Carlos Fuentes - The Crystal Frontier

It was a very beautiful night. Both of them enjoyed themselves, found each other, then lost each other. They agreed it was an impossible love, but it had been worth it. As Encarna said, You’ve got to grab opportunity by the tail because it doesn’t knock twice and — poof! — it disappears as if by magic.

They wrote each other during the first months. He didn’t know how to express himself very well, but she gave him confidence. He’d had to build his self-assurance himself, the way you build a sand castle at the beach, knowing that it’s fragile and may be washed away by the first wave. Now that he knew Encarna he felt he was leaving behind everything false and phony in his life. But there was always the risk that he would go back to being the way he’d always been if he lost her, if he never saw her again. It was a pain in the ass having to serve, to fight with stupid, arrogant clients who didn’t even look at you, as if you were made of glass. His bad habits came back, his insolence, his obscenities. His foul humor came back. When he was a kid, he kicked the fire hydrants in Acapulco, furious that he was what he was and not what he wanted to be. Why them and not me? The other night, outside a luxury restaurant, he’d done the same thing, he couldn’t control himself, he began to kick the fenders of the cars parked there. The other drivers had to restrain him. Now he was in big trouble — this car belonged to Minister X, that one belonged to a big deal in the PRI, a third belonged to the guy who bought the privatized business Z…

What luck that at that moment the northern millionaire and ex-minister Don Leonardo Barroso left the restaurant looking for his driver and the man in charge of valet parking told him the man had felt sick and had gone home, leaving the keys of Mr. Barroso’s car. Now it was Barroso’s turn to throw a fit — This country is populated by irresponsible fools! — and suddenly he saw himself reflected in poor Leandro, in the rage of a poor tourist driver parked there waiting for fares and kicking fenders, and he burst out laughing. He calmed down as a result of that encounter, that comparison, that sense of identification. He also calmed down because on his arm he had a divine woman, a real piece with long hair and a cleft chin. The woman had Mr. Barroso under her spell — you could see it with your eyes shut. She had him by the nuts, no question.

Don Leonardo Barroso asked Leandro to drive him and his daughter-in-law home, and he liked the driver’s style, as well as his discretion and appearance, so much that he hired him to drive in Spain in November. He had business there and needed a driver for his daughter-in-law, who would accompany him. Leandro, distrustful after his initial delight faded, wondered if this tall, powerful man, who could do whatever he damn well pleased, saw in him a harmless eunuch who presented no danger driving his “daughter-in-law” around while he took care of his “business.” But how could Leandro turn down such an offer? He overcame his diffidence, telling himself that if his bosses had confidence in him, why shouldn’t he feel that way about them?

His bosses. That was different from driving around tourists. It was a step up, and you could see Mr. Barroso was a strong man, a boss who inspired respect and made quick decisions. Leandro didn’t have to be asked twice — it would be possible to serve someone like that with dignity, with pleasure, without humbling himself. Besides — he wrote instantly to Asturias — he was going to see Encarna again.

They’d bet that the person who gave Paquito a good beating would win a round-trip bus ticket from town to the ocean. And even though Portugal was closer to Extremadura, Portugal was Gallego country, where you couldn’t trust people and they talked funny. On the other hand, Asturias, even though it was farther away, was a Spanish sea and, as the anthem said, it was “dear homeland.” It turned out that the uncle of one of your thug friends was a bus driver and could do you a favor. He was Basque and understood that the world revolved around betting, around betting alone. Even the wheels of the bus — he said with a philosopher’s air— revolved around the bet that accidents were possible but unlikely. “Unless one driver bets another he’ll race him from Madrid to Oviedo,” said the thug’s uncle, laughing. It didn’t surprise you that to find the uncle and ask him to help you out no one thought to use the telephone or send a telegram; instead a handwritten note with no copy was sent without an envelope via a relay of bus drivers. Which is why so much time passed between the beating you gave Paquito and the promised trip to the sea. So much time passed, in fact, that you almost lost the bet you won because there were other bets — around here, they live by betting. One hundred pesetas says Paquito doesn’t turn up in the plaza again after the beating you gave him. Two hundred says he will and, if he doesn’t, a thousand pesetas says he left town, two thousand that he died, six perras that he’s hiding out. They went to the door of the shack where the idiot slept. Nothing but silence. The door opened. An old man came out, dressed in black with a black hat pulled down to his huge ears, his gray whiskers, three days’ worth. He was scratching at the neck of his white, tieless shirt. His earlobes were so hairy they looked like a newborn animal. A wolf cub.

You kept the comparison to yourself. Your pals didn’t like that stuff, your comparisons, allusions, your interest in words. Language of stone, fallen from the moon, in a country where the favorite sport was moving stones. Heads of stone: may nothing enter them. Except a new bet. Bets were like freedom, were intelligence and manliness all in one. Why is this old man in mourning coming out of the shack where Paquito used to live? Did Paquito die? They looked at one another with a strange mix of curiosity, fear, mockery, and respect. How they felt like betting and ceasing to have doubts! Just for once, your friends’ ways of looking were all different. This imposing man, full of authority despite his poverty, aroused in each one of you a different, unexpected attitude. Just for once, they weren’t the pack of young wolves eating together at night. Laughter, respect, and fear. Did Paquito die? Was that why this old man of stone who appeared in the idiot’s house was dressed in mourning? They remained silent when you told them that the bet was pointless — it was impossible to know if Paquito didn’t go to the plaza anymore because he’d died and in his house they were dressed in mourning because around here everyone was always dressed in mourning. Didn’t they realize that? In this town, mourning is perpetual. Someone’s always dying. Always. And there are going to be more, the old man in mourning thundered. Let’s see if you only know how to beat up a defenseless child. Let’s see if you’re little machos of courage and honor or, as I suspect, a bunch of faggy shitass thugs. The old man spoke and you felt that your life was no longer your own, that all your plans were going to fall apart, that all bets were going to combine into one.

Encarna never expected to see him again. She hesitated. She wasn’t going to change her looks or her way of life. Let him see her as she was, as she was every day, doing what she did to earn her daily bread. “Pan de chourar” the bride’s bread, she reminded herself, was the “bread of tears” in these parts.

He already knew where to find her. From nine to three, April to November. The rest of the time, the cave was closed to prevent the paintings from deteriorating. Breath, sweat, the guts of men and women, everything that gives us life takes it away from the cave, wears it away, rots it. The cave’s pictures of deer and bison, horses painted in charcoal, oxide, and blood are locked in mortal combat with the oxide and blood of living people.