The Children of Sanchez (69 page)

That was another search for me … I looked for Consuelo and Mario everywhere. I even went to the airport where they said he worked. God be blessed that I didn’t find him, because I would have dragged him from the airport to my father’s house, to account for his actions. Later, when it was all over, Consuelo told me she didn’t love him but had
gone out of desperation. “
Ay
, brother,” she said, “without doubt I treated the poor skinny little thing badly. I put on my dramatics for him all the time, and I realize I was unjust to him.”

Really, my sister is very honest, because she admits her faults, though a bit late. Think of it! I didn’t know about that drunk, Jaime, being her
novio
, until after she went with Mario, who was the better of the two. He even left a good job and all his things, because of my sister. I believe if they had continued together, they would have amounted to something.

Marta had had a fight with Consuelo and had gone off to Acapulco with a man, Baltasar, who, you might say, was my new brother-in-law. I didn’t know about this until my return home, when we received a letter from her. As soon as my father knew Marta’s address, he sent me to Acapulco with some of her things. That time I went as a paying passenger because I carried a large tub full of dishes and clothing. I left on the night bus and arrived there in the morning.

With the tub in a cart, I started up the hill to the street where my sister lived. There she was, coming down, carrying her market basket. I was about to whistle, but no sooner did I take a deep breath when I noticed that she was pregnant. All the air went out of me and I just stood there. But I was so glad to see my little sister again that nothing else mattered.

“Sis, how are you?”

“My little brother! What a miracle! When did you come?”

We greeted each other and she took me home to meet Baltasar.

Frankly, he looked lousy to me. He resembled the many people I have had to fight with. He didn’t look exactly fierce, but rather aggressive and ready for any contingency that might come up between us. He was barefoot and his shirt was open to show his chest. He had a small gold earring in one ear lobe, which must have caused him a lot of trouble with Mexican men. He explained that he wore it because of a vow he had made to the Virgin.

Baltasar’s shack had a dirt floor, a tin roof and walls loosely made of boards. The kitchen was smaller than a closet and the kerosene stove was very dirty. Everything really looked very poor.

Well, I asked Baltasar for an accounting and he explained that he had known my sister in Mexico City, where he worked in a bakery, and that he knew about her daughters when he asked her to go with him to Acapulco. He had told Marta to write to my father but she
wouldn’t until a month had passed, because she was afraid we, her brothers, would go after Baltasar with knives.

“No,” I said, “you have nothing to worry about. I am not a knifer, but any brother would get angry at this, don’t you think?”

When I heard Baltasar was a butcher, I thought to myself, “Ah, you bastard, I did well to bring my knife.” I hadn’t come looking for a fight, but I was armed and ready to measure him with the same stick he measured me. He was peaceful and so I was, too. He told me about his family … a big family, with two mothers and two fathers, but he didn’t have much to do with them. He said, “I don’t want to bother my people. After all, they give me nothing and I have nothing to give them.”

My sister and her children seemed calm and content there with Baltasar. Though he drank, Marta was sure of daily expense money because he sent her to collect his pay, and every day he brought home meat from the slaughterhouse. Marta took care of the money and it was something new for me to see a Mexican asking his wife for bus fare, or for
centavos
for a smoke or a drink. But at the same time, I realized it was a good thing.

Above all, I had to admit that Baltasar had shown nobility in accepting Marta with three children, though I believed I was capable of doing the same tiling. It would have been absolutely nothing for me to support a wife and children in the style he did. I was not afraid of women or of marriage, but I didn’t feel like tying myself down.

My family kept telling me I ought to get married, but I knew that I was a first-class avoider of obligations and that I wouldn’t make a woman happy. I wasn’t enough of a beast to make a woman live with me, nor had I met a woman worthy of marrying. If I had been a heel, I could have had the use of two or three young ladies, but I never did anything to them, or even with my
novias
. I’ve been only with prostitutes, also with two or three married women who were separated from their husbands. They satisfied my sexual desires. I’ve never had any children, not that I know about, because I picked only sterile women.

I’ve been a mean sort of fellow, but when it came to love, I’ve always been a man. Like we say here, I’ve always been able to give them a good hard screw, although they would sometimes wear me out. I’m an ugly fellow, but women preferred me. I’ve made two or three girls unhappy, but I preferred to wound them with a disappointment than
to be hurting them all their lives. I don’t like to hurt anybody in these matters because I couldn’t take it when it was done to me.

If there was one thing I hated, it was for
novios
to be deceiving each other. Look at the contradiction! I was a first-class liar and when it came to doing the wrong thing there was no one who could beat me. I’ve been a bad egg, a hopeless case, and nothing good had come out of me. Well, that was not altogether true because if I had been 100 percent bad, why, man alive, it would have been better for them to shoot me. That type of person simply does not deserve to live. Yet, when it came to love, I just couldn’t bear to deceive or to be deceived. And love was the thing where lies and deceit were most used.

Well, Baltasar and I got along very well together. He called me “
tu
” right off, and that made me feel more relaxed with him. He devoted himself to showing me around Acapulco, I accompanied him to the slaughterhouse, to the movies and to the
cantinas
. In fact, he made me go wherever he went.

One evening, I wanted a beer. “But let’s go where we can dance or where there is a
sinfonola
, because I don’t like a place that resembles a morgue.”

“Well,” he said, “then let’s go to the ‘zone’ where my sister works.”

“Your sister? And just what is your sister?” The “zone” was where all the prostitutes were, and I was full of curiosity about this. How was it possible that …?

“Come, you’ll see. Calm down, we’re almost there. Marta knows that I have a sister working here. Luisa is one of the finest whores around, but I don’t see her often.”

Well, we arrived and Luisa looked just right for that place. That is, her body was not very deformed, let us say. She sat with us and we drank many beers. I had to pay for it all, including the extra charge Luisa made for her company. Baltasar bawled her out for charging to drink with her brother and brother-in-law. So she said, “No, brother, you should understand that this is my business … if you don’t want me to work in a place like this, then pay to get me out!” Anyway, I handed over the money and we left.

I didn’t remain in Acapulco more than three days on my first visit because I felt uncomfortable eating off them. Besides, I was working in a factory at home and I wanted to get back before I lost my job. So I said good-bye and went to Mexico City.

It was the best factory job I had ever had and I really liked it. They paid me twelve
pesos
a day for eight hours of work and gave
us three days vacation a year. There were about four hundred men working there and we were all forced to join the CTM. I had never been in a union before and I must say that it was a terrific mockery. I was never called to a single meeting and I didn’t even know where the headquarters were. They didn’t bother to tell us that, but they never forgot to deduct our five
pesos
dues every month.

And politics is another gigantic farce, because millions of
pesos
are dancing around in it … millions for this public work and millions for that, but it is only a front to hide the millions which go into the pockets of the bureaucrats. I don’t understand politics, but all this business of campaigns and elections is such a farce that I don’t know why the people of Mexico are accepting it. Here the elections are not free because they know beforehand who is going to be the President.

I don’t claim to know much about freedom, except that I have been free all my life and have done what I always felt like doing. But when I was working in the factory I was no longer free because they forced me to register to vote, and they sent around circulars telling us we must vote for the government party. The vote is secret but they threatened us with a three-day no-work punishment if we didn’t vote their way. For me this is no longer the principle of free elections. It is anti-constitutional, but that is nothing to be surprised at any more. Frankly, I don’t care which candidate gets in, because either one of them will rob the people.

The year I worked in the factory I was in only three fights. The environment we live in demands fighting. I don’t want to leave here unless I am carried out on their shoulders. That’s the way heroes and corpses go out.

The first fight was over a poker game between me and three boys from the Street of the Tinsmiths. All of us were half drunk, especially Roberto, because liquor had a strong effect on me. I felt great about that fight. I knocked down one after another, until they stopped. The four of us remained good pals. That’s the way it used to be here, but now these rules have degenerated.

In the second fight, I was attacked by a gang one night while I was walking with a friend, Miguel, near the market. Miguel ran away and left me to be beaten up by five fellows. I had been drinking and couldn’t defend myself well. They cut my head and raised my eye to the size of a tomato. My lip was hanging down because of a cut that took six stitches. I hadn’t looked for that fight, but I got a bawling out from my father and from Manuel anyway.

The third fight was the worst. I didn’t go looking for that fight either, but they forced me. I was having a friendly discussion about a boxing match with a couple of fellows. Three cops came along and told us to move on.

I said, “Can’t a fellow have a chat on the street without anybody stopping him? This is a free country.”

“No, it’s not a free country,” says this wise guy. “Move on, you bums, and make it snappy.”

“All right, don’t push me, I can walk.”

Then they tried to put the bite on me for twenty-five
pesos
, and I didn’t give it to them, see? I had twenty-nine
pesos
on me, and I gave them to a friend of mine.

“Here,” I said, “please take this money because it seems these gentlemen want to rob me.”

“Shut up!” and bang! one of the cops hit me with his stick, one of those billies made of hard rubber. When they hit you, you don’t bleed but they almost knock you out. All the bleeding is inside. I got sore, really mad, and took a swing at him. Then they began clubbing me and punching me, clubbing and punching, back and forth, like a ball. They also kicked me, until everybody thought they had killed me. They injured my ribs and my head, and gave me such an awful kick that they wrenched my knee. And then they broke my leg bone.

By that time, the neighbors had notified my family, and Consuelo and Manuel came out and argued with the cops. All the while, the fellows and neighbors shouted to the cops to leave me alone, but none of them mixed in, not one of them. Two or three times my friends have disappointed me. When I see one of them in trouble, even if he had turned his back on me before, I go all out to help him. But they only looked on. Oh, well …

The cops didn’t arrest me, they just left me there on the ground. My brother and sister took me in a cab to the station house to file a complaint, but nothing happened to those cops. So you can see what I think of justice here. Hand them a
peso
and you get justice.

It took me a long time to recover from that beating. The wind was taken out of me and I have really tried to avoid trouble and fights since then. Many people judge a man by the way he fights. They see him pull a pistol or a knife and they say, “Ah! there’s a man for you. He doesn’t back down for anything or anybody.” I don’t judge a man
like
that. The real man is the one who faces up to life with integrity,
the one who faces reality without retreating. I judge a man by his deeds. If he can face up to life and to his obligations, then for me he is a man; in a word, a real man is a man like my father.

And to my way of thinking, a man who only produces children without accepting the obligations that go with them, doesn’t deserve to live. That god-damned son-of-a-whore Crispín is that type. He has forgotten all about his daughters and sends them a present only once a year. It’s better for him not to come to the house, because the day he does, I don’t know which of us will come out alive.

I’m sorry to have to say it, but my brother has shown a lack of responsibility in this respect, though he did his best to get ahead and to provide his children with at least the necessities of life. My father has set him a good example, so I don’t understand why Manuel neglected his children. It seems to me that my brother’s life has been a pity and a failure. He had more education than I, and more intelligence even than Consuelo. And he had fame as a storyteller … a party without him was no fun … but, in spite of all this, he wasted many years of his life. I haven’t done much for my family either, though I’m ready to give every drop of my blood for Consuelo, Marta, Manuel, my father, and for my nephews and nieces.

My family is uppermost in my mind. My biggest ambition in life is to improve their economic situation, if I can do it honestly. I’ve never been concerned with having a better life for myself, but only for them. It has been my greatest desire that we should be united. But when my mother died, our castle crumbled, its foundations fell and sank into the ground.