Without the income from my classes, and given the need to empty the house in Educación, I felt that the most sensible course of action would be to move in there for a few days, and so also save the long daily commute from the apartment I was then renting in Santa María la Ribera.
Before I’d even gotten the door fully open, the smell hit me with the clarity, the physical reality, of an image. It was difficult to believe that the house in Educación could still smell exactly the same in spite of the fact that it was now uninhabited, that my father was dead, that Teresa was dead, that Mariana hadn’t lived there for years, and that I myself, to the extent that time allowed such stunts, was a different person from the one who had once dwelled between those walls.
I dumped my backpack in my old bedroom and contemplated the titanic task that lay before me. Nothing seemed to have changed since the time I lived there. My father had hardly moved anything in the house, as if he’d been holding his breath for years, fearing to the last any trace of change.
I decided to organize the contents of the house into three broad categories: things to be sold, things to be given away, and things I’d prefer to talk to Mariana about before taking any action.
I began in the living room, where everything was saleable: the couch with its ineradicable stains, the ten volumes of the Encyclopedia of Mexico, a box of movies on VHS. The only thing my father had updated was the television set: I could probably get a good price for that immense, brandnew flat-screen.
After quickly sorting out the living room, I decided to move on to the kitchen, postponing the inspection of my former bedroom for a moment of greater spiritual equanimity. My father’s room would come last: the mere sight of its drawn-curtain half-light caused my breathing to accelerate.
That first night I was unable to sleep. My old bed was too short and the dust I’d disturbed in the living room had floated through the whole house, causing me an allergic reaction. Standing at my bedroom window, I watched the sun rise over Educación.
On the second day of the clear-out I went to get something to eat at a nearby street market and, among the food stands, saw an old pickup truck with flaking paint and a banner reading, “Furniture, clothing, and trinkets bought.” It seemed as good an option as any. When I approached the window of the pickup, I found the vehicle was empty. I looked around and inquired at a fruit stand, where I was told that the “junkman” would be back shortly. I leaned up against the dilapidated bodywork of the truck to wait in the sunlight.
After a few minutes, I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to find myself face-to-face with Rat. He was the same older man who had appeared a few weeks before in the vicinity of the hospital. This time he was alone, without the teenage girl I’d seen him arguing with in the street.
Rat didn’t appear surprised to see me, but neither did he give the least sign of recognition. “What can I do for you?” he asked. He had the raspy voice of a chain-smoker of unfiltered Delicados. “Don’t you remember me? I’m Mariana’s brother … No. 23, Calle H.” Rat made a vague gesture, as if saying that he couldn’t care less about the past, as if the fact of our having met twice—after twenty years during which we’d scarcely heard word of each other—just before and just after my father’s death, had no importance. “And what can I do for you, Mariana’s brother from Calle H?” he asked in a sarcastic tone, making his indifference clear. I gave up the attempt to be friendly. Maybe I was the only person who cared about the summer of ’94. Nobody, not Mariana, Rat, or anybody else, seemed interested in reviving the story. “My father died not long ago, and I’m clearing out his house. There are a lot of things I could sell you.”
Rat didn’t offer his condolences or show the least contrition. He told me that he’d swing by later to check how much there was, if it would fit in his pickup, and how many trips he’d need to make. He gave me his card: “‘Rat,’ Dealer in Antique Furniture,” it said; below was a drawing of a giant rat in dark glasses, driving a moving van. We shook on it; Rat’s hand was rough, callused, hard as concrete.
On the way back to the house I bought two cans of beer and a disposable dust mask. Drinking the beer, surrounded by the cardboard boxes scattered around the living room, I wondered where Rat would take all that stuff. He probably had a partner who would resell it all. It pleased me to think that there was a place in La Lagunilla or the antique market in Portales that would display all the material goods that had filled my father’s life: trophies of an existence dedicated to the accumulation of hand tools. Someone would stop one Saturday to ask the price of a monkey wrench and around him, solemnly silent, would be what remained of my father, his pillaged mausoleum of junk. There was some form of poetic justice in the fact that Rat was to take on the task. As if, in spite of his reticence and unnatural aloofness, he were doomed to accompany me, one more time, on that rocky transition out of Colonia Educación.
I don’t consider myself to be particularly attached to material goods. Throwing out the dreadful seascape that had adorned the hallway during my whole childhood didn’t involve the least sacrifice. And it was just as easy to get rid of the
