“I love your little tummy,” I told her with much affection. “I want to make it bigger and bigger.”
“Until I’m pot-bellied?” she said, infuriated. “You’d rather I had a pot-belly? Is that what you want, you monster? To see me deformed? Are you that apathetic?”
“Actually that wouldn’t count as a deformity.”
“Oh really? What else do you call ruining my figure? You know who gave me my figure? The Lord God gave it to me, and only He can take it away. .”
“On the day you die,” I said without meaning for it to come out the way it did.
“Oh! So that’s what you want! To kill me! Spineless creep!”
“That’s not what I said. .”
“To fatten me up like a carnival balloon until I explode, you coward, fool, ass-kisser! Out on the big ranch!”
As I said, Priscila’s outbursts were usually delivered out of conversational context.
No, she did not refuse me her “favors.” But she guarded them with so many precautions that in the end I would lose not just my passion, but also my pleasure. Fortunately, everything took place in the dark. Priscila never saw my genitals. Better off that way! I never saw hers. The worse for me!
“Turn off the light.”
“Okay, fine.”
“Don’t look at me.”
“How could I possibly see you? It’s too dark.”
“Touch me with mercy.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Touch my scapulars.”
“You don’t have any scapulars.”
“Dummy.”
“Oh.”
The problem was that she did wear scapulars where she should not have, so my moves felt sacrilegious. How was I to caress the Sacred Heart of Jesus? How was I to suck on the breasts (and whatever else) of Our Lord of Sorrows? How to penetrate, in short, the Holy of Holies covered by the Veil of Veronica? This last one was a temptation of a subtlety scarcely attributable to Priscila, who was perhaps unaware of Veronica’s questionable past, because she confused her with Mary Magdalene; she believed they were both sisters of the Lord, reformed by religion, and therefore stripped the Virgin Mary of her virginity, unless the girls were younger than Jesus, in which case, as they say in roulette, rien ne va plus, and everyone to Bethlehem!
“The wildest Negro I met in Havana,” Priscila sang when I had satisfied her.
All this took place in the dark. So she never saw me naked. Better still.
Chapter 6
Whoever reads this will understand that he who writes it needed a safe haven outside of his home. To forget about the Holguín family. Their living and their dead. To be able to look at myself in the mirror without blushing, because Priscila and her family embarrassed me and made me ashamed of them and of myself.
I gave the Holguíns just as much as or more than they gave me to reassert my authority (still shaky because I’d hit the jackpot by marrying Priscila, which allowed me to bound up the social ladder from the crowded rungs of nobodies to the spacious heights of somebodies, beyond what my merits entitled me to, if not below my own weaknesses). The Holguíns gave me the gift of contrast: by being both what I was and what I am with them, I had the enormous freedom to be someone else when I left the house to pursue my career.
My detractors say that Don Celestino bankrolled me. I suppose that’s so, but I turned out to be a very good investment. I paid back his loan with exorbitant interest. I drew a line. In the house of Lomas Virreyes, I would adapt to the eccentricities of the family. Outside of it, I would be my own man. Free from the influence of those at home. Do not transfer any phone calls to me, Ms. Secretary, from my wife or father-in-law. Fulfill their requests yourself, as long as they are important (money, property, and unavoidable meetings). Ignore the nonsensical requests (hair-salon schedules, complaints about the help, dinner plans with people who aren’t important, I’ve got a major headache, Why don’t you love me the way you used to? Where did you put the car keys? Can I hang a picture of the Pope in the living room?).
My office is my sanctuary, inviolable by definition, sacred by vocation. My private life is denied entrance. Because my employees know this, they treat me with the respect that a man — such as I am — about whom they know nothing outside of work, deserves. My office, unlike most, is an image of privacy. My house is an agora of hullabaloo, silliness, gossip, and blackmail by those who think they’ve got you by the nuts just because they knew you when you were a hungry greenhorn. Familiarity also breeds misfortune. I’m thankful that I can get away from that. None of it matters to me. I’m the guy who swings his leg over the arm of the chair.
The Real Me is born and reborn when I walk into the office, give instructions to the secretaries, and preside over the conference table around which my associates have been waiting.
I address them with the familiar tú.
They address me with formal usted.
(Authority accrues certain privileges.)
They stand at attention when I enter a room.
I remain seated until they’ve all left.
I never leave to go to the bathroom.
I urinate before a meeting.
I do not drink water during a meeting.
They do. They condemn themselves in my presence by acknowledging their needs. (Words, class indicators. They need. I have.)
And so, imagine my surprise (concealed as it was by my best poker face) on that January 6, when my colleagues welcomed me to the conference room wearing dark sunglasses.
I gave no signs of surprise beyond the aforementioned, failed joke.
I dealt with old business, asked for opinions, gave permission to go to the restroom, offered water, as if this were business as usual. .
The meeting ended. That was Friday. I announced a meeting for Monday, wondering what would happen. Everyone stood but me.
On Monday my employees again showed off their dark sunglasses. And they showed something more troubling: an inquisitive audacity. Behind the dark lenses, I imagined their defiant stares masking fear. Their isolation from me was at once a barrier to overcome and an opportunity to seize. My antennae vibrated as I perceived a shift of power. The power of the weakness that I imposed on them. The weakness of the power that they returned to me. When one of them rose and left for the restroom, I noticed for the first time the creaking of floorboards. I pressed my legs together.
What was happening?
I wasn’t about to let them explain the situation to me. I moved on with a vertiginous feeling, as though I was walking along the edge of an abyss. My associates’ attitude, whether rebellious or disrespectful, was so unbearable that it forced my hand. Without considering the consequences, I gave an order.
“Take off your glasses, comets. The sun is out.”
They all looked at me with astonishment.
I knew that I had won this game.
This office rebellion had shattered a piece of the security with which, until then, I had governed them and in governing them, I had governed myself.
The insubordinates kept their dark sunglasses on.
But that’s another story.
Chapter 7
Everybody needs comfort. The stray dog seeks a master to rescue him, bathe him, and take care of him: food and shelter, even more precious to those who depend on the kindness of others. The caged bird appreciates its birdseed but yearns for the freedom to fly; when it escapes and flies away, it yearns for the never-ending supply of birdseed. According to popular wisdom, teenagers rebel against their parents, go out into the world, and return, contrite, begging for shelter, food, comfort, and unconditional affection. This was the case of an old friend of mine, Abel Pagán, who rebelled, left home, and was forced by circumstance to return humbled. Nobody knows how things will turn out. I have everything I need right now. But how about Mexico? If the peso’s devalued? If the drug traffickers take over? If the city floods once and for all, the shit rising to the Heights? If the highways become impassable and filled with bandits, the way they were in the nineteenth century? If Zapata rises from the dead? If the captured legendary soldier Valentín, as in the equally legendary corrido, refuses to talk? If the fat lady sings? If the next big earthquake leaves the country in ruins?. .