The Dog Fighter (2 page)

I listened for hours each day watching dust spin in the sunlight coming down through the slats of the wood blinds. Listening to his stories of missionaries battle wealthy encomienda landowners for the hands and centavos of the Aztec and Zapotec and Maya and Tlaxcalteca.

The ancient peoples of this place where you were born were magicians. My father taught me. Olmec. They wore gigantic heads carved from wood and stone. Jaguar masks with thick lips and eyes of green serpentine and jade. These peoples disappeared south into the jungles of Chiapas and Campeche and Yucatán. Never to return. History is the spread of power. From one place and people to over more places and people. Full of betrayal and murder. Victims forever having to prove themselves and conquistadors forever breaking the victims courage and will.

My father was a very knowledgeable man with a kind distracted smile. He spoke and read English and each day he sat with me patiently in his office teaching me mathematics and English and history. With noise of laborers working outside to put asphalt over cobble streets of our neighborhood my father was as patient with my silence as he was in waiting for my grandfather to die so that his son could be his own. His discípulo. But I was by then a boy more interested in fighting than my fathers books and learning. In breaking mirrors over the edges of wells and throwing rocks at stained glass windows of the cathedral.

Only when my father took me to visit his patients living in las ciudades perdidas the lost cities of Veracruz was I very interested in his learning. In the rubble of mud and straw jacales and canvas and palm thatch shacks he allowed me to put needles into the arms of wastes of men with no teeth smiling grateful for my fathers medicine. I unwrapped the wounds of slender knife fighters in the backs of cantinas. These dangerous young men I admired who only stopped themselves from hitting me when the stitches stuck to the bandages for fear of my fathers great size. On his patients my father showed me deep cuts red and swollen. Diseased skin. Children with measles. Faces scarred from smallpox. Eyeteeth and cleft lips. Showing me where disease lived invisible in blue sludge along gutters that still watered the most magnificent dahlias fuchsias magnolias and hibiscus. Once I met an old woman who was never sick but also had no family to eat the meals she cooked each day. Many of these people had nothing to pay my father. And he never asked them. They gave him food and small gifts of animals carved from limestone or dolls made of corn husks. They gave him glass bottles stopped with rags of home brewed pulque. He set these gifts on the shelves in his study with his books that he treasured.

And in each of these gifts is a history lesson as important as those in these books. He said to me. Why?

But I had no answer then. And my silence was much easier.

Some nights my father and I did not return until after my mother had gone to sleep. In the summer months when the heat was unbearable and everyone wandered to be out of their houses my father led me to the busy zócalo.

In this square they used to hang from gallows old pirates and sea adventurers. He taught me. Men with skin red like clay after so much time in the sun on long voyages.

In the zócalo we often sat at the cafés where patients came to speak to my father. To tell me what a kind man he was. But I enjoyed watching the boys my age throw rocks at terrible smelling buzzards perched on lanterns of the cathedral. I wanted to be with them and not my fathers lectures.

On nights when the men and women and children were swimming in the harbor to escape the mosquitoes and great heat of Veracruz my father led me down to the water. He had much to say on these walks. With time listening to my father I decided that he was not so much a quiet man as he was one who chose not only his words carefully but those he shared them with also.

These azulejos in this entrance. He taught me. In English the word for them is tiles. Blue and white tiles. The word azulejo is interesting because some of it is Spanish and some Arabic. Like the word arroz. Rice in English. And sugar for azúcar. Sugar. The word for los azulejos is similar to the entrance itself. A seven pointed horseshoe arch it is called. Some by design of the mestizo and nativo slaves who built it. Some by the design of the Spaniard who forced them to build it. And some from the Moors who designed it first. Remember that the Moors were in Spain for seven hundred years. And then the Spanish crown in Mexico for three hundred. This is how conquest also works. The language of the conqueror nestles into the language of the conquered. It is fascinating verdad? My father put his arm around me then but I turned away from him and he only laughed at this. With time you will understand mi hijo.

On these long walks we shared my father told me stories of how it was for him when he first arrived in Veracruz. For some time many of his patients did not trust him. They called him a peninsular because he was born in Spain but chose to live in Mexico. But with time word of my fathers quiet generosity spread and soon he was trusted and respected by many. I learned very much from my father during this time but still I did not speak. He spoke enough for the both of us.

When I am upset with your mother. He said once. Or confused by some idea in my head or something that I have read I enjoy walking. It is the best way for me to rest. I prefer it to sleep.

Once my father took me to visit a patient who had the flesh of his arm bunched and coming loose from the chemicals he worked with in a tannery. I vomited from the sweet smell of his flesh. My father told me to wait outside while he rubbed balm on the mans skin. On our way home he said to me.

They do not smell the filth and disease they live in. Just as we do not smell the soap and perfume of our own home.

Guilt is what makes your father weak. My grandfather once said. Great strength does not feel for anything but itself.

When my father was not visiting his patients he devoured books entire in afternoons alone. Reading in silence. The words his fever. My father was a quiet man who lived life quietly but felt much and for this and many other reasons my grandfather did not trust him. But still he encouraged my mother to marry my father for what his great strength and size would allow my grandfather in a grandson to shape.

I tell only you the truth of my secrets. My grandfather whispered to me many times. The candle flame wavering in the black of his eyes. His knotted fingers shaking some. My memory fantastic for the stories he called our secrets. I wanted for your mother to marry this quiet doctor from when I first met him. Be patient while I tell you why. You must trust me in our secrets. And I trusted my grandfathers voice even with his wink and his terrible smile.

 

W
hile my grandfather was alive I never had this trust for my father. And when he was dead it was too late. My grandfather took me as a boy to swim against the waves of the Gulf. Waves the ships of the conquistadors had sailed into Veracruz on. And in this swimming I grew into my fathers great strength and size but for my grandfathers designs.

Your mother did not want to marry your father even for all of her love for him. My grandfather told me. She feared what her blood would do in the son of a man with those shoulders and hands. I did not like his talk of God but that doctor is lost in the maze of his own thinking. I held her hand and told her. Smiling. But he has come here to do good. I told her. And with time I convinced your mother any man who feels guilt like a woman is harmless. You are his son. My grandfather told me. But you are not so harmless. You are of his strength but my blood.

My father was sitting by the fire in his study reading when my mother brought me to him after I had drowned the kittens. She tried to give to him the length of sugarcane.

I will not do this. He folded his book across his knee and shook his head. I do not think your grandfather would be so proud of you today. He said to me.

But the blood of my grandfather was great in my mother. Her jaw clenched and high cheeks red. Her eyes lit by fire. When she beat me with the cane I could hear my grandfather whispering quiet over my mothers cries and with this I felt nothing for her. I felt only for the shadows of men standing over beasts in my dreams that my grandfather spoke of. And so when my grandfather came into the room afterward to kiss my forehead good night and saw this in my eyes his own dead eyes were much with pride.

Your mother did not want to marry your father. He had told me. Every day for a year your father asked her for her hand but she told him no. She was a beautiful young woman your mother. With a strong mind. But always with the fire in her blood. Your father read to her from books of poetry. He taught her some English. I did not approve of this English but I said nothing to prevent her from marrying him. What an intelligent husband he will make. I said. The fool and his books. His mind lost in the great strength of that body. Strong but harmless. Afraid of me. Allowing me to come and live with them when my hands went bad because he is so kind. How I prayed to God for what I could do with that strength in his son.

It was on their long walks that my father told my mother that he did not believe in God.

He said to me once that Jesus was the daydreamer of all great daydreamers.

Can you see him? Lying on the bank of the river Jordan in the sun. During when he was wandering all those years and no one knew where. Lazy on the bank in the tall grass staring off into the blue of those skies. His hands cradling his head. His ankles crossed out in front of him. Then uncrossed to itch without thinking at the top of his foot with his worn sandal where a fly had landed. A blade of grass in his teeth. The slender shadow of it passing the afternoon across his thinking face. Then there is a cool breeze. It moves the shade of a tree that has been sneaking toward him slow like the answer to a difficult question. Love your brother as you love yourself? He thinks. And then he says out loud smiling to himself. Fools that they are. They will believe that one.

I kept the beliefs of your father from your grandfather as long as I could. She told me sitting in the wood chair by my bed. I loved him but I was scared. Not even to God Himself in my prayers did I pray for your father for worrying of what God would do to him for these words he spoke. What God would do to me for loving a man who thought this way. But the excitement of these secrets your father and I shared was great. The excitement of sin. But still I feared for your father. And I believed then I could make him different than he is.

After my grandfathers death my mother sat in the wood chair by my bed telling stories of selfish boys buried in desolate roadside graves. Of men without mothers who are left to wander desert mountains chewing nopal to not die of thirst. I lay with my back to her and my teeth clenched. My father stood in the door of my room listening to these stories. Together they wanted to take the fever of my grandfathers whisper from me. But still I followed him. And still my dreams were the most beautiful and difficult things to see.

But much changed soon after the death of my grandfather. My mother became pregnant. She and my father both were very happy about this but still I spoke to no one.

After every day for a year of asking your mother to marry him. My grandfather told me. Your father told her he felt like some fool.

I told him of my dream of your uncle. My mother said. Of his knife slit eyes.

But I never saw the flames of those candles in the sad eyes of my mother. With my face to the wall I searched for the men of my grandfathers hiss in her soft voice.

From a window above a bench in the courtyard where your mother and father sat laughing and talking I listened to them then. To pauses in conversation when I knew they looked one another in the eyes.

Your uncle his head heavy with his face so swollen crawls across the floor of my room toward my bed at night. My mother continued. His tongue blue from his mouth. Laughing.

We do not have to have children. Your father told your mother. But she did not believe him. You forget that I am a doctor. He said to her. And that I love you. I sat above this in the window of the courtyard looking down on them knowing that what your father said was a great deception. That even the most great love could not prevent this. But I said nothing. I am the only one not to lie to you.

When my mother discovered that she was pregnant after my grandfathers death she went to my father. They sat me down in the kitchen and her eyes were with tears. She was smiling.

We will name him after your grandfather. She told me. But she said this only because they wanted for me to end my silence.

When your mother learned that she was pregnant with you there was much happiness. But your father asked her if she was sure.

Indudablemente. She laughed and hugged him around his great neck.

But not many days after my mother told me she was to have another child she caught me hanging a puppy from a tree. Other children watching this yelled my name while I wrapped hemp rope around the muzzle not to let it bark. I put the noose around the dogs neck and I raised and lowered it like a piñata. I lowered the dog until its back claws touched the ground enough so that it did not choke. And then I raised it and it swung dying until finally it was dead.

Again my mother begged my father to beat the violence from me but again he folded the book over his knee to not lose his place and he shook his head no. After this my mother woke us many times in the night crying my uncles name. Each time I woke I prayed to my grandfather for her death and the death of the child in her. I did many things to upset her after this. To make her beat me.