Almost Never: A Novel (29 page)

In the midst of this unparalleled merrymaking at the beginning of the year, Doña Telma carried out her household chores with much more enthusiasm than ever before; she cleaned deeply, things that may have seemed insignificant, like each and every leaf of the potted plants. May all dust disappear completely: how many hours a day did it take her? or, how many orders did she have to give her two servants before they fell in step behind her enthusiasm? Her cleaning perfectionism was consonant with her state of grace.

Because she saw herself as an admonishing spirit who was giving her son a lifesaving solution that would hopefully hold for years, Doña Telma strove daily to bring out the shine in her own environment, matching the abundant drive of her son, who came home every night both exhausted and jubilant, full of ideas so brilliant they seemed preposterous, even if any attempt to carry them out would have to be somehow or other elaborated. More and more flashes of genius pouring into an endless spiraling eddy. Unstoppable progress, therefore, as well as money and enlightenment. The mother’s triumph resided in her conviction that Demetrio would live by her side for, hmm, and just when she started thinking about lustrums and decades, a letter landed in her hands, or rather, the lump of a letter: addressee: Demetrio Sordo, and sender: Renata Melgarejo.

Breaking one spell with another, when viewed from a different angle, led to a problematic detour, considering that Demetrio was already on his way and to suddenly stop: a whiff of love—could it be? causing momentary dis-ease, or a favorable concern to which he should give full sway.

After fondling it for nearly three minutes, Doña Telma decided to peruse all that prolix passion. A tentative trespass, however, when it came to opening it. Hesitant or eager or pressingly perverse or tantalizingly slow, and how to proceed without messing things up. Egipto Cavazos, her servant, gave her a useful suggestion, recommending that she use steam to avoid damaging the seal. The need for delicacy in the operation was obvious; so Egipto offered to attend to this detail, and, well, we can imagine his dexterity, not to mention his presumption:
I’ll do it very well. Don’t worry.
Likewise the subsequent resealing, which also had to be precise—of course!, but also secret … In Mexico around the beginning of 1948, there appeared a stamp that said Express Delivery and another that said Ordinary Delivery. The latter, which had existed before, though without the degrading adjective, was what the new stamp wanted to distinguish itself from, though the distinction went unnoticed, for there was none, hence the term “express delivery” was nothing more than a pretense people mostly ignored. In reality there was a difference of less than two or three weeks between one kind of delivery and the other, depending on the distance from the point of origin. In this case Renata used the new service, which was supposed to be faster but wasn’t, for the letter had taken almost two months: from Sacramento to Parras! that is—within the same state! We can imagine the journey: once the letter arrived in Saltillo—this is a guess—it was brought to a halt, perhaps a bureaucratic one, in order to give priority to the most urgent. Nevertheless, a delay of almost two months! Why? Imagine if Renata had sent it by ordinary post, how long would it have taken? One month longer at least? Conclusion: mail service was a nightmare. The so-called ordinary assumed neglect, a leaving-for-later, or merely a dead calm, or outright indifference; as for the express delivery, it was the same—wasn’t it? or maybe acting very deliberately, or imagining the postal workers watching the (ordinary) letters pile up for days in the semidarkness and feeling quite smug about not rushing around, or worse: viewed as a work of found art, or something of the sort. All we have to do is look (with a magnifying glass) at the date it was sent … Ah … We said “with a magnifying glass” because Doña Telma used one but understood little. The handwriting was so bad it looked more like irresponsible scribbles, way-too-small and illegible letters that seemed to have been written in haste and with a whole host of inhibitions. The señora, however, was able to follow a certain amount of logic through the capricious combination of several key words, such as “marriage,” “love,” “loyalty,” “forgiveness,” “children,” “kisses,” “lick,” “mistake,” “come,” “Sacramento,” “I love,” “Renata,” “Demetrio,” “happiness,” and therein potential good fortune.

A plot that abides by defensible sentimental conceits in which the more cramped and illegible the damned scribbles the better intentioned they might be.

Or perhaps it was a stern rebuke, and Renata’s forgiveness came with many demands.

Or a definitive break.

In the meantime, the nervous resealing: Egipto in charge of this challenge. Precise, so as not to spoil the stamp. And so it came to pass, and the next step came that night when Doña Telma told Demetrio:
This arrived for you this morning.
The latter opened his eyes wide. His surprise swelled. Just to see the name of the (promising) remitter: aha: this should be read in private. Therefore, he shut himself in his room and tore the edge of the envelope and read excitedly as he turned each page, and just like Doña Telma, he understood very little. Oh, such grief! At moments, no doubt, the big guy wanted to turn to his mother to help him read that Babel of letters penned with rapid strokes, for he knew that to attempt it alone, it would take weeks to decipher what … let’s see … perhaps with a magnifying glass … Okay!, the only favor he asked of his mother was that she lend him the tool in question, and obviously she had no choice but to look surprised: good actress: her hypocrisy worked. The thing is, the magnifying glass simply magnified the jungle of lines, but … Now it’s time to transpose this whole nuisance to a conversation between son and mother in which the former confessed what we already know and she, once again a good actress, proposed trying to read it herself to see if … Or that they should read it together … An uncomfortable solution, or what other choice did they have … Demetrio agreed to the suggestion, of the joint deciphering, and it now behooves us to sum things up, also to mention the fact that not even together could they … they struggled, interpreted, even favorably: and: the letter—blast it—: impenetrable: why?

“You should go to Sacramento.”

“What about the business … ?”

“You don’t trust your employees?”

“It’s too soon to trust them.”

“If you want, I’ll get Egipto to take your place. As you know, he has worked for me for many years; I trust him completely. He’s never stolen even one penny from me.”

“Well, okay, I hadn’t thought of that, but …”

“Go! Now! Go claim that woman.”

A heat-of-the-moment push. Spritely automatism. Blossoming illusion, leading to a hubbub of fits and starts: Egipto, Egipto!, a serious man with a brash mustache. Serious—let’s hope!—and (according to Demetrio) an honest skinflint … with a future? Faith, trust, and then a trickle of only good things; thereby AGREED, and that was the end of it … Doña Luisa’s excellent suggestion, as she smilingly caressed her enormous offspring’s arm, right along his bicep. And now let’s excerpt the most outstanding part of the conversation: knowing full well that the poor handwriting had prevented them from getting to the bottom of the sweetheart’s story, his mother ventured to make a crucial suggestion: if Demetrio resolved to go to Sacramento he could kill two birds with one stone: once and for all he could propose marriage to the green-eyed gal and on his way through Monclova he could buy the engagement ring. As abrupt as an avalanche. True, there was the ring size: hmm: he had a model close at hand: Doña Telma’s ring finger: such parity, perhaps a bit bigger or a bit smaller, for—naturally!, rarely did a woman have fingers as fat as a man’s; so no point in taking measurements, all he had to do was take his mother’s wedding ring in a box and purchase one of a similar size. The señora heard as much and immediately took off the ring, then searched among her baubles for a box. She found one right away. Ready! and:
When are you planning to go?:
first things first: instructions for Egipto. Introduce him to the young employees of the pool hall: Liborio and Zacarías. The daily accounts, the liabilities and the assets. Careful with the suppliers! Demetrio would be gone for a week, more or less. In addition to all that, his mother posed a large question:
Would you like me to go with you?,
then added that if Renata accepted his proposal of marriage, she would go to formally ask for her hand, et cetera and et cetera. We repeat: all as abrupt as an avalanche, to which Demetrio agreed with an obedient nod, for his anxiety eased when he let himself be guided. Two days of activity: fine-tuning the arrangements: at the pool hall, mostly, for Egipto Cavazos’s eventual leadership carried a certain degree of risk and for the very reason you’ve already guessed: sleight-of-hand theft, chaos, lack of authority: you choose and decide which. And now let’s turn to his mother’s concerns as far as the domestic and temporary regency of the young maid, named Gonzala. That the poor dear would receive a bundle—not too thick—of bills for daily expenses. That if she had any problems, Egipto was at hand. As for the rest: throw caution to the wind! Embrace uncertainty, not without first placing oneself in the hands of God and a troupe of saints. Then the accord between mother and son: they wouldn’t take the pickup, better to go as usual by train. Hers was an order, not a suggestion. Here too you can choose the reason why we saddled Doña Telma with this one. One reason we’d like to propose is safety. Anyway, we can already picture them seated and in motion. Nobody should be surprised that his mother spoke in torrents as if she were dictating a script to her son, all about what he should say to Renata. Then came the chore of memorization … Well, let’s state explicitly that Demetrio softened up because it served his purposes.

The purchase of the ring in Monclova, gold-plated to impress the green-eyed gal, one that really shone, even though it looked a bit like a cheap trinket.

Deceit, when all is said and done. A major expense, which Demetrio hastily paid with arrogant pride.

Next came the virgin voyage on the dirt road.

For the first time the mother and son rode the bus from Monclova to Ocampo. Sacramento was the seventh stop out of a total of fourteen towns. A distance of twenty-seven miles.

And …

“I’m certain you will marry Renata. I have prayed for this to happen as soon as possible.”

Certainty breeds generosity.

N
o, no, innocent displays of impudence just wouldn’t do, something like wholeheartedly shouting out his beloved’s name from the bench until he saw her emerge quite dignified from her house to meet her beloved, or bringing a fairly showy bouquet of flowers and lifting them up and holding them aloft for a quarter of an hour, or a bit longer. Let’s just suppose Demetrio stretched his arms up as high as possible to show off that cumbersome bundle: you can judge for yourself what a sacrifice, what a show of repentance, but the former as well as the latter were ruled out. Better to come up with a single amorous maneuver: the most prudent one: send a messenger boy with a note, something like this written on a piece of paper:
I beg you a thousand times to forgive me for having licked the back of your hand.
Also ruled out. What’s the point of humiliating oneself if every humiliation is still an extravagance. Another option would be for him to sit on the bench for hours and hours until Renata came out dressed to the nines. When Doña Zulema made the “hours and hours” suggestion, Doña Telma pointed her index finger at her as if the beginning of the correct answer were about to be divulged; Demetrio, in the meantime, looked surprised. The trio had been speculating about possibilities for how the suitor would present himself, something that would be touching, but above all discreet, no blatant displays, and, well, right when the “hours and hours” idea came up, Doña Telma shot a mischievous glance at her son, then proposed the following:

“It wouldn’t be such a bad idea for you to spend the night on the bench, in the event that Renata doesn’t come out to see you … You shouldn’t call to her or write anything, just arrive and settle yourself in. You’ll see, your silence will be your triumph … What’s more, it would be good for you to bring your suitcase as if to say that you plan to stay there until she comes to you, even if it takes one or two days, and nights, or more. Just remember, if you send her a message you’ll spoil everything.”

Obedience—just like that? without a hint of recomposing. Hrumph, sleeping outside wasn’t that bad, although … In 1948 in Sacramento there was only one policeman, and he had a pistol but no uniform; a sixty-something señor who wore a cowboy hat instead of the official cap. A fetid cubicle, fifteen by fifteen, located in back of the council house, had been used only twice as a jail cell, when the then-fifty-something señor recruited four volunteer deputies to trammel just one prisoner in said cubicle. We bring up these two incidents because both times the confinement lasted one night and was due to a minor infraction: spending the night on the bench in the plaza. Both were outlanders who couldn’t find anywhere better to sleep and had planned to leave at the break of day. A crime, though—which one? This was brought up by Doña Zulema, who went on to say that for ten years nobody had been incarcerated, not even for more weighty infractions. So, Demetrio need not be concerned about sleeping in the spot previously suggested. He might be reprimanded by the policeman (now in his sixties), but that’s all. A reprimand without consequence—right? a tenuous prohibition, that’s all; moreover, Sacramento was so peaceful that the only dubious deed could be the commotion the bees made when they built their hives, to wit: a stinging attack if some birdbrain dared venture near where they labored. Such was Doña Zulema’s hyperbole, wishing (in addition) to make herself agreeable. Bear in mind the look in her eyes, just like in Doña Telma’s, which was to push Demetrio to “not think so much, just do it,” because he—oof!—with his yeses and his nos … It’s just that, how long would he have to stay on the bench? And he wouldn’t be able to change his clothes, or bathe … Then: would they bring him food?