The Revolutionaries Try Again (10 page)

feigned a willingness to fight but never did, goddamn cowards, and although neither Antonio nor the Fat Albino wanted to look like cowards they were both on probation, whatever, probation or no probation, as everyone crowded around them yelling grab that caraeverga by the neck, Yucca, kick that fat ass in the balls, Don Buca, they had no choice but to end their freshman sideshow and fight, not that they didn't hate each other to begin with, during their sophomore year they'd both made the soccer team and because they lived close to one another, and because Antonio's mother didn't have a car and soccer practice started at six in the morning, their coach had suggested that the Fat Albino give Antonio a ride, to which the Fat Albino had agreed to earnestly, putting on a show of being so happy to help the team, coach, driving Antonio grudgingly three times a week until the morning when the Fat Albino asked his chauffeur to race up on Bálsamos Street to pick up Antonio in reverse (why did that backwards driving feel like such a putdown?), and as everyone crowded around them Antonio lunged at the Fat Albino and the Fat Albino swung at Antonio and Antonio stumbled and Father Ignacio broke up the fight, and although both of them were on probation only Antonio's mother received a call from Father Ignacio informing her that he needed to talk to her in person because this time he was really going to expel Antonio, and that night his mother said I've had it with you, Antonio José, I'm not finding you another school, after all the sacrifices I've made to keep you there, now you'll end up graduating from some antro in El Guasmo, looking defeated by what she heard herself saying because she knew that Antonio loved San Javier, knew that when their green cards had gone through during his sophomore year she'd asked him if he would rather stay and wait to graduate with his friends before moving to the United States and he'd say yes, Mom, please, Mom, and what he said to her that night after Father Ignacio called her was I think this time Father Ignacio is serious about expelling me, Mom, help me please, tell him it had something to do with my father, tell him my father came back and we had an altercation, anything, please, tell him anything, Mom, and the next day in Father Ignacio's office his mother did lie to him so Antonio
could stay in school and graduate with honors but without medals and then leave her, and when his mother visited him in San Francisco she told him that after he left Manuel started bringing her soup, that Manuel learned to cook so she would have more time to rest, that Manuel had volunteered himself when she needed someone on whom to practice the nonordinary states of consciousness therapies she was learning, and what Antonio didn't tell her then or later is that one Sunday in the weeks or months after the caravan for El Loco appeared on Bálsamos Street he'd ventured to the patio outside to check on Manuel, knowing that on Sundays all domestics in the neighborhood had the day off, sneaking inside the cement box that had been built into the patio for live in domestics and that seemed to have been forgotten long ago because the bottom part of the door, hollowed by mold or rain or moths or mice, no longer reached the floor, because the door had a hole instead of a handle, because inside someone had stored piles of bathroom tiles and splotched cans of paint, because the mattress on the squalid bed was as thick as a straw mat, because squashed mosquitoes blotted the walls, because the whole place wasn't bigger than a tool shed, and as Antonio tries to sleep and free himself of the caffeine he ingested on the plane from San Francisco to Guayaquil he cannot remember if the miserable conditions in which Manuel lived moved him, no, they didn't, he was too focused on his salacious pursuit, although even if he hadn't been so focused on finding pornographic magazines he probably would have found a way to overlook the implications of this sight, searching through Manuel's things without disrupting them, as if demonstrating to whoever could be watching that he had good manners, and what doesn't amaze Antonio is how easy it was for him to actually believe he was searching for posters or placards or any evidence that Manuel was a Bucaram subversive, searching and finding a black and white photograph of an old woman who could have been Manuel's grandmother or his mother or an aunt, searching and finding a bundle of letters written with the same meticulous calligraphy and the same florid language that did not detract from the wistfulness of the contents, all of them mailed from Calceta, a small town in
Manabí, searching and finding under the mattress a page that had been ripped from Diario Extra, a sensationalist tabloid, and yes, a picture of El Loco was on one side, but the kind of picture he'd hoped to find was on the other (a voluptuous woman in a green bikini who was nestling her forehead on a palm tree, holding it with both hands as if it were a placeholder for her lover to be, you, inviting you to admire the tan of her thighs and the flow of her hair, which Antonio did, then and later in his room), returning the ripped page from Diario Extra before Manuel came back that evening because Antonio liked to think of himself as the type of person who wouldn't have just used that scrap of picture without returning it or praying the rosary right after he was done, and although Antonio doesn't remember if a rosary prayer was part of that Sunday afternoon, or that Sunday evening a week or two later when Manuel was supposed to come back but didn't, Antonio does remember that while he was worrying about whether through the mysterious hand of god Manuel had found out that he had searched through his things and had therefore decided not to come back, his mother was worrying that with only a week or two left before the election Manuel had defected to join a group of Bucaram subversives, although on the Monday or Tuesday after Manuel didn't come back she tried to make it into a joke by saying that Manuel was probably inflating balloons for the caravans for El Loco in Esmeraldas, and yet by Wednesday or Thursday the joke was over because someone had informed her that two or three other domestics down the block hadn't come back either, and then on Saturday morning Antonio heard the bell ringing, the door opening, his mother saying where the hell have you been, Manuel, less as a question than as an accusation, as if him being anywhere but here was an outrage, her voice as hoarse as always, careful not to reveal that she might be scared, holding on to the doorknob in case she had to slam the door shut, although the brass chain was still fastened, my grandmother, Manuel was saying, she couldn't get out of bed, Manuel was saying, couldn't eat, couldn't stop sobbing, Doña Cecilia, at the bus stop on Sixth Street the domestic for Doña Elena had been waiting to tell him that his grandmother was sick, that his grandmother was
asking for him, and it was only when he was already on the bus to Calceta that he'd realized he didn't know our phone number, hadn't memorized it, and while Manuel spoke Antonio approached his mother but she did not acknowledge him, you're lying, his mother said to Manuel, relieved by the finality of her verdict, didn't they teach you not to lie in school, you never said anything about a grandmother in Calceta, which was true, of course, except that Manuel had never said anything about anything because we'd never asked, in fragments Manuel repeated himself, perhaps hoping to make his sad journey more real to her, sensing that my mother wasn't listening because his voice started to lose conviction, you can't come in, she said, you don't work here anymore, and as I stood next to her, expressing my solidarity with her decision, Manuel said talk to the señorita, niño Antonio, tell her I'm not lying, and yes, I had leafed through enough of his letters to at least confirm he had an ailing grandmother in Calceta, and yes, Manuel did look as if somewhere along his return here he had declined to exist and what remained of him stood before us, a skeletal child of fourteen or thirteen who was clearly grieving, and although it is easier for Antonio to imagine himself pushing Manuel away and slamming the front door and saying don't come back, you hear, which allows him to distance himself from the pathetic thing he actually did by deploring the violent thing he didn't do, what actually happened was that Antonio said he does have a grandmother in Calceta, Mom, he does, which made his mother wince, as if Antonio was interrupting a scene in which he didn't belong, and perhaps anticipating her reaction he had said what he had said without much conviction, less as a fact but as a distant possibility, and so Antonio didn't insist and walked away, and so his mother shut the front door and that was it for Manuel, and a few weeks later El Loco lost the elections by an alarmingly small margin, and a few months later Antonio graduated from San Javier and fled this miserable place, and in the next twelve years more of our cultivated prefects and ministers embezzled our country and fled, and more people were forced to live in the most precarious conditions, and more children of the self proclaimed Ecuadorian elite who barely managed to graduate from third
tier American universities bestowed upon the country the useless wisdom that we must not give the poor the fish but teach them how to fish, and twelve years after leaving this miserable place Antonio decided to return because Leopoldo called him and said come back and let's run for office, Drool, and a few years before he decided to return his mother told him about the night two armed men robbed her outside their apartment on Bálsamos Street, Antonio José, the thief on the driver's side was pulling Monsi up by her hair and beating her with the butt of his pistol so she would stop shrieking, and the next thing I remember is the car speeding us away from the city, and the man in the backseat next to me pointing his pistol at me, and Monsi insulting them and me trying to calm her down, she didn't want to budge so she was stuck between the two front seats, I was trying to calm her down and then one of them yelled at me to shut up already, I am trying to calm her down because I want to avoid a tragedy, I said, I was very calm, following Father Davila's advice that in times of need one should invoke one's ancestors and becalm oneself by inhaling, exhaling, in those days I was meditating at least three hours a day, Antonio José, saying to Monsi come back over here, my dear Monsi, pulling her to the backseat because the man up front was hitting her, don't let him hit you, my Monsi, come back here, hugging her so she would calm down but she kept screaming not again, I've had enough of this, and then the thief next to me asked for my handbag and I said to him this bag is old so if you want to take it, take it, but I am not going to give you my documents because they're tough to reissue, give me your wallet, he said, no, I said, I am going to give you my money, I have money that I took out of the bank this morning that's going to benefit you, because I know what interests you is the car but also the money and the others that dropped you off are not going to know you are going to have this cash, but leave us some money for the taxi for the way back because otherwise how do we get back, and please don't leave us somewhere dangerous, we're two women alone, so I gave him my money and he let me keep enough money for the ride back, I think he was more scared than I was, they were both between sixteen or seventeen, apparently they hire
these kids from the street and they make them do these robberies for a little bit of money, the newspapers recommend not fighting with them since they are likely to be nervous and can inadvertently shoot, plus we've heard they are often given drugs to bolster their courage, and the next thing I remember is the car speeding us away from the city as I held Monsi's hand and I was saying to her it's okay Monsi, they won't hurt us, right?, you won't hurt us, they just want the car, Monsi, there's no need to point that gun at us, and then, as if tired of listening to me, the thief in the driver's seat stopped the car and said take off your shoes and get out, viejas del carajo, and of course we did, exiting as fast as we could and finding ourselves in a barren field where someone must have detonated something because it was strewn with shards of glass and broken rocks, walking for at least an hour before we encountered a small house where an old man who made a living by scavenging metal scraps committed himself to driving us back to the city, Monsi's feet were permanently damaged, Antonio José, sleep now, Antonio, sleep since tomorrow you'll be meeting with Leopoldo for the first time in twelve years, and after I arrived home the memory of the robbery settled on me and I couldn't sleep in my room anymore, his mother said, I had to switch to the guest room where I felt more protected even though the panic attacks didn't ebb, and in San Francisco his mother told him that a year after El Loco lost the elections Manuel showed up at their apartment on Bálsamos Street again, pleading for a second chance, this time I won't disappear, Doña Cecilia, I promise I won't disappear, and soon after she agreed to give him a second chance Manuel started bringing her soup, learning how to cook so she would have more time to rest, volunteering himself when she needed someone on whom to practice the nonordinary states of consciousness therapies she was learning at Centro Pachamama, and what surfaced during these therapies astounded me, Antonio José, when Manuel was born his mother had to abandon him by the side of the road because his father had vowed to drown him, I don't know, Antonio José, maybe that man thought the child wasn't his, thankfully a good soul picked him up and tried to raise him, Grandma Angela, Manuel called her, poor Manuel, his
troubles didn't end there, somehow his father found them and burned Grandma Angela's house, little by little Manuel began to liberate himself from the past, Antonio José, Manuel and Grandma Angela had to escape and find refuge in a different province, little by little I began to encourage him, he was seventeen years old and hadn't even finished elementary school, Antonio José, I offered him meditation lessons, Reiki, Bach flower remedies, and one day Manuel enrolled himself in night school and bought himself a pair of dress pants and said to me I've always wanted to wear pants like these, Doña Cecilia, and before I was to leave he was almost done with trade school, Antonio José, before I was to leave Guayaquil for good he had tears in his eyes and said what am I going to do without you, Doña Cecilia, what am I going to do without you now.