Ramifications

by Daniel Saldaña París

  I felt a coldness in my legs and thought that it was due to the air conditioning, but when I looked down I realized that my pants were wet. The odor of urine was slight but unmistakable, and even though I was ashamed of that smell, I consoled myself with the thought that it was familiar and organic, unlike the chemical smell of solvent on the adolescent soldier’s breath.

  At my side, Mariconchi was staring straight ahead, apparently ignoring me, as if we’d never exchanged a single word. Or rather, as if she were sleeping with her eyes open—Mariana had told me about similar cases: sleepwalkers whose unblinking eyes were always wide open.

  A little later, I noticed a lightening of the horizon outside the window, and after a while the sun came up. By that time the urine on my pants had dried, although the tenuous smell persisted. The passengers were waking up as if nothing had happened, as if that nighttime halt in the middle of the highway had been, for them too, a vivid dream they would forget in the course of a few hours, as the sun warmed the world.

  5

  IF I HAD THE WILL TO LEAVE THIS BED, I’d like to take a taxi to the Taxqueña terminal and, once there, board the same bus bound for Villahermosa that I took twenty-three years ago. Perhaps in that way, through the ritual of repetition, the ramifications of that night—of that summer—would be obliterated. Perhaps then the dream about my father and the pigeon, the laugh of the teenage soldier, Mariconchi’s absorbed expression, the somber forebodings that welled up as I watched the sun rise that morning; perhaps all that would become a closed book, water under the bridge, a past history that no longer affects me. But I know that going to Taxqueña now and taking that same bus would be no use. It wouldn’t do any good. First I have to write the story through to the end, fill this spiral-bound notebook with my scribblings to the very last page, drop it by the bed, open the next notebook, and continue writing until that one, too, is full. Not because writing is an act of salvation, but because there’s no other way I can tell myself the things I don’t even dare think when I’m alone. Only when I’ve written it all down will I be able to look at myself in the mirror and not see the face of someone else, the other that stalks me from within.

  Josefina—the woman who, on Mariana’s instructions, cleans my apartment—turned up this morning, so I guess it must be Friday. I spoke with her for a long time, or rather, she spoke, and I listened from my bed. Her voice was drowned out from time to time by the noise of dishes being washed, but I was able to deduce from the context what I’d missed. She told me a sad, complicated story about feuds between neighbors and threats made by the local political boss.

  As she was leaving, Josefina told me that I should get in touch with Señora Mariana—as she calls my sister—more often. What had she seen or heard in my sister’s home to cause her to offer me that advice? Was Mariana all right? Had she broken up with her partner after four years of conjugal bliss? Was it, in fact, my life, what happens in this apartment, that led her to believe that I need to talk to someone?

  Whatever the case, I decide to contact Mariana. I don’t call her on the phone, that would be going too far; instead I send a message: “Remember when I kicked a pigeon in the square?” Her reply takes several hours, and arrives as night is falling: “Ha ha. You cried for three days.”

  Despite the apparent coolness of its content, her message calms me for a while. I like the way Mariana is never condescending toward me, even though she knows that I’m in a fragile, disturbed state of mind, even though she’s aware that I seldom leave my bed. Criticizing me, laughing at my way of dramatizing events, is her way of showing affection. I’ve been at peace with that fact for many years.

  When Mariana left home at the age of eighteen it seemed to me an unpardonable betrayal. My father took advantage of the situation to convert my sister’s bedroom into a utility room, in which he stored a broken television set and an exercise bike he only ever used three times. That dusty room seemed to represent everything that separated my father from his daughter.

  Without the grease of everyday life together, my relationship with Mariana also began to show signs of rust. Later, she cut herself off from my father completely for several years due to an argument, the details of which no one ever explained to me. At that time I was contending with the normal adolescent conflicts—intensified by my mania for trying to resemble my dead mother—and didn’t have the maturity to restore the fraternal relations Mariana had unilaterally broken off.

  Only my father’s unexpected diagnosis of cancer, two years ago, brought us together again. Our first meetings, in the hospital cafeteria, were a little awkward. Initially, Mariana and I opted for a sort of unnatural formality; like former workmates, we caught up on the basics of our lives without going into details or alluding to feelings. My father’s illness was, naturally, the theme we most frequently returned to. We commented on his prognosis, the treatments the doctors proposed without convincing either him or us of their efficacy, the general conditions in the hospital. Then we’d sit in uncomfortable silence, sipping stewed coffee from our polystyrene cups.

  Gradually both Mariana and I relaxed, perhaps worn down by the weariness my father’s cancer induced in us. A sort of mutual understanding was restored between us. She began to tease me again, like when we were kids, and on several occasions I fruitlessly attempted to get her to talk about Teresa and the summer of ’94. “Forget it, little bro. That was a long time ago, none of it matters now.” But however much Mariana refused to acknowledge the weight of the past in her life, it was obvious that Teresa’s premature death had affected her as much as it had me, although in different—maybe even opposite—ways. What in Mariana became rage, inspiration, a motor that gave her life direction and force, had hollowed me out, like a subterranean river eroding my essentially feeble adult normality.

  After leaving the house in Educación, Mariana graduated from college with top grades and started out on a successful career as a government policy consultant. I didn’t tell her at that time, and still haven’t—it would be a weird thing to include in a text message—but it’s always been clear to me that something of Teresa’s undaunted critical spirit, her way of taking things seriously, lives on in Mariana.

  For my part, I find it more difficult to identify what I inherited from Teresa. Despite all my efforts to be like her, my social conscience has never developed to the level of making me feel passionate about the things that mattered deeply to her—and now matter deeply to Mariana. I even have the impression that, with time, my features have become increasingly less like my mother’s. And, as I’ve already said, my voice has never—in its natural state—had that same neutral tone.

  For a time I convinced myself that I’d inherited Teresa’s analytical ability, her way of questioning and distrusting everything. I now realize that I was never sufficiently distrustful.

  On the other hand, I have my father’s eyebrows and chin, his explosive temper, and, it seems, a pathetic unwillingness to move from my bed, even for the end of the world.

  In material terms, I inherited everything from him, including the money I used to buy this apartment and these spiral-bound notebooks in which I write. When I was emptying the house in Educación I found scarcely anything that might have belonged to Teresa beyond a few photos, some books on political theory, and two letters: the one she left on my father’s night table when she went away and another, which she mailed to him from Chiapas shortly before her death.

  6

  THE SUN WAS WELL UP IN THE SKY when the driver made a stop and explained that we had fifteen minutes to purchase provisions and use the restrooms. The fact that we took this break made me think that it was still a long way to Villahermosa, but, guessing my concern or reading it in my face, Mariconchi assured me that we were nearly there, with at most two hours to go.

  My spirits had flagged after the episode at the military checkpoint—I still wasn’t completely sure it had actually happened. In the light of day, I was convinced that my journey made no sense. I’d never find Te
resa. First, because I didn’t know where she was; my plan to search for the man with the pipe and balaclava until I discovered her too—there, in the warzone of the Chiapas jungle—began to seem embarrassingly naive. I was hungry, I wanted to change my clothes and leave behind the smell of piss.

  Mariconchi asked me if I had enough to buy something for breakfast, and I extracted from my pocket what little remained of the money Rat had given me. “You hold on to that, sweetie. This is on me. After all, we’re old friends now,” she said, and it gave me a tremendous sense of peace to corroborate that my perception of time was shared: we’d just passed through the longest night in history. Even the military checkpoint (the chemical smell on the soldier’s breath, the echo of his laugh) felt like a distant memory, like something that had happened during the previous school year—an old story everyone already knew and no longer mentioned.

  While Mariconchi was standing in line to buy food, I went to the restroom and locked myself in one of the stalls. The toilet was blocked and there was shit-stained paper on the floor. Being very careful not to touch anything, I took off my pants and then my briefs. The moment I threw the briefs into a corner of the stall, I remembered that they had a name tag: a name tag Teresa had sewn onto the inside of the waistband. I considered retrieving them, taking them with me. It would be a mistake to leave a clue to my identity in that stall. As my life appeared to have become a Choose Your Own Adventure book, it was time I started thinking like one of the heroes of those stories.

  On the other hand, the briefs were revolting, and I was ashamed of them. The urine had dried, marking out strange continents on the white fabric. A compromise solution occurred to me: I picked up the briefs, pulled off the name tag, and put it in my pocket. Then I threw them back down among the filth. I left the stall and washed my hands with the satisfaction of knowing that I’d acted wisely. I’d covered my tracks. No one would be able to trace me. True, my pants were still a little stiff and smelled of dry piss, but I felt freer. I had neither briefs bearing my full name nor a definite destination. I had no home, no family, no friends. The distinction between vacations and school had lost its meaning. I could have started afresh at that point, changed my identity and persuaded Mariconchi to adopt me: her hugs were warm and she used terms of affection that would have been impossible to imagine on Teresa’s lips. I could have invented a new life for myself, made to the measure of my desires and frustrations. A life in Villahermosa, Tabasco State, in the humidity and tropical sunlight.

  If I’d been able to choose a name for my new self, I wouldn’t have had to give it a second thought: Úlrich González. That was the name of a boy who had turned up in Paideia in the middle of the academic year only to then disappear, just as unexpectedly, two weeks later. Úlrich was pale and sickly. The rumor was that his parents traveled a lot. No one at school had managed to become either a friend or rival of Úlrich González, and everyone seemed to forget his existence the moment he stopped coming to class, but his name remained on the register for several months, and some absentminded teachers would read it out as if he were still one of us. That repetition had caused the mysterious appellation to be etched deeply in my memory, and I even sometimes repeated it to myself quietly as a sort of invocation: “Úlrich González, Úlrich González.”

  If I took on that new identity, if I became Úlrich González of Villahermosa, I’d do things differently. To start with, I’d try to play soccer properly, take more interest in sports, be one of the group of students everyone wanted to be friends with, the celebrities of my school. In the afternoons, I’d return home smiling and excited, bursting with stories to tell my adoptive mother, Mariconchi. Úlrich González would be the most popular boy in Villahermosa, perhaps even in the whole of Tabasco State. I’d finally have a girlfriend, and it would be to her alone, in a moment of blind passion following our first kiss, that I would reveal the truth about my past: that I wasn’t Úlrich, that I’d assumed that name at the age of ten in the shit-strewn restroom of a service station, after running away from my home in Colonia Educación, Mexico City, on a secret mission to rescue my mother, who was trapped in a cruel, bloody war that she had joined from pure, unadulterated heroism. My girlfriend would gaze at me incredulously for a few seconds, but then she’d put her arms around my neck and say that she’d always known, or suspected it; said that beneath the personality of the likeable, sporty Úlrich González of Villahermosa lay a dark, indecipherable secret that had captivated her from the instant we’d met.

  Mariconchi’s voice broke into my daydreams: “Here you are. I don’t know if you like spicy food, but I bought you a tamal with green chili sauce.” I didn’t in those days eat spicy food, couldn’t stand it, and disliked the color green. At mealtimes, Teresa always used to say that adding sauce to food was a bad habit as it masked the taste of everything else. It was, fundamentally, another of the ways she drew a line between herself and my father, who used to smother any dish from eggs to rice in industrial quantities of habanero chili sauce. I, of course, used that disagreement to take Teresa’s side, the side I always took. But maybe Úlrich González could stand or even positively liked spicy food, and that was a good moment to start to behave the way Úlrich would. “Thanks,” I said, and tried to grasp Mariconchi’s hand, but she drew it away as if she was beginning to weary of taking responsibility for me, or was frightened by that unexpected familiarity.

  Her snub didn’t really bother me. Quite the reverse: the fact that my traveling companion was displaying a degree of hostility made her much more interesting. Suddenly Mariconchi had ceased to be the soft-hearted, chatty mother who goes around calling everyone “sweetie” and had become a woman of moods and nuances, a brave woman—like my mother, like Mariana—who had challenged the irrational violence of the adolescent soldier in order to care for a strange child, some unknown Úlrich.

  We boarded the bus again and took our seats. The shawl Mariconchi had lent me at the checkpoint lay screwed up in a ball on my seat, like a reminder that everything that had occurred at the checkpoint had been real, not a nightmare.

  We ate our tamales in silence, picking away at them with plastic forks and scattering crumbs around us. I found it almost impossible to eat the chili. It felt as if my tongue were being scalded, but in some way that self-inflicted pain seemed purifying, redemptive, soothing. My nose was streaming and I began to hyperventilate. Mariconchi seemed to be aware of my distress but said nothing. I noticed that she was even making a conscious effort not to look at me, to stare across the aisle at the obese couple on the other side who had bought enormous quantities of snacks, cookies, and sodas.

  The bus advanced more rapidly, as if the sun and the imminence of our arrival had raised its spirits. The reality of my situation began to hem me in on all sides: it wasn’t now viable to change my identity: Mariconchi wouldn’t accept me into her life as Úlrich González, and I would never have a good, empathetic girlfriend in Villahermosa, Tabasco State.

  And I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to continue my journey to Chiapas. The episode with the soldiers had changed everything. The adult world was more brutal and terrifying than I’d supposed in Taxqueña, before embarking on the most perilous adventure of my short life. If I continued to Chiapas, new checkpoints would await me, new humiliations. I was unready for any of that. Deceived by a rather portable conception of Mexican geography, I’d undertaken that journey without the necessary preparations. I hadn’t even brought my backpack. I hadn’t even brought my Choose Your Own Adventure book or my water bottle.

  “Your mom’s not going to be there to meet you in Chiapas, is she?” asked Mariconchi out of the blue when she’d finished her tamal. It was a rhetorical question: she knew I’d lied to her. Mothers know these things. I shook my head in shame. “Have you run away from home?” she asked in the same wary tone. I said I had. I tried to explain that my mom was in fact in Chiapas, but Mariconchi gestured me to be silent. She stared again at the obese couple on the other side of the aisle, weighing up her
options. Finally she came to a conclusion: “When we get to Villahermosa we’re going to talk to your mommy and daddy, sweetie. Let’s see if they can come to collect you.”

  I imagined the scolding my father would give me: he’d look grave, attempt to reason with me, speak very slowly and clearly, explain the risks I’d run in going off like that. But the longer he spoke, the more fired up he’d get; he always did. From explaining, he’d quickly progress to shouting. The patient, carefully thought-out language would warp into an explosion of uncontrolled emotion. I knew his tones of voice well, the registers of his language. They were mine too: I was also incapable of having a sensible discussion (as Teresa had been able to, as Mariana still can). I couldn’t at that time—and still can’t—tolerate someone thinking differently to me or doing something that annoys me. I’d get steamed up, lose my grip. So my father’s shouting didn’t alarm me: it was my shouting, and it was also my unstable, explosive irrationality.

  If Teresa had been at home, I’d have been much more scared of the payback. She’d have taken her time, carefully chosen the words that would most profoundly shake me: “I’m disappointed in you,” or “I’m very sad to see that you can’t be left alone, even for a moment.” Devastating words that always went straight to the mark, that would wash away my fragile construction of pretexts like a wave that reduces the most complex sandcastles to nothing. Would I ever achieve that level of precision in my own use of words, that ninja state of language Teresa used to brandish before us, her children, like a light, finely honed sword?