Read Online Distant Relations by Carlos Fuentes - Free Book Online

actual lights. The blast of malice directed against Branly, Branly’s vital juices informed him, his viscera, the shadowy taste in his mouth, sprang from a different place and a different time, a faraway time and place as distant in origin as the dead leaves swirling in the wake of the automobile racing along the avenue of the Clos des Renards—leaves my friend feverishly knew were alien to that place; they had not fallen from any tree in these woods, and who could say who or what had carried them here, or when or where they had actually fallen, in what dense forest.

7
    Branly is an inveterate traveler. It is not unusual to see him one day, as today, in the dining room or swimming pool of the club housed in Gabriel’s magnificent pavillon facing the Place de la Concorde, and then lose sight of him for months. He may wish to see his favorite Velázquezes in the Prado or the magnificent Brueghels in Naples, the diamantine lakes of southern Chile or the endlessly golden dawns over the Bosporus. The wish is father to the deed; wish, not caprice, he explains. Because he had known the innocent world before Sarajevo, he believes it would be absurd in this day of instant communications for men not to claim their right to use transportation to their own advantage, to fulfill their slightest whim, knowing that, like every new conquest, such privilege is also a notification of what we have lost: the visa-less intercommunicating universe he had enjoyed when one traveled to Kabul not in a Caravelle but in a caravan. The witticism attributed to Paul Morand could easily apply to my friend: he so loves to travel that his will stipulates that his skin be made into a suitcase.
    So no one among Branly’s friends is surprised by his sudden absence. He might be visiting the Countess at nearby Quercy, or be as far away as the Toltec ruins at Xochicalco. Neither will ever be dislodged from its site, and so, in keeping with a life based on civility and social niceties, my friend willingly goes to the mountains that will not come to him.
    And such idiosyncratic habits serve a different end as well. They permit him, in keeping with his desire, to avoid any mention of occasional illness. Nothing irritates him more than the solicitous—sincere or feigned, though almost always hypocritical—attentions given the ailments that beset the elderly. He is no hypochondriac, and he detests the idea that anyone should see him reduced to querulousness or debility. When Branly finds himself in bed against his will, Florencio and José are well trained in informing callers that M. le Comte will be out of town for a few weeks, and if they want to communicate with him they may do so by writing in care of the prefecture of Dordogne, or perhaps by poste restante to the island of Mauritius. M. le Comte will undoubtedly be dropping by one of these days to pick up his mail.
    Even those of us who suspect the subterfuge in all this are quite happy to attribute it to the combination of fantasy and reserve which in the Count are good and sufficient proof of his independence. In this way he cautions us to respect his privacy as he respects ours. It is only this afternoon, for instance, that I learn of the several days he spent in bed following the accident he suffered the evening he ran into one of the oak trees lining the avenue to the Clos des Renards. I acknowledge my appreciation of his confidence, though a barely perceptible gleam in his small eyes reveals that if he has told me, it is only because the incident is indispensable to the story, the result of an automobile accident—not uncommon in the life of one who travels so frequently—and not a common cold.
    â€œI am convinced that there are events that occur only because we fear them. If they were not summoned by our fear, you see, they would remain forever latent. Surely it is our imagining them that activates the atoms of probability and awakens them, as it were, from a dream. The