Abuelo became his grandson's closest friend. He told him who Sonja's family was. To many Mexicans, Fulgencio Batista was only an upstart colonel and maybe worse. But Don Pedro Escalante, though he was a hidalgo, had secretly sent money to Pancho Villa. And now he was secretly giving money to his daughter-in-law's uncle.
He was catholic in his political predilections but not Catholic in his religious ones. Little Jonas was baptized by a priest, but he was not reared a Catholic. His father was not a Catholic, so Grandfather deemed it would be inappropriate someday to present a devout Catholic son to a non-Catholic father — and he had no doubt the family would someday present the son to the father.
Grandfather sent the boy to the grammar school in Cordoba. Boys there knew he was a bastard and not only that but the son of a yanqui, but they dared not torment the grandson of the hidalgo. One did and suffered a broken nose for his effrontery.
Abuelo carried a pistol on his hip. He taught his grandson to shoot, and when Jonas was only eight years old he gave him a .22-caliber seven-shot Harrington & Richards revolver. Jonas practiced with it, under the careful tutelage of the old man, and he became accurate, so accurate that his targets were spent shotgun shells set up on a sawhorse to be fired on from twenty meters.
One of the boy's proudest moments came when he was nine years old. His little sister Maria was a toddler. She had been in the kitchen, where the cook had given her a slice of pie, and she wandered out through the back door, across the dooryard and beyond. Shortly Jonas heard the cook scream. He was in his room reading, and before he ran out to see what was wrong he grabbed his revolver. He had an instinct that if some sort of danger was threatening, a gun might be useful.
He ran into the dooryard. The cook stood flushed, trembling, terrified, pointing at the little girl. Maria sat on the ground, ten meters beyond the dooryard fence. She too was frightened. Not two meters from her a coiled rattlesnake buzzed its warning. She had wandered near it when it was shedding its skin and was in a foul, aggressive mood. Whether or not it would strike was uncertain, but it might if she moved. It almost certainly would if anyone else came near.
Jonas closed his left hand around his right wrist and took steady aim on the rattlesnake. Its head was as big as four of the shotgun shells that were his usual targets. Still, this was no easy shot. He held his breath, which he did not usually do when he was shooting. He fired. The .22 slug split the head of the rattler, and it writhed and thrashed as the boy rushed up and grabbed his little sister to drag her away from it.
He was a hero. It was a fine thing to be a hero. He enjoyed it.
3
The next year, 1936, he did not return to the grammar school in Cordoba. Instead, he and his mother went to live in Mexico City, in a flat maintained by Virgilio Escalante for his convenience in his frequent visits to the capital. The family had used its considerable political and economic influence to secure a place for Jonas at La Escuela Diplomatica, an international school for the children of diplomats. There he would study with Europeans and improve his English and learn French and German.
He learned something else: that Mexico was not one of the world's great nations, not in wealth, not in military might, not in cultural achievement and influence. No. The Estados Unidos to the north was all these things. Mexico was not. Mexico was a respectable nation but not a leader of the world. At the grammar school in Cordoba the teachers had taught otherwise.
His mother smiled when he asked her about this. The nuns had never taught her, she said, that Cuba was one of the great nations. They had taught her that Spain was the greatest nation of the world, with the world's supreme culture, admired and envied by everyone. The poor silly women had believed it, she said. And the teachers at Cordoba had believed what they taught.
At La Escuela Diplomatica it meant nothing that he was the illegitimate son of Jonas Cord, nothing that he was the grandson of Don Pedro Escalante. No one there had ever heard of either of them. He was Jonas Enrique Raul Cord y Batista, and all that counted was that his family had enough money to pay his tuition — that and the fact that he was bright enough to meet the challenge of a singularly demanding school.
During his first year at the school he lived at home in the Escalante apartment. In 1938, when he was twelve and no longer in the grammar-school department, he moved into the boys' dormitory.
The boys lived two to a room. His roommate was Maurice Raynal, a boy one year older than he was, who was supposed to act as a sort of mentor in the realities of school life. Maurice was the son of the naval attaché at the French embassy. Though a year older, he was no bigger than Jonas, who was tall and muscular with a man's voice, no longer a child in any sense.
Maurice's Spanish and English were heavily accented, as for that matter was his German. The teachers were constantly at him about it. The teachers asked Jonas to help him. They suggested that the two boys speak only English and Spanish in their room. Jonas was happy to do that, especially the English. The more he spoke English, the better.
Maurice complained that Jonas did not speak English the same as their English teacher. Eventually he understood. "Ah, Jonas, c'est Americain! Ce n'est pas Anglais! Vous parlez Americain!"
Jonas could not have been happier. He was not English. His father was not English. He wanted to speak his father's language, and his father spoke American.
Maurice was the source of a problem, and also of an education. He took off his clothes when they were alone in their room and the door was bolted. He walked around naked. Jonas never did. Usually when he did it, Maurice had an erection. Jonas was mature enough to know what that was.
And then one evening Maurice lifted his penis in his hand and asked, "Dites-moi, mon ami. Est le votre si grand?"
Jonas glanced casually at the stiff organ. "Oui," he said. "Plus grand."
"Vraiment? Me montrez."
Jonas considered for a moment, then stood and unbuttoned his pants and pulled out his own penis. "Voila," he said. "Assez grand?"
Maurice grinned and nodded. "C'est beau."
Jonas stuffed his back in, buttoned his pants, and turned his attention to a problem in plane geometry.
He had supposed what Maurice had in mind was a competition. That was not what Maurice had in mind at all. The next evening he asked Jonas if he ever had wet dreams. Jonas admitted that he did.
Maurice spoke English. "A pleasure, no? But you need not wait for that pleasure. You can make it happen."
That was an interesting idea. Jonas had guessed as much but had not experimented.
Maurice saw he was interested. "I will show you how," he said solemnly, and he proceeded to masturbate, casting his ejaculate into a handkerchief. "See? Shall I do it for you?"
"I will do it for myself," said Jonas.
"Do. Let's see how much time you need."
Aroused, Jonas did what Maurice suggested, wetting his own handkerchief.
"It is good, no?" Maurice asked. "It is better when we do it for each other — at the same time."