2
The rigid hours for breakfast, lunch, and dinner were also loathsome. Key interludes, for in the dining room all sorts of subjects were raised, mostly by Rolanda, a woman who distilled bitterness. Unmarried, virgin, old, on top of a host of other afflictions. We can venture to guess what sorts of ideas made her shudder. Dark and decadent ones. Everything was fair game — the world and its inhabitants — except her far-distant God, the one to which she prayed. Imagine, then, the extent of her solitude, so evident. Abject boredom, even when praying, even when cooking … Though she never stopped talking while carrying steaming dishes to the table or fulfilling her lodgers’ petty requests. Her monologues brooked no interruptions … Breakfast was served almost at dawn, as previously stated. Within the half hour eggs appeared, but sometimes only pastries. Never after that half hour, for the lodgers, four in all, had to leave for work. Moreover, let’s figure that three left on the weekends. They returned to their villages in order to — or so they averred a hundred-odd times — enjoy the company of their wives and progeny. Not the agronomist, the obstinate bachelor, not till now. Though it seemed that his nearest of kin resided in the devil’s lodgings. And evasive: Monday-through-Friday dinners, that is, conversation, a gathering of working people who often wound up extolling the virtues of their own jobs, Demetrio being the one with the highest salary, perhaps because he was the only semiprofessional among them: oh, the grand implicit advantage. If any of the others had been in business — alas! — they would have walked right out of that house in search of a better life, but they weren’t, they were lowly wage earners, all somewhat younger than the agronomist; he, a roaring success! who earned two thousand pesos a month, so for him the pleasure of sex could be a fortuitous indulgence, but something was ruffling him: the aftertaste — how long could it go on? This notion brings us conveniently back to his bookkeeping, carried out during his Sunday-morning seclusion: Demetrio had to include the money he was saving monthly to buy a small house. A measly sum. After so many years of penny-pinching … Penny-pinching, indeed, but the investment was growing in the bank: at what percentage? He had it in a fixed-term account, so he saw his totals only once a year. A significant sum. The first time — amazing! when he saw the number, and the second — wow! It really did make sense to save in one of those munificent institutions. He got the information twice. Twice, because Demetrio had spent two years and three months working as the administrator and principal agricultural expert for a ten-thousand-hectare orchard. “Private ranch” would be the more accurate appellation, but the owner refused to call it a ranch, that little word just didn’t seem appropriate, for there were no cows, nor chickens nor goats, none of those animals that produce wealth (not even pigs). So, no. Instead: pears, apples, or whatever other ideas for planting and harvesting he had: a clownish contumacy: the agricultural, indeed! In any case, before continuing in this vein, it would do to insert this note: nowadays the subject of ranches is of only peripheral interest, because ranches have no truck with the urban or the violent (our landowner would never have dreamed of planting marijuana or poppies), so we offer this information very much as an aside, only to turn our full attention back to the sexual, for that’s what really matters. Let’s, however, quickly assert that Demetrio Sordo had nothing to do with marketing the harvest: where it should go: near or far — no, never that! nor the renting of trailers, none of that tedious stuff. On the other hand, he was responsible for the drainage ditches; yes, and for all things related to the purchase of fertilizers and amendments, as well as the best insecticides to prevent plagues and other evils; and the manual work: the making of furrows, ridges, ditches, rows, and even terraces; as well as the rest: breaking clods, hoeing, plowing, grading, mowing, sifting, and threshing, in concert, needless to say, with the peasantry. All of which he carried off with great aplomb, which led the landowner to give Demetrio full jurisdiction over the orchard. Trust. Respect. He visited twice a week. He wanted results and that’s what he got. At a serene pace that others might find torturous. But let’s leave this for now and turn to the recently sexual. Before, as we said, the agronomist would make his way directly to the lodging house after the day’s work; he would arrive beat, to bathe, to rest: seclusion, a clean break, the radio, waiting for dinnertime. Monotony. But ever since he’d met Mireya he made his way straight to the brotheclass="underline" by taxi: a dirty and desperate dash, only the second time, for by the third, alas, a bath in the orchard, or rather: washing by bucketfuls. As far as that went, we must consider the time it took to heat the water to an optimal temperature. On a stove in a kitchen — of which there were both — though the distance between the bath and the kitchen exceeded 150 feet and counting. Further delays, but that’s what Demetrio did the third time and thereafter: quite a chore this coming and going with buckets: four in alclass="underline" slow considering what preceded and followed: stealing an hour from the workday — indeed! because if the agronomist didn’t make it to the brothel on time, Mireya might be occupied with another client, a circumstance he wished to avoid by all means. Those first few days he was, mercifully, spared. Another option was to go to that aforementioned hell and wash there: in her room, before the screw. He asked, fearful of eliciting a negative response … No, on the contrary, Mireya said that as long as he did it quickly … Well, to clean off the dust of the fields was not a matter of a simple dousing, you had to stand under the water for a long time and thoroughly soap yourself, a privilege for which, Demetrio told her, he would be willing to pay an additional fee. Money for Mireya, secretly — really? and she agreed with a smile.