rapidly crossed the cold, silent evening desert, filling it with the noise of tires and motor, frightening the hares, which leapt far away from the straight highway, the uninterrupted line to the frontier—crossed the desert in order to break the illusory crystal divider, the glass membrane between Mexico and the United States, and continue along the superhighways of the north to the enchanted city, temptation in the desert, illuminated, brilliant, with a Neiman Marcus, a Saks, a Cartier, and a Marriott, where a luxury suite awaited the bride and groom: champagne and baskets of fruit, a sitting room, spacious closets, a king-size bed, lots of mirrors in which to admire Michelina, a pink marble bath tub in which to bathe with her—her buttocks were larger than they seemed, her legs thinner, like a thrush’s—oh, woman of tempestuous eyes, immobile little nose, and nervous nostrils through which night escapes from you, parted lips, moist, through