Burnt Water (27 page)

U
REÑITA

“What rank did you reach young man?”

“I don't seem to remember.”

“Don't be asinine. Second? Third?”

“Whatever you say, Señor Ureña.”

“Oh yes, Bernabé, I'll be having plenty to say. That's why I'm here. We get knuckleheads like you by the ton here. Well, never mind. That's our raw material. We'll see what we can do to refine it, to make an exportable product.”

“Whatever you say, Señor Ureña.”

“Presentable, I mean. Dialectics. Our friends think we have no history and no ideas because they see dolts like you and they laugh at us. So much the better. Let them believe what they will. That way we will occupy all the history they vacate. Do you understand what I'm saying?”

“No, maestro.”

“They've filled our country's history with lies in order to weaken it, in order to make it putty, then they tear off a little piece and then another and at first no one notices. But one day you wake up and you no longer have the great, free, unified nation you dreamed of, Bernabé.”

“I dreamed of?”

“Yes, even you, though you don't know it. Why do you think you're here with me?”

“El Güero told me to come. I don't know anything.”

“Well, I'm going to make you understand, you simpleton. You are here to assist at the birth of a new world. And a new world can only be born of tumultuous, hate-filled beginnings. Do you understand? Violence is the midwife of history.”

“If you say so, Señor Ureñita.”

“Don't use the diminutive. Diminutives diminish. Who told you to call me Ureñita?”

“No one, I swear.”

“Poor muddlehead. If I wanted I could analyze you blindfolded. This is what they send us. We owe that to John Dewey and Moisés Sáenz. Tell me, Bernabé, do you have a fear of getting buried in poverty?”

“I'm already there, Señor Ureña.”

“You are mistaken. There are worse things. Imagine your poor old mother scrubbing floors, still worse, imagine her streetwalking.”

“You imagine yours, prof.”

“You do not offend me. I know who I am and what my worth is. And I know who you are, shitty
lumpen.
Do you think I don't know your kind? When I was a student I went to the factories, to try to organize the workers, to awaken their radical consciousness. Do you think they paid me any heed?”

“All the way, maestro.”

“They turned their backs on me. They refused to hear my message. They didn't want to face reality. And there you have it. Reality punished them, it avenged itself on them, on all of you, poor devils. You haven't wanted to face reality, that's the problem, you've tried to punish reality with dreams and you've failed as a revolutionary class. And yet here I am trying to form you, Bernabé. I warn you; I don't give up easily. Well, I've said what I had to say. They've vilified me.”

“They?”

“Our enemies. But I want to be your friend. Tell me everything about yourself. Where do you come from?”

“Oh, around.”

“Do you have a family?”

“That depends.”

“Don't be so reticent. I want to help you.”

“Right, prof.”

“Do you have a sweetheart?”

“Could be.”

“What are your ambitions, Bernabé? Trust me. I trust you, don't I?”

“That depends.”

“It may be that the atmosphere here in the camp is too cold. Would you prefer to continue this conversation elsewhere?”

“It's all the same to me.”

“We could go to a movie together, would you like that?”

“Maybe.”

“Remember one thing. I can help you humiliate those who humiliate you.”

“I like that fine.”

“I have books in my home. No, not just books on theory, I have less arid books, all kinds of books for young men.”

“Swell.”

“Are you coming then, you doll?”

“Let's shake on it, Señor Ureñita.”

L
ICENCIADO
M
ARIANO

They took him to meet him after he bit Ureña's hand, they said the Chief fell out of his chair laughing and wanted to meet Bernabé. He received him in a leather-and-oak office with matched sets of red leather-bound books and statues and paintings of erupting volcanoes. He told him to call him Licenciado, the Honorable Mariano Carreón, it sounded a little pretentious to call him Chief the way they did in the camp, didn't he agree? Yes, Chief, Bernabé said, and thought to himself that the Licenciado looked exactly like the janitor at his school, a janitor who wore spectacles, and had a head like an olive with carefully combed hair and lenses thick as bottle glass and a mousy little mustache. He told him he liked how he'd reacted to that obnoxious Ureña, he was an old pinko who was working for them now because the other leaders in the movement said a varnishing of theory was important. He hadn't thought so and now he was going to see. He summoned Ureña and the theorist entered with bowed head, his hand bandaged where Bernabé had sunk his teeth. The Chief ordered him to take a book from the shelf, any book at all, the one he liked most, and to read it aloud. Yes, sir, at your pleasure, sir, said Ureña, and read with a trembling voice
I could not love within each man a tree/with its remaindered autumns on its back,
do you understand any of that, Bernabé? No, said Bernabé, keep reading, Ureñita, as you wish, sir,
till in the last of hovels, lacking all light and fire,/bread, stone and silence, I paced at last alone,/dying of my own death,
keep going, Ureñita, don't swoon, I want the boy to understand what the fuck this culture thing is all about,
Stone within stone, and man, where was he?/Air within air, and man, where was he?/ Time within time
 … Ureña coughed, oh, I'm so sorry,
Were you also the shattered fragment/ of indecision
…? That's enough Ureñita, did you understand anything, boy? Bernabé shook his head. The Chief ordered Ureña to place the book in a huge blown-glass ashtray from Tlaquepaque as thick as his spectacles, put it right there and set fire to it, right now, double time, Licenciado Carreón said with a dry severe laugh, and while the pages blazed he said I didn't have to read any of that stuff to get where I am, who needs it, it would have got in my way, Ureñita, so why would this kid need it? He said the boy had been right to bite him, and if you ask me why I have this library, I'll tell you that it's to remember every minute that there are many books still to be burned. Look here, son, he said to Bernabé staring at him with all the intensity he was capable of behind his eight layers of congealed glass, any dumb shit can put a bullet through the most intelligent head in the world, don't forget that. He told him he was all right, that he liked him, that he reminded him of himself when he was young, that he perked up his spirits and oh, how he wished, he said as he invited him to accompany him in a Galaxy black as a hearse with all the windows darkened so you could look out without being seen, someone years ago had taken an interest in him, someone like himself, they stole the election from General Almazán, synarchism would have taken care of people like them, as they were doing now, don't you worry, if you had had us your life and your parents' lives would have been different. Better. But you have us now, Bernabé my friend. He told the chauffeur to come back about five and told Bernabé to come eat with him, they went into one of the restaurants in the Zona Rosa that a furious Bernabé had seen only from the outside one Sunday, all the majordomos and waiters bowed to them like acolytes during Mass, Señor Licenciado, your private table is ready, this way, what can we do for you, señor, anything at all, I'm putting the Señor Licenciado in your hands, Jesús Florencio. Bernabé realized that the Chief liked talking about his life, how he'd come from the very asshole of the city and with persistence and without books but with an idea of the greatness of the nation, yes that, had got where he was. They ate seafood au gratin and drank beer until El Güero came in with a message and the Chief listened and said bring that sonofabitch here and told Bernabé to keep calm and go on eating. A very cool Chief went on recounting anecdotes and when El Güero returned with a well-dressed paper-skinned man, the Chief simply said good afternoon, Señor Secretary, El Güerito is going to tell you what you need to know. The Chief went on circumspectly eating his lobster thermidor as El Güero seized the Secretary by his tie and mouthed a string of curses, he'd better learn how to treat Licenciado Carreón, he shouldn't get independent and go see the president on his own, everything went through Licenciado Carreón first, didn't the Secretary owe him his job, see? The Chief simply ignored El Güero and the Secretary, he looked instead at Bernabé, and in his eyes at that moment Bernabé read what he was supposed to read, what the Chief intended him to read, you can be like me, you can treat the big shots this way and have no fear, Bernabé. The Chief ordered the remains of the lobster removed and the waiter Jesús Florencio bowed with alacrity when he saw the Secretary but when he saw Licenciado Carreón's face he decided not to speak to the Secretary but instead busied himself with removing the dishes. As they couldn't look at anyone else, Bernabé and Jesús Florencio exchanged glances. Bernabé liked the waiter. He felt as if this was someone he could talk to because they shared a secret. Though he had to ass-kiss the same as anyone, he earned his living and his life was his own. He found out all this because they decided to meet, Jesús Florencio took a liking to Bernabé and warned him, watch out, if you want to come to work as a waiter I'll help you, politics has its ups and downs and the Secretary's not going to forget that you saw him humiliated by the Licenciado and the Licenciado's not going to forget that you saw him humiliate someone the day they humiliate him.

“But congratulations just the same. I think you've bought yourself a winning ticket, buddy.”

“You think so?”

“Just don't forget me.” Jesús Florencio smiled.

P
EDREGAL

Bernabé felt that this was really a place with a name. The Chief took him to his house in Pedregal and said, Make yourself at home, as if I've adopted you, go wherever you want and get to know the boys in the kitchen and in administration. He wandered in and out of the house, which started at the service area on the ground level but then instead of rising descended along scarlet-colored cement ramps through a kind of crater toward the bedrooms and finally to the open rooms surrounding a swimming pool sunk into the very center of the house and illuminated from below by underwater lights and from above by a roof of celestial-blue lead tiles that capped the mansion. Licenciado Carreón's wife was a small fat woman with tight black curls and religious medals jangling beneath her double chin, on her breasts, and on her wrists, who when she saw him asked if he was a terrorist or a bodyguard, if he'd come to kidnap them or protect them—they all look alike, the brown scum. The señora was highly amused by her own joke. You could hear her coming a long way off, like El Güero and his transistor and the Burro and his braying. Bernabé heard her often the first two or three days he wandered around the house feeling like a fool, expecting the Chief to call him and give him some job to do, fingering the porcelain knickknacks, the glass display cabinets and large vases and at every turn bumping into a señora who smiled as endlessly as his father, Andrés Aparicio. One afternoon he heard music, sentimental boleros playing during the siesta hour and he felt languorous and handsome as he had when he looked at himself in the hotel mirrors in Acapulco, he was drawn by the soft sad music but when he reached the second floor he lost his way and walked through one of the bathrooms into a dressing room with dozens of kimonos and rubber-soled beach sandals and a half-open door. He saw a bed as large as the one in the Acapulco hotel covered with tiger skins and on the headboard he saw a shelf with votive candles and religious images, and beneath that a tape deck like the one El Güero had in his secondhand Thunderbird and lying on the skins Señora Carreón stark naked except for her religious medals, especially one in the shape of a seashell with a superimposed gold image of the Virgin of Guadalupe that the señora held over her sex while Chief Mariano tried to lift it with his tongue and the señora laughed a high coquettish schoolgirl laugh and said, Oh no my Lord, no my King, respect your little virgin, and he naked on all fours his balls purple with cold trying to reach the medal in the shape of a seashell, oh my sexy plump beauty, oh my saintly little bitch, my perfumed whore, my mother-of-pearl ringleted goddess, let your own little Pope bless your Guadalupe, oh my love, and all the time the bolero on the tape,
I know I shall never kiss your lips, your lips of burning crimson, I know I shall never sip from your wild and passionate fountain
 … Later the boys in the office and the kitchen told him, you can see the Chief's taken a liking to you, friend, don't do anything to blow it because he'll protect you against whatever comes. Get out of the brigade if you can, that's dangerous work, you'll see. On the other hand here in the kitchen and the office we've got the world by the tail. El Güero walked through the office to answer the telephone and invited Bernabé to go for a ride in the Jaguar that belonged to the Carreóns' daughter, she was in a Canadian finishing school with the nuns and the car had to be driven from time to time to keep it in good shape. He said the boys in the office were right, the Chief sees something in you to adopt you this way. Don't muff the chance, Bernabé. If you get to be one of his personal guard you're set up for life, said El Güero, driving the girl's Jaguar the way a jockey exercises a horse for a race, I give you my word, you'll be set up. The deal is to learn every little thing that's going on and then whatever shit they try to pull you've got a stranglehold on them, you can take any shit they try to pull, unless they shut you up forever. But if you play your cards right, just look, you've got it all, money, girls, cars, you even eat the same food they eat. But the Chief had to study, Bernabé replied, he had to get his degree before he made it big. El Güero hooted at that and said the Chief hadn't gone past grade school, they'd stuck on the Licenciado because that's what you call anyone important in Mexico even though he wouldn't recognize a law book if it fell on him, don't be a jerk, Bernabé. All you need to know is that every day a millionaire is born who someday is going to want you to protect his life, his kids, his cash, his ass. And you know why, Bernabé? Because every day a thousand bastards like you are born ready to tear the guts out of the rich man born the same day. One against a thousand, Bernabé. Don't tell me it isn't easy to choose. If we don't get away from where we were born we go right down the goddamn tubes. We have to get on the side of the ones who're born to screw us, as sure as seven and seven make heaven, right? The Chief called Bernabé to the bar beside the pool and told him to come with him, he wanted him to see the tinted photograph of his daughter Mirabella, wasn't she pretty? You bet she was and that's because she was made with love and feeling and passion and if you don't have those there's nothing, right, Bernabé? He said in Bernabé he saw himself when he didn't have a centavo or a roof over his head, but with the whole world to conquer. He envied him that, he said, his eyeglasses fogged with steam, because the first thing you know you have everything and you begin to hate yourself, you hate yourself because you can't stand the boredom and the exhaustion that comes of having reached the top, you see? On the one hand you're afraid of falling back where you came from but on the other hand you miss the struggle to reach the top. He asked him, wouldn't he like to marry a girl like Mirabella someday, didn't he have a sweetheart? and Bernabé compared the photograph of the girl surrounded by rose-colored clouds with Martincita, who was plain born for misfortune, but he didn't know what to say to Licenciado Mariano, because either way whether he said yes he did or no he didn't, it was an insult and besides the Chief wasn't listening to Bernabé, he was listening to himself thinking he was listening to Bernabé.