Читать книгу For Love of the Dollar - J.M. Servin - Страница 8

PROLOGUE

Norma picked up her bag from the desk and left the room, slamming the door. It wasn’t the first time we’d argued, but it was the first time we’d insulted each other face-to-face. She had taken the liberty of snooping in my stuff and I caught her reading my stories. By way of apology, she admitted that they had a certain flair, but that they were corrosive and destructive. They reflected the worst of me without even trying. This type of “confessional” writing—that’s what she called it—negated everything that Norma understood about “holding beliefs.” But her fear of accepting the reasons she lived in an eighty-square-foot studio apartment was the real trigger for a squabble filled with bitter reproaches over the insinuations in my writing. Still, her complaints, as indignant as ever, didn’t phase me; I’d made the call years ago to make no enemies, least of all my sister—our hatreds are chips off the same block.

As far as I’m concerned, all of humanity’s acts are plagued by hatred and disappointment. Norma is ruled by her visceral opinions not only about me, but about all of those who surround her. Hatred, a much more sincere feeling than “love,” is the piston of rebelliousness, the only way of denying misers and scoundrels any respect. If we didn’t have the option of sugarcoating it with irony, the streets would be filled with execution walls and scaffolds.

Accepting hatred as a part of our essence keeps us afloat above the scared and resentful masses—whom Norma secretly loathes—those who are incapable of hating, who just keep themselves busy with any old trinket in their hands. A mass of unhappy people hounded by hunger and poverty from all corners of the world. Mexicans, as always, anguishing and puppet-like. Submissive, swindled, apathetic, and yet agonizing over little things. Loyal to their tyrants and to their sweet Virgen de Guadalupe. But if we were to position ourselves beyond hatred, we might aspire to the freedom of assuming responsibility for our decisions without laying the blame on others.

That’s how I was trying to sum up the contradictions in my fragmented culture and my daily experiences. It proved pointless to highlight the motives behind what I rejected and what I held on to. Norma was one of the few day laborers I knew who, at least until that moment, would open up to me about more than just the typical problems of people like us. She left the TV blaring as the final evidence of her furious presence in the room, then her high heels hastily descended the stairwell of the house on Alexander Avenue.

It had been a brief yet intense argument, leaving me exhausted. I turned off the television and lay down in bed. The ceiling fan looked like a vulture circling above its prey. The whipping blades were not enough to ease the tense and sticky atmosphere, nor to shoo away the flies sneaking in through some hole in the open window’s screen.