The Children of Sanchez (67 page)

Instead of heading for the hills, I started toward a coffee plantation that was closer. But, first I had to pass through a group of houses, where there were all kinds of watchmen and guards. I ran right into the wolf’s jaws, without realizing it. I was more than tired by now … really, really exhausted. I had run more than a kilometer and had given all I had. My lungs and my temples felt like they were going to burst, my eyes were popping out of my head. I really had no more strength to go on running. But, even so, I still had hopes that I could get away. I had a tremendous lead; I must have been two or three blocks ahead of all of them.

I had to pass through the patio of a private house around which there was a hedge. But hidden in the bushes were wires, which I ran against. I hit the ground and could barely get up again. I pulled myself together and jumped over into another yard. There were dogs there and even they chased me!

I turned a corner to get to the street and ran right into a guy sitting there. By then I wasn’t really running any more, kind of walking with long strides, but I thought I was still running.

He said, “What’s going on? What are you running for? Stop!”

“None of your business,” I said to him. “What did I do to you? Do I owe you anything, or what? Leave me alone.” But no, he wanted me to stop and pulled out a knife and grabbed hold of me.

I said to him, “What did I ever do to you? Let go of me please. Look, you might get hit with a bullet.”

“No,” he said, “now we’ll see why you are running.” But we didn’t stop … we kept running, with him hanging on to my jacket. I dropped to the ground, to see if that would make him let go. He went down with me, still holding on, so I stood up again fast, giving him the knee in the testicles. He threw the knife, but I managed to dodge and it went through my clothes.

Then, bang! some shots again. I started to run and that guy stopped me. But I was dead, by then … really finished … I didn’t even have strength to talk. The others got there—that cop; those jokers, the officials and the clerks; and all the civilians and a mob of people. Somebody grabbed me by the arm on the right and somebody else on the left. I fainted for a moment and they held me up. The cop had his gun in his hand and was coming toward me with the idea of putting
a bullet into my chest. But the ones who were holding me up said, “O.K., now, you bastard, this man is all in. He’s all beat up, why hit him any more? We’ve got him, so don’t hit him now.”

For the moment that cop didn’t hit me. We walked to a taxi that had joined the chase … rather they carried me, as I couldn’t even walk any more. The cop was real sore. I don’t blame him because if I had managed to get away, he would have had to take my place, you see. It seems like that was the law there. The policeman is responsible for whatever happens to the person under his custody.

But there was no reason for him to hit me. As we went up the steps to the jail, he kept hitting me with his gun in the little bone at the bottom of the spine where it is terribly painful. He was hitting me and saying, “Up you go,
desgraciado
. If you got away from me, I’d be in your place now, wouldn’t I?” And every word was another jab with the gun. It hurt so much I could hardly stand it. After we got there, the officials said, “
Ay, negrito
! You can run like a rabbit. How would it have been if you’d gotten away on us, eh? Put him back in again.”

Wham! they gave me a kick in the behind and then that cop started to beat me. He opened my head, beating me with his gun. I still have the scar.

“What kind of a lousy bastard are you, anyway?” I said. “I can’t even walk under my own power, and still you hit me. Have a heart!” Everybody around recognized that he wasn’t doing the right thing. They were saying, “That’s enough. Leave him alone. You’ve got him now.”

Back in jail, the other prisoners began asking questions: “How did they catch you? Why didn’t you run this way … or that way?” They gave me all kinds of advice as to what route I should have taken, but it was too late. My companions in misfortune respected me a lot more, now, you know what I mean? Most of them were in there for more than just one killing. One guy, Eduardo, had eighteen to his name, and bragged about it. He would say, “
Ay
, what tramps! I killed eighteen and look at me. I don’t even mind jail. I’m resting.” After a couple of years he’d get out, paying money, of course.

You cannot imagine the things that happened to me in that jail, and the remorse I felt. Physically I was dead, and morally I was buried. But I don’t want to make myself tragic; thanks to God, I always get
back on my feet and throw out a laugh. Why shouldn’t I laugh? Life is a comedy and the world is the theatre and we are all actors.

I don’t know how they found out about me at home. I had sent a confidential letter to Marta, telling her that I was working in the Veracruz jail as a messenger and that they shouldn’t worry about me. I couldn’t tell her I was a prisoner, could I? I asked her not to tell my father, but on the sixth of January, the Day of the Three Kings, he was there.

When I heard them shout out my name, I thought it was a letter from Marta. In such places a letter is a big event, so I was happy. It was too impossible to imagine that my father would come, even if he knew, because his obligations and his job wouldn’t permit it. I thought the day my father came, the sun would black out or the moon would fall. I was afraid to have him find out, but at the same time I felt sorry for myself and prayed. “God, I know I’m a first-class bum and deserve what I’m getting, but have a little pity and make my trouble easier for me to take, because really, I’m like a stone in a well, here.”

Up there, little Jesus must have been listening, because, as I said, there was my
papá. Ay
! to see me! I felt like I had come to heaven, but, of course, I was also afraid that the jail would come down on my head. Well, we greeted each other and—this hurt me—my father cried. He held his breath a moment and threw his head back as if he was gasping for air, and his voice broke when he started to talk. As for me, frankly, the tears came to my eyes. I couldn’t help it. Well, that’s about as far as it went.

I guess my father came to see if I was still alive or if he could settle this affair of mine. I said, “Don’t worry about me. After all, it won’t be more than a year when they throw me out of jail.” What advice can a son give his father when he’s locked up?

Then my father began to bawl me out. “See, you see what happens when you don’t behave like I say? This will keep on happening to you and you are going to fail in life, so long as you don’t behave like decent people, as the Lord orders.” Simple words, but containing a great truth. I had nothing to say and didn’t even look my father in the face. I have never looked him in the face and least of all that time. As a general thing, my father saw me with my eyes to the ground.

Well, he left me fifty
pesos
to get a lawyer, but I didn’t trust lawyers and invested the money in a bed … two saw horses and a plank … which I bought right there in jail. I had been sleeping on the bare
ground, with nothing to cover me. We were a hundred-odd guys in the gallery and when one of them went to the toilet, he’d step on my foot or my face while I was sleeping. With a bed, I was “up on top.” It was harder than a rock, but they didn’t step on me any more.

My father visited once again, with Consuelo and my half-sister Marielena. Later, I received a letter in which my
papá
told me he had to have his appendix out and that the doctor was doubtful that he would come through it all right. He let me know he forgave me everything, that I should make over my life and behave better. After that, I didn’t receive a letter for two months, so you can imagine what gloomy thoughts I had.

“God, give me a sign, something to let me know how my father came out. If it was Thy will to call him to accounts, do Thy will, but at least don’t keep me in ignorance. I beg You from the depths of my heart, leave him with me, even if for only another year. I’ll go further … if it’s possible, take me, who least deserves to live, and not my father. He still has people who need him, so I prefer to die in his place.” That’s the way I was for two months. No letter … no letter. The mailman came every day, but nothing, nothing, nothing.
Ay!
Sincerely, it was a living death. I had died a thousand times before, but that time I was nearly dead for real.

I went to Mass every week in jail. Even there, when I knelt before the altar and made the sign of the cross, I felt the same spiritual peace I got only in church. I was transported, if not to another world, at least away from the vileness and deceits of this world. And when I spoke to God, I felt he was listening. I can’t explain it, but I never felt that way anywhere else. It was my only comfort in prison.

One of the prisoners was an Evangelist and he dared to insult the priest and the nuns, and tried to teach us his doctrines. He was always reading the Bible and knew more than we did. He criticized confession and Mass and when he asked us what we meant by being a Catholic, we couldn’t answer him. I’m really not versed in Catholicism, but first I want to understand my own religion before I learn about another, no?

One day, the Brother, which was what we called the Evangelist, said to me, “Come here, Otelo.” That was my nickname there. “What do you think, Otelo? Isn’t it true that the priests are earthly sinners like the rest of us? And aren’t nuns women, after all, who also have desires to lie with a man?”

“I can’t answer that, Brother,” I said, “but what I can say is, why don’t you go fuck your smutty mother and leave my religion alone?” Now this Evangelist was a real fighting cock and when I mentioned his mother he immediately reached for his knife. I was working in the carpentry shop at that time, so I had a sharp knife, too. All the other prisoners were Catholics and were on my side, but the officials broke it up and made me mop the courtyard and the “Brother” clean the toilets.

My thoughts were very sad ones, because I was planning to escape. Either I got out or they would kill me! But before I died, I wanted to confess and leave this world satisfied in that sense. So I went to one of the little priests and asked him to show me how to confess, because I had never done it before. I told him all my sins, including the one about being in love with my sister. I told him all the thefts I could remember and as a penitence, he said when I got out of jail I should give back whatever I had robbed, or at least tell them it was I who had done it. And I had to pray three
Padres Nuestros, El Credo
, and
Yo Pecador
, and a few Ave María’s.

I cried a lot while I prayed, and afterward felt so calm and content that I didn’t think of escaping any more. I resigned myself to waiting for my hearing and sentence. They had told me that the boy I had knifed was in bad shape. Then I heard he had died … later, that he hadn’t, and that he was living it up, as usual.

I took my first communion, right there in jail, at the age of twenty-one. They gave us each a candle, a cup of chocolate and bread, and after that I got into bed for the rest of the day. I didn’t want anyone to disturb me because I felt such a tranquillity, so at peace with myself, that I didn’t want to move.

As a reward for my first communion, I guess, I received a visit from my brother, and another lecture. Manuel came all the way from Mexico City, to bawl me out. “Look, brother,” I said, “I know I deserve everything you are saying, but consider the punishment I am getting here. You are older and I respect you, but please don’t bawl me out, please.” And tears came to his eyes, too. My brother is more noble than I; as a matter of fact I cannot call myself anything like noble, because I have been a bum. And the bad thing about it is that I realize it and torture myself about it all the time.

Well, then Manuel said, “Do you know who came with me?”

“No, who?”

“Graciela, the one who was my girl.”

“Let’s see! Bring her in.” And so he brought her to the gate. She had very pretty eyes and wavy hair. And her voice was sweet.

“Hello, Roberto, how are you? What bad luck, eh?”

“Well, don’t worry about me, please.”

And then they went away.

Well, I was working with Paolo, the carpenter. He had all his tools right there in the jail and I helped him, not because I got a
centavo
out of him, but because he would give me some of the food he prepared. Then, some time in July, I was playing cards with a companion in misery and went to bed late. During the night, I got up and went to the toilet, stepping on one, then the other. I was urinating when I saw something glitter on the outside of the bowl, down at the bottom. Standing nearby was the Cock, the tough guy of the jail, who had already been a prisoner for ten years and still had a couple of hundred to go.

“What’s the gag?” I asked.

“Shut up, you son-of-a-whore, or you die,” and he pulled his knife on me.

“Don’t be a bastard, you can’t scare me like that. What’s it all about?”

“Shut up, Otelo! This is how we get out.”

They had a pretty deep hole dug, deep enough for a fellow to get into. The glitter I had seen was a candle to light up down below.

“We’re going to get out through here to the other side of the jail wall.”

“Do you think you’ll make it?”

“Just you help me stand them all off, and you’ll see how we get out.” He passed me his knife and pulled out another for himself. A guy called the Cover came out. He was a homosexual and was the one who had begun the hole. In the course of the digging, there were a number who helped … one digging, another collecting the dirt, another taking it out. We made mattresses and pillows out of it and covered it up so no one could see.

The gallery was washed every month and the bedding was taken out and deloused. There sure were bedbugs there! The “mayor” would come in with a bar and poke at the walls and the floor to see if there had been any digging. The day before it was our turn to wash the gallery, we went around with our hearts in our throats. We dug until
five in the morning, because they woke us up at seven. By then, the majority of the prisoners in the gallery realized what was going on.