Ramifications

by Daniel Saldaña París

  It was a short letter, two sides of a piece of writing paper. The final paragraph was about us (Mariana and I). She asked my father, if he had an ounce of shame left in him, not to tell us lies about her. She couldn’t ask him to explain her decision to us because she knew he wouldn’t understand it himself, but she begged him not to set us against her. She promised to call from time to time and didn’t rule out visiting us at some point, when her underground existence allowed.

  It was very strange to read the same letter I’d furtively held in my hands for a moment twenty-one years before. Would I have understood anything if I’d read it all the way through then? Would I—as did in fact happen—have set out on a bus to follow Teresa through the southeast of Mexico if I’d known its content?

  Those lines revealed something about my father I found painful to consider at that moment, when his body had only recently been interred. I’d always been aware that the relationship between him and Teresa was tense, and only very rarely fantasized about the possibility of them being really in love, but the letter showed a much higher level of tension, a sense of asphyxiation in Teresa that I’d never, at the age of ten, been able to read in her neutral voice and undemonstrative manner.

  In the same red folder, underneath that letter, were—in the washed-out hues of early eighties photography—four color photographs. In the first, Teresa was standing beside a child of no more than three, who must have been Mariana. She was holding up a placard with the words “Free Nicaragua” and underneath, in a smaller font, “S.I.N.C. Active Resistance.” In the photo, Teresa was smiling candidly at the camera; she was wearing jeans, an embroidered white blouse and had her hair tied in a ponytail. My sister was dressed in a tiny pair of red dungarees, her hair was in pigtails, and she wore an expression of extreme confusion. She was looking at Teresa rather than the camera. Behind them it was possible to make out the United States embassy on Paseo de la Reforma, and other demonstrators were advancing into frame on the right of the shot.

  The second photograph was earlier than the first. It was smaller and the corners were rounded. In it, my father and Teresa stood with their arms around each other on a beach. My father’s trunks were like a cropped, tight-fitting pair of boxers; he looked incredibly thin and had a ridiculous mustache. My mother’s swimsuit hugged a six-months-pregnant belly. They were both smiling.

  The third photograph was a family portrait, taken after my birth. Standing rather stiffly in front of the metal gate of the house in Educación, Teresa and my father were looking fixedly at the camera. At their feet was Mariana, wearing a flowered dress, and, almost wriggling from their arms, was a baby in floods of tears—me. I laughed a little on seeing that third image and decided to save it to give to Mariana, convinced that it would amuse her too.

  The last photograph was a professional portrait of Teresa. The colors were more vivid than in the others, and it was a larger format. Standing alone, looking very serious, her face framed by those long bangs that were fashionable in the nineties, Teresa was looking at the camera with an aloof expression that communicated her disdain for the photographer, for the whole situation. The backdrop was of a blue fade that clashed with the red of her lipstick. Viewing that image, I thought that Teresa’s makeup seemed overdone, as if she were disguising herself, as if that excess were a critique or parody. Her rigid, almost depressing seriousness reinforced that hypothesis and was slightly reminiscent of the expression in Buster Keaton’s sad, wide-set eyes.

  I put the photos to one side and continued to work through the folder. There were two electricity bills that seemed out of place there and, between them, an open envelope with postage stamps. I once again recognized Teresa’s handwriting. The letter was addressed to my father and the return address was San Cristóbal de las Casas. From the date stamp I knew that my father must have read that letter, the second, shortly before Teresa’s death.

  Less passionate in tone than the first, the second letter was, by contrast, more informative. I guess that once she’d escaped, Teresa no longer felt the urgent need to justify herself ideologically, although her resolve was unshaken, perhaps even stronger than before. Without going into detail, she reproached my father for having made her abandon her interests, for having coaxed and wheedled her only then to reveal his true nature—a lack of moral principles, reactionary violence, rampant mediocrity. “Your money disgusts me,” she said, “and because of you, I disgust myself.”

  After the paragraph of reproaches, Teresa went on to practical matters and the solid future she’d invented for herself. The future she’d perhaps spent years constructing or, on the other hand, had conceived in a moment of inspiration, crouched and vigilant in the Lacandon jungle.

  She said that she’d moved to San Cristóbal de las Casas after attending the National Democratic Convention. Her plan was to get a job there and, at some point, bring Mariana to live with her. She promised to call us as soon as the telephone line was connected. She asked about my return to school, as if my father would reply to her letter—a letter that allowed for no possible answer, a letter that said everything there was to say between them. She sent me kisses.

  I reread the letter a couple of times to make certain that I hadn’t missed anything. I imagined my father rereading it, seething with rage, crumpling it in a moment of supreme frustration and then, early the following morning, repenting that action and smoothing it out again. Was that how it had been? Maybe not. Maybe my father had read it two or three times, put it in that red folder and forgotten about it. A few days afterward, Teresa had died and he hadn’t given another thought to that letter; perhaps it had been easier, I thought, not to: easier to believe that his wife had died loving him unconditionally, promising to come home soon.

  Setting aside what it meant for my father—and what it said about his ability to conceal the truth for years—the letter contained one eloquent and painful omission: Teresa had written that she would “bring Mariana” to live with her, and just that.

  True, she did ask after me and sent me kisses, but there was no mention of bringing me to Chiapas.

  What had Teresa seen in me that made her decide I wasn’t worthy of that destiny? Did she think that I was too like my father, a violent man, without redeeming features, condemned to live in error, in mediocrity, in Educación?

  I folded the letter along the existing crease and, as I did so, inevitably thought of the origami frog with the cryptic message (“the left side”) I’d found in my bedroom. Folding folds, repeating the folds that others had made before me, seemed to be my fate. Teresa had folded that letter in September 1994. She’d put it in an envelope and walked to the post office in San Cristóbal de las Casas. Then, perhaps, she’d returned to the damp apartment with a metal door she’d rented in Santa Lucia or Barrio de Mexicanos, or wherever she’d decided to start her new life.

  What had my mother done for the rest of that day? It’s reasonable to suppose that she already had some friends: Zapatista sympathizers she’d met at the National Democratic Convention, indigenous women who had come from other parts of Mexico to learn from the rebels, local journalists who were accustomed to violence and death, and who both expected and feared betrayal by the government.

  Sitting at my father’s desk, the red folder open before me, I again felt like a detective, like the small, ten-year-old detective I’d wanted to be that summer. The same detective who had boarded a bus to nowhere, following a slender clue.

  There were still a few documents in the folder that I hadn’t looked at. One was my parents’ marriage certificate, issued by Civil Register No. 49, Coyoacán, on April 4, 1978. Teresa’s sprawling signature, my father’s cramped, unclear signature, my grandparents’ names. I put the dog-eared sheet of paper on top of a pile of important documents, next to the two letters.

  The last document in the folder was Teresa’s death certificate. I glanced over it distractedly, not intending to devote much time to it. I’d expected to find it in the desk. Just a little longer and I’d have
completed my task: finished with that house, that story, that past. Rat and the refuse collector would, between them, remove the odds and ends left scattered about. I’d return to my shared apartment during the time it took Garmendia to sell the house and hand over my share of the inheritance. Now that I was unemployed, I’d have time to look for somewhere else to live. I’d choose one of the urban antipodes to Educación: an apartment in an interesting neighborhood with bookstores, and cafés that weren’t El Jarocho. I’d look for a new job, or perhaps do a master’s degree in something, now that I could afford to. And I didn’t rule out the possibility of changing professions, or even moving to another city. I’d be able to travel abroad. All I had to do was fold that sheet of paper and it would be all over. The wide gash in the summer of ’94 would close, would begin to heal.

  I glanced down at the death certificate. The deceased’s details. Name. Sex. The handwriting of the official who had filled in the form, his spelling mistakes. Spouse. Location: San Cristóbal de las Casas. Date of death: September 25, 1994. Not September 23. That’s to say, the day after my father had flown to Chiapas. The day after, not the day before. Cause of death: Asphyxia due to inhalation of propane gas.

  9

  IT WAS A SLOW PROCESS. At first I behaved as if nothing had happened. After all, it could have been an error, there were a thousand explanations. I finished clearing out my father’s house. I hired a van to transport the double bed and a few other things to my apartment. I called Garmendia and, two days later, gave him the keys to the house in Educación—all three extant sets.

  One weekend I took a cab to my sister’s, bringing with me the photographs I wanted to give her. Katia, her wife, laughed at the shots, but Mariana wasn’t really amused. I also attempted to give her half the sum Rat had paid for the furniture, but she insisted I keep it: I’d need it more than she did now that I’d packed in my job.

  In a matter of weeks, the house was sold: apparently Educación has become a trendy area, with most of the residents working in the business and retail zones of Coapa.

  Throughout the following five months, I got on with my life as if nothing had happened. It could even be said that things improved, at least on the surface. I bought this apartment and moved in. Not having to pay rent was a great weight off my mind: I became a more cheerful person. I found a job in a company that produced educational diagnostic tests that was more lucrative than the Spanish classes. Each weekday morning, I put on a shirt I’d sent to be dry-cleaned and took the Metrobus to the modern building where I worked. I’d spend the day revising the grammar of questions for examinations in such diverse fields as mechatronic engineering and international law. The benefits were very good for such a simple task. I had paid vacation, health insurance, and a performance-related bonus if I checked more exam questions than my colleagues, which wasn’t difficult because most people did very little work.

  Mariana and I sometimes talked on the phone, and during the week we’d send text messages about trivia or to communicate the highlights of our daily lives.

  During those months I also met a really nice woman, and we started dating. The fact that we worked near each other made it easier for us to meet. We went to the movie theater in the shopping mall or ate salads together at lunchtime. She was kind and seemed genuinely interested in me, an attitude I found—and still find—incomprehensible. She had a tinkling laugh, wide hips, and her left eye was slightly narrower than her right.

  But I wasn’t made for that life. It was as though I’d woken in someone else’s body and was temporarily acting as a stand-in for that person.

  I never mentioned the red folder to Mariana. I didn’t tell her about the second letter or Teresa’s plan to bring her to Chiapas to live with her. And of course, I didn’t mention the death certificate, didn’t mention the fissures that had opened up in the story my father had told us for years—the story we’d believed to be true, and from which our adult lives had ramified, like the veins from the midribs of my childhood leaves.

  I kept the letter and the certificate in my own folder of important documents, which is green rather than red. A folder that I now keep under this bed, along with the elementary school notebooks and my passport.

  I don’t now remember what I was thinking about during those months. Nothing, I guess. I concentrated on functioning, on imagining a perfect future. My dry-cleaned shirts smelled the same as my father’s used to, but I pretended not to notice.

  One Sunday afternoon I took out the folder and contemplated it for a while. I extracted the contents and scattered the papers on top of my unmade bed. I didn’t have the courage to read Teresa’s letters again. The death certificate was folded in half, and I couldn’t bring myself to open that either. I put everything back and returned the folder to its place under the bed.

  That Sunday night I was unable to sleep. I wanted to force myself to cry, the way you make yourself vomit by sticking your fingers down your throat. I wanted my father to be alive so I could ask him what the hell had gone on in San Cristóbal de las Casas, in that small apartment where Teresa had chosen to remake her life. Ask him just exactly what had happened between September 23 and 25, 1994, while Mariana and I watched TV, while I vomited, had diarrhea, and drank cup after cup of chamomile tea, devastated by the news of Teresa’s death.

  But no one could respond to those questions then—no one can now. It’s possible that the answer to them all has been forming in my subconscious during the past two years.

  Maybe my father wanted me to find the answer alone, wanted the horror of that answer to grow inside me at its own pace, like a carnivorous plant that initially looks like clover and gradually reveals its true nature.

  The following day I didn’t go to the educational diagnostic test company. I was tired and upset, lacked the energy to continue pretending that everything was fine. The woman I was dating sent me four text messages, but I didn’t reply to any of them. I convinced myself that I was ill, despite having no other symptom than a slight headache, probably due to a bad night’s sleep.

  On Tuesday, I returned to the office wearing my freshly laundered shirt. I found the Metrobus journey very difficult, but thought that once I got to work everything would be fine, that it was just a brief crisis. I told my boss that I was feeling better and said the usual good mornings to my colleagues. It occurred to me that I could perhaps make use of my untouched health insurance to consult a psychiatrist, a professional who would explain that what was happening to me was normal, a sort of delayed-action grief. I’d be prescribed something to help me sleep and that would be that.

  But at one in the afternoon, just before the lunch break, I went to the restroom, shut the door, and stayed there for several minutes, feeling that I was about to scream or punch someone in the face. I left a message for my boss with his secretary and took a cab home. I never went back to that job. The people from human resources wrote repeatedly, asking what I wanted done with the things I’d left in my cubicle, but I never replied. I guess they must have thrown them out.

  At first I used to go for short walks around the neighborhood, but as the days passed I spent increasing amounts of time in the apartment. I stopped taking showers, put on four or five pounds, began to order delivery meals—Hawaiian pizza. On Fridays, when Josefina came, I’d pretend to be working at the kitchen table so she wouldn’t ask too many questions. But apart from those few hours, I was almost always in bed. Lying on the left side: Teresa’s side.

  After a couple of weeks, the woman I’d been dating began to show signs of annoyance. I told her I was ill, but when she offered to come by to see me, I stopped answering her messages. She continued calling but I didn’t pick up. My ring tone was the chirping of crickets, so it didn’t bother me.

  One Saturday night she sent me a text saying that she was downstairs, at the entrance to the building. I let her in for fear she’d try to locate the caretaker or call the police. She was clearly concerned.

  We had an awkward conversation, with her sitti
ng on the edge of my bed, and me with the blankets pulled up to my chin. She asked if I still wanted to go on seeing her, I said I didn’t, but I spoke the words very quietly and don’t think she caught them; she asked me what I’d said. I didn’t have the guts to repeat myself: I told her that I was going through a rough patch, but would be better soon and would get in touch then. Her tone was cold when she said good-bye (I don’t blame her: I’d behaved like an asshole).

  With Mariana, I managed to keep up the charade for longer. I used to answer her texts almost immediately; told her that I was happy with my new job and new girlfriend. In any case, she was always busy and rarely asked questions. But Josefina, who cleans Mariana’s apartment on Tuesdays, told her that I was always at home, in pajamas, doing nothing. When my sister phoned to ask me about this, I invented a story, said that my hours had been cut and that I now had Fridays free, but something in her voice gave me the impression that she didn’t believe me. A few days afterward, I told her I’d been fired. She asked if I was looking for work and my reply was, “not for the time being,” putting an end to the issue.

  For the most part of the last two years, my life has been confined to this bed. I sometimes sit up, resting my back against the wall, and look through the window at the only view: the office building across the street.

  In the beginning I used to think about Teresa a lot: I was trying to recall as clearly as possible the unvarying tone of her voice, the color of her hair, the way she smoked, leaning against the wall of the house in Educación. But the truth is that I only lived with Teresa during the first ten years of my life, so I don’t have many memories of her. I’ve set down here the three or four that are clearest (Teresa fainting on the edge of the market, Teresa walking behind me as I chased pigeons, Teresa arguing with my father, Teresa going camping one Tuesday at midday) in order to fix them in some way, to see if my memory finally stops distorting them, and the replica of the replica of the replica halts its slow but certain decay.