Swift as Desire (2 page)

This experience helped Júbilo to discover the power of words for bringing people closer or pushing them apart, and that the important thing wasn’t what was said, but the intention behind the communication. This
sounds simple, but it is in fact very complicated. When Júbilo’s grandmother gave him a message to translate, generally the words didn’t coincide with what she really wanted to say. The tension around her mouth and vocal cords gave her away. Even to an innocent child like Júbilo, it was obvious that his grandmother was making an effort to swallow her words. But, as strange as it sounds, Júbilo heard the silent words clearly, even though they had never been spoken. And he understood that this “voice” that remained silent was the one that truly represented his grandmother’s desires. So Júbilo, without thinking much about it, frequently translated those imperceptible murmurings instead of the words she spoke out loud. Of course, it never crossed his mind to do this to be naughty, just the opposite; his ultimate objective was always to reconcile these two women, both of them so beloved and important to him, to say out loud the magic word that neither of them ever dared to speak, the word that had to do with repressed desires. The frequent disagreements that arose between his mother and his grandmother were a clear example of this. Júbilo had no doubt that when one of them said black, she really meant white, and vice versa.

At his young age, what he didn’t understand was why these two women made their lives, and as a consequence the lives of everyone around them, so complicated, since any argument between them had repercussions on all the rest of the family. There was never a strife-free day. They always found reasons to fight. If one said that Indians
were lazier than Spaniards, the other would say that Spaniards smelled worse than Indians. There was no shortage of arguments, but without a doubt, the most sensitive were those that had to do with the life and customs of doña Jesusa. Doña Itzel had always worried that her grandchildren would be brought up in a lifestyle that, to her way of thinking, wasn’t appropriate for them. This had been one of the main reasons why she had avoided coming to the house in the past. She had wanted to avoid seeing how her daughter-in-law was raising the grandchildren like little Spaniards, but now she was back and was determined to save Júbilo, her favorite grandchild, from the loss of his cultural heritage. So he wouldn’t forget his origins, she was always telling him Mayan stories and legends as well as accounts of the battles the Mayan Indians had been forced to fight to preserve their history.

The most recent was the War of the Castes, an Indian insurrection during which approximately twenty-five thousand Indians lost their lives, and in which as it happened Júbilo’s grandmother herself had played an important role. In spite of the Indians’ ultimate defeat, something good came out of that battle, because later her son Librado was placed in charge of one of the country’s largest exporters of
henequén
—the fibers from an agave plant used for making rope and other materials. He had then taken the unusual step of marrying a Spanish woman.
Mestizaje
, the mixing of races, was not as common in the Yucatán peninsula as it was in other regions
conquered by the Spaniards. During the colonial period, Spaniards had rarely spent more than twenty-four hours at a time in the
encomiendas
, the large royal land grants where the Mayans worked as laborers. They didn’t mix with the Indians and when they married they did so in Cuba, with Spanish women, never with Indians. So the marriage of a Mayan Indian man to a Spanish woman was highly unusual. But for doña Itzel this union represented a danger more than something to be proud of. And the proof lay in the fact that none of her grandchildren, except Júbilo, spoke Mayan, and that they preferred to drink hot chocolate made with milk instead of water. For anyone else, it would be amusing to hear the heated discussions these two women held in the kitchen, but not for Júbilo, because he had to translate for them. On these occasions he had to be even more attentive than usual, because he knew anything they said could easily be interpreted as a declaration of war.

One day the air in the kitchen was particularly heated. A couple of hurtful messages had already been hurled across the room, making Júbilo feel very uncomfortable, especially because the unhappiness his grandmother’s words caused his mother was obvious. Most unbelievable, though, was that neither woman was really fighting about how to make hot chocolate. That was just a pretext. What doña Itzel was really saying was: “Look,
niña
, for your information, my forefathers built monumental pyramids, observatories, and sacred temples, and they knew about astronomy and mathematics way before
your people, so don’t you come trying to teach me anything, especially not how to make hot chocolate.”

And doña Jesusa, who had a sharp tongue, had to repress the urge to counter: “Look, woman, you are used to looking down on anyone who is not of your race, because the Mayans are so great and so wonderful, but they are separatists by nature and I’m not about to put up with that kind of snobbishness. If you disdain me so much, then don’t come to my house anymore.”

Finally the situation grew so tense, and each woman was defending her point of view with such passion, that Júbilo began to fear something terrible would happen. So when his mother, summoning up her courage, said: “Son, tell your
abuela
that I don’t allow anyone to come into my house to tell me how to do things, because I don’t take orders from anyone, especially not from her!” Júbilo had no choice but to translate: “
Abuela
, my
mamá
says that we don’t take orders in this house…well, except from you.”

U
PON HEARING THESE WORDS
, doña Itzel changed her attitude completely. For the first time in her life, she felt her daughter-in-law had acknowledged her rightful position. Doña Jesusa, on the other hand, was taken by surprise. She never imagined her mother-in-law would react to such strong aggression with a peaceful smile. After the initial shock she too responded with a smile and, for the first time since her marriage, she felt accepted by her
mother-in-law. With just a simple change of meaning, Júbilo had been able to give each of them what they had been seeking: to feel appreciated.

From that day on, doña Itzel, convinced her orders were now being followed to the last letter, stopped interfering in the kitchen; and doña Jesusa, confident that her mother-in-law finally accepted her way of life, was able to approach her
suegra
, her mother-in-law, affectionately. The whole family returned to normal thanks to Júbilo’s mediation, and he in turn felt completely satisfied. He had discovered the power of words and, having acted as his family’s translator since his early childhood, it wasn’t too surprising that instead of wanting to be a fireman or a policeman, he expressed the desire to become a telegraph operator when he grew up.

This idea crystallized one afternoon as Júbilo lay in his hammock next to his father, listening to him talk. The Mexican Revolution had ended several years earlier, but all kinds of stories were still circulating about what had happened during the war. That afternoon the topic was telegraph operators. Júbilo listened eagerly to his father. Nothing gave him greater pleasure than to wake up from his compulsory siesta to hear his father’s stories. The tropical heat forced the family to sleep in hammocks installed at the rear of the house, where there was a breeze from the ocean. There, beside
K’ak’nab
, they rested and talked. The gentle rhythm of the waves had carried Júbilo off into a deep sleep and the murmur of conversation brought him back in a delicious ebb and flow. Little
by little, his father’s words intruded upon his sleep and made him aware that he was back at home and that it was time to exercise his imagination. So, setting his tropical drowsiness aside, he rubbed his eyes and devoted himself to listening intently to his father.

Júbilo’s father had just begun telling a story he’d heard about General Pancho Villa and his corps of telegraph operators. It has been said that the importance Villa always gave to telecommunications was one of the key factors in his success as a military strategist. He was well aware that it was a powerful weapon and he was very adept at its use. An example of this was the unusual way he used the telegraph in his siege of Ciudad Juárez. Because of its strategic location, the border city was an important stronghold, and it was very well provisioned. Villa didn’t want to attack the city from the vulnerable position of the open desert, and he couldn’t cross the border for a better approach, so he decided to capture a coal train on its way from Chihuahua to Ciudad Juárez and use it as a kind of Trojan horse. He loaded his troops onto the train and when they reached the first station along the route, they seized the official telegraph operator and replaced him with Villa’s own head telegraph man, who sent a telegram to the
federales
saying: “Villa is pursuing us. What should we do?” Their answer was: “Return to Ciudad Juárez as fast as you can.” And that’s just what Villa’s men did. The coal train arrived in Ciudad Juárez at dawn. The
federales
allowed it to enter the city and by the time they realized that instead of coal the
train was filled with armed men, it was too late. And Villa was able to take Ciudad Juárez with a minimum of bloodshed.

They say a good listener requires few words. All Júbilo needed to hear his father say was, “Without the help of his telegraph operator, General Villa would never have won!” In Júbilo’s mind, the image of the telegraph operator immediately grew to heroic proportions, that unknown soldier whose name no one even knew. If that man was admirable in his father’s eyes, then he wanted to be a telegraph operator, too! He wanted to stop having to compete with his eleven older siblings. They were many years ahead of him, and had done a lot more studying. If his brothers weren’t lawyers, they were doctors; if his sisters weren’t beautiful dancers, they were brilliant thinkers. All of them were loaded with virtues and could claim multiple talents and abilities. Júbilo somehow believed that his father preferred talking to his brothers and sisters than to him, that he liked their jokes better than his, that he valued their achievements over those of his youngest son.

Feeling ignored and wanting to stand out any way he could, he dreamed of being a hero in his father’s eyes, and what better way to achieve that than by becoming a telegraph operator? Júbilo knew he possessed a special gift for hearing and transmitting messages, so the work couldn’t be that hard. He yearned desperately to be a telegraph operator. What did one need to do to become one? Where did one study? For how long? The questions shot
from his mouth like skillfully aimed bullets and the answers came back just as quickly. What excited him most was finding out that to be a telegraph operator, one had to learn Morse code, a mode of communication that very few people knew. Everything was looking great! Since only he would know what was said to him in the messages that he was to transmit, he would be able to translate them in his own way! He could already see himself appeasing lovers, arranging weddings, and ending all kinds of animosities. Without a doubt, he was going to become the best telegraph operator in the world. He felt it from the bottom of his heart. And the proof lay in the way he had repaired the relationship between his mother and his grandmother. Mastering Morse code couldn’t be any more complicated than that. Besides, he felt he possessed a gift. He knew perfectly well that his ability to “hear” people’s true feelings wasn’t shared by everyone. What Júbilo wasn’t then able to see, however, was that his greatest gift would, over the years, become his greatest misfortune, that being able to listen to unrepeatable secrets, wishes, and desires wasn’t as wonderful as it seemed, that being aware of what other people felt at every moment would come to cause him a lot of headaches, and huge disappointments in love. But in that early moment of laughter and happiness, who was going to tell Júbilo that life was difficult? Who could have warned him that he would end up lying in bed, in a near vegetable state and incapable of communicating with those around him? Who?