The Revolutionaries Try Again

by Mauro Javier Cardenas

  —

  Doctor Drool.

  Mister Microphone.

  Economista.

  Abogado.

  Good flight?

  Yes, ingeniero.

  Good to hear, arquitecto.

  Dígame licenciado.

  Licenciado.

  Gracias. Muchas gracias.

  Antonio and Leopoldo feign a demure stroll toward each other, shaking hands like portly congressmen. They palm each other’s back, as if dusting each other, and embrace.

  Missed me?

  With all my heart, etc. How’s the village? Swelling visibly?

  Leopoldo steps back to appraise Antonio’s black suit, exaggerating a professorial stance.

  That’s a great shirt, Leo. I favor the French cuffs, too. Pink’s still your best color though.

  That suit’s two sizes too small, Drool. Must be a new fashion. Flypaper for pickpocketers? You must be boiling in there. Last time I spotted a black suit was at Bohorquez’s funeral.

  Bohorquez’s dead?

  Out whoring. Got shot. No one told you?

  No one told me. And you didn’t tell me we were meeting at Don Alban’s, either.

  Surprise? Surprise!

  —

  At their spiritual retreat in Playas, during their sophomore year at San Javier, inside a cement structure that looked like a boarding school / beach house that had been abandoned in the 1970s, Father Lucio chastened them with a phrase that, because it was hilarious and true and shameful, and because the chapel was dark and crammed and they had to sit too close to each other on foldable beach chairs, none of them would ever forget, and what Father Lucio said that night was that with the same hand that holds the cross of christ you jack off, yes, that’s exactly what he said, fellows, we couldn’t have asked for a more punnable phrase, with the same hand that holds the cross of christ you jack off, and what Antonio also remembers of that retreat house is the sand spilling inside the cement patio, the sand creeping under the gates that led to the beach, as if trying to escape from whatever was outside, which was just a beach streaked with algae where Father Lucio had allowed them to play soccer before Mass, the wind blowing sand on their faces, the late afternoon surprisingly cold and bleak, although Antonio didn’t feel cold or bleak — pass the ball, nerd monkey — and aside from Father Lucio’s infamous phrase what Antonio will remember of that spiritual retreat is that after their evening Mass, disregarding Father Lucio’s warning that no one was to leave their rooms upstairs — stay alone with the lord, Drool — Antonio escaped from his room and evaded the Dobermans that had been unleashed by the priests and snuck inside Leopoldo’s room, where late into the night they argued about what god wanted from them and we have a responsibility to him, Leopoldo says, the lord has chosen us, Antonio says, the Dobermans barking outside Leopoldo’s room as Leopoldo raises a glass toward the light and says we must be transparent like this glass so that god’s light can pass through us.

  —

  Did everyone read the parable of the prodigal son? Noooooooooooooo. Yeeeeeeeees. Who wants to read it for us? Check, check, the Microphone to the microphone. What did you call me? Leopoldo will read it for us. I can declaim it from memory unlike the Drool here. Uuuuhhhhhh. Quiet down, children. One day the son of a wealthy man demands his inheritance. Just like Nebot, profe? Leaves home with it. Squanders it. Oh like El Loco in Panamá, profe? Whosoever interrupts the Microphone again will have to run up and down the stairs twelve times. Someone unplug him, we already know this parable. If you already know it tell it to us, Carlitos. Tell us the one about the broom and your mom, Carlitos. Fine I’ll tell it. Says to himself I’ll go back to Father and say to him Father I have sinned against you. Sets out on his journey home. Father I’m recontra chiro. His father runs to him and embraces him. Bring forth the best robe, his father says. My son was dead and is alive again. My dad would have said you might be alive now but this belt’s going to make you dead in less time than it takes to say parable of the don’t take my money again, Son. My father would have said if you were dead, and are alive again, that means you’re a ghost, and since Grandma’s afraid of ghosts, you’re going to have to sleep outside, Ramiro. All these years I’ve been slaving for you, the oldest son complains to his father, and you gave me nothing. I asked for nothing. Your brother was dead and is alive again, his father says. He was lost and is found. The end. So the young one’s the sly one and the oldest the sucker, profe? Check, check, Cain to the microphone. Enough of this nonsense, children. Leopoldo assigns homework. Antonio steps aside and takes in the sights atop the hills of Mapasingue. Far down on the stairs that lead down to Guayaquil, a man’s hauling up his improbable fruit stand; his daughter’s dragging a straw sack; and an old white haired woman’s climbing hundreds of stairs, and far behind her there’s the rooftops and bustle of the city, which seem impervious to the thousands of tiny houses surrounding it, single room houses built from whatever could be scavenged: caña, cardboard, hoods of trucks, cracked bricks, desiccated palms like on the wall on Antonio’s immediate right, which has been patched with a CFP poster from the times of Assad Bucaram. When the white haired woman finally reaches them, she stops and examines the children, as if she has climbed all the way here to check if they are her own. Antonio tries not to stare at her but it’s his duty, he thinks, not to overlook any of this. She has wrinkles on her face like knife scars. Her parched hands are swollen, fisted into lumps. As she fans her scorched feet with her purple skirt she examines Antonio and Leopoldo severely, as if demanding an explanation as to why they’re there. And what business did we have there? To say: blessed are the poor, for yours is the kingdom of god? To say: it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of god? To say: from here we will project the good intentions that will sustain us for years? Move along madre, Don Alban says, no bothering the catechists. Catechists? They’re with the Jesuits, the children say. Ah, she says, bowing in Antonio’s direction. May god keep you, Father. May god keep you.

  —

  The first course Antonio enrolled in after transferring to Stanford from Santa Fe Community College was the Political Economy of Latin America, a course in which the assigned reading exceeded the number of books he’d ever read in English up to that point, a course in which one day the renowned political science professor asked her approximately one hundred students what was the most stable form of government, and perhaps because Antonio was actually Latin American, he raised his hand confidently and did not wonder why no one else was raising their hands when the answer was so obvious, standing up in a room full of Caucasian American students who would one day attempt to set policies for Latin America and Antonio said dictatorships, Professor Karl, which apparently wasn’t the right answer because everyone laughed (everyone he knew in Guayaquil had been in favor of León Martín Cordero’s strong arm policies because that was the only way to get things done, just as everyone he knew had been in favor of Pinochet because look at Chile now, although later Professor Karl pointed her students to charts that demonstrated that during Pinochet’s dictatorship Chile’s inequality had actually risen, a chart he actually shared with his mother so she would stop embarrassing him with her nonsense about Pinochet’s economic miracle that he’d once parroted at San Javier — how could my mother turn to yoga and meditation to improve herself and still espouse such retrograde views about that murderer? — would it surprise you if I tell you Professor Karl’s course was the kind of course I had always imagined you and I would one day take together, Leopoldo? — you didn’t have anyone with whom to pace up and down the hallways of Stanford to debate matters of great importance to the future of Latin America? — those Caucasian American students would have called our debating style pompous populism, Leo —), and what Professor Karl said afterwards to dismantle Antonio’s asinine answer he doesn’t remember anymore, although he does remember that later someone spread the rumor that he was the son of the dictator of Ecuador, the leaden sarcasm of the
original remark frittering away upon repeated transmission so that by the time it reached his dorm, the rumor had acquired the undertones of a concealed fact, and because of the expensive clothes Antonio liked to wear (there was no way he was ever going to tell anyone at Stanford that he was on financial aid and that he’d purchased those flashy clothes with a credit card he never paid off, just as there was no way he was ever going to tell anyone that perhaps the reason he hadn’t applied to any graduate programs in public policy and hadn’t returned to Ecuador to run for office with Leopoldo right after college was that he didn’t mind having a pointless database job if it allowed him to buy the kind of clothes he couldn’t afford when he was growing up in Guayaquil), and because he didn’t dismiss the rumor about being the son of the dictator of Ecuador, on the contrary, he performed the bored confidence he thought his dormmates expected from the son of the dictator of Ecuador — let us not speak of my past, gentlemen — everyone came to believe Antonio was indeed the son of the dictator of Ecuador.

  —

  You’ve worn your most expensive black suit in the humidity and the heat merely to witness Leopoldo’s envy, Antonio thinks, although perhaps another interpretation could be that, given that he’d hastily shuffled through his wardrobe options in the closet the night before, he’d actually picked his black suit at random, although he knew he’d hastily shuffled through his options not because he didn’t care about what he was going to wear for his first meeting with Leopoldo but because he needed to fabricate the evidence that he hadn’t picked his most expensive suit to elicit envy, or that he hadn’t picked his most expensive suit because he knew you couldn’t find anything like it in Ecuador, and yet all along he’d known Leopoldo would know why he’d worn this suit. It wasn’t the first time he’d flashed his meager advantages to his friend. Leopoldo had grown so used to it that he’d turned his reaction into a skit, countering Antonio’s flaunts by acting like a father resigned to the pettiness of his wayward son. That Antonio equated resignation with approval allowed him, twelve years after not seeing Leopoldo, to do this to his friend again. He could tell Leopoldo that even at a considerable markdown he’d barely been able to afford this goddamn suit. That month after month he consumed every cent of his paychecks at high end department stores. That to afford orange Italian nylon pants he had to limit his grocery shopping to Chinese noodles and ground beef. That because of his shopping habits he only had enough savings to last him six months. But how to say this to Leopoldo without patronizing him? Even if he found a way he knew he was likely to betray himself with an ostentatious aside.

  —

  MICROPHONE: Doctor Drool.

  DROOL: Mister Microphone.

  MICROPHONE: Economista.

  DROOL: Do you mind if we start over?

  MICROPHONE: Reenact your mom and dad in the act of Drool conception?

  DROOL: Greet each other differently.

  MICROPHONE: You’re asking if we can be something other than what we are?

  DROOL: I’ll start. All these years I’ve been imagining this reunion and here we are at last, Leo.

  MICROPHONE: You would never say that. You would punch me in the shoulder, feign a demure stroll toward me, shake hands like portly congressmen.

  DROOL: I wish we would’ve gone to Stanford together, Leo.

  MICROPHONE: I haven’t thought about you in years.

  DROOL: We could’ve spiked our Who’s Most Pedantic with courses on phenomenology, econometrics, nonretrogradable rhythms.

  MICROPHONE: Only what ends continues, pig.

  DROOL: I would’ve been happier staying in Guayaquil with you and arguing with you about everything.

  MICROPHONE: Yet another half truth.

  DROOL: I’m sorry Leo I . . .

  MICROPHONE: You really think you have to confess all this to me?

  DROOL: Everything’s implicit and not implicit.

  MICROPHONE: Do you feel better now?

  DROOL: Momentarily. No.

  MICROPHONE: How many times do you have to reimagine a heartfelt reunion until it replaces the memory of our paltry reunion?

  —

  Let’s shut the door.

  Aren’t we expecting company?

  They can knock.

  They?

  Julio. Others will join later.

  Why is that lastre even a part of this? Bet you a sopa de bollo Julio won’t show. Popcorn’s out hunting for hoyos / so pay up for the sopa de bollo. Does that door even shut?

  Of course it does.

  Leopoldo tries to shut the door but the frame’s too big for the door and the door doesn’t have a handle. After much fumbling Leopoldo settles for the least ajar option, changing his mind and searching for a chain and a lock behind the counter. The business of locking the door is a clattery one. Leopoldo can’t find the key to open the lock so through the hole in the door handle and the hole in the wall he fastens the chain like a bow.

  Is this some kind of secret meeting?

  Allow me to select a seat for you, sir.

  Antonio sits and Leopoldo playacts at searching his pockets for his proclamation but of course he’s kidding because clearly he doesn’t need a piece of paper to proclaim anything, although he does need to pace up and down the cramped length of the place as if deliberating about matters of great importance.

  Still flatlining the currency at the Central Bank, Leo?

  We’re gathered here today, Leopoldo begins, but of course he’s kidding. Our country is at a crux, he says, the annals of history, he says, checking the door as if worried he will be found out. Leopoldo’s speech goes on in this vein for quite some time.

  Bravo, Microphone. You’ve convinced me. Again. Now tells us about our plan.

  The plan is for Julio to run for president. Leopoldo and Antonio would act as his invisible advisers. Say what you want about Julio but the guy has charisma. Everyone likes him. Plus the price of tuna is up. He can fund the campaign with the surplus of his father’s tuna fish empire.

  Very funny, Microphone.

  And yet Antonio can tell Leopoldo is not kidding. At San Javier Leopoldo often found ways to include Julio, the oldest son of one of the wealthiest men in Ecuador, for years a close friend of Antonio, or at least Antonio had thought so. Antonio isn’t about to admit he doesn’t mind Leopoldo has included Julio. Just as he isn’t about to admit he’s relieved Leopoldo’s plan isn’t bolder.