I have no idea what to do. Calm down, will you? How’s your work going?
Well. The Riveras have no idea how to manage paperwork and need someone to answer letters, save documents, review contracts.
Good. Congratulations. It doesn’t take up too much time?
Three times a week. I want to put a lot of work in here in the house.
Her husband’s “good” meant “it’s about time,” but Laura paid no attention. Sometimes she thought that marrying him was like turning the other cheek to destiny. It turned what was and perhaps always should have been an enigma, a distance, into a daily reality: the mystery of Juan Francisco Lopez Greene’s true life. She wouldn’t ask him aloud what she’d asked herself so many times. What did her husband do? Where did he fail? Was he a hero who had tired of being one?
Someday you’ll understand, he’d say.
Someday I’ll understand, she repeated until she convinced herself the expression was her own.
Laura. I’m tired, I get a good salary from the Workers Confederation and the Union Congress. We lack for nothing here at home. If you want to take care of Diego and Frida, that’s up to you. Do you also want me to be the hero of 1908, of 1917, of the House of the Workers of the World and the Red Battalions? I can make you a list of the heroes of the Revolution. It has treated all of us justly, except the dead.
I want to know. Were you really a hero?
Juan Francisco began to laugh, he laughed his head off, coughed up phlegm and roared.
No, there were no heroes, and if there were, they were killed off right away and they were honored with statues. Really ugly ones, too, so no one would go on believing in them. In this country, even the statues are phony. They’re all made of copper-you just have to scrape off the gilt. What do you expect from me? Why don’t you simply respect what I was and leave it at that, dammit?
I’m making an effort to understand you, Juan Francisco. Since you won’t tell me where you came from, at least tell me what you are today.
A guard. A guardian of order. An administrator of stability. We won the Revolution. It’s cost us a lot to achieve peace and to have a process of peaceful succession in power without military coups. We’re redistributing land, we have education, roads… Don’t you think that’s something? Would you want me to oppose all that? To end up like all those dissatisfied generals-Serrano and Arnulfo Gomez, Escobar and Saturnino Cedillo-or the philosopher Vasconcelos? They didn’t even get to be heroes. They just burned out. What do you want from me, Laura?
I’m just looking for a little hole in your armor, where I can love you, Juan Francisco. I’m that stupid.
A little hole? Why, I’m a sieve, my dear!
She tried to explain to Santiago, as the boy painted, that she was delighted by his artistic spirit. She told him while his father’s words were still ringing in her ears.
“Diego uses the word
Santiago was painting, unabashed, a man and a woman, naked but separated, standing, staring at each other, exploring each other with their eyes. Their arms were crossed. Laura told Santiago it was very difficult for a couple to love each other forever because the spirits of two people are almost never equal. There is a moment of total identification that impassions us, a balance between the two which, unfortunately, is only a revelation that one of the two will break the balance.
“I want you to understand that about your father and me.”
“Well, Mama, all you did was to anticipate him. You made him understand you were not going to he the sad one. You left that role to him.”
Santiago cleaned his brushes and looked at his mother.
“And the day he dies, who’ll be anticipating whom?”
How could I abandon a man so weak, Laura said to herself, then responded with strength and modesty: no, what we’ve got to do is to change the rules of the game, rules made by men for men and for women because only they legislate for both sexes, because the rules men make are valid both for the faithful and domestic life of women and for the unfaithful and errant life of men. The woman is always guilty of submission in one case, and in the other of rebelliousness; guilty of a fidelity that lets life pass by while she’s stretched out in a cold grave with a man who doesn’t desire her, or guilty of the infidelity of seeking pleasure with another in the same way her husband does, a sin for her, a prize for him, he’s called Don Juan and she Dona Puta, my God, Juan Francisco, why didn’t you cheat on me in style, with some great love, instead of being a camp follower for your boss Fatso Morones? Why didn’t you have a love with a woman as great, as strong, as brave as Jorge Maura, my own love?
With Danton, Juan Francisco had a relationship that paralleled Laura’s with Santiago: the family formed two parties. The old man-he’d turned sixty but looked seventy-forgave every one of his younger son’s tricks, gave him money, and sat him down so they both could see each other’s face. He did that because neither ever opened his mouth, at least not in the presence of their two rivals in the house, Laura and Santiago. Despite the silence, Laura suspected that Juan Francisco and Danton said things to each other. The old auntie, mute by act of will, confirmed this suspicion one afternoon at the healing ceremony, at the balcony, the repeated, unifying family ritual. Maria de la O insisted on sitting between the father and the younger brother, separating them, but she didn’t take her eyes off Laura. Then, when the elderly mulatta, dressed as always in black, had Laura’s attention, she rapidly moved her own eyes, like a dark eagle whose vision was split down the middle and who could see simultaneously in two directions. Several times she glanced from Juan Francisco to Danton and from the son to the father, which said to Laura something like “they understand each other,” which Laura already knew, or “they’re the same,” which was hard to imagine: the agile, party-loving, carefree Danton seemed the complete opposite of the parsimonious, withdrawn, and anguished Juan Francisco. Where was the relationship? Yet Maria de la O’s intuitions were rarely mistaken.
One night, when Santiago fell asleep next to his recently acquired easel-this one a gift from Diego Rivera-Laura, who was allowed to watch him paint, covered him with a blanket and cushioned his head as best she could, very softly caressing his unfurrowed brow. Leaving his room, she heard laughter and whispering in her bedroom. She walked in without knocking and found Juan Francisco and Danton on the floor, sitting with their legs crossed, studying a spread-out map of the state of Tabasco.
“Excuse me,” interrupted Laura. “It’s late, and you have school tomorrow, Danton.”
The boy laughed. “My best school is right here with my dad.”
They’d been drinking. The bottle of Potrero rum was half empty, and Juan Francisco’s alcoholic heaviness kept him from raising the hand he’d stretched out over the surface of his home state.
“Off to bed now, my fine young gentleman.”
“Oh, what a pain. We were having so much fun.”
“But, son, tomorrow you won’t be able to hold your head up if you don’t get some sleep.”
“Fun, son, head, dead,” rhymed Danton as he marched off.
Laura stared hard at her husband and the map.
“What place is that right under your finger?” Laura smiled. “Let me see. Macuspana. Was that just an accident, or does that mean something to you?”
“It’s a place hidden in the forest.”
“That much I can imagine. What’s it mean to you?”
“Elzevir Almonte.”
Laura couldn’t speak. Like an arrow, her mind flew back to the figure of the priest from Puebla who appeared one day in Catemaco to sow intolerance, impose ridiculous moral restrictions, disturb innocence in the confessional, and disappear another fine day with the offerings to the Holy Child of Zongolica.
“Elzevir Almonte,” repeated Laura in a trance, remembering the priest’s question that day in confession:
“He took refuge in Tabasco. He passed himself off as a layman, of course, and no one knew where he got his money. He would go to Villahermosa once a month and the next, day pay off all his debts in one shot. The day my mother died there was no priest in the entire zone. I ran everywhere shouting, My mother wants to confess, wants to go to heaven, isn’t there a padre to bless her? It was then Almonte revealed he was a priest and gave my mother the last rites. I’ll never forget the expression of peace on my poor old mother’s face. She died thanking me for sending her to heaven. Why did you hide out here? I asked Father Elzevir. He told me, and I told him, it’s time you redeemed yourself. I brought him to the Rio Blanco strike. He attended the workers left wounded by the rural police. The army had killed two hundred of them. Almonte blessed each and every one. They couldn’t stop him even
