Caramelo (21 page)

30.

A Poco—You’re Kidding

      E
leuterio was finishing a boiled egg and the heel of a toasted
bolillo
when he read his son’s letter. The shock proved so great, he suffered
un fuerte coraje
, that national syndrome known as a terrible rage, and on October 12, 1921, he was declared dead from a cerebral embolism. Because it isn’t the custom in that country to embalm the dead, Eleuterio’s corpse was simply displayed in the living room in his best suit, a black rosary laced in his hands, four candles lit at each corner, and on his belly a fan of red gladioli, the collective gift of his wife’s flea market customers.

This next part of the story I know sounds as if I am making it up, but the facts are so unbelievable they can only be true. The room was filled with the respectful murmur of a novena when Eleuterio’s niece let out a shriek like a dagger. Everyone thought she cried from grief. —What a good girl, that one, you can see she loved him the best. But it was because of what she noticed when she kissed the corpse good-bye. —He’s still warm! Look, his eyelids are twitching! It was true, even in death something behind his eyelids seemed to dance as nervously as it had when he was alive. —
Virgen Purísima
, he’s alive!

Immediately the doctor was summoned, the body moved to a bed, and all the hangers-on and relatives were first politely and then rudely requested to leave, because by now there were a lot of curious people about, neighbors and those walking down the street to see what they could see,
metiches
, busybodies,
mirones
, oglers, and
mitoteros
, liars/gossips/storytellers/troublemakers all rolled into one. These the doctor ordered out. Then with a stiff brush and rubbing alcohol, the doctor scrubbed Eleuterio back to life.

Little by little the body began to regain its color, and little by little Eleuterio Reyes began to breathe normally; accordingly, the doctor amended his final diagnosis from cerebral embolism to a cataleptic attack. Everyone was overjoyed, and a bottle of
rompope
was opened and glasses of that thick rum eggnog passed around.

It was an exuberant moment, perhaps the only epiphany in that decade of deprivations, until it was discovered that God had a wicked sense of humor.

Eleuterio was only half alive. Only the right half of his body awoke from the dead. The left half remained as sleep-filled as the day of his wake. From then on Eleuterio dragged himself about the apartment with a cane and mumbled a curious language made up of grunts, gestures, and spit that no one but Soledad could understand.

That evening the family celebrated Eleuterio’s half-resurrection. Then all the blood relatives signed a will. I, so and so, do hereby request that upon death I have my veins opened, or have my heart stabbed with a hat pin, or both, before burial to avoid being buried alive in the sad event I have inherited Eleuterio Reyes’ rare and unfortunate condition, et cetera, et cetera. Something like this, more or less, because that paper was lost among all the other items of no consequence that no one can remember exactly and no one can entirely forget.

31.

The Feet of Narciso Reyes

      A
ll his life Narciso never knew what was happening to him when it happened. As if his life was a pair of dice, and the world a cup that shook him about and let him drop at odd moments. Only after the rattling and rolling did he realize what numbers life had cast him. That is how it was love flourished without his being aware of it. He had only to feel the sharp pain in his chest to be reminded he was alive. And love is like that, too, constantly reminding us with its sharp delights and sharp pains, that we are, alas, alive.

When Narciso came home, Regina took one look at him and realized her baby was gone. In his place was
un fanfarrón
, a young peacock, a man with glints of the boy gleaming here and there, now and then, depending on the angle or the light. His neck was thick and powerful, there was a buoyant spring to his walk now, and his body had grown taut and strong. But there was something else. Something throbbing in his eyes, or perhaps something no longer there. He had that look people have when they’ve experienced a disappointment in life.

Why do people delight in inflicting bad news? Even before Narciso’s train pulled into Mexico City, a telegram from his Chicago cousins arrived that promptly and joyously reported his jilting. A pain wheezed from that little wound above the little wound—the hole in his heart where Narciso had once harbored
la negrita
Tompi.
Ah
, Regina thought to herself,
he has the look of a man deprived of a mother’s love; I’ll fix that
.

Among her other duties, Soledad was now assigned to help keep Narciso clean. Never mind that he had taken care of himself just fine when he had lived in Chicago all those years. Now that he was home, Regina
insisted that Soledad act as his nurse, and Soledad was now obliging with a washbasin and a kettle of hot water she had heated on the stove.

—When they put me against the wall, I thought they’d shot me even before I heard a gunshot, because I felt a little heat trickle out from my body and run down my leg. Only later when I began to stink with fear, because fear stinks, did you know? Only then did I realize it wasn’t blood, but urine.

—You’re lying! Soledad said.

—I swear to God it’s the truth. It’s almost like the story of Adam when God borrowed his rib to make Eve. They had to saw through three of my ribs, put your hand here. That’s what they did to get to the lung that collapsed, because that’s what happened to me, Narciso explained.

—What a barbarity! And is it true you can never swim anymore?

—Never, Narciso said, hanging his head and pretending to feel sorry for himself.

Narciso’s displays of sadness only endeared him to his nurse. Such a helpless thing, and with eyes as tender and dark as
café de olla
, as if at any moment he was about to cry. He looked sadder than she remembered him. More alone. This made him even more attractive. Sweet, Soledad could not help noticing, and those feet—too small for a man.

Such delicate feet! Soft as doves, as pale as the behind of a nun, luminescent as the wings of moths under the nacre moon, as delicately veined as marble and as transparent as a teacup. Once they had been smooth as river stones, but now they were calloused like her own.

—Corns, Narciso explained. —Up north I had to work
como un negro
.

Which is to say he worked very hard. The truth, the corns were from dancing the Charleston all night, not from hard labor.

In that instant Soledad’s heart flooded with pity. She wanted to bless those feet with kisses, caress, cradle, bathe them in milk. But as always, she was afraid of her feelings and simply said, —You’ve got hooves like a girl’s. This was meant as a compliment but taken as an insult.

Narciso Reyes let out a laugh as if he was used to being ridiculed. The girl Soledad brought out strange feelings in him. He remembered the first time he’d felt like this, a long time ago that first day he talked to her, on the stairwell of her Aunty Fina’s. He had tried to comfort her with a kiss, but missed; a crooked kiss of childhood that had landed on her eye, blinding her a little. They’d been kids. And now here she was all filled out
with a nice little behind and a sweet bounce in her blouse every time she moved. He’d show her a thing or two he’d picked up in Chicago.

Then Narciso Reyes tugged Soledad toward him and kissed the woman who would become the mother of his children. In that kiss was his destiny. And hers.

32.

The World Does Not Understand
Eleuterio Reyes

      E
ven with a lifetime of experiences, life takes one by surprise. So Eleuterio Reyes was astonished not only to have died but to be alive again and to have his only child at his bedside. Here was his Narciso, a little lizard strutting about in a tight suit and patent leather shoes, a red carnation in his buttonhole. He was nothing but a baby-faced dandy, a mama’s boy, a frightened spoiled brat, a snot-nosed kid disguised as a man, crying real tears, promising on his knees, —I’ll do anything you say, Father, name it, just don’t die on me again.

What else could Eleuterio do but laugh, since any words he tried to speak came out sounding like gargling. He laughed, then—a hacking fit that frightened his relations into thinking he was having another attack. Because he no longer had a language to explain himself, Eleuterio’s laughter arrived at what appeared to be odd moments. The family thought him a little senile since his resurrection, though inside that sluggish sea of body, he was stranded on an ice floe, hopelessly alert.

Fortunately, Eleuterio Reyes retained his ability to play the piano, if only with his right hand, and this perhaps saved him from jumping off a church tower. He composed some uncomplicated, entertaining pieces, and it was here he found solace from the world that did not understand him. His music was quick, elegant, lithe, and as overly romantic as ever. It didn’t matter if he wasn’t. With the gentlemanly manners of another era, a pencil, and imagination, Eleuterio Reyes composed several waltzes that revealed, if anyone had taken the time to listen, how explicitly naive and
youthful he still was. The soul never ages, the soul, ball of light tethered to that nuisance the body.

Eleuterio Reyes was trying his best to rise from the ashes of his near-death, and the Mexican nation was doing the same. So it happened that Narciso returned at a time when Mexico City was busy with balls, benefits, and fundraisers, as if reconstruction began by filling a dance card. Who could blame the citizens? Men were tired of jumping over dead bodies. Women were sick of grieving. The city, like its troops, was exhausted, sad, and dirty, disgusted with seeing ten years of things they wished they hadn’t seen, ready to forget with a
fiesta
.

In the decade of war, Mexico City had cheered a great confusion of leaders. The morning that Madero marched triumphantly into the city, the citizens shouted
vivas
. When the Ten Tragic Days ended and Huerta assumed power, the church bells rang and high masses were said in his honor. A short time later, when Huerta fled, they rang again as if to say, —Good riddance. Women stood on balconies throwing kisses and flowers to the victorious Villa and Zapata,
^*
who marched in like caesars, and the city whooped again when it was Carranza, and just as sincerely for his rival, the one-armed Obregón. It wasn’t that they were fickle. It was peace they were welcoming, not leaders. They’d had enough of war.

For Regina the war had meant an opportunity at finding her true calling. As in all wars, those who flourish are not the best people but the most clever and hard-hearted. Regina’s little commerce not only sustained the family through difficult times, but prospered and moved them up a notch in economic status. Now their apartment was packed with enough furniture to make it look like La Ciudad de Londres department store. Narciso had to climb over brass cuspidors, musical birdcages, obscene mirrors bigger than beds, Venetian finger bowls, crystal chandeliers, candelabras, carved platters, silver tea sets, leather-bound books, past paintings of nude chubbies, and portraits of chaste teen nuns taking their vows.

All the beds served as counters for displaying linens, even the one Regina slept in; she simply made a little room for herself at the foot of it, beneath velvet antimacassars, Oriental pillows, fringed draperies of satin and chintz and brocade, towers of embroidered sheets, towels, and pillowslips with monograms of the original owners. Every room was mobbed with furniture in the popular colors of the time, royal reds and purples—a suite of Louis XVI furniture, high-back wing chairs, horsehair
love seats, damask chaises, Queen Isabella carved sideboards, brass beds complete with silk curtains and canopy, caned Art Nouveau settees and Victorian chairs.

On the hour a variety of fragile clocks chimed, some with dancing figurines, some with cuckoos, some with a few notes of a popular waltz, like an aviary of noisy birds. Fringed piano shawls, carved wooden trunks, punched-tin lanterns, musical instruments, fluted glassware, engraved cigarette cases, crocheted bedspreads, hand-painted fans, plumed hats, lace parasols, dusty tapestries, ivory chessboards, gilt sconces, bronze and marble statuettes, gilded vitrines, Sèvres china chamber pots, glazed urns, silverware and crystal and porcelain, jewel inlaid boxes, lacquered Chinese screens, Aubusson carpets, zinc bathtubs, and, under glass domes, tortured saints, weepy madonnas, and pudgy baby Jesuses. More is more. It was a style of decorating that was to figure prominently in this and succeeding generations of the family Reyes.

—Look how we live now, son. Like kings!

—You mean like Hungarians, Narciso said.

—What are you saying, my life?

—I said
precioso
, Mother.

When Regina had instructed Narciso to take off his shoes on entering the apartment, he’d thought she meant it so as not to disturb his father, but then realized it was to save wear and tear on the carpets and furnishings.

—Be careful. Everything’s for sale, Regina said.

All day people knocked on the door to deliver items or to take them away. Indians arrived with
ayates
, slings strapped around the forehead and hanging on the back, and with this they were able to carry away items ten times their weight, just as Regina’s daddy had once done. Under monstrous loads, humble as worker ants, they ambled off to deliver an armoire or a couch or a bed at a given address. Regina did better business than El Monte de Piedad, the national pawnshop. The desperate came to pawn their inheritance. Quite a few left welted by an ugly lash of bad words or in the misery of tears, and some of these were men!