Читать книгу The Revolutionaries Try Again - Mauro Javier Cardenas - Страница 10

I / LEOPOLDO CALLS ANTONIO

Everyone’s saying that lightning struck the phone on Palm Sunday, Don Leopoldo. The one public phone at the Calderón that didn’t filch your coins. At least not all of them. That soon after hordes were pilgrimaging to it and lining up to dial their departed. That the single witness of the fateful strike, who’s the custodian at the Calderón — you know that park? The one by that gas station caught watering its diesel and dumping burnt Pennzoil in the Salado, imagine that, as if that river needed any more muck, a bit more and the stench won’t let us breathe, hopefully you don’t live by the Salado like I do, luckily León’s in charge and he’ll send someone to rinse it soon. That’s why I voted for your boss, Don Leopoldo, you know I’ve always voted for León. So the custodian hears thunder and sees lightning and he’s spooked. Brimming with liquor Patito, too. Apparently he’s known as a drunk and a troubadour. Little Jaramillo they call him over in El Guasmo. Apparently he serenaded his second wife at the Calderón and still shoulders his guitar to serenade the domestics that stroll by on Sundays. Cuando tú / te hayas ido / me envolverán / you know that pasillo by Julio Jaramillo?

An answer will only encourage Pascacio but no answer will not discourage him. Not that Leopoldo minds listening to him. Or that Pascacio doesn’t already know that Leopoldo doesn’t mind listening to him.

Las sombras?

That’s the one, Don Leopoldo. My Grandpa Lucho used to Pancho it for us while he fried his famous yapingachos. God keep him. He’ll never forget what you did for him. So while the rain’s pouring, Little Jaramillo’s running for cover with his guitar tucked inside his shirt, but of course its head is still protruding out of his shirt and scratching his beard with its pegheads, though my sister’s neighbor says he was running because he had seen strange shadows after him, shadows seeking retribution for his insatiable womanizing, though my sister says her neighbor’s a prude old cow who’s probably inventing this part, on the rest everyone agrees. That’s the neighbor I’ve been telling you about, Don Leopoldo. The one who thinks her jars have a different spirit than her cans. Everyone says that at night she Ouijas tin spirits with spoons. That her cabinets are like marimbas from ultratumba. Strange shadows or no shadows, Little Jaramillo’s running for cover and then he hears the loudest thunder he’s ever heard in his life. Under the ceibo by that public phone he squats and hopes lightning won’t strike him. If you ask him about it he’ll show you the mud on his sailor pants. He’ll even walk you to that shriveled ceibo and make you crouch. From right here, he’ll tell you in that Polo Baquerizo squawk of his, you know how those people talk, Don Leopoldo, from right here I saw a flash of lightning with twigs on it, ñaño. It was like a hand descending from the sky to hoist the roof off that phone. And the torched telephone still works. I know because after the storm’s over the first thing I did was call Conchita to tell her of how the lightning nabbed the phone instead of me. The phone’s ringing and ringing because Conchita’s big on sleep, and when she finally picks up I’m reckoning the phone’s dialing on no coins so I’m like Conchita, I’m calling you for free, finally we netted us a real miracle, and before she can rooster me for waking her I’m hanging up and dialing my brother up in El Paso and the long distance call goes through and I’m jumping and screaming Jorgito you wouldn’t believe what just happened.

Phone’s still broken?

You’re not going to report it, Don Leopoldo?

Of course not, Pascacio. No.

Still busted. I’m heading there again tomorrow to call my cousin Jacinta up in Jacksonville and my sister, you’ve met my little sister? She’s calling our Aunt Rosalia up in Jersey. Both had to flee after the last Paquetazo. You probably have a call or two to make too, eh?

Leopoldo does. And yet admitting it would reveal that his family is also vulnerable to the periodic catchups between downturns and shocks. Therapies of shock everyone calls Los Paquetazos. Thanks for the tip, Leopoldo says, finalizing their exchange as they reach León’s office with the rolltop oak desk they’ve been pushing along the hallway. The one desk remaining on the third floor. Or on any of the five floors. A relic from the times when El Loco and his cohorts emptied the municipal palace of everything but the doorknobs, the wallpaper, the one rolltop oak desk that was too heavy to haul.

After Pascacio picks up his bucket and mop, after he wishes Leopoldo a good night, after the metallic sound of his oscillating bucket fades down the stairs, Leopoldo checks his watch for scratches, though in the dark this isn’t easy to do, the only working light is down the hall, from the lamppost out the window, which he approaches with an industrious trudge and inflated chest, ridiculing himself for the servile diligence he adopts when León’s around, hearing the mottled collision of bugs outside, fireflies and moths and mayflies, those leeches of light, smashing themselves against the incandescence. Pascacio’s trying to rack up favors by helping him. Don Leopoldo, at the registry they’re asking my sister for a bribe she can’t afford. Don Leopoldo, at the social security they’ve pocketed my grandfather’s pension. With one call Leopoldo can fix these. He’s León Martín Cordero’s chief of staff. He has that kind of pull. And yet his pull is at odds with the digital watch he’s been sporting since high school, a gift from when his godfather scored his father a minor post in the prefecture, a clunker with shortlegged blip buttons and a rubber strap, sure, but an advanced machine back then, before his father fled in the wake of an embezzlement scandal. No new scratches from pushing the rolltop. Good.

Though he’s exhausted he will not wait for the bus at the stop nearby, even though at this late hour Pascacio’s the only coworker who might spot him there, but instead he will navigate through Pedro Carbo, Chimborazo, Boyacá, and at the crossing between Sucre and Rumichaca he will catch and ride a different bus along Víctor Manuel Rendón, Junín, Urdaneta, past that gas station that used to dump burnt Pennzoil in the Salado River, past La Atarazana and La Garzota and up the slope on Alcívar, where the bus driver will downshift abruptly and the bus will rattle like a can in a long trail of cans dragged across the asphalt of this canned city by the

(tonight Leopoldo’s dinner will consist of canned chili beans)

and along Alcívar the people already crammed inside the bus will be forced to stomach another round of house painters, domestics, fruit peddlers, hop in, people, lots of room in the back, and at least one of them will fake a panic attack to snatch a decent seat, a panic attack that will further dispirit everyone because those who disbelieve its authenticity will jostle with those who are trying to make room for the poor old woman who’s having the panic attack, and their sweat will not drip on the tin ridged floor but will be absorbed by thousands of pores that will regurgitate the smell of their daylong labors, which will not disgust Leopoldo because this time he shall will these people into a nonexistence that will not deject him then but later, when he will be reminded yet again of how uncharitable he can be toward those less fortunate than he is.

Leopoldo forestalls his bus ride by Tupa & Mera. On the window display silvered arrows point at televisions. On one of them a farmer guides his tractor with a remote control. On another the interim president, a protégé of León, praises the recent coup and announces another Paquetazo. On another the arrival of a helicopter promises yet another triumphant return of El Loco, who has already run for president twice. On another the young and the rich are behaving badly again, this time in Salinas Beach (isn’t that Torbay, his classmate from San Javier?). From the shuttered entrance of Tupa & Mera the watchman steps out onto the sidewalk and tries his most pugnacious glare on Leopoldo.

Good evening.

He does not answer Leopoldo’s greeting. Perhaps it’s too dark for the watchman to notice his tailored suit pants, his embroidered silk tie, his gold cufflinks with the San Javier logo?

Salvador’s not on duty tonight?

The watchman shakes his head.

Tell him Leopoldo Hurtado said hello. I work over at the mayor’s office, by the way. Tupa Mera’s a friend. Not sure if you’ve met him. He’s the owner of this and five other electronics stores across Guayaquil.

Leopoldo hands him his business card. The watchman holds it up with both hands, angling it, trying to lamp it with the TV screens. Now you can see?

I’m so sorry, Economista Hurtado. I’m so new at this job I didn’t even . . .

You’re for El Loco.

Never, Economista Hurtado. Always for León I . . .

On the bus Leopoldo does not yet think of calling his grandmother from the busted phone at the Calderón. He does think of her though. Not as she is now, he wouldn’t know how she is now, three weeks after fleeing to Pensacola because of the last Paquetazo, but as she remains in his memory, on her farm in the outskirts of Manabí, where he’s still ten years old and she’s teaching him how to drive her green John Deere, a one seater, sliding forward on her lap and holding on to the giant steering wheel while her rubber boots ram the pedals and she says that’s my Leo, drive it over those Jesuits if they give you trouble at San Javier, you hear, drive it over your pansy classmates if they heckle you for being smarter than them, which of course he proves to be, seven years later he’s up at the podium of San Javier’s coliseum delivering his valedictorian speech, the one he’d endlessly rehearsed in Antonio’s living room, we are the future of Ecuador, debating with his friend the meditative pauses, the stormy passages, the unrestrained warnings they’d learned from the sermons of Father Villalba, how are we to be Christians in a world of destitution and injustice, although Father Villalba wouldn’t have cared if they’d learned anything from him because while he was still alive he’d spurned them and cursed them and told them he knew they were going to sow misery like their fathers had sown misery, and while Leopoldo delivers his valedictorian speech he sees his grandmother among the crowd of senators and diplomats and of course León Martín Cordero, former president of Ecuador and current mayor of Guayaquil and the greatest oligarch of them all, carajo, and Leopoldo knows his grandmother has said to them or will say to them that’s my Leo, always the brightest one of them all, and he’ll go far, they’ll lie to her, he’ll go far.

Leopoldo asks the bus driver to slow down. He’s getting out. The driver doesn’t hear him so everyone in the bus relays the message that one’s coming down, chofer, mount the brakes, chofer, free the hangar, chofer, and when at last Leopoldo reaches the exit he jumps out of the moving bus and lands, at a gallop to avoid plunking forward, between the Salado and the Calderón.

By the busted phone there’s a long line, thirty people at least, he should’ve anticipated a line before jumping out, who knows how long before the bus drives by again at this late hour. Leopoldo proceeds to the front of the line, not hearing the voices saying I haven’t talked to my father in more than two weeks, I haven’t talked to my sister in four, strangers sharing with each other stories about those family members who had to flee after the most recent Paquetazo because the price of gas shot up, the price of butter, the price of rice, ladrones de mierda, because for the good of the economy the interim president tripled their bus fares, doubled their phone bills, because the Progreso Bank shut its doors after its owners absconded with the accumulated savings of those of us without any government friends to warn us ahead of time, qué hijueputas, outside the Progreso Bank my cousin Marta and hundreds of others screamed at the guards, hanging from the metal bars of the bank’s entrance, not knowing the bank was empty, not knowing the bank had already been sacked, and as Leopoldo advances to the front of the line, fast enough to parry what he already knows they’re saying, someone says hey, where do you think you’re going, oye, where to compañero, hey.

Leopoldo Arístides Hurtado, raising his wallet like a badge, addresses the crowd. My name is Leopoldo Arístides Hurtado and I’m with the office of León Martín Cordero. This telephone is in violation of code 4738 of the telephony guidelines established by the city council in 1979. This telephone is therefore deemed inoperative until it is compliant. Those who continue to operate it can and will be prosecuted.

What he say?

Can’t use the phone.

Kidding?

Someone walks up to Leopoldo and squints at his raised wallet as if it were a plaque next to a sculpture.

He’s not kidding.

Doesn’t look like he’s from León’s office to me.

A young woman in line decides to intervene. She unruffles the hemline of her polka dot dress, rubs the mud from her high tops, curving her left one atop her right one, a swift canvas peck, and then tittups to León’s envoy, whose name she recognizes because her brother Pascacio has mentioned him before, yet she doesn’t want to implicate her brother so instead of mentioning his name she smiles at Leopoldo, a smile that her brother says is almost as comforting as the yapingachos of Grandpa Lucho, a smile that the shintacklers who soccer on her street like to whistle at, Malenita, mi amor, where are you going with that sassy smile. She offers Leopoldo the scribbled numbers on her lilac notepad. We’re all calling our families, she says. You know how impossible it is for us to afford these calls. Couldn’t you wait to issue your order just a tiny little bit?

Leopoldo tries not to flinch. He pockets his wallet. No.

He’s not kidding, Malena informs the people in line, recklessly raising her voice so that Leopoldo can hear her saying that her brother Pascacio works nights at the municipality and has heaped praise on that piece of lastre for whatever reason.

Slip him a twenty, someone says. A man takes off his cap and hands it to his son, who begins to collect change from the people in line. Leopoldo did not expect this. In his mind this little caprice of his ended without resistance, with the crowd quickly vanishing from the Calderón. The boy shambles toward Leopoldo and tries to hand him the coinfilled cap.

Please. Please don’t. No.

The boy runs back to his father after leaving the cap, asprawl, at Leopoldo’s feet. He could concede. All right, he could say, just this one time, go on and call your families. Later Leopoldo will convince himself that he’d arrived at his decision not by impulse but by deduction, because Pascacio’s sister is here, Leopoldo will think, and Pascacio likes to gossip, and gossip spreads fast at the municipality so León, who does not tolerate corruption in his subordinates, could eventually hear of this, which is unlikely, but perhaps not so unlikely, either way the country’s too unstable for him to allow even for the prospect of León hearing about it so he will have to cover himself and follow through by reporting the busted telephone first thing tomorrow morning.

I don’t take bribes. Please vacate the premises.

After securing enough witnesses that she was already at the front of the line, an old woman approaches him, bowing to him as she sets down her pineapple by the coinfilled cap, showing him she has nothing left in her grocery bag except lettuce and a bag of rice, shuffling back to her place at the front of the line.

Everyone tallies what else they are willing to part with. Should they send the boy again? No. One by one for greater impact? Who should go first? Who will account for their place in line? Malena rips a page from her notepad, hands numbers to everyone in line. The boy claims he and his father should receive a better number because of their cap collection idea. But it didn’t work, someone says. One by one they deposit their belongings in front of Leopoldo. Green mangos, ripe bananas, photographs of their loved ones, plastic rosaries, a bag of lentils.

If Leopoldo were Antonio he would cry of embarrassment and hurl their belongings back at them and leave them to their ridiculous phone calls. Why don’t they just assault him? Wouldn’t that exonerate him from deciding anything?

I don’t take bribes. Please vacate the premises before I summon the squadrons.

No one moves. In line someone shushes someone until everyone’s shushed. The crowd seems to be waiting for something to happen. For someone to appear before them and rectify this.

Let’s get out of here, Malena says. We’ll find some other way to call our families.

A collective groan. Whistling. As they collect their belongings some are muttering desgraciado, others holler descarado, malparidos like him are what’s sinking this country, rata de pueblo, moreno de verga, just wait till El Loco returns.

No one’s left at the Calderón but him. From his wallet he tries to pull out his phone list, which includes the numbers for his grandmother, for his friend Antonio, for the economics department at the University of Indiana, where according to his contacts, scholarships for Ecuadorians might be available through the ministry of finance. The phone list’s lodged inside a pocket where his fingers almost fail him. He pulls the list out but drops it, swatting for it in vain on the way down. If you ask him about it he won’t show you his muddied phone list. Or tell you he was surveilling the withered ceibos of the Calderón to check if Little Jaramillo was lurking behind them, checking the sky for lightning too, although this telephone does not look as if it has been struck by lightning. Not that he would know what that looks like.

Leopoldo dials his grandmother.

No estoy, deje un mensaje, y si no hablan español me importa un pito, por su culpa mismo estoy aquí así que no voy a aprender su inglish del carajo.

Leopoldo’s relieved that her answering machine picks up. He would have been embarrassed to talk to her. He hangs up without leaving a message. He has expelled those people for nothing. Does the mud beneath him smell like vinegar, sulfur, or piss? Did the mud already absorb Little Jaramillo’s piss? Was it softened by it such that children could frolic in it? Make mud balls and snowmen benosed with carrots? The next number on his list is for his friend Antonio, known at San Javier as the Snivel, Gargamel, Drool, Saber Tooth. Leopoldo hasn’t talked to him since he left to study abroad, a month after their graduation, almost ten years ago. At Stanford, Antonio was supposed to breeze through a double major in public policy and economics and then return. At the Universidad Católica, Leopoldo was supposed to enlist the luminaries of their generation and then run for office with Antonio. Together they were supposed to do — what? what did you think you were going to do? — so much.

Leopoldo dials Antonio. Through the decrepit phone line Leopoldo hears the first ring, the fourth, and then an alien blare interrupts the sixth: banging on a piano, frantic strings, the crackling of shortwave.

Hello?

Barely hear you.

Why don’t you shut your vacuum? Unplug it, if that’s the less strenuous option.

Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. Which you’re interrupting.

Here to end your end times. So to speak.

The hell’s this? Hello?

This, Gargamel, is your father.

Microphone Head?

Drool?

Microphone Head!

Drool!

So a vacuum is your best metaphor for avant garde music? Surely nonretrogradable rhythms haven’t reached your village yet. Rarely has the term yet been used so dubiously.

Pardon me for neglecting to profit by your remark. Leopoldo hears Antonio laughing. Antonio remembers that quip. Of course he remembers.

Oh Drool. Always shortchanging your kind. Is your window open?

Is his window open? Yes. Right. Leopoldo’s buying time to prepare a comeback. A common tactic from Who’s Most Pedantic, their game from San Javier. During recess by Don Alban’s cafeteria they would refute each other about everything, spoofing the pompous language of demagogues, priests, themselves, digressing manically upon premises like compatriotas, let us applaud León’s proposal to privatize our toilets, compañeros, let us consider that if El Loco wins, Facundo’s maid will lop off his maid killer in his sleep, if she can find it, although rules are rules, digressions earn you top points but they have to eventually boomerang to the original premise, the audience permitted to interrupt only to call out for vocabulary clarifications: badinage!, what is?, sapidity!, what is?, and they halt their sciolisms and provide definitions, magniloquent inventions, on the spot. Is his window open? Antonio chooses not to block Leopoldo’s question with a question. He wants to hear what Leopoldo comes up with.

Why yes, my window is indeed open.

You see my friend, well you don’t really see, that’s why I’m about to inculcate you, your vacuum not only absorbs the detritus on your carpet but also the particles that float through your window, particles that carry inside of them the alarm of ambulances, the clang of cans, the tenor of the toll collector, all your troglogradables that are, in short, inside your artifact of . . .

Troglo what?

Gradables.

Chanfle. Do you own a vacuum?

Why yes. Indeed I do.

And you change its filter often?

Every two months.

You see, Microphone Head, well you don’t really see ’cause you’re as blind as a microphone, I haven’t changed the filter of my Red Devil in years. Therefore it has ceased to absorb anything. Neither detritus nor particles and absolutely no clang of cans. Oh Microphone Head: always faltering between the general and the specific. You know the one about Glenn Gould and the Hoover? Of course you don’t.

On the Salado side of the Calderón a domestic appears along Bolívar Street, too far from the busted phone for Leopoldo to know if she was one of the expelled. It is likely that more people will appear again soon. At San Javier their Who’s Most Pedantic game had served them well. On the national academic quiz show broadcasted by Channel Ten they had excelled in the debate section. And the Q&A section. They’d swept the city rounds and the interprovincial rounds and the finals against Espíritu Santo. At school everyone recognized them. During recess the appeal of Who’s Most Pedantic widened. Why I’m a better presidential candidate than you became a favorite premise.

Still flatlining the currency at the Central Bank, Microphone?

Been following the news?

About the twilight of the IPOS?

About the recent coup.

Another one?

Rumors that the interim president might be loosening the electoral requirements so El Loco can run.

El Loco’s returning again?

And the stronger candidates . . .

Stronger? You mean burlier? Dollarized at the gut, if you will.

. . . don’t want to run. The situation is irredeemable, so what’s the point? They’ll get ousted anyway. Ever considered returning?

Absolutamente never. I’m too busy wading in stock options. Money? Paper, yes.

There’s massive protests all over the country.

Again?

The indignation of the people has reached its limit.

Now that definitely hasn’t happened before.

Leopoldo doesn’t respond. Antonio interprets Leopoldo’s silence correctly. Leopoldo isn’t playing anymore. Antonio turns down Messiaen’s Abyss of the Birds.

And yet with the right strategy someone . . .

–Juana we’re out of eggs!

I think the lines are crossed, Leo. Typical of our backward . . .

. . . an outsider could sweep the elections and effect real change . . .

–Juana I gave you enough change for eggs.

He yells at you because he loves you, Juana.

. . . at last our chance to . . .

–Juana, carajo, quit eavesdropping on the politicians and go basket some eggs.

Hello?

Barely hear you.

–Quit clowning and hang up already. Juana?

Vote for us, Juana’s husband.

We always wanted an audience and here at last . . .

–How much for my vote?

Free milk?

Free housing?

–I’m voting for El Loco.

El Loco’s not coming back, sir.

–That’s what you people said last time.

How come we haven’t heard from Juana?

Juana’s husband and his imaginary wife, Juana, are voting for El . . .

–I’ll track you two conchadesumadres and . . .

Hang up and call again?

I think we have a chance, Antonio.

–Quit my phone line already!

Hello?