She would live with us for the rest of her life. She would know my children and, entirely by touch, my grandchildren, because, Francisco, she would say to me when she was old, these eyes of mine can’t see anymore.
She had worn them out seeing me grow up.
Two years after we moved, when I was nine years old, the nostalgic adventurer that Nana Pola was, she discovered that, among the performances in the pavilions of Monterrey, Marilú Treviño and Soledad Betancourt would appear on the same day.
“Want to come with me, Francisco?”
I gladly accepted. I had grown up with their stories and their songs, with their voices in my ears, and it had been a long time since I had seen them last in Linares.
My mama gave us money, and we went on the bus. When we arrived, we bought tickets valid for the whole show, though Nana Pola warned me that we would have to return home by eight.
“Why?”
“Because it’s when the good-for-nothings come out.”
Those good-for-nothings sounded interesting to me, but I’d learned not to insist when it was obvious the battle was lost before it had begun. Nana Pola had declared, with an authority that seemed to emanate from the Ten Commandments, that we wouldn’t see the good-for-nothings, and that was that. Intelligent boy that I was, I recognized that all I would achieve by being foolish was Nana Pola saying to me, Well, in that case, we’ll just go now, without seeing anything.
Thinking that the time would go too quickly, but resigned to the limit imposed, I followed her to our seats on a bench.
First Marilú Treviño would appear in the marquee, and then, after the jugglers and the magician, Soledad. I only managed to see Marilú. We even had to leave before she finished her evening repertoire, compelled by the people around us.
“Señora, take that screaming boy away—we can’t hear a thing.”
Compelled or not, I was relieved to go, to escape the notes of those songs, the depth and lightness of that familiar, gifted voice. I refused to explain or to wait for Soledad Betancourt to take her turn.
“I want to go home now, Nana.”
Now I realize how disappointed my nana Pola must’ve felt to miss the rest of the show and how much she must’ve regretted not inviting the neighbors’ nana, the only friend she had made so far in Monterrey.
“The jugglers are next, Francisco. Then there’s the magician,” she persisted, trying to persuade me, with those vaudeville acts, to stop crying.
But I, who hadn’t even cried when I woke from my concussion with a broken rib, did not want to stop. And not only that, but the more she asked me not to cry, the more I clung to my sobbing and even enjoyed it. I was convinced that I had every right to throw my tantrum. I, who when I woke from my coma, still concussed, confused by my state and by the abruptness of my papa’s departure to heaven—an innocent who didn’t understand that to go to heaven, one first had to die—barely reacted, barely cried when my mama told me.
“Francisco, your papa’s gone to heaven, and he’ll watch over you from there.”
“Why?”
I realized it was a question that was hard to answer.
“Because God called him.”
“But he didn’t say goodbye to me, and I lost the .22 he gave me.”
“He did say goodbye. You don’t remember because of the bump, but he did say goodbye, because he loves you very much. And don’t worry about the rifle anymore.”
And that was that. The explanation had been given, and I devoted myself to getting better so I could go back to being the restless boy I was before.
Hence my nana’s confusion: Why was I crying, then? What had made me cry? I didn’t answer any of her questions or any that my mama asked me when we arrived home. I went to bed and didn’t come out for dinner.
Do you know what? Two years before, on the Saturday when we moved, I had gotten up with more energy than ever, ready to live near my sisters and nieces and nephews, excited to find a good school in Monterrey, but even more excited to go there with Simonopio for the first time.
For days I had been talking to him about what we would do in Monterrey: we’d go to the Monterrey Pool to swim, for starters. It was summer, so it would be tolerable to dip our bodies in that water that came from the Santa Lucía Spring and that they dammed for the delight of the city’s inhabitants before letting it continue its natural course toward the Santa Catarina River. It was very close to our house, so we could walk there whenever we wanted. We would take my nieces and nephews, who were afraid of going in because they imagined that, because of the spring, a great underground viper would appear from the water to devour them. For years I had been assuring them that Simonopio would protect us from a thousand and one vipers, no matter how big they were, and this was my chance to prove it.
“You’ll take care of us, won’t you, Simonopio?”
I never waited for an answer, because, believing that I knew it, I considered it said—and I was also in too much of a rush to continue planning our new life to stop and wait. And it was from talking so much that I didn’t notice that Simonopio wasn’t contributing so much as a yes or a no to the conversation.
That it was a monologue and not a dialogue.
Then the Saturday morning of our departure arrived. We had to get in the car that would take us to the railway station. And Simonopio didn’t show up. And my mama said to me, Come on, Francisco. And I said to her, No, not without Simonopio. And Simonopio was nowhere to be seen. And neither was Nana Reja. And the rocking chair had disappeared with them. And in Simonopio’s shed, there was nothing left of him or his bees. And even the little mountain of crystallized honey that had formed in one corner over the years had disappeared.
Then I realized. And then I accepted it: Simonopio had gone and taken everything. Everything, except me.
I went back to the car, and we left that place forever. I would’ve liked to have told you that I left calmly and obediently, that I didn’t say anything during the entire journey, because boys are brave and they don’t cry. The truth, because I’m too old to hide things now, is that Martín had to run after me. I didn’t get very far down Reja’s road, because I was blinded by tears and short of breath due to the continuous scream that could not manage to transmute into the two words that whirled around in my head.
Forgive me: it’s not true that I returned to the car. To say that would imply that I did so voluntarily, but no. Martín took me back there. He carried me all the way in spite of my flailing legs. I think I would’ve bitten him like a wild animal had I not continued with my screaming. He put me—kicking—in the car and then the train.
My mama tried to calm me down. But anything she said was futile; I wasn’t listening. I couldn’t and I didn’t want to. I didn’t want comforting or explanations, because there were none. I think I was still looking around me, then, in the hope that Simonopio would arrive at the last minute. I think that, despite all the evidence, deep down I still believed it was impossible that Simonopio had abandoned me. When the train started up without him, I clutched my chest. When the train’s wheels began to turn, all hope died.
And with the strength of my chest, and perhaps also my stomach, I contained my sobbing. And the contained sobbing turned into nausea. I vomited all the way. I vomited so much and for so many days that my poor mama thought I’d die. And I did, too, but boys don’t cry, and how proud I felt that I would sooner have a brush with death than allow myself to live crying over him, missing him, remembering him, talking about him.
It was a trick; saved-up tears come out sooner or later, and mine came in an explosive crying fit that evening at the performances, as I listened to Marilú Treviño sing the same repertoire as ever, the one I’d liked to hear so much in her voice and in Simonopio’s: the songs I’d only ever listened to in my brother’s company. The first notes of the music transported me to giant-height on Simonopio’s shoulders, to warm days swimming in the river, to the toads that croaked at nightfall, to the summertime cicadas, to the orange-t
ree mazes, to the footsteps of a bee on my face, and to its sound when it flew off. It transported me to his peculiar and beloved smile and to his stories, to the mysterious lessons to which I always enjoyed listening, though I never understood, then to the space in my chest, to the lost rifle, to my papa’s involuntary absence and the premeditated absence of the person I always thought loved me like a brother.
So, from a distance, in his total absence, I punished Simonopio with my silence: my mouth would not utter his name again for years, and slowly but surely, my mind stopped thinking about him, because I made it.
I began to talk about him again, with a nostalgia that outweighed any bitterness I had harbored, when I had my first—and only—girlfriend, during that period of newfound love when one wants to know everything and share everything, without limit.
She asked me about my life in Linares, and I told her, at first trying to create an edited version of events. I spoke to her about my cousins, about their house-turned-school, about Thunderbolt, about the orange wars, the river, the nopal thorns, but none of these anecdotes seemed interesting. They all fell short. I soon realized there was no way to address those themes, to tell the stories well, to inject emotion, if I refused to acknowledge Simonopio’s existence.
Thanks to him, I had anecdotes to tell, and that was the reality that I understood during that exercise in narration. Without Simonopio as a protagonist in the story of my life, there were only loose threads. To talk about Linares was to talk about Simonopio. I accepted, with resignation, that talking about myself, openly and honestly, necessarily meant talking about Simonopio. And it was in talking about him, remembering him, that I realized I’d never forgotten him; that I’d never stopped missing him, though I could never forgive him.
My mama found us talking about her godson one day. She hadn’t heard me mention him for years and hadn’t spoken to me about him, either, sensing that it was a painful subject. She even came to think that her son had forgotten her godson over the years. She was surprised and glad that this wasn’t the case.
Memories are a curious thing: while I always felt fortunate to have a few photographs of my father, they ended up contaminating my memories of him, because I looked at them so much, they gradually replaced the flesh-and-blood man whose body had a smell, whose voice had a timbre, whose hair would ruffle, and whose smile, when he unleashed it, was more contagious than the flu.
In those old photographs, people were almost always captured at a forty-five-degree angle: looking into the distance and never at the camera; always serious; and for some reason, mostly in their formal clothes, in black, with every hair in place.
I kept memories of my papa, sure, but from looking at those cold, impersonal photographs printed on paper, before long I erased his smell from my nose, his voice from my ears, his warmth from my skin, and his face in motion. The wrinkles that formed at the corner of his eyes when he smiled or exerted himself, like when he dug five holes with me for five trees, faded from my mind. I remembered the holes, I remembered the trees, but my papa was always rigid, at a forty-five-degree angle, like the image recorded on paper.
Forgetting him in this way was very painful, especially during my teenage years, when I felt most guilty for my failure to remember his essence, when I tried to dream up a time machine like H. G. Wells’s—if not to save him, then at least to retrieve him.
We didn’t have a single photograph of Simonopio, though. And like I said, for a long time I refused to think about him. Nonetheless, when I opened myself up to doing so, out of love for my girlfriend or whatever it was, Simonopio remained intact in my memory: his smell, his voice, his warmth, his laughter, his eyes, his gestures when he spoke to me, his songs, his stories, his lessons, his words in that other language I learned from the cradle, his hand when I held it, his back when he carried me, his resignation when he found me wandering, his serene company when I was unsettled.
Life got in the way; routine interrupted me; the years caught up with me. And while I no longer had so much time to spend talking about him, or such an eager listener, I never lost Simonopio. And while, at first, the memory of him was more bitter than sweet, as I became an old man, the bitterness gradually faded.
It took me a long time, but I believe that, with age, I managed to understand Simonopio’s motives for leaving me: What would’ve become of him living in Monterrey? In Monterrey he would have slowly died of sadness, of weariness, of loneliness, of incomprehension.
In Monterrey he would’ve died before he died, like that circus lion he had seen as a boy.
92
A Heap of Masonry
I was born inside this heap of ashlar masonry, plaster, and paint a long time ago—it doesn’t matter how long.
In that time, the stones retained the order the original builder had given them, and one on top of the other and side by side, they formed the home of several generations. Look at them now, just strewn everywhere. When they demolished the house, they did so without consideration for what they might have been destroying with it: anecdotes and smells, memories and echoes.
My essence.
This town became a city and was reinvented, and without giving up agriculture—preserving the oranges that the men of my papa’s time grew there to save the land from strangers’ hands—it was also filled with industry. And so it was transformed, it grew. It became a city, and eventually there was no longer space for the last orchard still within the urban area: La Amistad. The orchard that my papa created from some blossoms that reached him after a long journey.
I suppose the new owner will build a residential or commercial development here. It’s no longer a place for a house built large out of necessity, but also simple, without luxuries or grand adornments. A house without historical value for anyone other than me, the last of the original owners.
I came today believing that I wanted to see it one final time to contemplate the last traces of my childhood, to touch the bricks that protected me when I was a boy, to try to capture, even if just once more, the aromas that had wrapped me up warm and that still define me to this day. I thought I would find it the same, unalterable, and that when I saw it, sitting in its shade, it would be easy to remember everything and everyone. That it would be less painful.
I was wrong. Though this was always the destination—and still is—I did not need to come here to remember. And the memories are as painful here as they were in my house in Monterrey or on the journey today.
They’re painful because they had to be. And I came because I had to.
Contrary to what I had believed, what I came searching for isn’t here, strewn among these ashlar stones. It was never here, because it was always in me, disappearing from this place, from these ruins ever since the day when I left with my mama for Monterrey. Because my papa was right that time when he took up a feather duster as a weapon: houses die when they’re not fed with their owners’ energy. And this house, recognizing no other owners after us, began its slow return to the land on the day we closed my chest, a process that continued when the last bee left its hive, when Nana Reja and her rocking chair turned away, and even more when Simonopio’s presence could no longer be felt.
Without realizing, in that chest in which my belongings traveled and that I always believed to be half-empty, I had packed all my memories. All of them. Intact.
The living house where I was born—the house that has been utterly dead since they knocked it down—gave me everything that defined it when I left. Its stones are strewn about without rhyme or reason, but the machine that finished it off could not destroy its echoes or the clunk of the floor tile or its smells or its nocturnal creaks. Because I took them all with me, just as today I brought with me the smell of the soup that Hortensia prepared before I left my home.
Just like when I was a boy, on my return, as an old man, I brought with me my memories of Simonopio. Complete. Intact.
93
The Future without Him
Since long before my mama’s first pub
lic announcement that our future was to be in Monterrey, Simonopio knew that was how it was and how it would be.
There was a future in Monterrey, but it didn’t include him or Nana Reja, however many times we invited them to share it with us. He knew that, if they agreed to come with us, they would both be slowly suffocated to death in that city that had already tried to squeeze the life from him on his only short visit there. And he knew that, if he went, the story that he had worked so hard to weave would change irredeemably. He knew from the first moment that they would not follow what was left of the Morales Cortés family, and it was from that moment that his heart slowly began to break.
When my mama asked him to help her pack this or that, he did it quickly so he could be back by my side, keeping me company, as soon as possible. I continued to recover faster than my mama thought possible, but slower than was tolerable for me, for while my body healed, my mind was already jumping and spinning. It needed constant distraction to keep me still, and Simonopio provided it because he knew that, without him, I would get bored, I’d be restless, and what was worse: I’d start misbehaving. Simonopio would speak to me about anything except that Saturday of my birthday and the days that followed it, when he had thought me lost even when I was in his arms. I didn’t ask about it, and Simonopio was grateful.
Thinking about that old day was painful, just as every minute of the new days was. Because Simonopio had known since he was little: one day the lion and the coyote would face each other. And the story that the wind, the trees, and the young bees were already telling of that day was one that Simonopio would’ve preferred never to hear, never to know, and most of all never to experience. Life would change, he had predicted since he was a little boy: his own, his enemy’s, mine, his godmother’s, everyone’s, and nothing would ever feel normal again.
And he was right: it had changed for all of us.
The Murmur of Bees Page 40
