The Good Conscience (7 page)

He runs out on the street and climbs the hill, sweating. The high dome of the Compañía church, lord of the landscape, is his guide. He runs so hard that his feet burn and his tendons ache. The church is empty, services have ended. Beside the central nave stands the knotted Cross of sacrifice upon which hangs the black Christ. He stops in front of it. It is not fear but love that holds him motionless, the same inexplicable love he felt in the stable remembering the morning. Christ's earth-colored face looks down, furrowed with blood. The metal eyes shine beneath the brows of painted torment. The wounded body does not move, though the arms are alive crying pain and welcome. The brief skirt, bordered with jewels, hangs stiff over the belly and down to the knees, and below it descend the lacerated rivers of the legs to their meeting in the single nail that pierces the feet. Jaime is sure that the body of the Savior will not go away, will not escape him as the world did. He kneels. Slowly he opens his pants again, and begins to masturbate. The church is silent, there is only the whispering of candles that flicker on both sides of the image. A strange tingling that he has never known before rises from his hot loins. He grips the crucified feet.

Silence overcomes silence. Something—the wax drippings of the candles—measures time again. The ecstasy of his orgasm passes and he lifts his eyes to the figure and does not know whether his body is Christ's, or Christ's is his. He turns and looks around the church. Then he stands and draws near the image and raises the stiff skirt. The reproduction of nature ends at the knees: the rest is a plain wooden cross which supports the wounded torso and the open arms.

*   *   *

“Not one word, kid, or I'll break your back…”

He had returned from the empty church along empty streets. It was afternoon. Everyone was sleeping, the meal ending Lent had been abundant, Guanajuato's belly was heavy, even the domes of the churches seemed drowsy. He had walked home slowly. Where were the street vendors, the
charro,
the young girls? After his experience in front of the image of Christ, he would have liked to see them again: maybe—he thought—they would notice him now. The girls would look at him. The
charro
would ask him to help take the pintos to their stable. The Indian woman would offer him a slice of
jicama.
For now he was different. “I must be different. My face must be changed. They won't see me the same. At dinner tonight I'll watch how they stare at me. Am I a man now? But all the boys at school have done it and they look the same as before. Maybe no one will notice anything.” He observed, a little fearfully, his reflection in windows. “Everyone is sleeping. Sunday siesta. I must be the only person in the city who is awake.” The colonial town in its solitude was like a great gold coin.

He did not want to go upstairs. “I don't want a siesta. It's that I don't want to see them, that's all. I'll go and see what I can find in the trunk.” He pushed open the squeaky stable door and then a hand closed over his mouth and a knee was in his back.

“Not one word, kid…”

There was a stench of sweat that did not smell of filth nor of labor; it was a different kind of sweat. It wiped away the odors of the morning: flowers, fruit, candles, horses, leather, washed hair. The hand held his lips still and the knee pushed him toward the back of the room, between the trunks and the dress dummies, behind the old carriage.

Then the hand released him and at the same time pressed the point of an iron bar against his chest. “Just take it easy.” Jaime was too confused to see clearly. He was aware of someone powerful and shadowy and threatening, and he thought of a thief, an escaped criminal. Then his eyes focused and he saw the man. Tall, strong, black hair falling over his forehead, eyes that were not those of a thief or a criminal.

They stared at each other.

Jaime panted and wiped his nose on his arm. The man was motionless except for his eyes, which moved from side to side not with fear but with dominating confidence. There was a pimple on his lip. His shoes, crude laborer's brogans, were scarred and dusty. His blue shirt was dry but bore the stains of sweat. The cuffs of his pants were rolled up. If his chest and shoulders were powerful, his legs were as thin as wires.

“Listen to me now. I'm hungry and very thirsty. You are going to go inside and bring me food and water. Do you understand? You aren't going to tell anyone that I'm here. Stop looking so scared. Go on, now, and remember what happens to squealers. Hurry.”

Now serene, now threatening, his voice seemed to come near and then drift far away.

“Go on, do what I tell you.”

Jaime was immobile in the corner.

“Look, kid, I'm about to fall over from lack of sleep and hunger.”

Jaime stepped forward and touched the man's hand and ran out.

A few minutes later he returned carrying a laden napkin, and the stranger smiled. He took the napkin and spread it open on the trunk. Slices of ham and cheese, chicken wings, a cube of quince candy.

“Here is the pitcher,
Señor.
”

“Call me Ezequiel.”

“All right,
Señor
Ezequiel.”

The man put down a chicken wing and laughed: “Just plain Ezequiel. How old are you?”

“Thirteen. Going on fourteen.”

“Do you work?”

“No. I belong to the family. I go to school.”

They seated themselves on the trunk of memories in which reposed
Doña
Guillermina's veils and magazines of the last century. Ezequiel chewed furiously, smearing the droopy mustache with grease. Again and again he pounded Jaime's knee; he could not hold in his happiness, as robust as his thick chest and the dark eyes that moved continually from the boy to the door to the skylight.
You learn something in this god-damn fight and that's how to tell who is for you and who isn't. Who is this kid? Just a little sissy, I thought when I saw him. A servant in this rich home, when he went for the food. He has helped me. No, I don't know. A lonely kid, that's all.

“What's your name?”

“Jaime.”

“Good. Take some of this candy, Jaime. Go on, don't be bashful. Do I have to twist your arm?”

“Thank you,
Señor
Ezequiel.”

“None of that
señor
business, I told you.”

“Ezequiel.”

“Well, what did you think when I grabbed you? You thought I was a crook, didn't you?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have many friends?”

“No.”

“I was sure of that! Here, take some water. You don't know what it's like to taste fresh water after three days walking across the desert and hiding in freight cars. Did you ever hear anyone talk about Ezequiel Zuno?”

“No. But that's you.”

“Sure, it's me.”
Maybe he won't understand me. I better keep my mouth shut. But I haven't spoken to a living soul for days. Sometimes I even had hallucinations. There's nothing worse than the high desert, you're too close to the sun. And you get mad because you know it isn't a real desert but just land that won't hold water any more because it has been misused. When I dropped off the freight, the land was still like bone.
“You don't have any idea how good I felt when I slipped into Guanajuato last night and came to the lake.”

“What?”

“Nothing, nothing. I'm worn out. I'm so tired I don't know what I'm saying. I'm going to lie down. Will anyone come in here?”

“No. But if you want, I'll stay.”

“They won't look for you?”

“My uncle …
Señor
Balcárcel … is in Mexico City. They won't look for me until dinner time.”

“Good. Afterward, I'll tell you a story. But now…”
There's no reason to tell him anything. He doesn't have to know what it is when they beat you … he doesn't have to know what names they call you, or what it's like to have to hang on and take it, afraid that at any moment you'll give in to them … he doesn't have to know how you get to feeling that to give in would be so easy, while to hang on and spit back at them is hard.

He fell asleep, his legs spread, his head against the trunk. He dreamed of men in long files. It was his recurring dream, but he never remembered it. When he woke, the boy was still there, sitting on the floor staring at a butterfly case with a shattered cover.

Like a faithful pup. My little sentry.

“Are you rested now, Ezequiel?”

“Yes,
mano.
Thanks for staying.”

Decaying light from the skylight fell on his oily eyelids.

“What time is it, Jaime?”

“About six.”

“Let me have that pitcher again. Ah!”

He rubbed his eyes and stretched.

“Couldn't you sleep on the freight train?”

“Cat-naps. Not real sleep, what with the heat and the stink of cattle.”

“Why, Ezequiel?”

“Why what? Why am I running and hiding? Probably because I'm a fool. Sure, why does a man do anything? You could let things ride so easily. You have your wife and kids … God knows how they're getting along now! Sure, sure. But you aren't alone. That's the problem, no one is alone. And when they haul you in front of the
cacique
and you beg him to let the men in the mine organize, and you even manage to get them all together outside the rathole shaft and put on a demonstration … well, then you know it isn't just yourself but all the others too. You say to hell with your family and your little job in the open air on top of the ground, and you gamble everything. That's what happened.”

The light disappeared from the skylight, but the copper rivets in Zuno's belt still shone. Jaime felt that that guttural voice came from the stomach, that Ezequiel pressed a copper button and made the voice speak.

“But why am I telling you? The silicosis and the men who are killed and the others who are so sick by the time they're thirty that all they can do is crawl through abandoned veins scraping together a few kilos of rock that they have to sell at any price they can get. Then, when you finally organize them all and take them out one night, carrying lanterns, to march in front of the administration building, something that had never happened before because we were supposed to be so stupid and yellow … But I talked with them, to each man alone and to all of them together, telling them to unite so we could get what was ours. The gringos didn't even come outside. They just sicked the
cacique
on me. I was locked up in jail and they beat the hell out of me trying to make me order the boys back to work. But I knew that trick. Once I called the strike off, they'd have shot me. That's why I escaped, kid. So I can go back still alive and kicking at them. So I can find other men like me, and working all together…”

“Jaime!”

Doña
Asunción's voice floated down the stone stairs. The boy, seated at Ezequiel's feet, jumped but did not get up.

“What are you going to do, Ezequiel?”

“I have to get to Guadalajara. I've friends there. You run along now. In the morning, bring me some breakfast.”

“When will you leave?”

“Tomorrow night. I'll rest here one day, and then push on.”

“Let me help you,” said the boy, taking the miner's hands.

“You've helped me already.”

“Jaime! Jaime!”

“Now run on before they suspect something.”

“I'll see you in the morning before I go to school.”

“Sure. Thank's for everything. Run now.”

Ezequiel Zuno stretched his legs again. He crossed his arms behind his head and breathed the stables' accumulated decay.
That's my kid. And just a few hours ago he thought he was alone in the world too.

Jaime climbed the lordly stairs with a new step. The things of the world would not escape him again, they were fixed now. He saw Christ very close, hanging upon nails. Ezequiel Zuno still closer, and not mute like the crucified figure. The Easter candle which was lit in order to be consumed. His own adolescent body, half-boy, half-man, the body he had discovered today, which joined them all, Christ, Ezequiel, and the candle. As he went up the stairs he touched his face, his shoulders, and his thighs. On the landing, the varnished colors of the Crucifixion opened like a fan. And above, at the head of the stairs, waited the impatient dark-clad woman.

“Look at your face! What have you been doing, rolling in the dust? May Jesus save me! Your uncle is coming. Go change your clothes. Hurry.”

*   *   *

There is something uneasy about this boy, Licenciado Jorge Balcárcel reflected as he finished breakfast and wiped his lips with his napkin. He is trying to fool us. He may fool the others, but not me.

Jaime had not been listening to the conversation and when Balcárcel addressed him, he flushed.

“You are decidedly absent-minded. Don't you have to go to school today? Holidays seem merely to weaken your will. Come, come, boy!”

His face has changed, the uncle thought on. He is beginning to be a man. A pimple on his forehead. An adolescent now, who will be like all the others, undisciplined, insolent to his elders, obsessed with women. Well, I'll handle him! He'll want to smoke, drink, go to whore houses. Naturally he will be rebellious. Pimples. Shaving. Then disobedience, but we'll see about that.

“Quick! I'm not joking.”

Drowsily Jaime rose and pushed his chair back and excused himself. He finished his glass of
café con leche
standing in front of his uncle's frown. He picked up his school knapsack and walked toward the kitchen.

“Here there! What business do you have in the kitchen?”

“A glass of water.”

“Isn't there water on the table?”

He believes that he has me fooled. That knapsack is stuffed with something. He is taking food to the parish beggars. When did this generosity begin?