be a good investment.
“Mexico is a country open to talent, Santiago. Don’t forget that.”
In his first year at law school, Santiago met Lourdes. She was in nursing school and came from Puerto Escondido, a beach town on the Oaxaca coast where her parents had a modest hotel with the best
“What’s that?”
“A steam bath with fragrant herbs that cleanses you of all toxins.”
“I think that’s just what I need. When are you going to invite me?”
“Whenever you like.”
“Sounds good.”
Together they went to Puerto Escondido and they fell in love there, facing the Pacific, which meets the steep bluffs along a treacherously sandy, sweet beach, but in fact it’s an abyss where anyone can quickly lose his footing, with no support to withstand the swift currents, which caught Santiago and dragged him, more in anguish than in danger, until Lourdes dove into the water, hooked an arm around the boy’s neck, swam with her free arm, helping him to get to shore, and there, exhausted but excited, they exchanged their first kiss.
“You tell me that with your voice trembling,” said Laura.
“It’s that I’m afraid, Dona Laura.”
“Forget the don a. You make me older than I am.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Santiago’s papa is a very hard man, Laura, he won’t put up with anything he himself hasn’t ordered, he becomes like a panther, and it’s something terrifying.”
“He’s not as fierce as you think, that little cat. He roars and scares you until you roar back and put him in his place.”
“I don’t know how.”
“I do, my dear. I do. Don’t you worry.”
The creep actually went down to Puerto Escondido, Grandmother, usually he sends one of his thugs to scare people, but this time he went himself in his private plane to see Lourdes’ family and tell them not to get any big ideas, this thing with his son was nothing but a rebellious, spoiled brat’s adventure, he asked them to explain that to their daughter, that Santiago shouldn’t fool her, she should be careful, he might make her pregnant and then walk out on her, but pregnant or not he was going to walk out on her.
“Your son has never said anything like that to us,” said Lourdes’ father.
“Well, I’m saying it, and I’m the one who gives the orders.”
“I would like to hear it from your son.”
“He can’t speak for himself. He’s just a confused kid.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“Don’t be stubborn, Mr. Alfaro. Don’t be stubborn. I’m not playing around. How much do you want?”
Face to face with Santiago, Danton did not treat him as a “confused kid.” He simply presented “reality” to him. He was an only child since unfortunately his mother couldn’t have a second child, which would have killed her, Santiago was her dream, her cherished filial love, but he, Danton, as a father, had to be more severe and objective, couldn’t afford the luxury of sentimentality.
“You’re going to inherit my fortune. It’s wonderful you’re studying law, though I’d suggest some postgraduate work in economics and business administration in the United States. It’s only natural that a father would like to have his son carry on in his place, and I’m sure you won’t fail me. Neither me nor your mother, who adores you.”
She was a woman whose beauty had evaporated-“like the dew,” she herself was in the habit of saying. Magdalena Ayub de Lopez-Diaz, until the high noon of her life, kept the attractions that so seduced Danton during those Sundays at the Jockey Club: her obvious defects-unbroken eyebrows, prominent nose, square jaw-in counterpoint to her Arab princess eyes, dreamy, velvety, with their olive eloquence under their glossy lids, provocative, like a hidden sex. By contrast, most of the marriageable young ladies of that period, pretty but all too “decent,” left the nuns’ school as if someone had stamped a
Magdalena Ayub-“my dream,” Danton called her when he courted her-was different. She was, besides, the mother of the third Santiago, whose birth instantly erased forever the remains of the youthful charms of Don Danton’s lady wife. She was weighed down by the sentence of the doctors: one more child would kill you, ma’am. She kept her unbroken eyebrows and her hips widened.
Santiago grew up with that stigma: I almost killed my mother when I was born, and I have destroyed any chance of life for possible sisters or brothers. But Danton turned guilt into obligation. Santiago, being an only child, having almost torn away his mother’s life to have his own, now had to do the right thing. Danton asked nothing special from his son: he had to study, graduate, marry a girl of his own class, add to the family fortune, ensure the survival of the species.
“And give me a calm and satisfied old age. I think I deserve one, after all my years of work.”
He spoke with one hand in the side pocket of his blue pin-striped double-breasted suit, the other caressing his lapel. His face was like his suit: buttoned up, double-breasted, striped, with his bluish beard and brows and still- black hair. He was, altogether, a midnight blue man. He never looked at his shoes. They glistened. No need to look.
The third Santiago did not dispute the chart drawn for him by his father until he fell in love with Lourdes, when Danton reacted with a brutality and lack of elegance that the son, from that moment, began to see as attributes of a father he’d loved and whom he’d thanked for so much-the allowance, the four-door Renault, the novelty of the American Express card (with a spending limit), the freedom to wear Macazaga suits (though Santiago preferred leather jackets and jeans)-without judging the motives, acts, justifications or errors in the “that’s the way things are” mode of his father’s words; his father was a man anchored in the security of his economic position and his personal morals, with the nerve to say to his son, “You will follow my path,” and to his son’s girlfriend, “You’re nothing but a stone in the road, get out of the way or I’ll kick you out of the way.”
His father’s attitude riled the young Santiago, enraged him at first, but then encouraged him to do things that had never occurred to him before. He became aware of his own moral nature, and aware that Lourdes too was aware of it: they wouldn’t sleep together until the situation was quite clear; they wouldn’t cheat each other, either with a baby “by mistake” or with sex as mere defiance. Santiago began to ponder, Who is my father, what has my father got that he should have this absolute power over people and this self-confidence?
He told Lourdes, Let’s outsmart him, mi amor, let’s stop seeing each other every day, only in secret on Friday evenings, so the old boy doesn’t get suspicious.
Santiago told Danton, fine, he’d study law, but he also wanted to learn practical things, and to do that he should work in his father’s office. Danton’s satisfaction with his son’s attitude blinded him. He couldn’t imagine any danger in letting his own son into the offices of Cooperative Resource Allotment Partnership (CRAP), a building of glittering glass and stainless steel on Paseo de la Reforma, a few yards from the statue of Christopher Columbus and the Monument to the Revolution. It had once been the site of the Paris-style house with the mansard roof where Butt del Rosal had awaited snow in Mexico-that old aristocrat of the Don Porfirio days whose trick was to eat his gelatin monocle at Carmen Cortina’s soirees. But Paseo de la Reforma-the avenue that the Empress Carlota had created to connect her residence in Chapultepec Castle as Maximilian’s consort with the center of the city (she conceived it as a reproduction of the Avenue Louise in her native Brussels)-was coming to resemble a street in Houston or Dallas, lined with more and more skyscrapers, parking lots, and fast-food outlets.
There, Santiago would learn the business, let him explore every floor, get to know everything, he’s the boss’s son…
He became friends with the file clerk who was mad about bullfighting by giving him season tickets-that year Joselito Huerta and Manuel Capetillo were the stars. He became friends with the telephone operators by getting them passes to the Churubusco Studios so they could watch Libertad Lamarque make her movies: the same
