León saying?, someone asks, what’s he so angry about?, someone else asks, and then they see León brush the fat man aside so the fat man stumbles, sideways and backwards, tripping down the stairs, where some of them are already shouldering their way out, which is unworkable because most of the people by the stairs are staying put, wondering if perhaps the fat man offended León somehow, if perhaps the fat man’s drunk, if perhaps the agape briefcase that León’s assistant is presenting to León contains their paychecks, and yet what León removes from his briefcase isn’t a wad of paychecks or a scroll with a welcoming speech but a whip that he’s uncoiling as he points at them as if they’re the scum of the earth, snapping the whip as he charges down the stairs, where most of them recoil but do not move, as if they still can’t believe the slashes and imprecations are meant for them, but then the whip cuts them and they’re fleeing now, pushing each other as León calls them leeches, cockroaches, bloodsuckers. On the far end of the courtyard the crowd seems to have caught wind of what’s happening because they’re running in all directions now, and because those cramped in the middle of the courtyard cannot run yet they’re jostling each other even more. Later they will see their stampede on television and hear that on top of trying to swindle the city El Loco’s rabble trampled seven women and three men in front of the municipal palace.
The courtyard has been cleared.
The overturned tricycle, the spilled juice, the cracked jars, the scattered oyster shells, the stained lottery tickets must seem unfortunate to León. Ill omens of some kind. Not the time, however, to be indulging in superstitions. It probably isn’t clear to the senator from Guayaquil, to the governor from Guayas, as he tries to breathe, what the time is for, or whether he
—
Leopoldo should’ve had a firmer grip on León’s briefcase. After León charges down the stairs and inadvertently pushes Leopoldo, the briefcase lands facing down, away from Leopoldo, as if resentful he’d let it drop. The business of collecting its contents, of crouching after shoe polish amid a commotion he’d rather not see, of squatting and toiling after a recommendation letter so Alvarito Rosales can be admitted into Babson College, so that Alvarito can pretend to study business administration at an institution that won’t flunk him, so that Alvarito can then return to run his father’s prawn business or run for office with promises of bread, roof, and employment — Alvarito Rosales, the candidate of the poor — has to be done. But when does it end? Leopoldo’s father like Antonio’s father like Stephan’s father like Nelson’s father like Carlos’s father like Eduardo’s father had embezzled and fled the country because they knew that was their one shot at getting ahead. Leopoldo and Antonio had refused to accept that. And then one day the newly appointed minister of finance fired Leopoldo from his hard earned post as a senior economist at the Central Bank so that the minister could hire his wife’s nephew instead. And then for months Leopoldo couldn’t find another job. The end. Go back to sleep, Negrito. Leopoldo crumples Alvarito’s letter and tosses it but then picks it up because what if someone finds it and tells on him? León has emptied the courtyard. His hands are shaking. The damp back of his guayabera has unaccountable streaks of soot. Leopoldo cannot see León’s vacant face but he can easily imagine it. He hurries down the stairs to steer León away from the cameras before León turns back toward them. On his way down Leopoldo slips on a compact mirror but he’s all right, yes, he didn’t fall. One of the cameramen, who has already broached the subject of a special favor with Leopoldo, isn’t filming León. He seems to be giving Leopoldo the chance to take León away. Does that moronic cameraman think Leopoldo doesn’t see the other cameras? Some of the reporters, as if they know Leopoldo’s about to obstruct them, are urging their cameramen down the stairs. By one of the garbage cans Leopoldo takes his time disposing of Alvarito’s letter. Ándate a la verga viejo hijueputa. Let El Loco’s people see León’s in no condition to block El Loco from returning. León turns and faces the cameras without looking at the cameras, as if lost in someone’s kitchen. Leopoldo checks his watch. Antonio’s waiting. It’s time.
IV / ANTONIO EDITS HIS BABY CHRIST MEMOIR
For first, there is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned good sense, education, and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves.
— DAVID HUME, AN ENQUIRY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING, SECTION X
After a twenty one year absence my father returned to the church. The pious boy I was back then had convinced him to attend Christmas Mass, and, according to my grandmother, his return that night led to the baby christ’s tears. Most in my family readily adopted my grandmother’s version, as I was to do in the years that followed, sharing it with my American acquaintances as another example of the quaint superstitions of my Third World country, which would often prompt in them comparisons to eyewitness news reports of Virgin Mary sightings on trunks of trees or mortadella sandwiches. Of course I suspected my grandmother’s version was far too simple, and yet nothing ever compelled me to elaborate on it by implicating others or by including events that began long before that night or that decade.
—
Everyone was implicated, Antonio writes along the margins of his baby christ memoir, meaning everyone he’d once known in Guayaquil (Cristian Cordero’s grandfather, Espinel’s father, Julio Esteros’s mother, his own father) plus everyone else in the world (and here Antonio wishes he wasn’t inside a plane so he could search online for an essay by Leszek Kołakowski, a philosopher Antonio had been drawn to because he was from Poland like John Paul II, the first pope to visit Ecuador — we can never forget the existence of evil and the misery of the human condition, Kołakowski wrote —), and so to write about implicating others before that Christmas night and that decade seems redundant to him since it was implied everyone was implicated, although he could argue against himself and state that most of us need reminders that we’re implicated with the existence of evil and the misery of the human condition, okay, so let’s say that you encounter these reminders in the leisurely world of memoir or fiction: wouldn’t you ignore them, Antonio, or at most be smote by yet another round of deep urges to change Ecuador that might impede your reasoning and compel you to board a plane back to Guayaquil without much of a plan or money?
—
Before my father agreed to attend Christmas Mass we were at my grandmother’s house. My father had announced I was old enough to sit with the adults, and since my grandmother’s dining table could seat only eight, and since neither my aunts nor my grandfather wanted to sour our Christmas by starting another pyrrhic battle, ten of us struggled to pass the potatoes and slice the pig without elbowing each other. And we did so in silence. My father was in an awful mood, and we knew that whoever spoke during dinner risked being savaged by his sarcasm.
—
But perhaps he has been equating Leszek Kołakowski with Father Villalba, Antonio thinks, perhaps he has been drawn to certain novelists and philosophers not because they’re from Poland like John Paul II but because their work reminds him of Father Villalba’s sermons, even though he doesn’t remember Father Villalba’s sermons anymore (once Antonio searched online for texts by Clodovis Boff and unbeknownst to him he later ascribed them to Father Villalba — never purchase a painting of your favorite landscape because that painting will come to replace your favorite landscape, one of W. G. Sebald’s narrators says, but what choice did Antonio have if his favorite landscapes have, for the most part, vanished? — bless me Father, Clodovis Boff recounts, Father we are dying —), or perhaps he hasn’t been drawn to certain novelists and philosophers because of Father Villalba but because he likes to believe intricate association mechanisms subtend his mind like in the novels of W. G. Sebald, drawn to Father Villalba like Jacques Austerlitz is drawn to fortresses that contain the seeds of their own destruction, for instance, and whether on that Christmas night at his grandmother’s house they stuffed themselves with potatoes and pig he doesn’t remember anymore either, so he should just delete the porcine and potato details or acknowledge he doesn’t remember them anymore.
—
My father had assumed that his appointment in the administration of León Martín Cordero had