The Revolutionaries Try Again

by Mauro Javier Cardenas

  —

  Don Alban!

  Muchachón!

  Leopoldo didn’t tell me we were meeting at your restaurant. I didn’t even know you had a restaurant. What a wonderful surprise, Don Alban. Looks great.

  De a poco we jumpstart the franchise.

  Now that I know your place’s here I’ll be coming back every day.

  My restaurant is your restaurant, niño Antonio. Leopoldo lunches here daily. My sopa de bollo he loves. One time when your classmates were here he stood up, you know Leopoldo, always the speechman, and delivered his Ode to Don Alban’s Sopa de Bollo. The bollo here does have heft, niño Antonio. I ask Hurtado, Economista, where’s your friend? Ah Don Alban, he says to me, still hooked on blondes up north. Your other friend I still see on Saturdays.

  Mazinger?

  Rafael, yes. That’s the one.

  He’s not going to Mapasingue still, is he?

  To Mapasingue and to the dumpster, too. The apostolic group never ended for him. Every Saturday before sundown he and Father Cortez head to the city dumpster to deliver antibiotics and bread. That boy used to be quite the kicker.

  Had that robotic speed.

  See him sometimes on the soccer field on Sundays. Your classmates still play together.

  Rafael’s still kicking the ball into outer space? Monkey Shooter we used to call him, remember?

  We’re out of monkeys, muchachón. How about you, niño Antonio? Did you show the Americans how it’s done?

  I stopped playing soccer when I got there and . . .

  I remember your fast finta dribble. You would grab the soccer ball and bolt. Unstoppable. Staying for good?

  For a little while. Longer, maybe.

  Let me clear a table for you. Sit, niño Antonio, sit.

  I’ve called Rafael a few times but he hasn’t . . .

  I remember driving you and Leopoldo and Rafael to Mapasingue every Saturday, remember?

  The apostolic group bus. How could I forget?

  —

  DROOL: First we raise their salaries.

  MICROPHONE: Can’t. Inflationary.

  DROOL: Enforce a minimum wage.

  MICROPHONE: Cost goes up, can’t compete, factories shut down and reopen in Colombia.

  DROOL: We pact with the Colombians.

  MICROPHONE: Shut down and reopen in Perú.

  DROOL: Pact with the Perúvians.

  MICROPHONE: Remember Paquisha?

  MAID KILLER: Paquisha / es historia / saaaagraaadaaa.

  DROOL: Screw borders. Petty maps.

  MICROPHONE: The impact of cartography on the onanistic tradition. Let us . . .

  MAID KILLER: Ona what?

  MICROPHONE: Nistic.

  CHORUS: Chanfle.

  DROOL: Tax incentives. For factories to stay.

  MICROPHONE: Excellent.

  MAID KILLER: He’s got you now, Microphone.

  MICROPHONE: Time?

  MAID KILLER: Two till.

  MICROPHONE: We can be late for Berta’s class.

  MAID KILLER: Bobeeeeerta.

  MICROPHONE: Drool wants to keep his milk program?

  DROOL: That’s a bovine question.

  MAID KILLER: Bovine! What is?

  CHORUS: Your mom.

  MICROPHONE: Your tax incentive just holed our budget. We’ll have to axe your milk program.

  DROOL: You wouldn’t do that.

  MAID KILLER: Seen the Microphone do worse, Drool.

  MICROPHONE: Milk for the kids or jobs for the parents. You decide.

  MAID KILLER: With León it can be done?

  DROOL: Don’t have to decide. Both.

  MICROPHONE: No problem. Just cover our hole, sir.

  MAID KILLER: Nasty girl.

  MICROPHONE: Privatize the phone lines.

  DROOL: Free milk for a year. Then what?

  MAID KILLER: Think of the children.

  DROOL: Privatize electricity.

  MAID KILLER: Bulb Head, powered by Torbay.

  MICROPHONE: Then what?

  DROOL: Privatize water.

  MICROPHONE: Then what?

  —

  According to Rafael the Mazinger, Father Villalba founded the apostolic group, a volunteer group that visits the elderly at the hospice Luis Plaza Dañín and teaches catechism in Mapasingue, soon after his appointment to San Javier, an appointment that Father Villalba abhors and that, according to Facundo the Maid Killer, was forced on him by the Vatican after they removed him from his parish in Ambato, where he’d been rallying the flowerpickers against the landowners just as the international flower market was booming, typical of this backward country, those indígenas should be grateful instead of grousing against the hand that feeds them, although, according to Bastidas the Chinchulín, Father Villalba was actually removed because of his diatribes against John Paul II at some conference in Puebla, diatribes that probably resemble the sermons Antonio used to hear from Father Villalba during the Sunday alumni services he used to attend with his grandfather years before he was admitted to San Javier, angry Sunday sermons that would irrupt against the school’s alumni, as if the alumni were to blame for him being exiled at a Jesuit school where for decades the same landowners I’ve been battling against have studied theology, where the sons of the same landowners I’ve been battling against have studied and will continue to study theology, although, according to Esteban the Pipí, Father Villalba has slowed the inflow of oligarchs by successfully lobbying to axe the school’s tuition and hike the difficulty of the entrance exam, and as Antonio approaches Father Villalba’s office to request permission to join the apostolic group he’s thinking about those sermons in which Father Villalba asks how are we to be Christians in a world of destitution and injustice, how is it possible for a single instant to forget these situations of dramatic poverty, insofar as you did it to one of these least brothers of mine, insofar as you exploited or ignored or mistreated these least brothers of mine, you did it to me, and as Antonio waits for Leopoldo at Don Alban’s restaurant he remembers Father Villalba saying that at the supreme moment of history, when your eternal salvation or damnation will be decided, what will count, the only thing that will count, is whether you accepted or rejected the poor. Antonio knocks on the door.

  Yes? What is it?

  Father Villalba, I . . .

  You’re interrupting the music, Olmedo. Sit and keep quiet.

  On Father Villalba’s desk a portable cassette player is transmitting music that follows no distinguishable pattern, roils, seems to progress in a scabrous direction, climbing to an altiplane to toll a bell, and then Father Villalba’s music’s over and someone in the recording coughs, someone scrapes a chair, and everyone’s clapping.

  What do you want?

  I want to join the apostolic group.

  That’s for second year students.

  I want to join this year.

  Next year. You’re too young. Next year.

  What does age have to do with helping the . . .

  You won’t get any perks from joining, Olmedo. Let’s make that clear. From me or any of the other priests. Or at least not from me. Now go. Shoo.

  From his shirt pocket Antonio pulls a page he has ripped from one of his arithmetic notebooks, the white fringe from the ripped page sprinkling on his lap, a sign of some kind, Antonio probably thought back then, just as his abstruse calligraphy, which his classmates will spoof on the blackboard for the next six years, was kind of a sign, too, emboldening him to read out loud what he’d handwritten on the page the night before.

  All the efforts of human thought are not worth one act of charity.

  Who said that?

  You did.

  That’s Pascal. From my Christmas sermon last year. Is your father an alumnus of this venerable institution?

  Father Villalba doesn’t wait for an answer but instead attends to the bookcases behind his desk, the three bookcases that if turned sideways wouldn’t fit inside the narrow width of Father Villalba’s office, which used
to be, according to Facundo the Maid Killer, formerly for storing pommel horses, mats, talc, and yet Father Villalba’s office doesn’t reek of humid leather or rank feet but of dank grass, likely germinating from the mate gourd Father Villalba is sipping as he pulls out what looks like a volume from an encyclopedia, the exhaustive kind, from the eighteenth century perhaps, something out of Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, which Antonio will read nine years later during his last winter break at Stanford, Father Villalba riffling through his encyclopedia as if its pages contained disposable knowledge, although sometimes Father Villalba doesn’t riffle through the encyclopedia but parts it exactly on the page he’s looking for, sliding it across his desk to offer Antonio Pascal’s complete quote.

  What does your father do, Olmedo?

  Father Villalba seems to regret the question as much as Antonio. Does Father Villalba know Antonio’s father had to flee the country because of embezzlement charges?

  What else have you been transcribing, Olmedo?

  Government supplies. My father’s . . . away now.

  Father Villalba rewinds or fast forwards his cassette, and because the cassette’s old and Antonio likes to remember the room and the school as being completely silent, the rewinding or fast forwarding makes quite a commotion, which to Antonio wasn’t and still isn’t a sign of any kind, and yet after the cassette’s done rewinding or fast forwarding — you mustn’t listen to a cassette while rewinding another cassette, Antonio José — Father Villalba doesn’t press play.

  Father Ignacio already knows your name. Better watch it.

  Obregon tried to steal the soccer field from us.

  So what?

  We were there first. You would have done the same. Just because Obregon’s a senior doesn’t mean . . .

  Doesn’t matter what I would have done. Don’t start any more fights. Ignacio will expel you.

  Don’t care.

  Of course you don’t. Did you at least win?

  We kept the field. And Obregon lost hair.

  Father Villalba leans into the glass top of his desk, examining Antonio, who’s sitting upright on the sunken armchair, this scrawny boy whose nose was broken by a senior three times his size, scowling without Christian restraint.

  Father Ignacio thinks Mapasingue is too dangerous for freshmen like you. As if your classmates were clamoring to spend their Saturdays teaching there. You and Leopoldo Hurtado are the only freshmen who’ve come to see me. Have you met Leopoldo Hurtado yet?

  —

  MICROPHONE: Then trickles down.

  DROOL: And while the people wait for your trickle, more of them starve.

  MAID KILLER: Apples from a tree, pickles in a jar.

  MICROPHONE: We set aside funds for a safety net.

  MAID KILLER: Mosquito / chicken / gallina / hen.

  MICROPHONE: Free milk.

  DROOL: Free bread.

  MAID KILLER: Roof and employment?

  CHORUS: Shut up, fatty.

  MICROPHONE: We subsidize natural gas.

  MAID KILLER: You just axed that subsidy.

  MICROPHONE: That was transportation, lerdo.

  DROOL: Pay attention, fatty.

  MAID KILLER: How do I get to school with such high bus fares again?

  DROOL: Why come to school? You’ll flunk anyway.

  MICROPHONE: Atrasa pueblo.

  DROOL: Mosquito pipón.

  MAID KILLER: I’m voting for Cazares.

  CHORUS: Shut up, Maid Killer.

  MICROPHONE: What about our external debt?

  MAID KILLER: Hoy no fío / mañana sí.

  DROOL: Later.

  MICROPHONE: Pay later?

  DROOL: Leave it for later.

  MICROPHONE: Gentle reminder.

  MAID KILLER: External debt! What is?

  MICROPHONE: 60 percent.

  CHORUS: Chanfle.

  —

  On Saturdays Don Alban’s bus transports the apostolic group to Mapasingue at a sluggish speed, not because Don Alban, who at San Javier also administers the school magazine and the school cafeteria and the intramural tournaments ranging from chess to minisoccer and whom the students have nicknamed Motorcito because of the rapidity of his short legs, isn’t a very good driver, but because Don Alban’s dilapidated bus, which Don Alban borrows from his neighbor on Saturdays from one to six, is a veteran of too many potholes and crowds weighing down its frame, hop in, people, lots of room in the back, although Don Alban justifies his sluggish speed by telling them I’ve got to watch out for you, muchachones, got to be on the lookout for those reckless pickup trucks that have proliferated because of the national bus strike, but not to worry, Don Alban says as his bus dodges the scorched tires, the protesters, the pickup trucks brimming with their cargo of people, I’m looking out for you, muchachones, and what surprises Antonio on his first ride up to Mapasingue is that even at Don Alban’s sluggish speed they reach the entrance to the hills of Mapasingue quickly, an entrance that isn’t too far from where Antonio lives, on the other side of Lomas de Urdesa, three short blocks from the home of León Martín Cordero, carajo, and as Don Alban’s bus crosses the entrance to Mapasingue a street vendor jumps in and hollers Chiclets, here the ciruelas and Chiclets, the road getting steeper and Don Alban’s bus getting slower, échele ganas, Don Alban, pújele, Don Alban, and what does surprise Antonio is how long it takes for them to spiral upwards and how much time will pass before they can see the city below past these hundreds of boxlike houses that look deserted and toylike in their rightangled simplicity, equilateral and orthogonal and

  (Antonio’s geometry homework is due on Monday)

  as unreal as they would appear to him when he would drive to the cemetery with his grandfather and far away he would see thousands of dots, these tiny houses, latching to the hills surrounding the city, and as Antonio waits for Leopoldo at Don Alban’s restaurant he thinks that if someone told him his life in the United States hadn’t happened, that he was still on his way to Mapasingue to teach catechism to the poor and that it was from atop Mapasingue that he has been imagining his life in the United States (Antonio arrives at Stanford, learns what to do to change Ecuador, returns to this same spot atop Mapasingue where, moved by the perpetual inequities around him, he decides to commit himself to saving his people (Antonio arrives at Harvard, learns what to do to change Ecuador, joins the International Monetary Fund, and pontificates about what to do to change Ecuador (Antonio arrives at Yale, meets a beautiful English major who worships Artaud, decides he has the strength of character to do without expensive clothes, applies to a graduate program in experimental literature))), he wouldn’t have a hard time believing he has been imagining his life in the United States, although of course he would have a hard time believing he has been imagining his life in the United States. Don Alban’s bus arrives at the elementary school in Mapasingue where the apostolic group teaches catechism and where unfortunately a pipe, the school coordinator informs Don Alban, has burst, flooding the classrooms and infesting the patio with mosquitoes, which from inside Don Alban’s bus Antonio cannot see, although later he will imagine clouds of mosquitoes swarming the inundated patio, dark abuzz clouds of mosquitoes that will remind him of the killer bees everyone was saying were on their way to Guayaquil from Africa or Brazil, and as Antonio waits for Leopoldo at Don Alban’s restaurant he marvels at how even the most remote association like that high school rumor about killer bees, which he hadn’t thought about in years, can, without in any way diminishing the solemnity he has ascribed to his time teaching catechism in Mapasingue, coexist with his time in Mapasingue, flickering on and off every few years to remind him it’s still there, orbiting him as Don Alban tells the school coordinator that the apostolic group isn’t allowed to teach outside the school, strict orders from Father Ignacio, Don Alban says, not allowed, and of course the school coordinator doesn’t ask why because he can guess why these aniñados aren’t allowed outside the school, and of course Don Alban knows the school coordinator knows why so they nod
and pretend to be agreeable but what a waste, Don Alban says, what a shame, the school coordinator says. Someone’s banging on the metal doors, the wide black entrance doors to the elementary school, although Antonio is no longer sure if someone had actually banged on those metal doors or if the recurrence of the memory of those black metal doors opening and closing, opening and closing for him on all those Saturdays for all those years, has begun to generate in retrospect all possible outcomes associated with those doors, including Father Villalba banging on them on the afternoon the pipe burst. Look, the Rabid Gnome’s here, Facundo says. Don’t call Father Villalba names, Maid Killer. What’s the matter? Father Villalba asks. Don Alban explains what’s the matter. Nonsense, Father Villalba says, plenty of room to teach on the sidewalks and on the stairs. Everyone out of the bus. Rafael: teach your students by the trees. Olmedo and Hurtado: take your students to the stairs. Rolando: come with me and let’s seal that damn pipe. Father Villalba disappears inside the inundated classrooms. Antonio’s students follow Antonio outside but then sprint in front of him, aligning themselves like a wall, feigning consternation: frowning, scowling, thumbs down, stomping forward, clenching twigs like flags and saying you talk funny, profe, god isn’t proud, some of them inflating their chests and clapping as if at a military parade, others genuflecting and spoofing desperate pleas to god, others making the sign of the cross, their eyes loopy and crossed, trying not to laugh, and although Antonio doesn’t remember their faces or their names or anything about them — how can you ascribe so much meaning to teaching catechism to the poor in Mapasingue when you can’t even remember anything about the children you taught there? — no, that isn’t true, I remember them rushing toward me outside the church after their first communion ceremony and embracing me as if I were San Bosco — you only remember that moment outside the church because you had once been devoted to San Bosco and you still like to think of yourself as San Bosco (before going to sleep Antonio would often reread his comic book about San Bosco rescuing the street children of Turin) — and although he doesn’t remember the children’s faces or their names, he does remember hoping that Father Villalba would witness how much the children liked him, and he also remembers that, despite his broken nose, which still can’t smell anything, he’d been able to detect the scent of perfumes on some of the children, water lilies and marigold from their mothers perhaps, because he’d seen their mothers combing their hair with combs like pocket rulers and fastening the topmost buttons of their shirts as if they were heading to a baptism or a wedding. From atop the stairs Antonio sees Father Villalba driving away. Is it unreasonable for Antonio to still expect Father Villalba to wave him goodbye? To approach him before leaving? To say the lord has chosen you? To say you must set forth? You must prepare yourself for the great task that awaits you? To say Father bless this your apostle? Months or weeks later Father Ignacio announces that Father Villalba has had some difficulties with his heart. A heart attack, Facundo, yes. Not sure for how long, Rolando. Eventually Father Villalba returns with a pacemaker. Two old women start attending Father Villalba’s Mass on Thursday afternoons, placing their tape recorders by the altar. Hey is that your grandma, Drool? Is that Mama Robot, Mazinger? Shut up Maid Killer! By orders of Father Villalba the tape recorders are relegated to the side exit. On the way out Facundo knocks on the plastic window of the tape recorders. Knock knock. Who is? Rabid Gnome is. Faith challenges the historical progress of the powerful. Father Villalba’s sermons retain their vigor. Lucio was shaking, Father Villalba says. What’s the matter, Father Lucio, I said, get ahold of yourself, what has happened? A terrible sight, Father Lucio said. By the side of the road a woman had fainted, and her three small children, he said, but Lucio couldn’t go on, Father Villalba says. One of her children was holding on to the woman’s braids on his lap, he said, but his hands were limp, Father Villalba, as if the veins in the boy’s hands had exhausted her transfusions and they were now resigned to whatever the sun wanted to extract from them. And the other two children looked indifferent to the woman’s plight, Father Villalba, but they weren’t indifferent, Father Lucio said. I knelt by the woman’s side and saw that the children were fainting of hunger like the woman had fainted of hunger. Father, she pleaded, bless me, Father, she pleaded. Father we are dying, Father Villalba says, breaking off to take in the conglomerate of teenage faces, this squat bald priest with the oval shoes, looking for where his warnings are going. We are on the side of the poor only when we. When we. We are not. We. The news of Father Villalba’s death doesn’t yield widespread consternation. At his funeral, the two old women reappear, placing their tape recorders atop his casket. Which tape should go first? They cannot agree. One of them just starts hers. The other one follows, upping the volume of her artifact. How are we on the side / Christians of the / in a poor world / alongside. A somber old priest next to Antonio dabs his eyes in his handkerchief. He’s not from San Javier. Not from Ecuador, either. A scuffed black trunk, abloom with faded tags, separates him from Antonio. The curled corners of stickers for Vallegrande, La Habana, Valdivia, Ambato have been reattached to the trunk with tape. Former pebbles, crag particles, and hair adhere to what remains of the tape’s adhesive paste. This foreign priest observes Antonio reading his luggage but fatigue seems to preclude him from smiling at Antonio. From telling him about the stickers, places he’s been. There goes the last of them, he says. Father Villalba drives away. Goodbye, father.