“Any moment now another bomb will explode and the world will come to an end.”
Guffaws in response, not a single indication of alarm. The news, it seems, had been attended to as if a leaf had fallen from a tree. Full focus on the scrumptious. Beans for dinner … this the only dish, though plentiful, accompanied by plump rolls … It’s also worth mentioning, by the way, that beans made with lard are much tastier, as these were on this occasion.
“The bomb was dropped from an airplane.”
Silence or the continued shoveling of food. Words, which ones? Only hers … tossed into the air.
“What? Aren’t you worried?! The world is about to come to an end!”
Demetrio shook his head, just as smug as can be, made a move to stand up to assert his authority, and did so, but first he wiped his tangled lips and spoke.
“Look, señora, if the world is going to end, let it end already.”
“What?!”
“Yes, let it end; after all …”
The others chimed in: “Let it end, let it end.” Derision for the defeated one; though: how callous this mediocre — somewhat shameful? — merrymaking, enough to make Doña Rolanda feel crushed by the indiscretion (that almost infantile chorus of “Let it end!” continued), my, my! the lady felt intimidated but not before she’d done further damage by uttering one last sentence: It’s just that, can you imagine how many Japanese have died! In response: not a sigh, not even for the sake of politeness: nope! why second the motion? May she and her facts fade straightaway. Hence, already shrunken and small, she uttered one last word: “Hi-ro-shi-ma,” a vague subconscious input Demetrio unwittingly recorded, so effectively that when he was sitting on a bench in a rectangular room, that is, a waiting room, he muttered the word as if trying to spit it out. The small plane that would carry him to Nochistlán had limited capacity: eight passengers. The agronomist was quite familiar with this grasshopper-like flight. And all the while: “Hi-ro-shi-ma, Hi-ro-shi-ma.” And, by way of counterpoint, a view of the concrete: the awaiting plane. And then the imagined: the bomb: from what height was it dropped? His guts churned at the mere thought that he would board a plane that might be carrying — a bomb! Terrifying associations growing grimmer and grimmer … Moments later the announcement of the plane’s departure. There weren’t eight passengers, only five, and still his fears: that the contraption would fall or that the bomb would explode in midair. Nevertheless, the boarding and the takeoff and finally the airborne motion: thick clouds angrily shook the plane, enough to make one think the worst. Bah! We needn’t dwell on this because nothing terrible happened. Landing put an end to the paranoia after a miserable hour that, by the way, had the landlady not mentioned the bomb or the airplane and even less the thousands of dead Japanese — careful now! — would have been COMPLETELY NORMAL, for this was not the first time Demetrio had taken this flight.
Inevitable regression once his feet touched the ground. Memories of Mireya, a fleeting but always sensual silhouette: “For sure she’ll get it on with others and at some point while she’s doing it she’ll shout out my name.” Such miserable thoughts made the agronomist ill, but, what could he do to rid himself of something that had already become abhorrently persistent?: “She’ll miss me. My naked body will appear in her dreams.” And as he turned away from the Nochistlán airfield, he redoubled his efforts to stroll along the pavement with a graceful air, and we say “air” because the local breeze caressed him: swirled around him, perhaps, to purify the traveler’s incantation: “No-chis-tlán,” “Hir-ro-shi-ma,” “Mi-re-ya,” “Pa-rras,” verbal scraps, parsimonious swaying that finally touched down on an unreal, deep, shifting surface, whereby the agronomist would soon forget Oaxaca completely. Nor did he wish to cram himself into that future frame called Parras, on which his mother appeared embossed (unblemished), or better said: where decency sparkled in colorful abstraction … From Nochistlán, which was not by any measure a world cultural center, he would take the bus to Cuautla, which wasn’t either (unless someone would like to claim otherwise). From there he would board a train to Mexico City, which was, of course: that urban area had to be the most important cultural center in the world, wouldn’t you say? And now, getting back on track, so to speak, we are now approaching the drudgery of the culminating leg of the journey. Demetrio knew what it meant to spend thirty hours on a train. Standing up, sitting down, eating poorly, getting depressed as he sank into silence, and it was even worse if someone tried to engage him in conversation. He rudely cut short anybody who dared, even raising a fist as if to fight if a stranger insisted. Once he had done just that: mercilessly slapping a quite shameless man who had provoked him: You think you’re man enough to get into a fistfight with me? He never should have said that, the agronomist’s violent outburst had been most improbable, such a quiet, well-behaved gentleman, so much for that! He had been so fierce that the train conductors forced him off at the next station without refunding even one cent of his fare. The conductors’ last argument (while shoving him) just as the train pulled away was regarding the expense of healing the wounded man, parting palaver that settled accounts between them … On the ground, prone, his suitcase tossed and broken, Demetrio had sworn at the capped men, who could no longer hear the inventiveness of his invectives. The consequences were awful. Sparing many details, suffice it to say that on that occasion the agronomist spent forty-eight hours in that accursed backwater. The tedium of hour upon cheerless hour made him yell at nobody in particular. A madness the locals duly respected. His own private problems had no ramifications, so, why censure him? better he wear himself out shouting his head off, and that’s just what he did, trembling, as if someone had poured a bucket of cold water down his back. How fortunate the muffling gloam hid, for better or for worse, his reddened face! Then the good services of the people at the station, where he slept on a pile of empty, scratchy gunnysacks. But first they gave him two soups: one greenish and the other gray. He slept poorly, in large part because his bedding smelled of burro piss. Horrible! Violence turns into disaster and recovery takes time. Demetrio recalled all this when the interruption came this time around, and the rudeness of his retort consisted of: I’m so sorry, but I don’t want to talk to anybody. I’ve got too many problems. That’s it! and he raised no fist. Precaution. Regret. Good manners.
In any case, he’d reach Saltillo; hmm, Saltillo, who knows what it was … Here it is important to contemplate how singular and solitary his tribulations were: Demetrio strained to carry his enormous suitcase. The wreck of a man ascending and descending the train’s metal stairs. Still to come was the difficulty of the next embarkation: the noisy train trip to Parras, four additional suffocating hours in pursuit of that pre-Christmas joy, the welcoming embrace between mother and son: this, the annual event … irritability upon arrival, for after each had spoken a few kind words he begged to rest: Please, I want to sleep. After those last four hours he just had to! now!
His mother understood. In this deflated state he retired to a room full of altars crowded with saints. A host of sacred eyes spying: upon a sinner seeking refuge. Tomorrow more fuss and bother because they would leave early for Sacramento: trains, stairs, his mother’s excessive chatter: all quite predictable. For now, let us focus on a single fact: Demetrio slept fourteen hours straight, watched over by porcelain saints who would do nothing at all. As fate would have it, he turned his back on them, so to speak: and: Demetrio — was he cold? — also covered his head, but … in sleep’s underworld there appeared words suggesting landscapes of great depths; as for the sleeper, he experienced a succinct sashaying of sensations; barely a murmur … cloying syllables such as: “Hi-ro-shi-ma”: hell? the wedding and God embracing the newlyweds: a photograph with mountains in the background. Another of the devil laughing as enormous tongues of fire licked the newlyweds. Finally: a circuitous flickering: heavy sleep, the road to relief …