HAPPY FAMILIES.

by Carlos Fuentes.

A Family Like Any Other

THE FATHER. Pastor Pagan knows how to wink. He's a professional at winking. For him, winking an eye-just one-is a way to be courteous. All the people he deals with conclude their business with a wink. The bank manager when he approves a loan. The teller when he cashes a check. The administrator when he hands it to him. The cashier when he plays the fool and doesn't inspect it. The chief's a.s.sistant when he tells him to go to the bank. The porter. The chauffeur. The gardener. The maid. Everybody winks at him. Headlights on cars wink, traffic lights, lightning in the sky, gra.s.s in the ground, eagles in the air, not to mention the planes that fly over the house of Pastor Pagan and his family the whole blessed day. The feline purr of the engines is interrupted only by the winking of the traffic on Avenida Revolucion. Pastor responds to them with his own wink, moved by the certainty that this is dictated by good manners. Now that he's on a pension, he thinks of himself as a professional winker who never opened both eyes at the same time, and when he did, it was already too late. One wink too many, he thinks in self-recrimination, one wink too many. He didn't retire. He was retired at the age of fifty-two. What could he complain about? Instead of punishing him, they gave him nice compensation. Along with early retirement came the gift of this house, not a great mansion but a decent place to live. A relic of the distant "Aztec" period in Mexico City, when the nationalistic architects of the 1930s decided to build houses that looked like Indian pyramids. In other words, the house tapered between the ground floor and the third floor, which was so narrow it was uninhabitable. But his daughter, Alma, found it ideal for her equally narrow life, devoted to surfing on the Internet and finding in its virtual world a necessary-or sufficient-amount of life so she did not have to leave the house but felt herself part of a vast invisible tribe connected to her, as she was connected to and stimulated by a universe that she thought the only one worthy to take possession of "culture." The ground floor, really the bas.e.m.e.nt, is occupied now by his son, Abel, who rejoined the family at the age of thirty-two after a failed attempt at leading an independent life. He came back proudly in order not to show that he was coming back contrite. Pastor received him without saying a word. As if nothing had happened. But Elvira, Pastor's wife, reclaimed her son with signs of jubilation. No one remarked that Abel, by coming home, was admitting that at his age, the only way he could live was free of charge in the bosom of his family. Like a child. Except that the child accepts his situation with no problems. With joy.

THE MOTHER. Elvira Morales sang boleros. That was where Pastor Pagan met her, in a second-rate club near the Monumento a la Madre, on Avenida Villalongin. From the time she was very young, Elvira sang boleros at home, when she took a bath or helped to clean, and before she went to sleep. Songs were her prayers. They helped her endure the sad life of a daughter without a father and with a grieving mother. n.o.body helped her. She made herself on her own, on her own she asked for a job at a club in Rosales, was taken on, liked it, then went to a better neighborhood and began to believe everything she was singing. The bolero isn't good to women. It calls the female a "hypocrite, simply a hypocrite," and adds: "perverse one, you deceived me." Elvira Morales, to give conviction to her songs, took on the guilt in the lyrics, wondered if her fatal sap really poisoned men and if her s.e.x was the ivy of evil. She took the lyrics of boleros very seriously. Which was why she inspired enthusiasm, convinced her audience, and provoked applause night after night in the white spotlights that fortunately obscured the patrons' faces. The public was the dark side of the moon, and Elvira Morales could give herself blindly to the pa.s.sions she sang about, convinced they were true and that, since in song she was an "adventuress on earth," she would not be one in real life. On the contrary, she let it be known that the price of her love was high, very high, and whoever wanted the honey of her mouth would pay for the sin in diamonds. Elvira Morales could sing melodically about the abjectness of her fate, but offstage she jealously preserved the "springtime of her worth" (it rhymed with "adventuress on earth"). After the show, she never mixed with the audience. She would return to her dressing room, change, and go home, where her unfortunate mother was waiting for her. The patrons' invitations-a drink, a dance, a little love-were turned down, the flowers tossed into the trash, the small gifts returned. And the fact is that Elvira Morales, in every sense, took what she sang seriously. She knew through the bolero the dangers of life: lies, weariness, misery. But the lyrics authorized her to believe, to really believe, that "true affection, with no lies, no wickedness," can be found when "love is sincere."

THE DAUGHTER. Alma Pagan made an effort to find a place in the world. Let no one say she did not try. At eighteen, she realized she could not have a career. There was no time and no money. Secondary school was the most she could hope for, especially if the family's resources (so limited) would go to help her brother, Abel, at the university. Alma was a very attractive girl. Tall, slim, with long legs and a narrow waist, black hair in a helmet cut, a bust ample but not exaggerated, a matte complexion and veiled eyes, a partially open mouth, and a small, nervous nose, Alma seemed made to order for the recent occupation of aide at official ceremonies. Alma dressed just like the other three or six or twelve girls selected for business shows, international conferences, official ceremonies, in a white blouse and navy blue jacket and skirt, dark stockings, and high heels; her function was to stand quietly behind the speaker, refill gla.s.ses of water for panels, and never smile, much less disapprove of anything. Expel her emotions and be the perfect mannequin. One day she joined five colleagues at a charity event, and she saw herself as identical to them, all of them exactly the same, all differences erased. They were clones of one another. They had no other destiny but to be identical among themselves without ever being identical to themselves, to resemble one another in immobility and then disappear, retired because of their age, their weight, or a run in a black stocking. This idea horrified Alma Pagan. She quit, and since she was young and pretty, she found a job as a flight attendant on an airline that served the interior of the country. She didn't want to be far from her family and therefore didn't look for work on international flights. Perhaps she guessed her own destiny. That happens. And it also happens that on night flights the male pa.s.sengers, as soon as the lights were lowered, took advantage of the situation and caressed her legs as she pa.s.sed, or stared hungrily at her neckline, or simply pinched a b.u.t.tock as she served drinks and c.o.kes. The drop that filled her gla.s.s-of alcohol, of Coca-Cola-to overflowing was the attack of a fat Yucatecan when she was coming out of the lavatory. He pushed her inside, closed the door, and began to paw at her and call her "good-looking beauty." With a knee to his belly, Alma left the peninsular resident sitting on the toilet, pawing not Alma's b.r.e.a.s.t.s but the paunch of his guayabera. Alma did not file a complaint. It was useless. The pa.s.senger was always right. They wouldn't do anything to the pigheaded Yucatecan. They would accuse her of being overly familiar with the pa.s.sengers, and if she weren't fired, she'd be fined. This was why Alma withdrew from all activity in the world and settled into the top floor of her parents' house with all the audiovisual equipment that from then on would const.i.tute her secure, comfortable, and satisfactory universe. She had saved money and paid for the equipment herself.

THE SON. Abel Pagan did not finish his studies in economics at the Autonomous University of Mexico because he thought he was smarter than his instructors. The boy's agile, curious mind searched for and found the obscure fact that would leave his professors astounded. He spoke with self-a.s.surance of the "harmonies" of Bastiat and the GDP in the Republic of Congo, but if they asked him to locate that country on the map or to make the leap from the forgotten Bastiat to the very well-remembered Adam Smith, Abel was lost. He had learned the superfluous at the expense of the necessary. This made him feel at once superior to his professors and misunderstood by them. He left school and returned home, but his father told him he could stay only if he found work, this house wasn't for slackers, and he, Pastor Pagan, hadn't been lucky enough to go to college. Abel responded that it was true, one b.u.m was enough. His father slapped him, his mother cried, and Abel sailed away on the ship of his dignity. He went out to find a job. He longed for freedom. He wanted to return home in triumph. The prodigal son. He confused freedom with revenge. He applied to the firm where his father worked. The office of Leonardo Barroso. Abel told himself he would show that he, the son, could handle the position that had destroyed his father. "Do I care about Barrosos? Little authoritarian bosses? Tin-hat desk dictators? Let them act tough with me!" He didn't have to wink. They received him with smiles, which he returned. He didn't realize that fangs lie halfway between smiles and grimaces. Big fangs. They took him on without further negotiations. Not even how easy it was perked up his antennae. They needled him, as if they were afraid that Abel was spying for his father, which meant he had to prove he was his father's enemy, and this led him to rail against Pastor Pagan, his weakness and his laziness, his lack of grat.i.tude toward the Barrosos, who had given him work for over twenty years. The son's att.i.tude seemed to please the company. The fact is they gave him a job as a.s.sistant floorwalker in one of the firm's stores, where his occupation consisted of walking among possible buyers and impossible sellers, watching them all to make sure that one didn't steal the merchandise and the other didn't take little breaks. Abel was the elegant civilian gendarme of the store. He became bored. He began to long for his university days, the protection of the family, their savings destined for his education. He felt uncomfortable, unappreciated. His own filial insolence, his own love of easy living, his ingrat.i.tude, appeared to him like habitual, ungraspable ghosts. He felt that the carpets in the store were clearly wearing out under his useless walking back and forth. He made friends. The best salespeople received commissions and appeared in the weekly celebratory bulletin. Abel Pagan never appeared in the bulletin. His bad reputation spread. "Be more accommodating with people, Abel." "I can't help it, Senor. I've always been rude to stupid people." "Listen, Abel, you saw that Pepe was in the bulletin this week." "How little intelligence you need to succeed." "Why don't you try to get into the bulletin?" "Because I don't care." "Don't be so difficult, kid." "I'm not difficult. I'm just taking on the disgust all of you ought to feel, a bunch of brownnosers." "Why don't you accept things the way they are and try to improve them every day, Abel?" "Because everything is the way it is, and it's not my style." "I wish I understood you, pal." Life was turning into a very long walk between the shoe department and the shirt department. Then the unforeseeable happened.

THE FATHER. Looking back at the past, Pastor Pagan asked himself, Why wasn't I dishonest when I had the chance? Weren't they all thieves? Except me? Why did I have to speak to Senor Barroso himself and tell him that everybody had gotten rich but me, Senor? Why did I settle for the pittance-a check for five thousand dollars-that they gave me as a consolation prize? Why, from that time on, did they stop winking at me? What crime did I commit by talking to the big fish, to the boss? He soon found out. When he presented himself as the only honest employee, he implied that the others were not. For Barroso, this meant he was belittling his fellow workers. A real lack of solidarity. And without internal solidarity, the company didn't work. When he set himself up as the one employee above suspicion, Pastor aroused Barroso's perverse intelligence. As far as the boss was concerned, they were all corruptible. This was the central premise at all levels in Mexico, from the government to the company and from the grocery store to the communal pasture. How could Pastor Pagan presume to be the exception? Barroso the boss must have laughed to himself. Pastor did not commit the crime of asking for a taste, he committed the crime of calling himself honest. He did not understand that it wasn't enough for a powerful man like Leonardo Barroso to give an improper commission to a minor employee. Pastor offered up his naked breast so his boss would try to really corrupt him. Now, forced into retirement with a pension for life, Pastor had time to reflect on the motives that drive each person to destroy others. Sometimes it's necessity, when the enemy is dangerous. Sometimes vanity, when he is stronger than you. Sometimes the simple indifference with which you squash a fly. But on occasion it's also to eliminate the threat of the weak man when the weak man knows a secret that the powerful one wants to keep hidden. Pastor Pagan lived in retirement, shuffling the possibilities of his destiny, which, after all, had already been fulfilled. The truth was they exchanged the whip for the cudgel. When he asked his employer to let him be another militant in the gigantic army of corruption, he committed the crime of accusing others while excusing himself. From that moment on, he was in the hands of the boss, which is to say, power. After that, Pastor would lack moral authority. He would be just another crook. The rule, not the exception he had been before. What would he have gained by not asking his employer for anything? Would he be freer, more respected, still employed? The bitterest day of Pastor Pagan's life was the one on which he realized that whatever he did, and without even knowing it, he was now part of the web of bribery in the small country of his own job. For years he had served corruption, carrying checks back and forth, accepting false accounts, winking, being winked at, morally captured at that photographic moment when a single eye closes in complicity and the other stays open in shame. But he had remained pure until now. He looked at himself in the mirror, searching for a halo, and all he found was a circle of thinning hair. He proposed a martyr's reflection, and the response was gray skin, a face with defeated cheeks, evasive eyes, and nervous eyebrows. He straightened his torso, and his chest caved in.

THE MOTHER. The bolero proposes lovers to us. Some are fatal. They live waiting for their luck to change or for death to come like a blessing. Others are nostalgic: We will live like the wandering bird, longing for love. There are those who are devotion's beggars: The woman he loved took everything and left him alone. There are boleros bursting with pa.s.sion: They want to drink the honey in the woman's mouth and, in pa.s.sing, be enthralled by her skin. There are dominating boleros that impose the heat of their pa.s.sion. Elvira Morales sang all these feelings but kept them in her bosom, which was why she communicated them with so much power. She avoided looking at the people who, night after night, listened to her sing in Aladdin's Cave. She made one fortunate exception. Something magical, mysterious, must have guided her eyes as she sang "Two Souls" and stopped them at the man who looked back at her with eyes different from all the others. Accustomed to denying the correspondence between the words of the boleros and the presence of the men who listened to her, she felt this time that the song and the person magically coincided. "Two souls that G.o.d had joined in the world, two souls that loved, that's what you and I were." A tender man: That's what the eyes of the spectator said as he was isolated in the nocturnal darkness of the cabaret by a spot just like the light that emphasized Elvira Morales's moon face and bare round shoulders, and paused at the low neckline of the red sequined dress, leaving everything else in the penumbra of mystery. Why were just two faces illuminated that night, Elvira's and the unknown man's? Who but G.o.d, or an archangel on a divine mission, was operating the spotlights that night? The fact is that Elvira, for the first time since she left home and began to sing, felt that a man deserved her voice, understood her lyrics, incarnated her music. This lasted only an instant. When the song was over and the lights went on, Elvira Morales looked in vain for the man she had glimpsed as she sang. Could it have been an illusion, a strange projection of the bolero into reality? No. The place was there, but the seat was empty, and when the table was occupied by a couple who had just come in, she knew that the man who had captured her attention had been there before, and even if he had left, she would still be there, and he would know where to find her. If he really wanted to see her again.

THE DAUGHTER. From the moment she decided to seclude herself on the third floor of her father's house, Alma Pagan had also decided on her new-and permanent-lifestyle. She felt revulsion when she remembered being as cold as a statue at conferences and charity benefits, or when she remembered being pawed, pinched, insulted on the Mexico CityMexicali or Mexico CityMerida flights. She didn't blame anyone but herself. Her body was the offender. Good-looking, desirable, corruptible. She alone was responsible for inciting macho l.u.s.t. She punished herself. She abandoned her flight uniform and adopted the style appropriate to internal exile. Keds, jeans, flip-flops, and sometimes sweatshirts from Indiana University Kokomo. A perpetual baseball cap from the ancient Jaibos of Tampico. Appearance wasn't the important thing, though it was enough just to see her not to desire her. The important thing was that by isolating herself from a hostile, unpleasant world, Alma could enter completely into a world of action and excitement, of vicarious emotion, of endless accident, and all of it without physical consequences for her. The world of the reality show. She bought a subscription to receive periodically the best programs about these real-life situations in which young, vigorous men and women partic.i.p.ate in daring adventures, constant compet.i.tions, select prizes. . . . Right now, in the middle of the story, Alma follows with almost strabismic attention the beginning of the adventure of a group of four couples who must compete for the first three places in a journey filled with obstacles. The odyssey begins in Ciudad Juarez and ends in Tapachula. That is to say, it starts at the border with the U.S.A. and ends at the border with Guatemala. The contestants have to compete, overcoming deterrents to reach the objective in first, second, or third place. The couple who comes in last is eliminated. The winning couple receives a week on the luxury cruise ship Sirens of the Sea. Sirens of the Sea. Those in second and third place receive thanks and a DVD on mountain climbing. Now Alma observes the departure of the four couples on the international bridge between El Paso and Ciudad Juarez. It turns out that four of the contestants are gringos and the other four are Mexican. The first gringo couple consists of two young men, Jake and Mike, slim and handsome, as if born for reality stardom. The second is two women, one black (Sophonisbe) and the other white (Sally). On the other hand, the Mexican couples consist of a man and a woman, as if avoiding suspicions of h.o.m.os.e.xuality. There are two short, skinny young people, Juan and Soledad, and two thin, weather-beaten old people, Jehova and Pepita. The North Americans wear T-shirts and shorts. The young Mexicans are attired like Tarahumara Indians from Chihuahua, that is, with bare legs, embroidered shirts, and red bandanas tied around their heads. The old people are dressed just like Alma Pagan. It shocks her that the most decrepit have appropriated the dress of the youngest. Is there no longer a difference in ages? Perhaps not. But the most interesting thing is that the race from frontier to frontier begins on the one between Mexico and the United States, that is, the contestants run from the border that millions of Mexicans would like to cross to find work in the prosperous north. And they end up on the border between Mexico and Guatemala, that is, the dividing line between two miseries that poor Central Americans sneak across to get to the United States. This paradox is not lost on Alma. It is part of her education. She begins to feel that the reality show is the university she never attended. Vicarious reality. Emotion without a value-added tax. Movement without danger. Alma finds her reality. She no longer has a reason to put herself at risk and go out into the hostile, degrading world. Thanks to the Net, the world was within reach; she felt that now she was becoming part of an instant tribe, connected by virtual Nets, stimulated by the audiovisual universe, and overstimulated by the temptation to make contact with other seafarers like herself. But she still didn't have the courage to chat. Those in second and third place receive thanks and a DVD on mountain climbing. Now Alma observes the departure of the four couples on the international bridge between El Paso and Ciudad Juarez. It turns out that four of the contestants are gringos and the other four are Mexican. The first gringo couple consists of two young men, Jake and Mike, slim and handsome, as if born for reality stardom. The second is two women, one black (Sophonisbe) and the other white (Sally). On the other hand, the Mexican couples consist of a man and a woman, as if avoiding suspicions of h.o.m.os.e.xuality. There are two short, skinny young people, Juan and Soledad, and two thin, weather-beaten old people, Jehova and Pepita. The North Americans wear T-shirts and shorts. The young Mexicans are attired like Tarahumara Indians from Chihuahua, that is, with bare legs, embroidered shirts, and red bandanas tied around their heads. The old people are dressed just like Alma Pagan. It shocks her that the most decrepit have appropriated the dress of the youngest. Is there no longer a difference in ages? Perhaps not. But the most interesting thing is that the race from frontier to frontier begins on the one between Mexico and the United States, that is, the contestants run from the border that millions of Mexicans would like to cross to find work in the prosperous north. And they end up on the border between Mexico and Guatemala, that is, the dividing line between two miseries that poor Central Americans sneak across to get to the United States. This paradox is not lost on Alma. It is part of her education. She begins to feel that the reality show is the university she never attended. Vicarious reality. Emotion without a value-added tax. Movement without danger. Alma finds her reality. She no longer has a reason to put herself at risk and go out into the hostile, degrading world. Thanks to the Net, the world was within reach; she felt that now she was becoming part of an instant tribe, connected by virtual Nets, stimulated by the audiovisual universe, and overstimulated by the temptation to make contact with other seafarers like herself. But she still didn't have the courage to chat.

THE SON. Leonardo Barroso was a powerful man because he did not ignore details. His eagle eye swooped down from trading stocks on the Hong Kong exchange to the life story of his humblest employee. Abel Pagan was situated midway between a billion-dollar investment and a porter's salary. Barroso had paid attention to him ever since the young man asked for a job and stupidly announced that he had come to degrade his father. Abel was intentionally sent to walk department-store floors. Just to soften him up and show him who was in charge of the company. Who was "top man." Which was why the call to come to the office of the boss, Don Leonardo, and then the peremptory offer, were so surprising. The son would do what his father had done for twenty-five years. Receive checks from the accounting office, take checks to the bank. Ask no questions. It was a position of trust. Don Leonardo winked: Abel ought to learn to wink. Wink at the bank manager. Wink at the teller. Wink at the driver. Wink at everybody. "They'll all understand, because that's what your father did. You just say: 'My name's Pagan, and Don Leonardo sent me.' They'll all understand. But don't forget to wink. It's the sign of a.s.sent. If they don't return the wink, you'd better be suspicious and leave." Abel was torn between satisfaction and doubt. Barroso trusted him. But he was manipulating him, too. More than anything else, he was placing Abel in a sequence of unknown actions in which the son's work was the continuation of the father's. Blindly, the young man decided to try his luck. After all, he had moved up from the counter to management in the wink of an eye. The boss trusted him. They gave him a raise. He rented a very small apartment over a bridal shop on Insurgentes. In no time he was living beyond his salary, given the demands of his status. Broads began to pursue him, and he couldn't receive them in an apartment damaged by earthquakes. He moved to the Hotel Genova in the Rosa district, and his s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g was regular but lacked the pleasure of conquest. Tasty. Girls offered themselves to him insinuatingly (suspicion) and f.u.c.ked as if obeying orders. Whose? Abel began to be even more suspicious. Expenses increased. So did his work. And, in the end, his frustrations. Abel lived like an automaton. The table was set for him. He didn't have to make any effort. The measure of his ambition was constantly frustrated by the abundance of his success. They called him Don Abel at the hotel. A table was permanently reserved for him at the Bellinghausen restaurant. They gave him a clothing account at Armani. They presented him with a red BMW, "Don Leonardo's orders." The broads, every single one of them, pretended to have torrential o.r.g.a.s.ms. In the bathroom, he was supplied with cologne, soap, toothpaste, and shampoo without having to ask. They even put pink condoms with little painted elephants on them in his bureau. Faithful to his origins and temperament, Abel felt that he had higher aspirations-call them independence, personal expression, free will, who knows-and that his position at Barroso Brothers didn't completely satisfy them. He also realized that his work was illusory. Without the nod from Barroso, his world would collapse. He owed everything to the boss, nothing to his own efforts. Abel Pagan wasn't a fool. Understanding embittered him. He began to feel an urgent need to prove himself. Not to depend on Barroso. Not to be anybody's servant. Did anyone think that he, the young man, didn't know more than the adults (Barrosos or parents)? Did anyone think he couldn't fill his own position, an independent position in the marketplace? He looked at everything around him-hotel suite, plenty of women, expensive restaurants, luxury cars, Armani clothes-and told himself that he, without anybody's help, deserved all this and had the brains and the guts and the b.a.l.l.s to get it on his own. He began to long for a freedom that his job denied him. What did he have that would allow him to enter the job market with autonomy? He counted up his marbles. Very few and pretty faded. All of them said: "Property of L. Barroso." He wanted desperately to a.s.sert himself. He let his hair grow and tied it back in a ponytail. He couldn't go any further. He wanted to live a different reality, not his parents'. And he didn't want the reality of his contemporaries, either. It made him sick to his stomach when someone in the office said to him, "You've arrived, Abel," and the more vulgar ones, "Broads, bread, the boss's protection, you f.u.c.king have it made, what else could you want, do you want anything else?" Yes, he wanted something else. Then everything began to change. Little by little. That's how it was. Abel had a secure job in an insecure world. He was smart and realized that the company was growing and diversifying production while work was being reduced. The fact was, you could produce more and work less, Abel told himself. He thought about all this and felt protected, privileged. And still he wanted more. Then everything began to change. They canceled his credit card. The little s.l.u.ts didn't visit him anymore. The office didn't pa.s.s him checks anymore. There were no winks anymore. They put him in a dark tiny office without light or air, almost a prophecy of prison. Finally, they fired him. Disconcerted, not to mention stunned, overnight Abel Pagan found himself out on the street. Wasn't this what he had wanted? To be independent, first of his family, then of his boss? Sure, it was just that he wanted to do it on his own terms, not anybody else's. Barroso had given him a destiny and now was s.n.a.t.c.hing it away from him. Abel imagined the boss licking his lips with pleasure. Barroso had humiliated the father; now it was time to humiliate the son. Abel felt like the sacrificial lamb, ready to have his throat cut. Abel asked himself what Barroso was up to. Testing the father's fidelity by testing the son's honesty? Abel looked at his hands, dirtied by more checks than the legs in a colony of spiders. "It's not fair," he murmured. He felt adrift, vulnerable, without direction. He felt dispensable and humiliated. He felt that his efforts had not been compensated. Didn't he deserve, on the merits, a better job because he had more education? Why were things just the opposite? Something was wrong, very wrong. Now what was he going to do? Where would he begin again? What had he done wrong? He screwed up his courage and asked for an appointment with Don Leonardo Barroso. He was turned down. But the boss's secretary handed him an envelope. Inside was a check for five thousand pesos and a phrase in Latin: Delicta maiorum immeritus lues. Delicta maiorum immeritus lues. A professor at the university was kind enough to translate it for him. "Even though you are not responsible, you must expiate the sins of your father." A professor at the university was kind enough to translate it for him. "Even though you are not responsible, you must expiate the sins of your father."

THE FATHER. Pastor Pagan was a good man, and he welcomed the prodigal son with dignity. He was moved by Abel's wounded vanity, and to avoid any hint of anger, he turned a blind but tearless eye when opening his arms to Abel. It was better to proceed as if nothing had happened. Look ahead. Never behind. He realized that the son, like the father, did not have many resources for confronting anything. Abel's return made them equal. The thought worried the father a good deal. Should he ask Abel directly: What's going on? Did not saying anything imply that he could imagine what had happened? Did saying something open the door to a confession in which the past would infect the present forever? Abel gave him the key. A month after his return home, after thirty days of pretending that nothing out of the ordinary had happened because the ordinary was fatal, Abel thought that if he was going to live with his parents and sister forever, the best thing was to say, "The truth is, I wasn't ready for that position." Which was his father's old position. These words of his son's confused the father and hurt him deeply. Pastor Pagan didn't say anything. He took refuge in the ruins of his pride only to confirm that Abel's return meant that neither father nor son controlled his own life. Pastor lacked energy. Abel had no will, either. When the father realized this, he began to bring up topics indirectly to see if he could finally tell his son the truth. One night they got drunk in a cantina out toward La Piedad, and in the heat of the drinks, Pastor thought the ice was breaking-the iceberg that the years had built between father and son-and he dared to sigh: "The G.o.ddess success is a wh.o.r.e." To which Abel, for the first time in a long time, responded, "Sure." "To be successful, you need losers. If not, how do you know you did well?" "Sure, for each success you have, it has to go badly for somebody else. It's the way the game is played." "And what happens when first things go badly and you move up and then things go badly and you fall?" "You become a philosopher, my boy." "Or you sing songs in cantinas, Pop." Which, being pretty tight, they proceeded to do. "The one who left." Not a woman. Luck is the one who left. Fortune is the one who got away. They embraced, though they were thinking different thoughts. The father was afraid Abel would sink into rancor and not know how to get out. The son put together alcoholic lists of the mistakes he had made and was still making. "How many mistakes did I make today?" he asked Pastor with a thick tongue. "Whew, don't count mistakes, son, because that's a count that never ends." "What do you regret, Pop?" Pastor answered, laughing: "Not having bought a painting by Frida Kahlo for two thousand pesos when I was young. And you?" "Getting things that I flat out didn't deserve." "Go on, don't get depressed on me. You had everything given to you." "That's the bad thing." "You didn't have to save as a young man just to lose it all with inflation and currency devaluations." "Is that why you sold yourself to Barroso, Pop?" "Don't f.u.c.k with me, son, show some respect, I worked a quarter of a century to put a roof over my children's heads and educate them. Don't try to find out how I did it. More respect. More grat.i.tude." "But the only thing I want to know is if he treated you as badly as he did me." "Worse, son, worse." "Tell me about it." "Look, Abel, don't look back, let's look ahead." "The problem is, I'm seeing double." "What?" "I'm seeing you double, as if you were two people." "You're tight." "Who knows. Suddenly, I'm as sober as I ever was." "Go on, finish up your tequila and let's go home. Our girls are waiting for us. They must be worried."

THE MOTHER. Elvira Morales decided not to lose her joy. She proposed a daily celebration of their meeting, thirty-three years ago, in Aladdin's Cave. She was singing. He knew where to find her. She wouldn't go away. And he came back. They married and were happy. Elvira wanted to sum up her existence in this sentence: Let arguments always remain embryonic, their differences hidden, and all the rest resolved romantically by dancing together again at the cabaret whenever there were clouds on the horizon. The cabaret had been the cradle of their love, and in it Elvira felt that the juices of their love were renewed. Pastor Pagan once again became the lover of her dreams. The incarnation of a bolero with no tears or complaints, though certainly filled with sighs, Elvira stopped being a martyr to her husband's destiny. When she felt trapped, she would return to the bolero, and then her marriage reeled. The entire sense of her life consisted in leaving song lyrics behind, nullifying them with a reality in which her portion of happiness was larger than her share of misfortunes, and therefore, when something clouded the happy marriage that was Elvira's sacrament, the altar of her spirit, she would invite her husband to dance, to return to the cabaret, to what were now called "caves," and dance, holding each other very tight, very close, feeling how the sap of illusion began to flow again. When he was younger, Abel would laugh at these nostalgic excursions. "And in its caves let the earth tremble," he would say in a parody of his favorite author, Gonzalo Celorio. But in the end the children were grateful for these ceremonies of renewed fidelity because they brought peace into the home and gave some lee-way to questions about the children's position in the world: at home or not at home. Elvira realized that more and more children were remaining at home beyond the age of thirty or returned home at the age of Christ, like her son, Abel, or were prepared to grow old at home, like Alma, locked away in her garret. All of this only reinforced Elvira Morales's conviction: If the children were tightrope walkers in the circus of life, their parents would be the safety net that broke the fall and kept them from crashing to their deaths. Was this the real reason for Elvira's behavior, why she forgave mistakes, why she fed the sacred flame of love with her husband, why she forgot everything dangerous or disagreeable, why she kept secrets so well? Because life isn't a bolero? Because life ought to be a sentimental ballad that soothes, a secret idyll, a pot of flowers that wither if we don't water them? That was why she and her husband would go together to the old bars and dance in cabarets. To remember what isn't forgotten by endlessly identifying happiness. Elvira's aged mother died while her daughter was singing boleros in Aladdin's Cave, on the night she identified Pastor Pagan without knowing that her ailing mama had pa.s.sed. That's how destiny deals the cards. And destiny is reversible, like a coat that keeps out the cold on one side and protects against the rain on the other. That was why Elvira Morales never said, "But that was then." That was why she always said, "Now. Right now. Right this very minute."

THE DAUGHTER. The two American women (Sophonisbe and Sally) didn't get past Ciudad Juarez. On the first day of the race, they disappeared and then were found dead in a ditch near the Rio Grande. Two residents of El Paso, Texas, had to be called very quickly to satisfy the rules of the compet.i.tion. No gringo couple had the courage to cross the river. The organizers resigned themselves to recruiting a couple of Mexicans prepared to do anything in order to win a trip to the Caribbean. In their eyes, the palm trees drunk on the sun were already before them, behind them the deserts of huisache cactus and rattlesnakes. The aridity of northern Mexico was part of the test for winning. The compet.i.tors in the reality show were receiving written instructions in manila envelopes. Now stop to pick p.r.i.c.kly pears or pack serapes. You're free. Choose. What's faster? It doesn't matter. Now they have to cross the desert riding unruly burros. Now they have to take a train up to Zacatecas, and the ones who miss it will have to wait for the next one and fall behind. They have to make up for lost time-how? Getting on a rattletrap bus that drives along a mountain road. The gringos shout with glee on every deadly curve. The Mexicans maintain a stoic silence. They lose it when they have to let themselves be pulled by a team of oxen through a muddy swamp. They survive. The desire to win moves them. Each couple is pursued by the one behind. Each is treading on the tail of the one in front and prefiguring the panting of the one that follows. They have to go into a bull-ring with a red handkerchief (courtesy of the house) and fight a bull calf disoriented because it ate cornflakes for breakfast. Once again, the two gringos are jubilant as they fight, giving Apache war whoops. The Mexican women abstain. The men-old Jehova, skinny Juan-make pa.s.ses more worthy than the frightened, confused calf. Now they're traveling through the middle of the country. There are posters, there are colors, there are instructions. Stop here. Sleep wherever you please. Outdoors. On a bench. However you can. The next day everyone has to shovel up the manure on a local cattle farm. They complain, it smells bad. Pepita falls down. She eats s.h.i.t. A gringo falls down. He eats s.h.i.t. He declares that this is very s.e.xy. The women caress their b.r.e.a.s.t.s as if to confirm that they're still intact. They all get into a bus heading for Oaxaca. Another bus appears, going in the opposite direction. Will they all die? Alma Pagan turns off the television set. She doesn't want to know what happens. She doesn't want the violence to interrupt, perhaps forever, not her second but her authentic life, the existence that offers her, free of charge, with no danger to her person, the reality show. She turns on the set in order to enter into the danger on the street. Though seeing it clearly, the small screen saves her from danger by giving it to her right here, where it doesn't touch her, in her house. She feels alive, stimulated. She no longer knows she is vulnerable. In her way, she has entered paradise.

THE SON. Why did he go back like a miserable pain in the a.s.s, to ask for another job with Barroso? Is this the effect of the moral hangover from the night with his father in the cantina in La Piedad? Did he see his father for the first time? Or did he see himself for the last time? Why did he know more than his parent but not have a secure position in the marketplace? Did mockery defeat him, the irresistible temptation to laugh at his parents? She sang boleros. She thought living contrary to the lyrics was enough to be happy. She hadn't realized she was living in a false world of illusion. She believed in the lyrics. Why had she stopped singing? Didn't she realize that the sacrifice wasn't worth it? She had traded the gold of an independent career for the small change of conjugal life. She was a sentimental slave to the bolero and became the martyr of the family. She never had escaped from the bolero. How ridiculous. She had sung in Aladdin's Cave. Aladdin didn't have a cave. He had a lamp. The one with the cave was Ali Baba. His folks are so ignorant. What a f.u.c.ked-up life. A school for the children. A home for the old folks. What a choice! Still, there are times when he is overcome by emotion, especially when his vanity is catered to by the perpetual cooing of his mother as she caresses his forehead and describes him, how handsome my boy is you're my boy your broad forehead your black curly hair your silky skin the color of dark mamey your profile like the king of clubs, like a Roman emperor, that's what they say, a nose with no bridge your small but full mouth, that face you make my boy as if defying a world you don't like, that c.o.c.k-of-the-walk tension in every last inch of your sweet body, you were that way when you were little, you're that way now that you're big, tell me, who admires you more than I do? And his sister gets on his nerves. How easy to lock yourself up with a laptop in a safe imaginary uncontaminated universe with no stardust, no offensive smells. And his father the worst of all, the high priest of deception, a man trapped in lies. And he himself, Abel Pagan, did he still have aspirations? And if he did, would he realize them one day? And where would he "fulfill" himself best? In the shelter of his family, at the age of thirty-two, or unprotected out on the great street, knowing that his vanity, no matter how small, was going to demand more and more effort? With what conviction would he arm himself to leave the no-cost comfort of home and go back out into the world? Was he going to tell himself: Stop brooding, Abel Pagan, the future's here, it's called the present? Or better yet, am I going to accept everything we were and improve it every day? How do you reject the past without negating the future? What would be the cost of his two rebellions, the insurrection against his family and the revolt against his office? Would he be capable of denying reality in order to bring it up to his desire? Could he forget completely what it was that opposed the ideal life of Abel Pagan, fortune's darling? Or should he submit to everything that denied him a happy-that is to say, an autonomous-free life without any obligation to subject himself to the family or the office? He had to choose. Secretly, he wrote desperate phrases in order to obtain some light. We are destroying ourselves to reach the unrealizable. To be a son, it's not enough to be against your parents. To be free, it's not enough to be against your boss. I need to change. I can't separate myself from my life. My family doesn't care about oblivion. They don't care that by midcentury no one will remember them. But I do. I do. What am I doing? Who will remember me? How do I make my mark on the wall?

THE FATHER. It wasn't that the drinks in the cantina went to his head. It was that for the first time, he felt like a friend to his son. They were buddies. Maybe it was that they hadn't had the chance to chat before. It was that they might not have the chance to talk frankly again. It was that the time had come to prepare the balance sheet of one's life, one's history, the time one had lived. We are children of an ill-starred revolution, Pastor had said to his son, who looked at him with uncertainty and suspicion and a kind of distant forgetfulness close to indifference. What revolution? What was his father talking about? The technological revolution? Pastor continues. He thinks we did a lot of things badly because we lost our illusions. The country slipped from our hands, Abel. And so the ties that bound us together were broken. In the long run, it's a question of surviving, that's all. When you have ideals, you don't care if you survive or not. You take the risk. Now there are no more connections. They were broken by forgetting, corruption, deceit, winking. The wink instead of thought, instead of the word, the d.a.m.n dirty wink, Abel, the sign of complicity for everybody and between everybody and for everything. Look at me and contemplate the sadness of a survivor. I worked very hard to feel like a moral man. Even realizing that in Mexico the only morality is making a fortune without working. Not me, son. I swear, for my whole life, I did nothing but take care of the work they gave me. Cutting through red tape. Negotiating licenses. Lowering fees. Going back and forth with checks, funds, bank deposits. What did I expect in return? A little respect, Abel. Not condescension. Not the wink of a crook. I showed I was a decent man. Courteous to my superiors. Not obsequious. How could I not notice that the thieves, the a.s.skissers, the grabby ones moved up very quickly, and I didn't? I seemed fated to always do the same thing until I retired. It cost me twenty-five years of honesty to reach an instant of lying. Because a five-thousand-dollar concession on a contract isn't a crime, son. It's a weakness. Or charity. In other words, what they call an existential stupidity. Then Barroso found out I had my price, too. I noticed the cynical, knowing gleam in his eyes. I was just like all the rest. I had just taken a little longer to fall. I was no longer his honest, trustworthy employee. I could be bribed. I was like everybody else. What to do with a brand-new thief, hey? In that exchange of glances, I knew that my destiny and my boss's were joined only to put an official seal on a pact of complicity in which he gave the orders and I kept quiet. He didn't have to say, "You disappointed me, Pagan." He knows how to speak with a movement of his eyelids. That's all that moves. Not his eyebrows or his mouth or his hands. He moves his eyelids and condemns you to complicity. I didn't have to do anything to feel that my poor triumph-five thousand dollars in charity-was my great failure, son. A mess of pottage, that's what it was. At that moment I felt obliged to really want what I once said I despised. I was disgusted with myself. I tell you that openly. I also knew I had to hide what had happened. That made me even more ashamed. And I knew that sooner or later I'd pay for my weakness in the face of power. "Don't worry, Pagan," Barroso said in a voice that was metallic and syrupy at the same time. "To be good, it has to be convenient." That wasn't true. I could confront life only because I didn't tolerate cheating. I didn't resign myself to being guilty. That was my mistake. If I wasn't innocent, I'd at least be as perverse as they were. A game of cat and mouse. Except that the cat was a tiger and the mouse a meek little lamb. I didn't have to threaten anybody. I didn't have to say a word. I had to put up with the consequences of actions that I thought were honorable, but they weren't. I didn't understand the value of a wink. I didn't understand the cost of a bribe. But as soon as he realized I was vulnerable, Barroso decided to destroy me so my weakness wouldn't become a danger for him. Each of us-Barroso and I-thought his own thoughts. I understood what was happening to me. Barroso always knew, and that's why he outstripped me. "Look, Pagan. There's a crime called fraudulent management. It consists of carrying out operations prejudicial to the owner's wealth for the benefit of oneself or other parties. It consists of making a profit as a direct consequence of issuing doc.u.ments made out to an individual, on demand or to the bearer, against an a.s.sumed person. For example, selling the same thing to two different people. Altering accounts or contractual terms. Declaring nonexistent expenses." He sat looking at me, I'm telling you, like a tiger you suddenly run into in the jungle, a wild animal hidden until that moment, though predictable. You knew it was there, that it always was there, but you thought it wouldn't attack you, that it would look at you in that sweet and at the same time threatening way typical of felines, thought it would disappear again into the underbrush. Not this time. "In other words," the boss continued, "you're guilty of fraud against this company for your own benefit." I could stammer that it wasn't true, that I had only followed instructions. That there could be no doubt about my good faith. Barroso shook his head in compa.s.sion. "Pagan, my friend. Accept the offer I'm making you for your sake and for mine. Your secret is safe with me. I'm not going to investigate where you got the five thousand dollars in your bank account." "But Senor, you gave them to me." "Prove it, Pagan. Where's the receipt?" He paused and added: "I'm going to give you a pension. A pension for life. You're fifty-two years old. Prepared to live quietly, with a secure envelope each month. A receipt isn't necessary. A contract isn't necessary, what an idea. Ten thousand pesos adjusted to inflation. Accept and the matter dies here." He made a melodramatic pause, very typical of him. "Refuse and what dies is you." He smiled and held out his hand. "What do you prefer? To be free and happy or in prison for twenty years? Because you should know that your crime carries a sentence of five to ten years in jail. Ten more on top of that will be because of me and the influence I have." He smiled, and his smile disappeared instantly. Look at my hand, son. That's what we've lived on since then. With the necessary adjustments for inflation.

THE MOTHER. He knew where Elvira Morales sang, and he could always find her. In the eleven o'clock show at the cabaret Aladdin's Cave. Would he come back? Or wouldn't she see him again? Looking at the past calmly, Elvira Morales always calculated that the anonymous spectator who had shared the white lights with her one night would come back to hear her and have the courage to talk to her. She kept the image of a tall, robust man, his incipient baldness compensated for by long sideburns and a well-groomed mustache. Though it was also possible he'd never come back, and it was all a mirage in the great gray desert of the Cuauhtemoc district. The fact is, he did come back, their eyes met as she sang "Two Souls," and in what was an unusual move for her, she came down from the small stage surrounded by applause and went over to the man waiting for her at table 12A. Pastor Pagan. "Shall we dance?" In her heart of hearts, she had made a bet. This man seems arrogant because he's shy. Which was why now, thirty-three years later, when Elvira felt that a second desert was growing, the desert of married life, she continued the song knowing that Pastor, when he heard her, would ask her to dance that same night. There were no working-cla.s.s cabarets like the ones they used to have. The life of the city had broken through the old borders. n.o.body dared to go into dangerous neighborhoods. Young people went far away, to the edge of the city. Old people were more secure, frequenting the salsa dance halls in the Roma district, where everything was so dependable you could even go up onstage and show your skill as a dancer. This was where they went, though Elvira and Pastor got up to dance only to the slowest, most melancholy boleros. Listen. I'll tell you in secret that I really love you. And I follow your steps even if you don't want me to. Then, in each other's arms, on the floor, dancing the way they did when they met, she could close her eyes and admit that when she gave up her career and agreed to marry, it was to become indispensable at home. If she didn't, it wasn't worth it. To be indispensable, she soon discovered (not now, now she's dancing cheek-to-cheek with her husband) that once out of her profession, she was free to bring the song lyrics into her private life. She realized, with bitter surprise, that the bolero was the truth. In the cabaret, she had sung what she hadn't lived: the temptation of evil. Now, in her home, the lyrics returned almost like something imposed, a law. Say it isn't true, Elvira. Say I didn't fall in love with you because of a secret despair, that I didn't transform the ringing of wedding bells into a prelude to an emptiness so profound that only a poor tyranny over the house can fill it. Giving orders. Being obeyed. Never being dominated. Hiding her probable melancholy. Burying her unwanted restlessness. Devising matrimonial strategies so he would never say what she feared most: "We're not the way we used to be." He never said it. They went to bars with the illusion that there was never any "used to" but always nothing except "right now." She always sang, and he knew where to find her. Always. She wouldn't leave. "You have an exciting voice." Mustache. Sideburns. Incipient baldness. Attributes of a macho. "Thank you, Senor." She did have an exciting voice as a singer, that's true. As a woman and mother, she felt her sentimental voice gradually turning into something else difficult to describe aloud. In her heart, she perhaps could tell herself-dancing very close to her past, present, for always lover, her man, Pastor Pagan-that instead of the woman's martyrdom typical of the bolero, she now felt tempted to identify with the wife and mother who gives orders, however small they may be. And who is obeyed. This causes melancholy and agitation in Elvira Morales. She cannot understand why she doesn't accept the simple tranquility of her home or rather, even if she does accept it, why she feels attracted to the misfortune at the heart of the song, though when you sing it, there's no need to live it, and when you stop singing it, you fall into the trap of giving it life. "I don't recognize myself," Elvira whispers in Pastor's ear when they dance together in the club. She doesn't go on. She suspects he wouldn't understand, and neither would anyone else. She would never say: "I regret it. I should have continued with my singing career." And neither would she say something as melodramatic as: "A mother and wife needs to be worshiped." She would never say a thing like that. She preferred, now and then, to declare her love. To her husband, her children, Alma and Abel. Her children didn't return the favor. In the shrug of their shoulders, in their cold eyes, she recognized that all of a mother's sentimental baggage seemed despicable to her children. For them, the bolero was ridiculous. But for Pastor, the music was just what it should be. The key to happiness. The prologue to the feeling, if not the feeling itself. Something overly sweet. Strange but overly sweet. Dancing in the half-light of romantic dance halls (there were still a few left), Elvira realized that what her children rejected in her was exactly what she rejected in her husband. The dreadful mawkishness of a world that decks itself out in colored spheres, as brittle and hollow as the b.a.l.l.s on a Christmas tree. Was it necessary to elevate like a profane Eucharist one's cheap and overly sentimental innermost feelings in order to disguise the lack of emotion in daily life, the absence of seriousness in the eternal disorder that affirms us in the face of the void, that distances us from everyone-from other people and from ourselves? Elvira Morales dances with her arms around her husband, and Pastor Pagan says into her ear, "How long are we going to pretend we're still young? How long are we going to admit that our children threaten us? That they annihilate us little by little." When she married, she thought: I can turn him down. But only now. Later, I won't have that freedom. And before returning to the everyday schedule, the customary obligations, the degrees of indifference, the thermometer of real or imaginary debts, he would say into her ear as they danced to boleros, holding each other very tight: "Once, there was magic here."

THE DAUGHTER. The four couples, fatigued, are approaching the final goal. The border with Guatemala. The Mexicans, Jehova and Pepita, have taken the train that goes to the Suchiate River, and the two North American boys, Jake and Mike, have opted for motorcycles. The Chihuahans, Juan and Soledad, prefer to run with a marathon highland rhythm. Only the Mexicans from Ciudad Juarez, the last-minute contestants, have lost their way in Oaxaca, where they finally were found in an inn sick with indigestion from a black mole. mole. Half an hour from the goal, in the Chiapas forest, the train is halted by trees blocking the track, and out of the forest come ten, twelve young devils. Heads shaved, naked from the waist up, tears tattooed on their chests. The announcer on the reality show does not omit these details. He thinks it's one more obstacle antic.i.p.ated for the race. Part of the show. It's not. Five or six boys get into the train with machine guns and begin to shoot the pa.s.sengers. Jehova and Pepita die instantly. The gringos, Jake and Mike, arrive like the cavalry in a cowboy movie, realize what is happening, get off their motorcycles, attack the devils of the murdering gang with their fists. They can't subdue them. Four boys with shaved heads shoot the young North Americans. They fall down dead. The forest is inundated with blood. The Chihuahans smell the blood from a distance. They have an ear for violence. They have suffered it for centuries at the hands of whites and mestizos. It is their inheritance to be suspicious. They don't approach the train. They take another road to the border. They win the compet.i.tion. In Indian dress, they are right in style to take a Caribbean cruise. "We've never been to the ocean," they declare when they are awarded the prize. Alma Pagan turns off the television. She doesn't know when she'll turn it on again. In any case, she feels better informed than her parents. They are very ignorant. And without information, what authority can they have over her and her brother, Abel? She thought this and didn't understand why she felt more vulnerable than ever. Half an hour from the goal, in the Chiapas forest, the train is halted by trees blocking the track, and out of the forest come ten, twelve young devils. Heads shaved, naked from the waist up, tears tattooed on their chests. The announcer on the reality show does not omit these details. He thinks it's one more obstacle antic.i.p.ated for the race. Part of the show. It's not. Five or six boys get into the train with machine guns and begin to shoot the pa.s.sengers. Jehova and Pepita die instantly. The gringos, Jake and Mike, arrive like the cavalry in a cowboy movie, realize what is happening, get off their motorcycles, attack the devils of the murdering gang with their fists. They can't subdue them. Four boys with shaved heads shoot the young North Americans. They fall down dead. The forest is inundated with blood. The Chihuahans smell the blood from a distance. They have an ear for violence. They have suffered it for centuries at the hands of whites and mestizos. It is their inheritance to be suspicious. They don't approach the train. They take another road to the border. They win the compet.i.tion. In Indian dress, they are right in style to take a Caribbean cruise. "We've never been to the ocean," they declare when they are awarded the prize. Alma Pagan turns off the television. She doesn't know when she'll turn it on again. In any case, she feels better informed than her parents. They are very ignorant. And without information, what authority can they have over her and her brother, Abel? She thought this and didn't understand why she felt more vulnerable than ever.

THE SON. Abel Pagan walks along the avenue, its walls heavily painted with graffiti. On wall after wall, the Mara Salvatrucha gang announces that it will bring the war to the city. They are young Central Americans displaced by the wars in El Salvador and Honduras. Abel feels sad looking at this graphic violence that makes the city so ugly. Though making Mexico City ugly is a tautology. And graffiti are universal. Abel saw and felt the immense desolation of the broad gray street. There was nothing to be done. He reached the metro station. He decided to jump the gate and board the train without paying for a ticket. n.o.body saw him. He felt free. The train, filled with people, pulled out.

THE BOSS. Leonardo Barroso shows no emotion at all when he reads these lines. Or rather, his lack of emotion is the most eloquent statement of his disdain. "Look, Abel. There are no indispensable employees here. Wise up, boy. With modern technology, production increases, and the worker goes down. If I ever offer you something, consider yourself privileged. Here you have a secure, steady job. What I don't tolerate are stupid whims. Personal rebellions in exchange for the privilege of working with me. With Leonardo Barroso. Understand? It's up to you. You're either in or you're out. I don't need you. The business will grow with or without you. If you want the truth, it'll do better without you. You should always feel that a job is a privilege, because you, Abel, are turning out to be superfluous."

THE FATHER AND MOTHER. I don't describe Elvira because in my eyes she's always the same girl I met one day singing the bolero "Two Souls."

Chorus of the Street Gossips

Exita gave birth in the street Half the girls on the street are pregnant They're between twelve and fifteen years old Their babies are newborns up to six years old A lot of them are lucky and miscarry because they're given a beating And the fetus comes out screeching with fear Is it better to be inside or outside?

I don't want to be here mamacita Toss me in the garbage instead mother I don't want to be born and grow dumber each day With no bath mamacita with no food mother With no nourishment except alcohol mother marijuana mother Paint thinner mother glue mother cement mother cocaine mother Gasoline mother Your t.i.ts overflowing with gasoline mother I spit flames from the mouth I nursed with mother A few cents mother On the crossroads mother My mouth full of the gasoline I nursed mother My mouth burning burned My lips turned to ash at the age of ten How do you want me to love me mother?

I don't hate you I hate me I'm not worth dog s.h.i.t mother I'm only worth what my fists deliver Fists for fighting fists for stealing fists for stabbing mother If you're still alive mother If you still love me just a little Order me please to love me just a little I swear I hate me I'm less than a dog's vomit a mule's s.h.i.t a hair on your a.s.s an abandoned Huarache a rotten peach a black banana peel Less than a drunkard's belch Less than a policeman's fart Less than a headless chicken Less than a b.u.m's old p.r.i.c.k Less than the skinny a.s.s of a Campeche wh.o.r.e less than a drug dealer's spittle less than the shaved a.s.s of a baboon in the zoo less than less mamacita don't let me kill myself all alone tell me something to make me feel like a real f.u.c.ker a real bad motherf.u.c.ker mother jes gimme a hand to get out of this mother d.a.m.ned to this forever mother?

look at my nails black to the quick look at my eyes glued shut by rheum look at my lips chapped raw look at the black slime on my tongue look at the yellow slime in my ears look at my green thick navel mother gemme outta here what did I do to end up here?

Digging gnawing scratching crying what did I do to end up here?

The Disobedient Son

1. Sometimes my father drank and sang Cristero songs.

2. He liked to recall the deeds of his father, our grandfather, in the War of Christ the King, when the Catholics of