Mauro Cardenas - The Revolutionaries Try Again

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Would rather be home by now, Ernesto Carrión thinks, undisturbed on his front porch, listening to his grandson Manolito singing along to Eydie Gormé and Los Panchos inside his house instead of listening to these protesters from the back of this yellow pickup truck, y qué hiciste del amor que me juraste / y qué has hecho de los besos que te di, those old boleros that Manolito slips into the tape player because he knows Grandma still suspires to them, singing along to Eydie Gormé and Los Panchos while he flattens plantains with Grandma’s rolling pin, and somehow grandma and grandson feel more real to him this way, unseen, as voices from the kitchen like ghosts from the beyond, although of course less spooky. Someone had told him that back in eighteen hundred and something the Catedral De La Inmaculada Concepción had been scheduled to become the biggest cathedral in South America until the builders discovered they had bungled their measurements so that, in the end, they had to shrink it or else the whole thing would collapse, and that, my friends, Ernesto would often say, is why I rarely venture inside that immaculate disorganism, any day now it could still collapse. Even from the courtyard outside La Inmaculada, he’d often told Manolito, while I sold guachitos, I could hear their sad amen canticles. Manolito wanted a guitar for Christmas. Next year, Manolito, next year. More protesters are glaring at Ernesto, likely because he’s working for, as his neighbors have warned him, as if his neighbors have the right to warn him against anything, especially about getting a job, not too many of them these days, the country’s too unsteady to be refusing a job, even if it’s a job working for the one male descendent of the greatest oligarch of them all, León Martín Cordero. A young man on the sidewalk is also staring at him, although he’s not glaring at Ernesto but instead seems to be researching him? The young man is wearing a black suit, dressed either for a bank function or a beach house funeral, his moccasins awfully pointy, handy for kicking poodles. The driver of the pickup truck told him that Cristian Cordero had just hired a team of foreign advisors. That they’re already scattered all over town, watching the natives for clues. It is not unlikely that the young man in the black suit is one of these foreign advisors and that he’s wondering why Ernesto is just standing there instead of spreading the news of Cristian Cordero’s candidacy. The old man, asleep at the mic. Ernesto powers the megaphone atop the roof, banging on the passenger window so they can quit it with the honking. Ernesto amplifies his voice with the megaphone and proclaims bread, roof, and employment, with Cristian Cordero, it can be done. Cristian Cordero for president, vote for Cristian Cordero for president.

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I’ll pick you up soon, Julio would say, and when he didn’t show up at Antonio’s apartment on Bálsamos Street, which happened often, Antonio would call him again and sometimes one of the domestics in the kitchen downstairs would answer and spend ten, fifteen minutes searching for Julio in that immense compound, calling out niño Julio, telephone, niño Julio, asking the other domestics if they had seen niño Julio anywhere, and sometimes during the search for Julio the domestic would put the cordless phone down without hanging up, and either because she forgot about it, or because she was summoned to a different task in a faraway wing, or because she figured the odds of Julio answering the phone were the same whether she searched for him or put the phone down on a side table, she would just put the phone down and leave, and sometimes Antonio would wait and listen to the sounds of Julio’s compound, hoping to catch proof that Julio was still there, imagining Julio’s invertebrate double floating above the white piano in the living room because according to Julio he’d mastered the art of lucid dreaming, just as according to Julio he’d mastered the art of speed reading, womanizing, piano playing after he’d heard Antonio was learning to play the piano in San Francisco, imagining Julio waiting for his parents to fall asleep and then sneaking outside, putting one of their cars in neutral, and slithering out of their garage in one of their ancient Mercedes Benzes, the kind you still see as evidence that time hasn’t passed in La Habana and which the Esteros family preferred so as to not alert thieves that they were one of the wealthiest families in Ecuador, although one time Julio did eschew his parents’ cars and borrowed his uncle’s Porsche 911 Turbo, and due to the rain and the high speed and Julio and Antonio not knowing how to switch on the wiper washers, they crashed and spun against a small bridge in Urdesa — we’re not dead? — verga my uncle’s going to be pissed — and later Julio would fabricate the most amazing tales as to why he hadn’t been able to pick up Antonio, but of course back then Antonio would believe anything by Julio the Popcorn, Julio the nephew of Father Ignacio, the principal of San Javier, who in the middle of their sophomore year magically admitted Julio to San Javier, ha, Antonio still remembers Julio on his first day, wearing a white tee shirt with a reflective spider on the back he couldn’t have possibly purchased in Ecuador, already convincing Esteban, the most studious of them all, whom they called Pipí because he happened to look like a penis, to let him copy his homework, and soon after Antonio called Julio and invited him to attend a heavy metal concert at Colegio Alemán Humboldt, and Julio said why not, and so while a band called Mosquito Monsters or Dengue Dwarfs blared their angry music, Julio screamed like a vulture or a hawk, so loud that the audience, taken aback, turned toward Julio, who pretended it wasn’t him, and when the audience wasn’t looking he tossed his soda at them, nope, it wasn’t him, because Julio had already perfected his look of stunned innocence, as if he couldn’t believe you thought he had, for instance, stolen your identity to open a credit card in your name, as Julio had done to Antonio while Julio pretended to study in Atlanta, Georgia — my dad cut down my allowance I had no choice I was about to pay it in full of course I’ll pay you back, Antonio — but that was too many years after their first heavy metal concert at Colegio Alemán Humboldt, where Antonio, emboldened by Julio, a better looking, better dressed reflection of himself, tossed his soda at the audience, too, and so Julio and Antonio became good friends, and so one night, a school night, way past midnight, while Antonio’s mother slept upstairs, Julio knocked on Antonio’s living room window downstairs and said let’s get out of here, driving them to downtown Guayaquil, where Julio began searching for streetwalkers by the post office, picking up two of them although Antonio passed on his for religious reasons so Julio and his streetwalker entered a motel while Antonio, who didn’t know how to drive, raced Julio’s ancient Mercedes Benz past multiple red lights, angry at himself for almost sinning with a streetwalker who looked like a vocalist from Warrant or Mötley Crüe or Ratt, one of those hair bands whose tee shirts were banned at San Javier for being satanic, eventually stopping for the police car that had been chasing him — I’m so sorry my parents beat me, officer, I’m confused about life, etc. — quit it with the sob story, how much money do you have on you? — and when Julio exited the motel he was livid because apparently his streetwalker was a man, ha ha ha, yes, that night had been a watershed in Antonio’s teenage life not only because it was the first time he’d seen a streetwalker up close but because his mother discovered he had snuck out with Julio and, thinking he was out doing drugs with this Julio, who according to her already had a reputation for frequenting nightclubs in the red light district even though he was only fifteen, seemed ready at last to ship Antonio to military school, as she had threatened to do for years, but of course Julio and Antonio continued to cause trouble, like for instance during their senior year, when Rosendo, Julio’s driver, told Julio’s mother that Antonio had stopped their ancient Mercedes Benz on the way up the hill to San Javier and had convinced Julio to skip school with him, and so Julio’s mother called her brother, also known as Father Ignacio, the principal at San Javier, and she also called Antonio’s mother and said yuck you lowlifes stay away from my family, and so Antonio was expelled for a week and Julio wasn’t, and so both of their mothers forbade their sons from seeing each other, which made it all the more fun since that meant Julio had to sneak Antonio into his compound, hiding him in the closet on those rare occasions when his mother or one of the domestics would knock on his door, and of course when Antonio would call Julio he would have to say his name was Leopoldo or Esteban, and sometimes one of Julio’s younger brothers would chance upon the phone one of the domestics had put down on a side table and say, as if bemused by the encounter and yet annoyed it required him to speak, hey who’s this, or sorry I need the phone, call back later.