“The pain you go through, you have the right to make others suffer, my boy. That’s the honest truth, I swear by all that’s holy.”
THE BRIGADE
They’re planning to meet on Puente de Alvarado and march down Rosales toward the statue of Carlos IV. We’re going to be in the gray trucks farther north at the corner of Héroes and Mina, and to the south at Ponciano Arriaga and Basilio Badillo, so we can cut them off from any direction. All of you are to wear your white armbands and white cotton neck bands and have vinegar-soaked handkerchiefs ready to protect yourselves against the tear gas when the police arrive. When the demonstration is a block and a half from the Carlos IV statue you who’re on Heroes come down Rosales and attack from the rear. Shout, Viva Che Guevara! over and over, yell so loud that no one can doubt where your sentiments lie. Yell Fascists at the demonstrators. I repeat, Fash-ists. Get that straight, you must create total confusion, real pandemonium, and then lay into them, don’t hold anything back, use your clubs and brass knuckles and yell anything you want, let yourselves go, boys, have a ball, those coming from the south will be yelling Viva Mao! but you send them flying, they won’t give you any trouble, the whole thing’s a breeze, let ’er rip, you’re members of the Hawk Brigade and the moment’s come to prove yourselves in the field, my boys, in the street, on the hard pavement, against posts and steel shutters, break as many windows as you can, that stirs up a lot of resentment against the students, but the main thing is that when you overtake them you go at it heart and soul, have no mercy for the bastards, kick and punch and knee and you, just you two, ice picks for you and see what happens and if you put out the eye of some Red bastard so what, it will be a lesson to them and we’ll protect you here, you know that, get that in your thick heads, you bastards, we’ll protect you here, so do God’s will and do it well and the street is yours, you, where were you born? and you, where are you from? Azcapotzalco? Balbuena? Xochimilco? Canal del Norte? Atlampa? the Tránsito district? Mártires de Tacubaya? Panteones? Well today, my Hawks, you get your own back, just think about that, today the street where you’ve been fucked good is yours and you’ll have your chance to fuck them back and go scot-free, it’s like the conquest of Mexico, the man who wins wins, today you’re going out in the street, my Hawks, and get your revenge for every sonofabitch who made you feel like a dog, for the abuse you’ve taken all your miserable lives, for every insult you couldn’t return, for all the meals you didn’t eat and all the women you didn’t screw, you’re going out to get even against the landlord who raised your rent and the shyster who ran you out of your rooms and the sawbones who wouldn’t operate on your mother unless he had his five thousand in advance, you’re going to beat up on the sons of the men who’ve exploited you, right? the students are spoiled young shits who one day will be landlords and pen-pushers and quacks like their papas but you’re going to get even, you’re going to give blow for blow, my Hawk Brigade, you know that, so go quietly in the gray trucks, then stalk like wild animals, then the fun, lash out, have the time of your lives, think about your little sister had against her will, your poor old mother on her knees washing and scrubbing, your father screwed all his life, his hands misshapen from grubbing in shit, today’s the day to get your revenge, Hawks, today won’t come again, don’t miss it, don’t worry, the police will recognize you by your white neck bands and armbands, they’ll act like they’re attacking you, play along with them, they’ll pretend to shove a few of you in the Black Maria, but it’s all a fake to put off the press because it’s all-important that tomorrow’s papers report a clash among leftist students, subversive disturbance in the heart of the city, the Communist conspiracy rears its ugly head, off with its head! save the republic from anarchy, and you, my hawks, just remember that others may be repressed but not you, no way, I promise you, and now, can’t you hear the running feet on the pavement? the street is yours, conquer the street, step hard, go out into the smoke, don’t be afraid of the smoke, the city is lost in smoke. No escape from it.
A NEW BERNABÉ
His mother, Doña Amparo, didn’t want to come because she was ashamed, his Uncles Rosendo and Romano told him, she didn’t want to admit that a son of hers was in the clink; Richi now had a more or less permanent job with the Acapulco dance band, and from time to time he sent a hundred pesos to Bernabé’s mother; she was dying of shame and didn’t know this new Bernabé and Romano said that after all her husband, Andrés Aparicio, had kicked a man to death. Yes, she replied, but he never ended up behind bars, that’s the difference, Bernabé is the first jailbird in the family. As far as you know, woman. But the uncles looked at Bernabé differently too, hardly recognizing him; he wasn’t any longer the dumb little kid who’d sat on the roof tiles while they shot rabbits and toads on the plain where the greasewood grew. Bernabé had killed a man, he went at him with an ice pick during the fracas on Puente de Alvarado, he buried the pick deep in his chest and he felt how the wounded boy’s guts were mightier than the cold iron of his weapon but in spite of it all the ice pick vanquished the viscera, the viscera sucked in the ice pick the way a lover sucks a beloved. The boy stopped laughing and braying and lay staring at the arches of neon light through stiff eyelashes. El Güero came to the prison to tell Bernabé not to worry, they had to put on an act, he understood, after a few days they’d let him go, meanwhile they were working things out and giving the appearance of law and order. But El Güero didn’t recognize this new Bernabé either and for the first time he stammered and his eyes even filled with tears, if you had to stab someone, Bernabé, why did it have to be one of us? You should have been more careful. You knew the Burro, poor old Burro, he was a stupid fart but not a bad guy underneath, why, Bernabé? On the other hand the waiter Jesús Florencio came as a friend and told him that when he got out he should work in the restaurant, he could arrange everything with the owner, and he wanted to tell him why. Licenciado Mariano Carreón had got drunk in the restaurant the day of the row in the city, he was very excited and spilled the beans to his friends about how there was this one kid that reminded him of a lot of things, first what Don Mariano himself had been like as a boy and then of a man he’d known twenty years ago in a co-op in the state of Guerrero, a crazy agricultural student who wouldn’t give in, who brought what he called justice to the state and wanted to impose it without so much as a fuck-you. Licenciado Mariano told how he’d organized the resistance against this agronomist Aparicio, playing on the unity of the village families, rich and poor, against a meddlesome outsider. It’s so easy to exploit provincial ways for your own good. You have to keep the local bosses strong because where there’s no law the boss will enforce order and without order you can’t have property and wealth and how else can a man get rich fast, he asked his friends. That agronomist had the fanaticism of a saint, a crusading zeal that got under Licenciado Carreón’s skin. For the next ten years he tried to corrupt him, offering him one thing after another, promotions, houses, money, voyages and virgins, protection. No dice. Aparicio the agronomist became an obsession with him and since he couldn’t buy him he tried to ruin him, to make problems for him, to prevent his promotions, even evict him from the tenement on Guatemala Street and force him into the lost cities in Mexico City’s poverty belt. Licenciado Mariano’s obsession was so total that he bought all the land in the area where Andrés Aparicio and his family and other squatter families had gone to live, so no one could run them off, no, he said, let them stay here, the old people will die, no one can live on honor alone and dignity doesn’t come with marrow-bone broth, it’s good to have a breeding ground for angry kids so I can set them on the right track when they grow up, a nest for my Hawks. He told how every day he savored the fact that the agronomist who wouldn’t be corrupted lived with his wife and son and bastard brothers-in-law on land that belonged to Licenciado Mariano, and because he allowed it. But the richest part of the joke was to tell the agronomist. So the Licenciado sent one of his musclemen to tell your father, Bernabé, you’ve been living on the
Chief’s bounty, you dirty beggar, ten years of charity, you think you’re so pure, and your father, who never stopped smiling so he wouldn’t look old, attacked Licenciado Carreón’s bodyguard and kicked him to death and then disappeared forever because all he had left was the dignity of death, he didn’t want to be buried in jail like you, even for a few days, Bernabé. It’s better for you to know, said Jesús Florencio, you see what they offer you isn’t as great as they make out. One day you’ll run into a man, a real man, who’ll knock your protection into a cocked hat. It’s not much of a life to live under someone’s protection, telling yourself, without the Chief I’m not worth a shit. Bernabé fell asleep on his cot, protecting even the crown of his head with the thin wool cover, talking in his sleep to the fucking Chief, you didn’t dare look my father in the face, you had to send a hired killer after him and he killed your killer, you asshole. But then he had a dream in which he was tumbling in silence, dying, tumbling like a shattered fragment of indecision, what? what man? He dreamed, unable to separate his dream from a vague but driving desire that everything that exists be for all the earth, for everyone, water, air, gardens, stone, time. “And man, where was he?”
THE CHIEF
He came out of jail hating him for everything, what he’d done to his father, what he’d done to him. El Güero picked him up at the exit of the Black Palace and he climbed into the red Thunderbird, so give your heart in sweet surrender, hey baby, where there’s music and fun there’s your Güerito. He told Bernabé that the Chief would be waiting in his house in Pedregal anytime the kid wanted to stop by and see him. The Chief was sorry Bernabé had been locked up ten days in Lecumberri. But a lot worse had happened to the Chief. Bernabé hadn’t known, he hadn’t read the newspapers or anything. Well, a real storm broke loose against the Chief, they said he was an agent provocateur and they threatened to send him as governor to Yucatan, which was roughly like being a ditchdigger on the moon, but he says he’ll get even with his political enemies and he needs you. He said you were the best man in the brigade. You may have stiffed poor old Burro but the Chief says he understands that you’re hotheaded and it’s okay with him. Bernabé started sobbing like a baby, it all seemed so lousy, and El Güero didn’t know what to do except stop the cassette music out of respect and Bernabé asked him to drop him on the road to Azcapotzalco near the Spanish Panteon but El Güero was worried about him and followed in the car as Bernabé walked along the dusty sidewalks where flower vendors were fashioning huge funeral wreaths of gardenias and stonecutters were chiseling tombstones, names, dates, the beginning and end of every man and woman, and where had they been, Bernabé kept asking himself, remembering the book burned by orders of Licenciado Carreón. El Güero decided to be patient and was waiting for him when an hour later he walked through the wrought-iron cemetery gate, that’s the second time you’ve come through an iron gate today, kid, he joked, better watch your step. Bernabé, still hating the Chief, entered the house in Pedregal, but the minute he saw that nearsighted janitor’s face he felt sorry for the man clinging to an oversized tumbler of whiskey as though it were a life belt. It made him sad to remember him on all fours stark naked his balls freezing trying to win his wife’s cruel teasing game. Hell, didn’t Mirabella have the right, after all, to go to finishing school rather than live in a tin-and-cardboard shack in some lost city? He walked into the house in Pedregal, he saw the Chief cut down to size and felt sorry for him, but now felt sure of himself, nothing bad could happen to him here, no one would abandon him here, the Chief wouldn’t make him bust his ass cleaning windshields because the Chief had no intention of taking justice to the state of Guerrero, he wasn’t about to die of hunger just to feel pure as the Host, the Chief wasn’t a fuckup like his Chief, his Chief Mariano Carreón his Chief Andrés Aparicio, oh Father, do not forsake me. The Licenciado told El Güero to serve the kid his whiskey, he’d been brave and never mind, politics is nothing more than a lot of patience, it’s like religion that way, and before you knew it the moment would arrive to get even with the men who were plotting against him and trying to exile him to Yucatan. He wanted Bernabé, who’d been with him in the hour of combat, to be with him in the hour of revenge. They’d change the name of the brigade, it had become too notorious, one day it would reappear bleached clean, bleached by the sun of revenge against the crypto-Communists who’d infiltrated the government, only six years, thank God for the one-term presidency, then those Reds would be out in the street and they’d see, they’d swing back in like a pendulum because they knew how to wait a long long long time like the stone idols in the museum, right? there’s no one can stop us. He said to Bernabé, his arm around his neck, that there was no destiny that couldn’t be overturned by contempt and he told El Güero that he didn’t want to see any of them, not him, not the kid Bernabé, not any of the young toughs in the house while his daughter Mirabella was there, she’d be returning the next day from Canada. They went to the training camp and El Güero gave Bernabé a pistol so he could defend himself and told him not to worry, the Chief was right, there was no way to stop them once they got rolling, look at that rock, how it keeps rolling, shit, said El Güero with a shrewd and malicious expression Bernabé hadn’t seen before, they could even slip out of the Chief’s hands if they wanted, didn’t he know everything there was to know? how to set things up, how to go to a barrio and round up the young kids, begin with slingshots if they had to, then chains, then ice picks like the one you killed the Burro with, Bernabé. It was so easy it was a laugh, all you had to do was create a kind of unseen but shared terror, we’re terrified of always living under someone’s protection, they’re terrified of living without it. Choose, kid. But Bernabé didn’t answer, he’d stopped listening. He was remembering his visit to the cemetery that morning, the Sundays he’d spent making love with Martincita in the crypt of a wealthy family, remembering a ragged old man urinating behind a cypress, bald, smiling like an idiot, smiling ceaselessly, who with his fly open walked away beneath that Azcapotzalco noonday sun hot as a great yellow chili pepper. Bernabé felt a surge of shame. But don’t let it return. A vague memory, a kind of unknowing would be enough for this new Bernabé. He went to see his mother when he had a new suit and a Mustang, secondhand but all his, and he told her that next year he’d have a sunny clean house for her in a respectable neighborhood. She tried to talk to him as she had when he was a boy, My little sweetheart, you’re such a good boy, my little doll, you’re not a ruffian like the others, she tried to say what she’d once said about his father, I never dreamed you were dead, but to Bernabé his mother’s words now were neither tender nor demanding, they merely meant the opposite of what they said. On the other hand, he was grateful that she gave him his father’s most handsome suspenders, the red ones with the gilded clasps that had been the pride of Andrés Aparicio.
BOOKS BY CARLOS FUENTES
Where the Air Is Clear
The Good Conscience
Aura
The Death of Artemio Cruz
A Change of Skin
Terra Nostra
The Hydra Head
Burnt Water
Distant Relations
The Old Gringo
Myself with Others
Christopher Unborn
Constancia and Other Stories for Virgins
The Campaign
Translation copyright © 1969, 1974, 1978, 1979, 1980 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc.