“Will you return?”
“I don’t know.”
“I promise, you won’t hear any more scolding from me. Again, I beg you to forgive me …”
“Don’t say anything, Mother. Soon I’ll figure out what I need to do.”
“If you want, I’ll hold on to your money. I think you are taking a huge risk by carrying it around in that suitcase. You really shouldn’t.”
“I’m taking all my money with me. I don’t care. I want to live near my sweetheart. I want to get married soon.”
“But you don’t have a job. If you don’t start working, that money will pour through your hands like water.”
“That’s my business. I don’t want you to ever scold me again.”
Separation. Choice. The rest of the day mother and son exchanged nary a word. Demetrio took a stroll around Parras. He needed to feel alone in order to think things backward and forward. The bad part of that tree-lined town was the paucity of restaurants and cafés, and not a single spot that was even remotely depraved; rather, the tacit aspect of the tranquility: more sacred relief than you could shake a stick at: three small plazas with cute benches and well-scrubbed kiosks. Streets made for the most primary of pleasures. Sights and sounds like extra decorations that made (and make) the seeing and the feeling seem haggard. Nevertheless, to stroll without faith, take a seat in some spot, and slowly slowly convince himself that this was not for him, that such a small-minded world would ultimately fill him with supreme disgust; it would be like consciously shrinking himself in order to quickly attain the philosophical outlook of an old geezer; it was to remain uncontaminated, at least not infected, by the unknown, or to cling to a few fixed ideas that had to be neutralized with neutral ingredients, never anything perturbing; it was the nonemancipation and the nonaudacity and, most of all, the senility of it all, of his soul, for example. Perhaps a fettered spirit. A young spirit whose flight had reached no higher than a hummingbird’s: to wit: to peck only at the known, at what was most obvious, and from there thoughts that zigzag toward the margins, to find therein more excitement: a desire that must not be, how could it be, and till when. Demetrio experienced more excitement on his train ride to Sacramento. He couldn’t, however, escape the rigid circle he had drawn for himself, unintentionally, in which, somehow or other, he now found himself trapped.
Trapped. Never!
Why?
Nevertheless, as he approached that other negligible place, swathed in the grandiose image of his saintly sweetheart, he thought about countless entrances and exits. Once Renata was his wife, she would be his unconditionally and would accompany him wherever he wanted and whenever he wanted … et cetera. The promise of a slave brimming with affection, flowing with honey, drowning in honey … Well, well! Let us watch Demetrio with suitcase in hand: a bigger one, which his mother lent him. Inside, of course his compressed banknotes; on top of them, two changes of clothes; two pairs of pants, one belonging to his father, which his mother had hemmed for him; she stayed up late at the task. Let us also watch Doña Telma’s alacrity, her handiwork, punctuated by bouts of tears; she dared not say a word about her son’s pending and inopportune departure. Cut, now, to the following morning. A chilly farewell, no kiss, and complete relief for him (here an ellipsis) on the boat crossing the river. An exceptional reception. There in her grocery store, like a perennial thinker, elbows resting on countertop and palm propping up her chin, Doña Zulema watched the rectangular vista that was her perpetual panorama: a frame that contained two walnut trees swaying slightly: this the background; closer up: a crumbling adobe wall; even closer: the dirt road along which people who almost never greeted her walked. Then her nephew appeared in the rectangular door frame. The aperture: a miracle — finally! Doña Zulema — credulous? Yes, she roused herself and stepped outside. The shadow of an embrace: almost. What’s going on? I never expected to see you at this time of year. And he: Well, here I am. Next scene: close up the shop and converse all evening and into the night. No, that last part, no, because the nephew was anxious to see Renata before nightfall. Doña Zulema — for a change — told him she would make him something to eat. Oh how splendid! Sudden hospitality after so much prior neglect. What a lark! And in the meantime he would wash by the bucketful, without caring if the water was cold, hot, or warm. Two events, if looked at carefully, that could be seen as joyous raptures: two promising predicaments, but as we can’t see, we can only read — what elucidation remains! Happy tension — in black and white? Heavens! So let’s place them side by side at the table. We’ll stand ten feet away: just for fun? That would be fantastic …
A plate with four flour tortillas filled with refried beans, a mortar full of green salsa, and placed a bit farther away (strategically?), a steaming cup of café con leche. Grandstanding? Well, the hospitality was quite ostentatious, considering that before … remember? Very nearly bashful, stuttering summaries of the reasons for his presence. New and rather ghastly lies, and when cracks began to show, which they did, Doña Zulema had some elbow room to pose a hefty number of questions … Which meant there would be no time to be exacting, perhaps later, maybe tomorrow, but the most essential things, in plain view, could not linger on the tip of the tongue.
“Forgive me for saying something that you may find disagreeable: that shirt you’re wearing is way too big on the sides and in back, and those pants are too short; your socks show too much. The fact is, you look awful.”
That is, the father was fatter than but not as tall as Demetrio. And his mother’s needlework was poor.
“I don’t care. I’ll explain everything later.”
“But you’re going to see your sweetheart.”
“I’m telling you, I don’t care. I must see her, period.”
Wow! So he came from Parras dressed like that. Datum now added.
Come on! Flood pants and a shirt that was making waves.
17
The intention: to break the monotony, which is what one might fancy doing when uncertainty, mixed with sorrow, is magnified. Doña Telma alone, going from here to there and back to here in her back garden, was being watched by her two servants, who awaited orders. The heat was gnarly that morning. It seemed like the sun wanted to accentuate its sheen so as to augment the despondency of a few rather than inject joy into what’s done. In that sense, and quite suddenly, the señora was afflicted by pangs of distress. Meanwhile, observed as she was by those meatheads, she managed to say: Off to the kitchen with you! I don’t want you watching me. Then, more fired up, but with her head hung even lower, she continued her pacing. Analytical pacing, supremely painstaking, which soon turned into a process of degradation, until she finally convinced herself that her life was nothing but an assemblage of scraps, or a lack of fortuitous events. True, she was a widow with means and a house, but (completely) alone, as if she were a piece of poisonous offal. Could be because she was an incorrigible nag or because her destiny was a path that grew grimmer as it stretched further out …
Grimness now: entrenched. Thundering doom, a juncture that could lead only to a long monologue: days, weeks, months, years, of talking only to herself — mummification! The complaint and the cure being kneaded together forever, for years now, ever since her husband’s death — a bit less than a decade ago — and even before that, when her daughters, one after the other, married those damn gringos, and she’d been all but forgotten, they didn’t write or visit, only once in a great while, they never completely abandoned her, squeezing her in, but really, ugh! Demetrio: the only one, every Christmas, though … we already know the brouhaha: now that he had returned he had fled ipso, under the pretext of needing to see his sweetheart: what a cock-and-bull story! a bunch of baloney! In a typical Mexican story, she would shrink into a tearful creature and go chasing after him; hence, the very next morning she took off to Sacramento. That’s right: to break the monotony so as not to sink even deeper into that tangle of guilt she had knotted for herself. Kneading the cure sans the complaints. A brave decision.