Chac Mool by Carlos Fuentes (1954)

Not long ago Filiberto drowned in Acapulco. It happened around Easter time. Even though he’d been fired from his job at the agency, Filiberto couldn’t resist the bureaucrat’s temptation to go, just like any other year, to the German inn, eat sauerkraut sweetened by the sweat of a tropical kitchen, dance on Easter Sunday on the Quebrada, and feel ‘well liked’ in the dark ethereal anonymity of la playa de los Hornos. Sure, we knew that in his youth, he’d been a good swimmer. But now at 40, and as worn out as he seemed, to try such a long stretch at midnight!? Frau Müller wouldn’t let him, such an elderly guest, stay up late at the inn. On the contrary, that night she organized a dance on the cramped deck, while Filiberto waited, very pale in his casket, for the morning bus to leave the station, traveling amidst crates and bundles on this first night of his new life. When I arrived early to oversee the shipment of the casket, Filiberto was under a pile of coconuts. The driver told us to arrange them quickly in the back and cover everything with tarps so as not to startle the passengers, and see if we could do all this without cursing the trip.
We left Acapulco with the breeze still blowing. It wasn’t until we got to Tierra Colorada that the sun brought the heat, with a breakfast of eggs and sausage. I opened Filiberto’s binder, taken the day before along with his other belongings from the Müller Inn. Two hundred pesos, an old newspaper, lottery ticket stubs, a one-way ticket –just one way?–, and the cheap binder with calendar pages and marble patterned dividers.
I decided to read it, despite the windy road, the stench of vomit, and a certain natural feeling of respect for the private life of my deceased friend. It would recall –yes, that’s how it began –our mundane work at the office; maybe it would tell why he was slipping, neglecting his responsibilities, why he sent countless nonsensical memos. And why was he finally fired, without pension, despite his salary rank.
“Today I went about arranging the matter of my pension. The attorney, real nice fellow. I left so happy that I decided to spend 5 pesos on a coffee. It was at the same café we went to as teenagers, and where I never go now because it reminds me that when I was twenty, I could afford more luxuries than I can now at 40. Back then we were all at the same stage, we’d forcefully rejected any negative opinion toward each other; in fact we’d stuck up for those who struggled at home with low parentage or lack of grace. I knew that many (perhaps the most humble) would rise to great heights, and that here at school were to be forged lasting friendships in whose company we would cross the raging seas. No, no it wasn’t that way. There were no rules. Many of the lowly stayed that way, many rose higher than we could foresee in those ardent fraternal gatherings. Others, though we seemed so promising, remained in the middle of the road, gutted by an unexpected trial, cut off by an invisible fence from those that triumphed and those that reached nothing. After all of that, today I went back to sit in those chairs, now updated –also, like a defensive barricade, the soda fountain –, and pretended to read the file. I saw them, many changed, amnesic, modified by neon lights, prosperous. With the café that I barely recognized, with the city itself, they’d shaped themselves at a rhythm different from my own. No, they no longer recognized me, or no longer wanted to. All in all- one or two- a quick thick hand on my shoulder- “see ya old buddy, good luck.” Between them and me were the 18 holes of the country club. I disguised myself in the file. Those years full of grand dreams, of blissful predictions, and all the omissions that prevented their reality, they all paraded past me. I felt the bitterness of not being able to stick my fingers into the past and assemble some neglected puzzle, but the toy-box is forgotten and who knows where the lead soldiers ended up, their helmets, their wooden swords. Those beloved disguises were nothing more than that. But there had been security, discipline, adherence to duty. Wasn’t that enough, or more than enough? The memory of Rilke still startles me sometimes. The great reward for youth’s adventure should be death; boys, we must part with all of our secrets. Today I wouldn’t have to look back on cities of salt. Five pesos? Two for the tip.”
“Pepe, aside from his passion for free trade, enjoys terrorizing. He saw me leaving mass and together we headed to the capitol. He’s cynical but that’s not enough for him: halfway down the block he had to formulate a theory. That if he weren’t Mexican, he wouldn’t worship Christ, and— No look, it makes sense. The Spanish arrive and they propose that you worship a God, dead and scabby, with a wounded side, nailed to a cross. Sacrificed. Offered up. What could be more natural than to accept a sentiment so akin to all your ceremony, to your whole life...? Imagine, on the other hand, that Mexico had been conquered by Buddhists or Muslims. It’s inconceivable that our Indians would worship someone who died of indigestion. But such a God for whom it goes beyond sacrifice to the point of tearing out his heart. Jeez, check mate to Huitzilopochtli! Christianity, in its warmest and bloodiest form, of sacrifice and liturgy becomes a natural and novel continuation of the indigenous religion. The aspects of charity, love and the other cheek, on the other hand, are rejected. And that is what Mexico is about: you must kill men in order to believe in them.
“Pepe understood the fondness I’ve had since I was a boy for certain kinds for Mexican indigenous art. I collect statuettes, idols, pottery. I spend my weekends in Tlaxcala, in Teotihuacan. Could that be why he likes to run all his theories by me, crafted with these themes for my consumption? It’s true I’ve been looking for a decent Chac Mool replica for a long time. And today Pepe tells me about a place in the Lagunilla where they’re selling one made of stone, and cheap apparently. I’m going on Sunday.
“Some joker colored the water in the office cooler red, consequently disrupting work. I should have known it was the manager, the only one who was laughing. He took advantage of the whole thing to take sarcastic little jabs at me all day, all because of the water. Shit!”
“Today, Sunday, I took off for the Lagunilla. I found the Chac Mool at the junk store that Pepe tipped me off to. It’s a precious piece, life size and, although the shopkeeper assures me of its originality, I doubt it. The stone is cheap but that doesn’t lessen the elegance of its posture or the girth of the block. The deceitful salesman has smeared ketchup on its belly to convince tourists of the sculpture’s bloody authenticity.
“Getting it home cost me more than buying it. But now it’s here, in the basement temporarily, while I reorganize my trophy room to make space for it. These figures need sunlight, vertical and firey; that was their natural element and condition. It looses a lot in the darkness of the basement, like a mere morbid hulk, and its grimace seems to resent me for depriving him of light. The shopkeeper had a light bulb exactly above the sculpture that defined all the edges and gave my Chac Mool a friendlier expression. I should follow his example.”
“I woke up to broken plumbing. Recklessly, I let the water run in the kitchen and it overflowed, ran onto the floor and went down to the basement without my realizing it. The Chac Mool is unaffected by the moisture but my luggage suffered; and all this on a weekday, has made me late for work.”
“They finally came to fix the plumbing. The luggage warped. And the Chac Mool with moss at the base.”
“I awoke at one; I’d heard a terrible moan. I thought it was burglars. Just my imagination.”
“The nighttime moans continue. I don’t know what it could be, but I’m nervous. The worst of all is that the plumbing has come apart again and the rains have come in, flooding the basement.”
“The plumber hasn’t come; I’m desperate. I’d rather not even mention the Federal District Bureau. This is the first time that the rain-waters don’t follow the gutters but find their way to my basement. The moans have stopped: It’s just one thing after another.”
“They dried up the basement and the Chac Mool is covered in moss. It gives him a grotesque appearance and the entire figure of the sculpture seems to suffer from gangrene, except for the eyes which are still stone. I’m going to take Sunday to scrape the moss off. Pepe recommended that I move to an apartment, into the top floor to avoid these aquatic disasters. But I can’t leave this big house, certainly too large for me alone, a little dismal in its porfirian architecture, but its the only inheritance and memory of my parents. I can’t imagine having to look at a soda fountain and player piano in the lobby and a showroom on the ground floor.”
“I went to scrape the moss off of the Chac Mool with a putty knife. The moss seemed to have become part of the rock. It took me over an hour and I didn’t finish until six in the evening. By then it was impossible to distinguish in the twilight and, to finish the job, I had to follow the contours of the stone with my hand. Each time I scraped the rock, it seemed to gleam. I didn’t want to believe it: by then it was like a paste. This Lagunilla shopkeeper conned me. His pre-Columbian sculpture is nothing but plaster, and the moisture will end up ruining it. I’ve put some rags on it and I’ll spend tomorrow on the top-piece before it deteriorates completely.”
“The rags are on the floor. Unbelievable. I felt the Chac Mool again. It’s hardened up, but not back into stone. I don’t want to write it: there’s something flesh-like in texture of the torso, I squeeze it like rubber. It feels like something runs through that reclined figure… I went back down last night. There is no doubt; the Chac Mool has hair on his arms.”
“This had never happened to me. I mixed things up at the office; sent a payment order that wasn’t authorized and the director had to write me up. Maybe I was less than courteous with my coworkers. I’ll have to see a doctor, see whether it’s my imagination or delirium or what, and get rid of that damn Chac Mool.”
-----Thus far, Filiberto’s handwriting had been the old kind, the kind I’d seen so many times in memos and letters, wide and ovular. The entry from August 25th looks like it was written by someone else. Sometimes child-like, each letter laboriously spaced out, others nervous, even deteriorating into an unreadable mess. There are three blank days, and the story continues:
“Everything is so natural; and then, a belief in reality…, but this is it, more than I believed. If a water cooler jug is real, and what’s more, we better realize its existence, or that is, if a joker dies the water red…A real puff of ephemeral cigarette, real distorted image in a circus mirror, all real. Then aren’t also all the dead, remembered and forgotten…? If a man crossed over to paradise in a dream, and was given a flower as proof that he’d been there, and if he woke to find that flower in his hand…, then what…? Reality: one day it was smashed to a thousand pieces, the head landed there, the tail there, and we only know one bit broken from the great body. Sea of freedom and fiction, real only when confined to a snail shell. Until 3 days ago, my reality was just that to the point of being erased today: it was reflexed movement, routine, memory, schedule. And then, like the day the earth quakes to remind us of its power, or death that will come, recriminating my lifelong forgetfulness, another reality appears that we knew was there, maverick, and which must shake us up to make known its presence and life. Again, I thought it was my imagination: the Chac Mool, soft and elegant, had changed color overnight; yellow, almost golden, seemd to show me that it was a god; momentarily relaxed, with its knees less tense than before, with a kinder smile. And yesterday, at last, a startled awakening, with that frightening awareness that there are two people breathing in the night, that in the darkness there are more pulses than one’s own. Yes, footsteps were heard on the stairs. Nightmare. Back to sleep... I don’t know how long I pretended to sleep. When I opened my eyes again, dawn had still not come. The room smelled horrible, like incense and blood. With a black look, I ran about the room, and was halted under two orifices of flickering light, two cruel yellow flames.
Almost out of breath, I turned on the light.
There was Chac Mool, upright, smiling, ocher-hued with his fleshy belly. I was paralyzed by the two eyes, almost crossed, very much fixed on the triangular nose. The lower teeth chewing the upper lip, immobile. Only the shine of the square headdress on the strangely voluminous head suggested life. Chac Mool approached the bed, then it began to rain.”
I remember that toward the end of August Filiberto was fired from the agency with a public accusation from the director and rumors of insanity and even theft. This, I did not believe. I did see some ridiculous memos asking the senior official if water could be smelled; and offering his services to the secretary of water resources to make it rain in the desert. I didn’t know how to explain it to myself. I thought that the summer’s exceptionally strong rains had gotten to him. Or that some emotional depression might have produced life in that big old house, with half of the rooms shut off and full of dust, without children or family life. The following notes are from the end of September.
“Chac Mool can be nice when he wants to… A charming squirt of water,… he knows fantastic stories about monsoons, equatorial rains, the deserts’ punishment; every plant springs from his mythical fatherhood; the willow, his lost daughter; the lotuses, his spoiled children; his mother-in-law, the cactus. What I cannot tolerate is the inhuman smell that emanates from that strange flesh, from the sandals smoldering with antiquity. With shrill laughter, the Chac Mool reveals how he was discovered by Le Plogeon, and physically placed, in the company of men of other symbols. His spirit has lived in the water jug and the storm, natural. His stone is another thing, and to have torn it from its hiding place is false and cruel. I believe Chac Mool will never pardon it. He knows the imminence of the aesthetic act.
“I should have given him cleanser to scrub his stomach that the shopkeeper anointed with ketchup to suppose him Aztec. He didn’t seem to like my question about his relationship to Tlaloc, and when he gets angry, his teeth, which are already repulsive, sharpen and gleam. At first he would go sleep in the basement; since yesterday, in my bed.”
“The dry season has begun. Yesterday, from the living room where I now sleep, I started to hear the same hoarse moans as before, followed by terrible noises. I went up and half-opened the bedroom door: the Chac Mool was smashing the lamps, the furniture; he sprang toward the door with his hands all scraped up, and I could barely shut the door and go hide in the bathroom… Later on he came down panting and asked for water; he keeps the faucets running all day, there’s not an inch of dry house left. I have to sleep all bundled up, and I’ve asked him not to soak the living room anymore.”
“Today Chac Mool flooded the living room. Exasperated, I said I was going to take him back to the Lagunilla. As terrible as his little laugh- horribly distinct from any human or animal laugh- was the blow he dealt me, with that arm weighed down with heavy bracelets. I should admit it: I’m his prisoner. My original idea was different: I would rule over Chac Mool, as one rules over a toy. Could it have been an extension of youthful confidence; but youth –-who said it?— is food eaten by the years, and I didn’t realize…He’s taken my clothing and he puts on the bath robes when green moss starts growing on him. The Chac Mool is used to being obeyed, always; I, who have never been one to make demands can only submit. While there’s no rain –what about his magical power?– he’s either angry or irritable.”
“Today I discovered that at night the Chac Mool goes outside. Every time it gets dark he sings a dissonant and ancient song, older than song itself. Then he stops. I knocked on his door several times, and when he didn’t answer I dared to enter. The bedroom, that I hadn’t seen since the day the statue tried to attack me, is in ruins, and there’s a concentration of that stench of incense and blood that has permeated the house. But behind the door, there are bones: bones of dogs, of rodents and cats. This is what Chac Mool raids at night to feed himself. This explains all the frightening growls in the early mornings.”
“February, dry. Chac Mool watches my every step; he has me call a take-out restaurant daily to bring me rice and chicken. But the pilfering from the office will soon be over. The inevitable happened: since the first, they cut the water and power for non-payment. But Chac has found a public spring 2 blocks away; every day I make 10 – 12 trips for water and he watches me from the roof. He says that if I try to escape he’ll strike me with lightning; he’s also the thunder god. What he doesn’t know is that I’m onto his nocturnal escapades… Since the lights are out, I go to bed around 8. I should be used to the Chac Mool by now, but a little while ago, in the darkness, I ran into him on the stairs, I felt his cold arms, the scales of his new flesh, and I wanted to scream.
“If it doesn’t rain soon, Chac Mool is going to turn back into stone. I’ve noticed the difficulty he’s had moving around recently, sometimes he sits down to rest for hours, paralyzed, as it seems, an idol once again. But those rests only give him new strength to torment me, clawing at me as if to sap some liquid from my flesh. Those friendly interludes when he would tell me ancient stories no longer take place; I sense in him some deep resentment. There have been other clues that have got me thinking: he’s about used up my entire pantry, he caresses the silk of the robes; he wants me to hire a house maid; he’s had me show him how to use soap and lotions. I believe the Chac Mool is falling victim to human vices; there’s even something old in his face that once seemed eternal. This may be my salvation: If the Chac becomes mortal, perhaps all his centuries of life will gather in an instant and he will be struck dead. But in this may be my end as well: Chac may not want me present for his fall; he might want to kill me. Today I’ll take advantage of Chac’s nightly outing and run. I’ll go to Acapulco; we’ll see what it takes to get work, and wait for Chac Mool’s death; yes, it approaches, he’s graying, swollen. I need to get some sun, swim, get my strength back. I’ve got 400 pesos left. I’ll go to the Müller Inn, it’s cheap and comfortable. Let Chac Mool take everything and see how long he lasts without my buckets of water.”
This is where Filiberto’s diary ends. I didn’t want to think about his story anymore; I slept until Cuernavaca. From there to Mexico City I tried to make sense of the account, relate it to his being overworked, with some psychological reason. When we got to the station at 9:30, I still couldn’t understand my friend’s madness. I hired a truck to take the casket to Filiberto’s house and, from there, arrange his burial.
Before I could get the key in the lock, the door opened. A yellow Indian appeared in a house robe and with a scarf. His appearance couldn’t have been more repulsive; he smelled of cheap lotion, his powdered face betrayed its wrinkles, his mouth was smeared with messy lipstick and his hair looked like it had been dyed.
“excuse me, did you know Filiberto had…”
“It doesn’t matter; I know everything. Tell them to bring the body to the basement.”