lose touch, get self-important. I have to step out a little, anonymously, with other people, like you. Thank you, great to meet you, now I have to run, they’re waiting for me, see you later, see you soon!”
“What a modest guy!”
“What a democrat!”
I knew I would eventually be recognized in the Zona Rosa. I have to skip going to L’s alley on Oslo and instead return to the parking lot in front of the Bellinghausen restaurant and from there head back home.
What awaits me there?
On this night that I had set aside to be with L, returning instead to Lomas Virreyes, I happen onto a huge family fight. Don Celestino, flying into a rage (or a rage flying into him, because our vices and virtues precede and survive us), rebukes his son Abelardo in the middle of the living room. Poor Priscila whimpers halfway up the staircase, and stoic but disappointed (or the other way around), I enter the house at the worst possible moment.
“You’re a drone!” shouts Don Celes. “You just want to bum around at my expense.”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying,” says Abelardo calmly. “I want to pursue my vocation.”
“Vocation, vocation! There is no vocation here. Vocation is a vacation,” exclaims Don Celes with a literary turn of phrase that I didn’t think he had in him. “Here we do our jobs. Here we work hard. Here there’s a fortune that has to be managed.”
“But father, that’s not my vocation.”
“Of course it isn’t your vocation, you little bum, it’s your obligation. Do you understand? We all have ob-li-ga-tions. We don’t screw around here! This is no joke! So just stop this talking this nonsense!”
Don Celes mocks the young man by affecting the manner of a dandy or a fop, though he mostly succeeds in making himself seem a cretin . . .
“But of course!” he clucks, sprinkling an imaginary handkerchief. “The young gentleman excuses himself from labor. The señorito has, listen to this, a vo-ca-tion. The little lord of the manor refuses to work—”
“No father, I am not refusing to—”
“Hush, you insolent brat! I am speaking!”
“And I am right.”
“What did you say? You’re what? What . . . ? Do my ears deceive me?”
“I don’t want to run a business. I want to be a writer.”
“You what? You want to what? And what will you be able to afford to eat, scoundrel? Alphabet soup? Paper enchiladas? A mole sauce made of ink? Who are you making fun of, Don Shakespearito? Show a little more respect to your lord father, the man who raised you, yes sir, who gave you everything, an education, a roof over your head, and clothing, to whom you come now with this nonsense about wanting to be a wrrrri-ter! Little Don Fauntleroy, tell me, do I have the word idiot written across my forehead?”
“I’m not asking you for anything.”
“You don’t need to. I already gave you everything. And this is how you pay me back, you miserable parasite!”
“Verbena!” Priscila says timidly from the fourth step of the staircase. “Doves!”
Nobody pays her any mind.“You ought to learn from your brother-in-law Adam” (That’s me and now I am a weapon).
“I admire Adam,” Abelardo dares to comment.
“Good! Because Adam married your sister so he could move up in the world; he hit the jackpot; he was Mr. Nobody, a beggar, not a pot to piss in, and you see, he knew how to take advantage of my position and my fortune, the rascal! He knew how to move up, and he got to where he is because he married your sister . . .”
“Hymen,” Priscila moans skillfully, but nobody pays her any mind.
“And look at him now: he’s a big shot, he’s the cream of the crop. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Aren’t you embarrassed?”
“I am not—” Abelardo mutters.
“You’re not anything, you’re nothing,” Don Celes says raising his hand in a threatening manner. “You’re not what?” he asks without making any sense. “You—?” he interrupts himself when he turns to see me looking at him sternly, unapologetically. I walk over to Abelardo and offer him my hand.
“Don’t let yourself be humiliated, my brother-in-law.”
“I’m not . . .” he stammers.
“Hold onto your self-respect.”
“I . . .”
“Move on from this house. Make your own way.”
“You . . .”
“Nothing. Expect nothing from me. You’ll make your own way in the world.”
My words silence the family.
With my usual self-restraint, I avoid all stares. I am my own boss. No quarreling. No mocking. No patronizing airs. No triumphalism. Don Celes is frozen into a statue. Priscila is cold and motionless. Abelardo is struggling between a kind smile and a grateful embrace.
I’d only intervened in the first place because I was recognized in the street and couldn’t go where I wanted to be, in L’s arms.
Priscila slaps the maid across the face as she carries a tray upstairs, announcing the resumption of normal life.
Chapter 9
“Adam, did you see?”
“What?”
“That boy.”
“What boy?”
“The Boy-God.”
“The boy what?”
He appeared where he was least expected, I am told by L, who along with my secretaries, keeps me apprised of the human-interest news that isn’t reported on in the briefings I receive.
At the intersection of Quintana Roo and Insurgentes Avenue. He stands on a little platform, dominating the traffic on the avenue. And it’s not some open space, but full of fast-moving cars except when there’re those horrible traffic jams, and it’s all impatient honks and insults. It’s a place where arteries converge, and where impatient speed alternates with even more impatient gridlock.
“You’ve got to see him—I went to see him,” L said. “Stopping traffic, wearing a white tunic, standing on his box like that desert hermit on his pillar, remember that Buñuel film? No? Well, it was Saint Simeon preaching in the desert: his congregation was dwarves, his mother, and the Devil. But this child addresses the traffic of Insurgentes and Quintana Roo, and what’s remarkable, Adam, is that first people honk their horns at him, but then they stop, get out of their cars, make fun of him, tell him to burn in hell for causing a traffic jam, I’m running late, get out of the way you little pipsqueak . . .”
“Pipsqueak?”
“He can’t be older than eleven, Adam. You’ve got to see him . . .”
“I see him in your eyes. What’d he give you, a little loco weed?”
“Come on Adam, I’m being serious. First the drivers were all pissed off. Then some of them start paying attention to him. It’s like he mesmerizes them, you know what I mean?”
I gestured that I didn’t, but listened attentively to that story . . .
“Attention,” L repeated. “You know? I just realized that our great defect is that we don’t pay attention.”
“L, don’t lose your thread. Get on with your story.”
“It’s my story, okay. We don’t pay attention to others. We don’t pay attention to ourselves. We let things happen