One night, when Santiago fell asleep next to his recently acquired easel-this one a gift from Diego Rivera-Laura, who was allowed to watch him paint, covered him with a blanket and cushioned his head as best she could, very softly caressing his unfurrowed brow. Leaving his room, she heard laughter and whispering in her bedroom. She walked in without knocking and found Juan Francisco and Danton on the floor, sitting with their legs crossed, studying a spread-out map of the state of Tabasco.
“Excuse me,” interrupted Laura. “It’s late, and you have school tomorrow, Danton.”
The boy laughed. “My best school is right here with my dad.”
They’d been drinking. The bottle of Potrero rum was half empty, and Juan Francisco’s alcoholic heaviness kept him from raising the hand he’d stretched out over the surface of his home state.
“Off to bed now, my fine young gentleman.”
“Oh, what a pain. We were having so much fun.”
“But, son, tomorrow you won’t be able to hold your head up if you don’t get some sleep.”
“Fun, son, head, dead,” rhymed Danton as he marched off.
Laura stared hard at her husband and the map.
“What place is that right under your finger?” Laura smiled. “Let me see. Macuspana. Was that just an accident, or does that mean something to you?”
“It’s a place hidden in the forest.”
“That much I can imagine. What’s it mean to you?”
“Elzevir Almonte.”
Laura couldn’t speak. Like an arrow, her mind flew back to the figure of the priest from Puebla who appeared one day in Catemaco to sow intolerance, impose ridiculous moral restrictions, disturb innocence in the confessional, and disappear another fine day with the offerings to the Holy Child of Zongolica.
“Elzevir Almonte,” repeated Laura in a trance, remembering the priest’s question that day in confession: Would you like to see your father’s sex, child?
“He took refuge in Tabasco. He passed himself off as a layman, of course, and no one knew where he got his money. He would go to Villahermosa once a month and the next, day pay off all his debts in one shot. The day my mother died there was no priest in the entire zone. I ran everywhere shouting, My mother wants to confess, wants to go to heaven, isn’t there a padre to bless her? It was then Almonte revealed he was a priest and gave my mother the last rites. I’ll never forget the expression of peace on my poor old mother’s face. She died thanking me for sending her to heaven. Why did you hide out here? I asked Father Elzevir. He told me, and I told him, it’s time you redeemed yourself. I brought him to the Rio Blanco strike. He attended the workers left wounded by the rural police. The army had killed two hundred of them. Almonte blessed each and every one. They couldn’t stop him even if they were in a hurry to load the corpses onto open cars and dump them into the sea at Veracruz. But Father Elzevir was indefatigable. He got together with Margarito Ramirez, a brave worker who set fire to the company store. Then he became an outlaw on two fronts. The Church was hunting him down because of his robbery in Catemaco, the government because of his rebellion at Rio Blanco. I ended up asking myself, What good are these priests? Everything Father Elzevir did he could have done without the Church. My mother was going to die with or without a blessing. Porfirio Díaz’s army killed the Rio Blanco workers and threw them into the sea with or without a priest’s blessing, and Margarita Ramírez had no need of the priest to set fire to the store. In all good faith, I asked myself what the hell the purpose of the Church was. As if to confirm my doubts, Elzevir showed what he was made of. He went to Veracruz, and declared that everything that happened at Rio Blanco was an ‘anarchist conspiracy’ and appeared in the newspapers alongside the U.S. consul congratulating the government for its ‘decisive action.’ He would have done anything to get a pardon for his robbery and for running away from Catemaco. He had betrayal in his veins. He used me when he thought we were going to win, and he betrayed us as soon as we lost. He didn’t know we’d win in the long run. I came to despise him and acquired a profound hatred for the Church. That explains why I approved the persecution unleashed by Calles and why I turned in the nun Soriano. They’re a plague, and we’ve got to be implacable with them.”
“You don’t owe them anything?”
“I do owe Elzevir Almonte something. He told me all about your family. He described you as the most beautiful girl in Veracruz. I think he desired you. He told me how you’d make your confession with him. He even aroused me. I decided to meet you, Laura. I went to Xalapa to meet you.”
Juan Francisco carefully folded the map. He was already in his pajamas and went to bed without another word.
Laura couldn’t sleep. She was thinking hard about the immense impunity a reputation based on old sentiments can give one, as if, having drunk life’s hemlock, there is nothing left but to sit back and wait for death. Do we have to suffer in order to be someone? Do we receive it or seek it out? Perhaps Juan Francisco, without realizing, would have taken the story of Father Almonte-whom she’d thought of as a refugee, more a shadow than a man, in Mutti Leticia’s boardinghouse in Xalapa-as more a pain than a sin. Who knows what deep religious roots each individual and each family had in Mexico? Maybe rebelling against religion was a way of being religious. And the Revolution itself, with its national ceremonies, its civil saints and its warrior martyrs: wasn’t it a parallel, lay church-just as confident that it was the depository and dispenser of health as was the Apostolic and Holy Roman Church that had educated, protected, and exploited Mexicans all at the same time since the Conquest? But in the end none of that explained or justified betraying a woman who’d been granted asylum in a home, her home, the home of Laura D az.
Juan Francisco was unforgivable. He would die-Laura closed her eyes to fall asleep-without his wife’s forgiveness. That night, she felt herself to be more the sister of Gloria Soriano than the wife of Juan Francisco López Greene. More the sister than the wife, more the sis…
The fact is-she went on caviling when morning came-she didn’t want to attribute the change in her husband’s life, from energetic and generous labor tribune in the Revolution to second-rate politico and functionary, merely and simply to the need for survival. Perhaps the game that father and son were playing with the map held the key to Juan Francisco, beyond the poor saga of Father Almonte, beyond Danton, who could be very secretive or very much a chatterbox, even a braggart, if that suited his self-esteem, reputation, and convenience. No, she was not going to disguise sympathies and differences in this house; here people would speak the truth from now on, just as she did, giving an example for them all. She’d confessed before her family and, instead of losing respect, had won it.
That weekend she said exactly that to Danton. “I was very frank, son.”
“You confess before a husband who’s impotent, one son who’s gay, another who’s drunk, and an aunt born in a whorehouse. Wow, what bravery!”