Almost Never: A Novel

by Daniel Sada

  Let’s talk against the grain about Demetrio’s great confidence: mental adjudication: all white, maybe pink, but no other color loomed in his future, for sure: what he’d found, what he’d contributed, all could now finally be seen as rhizomic. No putrescence, therefore, need be descried—ever! And one day with perfect composure the big guy told his employees that he had to leave Parras: a four-day trip, five, six, maybe less. They would be responsible for the business, that is, everything ship-shape, same as they were doing every day, so much so that he sometimes didn’t even stop by. Which explained why he asked for details the following day, so he could deduce a precise picture of his assets. An uphill ride, as usual more difficult than downhill. But we were talking about his trip to Sacramento. In any case, Demetrio went to church without telling anybody. He prayed, just in case. The penitence was wretched, almost artful: on his knees, on the ground, and crawling toward the altar (such a show), his arms spread in the shape of a cross. The forced entreaty: what began with pain would have to end the same. The sacrifice was exemplary, though looking at it up close probably not necessary. It’s just that Demetrio wanted to avoid another robbery: No more robberies, My Lord, have mercy … Please listen to what I am saying, I am begging you fervently. A farce? Almost to a tee. How sincere could he be when at one point in the middle of a prayer Demetrio let slip an unintentional chuckle? Who knows what came into his head …

  Anyway April arrived and with it the trip to Sacramento: of great importance. The scale of what he was about to carry out. First he asked Doña Telma for her blessing, and his mother, proud and empowered, hmm, crossed herself with aplomb, yes, well, you should have seen her, this fact alone made her feel grandiose, because she would remain in Parras more regal than ever. Did she also have a lucky star? While we’re at it, we all have one, it’s just that we don’t all think about it. Rather we think of God’s will, which is something else, or the saints’. But what we’d like to make clear here is that thinking about our lucky star, every day, would be a horse of a different color, as they say. One—yes or no?—of an alarming unheard-of size, perhaps the commanding size of an archangel.

  39

  We needn’t stretch our imaginations too far to take as given that Doña Zulema welcomed her nephew with open arms. We can also imagine the exultant cuddles. This business about her being the second mother comes up immediately; to put it in strong terms, she came right out with it; which made him—the apocryphal son? Confusion, and the more they clung to each other the greater the confusion, an almost libertine reflection; hindered love: fluctuating between which norms; more confusion, and therefore, even stranger. Oh, the twists and turns of affection, though the passion was directed elsewhere, as we know: Renata, still at the beginning. So Demetrio abruptly pulled away. From that moment on he never again wanted to catch even a whiff of the old woman’s odor—how disgusting!, and he expressed himself with such honeyed delicacy that even he surprised himself at having said what he said, which is better omitted because it is too sweet. We can well imagine the grandiloquent excuse, full of whatever it was full of. Then, while expressing gratitude for such withered hospitality, the nephew asked if he could take a bath in the cedar tub; he also asked his aunt not to say a word about Renata, for she knew that the affairs of the heart were coming to a head. For Doña Zulema, however, keeping quiet was rather esoteric, though she wisely abided, how understanding of her; how wounded, if only because she couldn’t speak … Anyway, she was left with the urge to utter a neologism, though not even that … Demetrio spent a long time outside in the tub. Let’s assume the nephew arrived in Sacramento around two in the afternoon then subtract the minutes of the embrace (cuddle), a first press as of an inaugurating nectar—or what can we call something that blooms? Then the bath that lasted about two and a half hours. A lot of, let us say, lazy soaking. But let’s expand upon the priors. Surely the sweat must have mingled. There was also subtle impregnation; now, dropping in, let’s try to watch his naked egress, let’s say, an instant seen by the aunt, a second of sight before the bashful nephew covered with the towel what shouldn’t be seen. All told, distant affection, impossible, but let us forget the forgettable and go once and for all to the model figure Demetrio cut a bit later. Model-husband; model-lover; the model who took a string of pearls out of his suitcase: the perfect gift for Renata. Then Aunt Zulema made a definitive, but appropriate, comment: On no account are you going to give those to your future wife. The superstition is that for each pearl there will be a tear. It is an ugly prediction. Please, throw that away, anywhere. It brings very bad luck. Superstition? Belief? One must never challenge the devil’s wisdom. The most dangerous thing one can do. In fact, Demetrio went and threw the necklace out on the street, and whoever, poor thing! picked it up would go belly-up. The prudent thing was to go to Renata’s house bearing no gift. So let’s watch the big guy arrive quite carefree at the stationery store, where—thank God—there was a swarm of customers. The fiancé had to wait until they’d all been helped, and when mother and daughter were alone Renata ushered her gallant into the living room, accompanied by the holy mother-in-law. Then: Wait here alone. Enjoy the living room. Look it over carefully. My daughter has to get dressed, spruce herself up. Don’t get impatient. The fiancé ensconced alone in that space. It comprised the family’s approval. That is, Demetrio was already one of the family. Phew! what a price to pay.

  The big guy sat with grave intent in the large greenish armchair in that still-strange and yellow living room. A new position, as if he were a pseudostatue or, better, an incomprehensible stiff. Waiting, waiting knowing how alone he was, almost drowning in a somewhat depressive state of mind.

  Hmm, the more time passed the more wicked ideas cropped up in his head.

  And a ton of minutes passed, hence—here comes the scab of his bawdy life! Oaxaca: the symbol, lechery a la costumbrista: against: suddenly: in Torreón he almost died. He saw the barrel of the gun pointing at him: he, who was now a well-groomed, ultradecent husband.

  Half an hour, a bit more, before mother and daughter appeared, quite dazzling.

  Pleasure at the sight of his conditional wife: Demetrio smiled after a short pause. But the whole time he was wetting his lips with an onrush of saliva. Quite abnormal, let us say, this action that soon discomfited the two women.

  Renata knew why Demetrio had come.

  Sensible, for the gallant promptly pulled a large roll of bills out of his jacket.

  The most practical of the practical.

  The mother-in-law was alert. She didn’t want to miss a word the betrotheds exchanged. Darn it she was meddlesome.

  The first thing the proud husband announced was that Renata could buy an extraordinary wedding gown with that money, with some reckoning, of course, because these funds would pay for everything related to the feast, though it depended, to wit: how many guests would there be? The sisters and their husbands and the closest family members in Sacramento, Lamadrid, and Nadadores, no more than sixty people, mother and daughter said.

  “You two will be in charge of that.”

  Also the cost of the Mass. Moreover: an anthology of details that piled up as the three spoke, but with that wad of dough the big guy avoided any rows, in fact, mother and daughter paid him no heed while they counted the money out loud.

  Problem: the onerous amount of work … for the two women.

  Counting the bills took so long that Demetrio’s thoughts turned to his and that ill-fated Mireya’s son; he imagined him healthy and with a respectable vocabulary by now. Yes, quite the talker. Yes, quite the walker—achoo! Naughty, for sure, but just then Renata exclaimed that it was so much money …

  And Demetrio puffed out his chest, feeling quite stuck-up, and said only, “Yes, yes,” then stretched his neck up a bit farther.

  Next they moved on to an issue of supreme importance: the date of the wedding. Doña Luisa said, “One moment,” and left then returned in a flash with a calendar in hand: let’s see. Closing the stationery sto
re came up, as a factor in and of itself. So: the best would be to aim for a Saturday in October; naturally! though it could also be November, not December, so …

  Speculations were skittish, for all three were tiptoeing around much too much, without any overpowering reason to do so.

  In the end: the first Saturday in November. Agreement, obviously symptomatic. The fifth, yes, fifth of … Five was a lucky number. The wedding would be held in the morning. It would be a good idea for Demetrio to arrive a couple of days early, just in case anything unexpected should occur—or not?

  The most important issues were apparently resolved. But the mother-in-law didn’t leave—damn it! Clearly that pest would not let her daughter talk to her future keeper: never! For Demetrio had said that he wouldn’t be returning to Sacramento before the wedding. His business there was demanding. The women pressed him for information on that subject, the reason for his diligence, why so busy.

  And what Demetrio was inclined to reveal:

  “It’s a pool hall. And it’s thriving.”

  This slightly squelched the women’s jubilation. Imagine a pool hall as a black stain. A fomenter of daily dalliance. Disappointment, (almost) depravity. There was a partially aggrieved silence, noted by the future husband, and clearly revealed in the resigned droop of their heads: what a pity! However, he offered up one explanation that maybe … The pool hall thing is temporary, afterward I’ll invest in decent businesses. My mother also disapproves, but she understands my strategy. Such a sincere explanation deserved a partial pardon. The women lifted their heads, buoyed by the tiny ray of hope that shined through. To all appearances he’d strayed, though here they espied a timely corrective. Temporary perfidy: right?, what was the time frame? Something like six months was a lie that could be believed. Renata believed it, and her mother, well, probably she did too. In fact, one must look at the positive side of pool halls: a business that underpinned what would be solid solvency. And Doña Luisa declared: I hope this pool hall thing is indeed temporary. And he nodded—in response? Let’s watch Demetrio’s hypocritical affirmative: what a notorious movement of his head! Then: upon seeing that the lady was not going to say, “Please, excuse me,” he decided that the moment had come for him to depart, he would return the following day for a visit (okay?). In any case, as he walked out and continued doggedly down the street, the following wove itself into his brain: he would not give up the pool hall because it made him a lot of money; with Renata (requested and granted) by his side, what did he care about his mother-in-law’s recriminations. Or rather: he would be the head honcho once he got married.

  Therefore: his idea of starting a cathouse in Parras was as spurious as any fantasy. And what about other depraved enterprises that would make him a pile of money. He wanted to become as corrupt—why not?—as he could. He wanted to join forces as soon as possible with people in politics, so he could steal (in a nice way) with the full weight of the law behind him, and he told himself: Yes, I want to be corrupt, and wealthy, very wealthy later on. I want my relatives to respect me. Suddenly, there appeared in his ambulatory obfuscation Mireya’s son, his son, too, and all grown up. That bastard (fairly muscular) son confronted him. He grabbed the lapels of jacket x to upbraid him for having shirked his responsibility toward him before he was born, and what could Demetrio say, no way could he say that his mother was a whore, it would be too hurtful to state it so straightforwardly. Well, that gloomy idea soon fled his mind, only for the shining word “trapped” to appear, indeed, trapped by the green-eyed witch—beautiful? naturally she was very beautiful, as well as unsoiled, as well she should be. Trapped by decency, forever. And, although he was corrupt (in his own way), he would appear to society as a decent man for having married a decent woman; an ignorant woman, illiterate, quite unfortunate, but with marvelous moral principles—how does that sound? He soon dismissed such ideas, however, as if rejecting them as too fastidious, then felt like a proud king, a king who should now leave Sacramento: by bus, by train, any way he could, because he didn’t want to talk to his aunt Zulema, who without a doubt was going to harass him with a rosary of compromising questions. Toxic woman, already diminished by fate; and that’s when he thought of the pool hall. His business, understood as the vast idea of a truly free genius. Hence corruption came knocking, giving free rein to leisure, and—what should he do? A doubt, the robbery. Bah, no doubts, rather lethargy, a bow to the coming ease. His waxing lucky star, we repeat, kindled his aspirations. Perhaps so.

  40

  His son was still making appearances on the velvet ceiling of the train car, a dangling insinuation, graying. We should mention that it was a first-class carriage, and it was nighttime, and they were unreal scenarios, the shadows barely doing the trick. That son went wandering through the corridors when silence held sway, there to see the oversized proof (yes or no, between the brows), and he had no difficulty recognizing what he was seeking. And grabbing the lapels of the large gentleman’s jacket, he said: Just so you know, my mother has suffered a lot because of you. She’s had to go to bed with many men to make ends meet. Poor thing. She, who wanted to love you, but you abandoned her, and you suck. Then the supposed son disappeared, thank God. By the same token it must be said that Demetrio did not sleep well, because the son (almost like flashes of lightning) kept appearing, throwing gobs of spittle then disappearing with a devilish guffaw that continued to reverberate for a long time. Then a daughter made her appearance, the poor girl quite pretty, for who knows if Mireya had a boy or a girl. Anyway, the girl was also grown up and, very even tempered though quite feeble spirited, she sat down next to her father to tell him a few things that might have sounded indignant: Many times I’ve hidden and watched my mother making love with one or another of her clients. Without her noticing, I try to see, to learn. But the truth is I don’t learn much because she copulates very mechanically. She’s never fallen in love with anybody. She never speaks your name and when I see her crying I know it is because God took love away from her. Maybe also because she knows that nobody will ever truly love her. And, after saying that sort of verbose glob, the (grotesque) daughter began to vanish. So Demetrio—did he sleep? how could he get comfortable? He managed: for minute-long lapses. And he arrived in Parras in a daze. It was the afternoon. When the sun’s edges were almost gone. A swath of disturbances. A succession of last straws, all corrosive and infamous. Daughter and son: in relay: harrowing malice, enough to make one stagger. The whole time he wanted to douse the unreal and the ruthless (no to apparitions) (no to parleys), but he couldn’t.

  How to escape those wailing voices, or how to definitively bury what was by its very nature inanimate, that is, the judgment of his crimes? He would have to go to church, alone, a guileless devil who had no choice but to kneel for hours on end. Pray—how? or a convincing argument, what God had given him, that explosive trifle: eternal love. And: Lord, you have given me Renata, I want to have her with me till I die, so don’t let anything bad happen to us, I beg of you. Followed by the whizz-bang of the entreaty. Tomorrow, deeds of devotion—naturally! but now to the practical, the verification he sought. When he arrived home he at once saw that his mother was happy, for the servants she had recently hired were superindustrious: Amalia and María Fulgencia: a miracle, how cheerfully enterprising they were! The domestic sphere looked like a floating fantasy. This according to his mother, who was exaggerating to be sure. Doña Telma really was exaggerating because it wasn’t such a big deal, or maybe in her joy—was she spewing nonsense? Anyway, Demetrio decided to go to the pool hall so as not to hear more hyperbole, for now anyway—right? and he was tired. In any case he went that night: crowded pool hall, merrymaking, smoke, pestilence, money-spending vagrancy, that was what mattered. And Ángel and Aníbal fast and furious, well organized, come what may, they never missed a beat. Greetings. Ah. The outcome: the glory of careful bookkeeping, finally, in a still-dizzying atmosphere now devoid of people.

  All on the up-and-up.

  The employees: s
mart. God was now fondling him.

  A robbery. No! Relief. Tranquility.

  So the following morning Demetrio was obliged to go to church and offer thanks. Yes, as well as beg that Renata … et cetera.

  Naturally the final pantomime would have to be exemplary.

  How long to crawl on his knees and with his arms outstretched in the shape of a cross?

  A good long while, you ass, someone from the next world might tell him with derision and aversion. We can, therefore, predict everything Demetrio did. Three laps on his knees around the nave of the church, inside, of course. A difficult act that—was it even worth it? His knees were bleeding: ow-ow-ow. He couldn’t walk quite right for three weeks. The slowness of his movements alarmed the servants, his mother, the employees of the pool hall, not to mention a vagrant or two, for nobody understood anything about optimal balance, a concept used by a circumspect curandero, and which Demetrio repeated everywhere. What! “optimal balance”—could it be flattery he swallowed whole?

  His mother tended to him daily. Nighttime ministrations were even more supercareful, for she used miniature cotton compresses and other secondary dressings. Luck before ingenuity. Treatments very early in the morning and very late at night and very who-knows-what. Nonetheless, slowness, gentleness. So-called love and so-called relief. Relief from suffering. So the scabs would form as soon as possible, the solution. Herewith we have the mother: a fly-by-night curandera, quite devoted, even, poor thing, breaking a sweat. Everything subjected to a “now we’ve got it,” which was working. That inexperienced petitioner was quite put out, however, by this stooping compliance. That ferrule discipline. And three weeks went by and still the big guy was walking awkwardly, you should have seen him half bent over every time he walked from the house to the pool hall and vice versa and nowhere else; limping sickly was the price he paid for things to go superwell. Because the pool hall, well, although it used to open at four p.m., later they decided to open at one, and Ángel, Aníbal, and Demetrio studied the possibility of opening at ten a.m. and closing at midnight—every day!, except Sundays, that is, for one mustn’t forget, not ever, the weekly Sabbath … So, here comes the reason!: how to deal with all the customers who came at all hours of the day! Many young bucks planted themselves at the door of the pool hall awaiting the happy opening, as if it were a grocery store; a whole hour ahead of time, believe it or not. And the spectacle of idlers eager to hit a few balls, to the sonorous sounds of shooting … No way around it! one day they simply had to open at ten a.m., and from then on …