Dr. Brinkley's Tower (27 page)

When the meal was over and the dishes cleared away, Francisco noted that his father was peering at him with a mixture of pride, empathy, and, if Francisco wasn't mistaken, impishness.

— Ready, mijo?

— Ready?

— Sí. Get your jacket.

Father and son walked through the streets of Corazón de la Fuente. Each had a tall, sturdy frame and a deliberate stride, and it was obvious to anyone who didn't know them that the two men shared the same lineage. All around were families cooking meals over low, smouldering fires, and as they walked they were approached by a dozen beggars, all trying to sell them Chiclets. Francisco the elder bought a few packets and then waved the rest away.

— Francisco, he said to his boy. — I would like to talk to you about Violeta.

Francisco sighed.

— Mijo. I know that you love her because, like you, she
has a certain solitary, pensive nature. Of course, there is also her extreme beauty.

— Sí, papi.

— Yet she also has an unattainable quality. Did it ever occur to you that maybe it is precisely this quality that you find irresistible?

— I don't understand.

— Francisco. Your mother died of typhus when you were ten years of age.

The two men walked in silence for a few strides. When Francisco Senior again spoke, his voice was rendered shaky by sadness. — I wonder if your concept of love for a woman is a love that cannot be returned. Could it be that you yearn for the type of love that you have for Violeta because it feels like something you know too well already? Because it feels like something you've known since you were a boy?

The two men stopped and faced one another.

— Mijo, added the older Francisco. — We Ramirezes are faithful men. Loyalty runs through our veins as surely as blood. Once our affections are stirred, nothing will dim them. That is the reason I have yet to so much as glance at another woman. It is both our curse and our noblest feature.

Francisco now saw that his father had led him to the door of Carlos Hernandez's cantina. Confused, he returned his gaze to his father's slender face.

— Hijo. Today you have reached seventeen years of age. It is my greatest wish that you have a drink of tequila with me.

Francisco was hit by a wave of emotion so fierce that, had it not been for the rules governing the behaviour of men, he might have permitted his eyes to mist. Instead he straightened,
appreciating what his father had managed to do: momentarily replace his heartache with a moment far more significant.

— Of course, he managed.

Things were slow in the cantina. Now that the locals had run out of tower money, most of Carlos Hernandez's business was conducted via the back door, through which he sold measures of pulque to anyone with a few centavos and a valorous liver. Hearing the saloon door swing open, the cantina owner, who was reading a newspaper at the bar, looked up.

— Well, look at that, he said. — A pair of Franciscos! To what do I owe the pleasure?

— Hola, Carlos, said Francisco Senior. — I believe you know my son.

— Of course. Hola, Francisco.

— What you may not know is that it is his seventeenth birthday today, and I would like to commemorate the occasion with the finest tequila that you have in the house.

— Be careful when you say that! I have a few very good bottles that I keep on hand for when the hacendero comes in. And as you know, he has expensive tastes.

— I understand that, primo. I have been preparing for this day for quite a while.

— Well, in that case, welcome.

The cantina owner reached below the bar and fumbled around for a few seconds. When he straightened, he held a bottle half-filled with amber liquid.

— One hundred percent agave, and the best that the grand state of Jalisco has to offer. I tell you what, Francisco. I'm in the mood for a drink myself. If you will tolerate my company, we'll call it my gift to the young man.

During the ensuing ten-minute discussion, in which Carlos Hernandez and Francisco Ramirez Senior argued over who would pay for the tequila, Francisco looked around, noting the ways in which the room matched the one he'd conjured a thousand times in his imagination: the rings on the tabletops, the bullet holes in the ceiling, the dull, settled-in scent of smoke. There were still charred marks on the wide-planked floor, a souvenir from the night in which a unit of Villistas had set the place on fire. As with all Mexican cantinas that served only men, the pissoir was in the main room, attached to the west-facing wall. Even Carlos's wife, the previously cheerless Margarita Hernandez, was said to enter the family business only during times of extreme necessity.

A compromise was eventually reached. Francisco the elder would pay for the first round, the cantina owner for the second. Carlos poured the tequila into three large snifters. When Francisco went to take a sip, his father tapped his arm and said: — Not so fast. This isn't the rotgut you and your amigos swill up at the mission. First, hold the glass up to the light and admire the colour.

Francisco lifted his glass so that it was directly between his nose and one of the kerosene lamps.

— Look closely, interjected Carlos. — Whereas you probably first thought it was simply the colour of honey, you will notice a tone of buttercup yellow around the edges, suggesting that this tequila has been aged patiently, under the most tender conditions, rendering it a colour closer to spun gold.

— Sí, said Francisco. — You're right.

— Now, said Francisco's father. — Smell it.

Expecting his nose to be singed by alcohol fumes, Francisco gave the beverage a cautious sniff.

— Ay no, said the cantina owner. — Don't be shy. It won't bite. Stick your nose right inside your glass and let its scent do the work.

Francisco did as he was told, his eyes widening with surprise. — Dios mío, he exclaimed.

— Exactamente! Now, exactly what do you smell?

Francisco sniffed again and thought hard. — Straw, he said. — And avocado.

— Cómo no? said the cantina owner.

— And cactus blossoms.

— Anything else?

— Mesquite, suggested Francisco's father. — And oregano.

— And creosote, said the cantina owner. — With a whiff of cilantro.

— And one other thing, said Francisco's father, taking another deep sniff. — Something I can't quite place.

— Sí, said Francisco. — I smell it too.

— May I give you gentlemen a hint?

— I think you might have to, Carlos.

— Perhaps a little … dulce de leche?

— Sí! father and son exclaimed simultaneously. — Dulce de leche!

All three lifted their glasses, taking the most reverential of sips. For Francisco, the taste was as gentle as the cool, woodsy breezes that follow a Coahuilan downpour … breezes that, for a short time, make you forget that México is a place of dust and hot weather.

— Mijo, said the cantina owner, contentedly twiddling his moustache. — Do you like it?

— Sí, said Francisco. — I do.

— Of course you do. It is the taste of México, captured in a glass.

Father and son stayed in the cantina for a good long time, and several more rounds of tequila. This was unfortunate. After the elating effect of the first two tequilas began to wane, Francisco Senior, hardly a drinker by nature, made an age-old mistake: he attempted to resurrect it with a third tequila, and then a fourth. By the time they were midway through their fifth, Francisco's father had begun to pine terribly for his wife. Songs she'd liked began running through his head, and he imagined he could smell her perfume mixed in with the other smells in the bar.

But the more affected was Francisco Junior, who was beginning to make an elementary discovery about amor. Just because you may understand why you love a person doesn't make that love any less potent. If anything, insight only strengthens the infatuation, as it gives it shape, a reason for being, and proof of its existence. It was a little like seeing a phantasm for the first time: what used to be an ephemeral belief is transformed into fact. He began to recall the feel of Violeta's lips on his own, and the way his heart thrummed every time he was in her presence. Simultaneously the room began to rotate, inspiring a turbulence in his stomach that was not at all pleasant.

Francisco excused himself. Walking unsteadily, he went
outside and found a path to the desert behind the cantina, where the sound of his retching soon mixed with the whir of car engines. It was a Saturday night, and even as Francisco lost the birthday meal he hadn't wanted in the first place, gringos were streaming across the narrow bridge between nations, following the brilliant green corona as determinedly as bees in a quest for honey.

One of these was a Texan named Edward Phillips, who had driven over that night in a Chevrolet the size of a small yacht. He had undergone the Compound Operation four days earlier and was eager to test the efficacy of the procedure. Following a team of grubby-faced children to the House of Gentlemanly Pleasures, he left his vehicle in the car park that Madam now operated in a stretch of desert west of the radio tower. He tipped the children, paused to admire the green hues rippling through the sky, and joined the lineup of men leading to the brothel's door. In the queue, Edward Phillips steadied his nerves by drinking cans of Moctezuma beer, purchased from a campesino who referred to him as
meester.

Finally he gained entrance to Madam Félix's infamous bordello. He was shown to the waiting room, where he drank a pair of tequilas in quick succession and smoked an above-average Cohiba. He was then invited to the room of Maria del Alma, who attended to him in such a way that his fingertips blazed and his heart palpitated and his mind erupted with colour. After, he was shown back to the waiting room, where he decided to toast the success of the Compound Operation with another tequila. With his blood thus enriched, he asked for another go, and was ushered this time to the chamber of Maria de la Noche, who introduced him to pleasures so
profoundly diabolical he decided, in mid-act no less, to devote the rest of his life to hedonistic pursuits.

This was no small moment in the life of Edward Phillips. Until that moment he had made his living as a small-town pastor, and had dedicated his life to a certain austerity of the flesh. To celebrate his decision to spend eternity in hell, he elected to enjoy yet another tequila before getting behind the wheel of his car, his level of inebriation such that he forgot to turn on his headlights. He swerved through the darkened streets of Corazón de la Fuente, his side mirror casually glancing against adobe facings. After a minute or two he realized that he was lost. He responded by using the Lord's name in vain, laughing giddily at his own heresy, and speeding up. In so doing, he unwittingly cruised away from the bridge leading to his own country, instead of towards it. This mistake inspired a small degree of panic.

By the time he reached the plaza containing the Pozo de Confesiones, he was moving at forty-five miles per hour. Furthermore, he was still badly distracted by thoughts of carnality and sin and the new life he had pledged to pursue. Or, failing that, he figured he would indulge his newly debauched self whenever he was on Mexican soil, a strategy employed by legions of family men who had confessed their sins to him over the years. Edward Phillips chortled.
If you can't beat 'em
, he thought,
you might as well join 'em
, for truth be told there were things about his life on the other side that he wouldn't mind hanging on to, foremost among them being his wife's peach melba, decent golf courses, and the shining faces of his children.

Unfortunately, he was so preoccupied by the theological debate now raging within him (asceticism versus experience;
contemplative pleasures versus pleasures of the flesh; knowledge of things godly versus a surrender to things earthly) that he didn't notice that a thin young girl with a twisting of metal in her mouth was, at that exact moment, stepping into the lane in front of him. He also didn't know that her name was Laura Velasquez, that she was engaged to an eighty-eight-year-old molinero named Roberto Pántelas, or that she'd decided that a walk might take her mind off the fiddle music ceaselessly transmitting through her braces. As his headlights were off, he also couldn't see that the poor girl was caressing both temples, and had entered the sort of dismayed, self-contained world often caused by low-grade suffering. He did, however, spot her at the very last moment, her face lit by fear, her hands held aloft in useless defence, at which point he was upon her.

There was a scream, though what followed was far more chilling — the sudden cessation of that scream. Phillips, wanting only to escape the Mexican police, sped away. Those within earshot came running from their homes dressed in night-clothes and slippers. Among them was the molinero, who, given the slowness with which he moved, was among the last to reach the scene. But once he did, the crowd parted to let him through. He approached his beloved and slowly worked his way to his knees. He embraced her rag-doll body. Upon hearing her attempt to speak, he put his ear to her mouth.

— Mi amor, she whispered. — Forgive me.

— Forgive you? he whispered.

— I should have been more careful …

Laura took a final, shuddering breath and, in that weighted moment, quit the terrain of the living. The molinero opened
his mouth to moan, his anguish preventing the issuance of sound. Tears flowed from his old eyes, forming twin streams over snow-white stubble, until one rolled off his chin and landed on Laura's reddening blouse. He buried his face in her neck, his rickety spine arched against chambray.
Oh, my Laurita
, he finally managed,
not you. Not you, not you not you not you.

His words came in the same rhythm as the rocking of his body, a sight so disturbingly sad that many of the onlookers began to weep themselves, for they all understood that they had just witnessed the termination of not one life, but two.