Authors: Laura Esquivel
Swift as Desire (20 page)
Lucha kept her promise and stayed with Lolita, holding her hand and wiping her tears, until she could finally take her home and put her to bed. They had to break the news to Lolita’s mother: her daughter had been the victim of a terrible attack and that was why she had arrived home so late and in this condition.
Lucha was dead tired when she got home. Seeing Lolita in such a sad state had been a very jarring experience. She never imagined that something even more terrible was waiting for her. Ramiro’s death represented the end of all that she held dear in life: her family and her love for Júbilo.
That night, don Pedro had not only robbed her friend of her virginity but at the same time profaned her
own home. He had destroyed Lucha’s image of Júbilo and Júbilo’s image of her. How could Júbilo have doubted her?! Lucha had thought that if anyone in the world knew her best, it was Júbilo. If she had ever put all her faith, her trust, her dreams, her intimate desires in someone, it was him. And suddenly she realized that the seventeen years they had known each other meant nothing. With a single question, Júbilo had ended it all. How could he have called her a whore? Didn’t he know her? What good had it done to give him not only her body but her very soul? It seemed unbelievable that the person she trusted most, and who supposedly loved her more than anyone else, was the same person who had now destroyed her whole world, a world she had never dreamed could deteriorate or be devalued. It was unbearable to find out that the one man she thought was different from all the rest turned out to be just like them. Lucha decided she would never again allow him, or any other man, to hurt her. She wanted to have nothing more to do with men.
The day after Ramiro’s funeral she asked Júbilo for a divorce. Because of the emotional state they found themselves in, Júbilo asked that she wait a few days for a decision, but Lucha didn’t want to listen to him or to accept any of his arguments. Her heart had been destroyed; she had buried it beside Ramiro. She felt as if she had been murdered. Just like don Pedro.
That same day, a headline had appeared on the front page of the newspaper:
MURDERED WITH THE SAME WEAPON THAT KILLED HIS FORMER LOVER
. It was an account
of don Pedro’s death at the hands of an unknown woman. The story read:
His was a life of cockfights and women. The director of the Telegraph Office was found dead this morning outside a hotel in the Plaza de Garibaldi, in the company of one of his regular girlfriends. He was killed by a .44 caliber bullet from the same gun with which he had killed another young mistress years ago. After that incident, due to his money and influence, he escaped prosecution. Pedro Ramírez emerged from obscurity during the Cristero Rebellion amid rumors of arms dealing to go on to enjoy an enviable political career. Ramírez held several administrative posts in the national government, among which the most important was as federal representative for the state of Puebla. According to initial investigations, Pedro Ramírez left his office on Friday evening and joined several friends at El Colorín, an infamous nightspot located in the Plaza de Garibaldi. At his hip was the .44 revolver, the same weapon responsible for his death later that night. Waiters at the club stated that Ramírez was a regular customer who often frequented the place in the company of a variety of women. Official reports indicate that later that night, Pedro Ramírez left the nightclub and walked toward a nearby hotel in the company of two young women with whom he apparently intended to spend the night. A short distance from the nightclub, the group was met by a third woman, who argued loudly with Ramírez and, during the ensuing scuffle, Ramírez’s weapon discharged and he was killed. The mystery woman fled the crime scene, and no physical description of her is available.
Apparently she had never been seen in the area before, and the only information police were able to gather was that she was well dressed, which leaves many questions still to be resolved in this homicide investigation.
W
HEN A CHILD DIES
so many questions remain unanswered, particularly when the parents are burdened with feelings of guilt. What would have happened if I hadn’t fallen asleep? Could I have saved the baby if I had been at home? Would my son still be alive if I hadn’t been drinking? Does God punish? What have I done to deserve this punishment? Am I really capable of protecting and caring for my family? How can this kind of neglect ever be forgiven? How can I ever overcome this sense of betrayal? They each had their own doubts about themselves, but it was clear that neither Lucha nor Júbilo was able to trust their partner again. The tragedy put an end to that. They could no longer even look each other in the eye. The pain of their son’s death was unbearable, and each with their mere presence reminded the other of it.
Some people believe one should forgive as easily as one loves, but others refuse to accept this because they just can’t forget. Júbilo couldn’t forget that he had been in charge of the child when he died, nor that a well-dressed woman had killed don Pedro in a jealous rage on that very same night. Lucha couldn’t forget that Ramiro had died because of Júbilo’s neglect, much less that that
neglect had been caused by his drinking. To forgive it is necessary to accept what cannot be changed, and neither of them was able to do that, because their own guilt prevented it. Lucha felt that if she hadn’t been so demanding, Júbilo would never have felt so useless and wouldn’t have started drinking. Ramiro had died because Júbilo had fallen asleep, but if she had been at home she would have heard him. Júbilo thought that if he had been capable of earning enough money, Lucha would never have felt the need to go out to work. She would never have had to deal with don Pedro and fall into his clutches, as he suspected. Only the passing of years could heal their souls, and then they still had to clear up any lingering doubts. It would take them both fifty-two years, an Aztec solar cycle, to talk about what happened that night and to finally put their minds at rest.
But at the time, neither of them could see clearly; they were both busy trying to forgive the unforgivable, to find a little relief, to free themselves of guilt, to somehow continue living with the terrible memory of what had happened. So the news of Lucha’s new pregnancy took them by complete surprise and raised new questions. They were in the middle of divorce proceedings. Júbilo felt this was not the right time to have another child, but Lucha felt just the opposite. To her, the unborn child represented a connection between them. She saw it as a living testimony of the love they had shared, as proof that all those years had been worth the trouble, and she would fight tooth and nail to keep it. But Lucha had decided the
child would belong to her alone. She didn’t want to share it with Júbilo. She struggled to get the divorce through as quickly as possible, even though it was against the advice of her entire family. All she could think about was kissing and cuddling her unborn child, the product of the most loving night of her life, the night before Ramiro’s death. She felt with this new pregnancy life was giving her back something that it had mercilessly taken from her. That was how she wanted to see it. And looking at it more closely, she even thought she should be grateful to the gods for the help they were giving her. To begin with, they had removed don Pedro from her path so her life could be improved. After all, the wretch more than deserved to die. But what Lucha just couldn’t fathom was why they had taken Ramiro from her. That was something she would never understand, even though they seemed to be trying to console her with the arrival of a new child.
F
OR
J
ÚBILO, IT WASN’T
so easy to accept becoming a father for a third time. He was worn out, empty, he didn’t feel up to facing a new child, to saying: “I am your father. I brought you into this world and I am the one who is supposed to provide you with food and clothing, but guess what, I don’t have any money. And I’m supposed to take care of you and love you, but let me tell you, I’m no good at those things: I tend to get drunk and fall asleep while my children suffocate. I don’t think I’m good for you; I
can’t watch out for you while you sleep; I’m no good at that, I might let you die.”
At the moment, Júbilo didn’t even feel capable of taking care of himself. He was filled with self-recrimination. The fear of hurting others made him look for ways to efface himself as a human being, to avoid everybody else, to numb his conscience. It hurt to wake up. It hurt to see Raúl. It hurt to look at Lucha. It hurt to smell the flowers in the garden. It hurt to walk. It hurt to breathe. The only thing he wanted to do was die. To get rid of his physical body once and for all, because emotionally he was already dead. So he chose to hang out in the cantina, to stay there all the time. To end his pain. To end his struggle.
There, he could forget about everything and everyone. The only effort he had to make was to raise the bottle to his lips. He would spend all day drinking and at night he would lie in the cantina’s doorway begging for money for more drink, without washing, without eating. His inseparable companion during this time was Chueco López. Chueco was his teacher in his new life on the street. When the cantina was open, they used its bathroom when they needed to, but when it was closed, to relieve themselves they had to go to the Sagrada Familia church, the same church where Lucha and Júbilo had been married years before. It was sad for everyone in the neighborhood to see Júbilo in this condition, and no one hesitated to give him money when he asked for it. Besides the affection in which he was held, everybody owed him a favor, so they couldn’t refuse, even though they knew
that Júbilo would use the coins they gave him to keep on drinking. Everyone knew his child had died and they understood his despair. Some tried to talk to him, to give him advice, but Júbilo couldn’t hear them; he was lost in the alcohol. His physical and mental condition deteriorated rapidly. He suffered all kinds of calamities. He was robbed, and his jacket and shoes were stolen, but he didn’t even notice. Some days he woke up vomiting, others, soiling himself, still others, thrashing and striking the ground. His legs became swollen, his feet cracked and split open, and his heart bled day and night.
And that’s how he lived until he had completed a cycle of fifty-two days. The number fifty-two was, of course, significant to the Aztecs, because the sum of its digits yields seven. Seven times seven fits inside a year, so to them fifty-two represented a complete cycle of life.
The fifty-two days that Júbilo spent drinking represented a phase he had to go through to realize he didn’t really want to die. He came to this conclusion one day when his brother-in-law Juan came looking for him. Júbilo could no longer stand up. When he saw Juan, he clung to his hand and said, “Help me,
compadre!
” Juan took him to the hospital, where Júbilo began his recuperation.
We’re talking about a slow and painful convalescence that included learning how to live again. The first thing Júbilo had to face was the withdrawal from alcohol, then regaining movement in his legs and arms, and finally the proper functioning of his whole body. But the most difficult thing without a doubt was trying to win back his
family. When he left the hospital, Lucha was already seven months pregnant. She had gotten herself a new job at the National Lottery, in addition to her original job at the Telegraph Office. Because don Pedro was dead, she had not found it necessary to hand in her resignation after all. She was more beautiful than ever, but she didn’t want to have anything to do with Júbilo. She was pleased enough that he had recovered, she had even been the one who told her brother Juan where to find Júbilo, because she had heard it from a neighbor. She had followed his recovery with great interest from a distance, but that’s how she wanted to keep him, far away from her and her children.
Júbilo had to make an enormous effort to get back on his feet, to find work again, and to convince his wife he was going to fight to preserve his marriage any way he could. Lucha’s parents played an important role at this stage. Although they had once tried to dissuade their daughter from marrying Júbilo, they now did everything they could to convince her she should forgive him and allow him to return home, because they loved him like a son. They had had years to see what a wonderful man he was, and his mother-in-law had become his best ally. She never tired of defending him, and she didn’t stop praising him until she managed to soften Lucha’s heart and convince her daughter to meet with the man who was still her husband. They had never finalized the divorce, because the law prohibited it while Lucha was pregnant.