Lost in the City: Tree of Desire and Serafin

by Ignacio Solares

  “Papá!”

  And it was then he realized it was not true. He’d dreamed it, or better said, he’d almost dreamed it because he had not yet slept. The door was closed, no one had entered. A bit of empty night filtered through the window, without Papá.

  “Go to sleep now. You have to get up early in the morning,” Mamá said, sitting at the table as if watching over Serafín’s sleep the last night she would be by his side.

  “I saw Papá come in very clearly, Mamá. Very clearly.”

  “I also see him every once in a while, but it’s pure imagination. If he’d really come in, we’d know for sure he’d come.”

  “I was sure he came in.”

  “But there’s no one. Look.”

  “Yes.”

  “Go to sleep now.”

  “And you, Mamá?”

  “I’m going to sleep in a little while. I was just waiting until I got sleepy.”

  He was not going to ask, but bit his lip and dared.

  “Were you looking toward the door when I saw Papá come in?”

  “I looked at you, and saw you see something I didn’t see.”

  “So nothing really happened?”

  “Nothing.”

  “It was only a dream?”

  “You had hardly started to sleep. Those dreams are the trickiest. Now go to sleep.”

  Obediently, he closed his eyes, and a multitude of images came to him. A young Mamá laughing with Papá. Mamá putting a flower in her hair in front of the mirror. A young Papá kissing her on her neck. Papá drinking and talking to Mamá in a voice rising in tone until it hardened into a smothered yell. Mamá listening to him in silence from the corner, where there is a hearth of bleached clay, stirring the pot of coffee, blowing on the coals to revive the embers, or going to tuck in one of Serafín’s brothers, the smallest one, who is wriggling like a little snake on a mattress close by. And Mamá saying, I’m dead tired, going to the bed—a metal one, the only one in the room—and undressing in front of them, while Papá takes a drink of tequila, his eyes gleaming. He stands up, caresses her, and whispers something in her ear, laughing nervously. But Mamá rejects him, and Papá returns to the table to talk to himself. He talks and talks in a monotonous voice that ends up lulling Serafín. At times, when he is angry with Mamá, he yells and hits the table with his fist, threatening to destroy everything, everything, and Serafín never understood very well what that everything included. But sometimes those quarrels finished with Papá waking him up and asking him to keep him company because he felt so lonely. Serafín would sit drowsily at the table, pulling the quilt around himself and holding his face, his sleepiness, in the palm of his hand, and Papá would tell him, as before, about the trips he had made and how Mamá did not love him, kept him suffering here, and he would put his hand between his legs as if to comfort himself.

  4

  A hard jolt of the bus woke him up. He looked all around and rubbed his eyes. The old man was sleeping beside him with his head thrown back. Serafín thought if he were dead, he would not look very different. His sharp chin stuck out in front and from his thin lips came a snore that was a muffled whistle.

  How long had he slept? The sun already seemed high and there were no clouds in the sky. Occasionally the dense, deep green hills revealed the wavy line of the horizon.

  By now he must be far away, and going farther all the time. Where would it all end? Who would be there? In the town’s plaza, for instance, that now would be beyond all those hills, lighted by a different sun. He had crossed it so many times, without thinking about being there. Just crossing it. The shadow of the jacaranda trees was falling on the benches of polished wood, and the old people were sitting in its shelter to watch the fountain with three jets and the people passing by. Those old folks. He saw them . . . Would they be there now?

  What did he dream? He only remembered a street, or something that was more like a tunnel of oaks or poplars making lines in the sunlight. And someone was running there. Yes, it was himself. His figure came clearer as he remembered the dream. He was in the city, on a street in the city—that was the feeling—and he was running to meet someone. He was going to find him but he bumped into another man. A man who stopped him and held him up in the air. An old man, skinny and tall . . . He pressed tightly against the window when he realized he had dreamed about the old man in the next seat, and about the city. Why, since he had just met him? Why had he gotten into his dream? He blinked and felt again the same shiver he had felt when he got on the bus. It seemed that the worst thing was to sleep, as always. Why was sleeping always the worst thing?

  . . .

  “And if I do it, Mamá? Ask them to let me off and take a bus going back? It’s going to be easier now than later. And Papá has to come back someday, doesn’t he? And if not, at least I would be with you. Why should I leave you to go look for him? I wouldn’t be alone. I would be with you, even though not with him. What I would like is for the three of us to be together. The way it is now, I don’t have either of you. I’m not with you or with him. And I’m not going to have either of you when I get there—that place they call the city.”

  . . .

  The only specific information he had about the city was from a certain Felipe Hurtado. He remembered him very well because he and Papá got drunk together one night and that was all they talked about.

  “It’s hell there, Román. I swear it’s hell itself. You’ve only gone for a visit and then come back. But stay a little while to look for work and you’ll see. For weeks I walked around like a fool, knocking on every door I could find, asking for work or at least that they would offer me a lousy tortilla—that’s how broke I was. A tortilla, damn it, I’d take anything, and nobody gave me a thing, Román.”

  “Hell doesn’t exist,” Papá answered, missing the whole point, simply because he could not bear a religious reference.

  “As far as I’m concerned, God can . . .” he said one night when Mamá and the children were praying in front of the image of Jesus with His Heart in Flames, and although he did not dare say the whole sentence, he made an obscene gesture. Mamá only lowered her head and pressed her lips together, as if the prayer might have choked her. She took Serafín’s hand, because he was the child closest to her when they were praying, and said, let’s continue, full of Grace, the Lord is with You . . .

  “Didn’t you hear me? I said, as far as I’m concerned, God can . . .”

  But Mamá interrupted him, turning around and looking at him with eyes burning as if just lifted from the embers, leaving him petrified in the middle of the room.

  “Be quiet! Or go away so we can finish praying!”

  Papá was very drunk, and when he quieted down, even his eyes cleared up, as if Mamá’s words—like part of a prayer—had awakened a sudden feeling for the sacred. But the reaction was worse. He burst out laughing and went to urinate in the doorway, there in front of his wife and children, who continued praying. He leaned his body back as if bending over double and threw a spray upward, straight up, while continuing to laugh. Serafín could not forget how he laughed while urinating and Mamá kept on praying, Blessed art Thou among women, and Blessed is the fruit of Thy womb, Jesus.

  “Go to Mexico City and you’ll see that hell exists, no shit,” Felipe Hurtado replied, taking a drink of his warm beer.

  “Well, look, Felipe, as far as I’m concerned . . .” Papá answered, beginning to drag his words, as if they had to run an obstacle course before they got to his lips.

  “You’re talking just to talk, Román.”

  There was a long silence in which they just drank, leaning over the pine table.

  “I think . . . sometimes I think hell would be better than here,” Papá said a moment before his head fell from his hand, rolled down the length of his arm, and hit his forehead on the table, with a noise that made Serafín think of a rock falling from a high place and splitting in two. Papá’s head split in two, Papá without a head, Papá divided, never again the same old P
apá. That night Serafín waited, watching for Papá to stand up and go to bed, with his head whole, as if nothing had happened. Before Felipe Hurtado left, he took his jacket off the spike—a jacket of green corduroy that he had brought from the city and that he showed off every Sunday strutting around the plaza—as he muttered,

  “You’re screwed, Román.”

  And he left after five warm beers and several more tequilas. Serafín counted them, one by one. He also counted the last one, which he drank while Papá was asleep on the table. And he heard him sing:

  “Open the door, my darling,

  open, open, open,

  I brought you a little something,

  nice, nice, nice.”

  5

  Serafín looked at the dust on his shoes that, he thought, was already dust from far away. He took a piece of bread with cheese and beans out of his bag and ate it quickly so he would not awaken the old man and have to offer him some. Hateful old man. Then he felt around in the bag until he found a can of juice and drank it, staring blankly through the window. The trees were going by unchanging as if really they were only one, repeated over and over until he was tired of it. Things farther away looked normal by moving more slowly: the adobe houses in the tiny villages, the grazing animals, the human figures with hardly time to strike a pose, like in the game of statues. They passed by, chasing each other without ever catching up.

  He finished eating and put the bag near his feet—touching it with his calf—and instantly fell into the deep sleep of an ancient fatigue.

  . . .

  Now it was the cold light of the moon that filtered through his dream and finally awakened him. He opened his eyes and saw it, very low, with its halo of thin clouds. Startled, he sat up and checked on the presence of the bag. At his side, the old man was sitting up very straight, looking wide awake, his profile showing clearly in the gloom, like the edge of a hatchet.

  “What happened?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Are we there?”

  “No. We’re stopped.”

  Serafín looked out the window and saw a mass of shadows in the distance, lights blinking off and on in the underbrush, like watching eyes, and the nocturnal movement of the trees. There were small groups of people by the side of the road.

  “A wreck,” the old man added without changing his position, without even bothering to look at him. “The bus hit a car. It seems some people are hurt. Everybody got out to look, but it doesn’t interest me. All accidents are the same.”

  “And . . . very long ago?”

  “We’ve been stopped here for hours.”

  “And what about me, Señor?”

  “What about you?”

  “Was I asleep all the time?”

  “You didn’t move. I even got close to make sure you were breathing. You never know with the heart.”

  “Could you die that way, asleep?” Serafín asked in a tone that combined fear of death with fear of the old man himself.

  “You can die any way. I had a friend who died while he was eating, with his spoon in front of his face and his arm up. And I saw a child jump from a chair and when he got to the floor, he was dead.”

  “Why?” he asked, pressing up against the window with his head down in his collar, hiding his fear.

  “I told you, the heart stops whenever it wants to, right then, because of bad air or bad thoughts. There are thoughts that can stop the heart instantly.”

  “And dreams?”

  “Dreams are very dangerous for the heart. I’ve learned to wake up from dreams that would have killed me like lightning.”

  Serafín remembered that, when asleep, the old man had really seemed awake, or rather, half dead.

  “Is all that true?”

  “I never tell lies, child,” he answered, now looking straight at him, with eyes that held the gleam of forged steel and made Serafín huddle even closer against the window.

  “Don’t talk to me about that anymore.”

  “What do you want me to talk to you about?” he asked, stretching out his bony, clawlike hand. Serafín finally hid himself in his collar like a turtle, and the old man gave him a light knock on the head. “‘Oh, don’t talk to me about that, Señor.’ Aren’t you a man?”

  “Talk to me about something else, Señor. Please.”

  “What, does death frighten you?” the man asked coming close with his dark smile and sour breath, like a whiff of hell itself.

  “Can you tell me about the accident?”

  “I didn’t see it because I was asleep, too. But the screams woke me up. There was a lot of confusion. A woman got off to walk around and was almost run over by another bus. Just because she wanted to get close and see. A fat man pulled out a badge and yelled that no one should move until the highway patrol came. The children were leaning halfway out the window. The bus driver was afraid and took off running, but the fat guy with the badge caught him and brought him back, twisting his arm.”

  “And now?”

  “I think we have to wait for an ambulance. Get out if you want to. You’re a child.”

  Serafín put on the sweater he was carrying in the bag. He was about to leave his seat when the old man asked with teasing eyes if he should take care of the bag. Serafín rejected the offer with an emphatic “no” and a shake of his head. So the old man, smiling broadly and showing two decayed teeth, reached out his big, bony hand to take the bag. Serafín jerked the bag away with a brusque movement that made it hit the metal edge of the window and produced a noise like broken glass.

  “It was a joke, boy, go on.”

  Before getting off, Serafín sat in one of the seats in front—almost all were empty—and took out what he was carrying in the bag: the shirt, the clean underwear, the folded pants, the paper sack with the food, some cans of fruit juice, his cup and ball game, and the wooden car. He reached all the way to the bottom and found the tiny plaster virgin that his mother always had near her bed. It was broken in two.

  Why did you put that there, Mamá? And what should I do with it now? He held the two parts together and looked at it sadly.

  It’s the thing that belongs to you most, isn’t it, Mamá? One day you said that you always had it with you. That ever since you’d prayed with your grandmother, you prayed to that virgin. You put it in the bag so you would almost come with me yourself. Why, if you knew it would break and I can’t even pray by myself? Remember I can’t get the prayers out.

  6

  He got off and went to stand at the edge of the highway. Fog dissolved the outlines of everything. People were coming and going, talking quietly, complaining in their looks and gestures, going back to the wrecked car to see what they had already seen, moving around and blowing on their hands, drinking coffee from a thermos bottle. The wind produced the sound of waving stubble.

  Serafín went toward the car. There were two people stretched out beside it, a woman covered up to her neck with a coat and a man who was holding up the nails of one hand as if to scratch the air, moving his head from side to side, licking his lips and moaning:

  “Enough, for God’s sake, enough . . .”

  The woman was curled up like a sleeping child. Her hair was a wet, red stain that ran down one cheek to her neck. Her eyes half-open, her lips purple, thick. In the air Serafín heard the same buzzing as when the girl was in the river. Or was it only fear?

  A few minutes later, the ambulance arrived with its siren screaming and a red light that tore open the cloak of cold. Serafín moved away and went toward the bus, where he saw the old man get off; the shadows and his loose clothing made him look even more like a scarecrow. He walked with long strides and his head swayed as if it were hung on a wire. He threw a cigarette butt in the air, turning it into a shooting star, and went deep into the underbrush, toward the moon, until the night swallowed him up. Serafín followed him, the dry leaves crunching under his light steps. Where was the old scarecrow going? Impossible not to go find out.

  Coming from behind a
tree, Serafín saw him from the back standing in the round frame of the moon, his figure lengthened by its light.

  “Come here,” he said without turning around.

  Serafín took two steps backward. His eyes were like tropical fire beetles.

  “Come on. I’m urinating and you’d better do the same, you impudent little snoop.”

  . . .

  Their arrival in the city kept him from staying quiet in his seat. The moon dissolved with an iridescent tranquillity as soon as the first houses appeared. The lights followed each other like a procession of torches, more and more intense. Now he was there, with no way to avoid it. This was the city. He almost stood up in his seat, but the old man pushed him back down.

  “You’re disturbing me, you stupid brat! You’re like a grasshopper.”

  The bag fell to the floor with a dry thud, and he imagined Mamá’s virgin broken into countless pieces.

  “It’s the city, Señor,” Serafín said in a calmer voice to make up for his excitement.

  “I already know that. But wait to get off.”

  Serafín continued watching through the window with the same astonishment, his nose plastered against the glass, smearing it, his eyes huge to take in everything.

  The lights finally hypnotized him, making him feel elevated above what he was seeing. He could not move. He knew he should not, because the heavy hand of the old man would subdue him immediately, but in spite of that, or perhaps because of it, something inside him came out as a sigh.

  There were the lights below, and not above, him.

  As far as he could see, there was the city, as he had so often dreamed it. He saw streets, houses, many things. He flew over buildings, came down in a wide street, and walked in it as if on water, with wings on his feet.

  . . .

  When they got off the bus, the old man told Serafín to follow him. Being in the whirlpool of people was very different from the earlier sensation of being up above. He was lost in a forest of legs, guided only by the old man’s high, hunched back.