The Good Conscience

by Carlos Fuentes

  Every morning of the three weeks of life that remained to Rodolfo, Jaime would enter the bedroom to get fresh clothes. The conversation between his father and his aunt that he had overheard pleased him. But when he came into his father’s dying presence, he did not know what to say or how to draw near him. Day’s first pale light bathed the sick man’s drawn skull. He was ugly, a wretched and ugly old man with a gaping smile and gummed eyelids. His uncombed hair fell over his ears. Jaime pulled open a drawer to choose a shirt, and tried to choose a word for his father too. But then he lifted his face and saw himself in the mirror, young, healthy, with clean-cut features and blond fuzz above his lips. He never found a word. Nor did his father speak to him. They waited.

  A few days before he died, Rodolfo gathered all his strength and stretched his arms and took his son’s hand. Jaime sat beside him and felt repelled by the stench of sickness and the dirty green-striped pajamas. Rodolfo’s flabby neck, his gray beard and his shoulders trembled with a strange desire. His still-living cadaver wanted to speak to Jaime, and he tried to pull the boy’s head near his lips. But the gray tongue moved without words. Jaime’s eyes dropped. He thought of the Bible verse about a house divided against itself. He and his father were forever separated from each other now. Jaime was youth, life. Rodolfo was death. Neither wanted to know his opposite. Jaime did not hear the words that finally struggled from his father’s bubbling throat: “We don’t live long … We die a long, long time.” The doctor knocked. Jaime welcomed the interruption, and stood up. But he returned to the bed, obeying a clear impulse, and squeezed his father’s hand.

  Asunción woke at four. The crowing of cocks accompanied her weeping. It was a blue dawn, and in its light Rodolfo’s stiff face was like metal. His hands held a crucifix. Jaime stood in the door and thought: he has died in the room of my youth, on the bed of my seventeen years. He tried to suffocate the sob that escaped through his nose and mouth. Now his father—those blue hands, that white sheet—had no name.

  Uncle Balcárcel remained standing with his hand nailed to his vest. He had assumed his most somber face. Asunción was on her knees weeping. Father Obregón rose from the head of the bed and said in a low voice: “We always come too late.” As he passed Jaime, he looked at him with severity. “Come to see me day after tomorrow.”

  “Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine,” Asunción was murmuring.

  Balcárcel stepped out into the hall and arched his eyebrows: “Late or soon, it comes to all of us.”

  Now his father, Jaime was thinking, had no name; a last gesture of love was impossible, the word he had begged of him every day during these weeks. He felt like going to the body and kissing the forehead. But the feeling that he would be acting a lie held him back. He stood in the door and wished that he could speak to the shrunken figure on the bed, and ask forgiveness for his pride and youth.

  “Decidedly, he was a good man,” pronounced Balcárcel. “Badly disciplined, yes. But a good man.”

  “… et lux perpetua luceat eis…”

  The man from the funeral parlor arrived at six in the morning.

  “A hopeless case: cancer of the stomach,” said the doctor. Then he asked all of them to leave the bedroom.

  Chapter 9

  SPADES FULL OF EARTH began to fall on the coffin. Bitter happiness flooded Jaime’s chest and he felt a sense of liberation he could not understand. It had rained for several days and the coffin seemed to float in the clayey depth like a caravel ready to set sail as soon as the mourners departed.

  “Please deport yourself well,” Asunción had said to the boy. “This is the first time you have had to attend the funeral of a member of the family. Put on one of your uncle’s black ties, and stand in line beside us.”

  There he stood now, giving his hand to Don Chema Naranjo, to Doña Presentatión Obregón and to Señorita Pascualina, to decrepit Uncle J. Guadalupe Montañez, to powerful Señor Maximino Mateos, to the Daughters of Mary, to Father Lanzagorta. Their compunctious faces and their squeezed fists and their words of consolation were all the same. Jaime moved his head restlessly. None of these people had ever taken the hand of Rodolfo Ceballos during his life. The fat merchant had been, at most, a reason for some forgotten gossip. No one had taken his hand, the boy reflected as he received the last abrazo of condolence, and he, his son, least of all.

  “May I stay here alone for a few minutes?” he asked his aunt and uncle when the file of mourners reached the exit to the cemetery. Balcárcel shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t be long,” whispered Asunción. “Your uncle has an important business meeting tonight and won’t be home. Please have dinner with me.”

  Jaime walked along the cypress-lined footpath, hurrying his steps, intentionally shouldering the lowest branches. Dampness speckled his face.

  One figure remained beside the grave where Rodolfo Ceballos lay. It was Juan Manuel Lorenzo, strange in his blue suit. The two friends shook hands.

  “I waited until the others left, Ceballos.”

  “Thank you, Lorenzo.”

  “I came to see you while you were sick. Did they give you my messages?”

  “No.”

  They walked back. Each knew that the other would not break the silence. From the distant hills, a leaden sky was rushing swiftly over Guanajuato. In the twilight the city’s vapors said farewell once again to day. Carpenter’s varnish pots, fumes from blacksmiths’ shops, the faint smokes of slum chimneys. Church bells were clanging, the bells of mules tinkled counterpoint. Under silver clouds, the colonial domes, blue walls of winding streets, white villages that clung to the sides of the steep valleys.

  “I waited for you … the day after we were at Irapuato … so we could go and work together,” said Juan Manuel as they started down the abrupt slope.

  Jaime loosened his black tie and unbuttoned his collar. “You know something? That woman they called Fina…”

  “She’s your mother, Ceballos.”

  Jaime kicked a bottle-cap. “How did you know?”

  “I’ve known a long time. She always said so … and she always comes to that bar.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Wasn’t it better for you to learn yourself? Why didn’t you tell her who you are, Jaime?”

  “Is that what you would have done?”

  “Yes. I wouldn’t have felt ashamed.”

  “I wasn’t ashamed!”

  “Yes, you too … you felt ashamed of her, just like your father and your aunt and uncle.”

  “Juan Manuel. Juan Manuel.”

  They stopped. The damp field gathered with full hands all the deepest scents of the earth. For the first time the young friends had called each other by their first names.

  * * *

  Asunción waited for Jaime until nine. Dinner grew cold on the velvet tablecloth. Her solitary and motionless figure at the head of the table was like one of the high-backed chairs. There were twelve chairs: Don Pepe Ceballos had had a large family and frequent guests. Family of eight in the epoch of the founder Don Higinio. Ten during Pepe’s regency: Guillermina, the two children, the brother Pánfilo, the penniless Lemus relations, the Andalusian grandmother Doña Margarita, and Asunción’s fiancé. And now she was there alone, without her husband, without Jaime.

  At nine she asked for a cup of warm chocolate. Afterward she wrapped herself in her woolen shawl and slowly walked the length of the drawing room, stopping to look through the curtains of each balcony. A fine mist had begun to fall like cobweb threads. She straightened the portrait of Governor Muñoz Ledo. She descended to the patio and climbed the spiral iron stairs to the room that still smelled of her brother. One by one she took down the pictures of the family he had collected during his last months.

  She left the room and locked the door. She thought of the house in its best times, when there were ten servants, when every room had been occupied and the stable full of horses and carriages.

  With the pictures in her arms she went down and walked to the front cor
ridor. Not for a long time had she visited the stable. She laid the pictures on top of a trunk. Her heel ground the wings of a dry butterfly. She looked down: her butterfly collection. She had made it when she was thirteen. It had been her passion, she had even carried the glass-topped cases with her on vacation trips. She squatted and picked up the crushed wings. Bright blue and black still glistened through accumulated dust. She caressed the wings tenderly.

  And now, as she remembered her adolescent hobby, it came to her for the first time that the future offered her nothing.

  When she left the stable, she locked it too.

  * * *

  Rain made their coats shine. The drizzle had begun about seven but they didn’t mind it, they were used to walking bareheaded under that eternal fine mist. Now they blew away the spume of their fifth beer, and laughed. They had never before drunk so much; the alcohol did not seem to affect Juan Manuel, but Jaime was waving his arms and passing his hand over his damp uncombed hair. He had heard that when you are drunk, everything reels. His sensation was that the walls and the objects hung upon them had separated and were throwing themselves at his head.

  “… and all the time there was that baboon Mateos trying to scare the girls with his dirty tricks,” said Jaime, palming his friend’s shoulders. “Have you ever confessed?”

  Juan Manuel shook his head.

  “You do right. Or maybe you do wrong. But that buzzard Father Lanzagorta, the things he told me … the things he told me! Say, Manuel! Have you ever been to bed with a woman?”

  Again Juan Manuel shook his head.

  “Well, let’s do it! You got money? I don’t either.”

  Jaime took off his wristwatch.

  “How much will you give me?” he asked the man behind the bar.

  “To pay what you owe?”

  “No, we have enough for that, sure we have enough.”

  “That’s different. A hundred pesos.”

  “It’s worth five hundred.”

  “No.”

  “A hundred and what we owe.”

  “Good.”

  “Take it. Where can we find some women? The best place…”

  “There’s a good house very near here.”

  “Let’s go.”

  “Tell them I sent you.”

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  Again they were walking through the drizzle. Jaime felt good; he even tried to sing. He embraced Juan Manuel, he clung to his friend’s unswaying body.

  “Happy, that’s how I feel!”

  “You’re…”

  “… subí a la palma, palmero…”

  “You’re glad to be alive.”

  Jaime laughed. “You see everything, don’t you? All the way to the bottom of my soul!”

  The bordel door was not opened quickly.

  “All the girls are busy right now. If you will step into the living room and have a drink…”

  A juke-box was blaring a rhumba and the hall was in shadow. From the living room came a great racket of partying, The small bedrooms opened on the hall, which was lined with flower-pots. Out of one of the doors stepped a short brown-skinned girl with a mole on her forehead. She fastened her blouse. She saw Jaime and took his arm.

  “Why go any farther?”

  “Sure, this is far enough.”

  “A hundred pesos.”

  “I can only give you fifty, señorita. I have to pay for my friend too.”

  “All right.”

  Then the beer went away and Jaime realized that he was afraid. He was trembling uncontrollably. He breathed on his hands. All he could say was: “How cold it is!”

  She asked him if this would be the first time, and he admitted it.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Ro … Rodolfo. What’s yours?”

  “Olga.”

  The girl snapped the light off.

  When he left her, Jaime shouted for Juan Manuel and his friend answered from another room. The noise from the living room continued. He had been with the girl only ten minutes.

  “Don’t you smoke?” she said when she came out into the hall. Jaime said that he didn’t.

  “Come on, let’s go in the living room for a few minutes so you can see what it’s like. And remember, I’m here every day except Sunday.”

  They walked down the dark hall. The living room was at the back. Olga spread the door curtains and put an arm around Jaime’s neck. A group of men and women were dancing and laughing. On the sofa, seated with an air of presiding over the party, was Don Maximino Mateos. And atop a small table with his shoes and his coat off and his armpits splotched with sweat and a crepe-paper hat on his balding head, Uncle Jorge Balcárcel was dancing all alone, dancing all alone with a bottle of rum hugged in his arms. Everyone was laughing, but Jaime laughed harder than all of them. The girl beside him doubled over with laughter too.

  Balcárcel saw Jaime and was paralyzed.

  Jaime kissed the mouth of the girl with the mole on her forehead, and left the house.

  Chapter 10

  HE SLEPT until eleven: because of his father’s death he was excused from school and his aunt did not dare that day to enter his bedroom. Balcárcel rose earlier than usual and breakfasted alone. Asunción hardly had time to tell him that Rodolfo’s novena would begin in the evening.

  In the afternoon Jaime went to see Father Obregón. The priest met him at the foot of the main altar and with a curt nod motioned him into the sacristy. There they sat as before, Obregón on the high-backed elaborately carved chair, Jaime on the small plain one. But this time no hint of self-doubt or expression of tenderness escaped the priest.

  “I want to confess,” Jaime smiled, anxious to tell a confessor for the first time that he had been with a woman.

  When he finished, Obregón’s badly-shaven face flamed.

  “And to think I had faith in you, that I believed you were one chosen by Our Lord. Yes: I believed you were a boy set apart, capable of forgiveness and charity!”

  Jaime suddenly felt a part of himself die. But he did not understand: he thought the priest was referring to last night, to the fact that he had gone to a bordel the same day his father was buried. He tried to speak, but Father Obregón silenced him:

  “I confessed your father the last day he was up and about and again the night he died. He wanted nothing in life except your love. He did not want to die without it. But you wouldn’t give it to him, you were incapable of a single gesture. You condemned him to die in pain and desperation. You are a coward, do you understand me! A coward! You have sinned against the spirit, you have…”

  “Father…”

  The priest’s fury mounted his face in red waves.

  “And you dared to come here, full of pride, and talk about the Imitation of Christ, the true love of Our Lord! You, who could not give one whisper of love to your own father! You love no one except yourself. For others you show only pride in disguise. You are one more Pharisee!”

  “Father, please, listen to me.”

  Obregón slapped the arm of his chair. “No, I shall not let you go on deceiving me with words. You listen, and pay attention. One day you went out into the mountains and harmed yourself physically…”

  Again Jaime felt the priest’s hot hands on his bleeding shoulders the afternoon Balcárcel had brought him, against the doctor’s advice, to confess. He felt the biting lash of cactus thorns across his chest. He had lacerated his body as an act of penance for Balcárcel’s self-satisfied face, for Aunt Asunción’s frustration, for his father’s timorous lack of manhood, for the horror of his mother in the dirty bar in Irapuato. He had made himself suffer in their names, to pay their guilt: one agonizing cut for forgiveness for Balcárcel, another for charity for Asunción, another for Rodolfo’s weakness; and all for the sin committed upon his mother, solitary and abandoned. Pain for her pain …

  “I know what you think: that it was an act of heroism, a penance to wipe away the evil done by others.…”

  “Yes! I did it for my
mother, I swear it.…”

  “Bah! It was a foolish act lacking in faith, an act of hopelessness, understand that. You merely wanted to punish your own sense of guilt. The only valid penance does not judge others. The only valid penance assumes the guilt of others from love alone, and does not expect recompense. What did you expect, you child? Some tangible result? A miracle in exchange for your pain?”

  “Yes, yes.… I had faith.…”

  “That men would change their habits between night and morning simply because you had felt agony? That thanks to you, human nature itself would change? You could be that proud! And that cowardly!”

  “What should I have done, Father?”

  “You should have had the guts to bend down to that unhappy abandoned woman your mother, and told her who you are and given her your love. That’s what you should have done. And you should have given your father your love. Instead you piled offense upon offense. You have done nothing for no one.”

  “What must I do now?”

  “Find your mother and love her truly, just as she is and for what she is. Don’t go on offending God with your hatreds. Love the people around you, your aunt and uncle, and love them more the harder it is. And believe me it is harder by far than to cut your back and shoulders with a whip. Help them, stop hating them.”

  “Help them?”

  “Yes, by loving them. That is your duty.”

  “How?”

  “Without saying one word. Love them! Love them in spite of all the harm you feel they have done you. Listen to me clearly now: love is not words but deeds. You have come to me with words, but you have never been capable of a single act of true love. And your cowardice hurts me, for I had faith in you…”