Carlos Fuentes - Burnt Water

“Help yourself, Chava, son. I’d sure like to help you. But, you know, Clemencia and I live pretty close to the bone, even if I do get my lunch and supper at the boss’s house. If it wasn’t for that … I was born poor and I’ll die poor. Now, you’ve got to realize that if I begin asking personal favors, Don José being as tough as he is, then I’ll have to pay them back somehow, and so long raise. Believe me, Chava, I need to get that two hundred and fifty out of him every payday.”

He prepared a mouthful of tortilla and hot sauce and lowered his voice.

“I know how much you respect your mother, and I, well, it goes without saying … But this business of keeping two houses going when we could all live together and save one rent … Okay, I didn’t say a word. But now, tell me, why aren’t you living with your in-laws?”

“You know what Doña Concha’s like. At me all day about how Ana was born for this and Ana was born for that. You know that’s why we moved out.”

“So, if you want your independence, you’ll have to work your way. Don’t worry. I’ll think of something.”

Clemencia wiped her eyes with the corner of her apron and sat down between father and son.

“Where are the kids?” she asked.

“With Ana’s parents,” Salvador replied. “They’re going to stay there awhile, while she’s getting better.”

Pedro said he had to take his boss to Acapulco. “If you need anything, come to Clemencia. I’ve got it! Go see Juan Olmedo. He’s an old buddy of mine and he has a fleet of taxis. I’ll call him and tell him you’re coming.”

Salvador kissed his father’s hand and left.

* * *

Salvador opened the frosted-glass door and entered a reception room in which a secretary and an accountant were sitting in a room with steel furniture, a typewriter, and an adding machine. He told the secretary who he was and she went into Señor Olmedo’s private office and then asked him to come in. Olmedo was a very small, thin man; they sat down in leather chairs facing a low, glass-topped table with photographs of banquets and ceremonies beneath the glass. Salvador told Olmedo he needed work to augment his teacher’s salary and Olmedo began to leaf through some large black notebooks.

“You’re in luck,” he said, scratching his sharp-pointed, hair-filled ear. “There’s a very good shift here from seven to twelve at night. There are lots of guys after this job, because I protect my men.” He slammed the big book shut. “But since you’re the son of my old friend Pedrito, well, I’m going to give it to you. You can begin today. If you work hard, you can get up to twenty pesos a day.”

For a few seconds, Salvador heard only the tac-tac-tac of the adding machine and the rumble of cars along 20 de Noviembre Avenue. Olmedo said he had to go out and asked Salvador to come with him. They descended in the elevator without speaking, and when they reached the street, Olmedo warned him that he must start the meter every time a passenger stopped to do an errand, because there was always some knothead who would carry his passenger all over Mexico City on one fare. He took him by the elbow and they went into the Department of the Federal District and up the stairs and Olmedo continued, telling him not to let just anyone get in.

“A stop here, a stop there, and the first thing you know you’ve gone clear from the Villa to Pedregal on a fare of one-fifty. Make them pay each time!”

Olmedo offered some gumdrops to a secretary and asked her to show him into the boss’s office. The secretary thanked him for the candy and went into the boss’s private office and Olmedo joked with the other employees and invited them to have a few beers on Saturday and a game of dominoes.

Salvador shook hands with Olmedo and thanked him, and Olmedo said: “Is your license in order? I don’t want any trouble with Transit. You show up this evening, before seven. Ask for Toribio, he’s in charge of dispatch. He’ll tell you which car is yours. Remember! None of those one-peso stops; they chew up your doors. And none of that business of several stops on one fare. The minute the passenger steps out of the car, even to spit, you ring it up again. Say hello to your old man.”

* * *

He looked at the Cathedral clock. It was eleven. He walked awhile along Merced and amused himself looking at the crates filled with tomatoes, oranges, squash. He sat down to smoke in the plaza, near some porters who were drinking beer and looking through the sports pages. After a time he was bored and walked toward San Juan de Letrán. A girl was walking ahead of him. A package fell from her arms and Salvador hurried to pick it up, and the girl smiled at him and thanked him.

Salvador pressed her arm and said: “Shall we have a lemonade?”

“Excuse me, señor, I’m not in the habit…”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be fresh.”

The girl continued walking ahead of him with short hurried steps. She waggled her hips beneath a white skirt. She looked in the shop windows out of the corner of her eyes. Salvador followed her at a distance. Then she stopped at an ice-cream cart and asked for a strawberry ice and Salvador stepped forward to pay and she smiled and thanked him. They went into a soft-drink stand and sat on a bench and ordered two apple juices. She asked him what he did and he asked her to guess and began to shadowbox and she said he must be a boxer and he laughed and told her he’d trained as a boy in the City Leagues but that actually he was a teacher. She told him she worked in the box office of a movie theater. She moved her arm and turned over the bottle of juice and they both laughed a lot.

They took a bus together. They did not speak. He took her hand and they got off across from Chapultepec Park. Automobiles were moving slowly through the streets in the park. There were many convertibles filled with young people. Many women passed by, dragging, embracing, or propelling children. The children were licking ice-cream sticks and clouds of cotton candy. They listened to the whistles of the balloon salesman and the music of a band in the bandstand. The girl told him she liked to guess the occupations of the people walking in Chapultepec. She laughed and pointed: black jacket or open-necked shirts, leather shoes or sandals, cotton skirt or sequined blouse, striped jersey, patent-leather heels: she said they were a carpenter, an electrician, a clerk, a tax assessor, a teacher, a servant, a huckster. They arrived at the lake and rented a boat. Salvador took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. The girl trailed her fingers in the water and closed her eyes. Salvador quietly whistled a few melodies as he rowed. He stopped and touched the girl’s knee. She opened her eyes and rearranged her skirt. They returned to the dock and she said she had to go home to eat. They made a date to see each other the next evening at eleven, when the ticket booth closed.

* * *

He went into Kiko’s and looked for his friends among the linoleum-topped, tubular-legged tables. He saw from a distance the blind man, Macario, and went to sit with him. Macario asked him to put a coin in the jukebox, and after a while Alfredo arrived and they ordered chicken tacos with guacamole, and beer, and listened to the song that was playing: “Ungrateful woman, she went away and left me, must have been for someone more a man than me.” They did what they always did: recalled their adolescence and talked about Rosa and Remedios, the prettiest girls in the neighborhood. Macario urged them on. Alfredo said that the young kids today were really tough, carrying knives and all that. Not them. When you looked back on everything, they had really been pretty dumb. He remembered when the gang from the Poly challenged them to a game of soccer just to be able to kick them around and the whole thing ended in a scrap there on the empty lot on Mirto Street, and Macario had shown up with a baseball bat and the guys from Poly were knocked for a loop when they saw how the blind man clobbered them with a baseball bat. Macario said that was when everyone had accepted him as a buddy, and Salvador said that more than anything else it had been because of those faces he made, turning his eyes back in his head and pulling his ears back; it was enough to bust you up laughing. Macario said the one dying of laughter was him, because ever since he’d been ten years old his daddy had told him not to worry, that he’d never have to work, that the soap factory was finally going well, so Macario had devoted himself to cultivating his physique to be able to defend himself. He said that the radio had been his school and he’d gotten his jokes and his imitations from it. Then they recalled their buddy Raimundo and fell silent for a while and ordered more beer and Salvador looked toward the street and said that he and Raimundo always walked home together at night during exam time, and on the way back to their houses Raimundo asked him to explain algebra to him and then they stopped for a moment on the corner of Sullivan and Ramón Guzmán before going their own ways, and Raimundo would say: “You know something? I’m scared to go past this block. Here where our neighborhood ends. Farther on, I don’t know what’s going on. You’re my buddy and that’s why I’m telling you. I swear, I’m scared to go past this block.”