Читать книгу Ajijic - Patricio Fernández Cortina - Страница 10

Chapter V

The Gathering

One day, after the event of the purchase of the valuable book, Sugar received a call from his friend Niagara, inviting him to participate in a meeting of expats that was going to take place at his home. Niagara was a retiree from Ontario, Canada, who had been living in Ajijic for several years with his wife Ava. He was a man about Sugar’s age, short, thin, and black-haired, with skin as white as snow. He wore round glasses, was assertive and regularly wore light colored jackets. He was an avid reader, well-versed in literature, and had a respectable library. His ability to recite passages from novels and long poems from memory was surprising, and he liked to do so often in conversations with his friends. In his interchanges with Sugar, he’d speak as if he were quoting from a book or a poem, and Sugar would speak as if he were savoring a song. The two let their conversations be driven by the plot of a novel or the lyrics of a song. That’s how they were.

Niagara and Ava’s house was located in the upper part of La Floresta, on a street called Paseo del Mirador. La Floresta was a neighborhood in Ajijic, divided in half by the Jin Xi Boulevard. It was a place where a large number of expats and other families from Guadalajara had settled, Sugar and Niagara used to go there to walk in lazy afternoons, talking and admiring the flamboyant trees and jacarandas that bloomed in the spring coloring the cobblestone streets when the first rains came. Sugar would call out to Niagara the names of the trees they would encounter along the way: olive, mango, avocado, araucaria, cypress, magnolia, lemon, guava, orange, and mandarin. A great pleasure was created in that little world of lairs, as the music created by the wind passing through the tall pines and laurels ascended to the sky, a place that was also home to swallows, calandrias, robins and hummingbirds (in Spanish also called “rose-suckers”). Niagara amused himself as Sugar recited the inventory: pomegranates, camachiles, obelisks, almond trees, African tulip trees, purple roses, golden showers, bougainvillea, aloe vera, rubber trees, weeping figs, and rose bushes. And in every gazebo, a laurel, plump and vast, nurtured inside by the song of birds.

It was common to see people in the plazas sitting on benches admiring that exuberant flora of La Floresta, while time marched on inexorably and conversations were carried away by the wind towards the lagoon. This was Ajijic, a place where time passed within a different flow of time, containing it, a town ordered by only the precepts of nature, where the rhythm of life was touched by the silence of the trees and the gazing upon the lagoon surrounded by hills, now close, now far. People looked at each other and drank away the afternoon amid the smell of the earth wet by the rains or enjoyed the gentle heat of the dry season beneath the cool shade of the trees, directing their thoughts towards hope, towards the infinite that began just behind García Hill.

The house was one story and was surrounded by a large yard, flanked by rows of hydrangeas planted along the perimeter wall, that contained their beauty. The expats’ evening would take place in this garden, taking full advantage of the Ajijic’s extraordinary weather. The garden was accessed from the street through a side door in the shape of an arch, covered with flowers, so that it was not necessary for the guests to walk through the inside of the house. The garden had been created with remarkable patience and wisdom over the years, by a master gardener who had cared for the delicate plants with the attention of an artist, and who had also guided the vines that hung from the walls. His masterpiece had been making the jasmine take on a beautiful sinuousness and having its scent spread throughout the garden like a rising tide. Ava and Niagara often participated in the work, especially when it came to polishing large fern leaves, staghorn ferns, and peace lilies. While they were working, Niagara liked to listen to Mexican music in the large open space: compositions by Blas Galindo and by Moncayo, the song “Chapala” performed by the Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán, anything by José Alfredo, Chabela Vargas, and Jorge Negrete. The water gushing from a fountain at the bottom of the garden, filled with koi fish and beautiful water lilies covering its surface, ran through small channels along the walkable Cantera paths. It was a veritable jardin des plantes, as many others found in Ajijic.

Niagara’s library was inside the house. It was a ventilated room thanks to the sliding windows that overlooked the garden. Although modest in size, the books were a prime selection made by a connoisseur of literature. Niagara only read novels, poetry, and short stories. The walls of the library were lined with books and in the center was a very fine desk, made of cedar, and an ergonomic chair that contrasted the classic with the modern. In front of his desk, above the door frame, he had etched these words by Amparo Dávila: “Let me not die on a cloudy or cold winter day, or go shivering with cold and fear into the unknown”; and below them, two more inscriptions: “Ars longa, vita brevis,” by Hippocrates, as he had researched; and another, anonymous but very eloquent one: “Life is short, then you die.”

Niagara was a man aware of the shortness of life and the imminence of death, both unfathomable mysteries. His conscience was clear, and he liked to say, following Seneca, that men lived as if they were never going to die. “What a waste!” he would say. Niagara wrote, although he had never published any of his writings. He knew the struggle between mind and hand during the arduous exercise of writing, and on that day he had prepared a text that he would read to the expats during the gathering.

Ava, Niagara’s wife, was astonishingly beautiful, exuberant, with “green, how I want you green,” colored eyes, huge and crystalline like the emerald water of the lake. She was a year younger than Niagara, and slightly taller than him, which gave the couple a curious air. She barely spoke any Spanish, but she pushed herself to learn it taking lessons from Niagara himself. There was no better hostess in Ajijic than she. She entertained like a queen. She moved slowly and seemed to be floating on air, her voice was very warm, and her manners were delicate. She had learned to make quince cajeta and to fry charales as the locals do. When she had guests in her house, she would cover the tables with beautiful linen tablecloths and fill them with flowers; the soaps and perfumes in the bathroom were of a fine touch; she served her guests with premium china and glassware. Her home was always spotless, clean, and tastefully decorated. On the walls hung pictures of renowned painters. The floors were made of mosaic tiles inlaid with wood, and beautiful lamps hung from the ceilings. On the terrace were two beautiful chandeliers with seven candles each. Niagara helped her with magnificent ideas that he drew from novels, about precious fixtures, and elegant furnishings to dress the house.

For that occasion, Ava had laid out wooden planks covered with Portuguese linen tablecloths in the garden, and the chairs that were apparently made of liana in the French way. The shade of the flamboyant tree gave the evening a pleasant temperature, and the wind from the lagoon that rose along the slope joined the one that descended from Tepalo Hill, refreshing the surroundings. Vines and pots of various plants hung from the branches of the jacarandas. A hummingbird drank from the jasmine, as Ava paced checking the last details.

On wooden boards were trays with canapés, bottles of red and white wine, cups, glasses, buckets with ice, and bottles of mineral water, as well as wicker baskets with a great variety of the typical Chapala sweets that vendors sell under the laurel trees on the Boulevard Jin Xi. Some were made of milk, known as chapalitas, with a chewy consistency; sour hibiscus, called gallitos; and others more made of tamarind, myrtle, milk fudge, burnt milk, and eggnog.

At six in the afternoon the guests began to arrive. The first to appear were Sugar and his wife Patti. She was a petite woman, who had her hair done in two slightly disheveled braids. Her graying hair, which she could not clasp between her braids, fell from her temples to her cheeks. Her face bore a striking resemblance to that of Marguerite Yourcenar, and for that reason Niagara continually reminded her that “the first homelands had been books.” She had blue eyes, always wore a shawl and huaraches with colorful stone earrings and necklaces. She was the same age as Sugar, and wherever she walked she left behind the delicious smell of her perfume. She was good friends with Ava, and like her, her Spanish was poor. They loved and understood each other, probably because they were so different: Patti was outspoken and outgoing, Ava cautious and deliberate. They both had a great sense of humor, each in her own way. Patti laughed out loud, like Sugar her husband; Ava did it discreetly, like Niagara.

The reception took place under the huge flamboyant tree that spread its branches protecting the guests from the afternoon sun. Topics that were discussed included the cultural activities set for the month, real estate offers, and community services, such as the dispensary and legal assistance for immigrants; the disorganization of some city services, especially garbage collection, was hotly discussed and it was announced that in the next few days the play Hamlet would be presented at the Lakeside Little Theater, with the adaptation of the screenplay written by Niagara and with Sugar participating by the setting to music the “something never seen before,” and the roles would be played by expats who had rehearsed with enthusiasm and diligence.

The expats founded a community of solidarity in Ajijic: “People who help their people: birds of a feather flock together.” They created a legally constituted association to organize themselves and make life more bearable and pleasant in a land that was not theirs, or maybe already is. They were happy in Ajijic, and they felt that way in their hearts. And that was fine. They had adapted to a new way of being and were organizing quite effectively to help each other. They had religious activities, book clubs, organized cooking and art history classes, met to paint, weave, and learn the craft of looms; they organized story writing workshops, singing classes and even formed a choir; they made hiking excursions along the lakeshore and the hills that surrounded it. They sought to fit in without fusing with the environment they had traveled to and to which they showed their respect every day. They participated, whenever possible, in the town’s festivals and carnivals, which were festivities in which religious beliefs and rites were upheld: both saintly and devilish.

On one occasion, Sugar, Patti, Niagara, and Ava went to witness the festivities of St. Stephen held in January. They first did it out of curiosity and then continued to do it for fun in the following years. They went among the people, walking and dancing, eating the tachiguales, those delicious loaves of bread baked on firewood, transported on platforms or boards during the procession so that all the attendees can reach one at will, and they had a savory laugh when they saw that some sayacas, those men who dressed up as women, painted the faces of Sugar and Niagara with flour as they turned along with the rest of the procession down Emiliano Zapata Street, hugging and dancing the sayacas like two drunken men with two obese women with their breasts puffed up with balloons. The music and the religious hubbub were separated from the debauchery by a tenuous line tolerated by the town priest, and that amused them because it represented the candor present in the most precarious and simple manifestations, the spiritual catharsis through which the true demons that every man and woman carries are released from within, right there where the human soul resides.

On another occasion, since they had become afflicted with the need to live and enjoy those Mexican traditions, the four of them went on a February night to the carnival in Chapala, attending the burial of bad humor parade and witnessed the coronation of the ugly king: “the ugly king,” Patti said with a laugh, and they were delighted with the serenades in the town square sung in honor of the queen of the festivities. In September, Patti and Ava never missed out on the parades of the rebozos that take place in Ajijic. It would be right to say that the expats had a feeling of ecstasy when they found themselves mixed up in those colorful environments; folklore expressed in music, song, costume and noise, a lot of noise, knowing that at night they would return to the peace of their homes to sleep in calmness, breathing the bromide that the lagoon exhaled under the shelter of the stars and the moon. They led happy lives in Ajijic.

Thus, once the meeting’s agenda had been finished and the sun began to set, the attendees were invited to go to the highest part of the garden to enjoy the food and wine that Niagara and Ava had prepared for them. When the sun set in the distance, the lagoon took on shades of amber, and in the twilight García Hill was painted in a cold blueness. Lamps were lit among the trees of the garden, and in the background Leonard Cohen’s song “Take This Waltz,” could be heard. Niagara asked the guests to sit in the rows of chairs that had been set up for the occasion and requested a moment of attention from them. Only the music and the chirping of birds broke the silence. The swallows, as there were still traces of sunlight, flew hurriedly in their last efforts to hide among the branches of the laurels. Niagara asked Ava to turn off the music and they all fell silent. He took from the inside pocket of his jacket some papers, with writing on both sides, adjusting the round glasses perched on his nose, and he began to read the text that he had written for the occasion.

“Dear friends I would like to read in Spanish, the language that this land that we love has given us. But I’ll do it in English since most of you don’t know Spanish very well. You should really make an effort to learn it, because in addition to being a rich and beautiful language, the gesture of speaking it would serve as a kind of tribute to Ajijic. Those of us who came here leaving behind our homes and our cities, our countries, and customs, have found here the goodness of the people and its climate. We fulfilled our jobs there and when the system retired us so that the younger generations could take our jobs, we moved to Ajijic. Tonight, I want to share with you some ideas about the importance of being aware of the shortness of life.”

Niagara paused to drink water and then continued reading in English. When he had said that he would have liked to read in Spanish, a murmur of voices had been heard, but then it was lost among the chirping of the last birds. Before continuing to read, he looked over his glasses towards the garden gate and saw that a man had entered without being noticed by the others. Stealthily, the man sat down in a chair in the back row. Since Niagara saw that he seemed resolute and like a person of good manners, he did not sound any alarm as he thought that it could be someone who had been invited by one of the Lakesiders. Furthermore, he believed he had seen him before in La Renga and in La Colmena, although he did not really know who he was. Then he continued:

“Our age should not be an object of regret, quite the contrary; it is now that we must love life more than ever and appreciate it with the wisdom that experience has given us. It is now when we must give full flight to our interests and hobbies, to our intellectual abilities, to art and to everything that we always dreamed of and that we could not do because of our busy lives. We have only a few years left, dear friends, it is now or never.

On a certain occasion, the Italian conductor Riccardo Muti told an audience at an awards ceremony that another Italian conductor named Vittorio Gui had told Muti that it was a pity that he, Gui, was already ninety years of age and so close to death, because he was just learning to be a conductor. You can imagine what Muti felt when he heard those words, so full of humility and spoken by a man who had been one of the great conductors of his time.

Yes, you will say that these words are already well-known truths, but the problem is that we forget them. We go through life as if we were never going to die—oh Seneca!—swatting flies as they say in Mexico. Today more than ever, let us look at the path, let us do away with our vices, open our minds, put our attention and our energies towards realizing our dreams, though it may impossible to accomplish them, because that will determine whether our achievements, however small they may be, turn out to be satisfying and not a defeat.

I remember that as a child my grandfather gave me a handful of new bills. I was fascinated by the smell of them and their softness to the touch, the smoothness of the paper and the firmness of the seals not yet worn by the hands of commerce. It was money so beautiful it seemed a shame to spend it. Whose hands would these bills pass onto and where would they go when they were exchanged in transactions? I would wonder. It would be wonderful to hoard all the new bills, but it was an absurd idea because as time passed, they would lose their value until they were worth less than the paper they were printed on. And that is how life works too: if it is not spent, it is lost. It becomes devalued, stale, and meaningless.

The life of each one of us is like a new bill; each one of us must decide if we’re going to spend it or hoard it. Life is as brief as the silence between sighs. We must spend every moment in search, lest what Eliseo Diego says in his poem, ‘They are leaving,’ happens to us: ‘It’s a shame to be like this, as if not being.’

Let us cross the rivers and seas that await us out there, on our own odyssey, forward, always forward. Every afternoon is either life or death. There, where two eternities meet: the forgotten past and the long-awaited future, as Carlyle thought.”

At that moment, the man sitting in the last chair put his hands to his head, covered his face, and rubbed his forehead and cheeks. Then he slid his hands over his neck, rubbing it several times. He closed his eyes and began to stammer: ‘I must do it, I must do it.’

Niagara tucked the pages of his speech into the inside pocket of his jacket, while everyone rose from their chairs clapping and toasting their drinks.

“To what remains for us to live!” said someone.

“Cheers! Life is short!” exclaimed another, clinking his glass of wine with those around him.

Ava, who by then was standing next to Niagara, had brought a nice Paracho guitar from the terrace and handed it to Sugar, who was sitting next to Patti in the front row. Speaking to everyone, she said:

“We have a surprise for you tonight.”

Then, looking at Sugar, she said:

“Sing, Sugar, sing.”

The guests turned to Sugar and gave him a loud round of applause.

“Yes, let him sing!” they said in chorus.

Patti, who had been sitting next to her husband, kissed him and in a loud and visibly cheerful voice said to him:

“Lovely, lovely, lovely… Sugar!”

Sugar laughed and kissed her forehead, stroking her braids and her loose hair.

Then Patti, even more excited, almost singing, and nearly as a plea, said:

“Sing, sing a song… Sing out loud!”

Sugar nodded. He turned his chair towards the crowd and sat down, placing the guitar on his right leg. He took his pipe in his left hand, tugged at his white beard with his right, and with that same hand he took a lighter with the Yankees logo on it from his pants pocket. He lit the tobacco in the chamber of the bowl. He smoked, still smiling. Then he took the guitar, brought it close to his face and smelled the fragrance of the cedar, remembering his childhood home, the streets of his city, the first sensations of love amid the fragrant branches of the trees from his youth. The wind moved his beard and white hair. He put his pipe on the small table beside him and said:

“You know, I still haven’t learned how to sing and smoke at the same time.”

There was laughter and the sound of glasses clinking as guests took their places again to hear him sing. He put the guitar back on his lap and began to play to the respectful silence of the guests. He sang a couple of songs and when the moon was full overhead, he began to strum the guitar strings with his thumb, saying these words:

“Tonight Niagara has spoken to us about one of the great truths of life, of our lives, and there are songs that have proclaimed them too, like this one that I have listened to since I was a little over thirty years old, and that goes like this:

I have climbed the highest mountains

I have run through the fields

only to be with you

only to be with you… I have run I have crawled

I have scaled these city walls

only to be with you.

But I still haven’t found

what I’m looking for…”

The guests began to sing in chorus with Sugar, clapping to the rhythm of the song, embracing the verses, without overshadowing the music that came from the guitar, elevating it as if the voices were rising like prayers to heaven. The lamps among the trees of the garden also swayed in the wind as Sugar sang in falsetto:

“I have spoke with the tongue of angels

I have held the hand of a devil

it was warm in the night

I was cold as a stone… I believe in the Kingdom come

Then all the colors will bleed into one…

But yes, I’m still running.

But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for…”

The mysterious man rose to his feet and leaned against the trunk of the flamboyant tree that rose from its massive roots. He stared at Niagara in astonishment. He listened to Sugar sing. He looked at the roots of the tree and then looked up at the foliage that stretched high up into the infinite sky. He looked down at the roots again. How important were the roots! He followed the rhythm of the melody with lilting movements of his right foot, uttering each of the verses of the song like a whisper. Emotions were invading him from his stomach to his face, and when they sang “…you broke the bonds, and you loosened chains, carried the cross of my shame, of my shame…But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for,” the man shuddered, his eyes narrowed, and tears welled up. He held his cheeks with his thumb and forefinger and wept heartily, supported by the tree, and again and again he struck the ground with his shoe, repeating the verses that caused him such deep sorrow. Sugar, who had already noticed the man’s presence, stopped singing when he saw that he was crying, and everything went silent. The guests turned and looked at him curiously. Ava approached him, and taking his arm, asked him in her rickety Spanish:

“Está usted bien?”

“It’s nothing,” he answered. “That music has fascinated me all my life. It moves me. Please forgive me. I was taken by a sudden memory, and I couldn’t help it.”

The guests asked each other if they knew who that strange man was. Sugar carefully set the guitar on the chair, picked up his pipe, and stood up. As he walked, he tugged at his white beard, wondering who that curious character was. When he reached him, he saw that Niagara and Ava were already by his side. Then Sugar settled in front of him, adjusted his sailor’s beret and, without delay, said:

“I think I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?”

The man nodded.

Since the music had ended abruptly, the guests realized that the evening had come to an end and began to head towards the garden’s gate. Niagara and Ava went to see them off, leaving Sugar and the strange visitor alone at the foot of the flamboyant tree. The man was looking at the ground, as if he were meditating.

Suddenly, he exclaimed:

“I must go.”

Sugar smoked his pipe, trying to meet the man’s gaze but the man remained focused on the ground without raising his head.

“Stay a moment,” Sugar said, “I enjoy lingering for a bit in this wonderful house after our gatherings. Niagara and I are good friends. We like to sit on the terrace and talk with a shot of tequila. I’m not in any particular hurry today. Let’s go to the terrace so you can calm down.”

The man did not resist, and both walked towards the terrace, with Sugar walking off a bit to pick up the guitar he had left resting on the chair. As soon as they were on the terrace, Sugar turned to the man and asked:

“So, tell me, what’s your name?”

“My name is Bob.”

At that moment Ava, Niagara and Patti appeared.

“Look, this is Bob,” Sugar said to the others.

“Please feel welcome,” Ava told him in her polite way of speaking.

“Yes, welcome, Bob,” Niagara completed the invitation.

Patti nodded to him, and Ava, turning to her, said:

“Darling, let’s let the gentlemen talk in peace. Come, let’s go to the living room and have some tea and petits fours. I have a lot of things to tell you.”

The ladies always spoke English to each other and when they were with their husbands or with the Lakesiders. For their part, Sugar and Niagara, although they spoke in English when it was just the two of them, always spoke in Spanish when they met someone from town. It was amazing that, although it was not their language, they spoke it with pleasure, demonstrating the affection they felt for Ajijic and for the people who had received them with so much warmth.

When the three of them were alone on the terrace, Sugar laughed, as always when he felt at ease, he tugged on his beard, adjusted his beret and, looking at Bob, said:

“Well, what’s going on with you, sir? What’s troubling you?”

Bob looked at Sugar, then Niagara, cleared his throat, and respectfully, if slightly affected, said to both:

“Please talk to me without calling me sir, I’m younger than you and I should show you respect.”

Sugar belted out another laugh and looking at Niagara proclaimed:

“Pour me a tequila, I’ve just been made to feel old!”

“It’s not that, sir,” Bob clarified.

“Oh, that’s okay,” Sugar replied, laughing again and patting Bob on the back. “‘I was so much older then and I am younger than that now’ Bob Dylan said that in ‘My Back Pages’ so don’t worry.”

Bob was thinking about what he had just heard, and Sugar laughed out loud again. Niagara went to the kitchen to get the tequila. Then Sugar exclaimed:

“Okay, okay, we won’t call you sir. Agreed?”

“Yes, sir.”

“These young people from Ajijic are very formal, Niagara,” Sugar yelled loud enough for Niagara to hear him.

The starry night was in bloom and the crickets were chirping. From the terrace you could see the beautiful garden thanks to the lights Niagara had turned on and that illuminated the trees from their roots, while the plants were bathed in the light of the lanterns that protruded from behind the ferns. Niagara returned from the kitchen carrying a tray with three shot glasses, a bottle of tequila, an ice bucket, three napkins, three medium glasses, and a bowl with spicy peanuts and fried charales, as well as a bottle of mineral water. He set it on the table, and before he offered them a drink, Sugar said:

“Hey, Niagara, this garden is more beautiful with every passing day. I can’t believe you’re the one who takes care of it. You and Ava haven’t been in the nursery for a long time, I have some beautiful azaleas that would look very good on the back wall,” he said, pointing to a spot in the garden, laughing and enjoying himself.

“The truth is that Ava is the one who actually takes care of it,” Niagara said. “I help her with what I can. You know that the plants and trees of La Floresta seem to be her life, so I am fine with whatever she says. She has more affinity with you than with me when it comes to that. I’ll remind her tomorrow about going to the nursery so you can show us the plants.”

Bob looked at them, surprised by how well they spoke Spanish. Then he said to them:

“You both speak our language so well, how did you learn it?”

“Well, young man,” Sugar anticipated, “the truth is that I can get by, but Niagara is a true specialist. Isn’t that so, amigo?”

“That’s right,” Niagara replied. “Because I worked several years for a publisher in Ontario, which had a division specializing in Latin American literature, and I also did online studies at Harvard in conjunction with the Instituto Cervantes in Madrid, in a program organized around the ideas of George Ticknor, the pioneering scholar on the history of Spanish-language literature in the United States. That allowed me to do some translation work, never like those of Aurora Bernárdez, of course, but acceptable to the publisher. So, I know, almost forward and backward, all the Spanish-language authors, from Cervantes, Quevedo, and Lope de Vega up to the most noteworthy ones of the twenty-first century and still today I live practically immersed in my library following the path of those beautiful letters. Ava and I decided to come to live to Ajijic, about ten years ago, because during one of my visits to the Guadalajara Book Fair I had the opportunity to attend a book presentation of a novel that takes place here in Ajijic, and I was fascinated with the beauty of this place.”

“You’re a true scholar, sir. Have you been to La Renga?” Bob asked excitedly.

“Oh, I’ve definitely been there. Although it’s small, it’s very beautiful, and it has interesting books. The bookseller is an ambitious young man, I mean in a literary sense. In terms of my erudition, I’ll tell you that I am now retired. I don’t like to speak of erudition, but of knowledge, and that is only obtained through work. Throughout the years I’ve read the authors of the Latin American boom and I really enjoy reading books by Rulfo, Arreola, Yáñez, Azuela, Gutiérrez Vega, Alfredo R. Plascencia and many more. Right now, I’m working on an essay about more contemporary writers from Jalisco and I’m really enjoying it. I only work for myself, and fortunately I have all the time in the world to do that in this place that to me is ideal for working.”

After hearing what Niagara had just said, Sugar looked at Bob and remembered the incident at La Renga, but he didn’t say anything, preferring to wait for a more appropriate moment during the conversation. Niagara offered his guests the drinks and snacks he had brought from the kitchen, saying:

“The glasses are for the water, which is the chaser, please. Or would you also prefer a beer? Tequila shouldn’t be put in mixed drinks, that would be an affront to its makers.”

“Have one,” Sugar suggested to Bob.

Bob looked at the tray and the tequila shots, but ignoring Sugar’s invitation, he directed himself to Niagara saying:

“I don’t drink. I don’t drink anymore, I mean.”

Niagara and Sugar looked at each other. They didn’t say anything. Then Bob said:

“I’d appreciate a glass of water. Alcohol distracted me. Would sink me. I had to set it aside. I drank like a fish until one day I gave up. It wasn’t possible for me to continue like that. I confess that I enjoyed it, probably too much. I thought I became one with God in a glass of wine, but that only happened with the first one, because by the second one He would withdraw.”

“Has it been a long time since you stopped drinking?” asked Niagara, who had already helped himself and was savoring a sip from his shot of tequila.

“A few years,” Bob replied.

“Years!” exclaimed Sugar. Then, staring at Bob, he said:

“I’m sure I’ve seen you before, as I already told you in the garden.”

Niagara quietly took another sip of his tequila and said in a calm voice to Bob:

“Stay a while and talk, it will do you good, so you can let go of your grief, if that’s what you’d like, of course.”

It was evident that Sugar and Niagara had different personalities, their mutual understanding was not by chance. Niagara was more deliberate, no doubt the fruit of so many books read. Sugar was, without going overboard, much more sociable and outgoing. Niagara spoke as if he was reciting and Sugar as if he was singing. In any case, Bob remained seated, without moving, gazing into the horizon which hid the lake behind it. A warm breeze stirred Sugar’s beard and hair, and bringing the pipe to his mouth, he smoked. The smoke was painted white in the light of the chandeliers and contrasted with the darkness of the night. Bob couldn’t bring himself to speak, yet. Sugar and Niagara couldn’t explain why he had come to the meeting if he was not an expat and had not been invited. Suddenly, Sugar took the pipe from his mouth and brought his face close to Bob’s, who was illuminated by the light, and staring at him, said in a sonorous voice:

“We are not ashamed of a man’s tears, in fact, we are not ashamed of anyone’s tears.”

Bob nodded appreciatively, bowed his head, and smiled, but something was obviously still troubling him. He looked at Sugar, then Niagara. Then Sugar felt that the time had come, and cheerfully exclaimed:

“But of course, you’re the man from the bookstore! Did you buy the book that was on sale for a ridiculously high price?”

Sugar looked back and forth at Niagara and Bob, and said:

“I remember very well now, Bob. You were standing in the center of La Renga, not speaking, like a statue, next to the sculpture of that French soldier, and…”

Bob kindly raised his hand to interrupt Sugar and nodded.

“Yes. It was me.”

Then he said:

“For years now I’ve been very interested in the life of the Lakesiders of Ajijic. I attended some meetings as an observer, and I heard about you through some conversations with other expats. Everyone in town knows both of you and I came to realize that they respect you too. Everyone knows who Sugar and Niagara are.”

Sugar looked at Niagara and winked, smiling. Bob continued:

“Then I became even more interested, and I was looking for a way to meet you. I found out about today’s meeting and encouraged myself to come because I have some doubts about a trip I want to take, and honestly, I had no one to ask about it. When I saw you at La Renga,” he said, looking at Sugar, “I didn’t want to mention it to you at that time. I was hoping for a more auspicious occasion. Several times I saw the two of you in La Colmena talking over coffee. I was at the table by the window and observed you from there, but it seemed to me that it was neither the right place nor the right time to interrupt you.”

“And what is it that is going on with you?” Niagara asked.

“You can talk to us in full confidence,” Sugar added.

“I am at a crossroads and I have a lot of doubts. What was read and what was sung tonight confirmed to me that I need to carry out something I have been preparing for years. You could say that I found a bit of light tonight. Yes, I bought the copy of The Iliad and the Odyssey in La Renga, because it is a very important book to me, for everything that it represents. I have read The Odyssey hundreds of times, and I had to have that valuable copy as part of my library, like a treasure.”

Niagara was looking at him with raised eyebrows. Sugar was quiet and smoked his from pipe pleasantly, watching this man who had shown up out of the blue. Bob took a drink of water, and said:

“I don’t want to take any more of your time tonight. It’s late. If you’re amenable, I’d like to invite you to my home tomorrow. It’d be a pleasure to host you. I’ll tell more you there. I hope you understand that I have no one else to talk to or that I can trust, and I think you could help me.”

Bob gave them the address to his house and said goodbye to them, grateful.