The Children of Sanchez (66 page)

“What’s the use of getting things, if you let them go to the dogs? You like to live in dirt, okay, let’s live in shit. We’ll see who gets tired of it first. We don’t have much, but at least you don’t go hungry. That’s a boon you have to thank God and me for. Lots of women would be happy just to have a man to lean on; everybody is more considerate to you, just because you are living with a man.

“Possibly you consider me too old. Maybe you feel cheated because I don’t come home stinking drunk and kick you awake in the middle of the night. Maybe you feel bored, María? What do you want? I don’t want to crucify you. I crucified one woman, one woman died at my side, and I swear I’d rather leave you than sacrifice you. I don’t want a slave for a wife, I want a companion. Study something, go to work, be active …”

She just listened to me. When I asked a question, she said “Yes” or “No.” I don’t want to throw all the blame on her, but if she hadn’t been that way, my life would now be radically different.

Then her family began to move in on me. That was something terrific! I have lived under the poorest possible conditions, but my wife’s family really shocked me. What happened was that her aunt and grandmother were put out of their room for not paying the rent. One of the aunt’s sons came and asked for permission to sleep there one night. So he stayed.

Then one day his mother, Elpidia, came with her other kid burning up with fever. A strong wind was blowing outside and the
señora
kept saying, “Where am I going to stay? Imagine, the child is sick and me having to go looking for somewhere to stay.” Well, she didn’t have to draw me a diagram, so I said she could stay until the kid got well.

María had a cousin, Luisa, who was living with her second husband. The kids from her first husband were living with them. This case is in a class by itself! The stepfather violated her little girl, a child of eleven, and got her pregnant. The mother tried to act like she didn’t know what was going on, but she knew all right and continued to live with him. Now that is one thing that is not accepted in my environment, no matter how low it is. The stepfather with his stepdaughter! Never!

Well, Luisa came to our house with the girl, who was in a bad way. The child looked like a pullet, the innocent, nothing but skin and bones. I took her to a doctor and he said she had a frightful case of malnutrition and bronchopneumonia. He didn’t know she was also pregnant! I paid for the doctor and the medicine, and they stayed at our place, seeing the poor kid was so sick.

Then the grandmother came with María’s brothers, supposedly to visit the sick kids, and wham! they stayed too. Now there was Elpidia and her two sons, Luisa and her daughter, the grandmother, my wife’s three brothers, and later, her sister, and another daughter of Luisa’s,
my four children, María, Lolita and I. Eighteen of us living in one room! Later, my brother Roberto had no place to stay, so he and his woman moved in too.

Disgust, disgust, disgust, is what I felt on entering my home each day. They were spread all over the floor, day and night. They were messy, dirty people, and the house really stank. The grandmother was the best of the lot. She tried to keep herself clean, but the aunt, Elpidia, was the most shameless of all. She would sit in the corner of the kitchen, delousing her children, pulling out the bugs. As far as I could see, she never even washed her hands. She would offer me food, but how could I eat? Just to see her hands made me sick to my stomach.

María’s little sister always had snot down to her chin. The toilet smelled and they didn’t even bother to close the door when they went. The kids were always screaming, especially in the morning when I liked to sleep. What a racket! It was like all hell let loose. It got to the point where my nerves were getting sick.

My father came by every day, as always. He never said a thing, but I could see he didn’t like all those people being there. My first reaction was to run them out, but my other self kept saying, “Poor things, they have no place to go. Today it’s them, tomorrow it’s me. How can I chase them out?”

I said to María, “
Ay
, old girl. It’s not that they are a burden, but I’m paying all the expenses and my money is running out … the little capital I had to work with. Tell them, please, to see what they can do for themselves.”

“No,” she says. “How can I tell them to go? You tell them!”

“But it’s your family. Don’t run them out, but break it to them, find a way. It’s not fair, especially now because I am in a
tanda
and these people are costing me thirty
pesos
a day here.” My friends in the market organized
tandas
, so we can have money to operate with. Every week, about ten of us each buys a ticket for fifty
pesos
and we take turns getting the five hundred
pesos
in a lump sum. So there I was, paying in fifty
pesos
a week and supporting all those people!

But María never told her family a thing. The truth is, she was happy with them there. She never looked happier. I got more and more nervous, but I didn’t tell them anything either. My money ran out completely. It got so I asked my father to take back my children because for a long time María was using the expense money to feed her
family and gave my kids only black coffee and bread. My poor kids! María and her family gave them a rough time.

I had absolutely nothing. I had to sell the bedroom set, and take María and Lolita to eat at the café on credit. The first one to leave was María’s grandmother, because she was the most considerate. She realized something serious was going on with me, and she took María’s sister and brothers with her. I didn’t chase out the others, but they left one by one, because I had nothing more to give them. It was really a triumph to get rid of that aunt! They had been with us for two months, I was flat broke and deeply in debt by the time they left.

My life has been a tangle of inexplicable emotions. I seem to be one of those morbid persons who enjoy torturing themselves. I curse myself with all the power of my soul. I swear there have been times when I have cried at night, alone in the café. My life has been so sterile, so useless, so unhappy, that,
por Dios
, sometimes I wish I could die. I am the kind of guy who leaves nothing behind, no trace of themselves in the world, like a worm dragging itself across the earth. I bring no good to anybody; a bad son, a bad husband, a bad father, bad everything.

Looking back over my life, I see that it was based on a chain of errors. I have treated it frivolously. I have been content to vegetate, to survive in a gray twilight, without effort and without glory. I waited for a stroke of luck … for a million
pesos
, so I could help my father, my children, my friends in need. I couldn’t do things on a big scale, so I did nothing at all.

But now I feel a little more self-confident and more reasonable. I would be proud to set up a modest home, to educate my children, to save my money. I would like to leave something behind me, so that when I die everyone will remember me with affection.

It sounds laughable, but if I could find the appropriate words, I would like to write poetry someday. I have always tried to see beauty, even among all the evils I have experienced, so that I wouldn’t be completely disillusioned by life. I would like to sing the poetry of life … great emotions, sublime love, to express the lowest passions in the most beautiful way. Men who can write of these things make the world more habitable; they raise life to a different level.

I know if I am to be constructive I shall have to fight against myself. More than anything, I must win in the fight against myself!

I
T AS ON A NIGHT IN DECEMBER, 1952, THAT I WENT TO JAIL IN VERACRUZ
. You see, I happened to be in a whore house, passing the time, having myself a little fun. I have always been a lone wolf and there isn’t a place I won’t go to. I had been there quite a while, drinking in the company of a lady. We were at the bar when I saw a guy named “Chicken” Galván come in. So what? … just another one of the local boys, as far as I was concerned. I found out later that he was the son of a high state official and went around accompanied by armed police, which was why he was so arrogant. He would insult and humiliate anybody he wanted to. It was easy for him to talk rough, because he had protection.

It happened that he came over to the bar and stood behind me. I was drinking and turned around. He stood there looking at me, so I looked at him, very natural, right? I didn’t say a thing to him and he didn’t say anything to me. We just looked at each other.

Well, that’s how the
pique
began, as we say in Mexico. But I wouldn’t take it from the very beginning. They played a
danzón
, which is the music I like best, and I asked the girl to dance. “Sure, why not?” After all, she was with me, wasn’t she? Along about the middle of the number, this boy walked up to me and said, “Step aside, I’m going to dance.”

“O.K., but right now I’m dancing with her,” I said. “Wait until the number is over.”

“What do you mean, ‘Wait!’ In the first place, don’t call me ‘
tu.
’ And in the second place, I am going to dance, because I feel like dancing.”

“Look, I call you
‘tu’
because that’s the way you talked to me, and,
secondly, you are not going to dance with her because even though she is a prostitute, I am not going to let her go, just like that, and that’s all there is to it.” I respect any woman who is with me and I see that she is respected, I don’t care what her social status is.

Well, then the fun started. He let me have one with his right that still hurts every time I think of it, and down I go. That did it! There was no way of getting out of the argument now, was there? Because, if there is anything I’ve got, it is that I never run away from a fight. I got up, and two or three of his cops came over and wanted to grab hold of me. What this guy had fixed up was that once the argument got serious, down to fists, the cops would step in, grab his enemy and he would begin to slug him to his heart’s content. But he said, “No. Leave him be! I can take care of this bastard all by myself.”

The police stepped aside. And so we mixed it up, but rough. I once used to box and he was not much of a boxer, so, frankly, I was getting the better of him. All of a sudden, he pulled a gun and threatened me. I don’t scare when I see a weapon. Instead of getting scared and backing off, I go absolutely blind mad and try to beat them to a pulp.

He said, “Today you die, you son-of-a-whore.”

“Let’s see about it. Anybody can pull a pistol … that’s easy … but it’s something else again to shoot it … you’ve got to have guts.”

“You’ll see right away,” he says.

Then I pulled my knife and wounded him. I can’t say it was a mortal wound, but I did wound him. I stuck him three times, twice in his body and once in the hand.

So a big fuss was kicked up and the cops arrested me. They said, “Now, wait and see, son-of-a-whore, now you are going to die.” And to be honest, that’s what I expected. I was sure they would kill me. Others who had just dared raise their voices to him had been given terrible beatings. And I, I had wounded him! This being the case, I shot the works. I figured I was done for.

The cops were saying, “You’ll see, son-of-your-damned-mother, you’ll see … you’re going to die.”

“O.K., but before I die, one or two of you goes before me.” They began to cock their guns, but what saved me, and I thank God for it, was that one of the three cops said, “No, let’s take Galván to the doctor and then we’ll know what to do with him … if not, we might be going out on a limb, and it isn’t worth it.”

“So, I’m not worth the trouble, you son-of-a-whore,” I said. “Just try it and you’ll see …”

Well, they took me to the municipal jail, there in Veracruz. I had fallen in, like a stone in a well. I was feeling pretty low. My family didn’t know I was there. What would it have cost me to send a letter, right? But how was I going to break the bad news? Several days went by and I felt worse than depressed, worse than sad … I was desperate.

I had only one idea in mind, and that was to get out no matter what it cost me, no matter how. But I had to think of the best way of doing it, not to miss. To get to the courtroom, you had to leave the jail, so I asked for a hearing. I got it and the date was set.

I had sold my shoes to buy food, because I couldn’t eat what they gave us. Even pigs would have thrown it back in their faces and told them a few things to boot, if they could talk. So I was wearing wooden clogs with wide rubber bands across the middle to hold them on. I practiced getting them off quickly, without bending down, because it would have been impossible to run with clogs. I kept practicing until finally the day came. I didn’t have it all figured out, but I had made up my mind to escape.

I went to court, accompanied by an armed cop, walking between him and the wall. We turned left, through the corridors which led out to the street, where there were soldiers on guard. The cop started to ask me questions but I really didn’t pay much attention. I was concentrating on the street, on which way to run, on how many people were around, and such things. The cop was saying, “Don’t worry about it. You’ll be getting out soon.” With those words, I’m off like a shot, throwing away my clogs, I don’t know how. When the moment came, I forgot all about what I had practiced.

I took off, barefooted, and ran like the devil was after me. I got away with a good head start. Then, I heard the sound of the 7-millimeter Mauser being cocked, a very special sound for me ever since I had been in the army. The bystanders and clerks were shouting, “Let him have it. Don’t be a fool. Kill him. Shoot at his legs.” I didn’t turn around because if I had and saw that he was aiming at me, I would have gotten scared.

I was risking my life to get away and with God’s help I was going to make it. I was running like a bullet, with him and various others after me. The people would pull away to one side when they saw me coming. When I got to the outskirts they began shooting. It sounded like the sixteenth of September, for all the shooting that cut loose.
Qué bárbaro
! the way the bullets were hitting alongside of me … or in front of me, at my feet … just like in the movies. A whole swarm of
people were after me, even civilians, who just wanted to give their trigger finger a good time.