The Revolutionaries Try Again (8 page)

At the Iglesia Redonda, as my father walked across the aisle to join the others, I recognized the man who had yelled my father's name: he had been at the minister's office, too. He was the father of Maraco Espinel, one of my classmates at San Javier.

I did not wait for my father to call out my name across the aisle and introduce me to his friends. I walked the other way and searched for the rest of my family. Eventually we all found each other. As we gathered to leave, my grandmother realized that my father and my Uncle Fernando were missing. Despite my protests, my grandmother sent me to look for them. She was still visibly excited about my father attending Mass, clutching the baby christ's basket with one hand and fanning herself with the other, and I could tell that she'd cried and that she would continue to cry whenever she remembered this Christmas. When my grandmother found out my father was serious about becoming a Jesuit priest, many years before I was born, she grounded him. When he wouldn't budge, defying her by praying loudly in his room, she took him on a trip to Paris, Milan, and other European cities where she showered him with the traditions
of luxury. At the lobby of the Hotel Saint Jacques he met a girl from Norway. My grandmother suggested he should travel with her for an extra month or two. He accepted my grandmother's money and did. He must have been seventeen years old.

I trudged back inside the church, which was now empty, walking around it and peeking out of every exit, and when I reached the third door I found them. They were alone now. My father, with his arms crossed, kept his gaze down while listening to my uncle's instructions. My uncle was smiling, insouciant, as if telling a story at a cocktail party where everybody knew him. He was saying don't waste any time, Antonio. Resign first thing Monday morning and don't worry about a thing. Take a long vacation, in Miami, for instance, and before those bastards get a chance to issue you a prison order we'll have it all sorted out.

My father noticed me first. He tried to discern whether I had heard what my uncle had just said. He must have concluded that I did because he closed his eyes and crossed his arms further, as if trying to wake himself up by squeezing his chest. These motions did not last. He opened his eyes and said what were to be his last words for the rest of the night: What the hell do you want? What is it, Antonio José?

They're waiting for you.

Come, my uncle said in a conciliatory tone. Let's join them. We'll chat more after the gift exchange.

V / ANTONIO IN GUAYAQUIL

To sleep, Antonio thinks, so exhausted by the long flight from San Francisco to Guayaquil that he doesn't roll down the window of his Taxi Amigo to examine what has changed about his miserable hometown in the last twelve years (plus he doesn't want the horrendous humid air outside to wade through the air conditioner vents inside), doesn't wonder too much about why Leopoldo didn't show up to welcome him at the airport (or rather why was he expecting Leopoldo to show up to welcome him at the airport), doesn't think about the two old indigenous women who were embracing each other and crying as the plane landed, isn't disheartened by the familiar images of El Loco on every telephone pole and every billboard along whatever this airport road is now called, on the contrary, feels embarrassingly reassured that while he was away, his country has remained as backward as ever, El Loco for President becoming less ubiquitous as his Taxi Amigo approaches his old neighborhood, where no one has ever voted for El Loco, and whether anyone here will vote for El Loco this time, if he manages to return from his exile in Panamá, wouldn't be difficult for Antonio to predict, although since this is the first time in twelve years that Antonio has been back to Guayaquil he doesn't yet know whether the neighbors who used to pile on El Loco for being an uncultivated thief still live in the neighborhood where he grew up, or whether they would still be alarmed to see a caravan for El Loco just like the one they'd seen on Bálsamos Street the first time El Loco ran for president, or perhaps it was the second time El Loco ran for president when the caravan for this self proclaimed leader of the poor alarmed the neighbors and his mother but not him, although of course in retrospect he's likely to downplay any threatening aspects of that unfortunate caravan, and as he unloads his luggage from his Taxi Amigo, a private car service his mother suggested for security reasons, it occurs to him that without the unfortunates of his country, without the 60 percent of Ecuadorians who live in perpetual poverty (why always sound like a demagogue when invoking the poor?),
he would have had to fabricate a new reason as to why he thought he was different from his fellow Saks Fifth Avenue shoppers in San Francisco, oh, but unlike you materialistic North Americans, I'm going back to Ecuador to help my — nice scarf, Drool — and yet by returning to Guayaquil he has ruined it for himself: he could've spent the rest of his life in San Francisco thinking of himself as the boy who once taught catechism to the poor, or as the teenager who once vowed to return to save the poor, and it would've been okay, yes, from the corporate headquarters of Bank of America during the week, or from an armchair inside his neighborhood coffee house during the weekend, his bountiful inner life would have shielded him from his bountiful inaction, and perhaps he still has time to fly back to San Francisco and pretend his return to Guayaquil never happened, and as he enters the apartment on Bálsamos Street where he lived with his mother until fleeing to the United States, he's relieved that nothing has changed since he left, although so much time has passed that perhaps it's not possible to claim that nothing has changed, or perhaps he wants to believe that nothing has changed to avoid the onrush of nostalgia he imagines most emigrants feel upon returning to their hometown after a long absence, or perhaps he wants to avoid thinking about all those years his mother had to live alone in this apartment after he fled to the United States — the light left the house after you left, Antonio — or perhaps he's too exhausted for onrushes of nostalgia or to start thinking about that one Christmas when his mother visited him in San Francisco and shared with him what had happened to her in Guayaquil, disrupting the convenient emptiness of all those years his mother lived alone by telling him about the first time she was robbed right in front of our apartment on Bálsamos, Antonio José, recounting the robbery for him with a voice attuned to a peace that was foreign to him and that surprised him more than any details about the robbery (during her visit to San Francisco his mother had also revealed to him that not only was she involved with transpersonal yoga and the Catholic meditations of Father Davila but with Reiki and rebirthing, too — I knew this was what they called an express hijacking, his mother said, where
they take you with them until they're done robbing others because normally those big Land Rovers have a tracking device —), and perhaps the elegant air conditioned cabin of the Land Rover had made it easier for his mother's friend to believe she was safe to parade her luxury car through the miserable streets of Guayaquil, or perhaps he's entertaining such embittered thoughts to avoid considering that in that same elegant cabin his mother was probably terrified, and so the one thief on his mother's side pressed the unlock button so that the other thief could open the door on the driver's side, and Monsi became hysterical, not again, Monsi was saying, not again, screaming at them hijueputas, malparidos, leave us alone, jostling with the thief on her side who was pulling her up by her hair and beating her with the butt of his pistol so she would stop shrieking (no, Antonio thinks, to him that caravan for the self proclaimed leader of the poor hadn't looked like a threat but like an outburst of celebration, as if earlier in the day El Loco had announced that if he became president not only was he going to provide the people with jobs, as he had promised in his ads, but with meals and free housing too, and in their excitement at this incredible news they had rallied up their neighbors, had rounded up their motorized belongings, had set out all over town to flap their signs and shout their hymns and bounce on their flatbeds, eventually losing their way and ending up on Bálsamos Street, a mere block from León Martín Cordero, carajo, the one ex president his mother still rooted for, the one who had been anointed by Reagan because of his strong arm tactics and his free market packages and who would have had no qualms about outfitting his grandson with a
BB
gun to shoo El Loco's people off his street), and as he sets down his luggage in the living room of the apartment on Bálsamos Street where he lived with his mother until fleeing to the United States he remembers his mother emerging onto her balcony to find the caravan for El Loco blasting its songs of hope from a megaphone fastened to a Datsun's roof with rope — the force of the poor / Abdalá / the clamor of my people / Abdalá — and on her balcony on that day like in those years before she steeped herself in transpersonal yoga and the meditation exercises of Father Davila, his mother seemed ready to order everyone
to shut the hell up, which was exactly what Antonio refused to do in those days, although sometimes after he argued with her he would refuse to talk to her for three, six, seven days in a row, or until she would threaten to send him to military school, and in those days he would often hear his mother complaining about how even people with only a smattering of education knew that El Loco was a joke, and whether Manuel, our domestic, was in on the joke worried my mother so much that from her balcony she was checking to see if Manuel looked enraptured by El Loco's caravan, but no, Manuel wasn't, although later my mother was to assume so, Manuel was just hosing the parking spots in front of our apartment building, and yes, El Loco was a joke, but what wasn't a joke were the alternatives, because our cultivated ministers and prefects and mayors and even my own father had been too busy defrauding our government to care about the poor, and what was even less of a joke was the precarious conditions in which so many people in Ecuador lived, and so I raised my hand and gave the caravan a thumbs up, a gesture that confused them because they seemed to be trying to determine if I was mocking them, although it's possible they were just observing me because I happened to be sitting there, a lanky teenager sporting his Emelec soccer uniform, and yet Antonio wasn't mocking them, he was smiling and clapping and ignoring his mother on the balcony who yelled come inside right this second, Antonio José, and as he opens the empty fridge rusted along the edges in the apartment on Bálsamos Street where he lived with his mother until fleeing to the United States, he considers how loud his mother must have yelled at him because the people in the caravan heard her, hesitating as to whether to heckle her because on the one hand her voice carried an authority they acknowledged, and on the other hand she was a woman, either way Manuel diverted their attention by waving at them, water splashing on his feet and sprinkling on his stone colored jeans, which he had rolled up to his knees as if he were about to catch carp at a rough river, wiping his hand on his tee shirt and waving at them again, which to me seemed innocuous enough, as if Manuel was greeting a traveling circus, a circus that then surprised him by returning his
greeting, some raising their fists as if promising to fight for him, others stretching their arms toward him to shake his hands, and as the last pickup passed him he did not take the three or five steps required to shake their hands, which should have counted in his favor but didn't because later that night Antonio's mother said I want you to watch him, or perhaps she said keep an eye on him, or perhaps she didn't say anything and in retrospect her statements have surfaced as manifestations of what he didn't know then that he was intuiting about her fears about El Loco, we need to be careful, his mother said, we need to keep all entrances locked, his mother said, and as he contemplates the empty walls of the apartment on Bálsamos Street he thinks of all the fistfights at San Javier that his mother had to account for when Father Ignacio would call her to inform her that her son had been suspended or placed on probation yet again (and once, during semifinals, Antonio swiped the yellow card from the referee and tossed it at his face — red card! you're out! — fighting for the ball with elbows and knees and taking off through the outermost flank at an incredible speed, the goalkeeper yelling stop him, Antonio yelling ábranse hijueputas, propelling the ball to the goal minimally when the ball was inflated maximally so that from afar his mean sprints looked like pranks — pata floja —), and what Antonio said to his mother after she told him to keep an eye on Manuel was I don't know what you're talking about, or leave me alone, or whatever he used to say to her when he wasn't ignoring her, don't play stupid, his mother said, because of course she knew that Antonio knew she was worried about El Loco, the self proclaimed leader of the poor who was talking the class talk, demonizing those people with money, those oligarchs who steal from the poor, those aniñados, and what worried my mother and her clients at her nail salon wasn't that El Loco was known for disregarding the sensible limits of public fraud but that our domestics might take El Loco's rhetoric to heart and revolt against us, rumors circulating among them about servants lurking inside our houses to slash our throats, and what Antonio said to his mother that night was you, all of you, are overreacting, raising his voice and saying something about our country needing a
revolt, anyway, to rid us of thieves, sensing or thinking he could sense that his mother wanted to nod in approval because what he'd said was an oblique swing at his father, who'd fled the country for defrauding the government during the administration of León Martín Cordero, but instead his mother admonished him for raising his voice, an admonishment interrupted by a telephone call, or perhaps the call came later, and as Antonio heads toward his old bedroom he wonders what they could possibly have said to each other in that interval between her admonishment and that telephone call — the light left the house after you left, Antonio — and it occurs to Antonio that he had never noticed how empty the walls looked in the apartment where he grew up with his mother, how emptied one feels after a long plane ride, how easy it is to assume he has never noticed something before instead of considering that what has become an absence in his past might include an evening in which he noticed the empty walls of his apartment when he was seven or fifteen or twelve years old (when Antonio was twelve he made a vow of silence to atone for whatever had been prescribed by the Jesuits as sin), how reassuring it was to find the old rotary phone on his way to his bedroom, not ringing now as it had rung that night when his mother admonished him for raising his voice, the phone ringing and reminding his mother that she was too exhausted to squash his bluster, ringing and announcing that one of her clients (Marta de Rosales or Veronica de Arosemena or one of the wives of our dignitaries whose proximity allowed my mother and I to pretend we were the kind of people with money El Loco was railing about and not the kind of people who would have slipped to a faraway low income neighborhood if my grandfather hadn't allowed us to stay in the apartment building he'd built before our neighborhood became a good one) was probably calling to request a last minute appointment to swap a broken acrylic nail before heading to a social function we hadn't been invited to, and yet even after all these years in which he has amassed what he considers to be an inordinate amount of memories that have interposed themselves between that time and this time, he's almost sure his mother didn't end their exchange that night by saying you're supposed to be the
man of the house, Antonio José, start acting like one, no, he's almost sure she simply picked up the phone and waved him away, and as Antonio heads to his old bedroom he wonders if his scapulars are still there, his poster of our Madre Dolorosa, his handwritten pamphlets with his interpretation of the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary, which included the presentation of jesus in the temple, the annunciation of Gabriel to Mary (one summer when he was sixteen he didn't incur a single bad thought that could mar his love for Mary), his comic books about San Bosco, his comic books about El Chapulín Colorado, a parody of a superhero from a popular television show brimming with catchphrases that everyone at San Javier used to repeat to each other — recontra qué? — chiro — chanfle — his pocket edition of the Imitation of Christ, his rosary with the sunflower sized beads, all of which was stored inside a long row of cabinets that had been built by a carpenter who looked like Cantinflas, a sunburnt sixty five year old Cantinflas who would show up drunk at their apartment on Saturday mornings, ring the bell, and greet my mother gently and ask her if there was any work this week, Doña Ceci, I could really use the work, how's niño Antonio, is he still growing like a tree, and it surprises Antonio to remember his mother addressing their carpenter without scorn, maestro, you've been drinking again, she would admonish him playfully, un poquitín nomás, Doña Ceci, he would say, and while Antonio still lived in Guayaquil their carpenter installed the iron gates by the glass doors in his mother's balcony, the sturdy cabinets in Antonio's bedroom, his bed and the sliding bed underneath his bed where Leopoldo would sleep when he stayed over, and perhaps by his old bed the immense poster of The Cure that used to spook his mother is still there, spooking no one now (although perhaps his mother still sometimes thinks about that black poster with the phosphorescent eyes and remembers those Saturday mornings when she would open the door to his bedroom and complain about his room reeking of whiskey, or about those Saturday mornings when she pretended she was or wasn't heartbroken because of him, as if he'd slighted her somehow, and I would plead after her in the kitchen and ask her what's wrong, Mom, and she would eventually tell him that