Miguel Aparecido looked down, away from me, as I looked away from him during this discourse.
Miguel continued: “Her voracity went mad on this subject: acquiring properties, adding land, as if the secular tradition of basing one’s fortune on owning land depended on this alone, as if she had already foreseen the moment when the great fortunes no longer depended on owning land but also on factories and now communications: This was,” Miguel said in summary, “Max Monroy’s conclusion. Not to be like his mother. To change the orientation of his wealth. Abandon the countryside and industry. Dedicate himself to communications. Build an empire of the future, far from the land and the factory, an almost impalpable universe barring his mother’s way, a world of cellphones and the Internet that offered, instead of mudholes and smoke, videos, webs, music, games, and above all information along with the right to two hundred free messages and half an hour unlimited calling to each owner of a Monroy mobile.”
And Sibila?
Imagine night falling on a face. Night fell on the face of Miguel Aparecido. He tried to rescue his account interrupted by all kinds of emotions, stammering and therefore unusual in him, even alien to the man I knew.
Sibila Sarmiento, a mother at fourteen. Deprived of her child at fifteen. Condemned to wander like a ghost, without understanding what had happened, through an abandoned ranch house stripped of furniture, in the care of absent servants who did not say a word to her. Did her husband, Max Monroy, understand what had happened? Or did he too absent himself from a situation that was nothing but the coarse, powerful whim of his mother, the monstrous old matriarch enamored of her own desire, her ability to show her own power at every opportunity so she would compare favorably to her husband the general, an irresolute womanizer, to believe she was ahead of events and mistress of the crystal ball, that reality did as she ordered because she did not endure reality, she created it, her caprice was law, the most capricious caprice, the most gratuitous cruelty, the least trustworthy desire, the most irrational reason: Now I’ll take over the Sarmiento lands, now I’ll marry my forty-year-old bachelor son to a twelve-year-old girl, now I’ll declare the kid crazy and have her locked up at the Fray Bernardino because the poor idiot doesn’t distinguish between the solitude of a ranch house and the helplessness of a lunatic asylum, rot there, imbecile, die there without realizing it, let’s see who can do anything against the desire, the power, the caprice of a woman who has overcome every obstacle with the strength of her will, a female who rids herself of any unnecessary obligation; the child’s mother to the funny farm; the child to the street, let him manage on his own, without help, let him become a little man without anybody’s protection, let’s see how he does, damn brat, if he has the right stuff he’ll get ahead, if not, well then he can go to helclass="underline" all for you, Max, all so you can grow up and assert yourself without ballast, without family obligations, without children to take care of, without a wife to annoy you, nag at you, weigh you down, you’ll be free, my son, you’ll owe supreme thanks to the will of your magnificent mother Antigua Concepción, not Concha, not Conchita, no, but the mother of will, of whim, of caprice, of creation itself, of determination… The mistress of destiny. The overseer of chance.
“I made myself in the street, Josué. I grew up however I could. Perhaps I’m even grateful for being abandoned. I’m grateful for it but don’t forgive it. I’ll defend myself with my teeth.”
I RETURNED WITH Father Filopáter to the Santo Domingo arcades. I wondered what brought me back. I guessed at some reasons: My interest in him and his ideas. The mystery surrounding his exclusion from teaching and from his religious order. Above all (because Filopáter was something like the final recollection of my youth), the memory of the moment when I learned to read, to think, to discuss my ideas, to feel, if not superior to then independent of the afflictions of childhood: subjection to a domineering housekeeper and especially ignorance of my origins. María Egipciaca was not my mother. My bones knew it. My head knew it when my confidence was withdrawn from the tyrannical housekeeper on Calle de Berlín. This did not resolve, of course, the enigma of my origins. But that mystery allowed me to uproot my life on the basis of an initiative determined by me, by my freedom.
Jericó was the symbol of my independence, of my promise of personal independence. But in the fraternal equation of Castor and Pollux, Father Filopáter, Trinitarian, intervened. He precipitated our intellectual curiosity, offered a port and a haven in what might have been aimless sailing regardless of the solidarity between the young navigators. If I had rediscovered Filopáter now, the event acquired an explanation: Jericó’s distance returned me to the priest’s proximity. Because if my friend and I had a “father” in common, it was this teacher at the Jalisco School, the priest who revealed to us the syntax of dialectic, the ludic element (in order not to be ridiculous) of ideological and even theoretical positions. To pit the philosophy of Saint Thomas against the thought of Nietzsche was an exercise, for Jericó and I were not Thomists or nihilists. The interesting thing is that Filopáter would find in Spinoza the equilibrium between dogma and rebellion, asking us, in a straightforward way, to be sure the ideology of knowledge did not precede knowledge itself, making it impossible.
“The truth is made manifest without manifestos, like light when it displaces dark. Light does not announce itself ideologically. Neither does thought. Only darkness keeps us from seeing.”
Had Filopáter’s position regarding dogma been what eventually excluded him from the religious community? Did the priest distance himself too much from the principles of faith in order to establish himself in the proofs of faith? These were the questions I asked myself when the chaotic or fatal events I have recorded here combined and broke the ties that until then had bound me to friendship (Jericó), sexual desire (Asunta), ambition (Max Monroy), and unspoiled charity (Miguel Aparecido).
What did I have left? The chance encounter with Filopáter appeared to me like a salvation, if by salvation you understand not a favorable judgment in the tribunal of eternity but the full realization of our human potential. To be what we are because we are what we were and what we will be. The question of transcendence beyond death is left hanging during the age of salvation on earth. Does the second determine the first? Does what happens to us after death depend on what we accomplish in life? Or ultimately, independent of our actions, is a final redemption valid when it is stimulated by confession, repentance, final awareness of the truth that pursued us from the beginning and which we believe only when we die?
Filopáter’s reply (and perhaps the reason for his exclusion) was that each human being was granted individual value independent of belonging to a group, party, church, or social class. The individual inalienable being could, in fact, affiliate with a group, party, class, or church as long as this radical personal value was not lost. Was this what the religious order could not forgive in Filopáter: the stubborn affirmation of his person without discrediting his membership in the clergy, his refusal to hand his personality over to the herd, disappearing gratefully into the crowd of the city, the monastery, the party? He had been faithful to what he taught us. He was the favorite son of Baruch (Benoît, Benedetto, Benito, Bendito) Spinoza, excommunicated from Hebrew orthodoxy, irreducible to Christian orthodoxy, a heretic to both, convinced that faith is consumed in obedience and expands in justice.