Lost in the City: Tree of Desire and Serafin (12 page)

“You're screwed, Román.”

And he left after five warm beers and several more tequilas. Serafín counted them, one by one. He also counted the last one, which he drank while Papá was asleep on the table. And he heard him sing:

“Open the door, my darling,

open, open, open,

I brought you a little something,

nice, nice, nice.”

5

Serafín looked
at the dust on his shoes that, he thought, was already dust from far away. He took a piece of bread with cheese and beans out of his bag and ate it quickly so he would not awaken the old man and have to offer him some. Hateful old man. Then he felt around in the bag until he found a can of juice and drank it, staring blankly through the window. The trees were going by unchanging as if really they were only one, repeated over and over until he was tired of it. Things farther away looked normal by moving more slowly: the adobe houses in the tiny villages, the grazing animals, the human figures with hardly time to strike a pose, like in the game of statues. They passed by, chasing each other without ever catching up.

He finished eating and put the bag near his feet—touching it with his calf—and instantly fell into the deep sleep of an ancient fatigue.

.   .   .

Now it was the cold light of the moon that filtered through his dream and finally awakened him. He opened his eyes and saw it, very low, with its halo of thin clouds. Startled, he sat up and checked on the presence of the bag. At his side, the old man was sitting up very straight, looking wide awake, his profile showing clearly in the gloom, like the edge of a hatchet.

“What happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are we there?”

“No. We're stopped.”

Serafín looked out the window and saw a mass of shadows in the distance, lights blinking off and on in the underbrush, like watching eyes, and the nocturnal movement of the trees. There were small groups of people by the side of the road.

“A wreck,” the old man added without changing his position, without even bothering to look at him. “The bus hit a car. It seems some people are hurt. Everybody got out to look, but it doesn't interest me. All accidents are the same.”

“And . . . very long ago?”

“We've been stopped here for hours.”

“And what about me, Señor?”

“What about you?”

“Was I asleep all the time?”

“You didn't move. I even got close to make sure you were breathing. You never know with the heart.”

“Could you die that way, asleep?” Serafín asked in a tone that combined fear of death with fear of the old man himself.

“You can die any way. I had a friend who died while he was eating, with his spoon in front of his face and his arm up. And I saw a child jump from a chair and when he got to the floor, he was dead.”

“Why?” he asked, pressing up against the window with his head down in his collar, hiding his fear.

“I told you, the heart stops whenever it wants to, right then, because of bad air or bad thoughts. There are thoughts that can stop the heart instantly.”

“And dreams?”

“Dreams are very dangerous for the heart. I've learned to wake up from dreams that would have killed me like lightning.”

Serafín remembered that, when asleep, the old man had really seemed awake, or rather, half dead.

“Is all that true?”

“I never tell lies, child,” he answered, now looking straight at him, with eyes that held the gleam of forged steel and made Serafín huddle even closer against the window.

“Don't talk to me about that anymore.”

“What do you want me to talk to you about?” he asked,
stretching out his bony, clawlike hand. Serafín finally hid himself in his collar like a turtle, and the old man gave him a light knock on the head. “
‘Oh, don't talk to me about that, Señor.' Aren't you a man?”

“Talk to me about something else, Señor. Please.”

“What, does death frighten you?” the man asked coming close with his dark smile and sour breath, like a whiff of hell itself.

“Can you tell me about the accident?”

“I didn't see it because I was asleep, too. But the screams woke me up. There was a lot of confusion. A woman got off to walk around and was almost run over by another bus. Just because she wanted to get close and see. A fat man pulled out a badge and yelled that no one should move until the highway patrol came. The children were leaning halfway out the window. The bus driver was afraid and took off running, but the fat guy with the badge caught him and brought him back, twisting his arm.”

“And now?”

“I think we have to wait for an ambulance. Get out if you want to. You're a child.”

Serafín put on the sweater he was carrying in the bag. He was about to leave his seat when the old man asked with teasing eyes if he should take care of the bag. Serafín rejected the offer with an emphatic “no” and a shake of his head. So the old man, smiling broadly and showing two decayed teeth, reached out his big, bony hand to take the bag. Serafín jerked the bag away with a brusque movement that made it hit the metal edge of the window and produced a noise like broken glass.

“It was a joke, boy, go on.”

Before getting off, Serafín sat in one of the seats in front—almost all were empty—and took out what he was carrying in the bag: the shirt, the clean underwear, the folded pants, the paper sack with the food, some cans of fruit juice, his cup and ball game, and the wooden car. He reached all the way to the bottom and found the tiny plaster virgin that his mother always had near her bed. It was broken in two.

Why did you put that there, Mamá? And what should I do with it now? He held the two parts together and looked at it sadly.

It's the thing that belongs to you most, isn't it, Mamá? One day
you said that you always had it with you. That ever since you'd prayed with your grandmother, you prayed to that virgin. You put it in the bag so you would almost come with me yourself. Why, if you knew it would break and I can't even pray by myself? Remember I can't get the prayers out.

6

He got off
and went to stand at the edge of the highway. Fog dissolved the outlines of everything. People were coming and going, talking quietly, complaining in their looks and gestures, going back to the wrecked car to see what they had already seen, moving around and blowing on their hands, drinking coffee from a thermos bottle. The wind produced the sound of waving stubble.

Serafín went toward the car. There were two people stretched out beside it, a woman covered up to her neck with a coat and a man who was holding up the nails of one hand as if to scratch the air, moving his head from side to side, licking his lips and moaning:

“Enough, for God's sake, enough . . .”

The woman was curled up like a sleeping child. Her hair was a wet, red stain that ran down one cheek to her neck. Her eyes half-open, her lips purple, thick. In the air Serafín heard the same buzzing as when the girl was in the river. Or was it only fear?

A few minutes later, the ambulance arrived with its siren screaming and a red light that tore open the cloak of cold. Serafín moved away and went toward the bus, where he saw the old man get off; the shadows and his loose clothing made him look even more like a scarecrow. He walked with long strides and his head swayed as if it were hung on a wire. He threw a cigarette butt in the air, turning it into a shooting star, and went deep into the underbrush, toward the moon, until the night swallowed him up. Serafín followed him, the dry leaves crunching under his light steps. Where was the old scarecrow going? Impossible not to go find out.

Coming from behind a tree, Serafín saw him from the back standing in the round frame of the moon, his figure lengthened by its light.

“Come here,” he said without turning around.

Serafín took two steps backward. His eyes were like tropical fire beetles.

“Come on. I'm urinating and you'd better do the same, you impudent little snoop.”

.   .   .

Their arrival in the city kept him from staying quiet in his seat. The moon dissolved with an iridescent tranquillity as soon as the first houses appeared. The lights followed each other like a procession of torches, more and more intense. Now he was there, with no way to avoid it. This was the city. He almost stood up in his seat, but the old man pushed him back down.

“You're disturbing me, you stupid brat! You're like a grasshopper.”

The bag fell to the floor with a dry thud, and he imagined Mamá's virgin broken into countless pieces.

“It's the city, Señor,” Serafín said in a calmer voice to make up for his excitement.

“I already know that. But wait to get off.”

Serafín continued watching through the window with the same astonishment, his nose plastered against the glass, smearing it, his eyes huge to take in everything.

The lights finally hypnotized him, making him feel elevated above what he was seeing. He could not move. He knew he should not, because the heavy hand of the old man would subdue him immediately, but in spite of that, or perhaps because of it, something inside him came out as a sigh.

There were the lights below, and not above, him.

As far as he could see, there was the city, as he had so often dreamed it. He saw streets, houses, many things. He flew over buildings, came down in a wide street, and walked in it as if on water, with wings on his feet.

.   .   .

When they got off the bus, the old man told Serafín to follow him. Being in the whirlpool of people was very different from the earlier sensation of being up above. He was lost in a forest of legs, guided only by the old man's high, hunched back.

“Señor, Señor!” the hunched back was hidden behind a column and suddenly, no matter how hard he hurried, he could not see it.

“Come on, hurry, run!”

He began looking in the dizzying gallery of faces for Papá's, as if he were here, about to start back to Aguichapan just as Serafín arrived. Among those crossing like shadows; among those dozing in their seats, their sleep protected by the uproar; among those lining up to buy a ticket; among those on the platform, just about to get on a bus. And if he should find him? How would it seem? And how would Papá react upon seeing him?

“Where are we going?” he dared to ask when they were on a wide street like a raging river.

“To my house.”

They got on a bus that stopped on every corner and had standing room only. Serafín wanted to talk to his father on the phone just as soon as possible. Why had he not done it in the station? Why did he always forget the most important thing? But he had felt so bewildered that he was only now beginning to react. The old man was holding him up by the neck, choking him.

They got off when they got to a park. It was a park with loose dirt and taco stands all around, enveloped in clouds of smoke. The neon lights silvered the dry branches of the trees making them look like phantom watchmen.

“Señor, I need to make a phone call,” Serafín said, pulling on the old man's jacket.

“There are no phones around here.”

“But I need to do it. I came to find my Papá.”

“It's almost midnight. You can talk to him tomorrow.”

“But I want to.”

The old man held his arms up high, waving them around like a large bird.

“Go on then!”

Serafín lowered his head and looked up through his eyelashes.

“I . . . you'll have to dial the numbers for me. I don't know how to read them.”

“I'm not going to dial anything. Understand? It's very late and you're going to wake people up. Tomorrow is as good as today.”

“What if my Papá leaves early in the morning?”

“Where does he live?”

“I don't know.”

“What do you mean you don't know? Where are you going to call him?”

“At a number my Mamá gave me.”

“Show it to me.”

Serafín felt in the pocket of his shirt. He pulled out a wrinkled, yellowed piece of paper and showed it without letting go.

“It's just a name and number,” the old man said, bending over it.

“I have to find him here.”

The old man burst out laughing and threw up his arms again, stirring up the air in the park.

“Stupid brat. And what if he doesn't live there anymore? What if he went to live somewhere else? How are you going to go back? Tell me, how?”

“I don't know . . .”

“Look, tomorrow is another day,” and he put his hand in Serafín's hair and ruffled it up, as if he meant it to be a caress. “We can get up early and call him from a store that's next door to my house. OK?”

“All right.”

“That's more like it. Now we can go to sleep. That bus was hard on my bones.”

7

They entered a narrow, dark alleyway
with water-stained walls and overflowing garbage cans. They crossed a patio with washtubs and clothes hung to dry. The doors were metal, and the few lighted windows gave a murky light. At the end of the patio, the old man stopped and took out a key chain.

“You can sleep here tonight and do whatever you want tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Señor.”

The old man lighted a candle. Its light barely edged around
things, which seemed to float in the darkness—the table, the chairs, a rusty metal bed with a wool spread so tattered it seemed about to come apart, a worm-eaten dresser with a small lace cover on it, and the oval picture of a smiling old lady. In a corner, near the bathroom door, cans and empty bottles and a pile of yellowed newspapers.

“Your house is nice, Señor.”

“It isn't my house. Well, it is now, but before it belonged to a woman called Angustias, who died. These are her things. The lady in the photo was her mamá.”

Serafín went over to see the photograph, which seemed to glow.