Ramifications

the dining room table with a glass of tequila before him. He didn’t see me, so I squatted down on the turn of the stairs and spied on him for a moment. Although I was viewing him from above, through the rails of the bannister, I was able to see his face. His expression was hard to read; it was as if he were attempting to solve some complex math problem or memorize a sequence of numbers. He was staring at a point on the tablecloth but, after a while, moved his eyes to focus on another spot. Every so often he took a sip from his shot glass, barely wetting his lips. What could he be thinking about? Was he blaming himself for Teresa’s death? Was he sad, worrying about taking responsibility for us on his own? I considered going to him, putting my arms around him, and telling him that it wasn’t his fault, that it had been an accident or fate. But just when I was about to offer consolation, his facial muscles relaxed. Where previously there had been incomprehension and emptiness, now, at first timidly, a smile was appearing. I’d never seen my father smile that way. It’s most probably, I thought, a smile he wears when he’s alone, when he thinks no one can see him. The smile grew broader. The crow’s-feet around his eyes deepened. Then he began to laugh, silently; as if repressing the sound.

Squatting there, spying on my father, I recognized for the first time the similarity between that laugh and the one given by the soldier who had frisked me one night on the highway to Villahermosa. I slowly rose to my feet and silently went back up the stairs to my bedroom.

Twenty-one years went by without me thinking about that laugh. Or maybe it would be better to say that twenty-one years went by with me trying not to think about it, but the memory finally resurfaced, and the fact that I now live in solitary confinement, that I spend the greater part of my life lying on the left side of this bed, has, in some sinister, obscure way, to do with the persistence of that laugh in my memory.

8

I FOUND THE FOLDER IN ONE OF THE DESK DRAWERS. Perhaps subconsciously anticipating the catastrophe, I’d put that drawer off until last. Once those papers were in order, I’d be able to say I’d finished with the room, the most difficult of all. Then all that would be left was to organize the removal of my parents’ bed and the few other pieces of furniture that I’d decided to keep. In three or four days, I’d be able to hand over the keys to Garmendia.

It was a red, A4 Kraft folder. My first guess was that it would contain documents related to the insurance policy (true to his practical nature, before his death my father had said that they were in the desk), but as soon as I opened it, I realized that this was not the case. I immediately recognized the writing: Teresa’s formal, elongated hand. The first sheet of paper I extracted from the folder was the letter I’d attempted to steal from my father’s night table when I was ten.

After Teresa’s death, I’d forgotten about the letter, or perhaps it no longer seemed important: the mystery was solved. According to my father, who had drip-fed us the story over the intervening years, Teresa went to La Realidad, Chiapas State, to attend the National Democratic Convention in the Lacandon jungle, convened by the Zapatista National Liberation Army. Politicians, intellectuals, journalists, academics, and international observers had also been present.

During that week, Teresa had listened to speeches made by the most important figures of the rebellion, and at mealtimes had debated with volunteers and students from different regions of the country. When the convention broke up she considered staying there, perhaps also joining the rebel ranks or becoming a volunteer in one of the communities, but someone told her that she couldn’t, that she had to return to Mexico City, where she would be more useful raising funds and circulating true information. Disappointed, Teresa had decided to rent a small apartment on the outskirts of San Cristóbal. Her plans—again, according to my father—were not completely clear, but she was probably thinking of spending a couple of months there alone, taking a vacation from the family before returning to her life as a diligent housewife in Educación.

At heart, I always knew that it was a lie, an illusion created by my father, who wanted to convince himself (and us) that Teresa had always intended to come back. I never knew if he believed his own story or simply maintained it before us, but the truth is, I never made the effort to contradict him.

Teresa’s letter didn’t specify a precise plan, but she was resolute: she was going to Chiapas because she could no longer bear living with my father and knew that the indigenous peoples of Chiapas had “a lesson in dignity” to offer her.

Sitting at the desk, reading the letter, the red folder on my knees, I had the impression that the Teresa who had written those lines was very young. Until that moment I’d always imagined my mother to be a full-fledged adult, conscious of the weight of all her decisions, a person as rational and restrained as her robotic voice. But Teresa had also been a passionate woman beset by contradictory impulses. Her farewell letter allowed a vision of that aspect of her personality. There was a high ideological tone that, with the distance of time, I found slightly embarrassing. That letter seemed to have been written in a more heroic age; not in the final decade of the twentieth century, but much earlier, in the golden years of the student movement of the seventies, or at the dawn of the Cuban Revolution. Teresa employed terms like “alienation” and “capitalism” to complain about the