Adam in Eden

Chapter 30

tale of the comet In the ongoing dispute about comets, Father Güemes (who finally revealed his name) claims that each passing of the asteroid has been a fateful sign: 1965, the beginning of the end of the PRI (Party of Revolutionary Institutions) and presidential arrogance; 1957, the end of the “Mexican miracle” and the loss of the last revolutionary illusions; 1910, during the revolution, need I say more, Madero enters Mexico City, there is an earthquake, and the comet passes; 1908, in the tower of Chapultepec Castle, the old dictator Porfirio Díaz, watching the passing of the comet, announces that Mexico is ripe for democracy and leaves his extravagant moustache to soak; 1852, the passing of the comet coincides with the end of Santa Anna’s dictatorship and the start of the liberal revolution; 1758, the comet is the portentous light of the still-to-come revolution for independence from Spain; 1682, the viceroy of La Laguna, Count of Paredes, will soon order the hanging of Antonio Benavides, a seafaring pirate whose life ended on the dry plateau, in the small square of El Volador, all because he deliriously gave himself the nickname “the Hidden,” proof positive, because surprise candidates in presidential elections were called “hidden candidates,” that every past contains its future; 1607, this time the comet, alleges Güemes, prefigures and celebrates good government, when Luis de Velasco, the younger, in his second term as viceroy of New Spain, enforces the abolition of Indian slavery, but fights along Río Blanco Road against Yanga and the other runaway black slaves, whom he would later pardon and to whom he would give a new city in Veracruz to be called San Lorenzo de los Negros; in contrast, in 1553, the comet coincides with the catastrophic flooding of Mexico City, proving that its crossing of the sky equally celebrates joys and announces tragedies; and in 1531 (the man of faith now reaching the end of his reoccurring sermon), the comet and the Virgin appear at the same time, heralding the end of paganism; “Faith has prevailed, my esteemed Don Vizarrón,” and the scientist Vizarrón who didn’t want to be outdone by the prelate and so revealed his name, too, answered, “Yes, but in 1508, when there was no Christianity in Mexico nor prudes of your sort, my dear Don Güemes, the meteor arrived with thunderbolts, the Aztec temples burned, the commotion troubled its waters, the wind mingled its lamentations with those of The Weeping Woman, La Llorona, who roamed the streets of the city every night screaming, Oh my children, oh my children. . ”

“That just goes to prove what I was saying,” explains the preacher.

“The comet was a sign that Christ was already on his way.”

“That’s cheating,” Vizarrón laughs, “pure sophistry. What do all the comets have in common? I’ll tell you: it’s not history, it’s physics. The comet travels in an elliptic orbit of the sun. It is made, my dear sir, of ice and rock. It generates a gaseous exterior. It tail stretches millions of miles. It ejects stellar particulates. The comet is a product of the sun. But it doesn’t reflect sunlight. It reflects solar radiation, which is different; it emits its own light. Fleeting light, my good man. When the comet nears the sun, it vaporizes. It ceases to exist.”

“But it coincides with historical events. It is an outward manifestation of the coincidence of faith with facts.”

“You’re the one who mixes history and miracle, miracle and comet. You might like to know that nine comets pass each year. What have you got to say to that? What are you going to tell me now?”

Nothing could answer that but the voice of Adam Gorozpe’s gardener (that’s mine, the narrator’s gardener) concentrating on his work:

Oh, comet, if you’d only known

What you’d come to herald

You never would have shown

Lighting up the heavens.

Nobody would blame you.

Not God, who sent him to you.