“And because style is change, it affects our business. What do we offer the consumer? The most modern, the most advanced, at times the most useless, because tell me, if you already have a black telephone, why do you want a white one? I’ll tell you: Because choosing between two phones today is choosing among a hundred phones tomorrow. Do you see? Luxury creates necessity, necessity creates luxury, and we produce and win. There is no end to it! There’s no reason for it ever to end! Ha!”
She didn’t say these words as an exclamation. Her behavior at these social events was very distinctive. She knew she was looked at and even guessed at. Over and above the conversations, the clink of glasses, the scent of lotions and perfumes, the taste of sausages and quesadillas, Asunta Jordan circulated in a kind of light, as if a theatrical spot were following her, always looking for the best angle, making her hair shine, resting like an insolent bee on her plump red lips a la Joan Crawford, hot or cold? That was the question others asked as they watched her go by, does Asunta Jordan kiss hot or cold? murmuring in secret to Josue, exciting the curiosity of the guests, Ask yourself, Josue, who’s looking at you, where are they looking at you from? Ask yourself but don’t look at anybody, act in public as if you had a secret and wanted them to guess what it is.
She offered no opening. She let them look at her. She imposed silence as she passed. And if she held my arm, it was as if I were a cane, a walking puppet, a theatrical prop. She needed me to circulate through the reception with no need to speak with anyone, exciting everyone’s curiosity each time she said something to me in a quiet voice, smiling or very, very serious. I was her support. A straight man.
In the real world (for me these excursions into society were almost imaginary) Asunta brought me up to date on my duties with rapid efficiency. There existed a national and global market of young people between twenty and thirty-five, Generation Y, given this name because they succeeded Generation X, who were now past forty and even though everybody adjusts to the customary until they fear that the newest thing will bite them, the twenty- year-olds are the primary target of consumer advertising. They want to make their debut. They want to be different. They want brand-new objects. They need technologies they can control immediately and that are (at least in their youthful imaginations) forbidden to “the older generation.”
The notable thing-Asunta continued-is that in the developed world each generation of the young is smaller than the one before because of the decline in population. New families, more divorce, more homosexual couples, fewer children. On the other hand, in the world of poverty-ours, the Mexican world, Josue, don’t kid yourself-the population increases but so does poverty. How can we combine demography and consumption? This is the problem set forth by Max Monroy, and your job, my young friend, is to solve it. How to increase consumption in an impoverished population?
“By making them less impoverished,” I dared to remark.
“And how do we do that?” the queen bee insisted.
I opened my eyes to think clearly. “By taking the initiative? By opening limited credit for them and giving them short-term cards? By educating. Preparing. Communicating.”
“Communicating,” she moved ahead. “Letting them know they can live better, that they deserve credit, cards, consumption, just like the rich…”
I tried to look intelligent. She moved ahead of me like an Alfa Romeo passing a Ford.
“And how do we do that?” she said again.
Asunta was enthusiastic, dazzling me because I desired her, but I understand now that to have her I would have to respect her for what she was, an executive woman, an arm in the enterprises of Max Monroy that, like the goddess Kali, has as many arms as it has needs.
I was content with two, ready to love, caress, strangle me. She looked at me, confusing my desire with ambition. They’re not the same thing.
“I’ll tell you how,” and she snapped her fingers, on the offensive. “Move ahead. Give them the medium of communication. Send an army of our employees from village to village, settlement to settlement. Bring in trucks loaded with handheld devices. Like tire salesmen did when the first highways and cars were promoted by Dona Concha, Max’s mother, in the 1920s. Like the Christian missionaries did, so long ago, when they brought the Gospel to the conquered Indians. Now, Josue, we’re going to bring in the medium of communication, the tiny device, call it Creative Zen, YP-Tq, LGs, whatever you like, the toy, show it to the poorest campesino, the most isolated Indian, the illiterate and the semiliterate, who by touching this button can express their desires and by pressing the other receive a concrete response, not dead promises but the living announcement: Tomorrow we’ll install what you asked for, we’ll give you a cellphone, an iPod so you can hear already programmed music, we know your tastes, an iPhone so you can communicate with your friends, and by God, Josue, break the isolation in which your, our, compatriots live, and once you give them the devices free of charge you’ll see how demand is born, credit is given, a habit is created…”
“And generations will be in debt to us,” I said with healthy skepticism.
“And so?” She managed to smile despite herself. “You and I will be dead.”
“And while we’re alive?” I said, not expecting a reply, since Asunta Jordan’s program seemed to run out in this life, not the next.
Still, when I thought this, it occurred to me that at the age of eighty-three, Max Monroy had already considered the future, had already made a will. Who would be his heirs? What would Asunta obtain in Max’s will, if in fact Max left her anything? And to whom else could Max leave his fortune? I laughed to myself. Public welfare. The National Lottery. An old age home. His own business, recapitalizing it. His loyal collaborator Asunta Jordan?
I digress.
I OUGHT TO have imagined, oh woe is me, that in a fashion parallel to my technosentimental education at the hands of the beautiful, crepuscular Asunta Jordan in the fiefdoms of Max Monroy, my old friend Jerico must have been receiving political instruction at the hacienda of our joker president.
Maestro Don Antonio Sangines informed me that Jerico was still working in the presidential offices at Los Pinos. One night he invited me to supper at his mansion in San Angel, and after the previously mentioned patrol of children-they were already in their pajamas-he sent them away and sat me down to a meal not only of dishes of food but of biographies, as if, since he was the conductor of the destinies allotted to me and Jerico, it was now time for him to turn to a new function: the president’s biography.
“How much do you know about President Valentin Pedro Carrera?” he asked before attacking a consomme with sherry.
“Very little,” I replied, my spoon at rest. “What I read in the papers.”
“I’ll tell you about him. So you’ll know where and with whom your friend Jerico is working: Valentin Pedro Carrera won the presidential election with the invaluable assistance of his wife, Clara Carranza. In the pre-election debates, each candidate boasted of his marvelous family life. The children were a delight”-Sangines’s eyes gleamed, and from the top floor we could still hear the prenocturnal tumult of his youngsters-“his wife was the ideal woman, a loving mother, a disinterested colleague, a First Lady because she was already his first companion (relatives had to be hidden).”
All the candidates fulfilled these well-known formalities. But only Valentin Pedro Carrera could swallow with difficulty, suppress a fat tear, take out a large colored handkerchief, blow his nose vigorously, and announce:
“My wife, Clara Carranza, is dying of cancer.”
At that instant, our current leader won the election.
Who will vote, perhaps not for the candidate but no doubt for the health, agony, and probable death of Dona Clara, elevated to a combined sainthood and martyrology by that television moment when her husband dared say what no one knew and, if they did, had kept hidden in the old closets of discretion?
The candidate is married to a heroic, stoic, Catholic woman who may very well die before the election-vote for widower Carrera-after the election-what will happen first, the funeral or the inauguration?-during the ceremony- how brave Dona Clara was, she got out of her bed to support her husband when he rendered his affirmation that he would protect the Constitution and the laws emanating thereof!-or in the first months of the new government- she clutches at life, she doesn’t die so as not to discourage the president-or when, at last, the senora gave up the ghost and Valentin Pedro Carrera transformed personal grief into national mourning. There was no church without a requiem, no avenue without posters with photographs of the transient First Lady, no office without a black bow
