The Revolutionaries Try Again (16 page)

That night at Eva's house — on Eva's bed — Rolando doesn't know whether to say that was a disaster or that was amazing — either way they're both trying to pretend nothing much happened at Roldós Plaza — At least now we know what the people want — to which Rolando doesn't reply by saying yes Eva the people want to trounce the same old stories — Yes Eva the people want a swine for president — You misunderstand them — Diagram it for me then — I'm not your schoolteacher — Ever tell you about our grammar teacher at San Javier named La Caballero? — Oh boy stories from boys' school — Everyone pined for La Caballero because she was the only
human resembling a female in a three mile radius and during class some of my classmates would install their mothers' makeup mirrors atop their sneakers and when she walked down the rows of desks — That's disgusting — What's disgusting is that swine what's the point of our radio if we live under a system that allows El Loco to run for office again and again? — which is the wrong thing to ask — already he can feel his irritation coursing through his voice — The point is to inform them — already he's angry at how unconvincing she sounds when she says that the point is to make their lives better — that the point is to stop asking what's the point all along the hypotenuse of our lives — Hypote what? — Nuse — Chanfle — That's right — Hypotenuse of our — No Rolando it's annoying and you still have clown paint on your ears — White at last — Not funny — Not even a tiny bit? — It's annoying and it's tiring — Isn't it counter to our idea of ourselves not to question what's the point? — Nothing's ever going to change — Ugh — We both know all of this is futile leave the people alone Rolando — I didn't do anything — No one wants the apocalypse here — I didn't say anything — You think I don't know what you've been up to? — Radio Nuevo Día / la radio de tu — You think people here don't talk? — I don't know what you're — You're a terrorist — You're exaggerating a little — You think the acts of vandalism you're planning are going to help anyone here? — No one Eva — What do you think you're accomplishing? — Nothing Eva but probably more than your stupid little plays — which unfortunately he does say — not unfortunately okay I'll say whatever I want — and after Rolando says whatever he wants Eva shoves him out of bed — and she seems to resent that Rolando isn't taken aback despite almost falling off her bed and that Rolando knows she knows there's nothing she can say to rebut him — we're conscientizing the people — she doesn't say — we're veering the discourse toward a truth they will willingly accept as just — she doesn't say — through art we will transcend our condition — she doesn't say — Get out — she does say — Go away — she does say — Fine — Okay — and he's putting on his boots and storming out of her room and imagining how he will slam her front door and drive away and not talk to her ever again and then change his
mind after a few days and call her three and four times a day until she picks up but she won't pick up and his frustration at not being able to know if her anger has irreversibly ended their relationship will likely be greater than his frustration at her unwillingness to concede the pointlessness of their plays so he doesn't storm out of her house but instead remains in her kitchen — hearing her switch off the lamp on her nightstand — although he knows she won't be able to sleep — at least he likes to think she won't be able to sleep — and after a while he likes to think she's not asleep — although the room's still dark and he hasn't heard Eva shuffle even once — and after a while the sound of trucks speeding by and the crickets remind him of nothing — and after a while he thinks about El Loco — about his radio — about the radiant woman who reassured her plants — about silence giving the impression that one has no opinions — that one wants nothing — about his first day at the Universidad Estatal — about waking up on the morning he was to graduate from San Javier and finding that his scuffed black shoes had been miraculously polished — returning to Eva's room and sitting quietly on the chair by her bed and thinking about the morning he found a soccer ball under their Christmas tree when he was five years old — When I was five my father gifted me a doctor's kit and I would go around the house tapping the cement walls with my tiny hammer — to which Eva doesn't reply — and after a while he thinks about his father changing his mind about opening the school cafeteria on the day he was to graduate from San Javier — okay Rolandazo go on and take your seat at the coliseum you're in the first row — And in that short interval between my father's day jobs at San Javier administering the school magazine and the school cafeteria and his night jobs hauling boxes at the harbor he would doze off in his armchair restlessly like a watchman who knew something was up which in most cases meant me not doing my homework — And when it was time for him to leave he would enact the same skit that included my sister until she left — My hair's a mess he would whimper — As if the armchair wouldn't let him out of its grip until someone fixed his hair — And then my sister would rush over to him gleefully — Pretending she was fulfilling some portentous
duty — My sister and I both loved Topo Gigio by the way — When we were little she would put me to sleep by singing a / la / camita — Do you know that song? — According to my father on my sister's first day of first grade I propped myself by the living room window and cried inconsolably after she left — And because that week and the week after I didn't stop crying my father had to beg the director of the school to take me in too — And then my sister would comb my father's hair — And then one evening when my sister was no longer with us my father wouldn't wake up from the couch despite me banging my ruler on the kitchen table — Which is the kind of thing my sister would have scolded me for — And I could hear my father mumbling words at random — Nikon — Formica — Un solo toque — My hair's a mess — And while he mumbled words at random I searched for my sister's comb and found it under his pillow — Red with teeth like toothpicks — Which I'd seen my sister trying to soften with her fingertips — And which no longer smelled like her strawberry shampoo — In any case I combed his head while he was asleep — And as I did so my father opened his eyes and looked at me as if thinking the same thing I was thinking — This isn't what men do — But my father doesn't wave me away — He closes his eyes and pretends he hasn't seen me — That he's still asleep — And I go along with him — I go on — Back then my father was already bald by the way — but Eva doesn't comment on what he just shared with her — Eva doesn't move — and after a while the room is still silent and he thinks about finding a new white dress shirt on his father's armchair on the morning he was to graduate from San Javier — about how years before he was a freshman at San Javier his father had included pictures of him in the school magazine — about how during his six improbable years at San Javier there had been more pictures of him in San Javier's magazine than of any other student — about his father changing his mind about opening the school cafeteria on the day he was to graduate from San Javier so that Rolando wouldn't have to serve empanadas to his fatuous classmates — so that Rolando wouldn't have to serve chorizo to that Opus Dei woman whose plastic surgeries couldn't conceal her contempt for everyone who looked as aboriginal
as she used to look and who happened to be the wife of a tuna fish magnate — that would be Julio Esteros's mother — and before his father changes his mind again Rolando runs out of his father's cafeteria and runs past the soccer field that will never see grass and what does he care about grass not growing on a field where new batches of conchadesumadres will continue their awkward dribbling unlike his quick dribbling on the mini basketball court — which he's passing now and on which he once scored eight points in less than ten minutes — the outdoor basketball court by the garbage cans that he'll never have to empty again — and as he crosses the forest of eucalyptus and birch trees his tie doesn't flutter because of his new tie clip — which according to his father belonged to his grandfather — and although his sprint from the cafeteria to San Javier's coliseum doesn't last long year after year he returns to this memory just as he returns to his radio — to the radiant woman who reassured her plants — to the first day he arrives at the Universidad Estatal — where by the entrance smoke is still rising from a tractor wheel — where by the entrance the gates are locked but bent enough for crossing inside — where the streets look as if decades ago trucks had dumped the belongings of a slum onto them and no one had bothered to clean up the gnarled tricycle — the spray cans — the tin or thatched roof — the broken glass still attached to rum labels — the rocks everywhere — as if someone had icepicked the moon and here was the detritus of that absurd effort — the metaphysical rebel declares he's frustrated by the absurdity of the universe — the pamphlets glued to cracked bricks — and in its widest sense rebellion goes far beyond resentment — the emptied tear gas canisters — the rocks everywhere — Yankees Go Home — the smell of tear gas — My father used to fumigate the cornfields of a Polish American landowner in Portoviejo and sometimes Mister Henrik would ask my father to wear a brown body suit with tanks like in those movies about chemical warfare — And before heading to fumigate Mister Henrik's land my father would always repeat the same phrase — He loved the sound of Mister Henrik's words by the way — Try to say maaaska — Try to say tlenooowa — Goodbye children I'm off to do the monster he would say — Why are you telling me all
this Rolando? — oh — so you were not asleep — he doesn't say — what is he supposed to say? — I'm sharing all these tender memories with you so you'll know — what? — that I am not what I am? — Rolando doesn't say anything and she does not press him or turn toward him — Maaaska — she murmurs — Tlenooowa — and then she does fall asleep — and then he tries to fall sleep on the chair by her bed and he's dozing off and he's running past the basketball court at San Javier and past the line of station wagons heading to San Javier's coliseum — as fast as a chicken in Ethiopia — Rolando being both the fowl and the hungry Ethiopian — good one Facundo! — neither good nor bad señor — approaching the coliseum where Facundo Cedeño and the rest of his classmates are loitering outside and look Satan's here — Guillermo Maldonado says — what's up empanada — Antonio José says — yo empanada — Leopoldo says — looking good chorizo — Cristian Cordero says — empanaaaaaaaaada — Facundo Cedeño says — diavolo — Carlos de Tomaso says — gremlin — Giovanny Bastidas says — le empanada — Stefano Brborich says — with beef — Juan Lopez says — and cheese — Rafael Arosemena says — and molto chorizo — Jacinto Cazares says — shut up Jacinto! — everyone says — Rolando hurries inside the coliseum — the clanking of chairs — the crowds gathered around León Martín Cordero — empanada — gremlin — diavolo — gizmo caca — with beef — and chorizo — hey.

Rolando leaves before Eva wakes up and he doesn't see her the next day or the next or the day after the next and early on Sunday he rides the bus to El Guasmo and jumps on the back of a pickup truck that's part of a caravan heading to welcome back El Loco — and on the side of the road Rolando sees a small crowd circling a burning tire in celebration of El Loco's return — and on every corner megaphones are transmitting the same songs — the force of the poor / Abdalá / the clamor of my people / Abdalá — and on the flatbed where he's standing everyone's singing along to this unending stream of songs — and on every corner a poster of El Loco adorns doors / windows / lampposts — as if the people here believed they could summon him back with an overabundance of images — quick the lamb's blood — knowing me / knowing you / there is nothing we
can — the force of the poor / Abdalá / the clamor of my people — and as the sun goes down Rolando follows a long line of people who are lighting torches — but Rolando doesn't seize their torches and scream wake up you idiots can't you see El Loco is as corrupt as the rest of them? — and on the plaza there are couples dressed as if going to a wedding and families dressed as if going to church and girls with veils and what looks like first communion dresses — and contrary to the rumors he had allowed himself to believe the people aren't coming here for free alcohol because there's no free alcohol anywhere — although of course there's ambulatory vendors selling water and beer and there's so many flags that Rolando has to keep changing positions so he can see the stage — it's getting tougher to move because everyone wants to be by the stage — especially those with signs representing their cooperatives or their neighborhoods — and on the stage Los Iracundos is singing the same old ballads that everyone loves — y la lluvia caerá / luego vendrá el sereno — the force of the poor / Abdalá — and everyone's singing along and it's hard to tell amid the noise if that's the sound of a helicopter behind them — it is! — a helicopter that's descending rapidly toward them and some of the children look scared of the winged machine above them but most people are just waving their handkerchiefs and signs despite the gray whirlwind of dirt that's swirling pebbles off the ground which are pelting them so that Rolando has to cover his face — the force of the poor / Abdalá — and Abdalá lands and he's welcoming them and thanking them and singing and saying I love you Ecuador — and Abdalá's pacing back and forth on the wooden platform and he's sweating — he's angry — his white guayabera cannot contain his indignation because of what the oligarchies have done to the poor of my country — Is there a parent in the crowd please raise your hand — Let's see you gentleman here with your son let's talk the truth no tales I'm going to demonstrate to you that you are not the same for León because they have another god — The god of racism — The god of monopoly — The god of wealth — I'm going to demonstrate it to you and you tell me if I lie — Sir with the greatest respect if your eighteen year old son falls in love with León's daughter would they
let him in their house? — No! No! No! — They will beat him and throw him out yes or no? — Yes! Yes! Yes! — exactly yes — Rolando go back to your room — But if León's grandson were to leave your daughter pregnant what would León say? — Oh ha ha it's just our boy being a rascal is this the truth or is this not the truth? — Yes! Yes! Yes! — Would they give that baby their name? — No! No! No! — They would make her abort it or she would be imprisoned and forsaken with a bastard child like they have forsaken and imprisoned my beloved country.