Adam in Eden

Chapter 1

I don’t understand what happened. Last Christmas everybody was smiling at me, giving me gifts, congratulating me, predicting a new year — yet another year — of success, satisfaction, and just rewards. People nodded approval at my wife as though to tell her she was very lucky to be married to the toast of the town. . Today I ask myself, what does it mean to be “the toast of the town. .?” Or, for that matter, burnt toast? I feel more burnt than toasted. Was this the year when my memory, so subject to illusions, at last grew disillusioned? Did what happened really happen? I don’t really want to know. All I want is to go back to last year’s Christmas: a family affair, comforting in its stark simplicity (in its inherent stupidity) and annual reoccurrence; a prophecy of twelve months to come that would not be as gratifying as Christmas Eve because fortunately they would not be as silly and wretched as Christmas; the holiday that we celebrate in December — just because — as a matter of course — without knowing why — out of custom — because we are Christians — we are Mexicans — war — war against Lucifer — because in Mexico we’re Catholics to a man, not excepting the atheists — because a thousand years of iconography instructs us to kneel before the Nativity scene of Bethlehem even as we turn our backs on the Vatican. Christmas takes us back to the humble origins of faith. There was a time, another time, when to be Christian was to be called an atheist, to be persecuted, to hide, to flee. Heresy: a heroic path. Now, in our sorry age, to be an atheist shocks no one. Nothing is shocking. Nobody is shocked. What if I, Adam Gorozpe, were suddenly to knock down the little Christmas tree with my fist, smash the star, wrap a wreath around my wife Priscila Holguín’s head as a crown, and — as they used to say—to drum out (whatever that means) my guests. .?

Why don’t I do that? Why do I keep acting with my famous bonhomie? Why do I keep behaving like the perfect host who, every Christmas, invites friends and colleagues over, plies them with food and drink, gives each of them a different present — never the same tie twice, or the same scarf — even as my wife insists that ‘tis the season for re-gifting the useless, ugly, or duplicate presents that were foisted on us, and for dumping them on those who, in turn, give them to other dupes who thrust them upon. .

I look at the small mountain of gifts piled before the tree. I am overcome by the fear of giving a colleague the gift he gave me two, three, four Christmases ago. . But thinking about this is enough to ward off my fears. My story isn’t up to New Year’s yet. It’s still Christmas Eve. My family surrounds me. My innocent wife smiles her most conceited smile. The maids pass around punch. My father-in-law distributes cake and cookies from a tray.

I should not get ahead of myself. Today everything is fine; nothing awful has happened yet.

I look out the window distractedly.

A comet trails across the sky.

And my wife, Priscila, loudly slaps the maid who serves the cocktails.