Fortunately his investment in that experiment had cost him only one peso and fifty centavos.
An infectious, monumental, depressing adventure because it gave him no glimmer of clarity as to the direction his life was taking. Curves and straightaways, though many more curves and perhaps some regression that could be interpreted as a harbinger of a precipitous conclusion, so much so that on his way back to La Mena he felt as though he were approaching an abyss.
The headlights of the pickup, in addition to shedding light on the familiar route, seemed to place in his path armies of nopales and huisaches: rising abruptly out of the earth or descended from the heavens: no! for God’s sake — not now! Interlopers! Frauds! A world of thorns. Certainties that when passing were merely glanced sidelong, fade-outs rather than fortuitous disappearances or the semblance of a current rushing backward. The (illuminated) illusory was so real, so apocryphal because so fleeting. Then, when he arrived at La Mena, he would have liked to see a single lightbulb, one electrical surprise to counteract, given the splendor of the mass of stars, but — what a fool! what a doltish delusion! it would be forever before electricity would come to that region. Not next year, nor the following, not in a lustrum, nor in a decade. The bulb relief — O remora! A highfalutin fantasy: a teensy and allusive stigma of what might or might not happen three decades from now … If only there were a bulb (just one one-hundred-watt bulb, let’s say) Demetrio would acknowledge that this ranch was his ideal place, and he, of course, the wise pioneer chosen by God to build first a hamlet, then a village, and then a city: a fervent founding father, but the darkness — primitive, shapeless, constricted thus rank because so narrow: now errant, now repellent, now the dregs of the dregs, and, therefore, a reality that not only dejects but imprisons. When he saw how uncertain all this was, especially when it was almost midnight, Demetrio realized he couldn’t live there much longer. Neither alone nor accompanied. Renata, in the meantime, resurrected. Sexual meekness that required a maximum of spiritual meekness, a future in dribs and drabs in exchange for true power. What a paradox! The big guy had taken this job to be closer to her and in the end he was much further away. The lack of communication, the workload increasingly heavy. He could neither send nor receive letters, and a trip to Sacramento, without knowing the roads welclass="underline" ah, he would get gruelingly lost. He didn’t even try. It would be so risky, tempting perhaps, but … Renata instead inspired him to focus on his job. If he killed a goat, there in the thick of the blood Renata’s smile appeared. If he milked a cow (he’d already learned how), he encountered the oneiric semblance of her beauty in the spurts of milk. If he heard songs on the radio, his darling appeared to him suspended in the breeze. And during his trips to Sabinas and Nueva Rosita, Renata’s face, above the clouds, began to appear, and the intense green of her eyes dyed the white and blue of the sky. Then dissipation. Then the magnetism of her voice saying: Come, come love me. Don’t abandon me. In fact, some time before, in an about-face and with unexpected force, Benigno asked him:
“Did you have fun in Sabinas?”
“No way. I had a terrible time.”
If only he had made the effort during one of his daytime trips to those half-town-half-cities and asked ever so casually if there happened to be a more upscale congal … No, not that, not now: stubbornness fortified in a sorrowful interior … He didn’t want to find out (ignorance and its acrid ups and downs were better), for he also didn’t want to touch himself down there and thereby create confusion: never again! It’s just that without love, sex was disgusting and fraudulent, gratuitous suffering, disgusting gratification. So, on the plus side, the longing for indestructible purity and endurance. And the reinforcement of his fixation on one sacred ass, the one he predicted would overflow with beauty and mystery, the notion of a tunnel with flexible walls, but still steely and quite slippery, something like a divine — yes? — chalice placed in the middle of a bizarre altar; vulgarities (almost) for a boost, also so as not to give much of himself to anybody: to wit: Demetrio was becoming more silent. He no longer sought conversation: the essential, a kind of casual dissipation. True that Bartola made him food, but the only word he offered in return was “thanks,” a mere euphonic abstraction in spite of the fact that she brought him his plate of beans, or eggs with salsa, as well as flour tortillas and a glass of milk, to his quarters; the family stopped inviting him over, but the manager’s refusal operated with more vigor: fists raised, pounding the air; also, boorish stomping, even kicking up some dust. Even on Christmas Eve, Demetrio preferred to dine alone, perhaps so as not to recall his mother, nor his second mother, nor Renata, nor — whom else? A mental blank: a discipline of sorts: barely a blur: an oblique achievement. When New Year’s Eve rolled around, he chose to drive the pickup about three miles away from La Mena to avoid any hugs for — Happy New Year! To gaze at the stars, to glimpse vague signs … He fell asleep in the cab of the pickup, hungry by design, bundled up warmly (he’d bought loads of clothes in Sabinas), wearing — who would see him? — a thick wool hat with earflaps, and a double-knit scarf, and — of course! his privacy tripled. He didn’t even chat with Don Delfín when he came, when he handed over the weekly take: astonishing numbers — so precise! and otherwise just the stern yeses and nos, one or another sentence spoken as if to summarize a civility after hearing a particular command. So there wasn’t even a (diplomatic) Christmas embrace, nor one for New Year’s (so graceful). Who could explain his disdain?
Wise discretion peeling inner layers open.
What kinds of riddles and dissipations … other than the words?
Total devotion to work and nothing but.
And thus two months passed …
March brought a freshening … perhaps a clearing, suitable for carrying out a mission.
Suddenly Demetrio played with a happy idea: to go see Renata in the middle of the week, even though it would take him a couple of days. He left in the early dawn, right around three …
He ventured, he got lost. Since the manager didn’t know by heart the long detour that connected La Mena with the wide dirt road that in turn connected Monclova to Sabinas, he came to a graded crossing of four roads, and the mistake: he took the last one he should have taken, ending up in a hamlet called Hermanas: far far away: on the outskirts of the enormous municipality of Ocampo. So he turned around: angry: blast it! He was even angrier when he realized that, without meaning to, he’d taken yet another road that had brought him to another hamlet, called El Pino Solo: a rustic slime heap, almost spectral, because very strange people lived there, people who wanted (almost) to kill just for the sake of it. However, his vexation did not arise from his fear of being imminently and definitively killed, but rather because the pickup had by then burned more than half a tank and who knew if the gasoline would last until he arrived safe and sound in La Mena, moreover — which way? which was the shortest route? In fact, night came upon him like something grotesque. It was cold as hell in that desert without a glimpse of butte or hill. Hunger gnawed as well. It seemed like his guts were beginning to stick to his backbone: a bellowing belly, and — who the hell was going to give him something to eat? If he didn’t happen by a ranch on his way back, he had better get used to the notion of ingesting plants: creosote and lantana didn’t taste so bad and they were, in fact, quite nutritious. After sleeping, terrified, in the aforementioned cab, he continued the following day like a lost and rollicking fool full of faith. Yes, faith, for he prayed in his very own way. He never tired of repeating, more than a hundred times: God help me! a phrase that became more and more syllabified and, deliberately, more prolonged and melodious; just once he added to his entreaty the following sentence: You know I’m a good man! and at a different point, blarney of this sort: If you help me get to La Mena soon, or to El Origen or La Igualdad, I promise I’ll bring flowers to the church in Sabinas as soon as I can. Flowers? what a magnificent gift. Perhaps God, upon hearing that such a great big being was going to give him such a colorful offering, had no choice but to take pity on him and thereby help him find his way. He reached El Origen in no time. His adventure was but a deceptive detour. The tank still had gasoline — oh!: a miracle in this region, so far removed from the progressing world. Even he, who had desperately swallowed a few handfuls of (inevitably encountered) lantana berries arrived quite restored at … He was never thirsty, hard as it is to believe! Although, a while later he did feel the aftereffects of what he had experienced, SO TREACHEROUS, hopefully never again to be so lost.