UREÑITA
“What rank did you reach young man?”
“I don’t seem to remember.”
“Don’t be asinine. Second? Third?”
“Whatever you say, Señor Ureña.”
“Oh yes, Bernabé, I’ll be having plenty to say. That’s why I’m here. We get knuckleheads like you by the ton here. Well, never mind. That’s our raw material. We’ll see what we can do to refine it, to make an exportable product.”
“Whatever you say, Señor Ureña.”
“Presentable, I mean. Dialectics. Our friends think we have no history and no ideas because they see dolts like you and they laugh at us. So much the better. Let them believe what they will. That way we will occupy all the history they vacate. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“No, maestro.”
“They’ve filled our country’s history with lies in order to weaken it, in order to make it putty, then they tear off a little piece and then another and at first no one notices. But one day you wake up and you no longer have the great, free, unified nation you dreamed of, Bernabé.”
“I dreamed of?”
“Yes, even you, though you don’t know it. Why do you think you’re here with me?”
“El Güero told me to come. I don’t know anything.”
“Well, I’m going to make you understand, you simpleton. You are here to assist at the birth of a new world. And a new world can only be born of tumultuous, hate-filled beginnings. Do you understand? Violence is the midwife of history.”
“If you say so, Señor Ureñita.”
“Don’t use the diminutive. Diminutives diminish. Who told you to call me Ureñita?”
“No one, I swear.”
“Poor muddlehead. If I wanted I could analyze you blindfolded. This is what they send us. We owe that to John Dewey and Moisés Sáenz. Tell me, Bernabé, do you have a fear of getting buried in poverty?”
“I’m already there, Señor Ureña.”
“You are mistaken. There are worse things. Imagine your poor old mother scrubbing floors, still worse, imagine her streetwalking.”
“You imagine yours, prof.”
“You do not offend me. I know who I am and what my worth is. And I know who you are, shitty lumpen. Do you think I don’t know your kind? When I was a student I went to the factories, to try to organize the workers, to awaken their radical consciousness. Do you think they paid me any heed?”
“All the way, maestro.”
“They turned their backs on me. They refused to hear my message. They didn’t want to face reality. And there you have it. Reality punished them, it avenged itself on them, on all of you, poor devils. You haven’t wanted to face reality, that’s the problem, you’ve tried to punish reality with dreams and you’ve failed as a revolutionary class. And yet here I am trying to form you, Bernabé. I warn you; I don’t give up easily. Well, I’ve said what I had to say. They’ve vilified me.”
“They?”
“Our enemies. But I want to be your friend. Tell me everything about yourself. Where do you come from?”
“Oh, around.”
“Do you have a family?”
“That depends.”
“Don’t be so reticent. I want to help you.”
“Right, prof.”
“Do you have a sweetheart?”
“Could be.”
“What are your ambitions, Bernabé? Trust me. I trust you, don’t I?”
“That depends.”
“It may be that the atmosphere here in the camp is too cold. Would you prefer to continue this conversation elsewhere?”
“It’s all the same to me.”
“We could go to a movie together, would you like that?”
“Maybe.”
“Remember one thing. I can help you humiliate those who humiliate you.”
“I like that fine.”
“I have books in my home. No, not just books on theory, I have less arid books, all kinds of books for young men.”
“Swell.”
“Are you coming then, you doll?”
“Let’s shake on it, Señor Ureñita.”
LICENCIADO MARIANO
They took him to meet him after he bit Ureña’s hand, they said the Chief fell out of his chair laughing and wanted to meet Bernabé. He received him in a leather-and-oak office with matched sets of red leather-bound books and statues and paintings of erupting volcanoes. He told him to call him Licenciado, the Honorable Mariano Carreón, it sounded a little pretentious to call him Chief the way they did in the camp, didn’t he agree? Yes, Chief, Bernabé said, and thought to himself that the Licenciado looked exactly like the janitor at his school, a janitor who wore spectacles, and had a head like an olive with carefully combed hair and lenses thick as bottle glass and a mousy little mustache. He told him he liked how he’d reacted to that obnoxious Ureña, he was an old pinko who was working for them now because the other leaders in the movement said a varnishing of theory was important. He hadn’t thought so and now he was going to see. He summoned Ureña and the theorist entered with bowed head, his hand bandaged where Bernabé had sunk his teeth. The Chief ordered him to take a book from the shelf, any book at all, the one he liked most, and to read it aloud. Yes, sir, at your pleasure, sir, said Ureña, and read with a trembling voice I could not love within each man a tree/with its remaindered autumns on its back, do you understand any of that, Bernabé? No, said Bernabé, keep reading, Ureñita, as you wish, sir, till in the last of hovels, lacking all light and fire,/bread, stone and silence, I paced at last alone,/dying of my own death, keep going, Ureñita, don’t swoon, I want the boy to understand what the fuck this culture thing is all about, Stone within stone, and man, where was he?/Air within air, and man, where was he?/ Time within time … Ureña coughed, oh, I’m so sorry, Were you also the shattered fragment/ of indecision…? That’s enough Ureñita, did you understand anything, boy? Bernabé shook his head. The Chief ordered Ureña to place the book in a huge blown-glass ashtray from Tlaquepaque as thick as his spectacles, put it right there and set fire to it, right now, double time, Licenciado Carreón said with a dry severe laugh, and while the pages blazed he said I didn’t have to read any of that stuff to get where I am, who needs it, it would have got in my way, Ureñita, so why would this kid need it? He said the boy had been right to bite him, and if you ask me why I have this library, I’ll tell you that it’s to remember every minute that there are many books still to be burned. Look here, son, he said to Bernabé staring at him with all the intensity he was capable of behind his eight layers of congealed glass, any dumb shit can put a bullet through the most intelligent head in the world, don’t forget that. He told him he was all right, that he liked him, that he reminded him of himself when he was young, that he perked up his spirits and oh, how he wished, he said as he invited him to accompany him in a Galaxy black as a hearse with all the windows darkened so you could look out without being seen, someone years ago had taken an interest in him, someone like himself, they stole the election from General Almazán, synarchism would have taken care of people like them, as they were doing now, don’t you worry, if you had had us your life and your parents’ lives would have been different. Better. But you have us now, Bernabé my friend. He told the chauffeur to come back about five and told Bernabé to come eat with him, they went into one of the restaurants in the Zona Rosa that a furious Bernabé had seen only from the outside one Sunday, all the majordomos and waiters bowed to them like acolytes during Mass, Señor Licenciado, your private table is ready, this way, what can we do for you, señor, anything at all, I’m putting the Señor Licenciado in your hands, Jesús Florencio. Bernabé realized that the Chief liked talking about his life, how he’d come from the very asshole of the city and with persistence and without books but with an idea of the greatness of the nation, yes that, had got where he was. They ate seafood au gratin and drank beer until El Güero came in with a message and the Chief listened and said bring that sonofabitch here and told Bernabé to keep calm and go on eating. A very cool Chief went on recounting anecdotes and when El Güero returned with a well-dressed paper-skinned man, the Chief simply said good afternoon, Señor Secretary, El Güerito is going to tell you what you need to know. The Chief went on circumspectly eating his lobster thermidor as El Güero seized the Secretary by his tie and mouthed a string of curses, he’d better learn how to treat Licenciado Carreón, he shouldn’t get independent and go see the president on his own, everything went through Licenciado Carreón first, didn’t the Secretary owe him his job, see? The Chief simply ignored El Güero and the Secretary, he looked instead at Bernabé, and in his eyes at that moment Bernabé read what he was supposed to read, what the Chief intended him to read, you can be like me, you can treat the big shots this way and have no fear, Bernabé. The Chief ordered the remains of the lobster removed and the waiter Jesús Florencio bowed with alacrity when he saw the Secretary but when he saw Licenciado Carreón’s face he decided not to speak to the Secretary but instead busied himself with removing the dishes. As they couldn’t look at anyone else, Bernabé and Jesús Florencio exchanged glances. Bernabé liked the waiter. He felt as if this was someone he could talk to because they shared a secret. Though he had to ass-kiss the same as anyone, he earned his living and his life was his own. He found out all this because they decided to meet, Jesús Florencio took a liking to Bernabé and warned him, watch out, if you want to come to work as a waiter I’ll help you, politics has its ups and downs and the Secretary’s not going to forget that you saw him humiliated by the Licenciado and the Licenciado’s not going to forget that you saw him humiliate someone the day they humiliate him.