Swift as Desire (16 page)

Júbilo was distressed to see how his wife and all his telegraph operator friends kept quiet, putting up with all kinds of injustices just to keep their jobs. Was there really no other way of earning a living without losing one’s dignity? Couldn’t they see that without his money and his position don Pedro was a nobody? Hadn’t they seen him roll down the stairs like a fat bundle? Júbilo couldn’t understand their need to contort themselves, to crouch in fear, to resign themselves to being terrified by a corrupt and despicable man. Oh, how he missed his grandmother in moments like these! Doña Itzel had always had a clear and analytical mind and had been a tireless fighter
for social justice. If she were alive now, surely she would already be organizing a revolt in the office to put everyone in his proper place.

Júbilo asked himself what doña Itzel would say if she knew how the progress she had so feared had insinuated itself into the very heart of every home. That there was a radio and a telephone in nearly every house now. That television had just been granted a patent and that people were ready to kill to acquire one of those devices that would allow them to see images broadcast from afar. Besides having proof that her fears had been justified and that progress was not as harmless as had been initially believed, his grandmother would have realized the danger of allowing the owner of a radio station to decide what its listeners should hear and the owner of a television station what its viewers should see. That this control of communication would lend itself to a self-interested management of information and, subsequently, of public opinion. Not that Júbilo was trying to pass himself off as a saint. After all, he had spent his life modifying messages, but he had done so with the sole intent of improving relationships between people. There were many people, on the other hand, who had dedicated their time and energy to linking populations that had previously been isolated from one another, with a clear economic purpose, believing that everything had a value and could be manipulated, exploited, corrupted, commercialized.

Júbilo could easily imagine what his grandmother
would say. She would remove the cigarette from her mouth and speak frankly.

“What’s the matter with you, Júbilo? How can you let a man like that, who doesn’t care one bit about communication, stay in charge of the Telegraph Office? I die, and everything goes to hell! How can it be that we fought a revolution to give you a better Mexico and now we rot underground while these opportunists benefit from our struggles? Why do you put up with this? Don’t you have any balls? How can you let a man like don Pedro, without any morals or scruples, be near Lucha while you’re lamenting your fate on a park bench? Don’t be an asshole! Get up and do something!”

But what could he do? Force Lucha to quit? First of all, she wasn’t a child who could just be told what to do, and, second, under the current circumstances he had no means to support her. If only he had studied to be a lawyer or a doctor like his brothers-in-law instead of a telegraph operator, he wouldn’t be in this sad position. He felt like a failure. And to make matters worse, with the arrival of radio communication, the outlook for telegraph operators was rapidly growing bleaker. It wasn’t so easy to find a new job. He was dying to get Lucha out of there, but he couldn’t imagine how, or when. For the time being he had to accept that they needed Lucha’s income, which made him feel even more useless. Fortunately, he still had his night job at the Compañía Mexicana de Aviación and that helped somewhat to alleviate
his feeling of failure. Otherwise, he would be slitting his wrists.

Was there a place for him? Was a position waiting for him? Was this part of a cosmic design? In his beloved old neighborhood, everything was related in accordance with a natural, sacred order. The faithful went to church at the same time. The clock at the Museo de Geología chimed the hour punctually. The
bolillos
, those delicious little rolls, came out of the oven of La Rosa bakery at seven every morning and at one in the afternoon, rain or shine. Dr. Atl took his regular walk. Housewives poured buckets of water on the sidewalks and swept them meticulously before their children left for school. The knife sharpener parked his bicycle on the same corner at the same time. Everyone followed a preestablished routine. Júbilo wondered how far one could go in breaking that order. How much could that routine be disrupted? How much was a simple mortal like him allowed to change the rhythm of events? Was his destiny already decided? Could he change it? The only things Júbilo knew how to do were communicate with people, and love Lucha. He didn’t know how to do anything else, nor did he want to. As a child he had decided that what pleased him most in life was helping improve people’s emotional states and their personal relationships. And, all modesty aside, he thought he did it very well. He was good at communicating, and at loving Lucha. From the first day he had set eyes on her, all he had wanted was to stay at her side forever and to have her be the last person he saw before he died.
That was his desire. However, it seemed the forces of production, industry, and technology were in frank disagreement with his plans.

For the second time in his life, he felt disoriented, frustrated, and disconnected. And, coincidentally, don Pedro was somehow involved in his life again. Júbilo was so furious with him that if don Pedro were standing there in front of him, he would beat him until he wore himself out; he would kick him in the balls until they were rendered useless; he would throw boiling oil into his eyes so he could never again dare to leer at his wife or any other woman. And his hands! Those hands that had had the audacity to touch Lucha, those hands that had robbed poor peasants, that had killed innocent people, that had signed his letter of dismissal. How he would love to lacerate those hands with tiny paper cuts and then pour lime and chile juice on them, so he wouldn’t even be able to pleasure himself. Surely that pig don Pedro was masturbating at that very moment, thinking about Lucha’s breasts. Júbilo knew for certain that when don Pedro had brushed against her breasts, he had been dying to caress them, to free them from her brassiere and to touch them with his mouth. How could Júbilo not know that!

The day Lucha had taken his hand in her parents’
sala
and put it on her breast as an open invitation to caress her, he had almost died of a heart attack. The first time is always an unforgettable experience, and it was still very alive in Júbilo’s memory, but the softness and firmness of her adolescent breast was no match for their roundness
and volume now that she was pregnant. Each day he caressed her with greater pleasure. He considered himself so fortunate to have discovered love in Lucha’s arms. With her, he had learned how to kiss, to caress, to lick, to penetrate. Together they had discovered the best ways to give each other pleasure. For Júbilo, his hand was his most important sexual organ. With his hand he could give and receive pleasure on a grand scale. With his penis he was limited to caressing the inside of Lucha’s vagina, but with his hand he could caress Lucha’s entire body. Júbilo had carefully mapped out his wife’s erogenous zones. He knew exactly where and how to slide his fingers and the palm of his hand. He had cataloged her points of greatest sensitivity, among which her breasts figured predominantly. Júbilo knew which of her nipples was the more sensitive, how to caress it without causing pain, how long he could suck on it and bite it without injuring her delicate skin.

All of a sudden, he felt a blow to his head. A ball had fallen from the sky and startled him. The laughter of a few small children playing in the park interrupted his musing. Smiling, Júbilo returned the ball to them. Suddenly he felt guilty about sitting in the park at that hour instead of working, and then even more so about thinking of Lucha’s nipples in front of these innocent children. He tried to concentrate for a moment on the crossword puzzle he’d been working on, in order to look as if he were doing something, instead of gazing at his navel. Because people are usually judged by what they do and
valued by how much they earn, he didn’t want anyone to think he was a bum. Now, from any point of view, he felt like a nobody.

A dirty man tottered over and sat down on the bench next to Júbilo, forcing him to stop what he was doing. It was Chueco López. He was terribly hungover. It took him a while to recognize Júbilo, but when he did, he embraced him and cried on his shoulder. He called him his “soul brother” and invited him for a drink at the cantina. Júbilo wasn’t too excited about spending time with Chueco, but since he had nothing better to do, he accepted the invitation. It was obvious that Chueco López didn’t have any money, so it was Júbilo who ended up paying for the drinks, but he didn’t care one bit, because he discovered that the alcohol anesthetized him wonderfully. For a good while he didn’t feel any pain at all. He laughed as he hadn’t for days. He forgot all about Lucha and her nipples, don Pedro and his greedy hands, the fact that he was semi-unemployed.

Suffice it to say that Júbilo became a devoted client of the bar from that day on. After a few drinks he saw life differently. He could tell jokes, be funny, raise a laugh out of the rest of the drunks.

Júbilo’s life rapidly changed. He stopped obsessively looking for work. He felt useful in the cantina. He quickly became the confidant of several drunks and knew he had found the ideal place to spend his mornings. After taking Raúl to school, he would immediately head for the bar. There, he always found someone to play
dominoes with, to exchange jokes with, to toast women with. He started smoking more, up to three packs a day now. He would leave the cantina when he heard the clock at the Museo de Geología strike the hour, to pick up his son from school. He would take him to his grandparents’ house, and from there he would take the bus to the airport and arrive in time for his job as a radio telegraph operator. He would arrive smelling of alcohol and cigarettes, in a foul mood. When he finished his shift, he would return home and get into bed with Lucha. Hugging her body and with his hand on her pregnant belly, where he could feel the beating of his future child’s heart, everything made sense.

Little by little his routine began to vary. It began when, instead of waking up, showering, and getting ready to go to the cantina, he decided he preferred to stay in bed. Then he decided he didn’t want to shave anymore. Until the day he decided he didn’t want to go to work at the Compañía Mexicana de Aviación.

Any modern psychoanalyst would have diagnosed a severe depression, but since Lucha wasn’t one, she exploded. She couldn’t put up with any more. All this time she had been pretending that nothing was wrong, but everything was wrong! She had to go to the office every day and fend off don Pedro’s flirting firmly but kindly, so as not to anger him. She had to put up with the stench of alcohol emanating from Júbilo’s body, even though it made her nauseous just to be near him. She had to eat, even though she wasn’t hungry, because she was
carrying a child inside her. A child who hadn’t done any wrong. A child that Lucha prayed to God would be born healthy and spared from having felt don Pedro’s hand caressing it. She had to swallow all of these intimate thoughts. She had to come home tired from work to make the bed, wash the dishes, cook dinner for Raúl, and play with him for a while before he went to bed. She had to hold back the urge to chastise Júbilo for not helping her with the housework, because she knew what a difficult time he was going through. But she couldn’t put up with it any longer! If Júbilo thought it was easy for her to keep her mouth shut, he was wrong. It was unbearable to keep quiet in the face of such unfairness. The growing distance between her and her husband was unbearable. She missed making love like they used to do, but now they couldn’t even do it at all. She was about to give birth. And on top of all that, now Júbilo didn’t want to go to work. How convenient!

They argued for a long time, during which Lucha released all of her anger, which was so powerful that it was much more helpful than a session of psychoanalysis. The next day, Júbilo did go back to work, but not before going to the cantina first to drink himself to the gills. Lucha, completely exasperated, realized she could no longer count on Júbilo, that she was on her own. Fortunately, her long-awaited maternity leave finally arrived. Lucha said good-bye to her job and as soon as she did, the problems between Júbilo and her diminished considerably.

Júbilo’s anguish vanished when he could see, hear, and touch his wife. With Lucha’s presence in the house, everything went back to normal. Of course, Júbilo preferred to be with her instead of at the cantina. He had a wonderful time with his wife. They went to the market together, cooked together, took baths together, picked up Raúl together, and ate together as a family before Júbilo left for his shift at the airport. Suddenly, his dismissal from the Telegraph Office was converted into something positive. Thanks to Júbilo’s having his mornings free, Lucha and he were able to enjoy a relationship worthy of
novios.
That’s not to say they were lovers, because Lucha’s bulky stomach was in no condition for that sort of activity, but their relationship was filled with more love than ever. They felt reunited and were very happy, in spite of the fact that Júbilo had still not found a new day job.

Júbilo almost managed to forget about don Pedro. His name wasn’t mentioned in the house. Maybe that’s why Júbilo became so angry the day a telephone call brought him back into their lives. Júbilo had gone out to buy tortillas and was on his way to the kitchen with them. As he passed the bedroom, he saw Lucha sitting on the bed, talking on the telephone. She was tense. Not to appear indiscreet, Júbilo walked on, but kept an ear on the conversation, as much as his hearing allowed. Júbilo finished setting the table while Raúl washed his hands, and when Lucha appeared in the dining room, he knew it was don Pedro who had called. There had been something
in his wife’s tone of voice that told him. Feigning nonchalance, he asked:

“Who was that?”

“Don Pedro.”

“What did he want?”

“Nothing. He just wanted to know how I was, and if we had decided who was going to be the baby’s godfather.”