“Just imagine,” the attorney Zurinaga smiled. “Füssli was a cleric who fell out with an ecclesiastical judge. The judge defrocked him, and that’s what pushed Füssli toward art. .”
Zurinaga brought his fingers together beneath his chin.
“Sometimes, I would like to have been a judge who expelled himself from the judiciary and so is condemned to art. . Too late,” he sighed. “For me, life has become a long parade of corpses. . My only comfort is to count those who have not yet left, those who age with me. .”
Sunken in his leather wing chair worn from years of use, Zurinaga caressed its arms the way another man might caress the arms of a woman. His long white fingers took such deliberate pleasure from this that the lawyer seemed to be saying: “The flesh decays; the chair endures. Take your pick: one skin or the other.”
Zurinaga was seated near a fireplace that was lit day and night, even in warm weather, as if cold were a state of mind, something like the spiritual temperature of the boss’s soul.
His pale face revealed a network of blue veins, giving him a translucent though healthy appearance in spite of the minute web of wrinkles that spread between his balding cranium and his well-shaved chin, forming tiny eddies of old flesh around his lips and thick curtains above his gaze that, in spite of everything, was penetrating and watchful — even more so, perhaps, because his aged flesh had caused his pitch-black eyes to sink deep into his skull.
“So, how do you like my house, counselor?”
“Very much, Don Eloy.”
“A dreary mansion, large beyond all need. .” the old lawyer recited in a strange trance. He was a rare bird, considering his species — I thought as I listened to him — a Mexican lawyer who quoted English poetry. The old man smiled again.
“So you see, my dear Yves Navarro, the advantage of living a long life is the opportunity to learn more than one’s circumstances alone would allow.”
“Circumstances?” I asked in good faith, not certain what Zurinaga was talking about.
“Sure,” he said as he brought together his long pale fingers. “You descend from a great family; I ascend from an unknown tribe. You have forgotten what your ancestors knew. I have learned what mine never knew.”
He extended his hand and again caressed the beautiful worn leather of his comfortable armchair. I laughed: “Don’t be so sure. Being a wealthy landowner in the nineteenth century in no way guaranteed a cultivated mind. More likely the opposite! My forefathers had a hacienda in Querétaro where they grew maguey and fermented it to make pulque liquor. That sort of operation wouldn’t have been especially conducive to the enlightenment of its owners, that’s for sure.”
The light from the burning logs played on our faces like murky remains of sunlight.
“My ancestors were not interested in knowing,” I added, “just in owning.”
“Have you ever asked yourself, Licenciado Navarro, why the so-called ‘upper classes’ in Mexico never hang on to their stations long?”
“It must be a sign of the country’s health, Don Eloy. It means that there’s social mobility in Mexico, movement, the possibility of bettering one’s position: a permeability of class boundaries. Those of us who lost everything during the Revolution — and we had a lot to lose — not only accepted it, we applauded the fact.”
Eloy Zurinaga rested his chin on his clasped hands and looked at me with understanding.
“The problem is that, in the Americas, we are all colonials. Here only the Indians can be true aristocrats. The European conquistadors, the colonizers, were commoners, the hoi polloi, ex-cons. . On the other side of the ocean, the Old World bloodlines prolong themselves, not only because they date back centuries, but also because they don’t depend, like we do, on immigration. Take Germany. No Hohenstaufen had to cross the Atlantic to make his fortune. Think of the Balkans, of Central Europe. . The Hungarian Arpads date back to 886, for Saint Stephen’s sake! The great Župan Vladimir brought the Serbian tribes together in the ninth century, and beginning in 1196 the Numantian Dynasty ruled from the Zeta plain to the region of Macedonia. None of them needed to come to America to make a new start. .”
Every conversation with Don Eloy Zurinaga was interesting. Yet I knew from experience that the lawyer never spoke without a specific ulterior motive, stealthily approached through far-flung references. I’ve already mentioned that he was never curt with anyone, neither with his inferiors nor with his superiors; however, being so very superior himself, Zurinaga didn’t admit that there could be anyone above him. In any case, it was true: he paid polite attention to those of us who were beneath him, allowing us all to say our piece.
But when, following this pleasant introduction, my boss got to the point, I wasn’t at all surprised at the direction our conversation took.
“Navarro,” he said, “I want you to take care of a very important matter.”
I nodded in assent.
“We were talking about Central Europe, about the Balkans.”
I nodded again.
“An old friend of mine, displaced by wars and revolutions, has lost his estate along the Hungarian-Romanian border. He had extensive lands strewn with castles in ruins. The thing is,” said Zurinaga with a touch of melancholy, “the war only exterminated what was already dead.”
I looked at him in hope of an explanation.
“As you know, it’s preferable to be the master of your own downfall rather than to find yourself the victim of forces beyond your control. . Suffice it to say that my good friend was the master of his own fall from nobility, and that now, between the fascists and the communists, he’s been stripped of his lands and his castles and his. .”
For the first time in our relationship, I felt that Don Eloy was hesitating. I even noticed a nervous twitch in his left temple.
“Forgive me, Navarro. These are the recollections of an old man. My friend and I are of the same generation. Imagine, we studied together at the Sorbonne back when law, like good manners, was learned in French. Before l’anglais corrupted everything,” he concluded with bitterness.
He looked at the flames in the fireplace as if to temper his own gaze, and continued with his usual voice, a voice that sounded like a river churning up rocks.
“It just so happens that my old friend has decided to settle in Mexico. You see how easily generalizations fade. My friend’s ancestral estate has been his, his family’s, since medieval times, and yet, here you have him in Mexico City, seeking a roof over his head.”
“How may I be of service, Don Eloy?” I asked hastily.
The old man stared at his trembling hands as he moved them closer to the fire. Then he laughed.
“Would you believe it? Usually, the person who takes care of such matters as these would be Dávila, who, as we know, is away fulfilling more pleasant duties at the moment. And as for Uriarte, between you and me, ne s’y connaît pas trop. . Anyway, the fact is that I am going to entrust you with finding a house for my immigrant friend. .”
“Only too happy to help, sir, but I. .”
“No, no. I am not just asking you for a simple favor. I’ve taken into account that you have a French mother, that you speak the language, and that you are familiar with the culture of the Hexagon. I could not have hoped for a more perfect match for my friend.”
He paused and gave me a friendly look.
“Can you imagine? We were students together at the Sorbonne. That means we’re of the same generation. He comes from an old Central European family. They owned a great deal of land in the Balkans, between the Danube and the Bistrica neighborhood of Novi Sad, before the devastation of the great wars. .”