Chuy put his hands on the wheel and listened to his own arresting voice talking to itself.
“This glass will have to be replaced as a condition of purchase,” Chuy heard himself say. “And the engine, of course, must be inspected. Another thing, what about the lights?” As though commanded by his own words he pulled out a knob and a single headlight lit up, as well as a weak bulb over his head.
“I will insist on a review of the entire electrical system,” said Chuy, and as it indeed came about, the faulty headlight and one taillight were in time adequately repaired. But the left taillight, through an eccentricity of the wiring, never stopped blinking from the moment it was put in order. Because of the confusion caused by this unintended signaling, the Volkswagen later on became involved in a number of accidents, but none of these resulted in fatalities.
Nor could the bulb in the ceiling be turned off except by unscrewing it. Most of the time Chuy considered this to be more trouble than it was worth, so the light generally shone night and day. Those of Chuy’s passengers who traveled after dark became accustomed to the continuous glow in which they sat faintly visible to all the world, like actors on a stage lit by fireflies.
• • •
Chuy discussed the purchase of his car with the two men in Ibarra who had been his best friends since childhood. Together they shared these things: the ability to keep a secret, the desire to become rich, and the same godfather. But this godfather had already died in an accident involving foolhardiness, pulque, and knives.
Like Chuy, whom the cura addressed as Jesús Santos Larin, these friends had three names. The first name their parents gave them at birth, then their father’s last name, then their mother’s family name, which would not succeed them, and, once carved on their gravestones, would be abandoned there. But there was no need to know the names of Chuy’s friends. They had never been called anything but El Gallo and El Golondrino, the Rooster and the Swallow. These nicknames suited each man as neatly as a sheath fits a blade.
El Gallo had a big chest, chips of flint for eyes, and a habit of kicking at the ground wherever he stood, whether there were pebbles and clods underfoot or not. Had he actually been a rooster in a barnyard he could have claimed six hens. These were his wife, his second cousin Lili, the two Benitez girls, a woman in Loreto, and a woman in Lagos.
El Golondrino was small-boned and light as a tissue-paper kite on a gusty March morning. He could cross the plaza from one arcade to another and never be seen in passage. The Swallow lived alone in a mud house furnished with packing crates for tables and nail kegs for chairs.
Within three hours of his visit to the used-car lot Chuy Santos outlined his plan to El Gallo and El Golondrino. They met where they could have privacy, in the middle of an old stone bridge on the outskirts of the village. This bridge crossed the arroyo between two mining properties that, once gutted of pure silver, had been abandoned to cave-ins and rising water.
At first Chuy’s friends listened in silence. Then they said, “What is the price of this car?”
Chuy looked up the arroyo past the low white house of the North Americans, past the old monastery, to the hoist tower of La Malagueña, the copper mine where El Gallo and El Golondrino worked underground.
“Twenty thousand pesos,” said Chuy, “and three years to pay at 40 percent annual interest. Remember this. While we are buying the car we will be living on its profits.” Then Chuy looked the other way, toward the bend of the arroyo and the nuns’ school where the three men now on this bridge had sat at one desk in the first grade. “The down payment is a third of the total cost.”
El Gallo scuffed at a stone block with his right foot.
Chuy went on as if he had studied law at the autonomous national university. “As driver, the car will be registered in my name. As equal investors in the down payment, you will have your money back in one year and double it in the next. But first I will try to borrow the entire amount from don Ricardo, the American. He is a man who acts on impulse.” Chuy smoothed his hair with both hands. “An example of this is his presence here in Ibarra. And the presence of the wife he brought with him.”
The men leaned silently on the ancient balustrade of the bridge.
“What color is it?” asked Chuy’s friends, and first Chuy said, “Like a tomato.” Then, “More like fresh vino tinto.” He thought again. “Exactly the color of a cardinal’s cape,” and the other two nodded as if the Cardinal of Mexico had celebrated mass in the parochial church of Ibarra yesterday and emerged later on into the sun to prove to the mongrels on the steps the eternal verity of red.
• • •
On a cold starry evening Jesús Santos went to the house of the North Americans and stood outside the window of the dining room. Don Ricardo Everton and his wife, doña Sara, were inside, eating chiles rellenos and dividing a single bottle of beer between them. This economy seemed odd to Chuy, who knew that in the regular size Dos Equis cost only three pesos and was even less by the case. Wall lamps lit up the room and two unnecessary candles burned in green glass chimneys on the table.
There is no way to understand this señor Everton and his señora, said Chuy to himself. So rich and yet so poor. He tapped on the window and saw don Ricardo stop eating and cross the hall to open the front door.
From her place at the table Sara heard Chuy’s voice and sat transfixed, listening, her beer glass raised in her hand. When the door closed behind the visitor she said, “Who is that man with the beautiful voice?”
“Chuy Santos,” said Richard. He looked at his wife, who was gazing abstractedly through the window into the dark. “But I have no idea if he can sing.” For he had detected behind her eyes an image, a gathering of people in the walled patio under an April moon. There would be paper lanterns strung from trees, and roses and grapes on the vines. Notes of a guitar would scatter like a broken necklace on the tiles. Then the voice of Jesús Santos would pour into the night to astound the gentlemen in hand-tooled boots and the ladies in thin silk slippers.
Richard noticed all this unfolding in his wife’s eyes and said, “Chuy wants to borrow twenty thousand pesos. For a taxi. Who knows if he can sing?”
• • •
Jesús Santos met again with his two friends on the bridge. “The American will not cooperate,” he said.
El Gallo clapped his arms against his side as if he felt a chill. “Then we must acquire the money some other way,” he said. He looked down into the arroyo where a few plastic bags and rusty cans had been cast away for the first heavy rains to float off to the valley. “I have an idea in connection with a tunnel at the mine,” he said, and met the eyes of El Golondrino.
The Swallow said nothing. He picked up a rock from the bridge and with a single wide swing of his arm let it fly at an Orange Crush bottle twelve meters away, causing the glass to explode into tawny fragments that burned like coals on the sandy bottom.
“What do you propose?” said Chuy to El Gallo.
“I must discuss this matter first with the Swallow here,” said the Rooster, and tapped his small friend on the shoulder. “But before we execute my plan, which is dangerous, we must try two other things.”
“What things?” said Chuy.
“First you must go to the owner of the car and persuade him to lower the price. Then you must go again to the American and prove to him that the vehicle is now a bargain.”
“I may or may not do these things,” said Chuy.
• • •
The next morning he was waiting at the iron gate of the used-car lot when the owner pulled it open. The Volkswagen, looking brighter and more powerful than ever, was still there.
“I would like to try it out,” said Chuy.
“Come back in one month,” said the owner. “But leave a deposit.”
Chuy pulled out a wad of money and from the top peeled off the two five-hundred-peso bills he had borrowed th
e day before from his father-in-law. These he held casually, as he would have held a losing lottery ticket or a burned-out cigarette. Now the dealer, all at once turned cordial, invited him to enter the detached cab of a truck which he used as an office. Here the two men bargained and at the end of an hour, half of talk and half of silence, the price of the car had dropped from twenty thousand to fifteen thousand pesos, the down payment to only five thousand.
They returned to the red Volkswagen, where Chuy stood a moment in reflection, his hand resting on the hood through which he felt the echoes of the engine’s long career. He gave the dealer one of the bills.
“My restaurant business permits me very little time away,” said Chuy. “I cannot return here for two months.” And he gave the proprietor a second bill. “That is your deposit, to be applied against the down payment. But I must drive this car before I buy it.” His palm still lay on the blistered paint. “And it must be in the finest condition.” With this, Chuy lifted his hand and walked away.
• • •
He returned to the North Americans’ house that afternoon and asked to speak to don Ricardo. He made his request of the señora who, bareheaded and wearing workman’s pants, was standing on a stone wall three meters high to thin out the olive tree that stretched over it.
Soon she will be climbing the branches, thought Chuy, which, thin as she is, may fail to support her.
“Buenas tardes, señora,” he said out loud.
Sara, halfway into the tree, her head sprinkled with silver leaves and her face with powdery dust, heard his voice and was struck motionless, holding a branch in her left hand, a pair of clippers in her right. She waited for him to speak again, and when he did not she disengaged herself from the tree and looked down. A web, with the spider curled tight at the center, hung from her shoulder.
“You are Jesús Santos,” she said. From the wall she stared at the part in Chuy’s hair, so exact it might have been plotted by instruments. “Do you sing?” she asked.
Chuy ignored this question. “Look, señora,” he said. “I must speak to your husband.”
“What about?” said the woman, making no move to descend from the wall, though a ladder was propped against it.
“A matter that can only be discussed with don Ricardo himself.”
“He is working on the drawings of a new head frame for the mine and has asked not to be disturbed.”
She is lying, thought Chuy. She wants no one to know that don Ricardo is ill again.
“Otra vez la gripa?” he said out loud in tones that seemed to have healing powers of their own. Above him the American señora denied this and set off a small rain of leaves which fell from her head down to his.
Leaves still dotted her hair as she descended the ladder and pulled the cobweb from her sleeve. “Is it about your taxi?” she asked.
“About my taxi, yes,” said Chuy. “But the entire situation has changed as of this morning.”
“Tell me,” she said, and they sat down under an olive tree on a carved wooden bench with a cracked back.
“This car,” began Chuy, and went on to describe it as he might describe a racing stallion, the ex-president’s yacht, or the Emperor Maximilian’s festooned and gilded carriage, three things he had never seen. He noticed that don Ricardo’s wife listened attentively to every word he spoke. When he paused briefly in his recital she said nothing and seemed only to be waiting for him to go on.
At last she spoke. “But who will your passengers be? To travel by bicycle or bus is much less costly.”
“Señora, you have forgotten those to whom time is a matter of life or death. Those who, if they hope to survive, must travel by car whether they can afford it or not. Those with lungs that bleed and wounds that fester. You are not considering the damage inflicted by knives and guns, and by the maniacs at the wheels of trucks.”
Sara remained silent.
“Think of this, señora,” Chuy went on. “While the mine’s van is delivering an accident victim to the hospital in Concepción, at the same time I, in my taxi, can deposit at the specialist’s door the grandmother with the abscessed tooth, the infant with the club foot, the young wife who has been in labor for two days.”
“Come back tomorrow afternoon,” said doña Sara. “I will speak to my husband before then. But don’t count on his support.”
It is hard to move the hearts of these Americans, Chuy thought to himself.
• • •
Later the same day Chuy met his friends on the arch of the bridge. When they heard his report El Gallo looked toward the hills with eyes the color of lead and El Golondrino produced a slingshot, loaded it with a pebble, and killed a sparrow perched on the branch of a cottonwood.
To stiffen their resolve Chuy said, “Remember. The price is down and the American may yet support us in some way. Unless it is true that he is losing money on the mine.”
El Gallo fixed the shards of his slaty glance upon his friend. “He is certain to be losing money. The conquistadores themselves could have found no profit in this ore.” He kicked at a milkweed that had sprouted from a crack. “But all that is about to change. Eh, Golondrino?” and he poked the little man’s ribs.
“Next week we will enter an unwatered tunnel where no one has set foot since the War of the Independence. This tunnel might as well have been excavated by an earthworm making a path through the roots of a cedar tree.” El Gallo let forth a strident laugh. “It is so crooked that not a man working there will see the neighbor to his right or to his left.” And El Gallo thumped his fellow miner hard upon the back.
“What is there to gain from that?” asked Jesús Santos, the restaurant proprietor.
“Precisely this,” said El Gallo. “This tunnel intersects an unexplored deposit of silver. Not mere traces of silver but enough to be separated and weighed.”
At these words Chuy heard a motor start up eighty kilometers away. He watched a car that was out of sight, beyond the mountains, split the countryside in two, dividing the landscape as a line of red ink would divide a map. He saw himself at the wheel of this car.
• • •
The next afternoon Chuy presented himself at the Evertons’ door. To his regret it was doña Sara who opened it.
“Forgive me, Jesús,” she said, as if she had committed an infraction of federal law. “There were so many . . . I had so much . . .” At this point her voice wandered off and was lost.
Chuy stared at her and said to himself, It is becoming increasingly difficult to communicate.
Finding a few words at last, she asked him to wait inside. Then she disappeared, closing two doors behind her.
He stood in the hall next to a scarred leather chest which in his opinion would have been better strapped to the back of a tinsmith’s mule. On the chest was the señora’s handbag. Also a wooden religious figure in poor condition, its painted robe scattered over with chipped roses.
“Who is this personage?” Chuy asked himself, speaking aloud since there was no one to hear. He gazed for a moment at doña Sara’s bag, then back into the sunken eyes of the figure. “It is not San Juan, San Antonio, or San Francisco. It might be San Pedro without his keys.” Again he considered the señora’s handbag. “She is a reckless woman,” he said, “to leave her valuables in open view, next to the unlocked door.” Listening, and hearing two voices at a great distance, Chuy opened the bag. Then he turned his back to the figure on the chest, took from the wallet two five-hundred-peso bills, and folded them into his pocket.
Now footsteps approached from behind the closed doors. Chuy was disappointed for the second time to see the señora appear instead of the señor.
She brought the answer he anticipated. Don Ricardo refused to finance the Volkswagen and would promise only this, that if neither the mine pickup nor his own car were available he would depend on Chuy’s taxi in the event of an emergency at the mine.<
br />
Then doña Sara said, “With all the warnings to miners and the posting of signs there should be no accidents. Even the dynamiting of tunnels is under the supervision of a cautious foreman. Therefore,” she went on, “it is hard to believe an accident could occur.” And Chuy saw that she had deposited her faith, all at one time, not in God but in the common sense, good nature, and predictable behavior of man.
“I imagine you can borrow the money to cover the down payment from any bank,” said the señora.
What an imagination, thought Chuy. This woman probably notices faces in clouds, spirits in water, and words in the wind.
• • •
On the following Saturday Chuy, making an unscheduled visit to the church, sat across from the cura in the confessional booth. He had no sooner said, “Pray for me, father, for I have sinned,” than the priest recognized him as Jesús Santos Larín and began to wonder if he might be taught to sing aves and alleluias.
First Chuy confessed to the ordinary vices, then he allowed a silence to fall, and finally said, “I came across two five-hundred-peso bills and kept them.”
The cura concentrated with an effort. “Did you ask those around you if the money was theirs?” And when he was told there was no one in sight, the priest said, “In that case the two bills were yours to claim since the next passerby would have picked them up if you had not.” Chuy was silent again and in order to listen a little longer the cura asked him how he would spend this money.
At that, Chuy entered into a complicated response, beginning with an analysis of the Volkswagen and ending with an account of the proposed taxi service, but the cura heard only the rich tones that conveyed this torrent of information.
The priest, who had a collection of old Victor records, identified Chuy’s voice as tenor and soon found himself becoming fretful once again as to why he had been passed over for elevation to monseñor and eventually to bishop. For the present occupant of the episcopal throne had been a country boy like himself and they had entered the seminary on the same day. There was no more difference between them than between two pinto beans. A simple matter of politics, thought the parish priest as he listened to Chuy’s resonant appraisals of pistons and valves.
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