Carlos Fuentes - The Years With Laura Diaz

Juan Francisco did not break the long silence that followed Laura’s words until he got out of bed, buttoned up his blue-and-white-striped pajamas, took some water from the pitcher, drank it, and sat on the edge of the bed. The room was cold — it was the thunderstorm season — and hail, as thick as it was unexpected, was drumming on the roof. Through the open window flowed a newly fresh aroma of jacarandas, overcoming with its sensuality the billowing curtains and the little puddle forming under the window. Then Juan Francisco’s words began, very slowly, as if he were a man without a past — where did he come from, who were his parents, why had he never revealed his origins?

“I always knew I was strong on the outside and weak on the inside. I knew it when I was just a kid. That’s why I made such a huge effort to show the rest of the world I was strong. You especially. Because I knew early on the fears and weaknesses I had inside. You’ve heard of Demosthenes, how he overcame his timid stutter walking along the beach with pebbles in his mouth until he could overpower the noise of the waves with his voice and make himself into the most famous public orator in Greece. That’s what happened to me. I made myself strong because I was weak. What you can’t know, Laura, is how long you can keep winning against fear. Because fear is sickly, and when the world offers you gifts to calm you down — money, power, or sensuality, all together or one at a time, it doesn’t matter — there’s no way around it, you’re grateful the world isn’t sorry for you and you go on yielding the real strength you won when you had nothing to the false strength of the world which is starting to talk to you. Then the weakness ends up overpowering you, almost without your realizing it. If you help me, perhaps I can achieve a balance and be — not as strong as you thought when you met me but not as weak as you thought when you abandoned me.”

Laura was not going to argue about who caused the break. If he went on thinking he’d been abandoned, she’d be compassionate and resign herself to seeing him play that part, and try not to lose even more respect for him. But he, in turn, would have to put up with all her truths, even the cruelest ones, not out of cruelty but so that the two of them could live from then on in the truth, disagreeable as it might be, and especially so that Danton and Santiago could live in a family without lies. Laura recalled Leticia, her mother, and wanted to be like her, to have the gift of understanding everything without using unnecessary words.

When she returned from Xalapa, she brought the Chinese doll to Frida Kahlo. The Coyoacán house was empty. Laura walked into the garden and called out, “Is there anyone at home?” And the tiny voice of a maid answered, “No, miss, there’s no one here.” The couple was still in New York, where Rivera was working on the Rockefeller Center frescoes, so Laura put Li Po on Frida’s bed and added nothing, no note, nothing; Frida would understand, it was Laura’s gift to the lost child. She tried to imagine the purity of the Oriental doll’s ivory amid the tropical undergrowth that would soon invade the bedroom: monkeys, said Frida, parrots, daisies, hairless dogs, ocelots, and a jungle of lianas and orchids.

She had the boys sent from Xalapa. Punctilious, Santiago and Danton followed Leticia’s precise and practical instructions and took the Interoceanic train to the Buenavista station, where Laura and Juan Francisco were waiting for them. The boys’ nature, which Laura already knew, was a surprise for Juan Francisco, although it was for Laura, too, in the sense that each of them was rapidly accentuating his personal traits — Danton, clownish and bold, gave his parents two hasty kisses on the cheek and ran off to buy candy, shouting, why did Grand-mama give us money when there were no Larín chocolates or Minnie Mouse lollipops on the train, but anyway the old skinflint only gave us a few cents; then ran to a kiosk and asked for the most recent issues of his favorite magazines, Pepín and Chamaco Chico, but when he realized he didn’t have enough money, resigned himself to buying the latest copy of Los Supersabios. Juan Francisco put his hand in his pocket to pay for the magazines, but Laura stopped him. Then Danton turned his back on them and ran down the street ahead of the rest of the family.

Santiago was different. He greeted his parents with a handshake that established an uncrossable space and kept kisses at bay. He allowed Laura to put her hand on his shoulder to guide him to the exit and wasn’t too embarrassed to let Juan Francisco carry the two small valises to the black Buick parked on the street. The two boys were noticeably uncomfortable, but since they didn’t want to attribute their discomfort to being with their parents, they kept on running their index fingers under their stiff collars and along the ties of the formal suits Doña Leticia had dressed them in: striped three-button jackets, knickers, knee-high argyle socks, coffee-colored square-toed shoes with hooks.

Everyone was silent during the trip from the station to Avenida Sonora, Danton absorbed in his comic book, Santiago bravely watching the majestic city pass by — the recently inaugurated monument to the Revolution, which people compared to a gigantic gasoline station, Paseo de la Reforma and all the traffic circles that seemed to do the breathing for everyone, from Caballito, the equestrian statue of Charles IV of Spain at the intersection with Juárez, Bucareli and Ejido, Christopher Columbus and his impassive circle of monks and public scribes, to the proud statue of Cuauhtémoc brandishing his spear at the intersection with Insurgentes; all along the great avenue lined with trees, footpaths, bridle paths for morning riders who at this hour were slowly plodding along, and sumptuous private mansions with Parisian facades and decorations. When they left Paseo de la Reforma, they entered the elegant streets of Colonia Roma with its two story stone houses: garages at street level and reception rooms visible thanks to the white-framed balcony windows left open so the maids, with their complicated braids and blue uniforms, could air the interior rooms and shake out the carpets.

As they went along, Santiago read the names of the streets — Niza, Génova, Amberes, Praga — until they reached the Bosque de Chapultepec — not even there did Danton raise his eyes from his comics — and thence to their home on Avenida Sonora. To Santiago, it was like a dream — the entrance to the great park of eucalyptus and pine trees, flanked by stone lions in repose and crowned by the mythic Castle where Moctezuma had his baths, from whose parapets the Boy Heroes of the Military School threw themselves rather than surrender the Alcazar to the Yankees in 1848, where all the rulers of Mexico lived, from the Habsburg emperor Maximilian to Abelardo Rodriguez, the casino godfather, to the new President, Lázaro Cárdenas, who decided that such luxury was not for him and moved, in good republican fashion, to the modest villa at the foot of the Castle, Los Pinos.

Over the course of a second breakfast, the boys listened impassively to the new order of their lives, although the spark in Danton’s eyes silently announced that he would contest each chore with some unpredictable mischief. Santiago’s eyes refused to admit either strangeness or shock; he filled the void, in Laura’s astute reading of her son, with nostalgia for Xalapa, for Grandmother Leticia, for Aunt María de la O. Would the young Santiago have to leave things behind in order to miss them? Laura surprised herself in thinking that — as she observed her elder son’s serious face with its fine features, his chestnut hair so like that of his dead uncle, so different from Danton’s swarthy appearance, his cinnamon complexion, his thick dark eyebrows, his black hair held in check with brilliantine. The only curious detail was that Santiago the fair had black eyes, while the dark-skinned Danton had pale green eyes, almost yellow, like a cat’s.