Burnt Water by Carlos Fuentes

kind of recognition that would at the same time dissipate those years forever.
    â€œFor what?” I replied. “I’m happy we can talk again. That’s all I want. We see each other every day, but each time it was as if the other weren’t there. Now I’m happy we can be friends again, like before.”
    â€œWe’re more than friends, Claudia. We’re brother and sister.”
    â€œYes, but that’s an accident. Because we are brother and sister we loved each other very much when we were children; but we’ve hardly spoken to each other since.”
    â€œI’m going away, Claudia. I’ve already told my father. He doesn’t agree. He thinks I ought to get my degree. But I have to go away.”
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œI’ve got a job with the United Nations in Geneva. I can continue my studies there.”
    â€œYou’re doing the right thing, Juan Luis.”
    You told me what I already knew. You told me you were sick of whorehouses, of learning everything by rote, of the obligation to be macho, of patriotism, lip-service religion, the lack of good films, the lack of real women, girls your own age you could live with … It was quite a speech, spoken quietly across that table in the Mascarones café.
    â€œIt’s not possible to live here. I mean it. I don’t want to serve either God or the devil; I want to burn the candle at both ends. And you can’t do it here, Claudia. Just wanting to live makes you a potential traitor; here you’re obliged to serve, to take a position; it’s a country that won’t let you be yourself. I don’t want to be ‘decent.’ I don’t want to be courteous, a liar, muy macho, an ass-kisser, refined and clever. There’s no country like Mexico  … thank God! I don’t want to go from brothel to brothel. When you do that, then all your life you are forced to treat women with a kind of brutal, domineering sentimentality because you never learned to really understand them. I don’t want that.”
    â€œAnd what does Mother say?”
    â€œShe’ll cry. It doesn’t matter. She cries about everything, what else would you expect?”
    â€œAnd what about me, Juan Luis?”
    He smiled childishly. “You’ll come to visit me, Claudia. Swear you’ll come see me!”
    I not only came to see you; I came to look for you, to take you back to Mexico. And four years ago, when we said goodbye, the only thing I said was: “Think about me. Find a way to be with me always.”
    Yes, you wrote me begging me to visit you; I have your letters. You found a room with bath and kitchen in the most beautiful spot in Geneva, the Place du Bourg-de-Four. You wrote that it was on the fifth floor, right in the middle of the old city. From there you could see steep roofs, church towers, small windows and narrow skylights, and in the distance the lake fading from sight toward Vevey and Montreux and Chillon. Your letters were filled with the joy of independence. You had to make your bed and clean and get your own breakfast and go down to the dairy next door for milk. And you had your drinks in the café on the plaza. You talked so much about that café. It is called La Clémence and it has an awning with green and white stripes and anyone who is anyone in Geneva goes there. It’s tiny, six tables facing a bar; waitresses in black serve cassis and say “M’sieudame” to everyone. I sat there yesterday to have a cup of coffee and looked at all those students in their long mufflers and university caps, at Hindu girls with saris askew under winter coats, at diplomats with rosettes in their lapels, at actors who are trying to avoid paying taxes, who take refuge in chalets on the lake shore, at the young Germans, Chileans, Belgians, and Tunisians who work at the ILO. You wrote that there were two Genevas. The ordered conventional city that Stendhal described as a