Slowly he worked up a lather with the moistened brush and the soap.
Now there would be no time to form the Red Battalions of the Revolution again.
He spread the lather on his cheeks, upper lip, and neck.
Now there would be no time to revive the House of the Workers of the World.
Slowly he shaved.
Now there would be no time for his revolutionary deeds to be recognized, because now no one remembered anymore.
He was in the habit of shaving at night before going to bed, so as to save time in the morning before going to work.
Now there would be no time for them to give him his rightful place, fucking bastards, he was someone, he did things, he deserved a place.
He finished shaving.
Now there would be no time to admit failure.
He dried his face with a towel.
Now there would be no time to ask, Where did I go wrong?
He laughed into the mirror for a long time.
Now there would be no time to open a door to love.
He looked at an old man he didn’t recognize, another man who was himself emerging from the depth of the mirror to meet him now.
Now there would be no time to say I love you.
He looked at the wrinkled cheeks, defeated chin, curiously elongated ears, the sacks under his eyes, the gray hair everywhere-on his ears, his head, his lips, like frozen hay, a weather-beaten old pine tree.
He felt a huge desire, painful and pleasurable at the same time, to sit down and shit.
Now there would be no time to fulfill the promise of an admirable, glorious destiny he could bequeath.
He lowered the trousers of the striped pajamas that Danton had given him for his birthday and sat down on the toilet.
Now there would be no time…
He pushed hard and fell forward, his bowels emptied and his heart stopped.
Damned weather-beaten old pine tree.
At Juan Francisco’s wake, Laura set about forgetting her husband, erasing all the memories that weighed on her like an early tombstone on the grave of her marriage, but instead of grieving for Juan Francisco, she closed her eyes, standing next to the coffin, and thought about the pain of giving birth, thought about how her sons were born-so much pain and such an eternity between contraction and contraction for the elder son, smooth as swallowing caramel cream for the second, liquid and smooth like melted butter… but with her hand on her husband’s coffin, she decided to live the pain of childbirth, not that of death, realizing that someone else’s pain, the death of others, ends up being just that in our minds, someone else’s, neither Danton nor Santiago felt his mother’s birth pangs, for them entering the world was a cry of neither happiness nor sadness, the victory cry of the newborn, his
And now Juan Francisco was dead and didn’t know it. He felt no pain at all.
Nor did she. Which is why she preferred remembering the pain of giving birth, so that those who came to the wake-old comrades, union men, minor government functionaries, the odd deputy, and, in brutal contrast, Danton’s family and rich friends-could see in her face the traces of a shared pain, but this was false since the pain, the real pain, can be felt only by the one who feels it, the woman giving birth, not the doctor who helps her or the child being born, only the man being shot feels the bullets penetrate him, not the firing squad or the officer giving the order, only the sick person feels it, not the nurses…
Who knows why, Laura recalled the image of the Spanish woman Pilar Mendez at the gates to Santa Fe de Palencia, shouting in the middle of the night so that her father would show her no mercy, only justice as political fanaticism conceived it, shot at sunrise for betraying the Republic and aiding the Cause. Like her, Laura wished she could shout, but not for her husband, not for her sons, for herself, remembering her own pains, banal and terrible, in giving birth, indescribable and impossible to share. They say pain destroys language. It can only be a shout, a whimper, a disembodied voice. Those who speak of pain don’t feel it. Those who possess the language of pain describe the pain of others. True pain has no words, but Laura Diaz, the night of her husband’s wake, did not want to shout.
Her eyes still shut, she remembered other cadavers, those of the two Santiagos, Santiago Diaz Obregon, her half brother, shot in Veracruz at the age of twenty, and Santiago Lopez-Diaz, her son, dead at the age of twenty-six in Mexico City. Two handsome dead men, equally beautiful. She dedicated her mourning to them. That night, her two Santiagos, the Elder and the Younger, gathered together the dispersion of the world spilled out in no order over the years so as to give it proper form, the form of two young, handsome bodies. But it’s one thing to be a body and another to be beautiful.
The comrade workers wanted to lay the red flag with the hammer and sickle over Juan Francisco’s coffin. Laura refused. Symbols were superfluous. There was no need to identify her husband with a red rag that could be put to better use in a bull ring.
The comrades walked out, offended but silent.
The priest officiating at the wake offered to say the rosary.
“My husband wasn’t a believer.”
“God receives all of us in His mercy.”
Laura Diaz pulled off the crucifix adorning the lid of the coffin and handed it to the priest.
“My husband was anticlerical.”
“Madam, don’t offend us. The cross is sacred.”
“Take it. The cross is a rack of torture. Why don’t you put a little gallows on the coffin, or a guillotine. In France, Jesus Christ would have been guillotined, right?”
The murmur of horror and disapproval that arose from the pews where Danton’s family and friends were seated satisfied Laura. She knew she’d done something unnecessary, provocative. It was a natural reaction. She couldn’t have repressed it. It gave her pleasure. It seemed, suddenly, like an act of emancipation, the beginning of something new. After all, who was she now if not a solitary woman, a widow, companionless, with no family but a distant son now captive in a world Laura Diaz found detestable?
People began to leave, humiliated or offended. Laura exchanged glances with the only person looking at her fondly. It was Basilio Baltazar. But before they could speak to each other, a decrepit small man, shrunken like a badly washed sweater, wrapped in a cape too big for him, a tiny man with features both well defined and faded by time, with little clumps of matted hair above his ears, like frozen grass, handed Laura a letter, telling her in a voice from the depths of time, Read it, Laura, it’s about your husband…
There was no date, but the handwriting was old-fashioned, ecclesiastical, more appropriate for noting baptisms and funerals, life’s alphas and omegas, than for communicating with another person. She read the letter that night.
Dear Laura, may I address you that way? After all, I’ve known you since you were a child, and even though the difference in our ages is a thousand years, my memory of you remains fresh. I know that your husband, Juan Francisco, died keeping the secret of his origin as if it were something shameful or disgraceful. But do you realize he died the same way, anonymously, making no noise? Could you yourself, if I were to ask you today, give an account of your husband’s life over the past twenty years? You’d find yourself in the same situation as he did. There’d be nothing to tell. Do you think the vast majority of those who come into this world have something extraordinary to tell about their lives? Are they, therefore, less important, less worthy of respect and, sometimes, of love? I write you, my dear friend, whom I’ve known since you were a girl, to ask you to stop torturing yourself thinking about what Juan Francisco Lopez Greene was before he met and married you. Before making a name for himself as a fighter for justice in the Veracruz strikes and when the Red Battalions were created during the Revolution. That was
