How many of you are there?
Uh, not enough?
On the courtyard everyone sees León gesticulating and shouting but what’s León saying?, someone asks, what’s he so angry about?, someone else asks, and then they see León brush the fat man aside so the fat man stumbles, sideways and backwards, tripping down the stairs, where some of them are already shouldering their way out, which is unworkable because most of the people by the stairs are staying put, wondering if perhaps the fat man offended León somehow, if perhaps the fat man’s drunk, if perhaps the agape briefcase that León’s assistant is presenting to León contains their paychecks, and yet what León removes from his briefcase isn’t a wad of paychecks or a scroll with a welcoming speech but a whip that he’s uncoiling as he points at them as if they’re the scum of the earth, snapping the whip as he charges down the stairs, where most of them recoil but do not move, as if they still can’t believe the slashes and imprecations are meant for them, but then the whip cuts them and they’re fleeing now, pushing each other as León calls them leeches, cockroaches, bloodsuckers. On the far end of the courtyard the crowd seems to have caught wind of what’s happening because they’re running in all directions now, and because those cramped in the middle of the courtyard cannot run yet they’re jostling each other even more. Later they will see their stampede on television and hear that on top of trying to swindle the city El Loco’s rabble trampled seven women and three men in front of the municipal palace.
The courtyard has been cleared.
The overturned tricycle, the spilled juice, the cracked jars, the scattered oyster shells, the stained lottery tickets must seem unfortunate to León. Ill omens of some kind. Not the time, however, to be indulging in superstitions. It probably isn’t clear to the senator from Guayaquil, to the governor from Guayas, as he tries to breathe, what the time is for, or whether he
—
Leopoldo should’ve had a firmer grip on León’s briefcase. After León charges down the stairs and inadvertently pushes Leopoldo, the briefcase lands facing down, away from Leopoldo, as if resentful he’d let it drop. The business of collecting its contents, of crouching after shoe polish amid a commotion he’d rather not see, of squatting and toiling after a recommendation letter so Alvarito Rosales can be admitted into Babson College, so that Alvarito can pretend to study business administration at an institution that won’t flunk him, so that Alvarito can then return to run his father’s prawn business or run for office with promises of bread, roof, and employment — Alvarito Rosales, the candidate of the poor — has to be done. But when does it end? Leopoldo’s father like Antonio’s father like Stephan’s father like Nelson’s father like Carlos’s father like Eduardo’s father had embezzled and fled the country because they knew that was their one shot at getting ahead. Leopoldo and Antonio had refused to accept that. And then one day the newly appointed minister of finance fired Leopoldo from his hard earned post as a senior economist at the Central Bank so that the minister could hire his wife’s nephew instead. And then for months Leopoldo couldn’t find another job. The end. Go back to sleep, Negrito. Leopoldo crumples Alvarito’s letter and tosses it but then picks it up because what if someone finds it and tells on him? León has emptied the courtyard. His hands are shaking. The damp back of his guayabera has unaccountable streaks of soot. Leopoldo cannot see León’s vacant face but he can easily imagine it. He hurries down the stairs to steer León away from the cameras before León turns back toward them. On his way down Leopoldo slips on a compact mirror but he’s all right, yes, he didn’t fall. One of the cameramen, who has already broached the subject of a special favor with Leopoldo, isn’t filming León. He seems to be giving Leopoldo the chance to take León away. Does that moronic cameraman think Leopoldo doesn’t see the other cameras? Some of the reporters, as if they know Leopoldo’s about to obstruct them, are urging their cameramen down the stairs. By one of the garbage cans Leopoldo takes his time disposing of Alvarito’s letter. Ándate a la verga viejo hijueputa. Let El Loco’s people see León’s in no condition to block El Loco from returning. León turns and faces the cameras without looking at the cameras, as if lost in someone’s kitchen. Leopoldo checks his watch. Antonio’s waiting. It’s time.
IV / ANTONIO EDITS HIS BABY CHRIST MEMOIR
For first, there is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned good sense, education, and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves.
— DAVID HUME, AN ENQUIRY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING, SECTION X
After a twenty one year absence my father returned to the church. The pious boy I was back then had convinced him to attend Christmas Mass, and, according to my grandmother, his return that night led to the baby christ’s tears. Most in my family readily adopted my grandmother’s version, as I was to do in the years that followed, sharing it with my American acquaintances as another example of the quaint superstitions of my Third World country, which would often prompt in them comparisons to eyewitness news reports of Virgin Mary sightings on trunks of trees or mortadella sandwiches. Of course I suspected my grandmother’s version was far too simple, and yet nothing ever compelled me to elaborate on it by implicating others or by including events that began long before that night or that decade.
—
Everyone was implicated, Antonio writes along the margins of his baby christ memoir, meaning everyone he’d once known in Guayaquil (Cristian Cordero’s grandfather, Espinel’s father, Julio Esteros’s mother, his own father) plus everyone else in the world (and here Antonio wishes he wasn’t inside a plane so he could search online for an essay by Leszek Kołakowski, a philosopher Antonio had been drawn to because he was from Poland like John Paul II, the first pope to visit Ecuador — we can never forget the existence of evil and the misery of the human condition, Kołakowski wrote —), and so to write about implicating others before that Christmas night and that decade seems redundant to him since it was implied everyone was implicated, although he could argue against himself and state that most of us need reminders that we’re implicated with the existence of evil and the misery of the human condition, okay, so let’s say that you encounter these reminders in the leisurely world of memoir or fiction: wouldn’t you ignore them, Antonio, or at most be smote by yet another round of deep urges to change Ecuador that might impede your reasoning and compel you to board a plane back to Guayaquil without much of a plan or money?
—
Before my father agreed to attend Christmas Mass we were at my grandmother’s house. My father had announced I was old enough to sit with the adults, and since my grandmother’s dining table could seat only eight, and since neither my aunts nor my grandfather wanted to sour our Christmas by starting another pyrrhic battle, ten of us struggled to pass the potatoes and slice the pig without elbowing each other. And we did so in silence. My father was in an awful mood, and we knew that whoever spoke during dinner risked being savaged by his sarcasm.
—
But perhaps he has been equating Leszek Kołakowski with Father Villalba, Antonio thinks, perhaps he has been drawn to certain novelists and philosophers not because they’re from Poland like John Paul II but because their work reminds him of Father Villalba’s sermons, even though he doesn’t remember Father Villalba’s sermons anymore (once Antonio searched online for texts by Clodovis Boff and unbeknownst to him he later ascribed them to Father Villalba — never purchase a painting of your favorite landscape because that painting will come to replace your favorite landscape, one of W. G. Sebald’s narrators says, but what choice did Antonio have if his favorite landscapes have, for the most part, vanished? — bless me Father, Clodovis Boff recounts, Father we are dying —), or perhaps he hasn’t been drawn to certain novelists and philosophers because of Father Villalba but because he likes to believe intricate association mechanisms subtend his mind like in the novels of W. G. Sebald, drawn to Father Villalba like Jacques Austerlitz is drawn to fortresses that contain
the seeds of their own destruction, for instance, and whether on that Christmas night at his grandmother’s house they stuffed themselves with potatoes and pig he doesn’t remember anymore either, so he should just delete the porcine and potato details or acknowledge he doesn’t remember them anymore.
—
My father had assumed that his appointment in the administration of León Martín Cordero had entitled him to arrogance, and perhaps because of his airs of infallibility we did not consider something could be troubling him.
—
He had also assumed that his father’s appointment in the administration of León Martín Cordero had entitled him to arrogance at San Javier, Antonio thinks, but who could blame such a skinny teenager with acne on his face for assuming airs of infallibility for just a tiny bit? (And here Antonio recalls some notes he’d written about Your Face Tomorrow by Javier Marías — one never experiences genuine self disgust, Javier Marías wrote, and it’s that inability that makes us capable of doing almost anything — or, in Antonio’s case, of doing almost nothing — I’m on a plane on my way back, isn’t that enough? — no.)
—
My grandmother, restless amid our silence, seemed to be counting rice grains with her fork, though most likely she was deliberating whether to talk. She loved a seated audience, and Christmas was the time of the year when everyone was more receptive to her stories. She must have reminded herself that she was, after all, the most inured to my father’s jabs because she began recounting for us the storied origins of her dining table. The story was not a new one (none of them were) yet we were relieved someone other than us was talking. After her father sold a small fraction of his plantations, she said, he had decided on a whim to throw out all their furniture and start anew, contracting for the job all the carpenters available in Portoviejo at the time. For a week, on their cobblestone patio, the sound of hammers and hacksaws merged with the sound of poor families carrying off the old furniture her father was giving away. The dining table my grandmother had inherited from those days had knotted flowers carved on its thick width, which matched the dense Guayacan patterns of the four adjacent cabinets, immense cabinets stuffed with more plates and teacups and sugar bowls than anyone could ever use in a lifetime, all of them burnished at least monthly, most of them handpainted with landscapes no one wanted to see.
—
Before Antonio’s grandmother squandered what remained of her father’s plantations in Portoviejo, Antonio would stay with her during the summer, and what he remembers of those summers in Portoviejo are the black bats that would appear outside the immense windows in his bedroom like apparitions from Monstruo Cinema, the weekly horror TV hour he wasn’t allowed to watch, the black bats that he knows he hasn’t invented in retrospect because he’d asked the laborers in his grandmother’s plantation and they had confirmed that yes, niño Antonio, vampires love bananas, and clouds of them do swarm us at night, and although the black bats had terrified him they hadn’t traumatized him irreversibly, or at least his nightmares about the black bats by those immense windows did vanish eventually, and what Antonio also remembers of those summers in Portoviejo is the chained monkey at an outdoor grill by the side of the highway, Antonio hurling rocks at the squalid monkey chained to what looked like a giant nail sledgehammered into the mud, the monkey charging toward him and choking himself before he could reach him until the one afternoon the monkey managed to grab his hair and wouldn’t let go, someone help that little boy, for god’s sake, the monkey thrashing Antonio by his hair and Antonio thinking then or later that he got what he deserved, the monkey not letting go of Antonio’s hair even after a pair of brooms descended on him, the monkey probably thinking we’re both going down, carajo, you and me to the grave.
—
My father did not interrupt my grandmother’s story. He remained silent, concentrating on the uneven horizon inside his wineglass. I could not tell if he had been staring at it for long, or if it was just a passing gesture of wine connoisseurship because I was too distracted by my upcoming speech. After participating in my father’s reckless lifestyle the summer before, I had decided it was my duty to convince him to attend Christmas Mass with us, and for this delicate task I had prepared a speech. I had spent quite some time contemplating not the exact words to deliver but my father’s reaction to them, envisioning a sudden conversion like Saul on his way to Damascus, god’s light passing through me so as to inspirit my every word. In a mixture of rosary prayers and feverish writing, I’d finished my speech the night before. Perhaps a resolute argument, perhaps a series of unconnected allusions to the theological texts I was studying in school, either way, I’d accumulated at least seven or eight pages wrinkled by my scribbling and crossing and waiting for the light to shine. I would address my father after dinner.
My Aunt Carmen, the only one in my father’s family with enough good looks to marry a bold, young politician, brought up the headline news. The mayor of our city, or perhaps some other elected official that I can no longer recall, had defrauded the municipality and fled.
Just another crook, my father muttered, aware that my grandmother had urged everyone to vote for that crook during election time. We waited for my father to riff on his remark. He didn’t. This did not imply his mood was improving. Under the table I could see his hands stroking his gray suit pants, as if reassuring them of their own fine tailoring and fabric, which he had once explained to me by pointing at the minute violet stripes that had been woven into them.
—
His father never explained those minute violet stripes to him, Antonio thinks, crossing out the passage about the minute violet stripes, but his father did drag him along to splurge on Italian business suits at the most expensive boutiques in Quito, no, not drag him along, Antonio loved sauntering into those expensive boutiques where the voluptuous saleswomen would dote on both father and son, his father flirting with them and the saleswomen saying your son’s so handsome, Don Antonio, he’s going to stir the cauldron as much as you, a prediction that didn’t come true while he lived in Guayaquil — hide your Smurfs, here comes that ugly Gargamel — but that came true once he arrived in San Francisco — good one, Menudo Boy — and although Antonio likes to believe he has inherited nothing from his corrupt father, he knows he has inherited his father’s penchant for expensive clothes because he splurged even when he couldn’t afford them (and likely will continue to splurge because the realization that a behavior is inherited isn’t strong enough to counter the inherited behavior — you could simply stop buying expensive clothes, Drool — easier to continue to splurge and blame it on my corrupt father? —), and of course to his American acquaintances his penchant for expensive clothes was a source of amusing anecdotes, courtesy of Antonio from faraway Ecuador, but to him his penchant for expensive clothes dispirited him because if he hadn’t splurged he could’ve quit his database job and returned to Ecuador sooner, although he would have never returned to Ecuador without owning a sizable amount of expensive clothes — you’re fated either way, Gargamel — fine, let’s not delete the minute violet stripes since my father did purchase a gray suit with those minute violet stripes, Antonio writes along the margins of his baby christ memoir, and I did notice the minute violet stripes without my father pointing them out to me (though possibly the saleswomen had been the ones who had explained the minute violet stripes to them?).
—
Heartened by what she mistook as my father’s unusual restraint, my grandmother loosed tale after tale about our great ancestry, ranches and islands and heroes of the Independencia, eventually landing on her favorite story: about how the baby christ materialized into our family. In a dream, she said, a voice had guided her grandmother. Buried on the far side of her father’s plantation, the voice had said, by the tallest oak tree with the knifed bark, she was to find resounding evidence of god’s existence. Her grandmother awoke, soaked in sweat despite the force of her ceiling fan. She was not the gullible type, no sir, my grandmother said, but wh
en god calls, our lineage answers. Her grandmother sprang out of bed, and with her mosquito net still entangled around her knees she ran across her father’s field, one of the largest ones in Manabí, and despite the bats and the Pacific coast wind, she fell on her knees and with her hands she pierced the earth until she found him: our baby christ. He was intact, lying in a wicker basket like the one Moses must have been in when the Egyptian princess found him. He was wrapped in a purple and gold shawl, his wide clay eyes contemplating the heavens.
—
No tallest oak tree with the knifed bark, Antonio writes along the margins of his baby christ memoir, no mosquito nets, no bats (or rather, yes, bats but not in his grandmother’s baby christ story), no Pacific coast wind, no force of the ceiling fan (his old bedroom in Guayaquil did have a poorly installed ceiling fan that spun like a moribund turbine above his bed): the dream guiding her grandmother to the baby christ, on the other hand, had been recounted enough times by his grandmother for him to still remember that the function of the dream had been to guide his grandmother’s grandmother to where the baby christ was buried, and yes, he understood the narrative purpose of telling details, and he also understood the need to add concrete details for the sake of verisimilitude, but there has to be another way to revisit his past without him pretending he remembers the whole of it.
The Revolutionaries Try Again Page 6
