The Years with Laura Diaz

The mere sight of Juan Francisco in bathrobe and slippers opening the door reminded her that she was, like it or not, a wife. She instantly rejected a repugnant but all too noble idea that had flashed through her mind. We only survive at home. Only those who stay at home survive. Out in the world, chasing the light, the fireflies burn up and die. That had to be what her grandfather must have thought, the old German Don Felipe Kelsen, who crossed the ocean to lock himself away in the Catemaco coffee plantation never to leave again. Was he happier than his descendants? Children shouldn’t be judged by their parents, much less the grandchildren. The idea that the generation gap has never been greater is false. The world has always been made up of generations standing on opposite sides of an abyss. It’s also made up of couples divided at times by clamorous silences, like the one that separated Grandfather Felipe from his beautiful and mutilated Doña Cosima, whose self absorbed gaze was never distracted-Laura knew from the time she was a child-from the dangerous and dashing bandit of Papantla. Seeing Juan Francisco in his robe and slippers open the door-old slippers with a hole for the big toe on his right foot to air, the chenille robe with gaudy stripes like a serape turned into a towel-she was seized with laughter thinking that her husband might be the secret child of that highwayman from the era of Benito Juárez.

“What the devil are you laughing at?”

“At the idea that we’re going to be grandparents, old boy,” she said, giggling hysterically.

In some unconscious way, the news of his daughter-in-law’s pregnancy buried Juan Francisco for good. It was as if the announcement of an imminent birth demanded the sacrifice of a hasty death, so that the child could take the space now uselessly occupied by the old man; he was now sixty-nine. Well, that was an educated guess, said Laura, smiling, because no one had ever seen his birth certificate. She saw him as dead beginning the night when he opened the door of their solitary home. Which is to say, she took away the time left to him.

Now there would be no time for a few sad caresses.

She saw him close the door, double-lock it and slide the bolt, as if there were something worthy of being stolen in that sad, poor place.

Now there would be no time to say that after all he’d had a happy life.

He shuffled off to the kitchen to make the coffee that both put him to sleep and gave him the sensation of doing something useful, something he could do on his own without Laura’s help.

Now there would be no time to change that winter smile.

He sipped his coffee slowly, moistening the remnants of a roll in it.

Now there would be no time to rejuvenate a soul that had become old. Not even believing in the immortality of the soul would make it conceivable that Juan Francisco’s might survive.

He cleaned his teeth with a toothpick.

Now there would be no time for a new and first look of love, neither sought nor foreseen yet astonishing.

He left the kitchen and glanced at the old newspapers saved for the hot-water heater.

Now there would be no time for the pity the old deserve even when they’ve lost love and respect.

He crossed the room filled with the velvet-covered furniture where years ago Laura had whiled away long hours while her husband argued labor politics in the dining room.

Now there would be no time to become indignant when results and not words were demanded of him.

He made a half turn back to the dining room, as if he’d left something behind, a memory, a promise.

Now there would be no time to justify himself, saying he’d joined the official party to convince those in power of the error of their ways.

Stumbling, he grabbed the banister on the stairway.

Now there would be no time to try to change things from within the government and the party.

Each stair took a century.

Now there would be no time to feel himself judged by her.

Each stair had turned to stone.

Now there would be no time to feel himself condemned or satisfied that it was only she who judged him, no one else.

He managed to reach the second floor.

Now there would be no time for his own conscience to condemn him.

He felt disoriented. Where was the bedroom? Which door led to the bathroom?

Now there would be no time to recover the prestige he’d accumulated over years and lost in an instant, as if nothing counted but that instant when the world turns its back on you.

Ah yes, this was the bathroom.

Now there would be no time to hear her say, What did you do today? and to answer the usual thing, You know.

He knocked modestly at the door.

Now there would be no time to keep an eye on her every moment during the day, to have her followed by detectives, to humiliate her a bit because he loved her too much.

He went into the bathroom.

Now there would be no time for her to pass from tedium and disdain to love and tenderness. No more time.

He looked at himself in the mirror.

Now there would be no time for the workers to love him, for him to feel loved by the workers.

He took down his razor, the shaving soap, and brush.

Now there would be no time to relive the historic days of the Río Blanco strikes.

Slowly he worked up a lather with the moistened brush and the soap.

Now there would be no time to form the Red Battalions of the Revolution again.

He spread the lather on his cheeks, upper lip, and neck.

Now there would be no time to revive the House of the Workers of the World.

Slowly he shaved.

Now there would be no time for his revolutionary deeds to be recognized, because now no one remembered anymore.

He was in the habit of shaving at night before going to bed, so as to save time in the morning before going to work.

Now there would be no time for them to give him his rightful place, fucking bastards, he was someone, he did things, he deserved a place.

He finished shaving.

Now there would be no time to admit failure.

He dried his face with a towel.

Now there would be no time to ask, Where did I go wrong?

He laughed into the mirror for a long time.

Now there would be no time to open a door to love.

He looked at an old man he didn’t recognize, another man who was himself emerging from the depth of the mirror to meet him now.

Now there would be no time to say I love you.

He looked at the wrinkled cheeks, defeated chin, curiously elongated ears, the sacks under his eyes, the gray hair everywhere-on his ears, his head, his lips, like frozen hay, a weather-beaten old pine tree.

He felt a huge desire, painful and pleasurable at the same time, to sit down and shit.

Now there would be no time to fulfill the promise of an admirable, glorious destiny he could bequeath.

He lowered the trousers of the striped pajamas that Danton had given him for his birthday and sat down on the toilet.

Now there would be no time…

He pushed hard and fell forward, his bowels emptied and his heart stopped.

Damned weather-beaten old pine tree.

At Juan Francisco’s wake, Laura set about forgetting her husband, erasing all the memories that weighed on her like an early tombstone on the grave of her marriage, but instead of grieving for Juan Francisco, she closed her eyes, standing next to the coffin, and thought about the pain of giving birth, thought about how her sons were born-so much pain and such an eternity between contraction and contraction for the elder son, smooth as swallowing caramel cream for the second, liquid and smooth like melted butter… but with her hand on her husband’s coffin, she decided to live the pain of childbirth, not that of death, realizing that someone else’s pain, the death of others, ends up being just that in our minds, someone else’s, neither Danton nor Santiago felt his mother’s birth pangs, for them entering the world was a cry of neither happiness nor sadness, the victory cry of the newborn, his Here I am!, while the mother was the one who suffered, and perhaps like her in the terrible traumas when Santiago was on the way, she shouted without caring whether the doctor and nurses heard her, “Damn it all! Why did I have a child? this is horrible!, why didn’t anyone tell me? I can’t bear this, I can’t bear this, just kill me, I want to die, damn brat, I hope he dies too…”