by Oscar Lewis
So I began asking her to marry me. I promised to work hard and give her everything and all that. I reminded her that I had behaved respectfully. “See,” I said, “that’s what a person gets for behaving decent. That’s something you don’t even appreciate. I could have had you but I held back, because I had promised to respect you.”
So, you know what she said?
She said, “Why did you promise? Because you couldn’t! When it got right down to it, you couldn’t do a thing.”
I got so mad, I slapped her. “Now you throw it up to me that I held back? Is that what I get for being honorable?” And I slapped her again. Naturally, my male pride didn’t let me admit what really had happened.
After that, we didn’t speak to each other. Another woman began to go for me. She was living with a man and I didn’t want her, but she kept after me, until finally, when I least expected it, I had to give in.
Then, suddenly, one day María comes over to me and says “Manuel, you kept asking me to marry you, didn’t you? Well, let’s do it right now.” I was completely surprised, but I took her to a hotel before she changed her mind. What had happened was that she was jealous of this other woman and wanted to show that she could take me away.
It was obvious right away that María was inexperienced. She was a virgin and completely passive. She let herself be taken and that was that. Because of my state of nerves, I had to work hard and even then just barely made it. After that, María went back to sleep on her balcony and I slept at the café. We kept living that way for several months.
I hoped that María would change. But she was always passive, the same desperate way all the time. I don’t want to sound depraved, but from my experience, a woman should reach a certain point of excitement. Well, I tried … I prepared her, but she wouldn’t react. Sometimes even while I talked to her and worked on her, she fell asleep! That would freeze up a person, no?
I scolded her about it. “Look, María, why do I always have to be the one to take the initiative? Why can’t you be the one to ask? It’s the normal thing in a marriage. How come it has never occurred to you?” Ay, poor me! I thought it was because she didn’t love me, but she said all along that she wouldn’t live with me if she didn’t.
She didn’t complain about my impotence, though. I wasn’t always that way and besides I could disguise it. But it tortured me! Sometimes I blamed it on my brain, which was never at rest. Even when I was in the act, I wasn’t really in it. I was always thinking, or listening to music inside my head. My mind wandered from one thing to another, entirely unconnected. I felt terrific throbbings and heavy feelings; sometimes I’d think so much my head felt it would burst open. There were times when the world stopped for me and I had no desire to do anything. The street, the noise, the movement, people … were all dead for me … the flowers had no color.
When I was with María I would forget my worries a little. I tried talking to her about the serious things in life but she got bored. I was not very cultured, but at least I liked to read, to cultivate myself a bit. But do you know what interested her? Comic books, love stories, gossip … she talked plenty with other people about things like that, but when I discussed things with her, she only answered “Yes” or “No.”
Then her sloppiness bothered me. “Fix yourself up, please, María,” I’d say. “Try to be a little cleaner. You go around looking like disappointment itself, as though you had no illusions left.” She showed no interest in life. I wondered if something was wrong with her.
I was thinking of leaving María when she became pregnant. I had no intention of abandoning her now, or of giving her a hard life. She wanted us to be married by civil law (someone had told her that a child born out of wedlock develops donkey’s ears and walks in the shadow of the cross all his life). But I wouldn’t marry her because it would be a kind of treachery toward my children and my dead wife. The children I would have with her would have all the rights before the law, and my four kids would lose theirs automatically.
It was at about this time that my papá told me to take back my children. “I’m fed up,” he said. “I’m sick and tired of your kids. You’ve got to get them out of here. I can’t stand them any more.”
So I brought them to the Casa Grande, where Marta and her children were living. Marta agreed to take care of them if I gave her expense money. Well, on the third day, when I went to give her the money in the evening, I found my kids abandoned, without having eaten all day. My sister had gone off with a man, her kids and all! She left without a word and my poor children looked like hungry orphans when I got there.
That’s when I brought María to live with me in the Casa Grande. I thought she would be of use to fix the children’s food, if nothing else. My father said I could have the room if I paid the rent. When he found out about María, all he said was, “So, you’ve taken on another responsibility. It’ll be just like the other one.”
I started out with lots of illusions about setting up a home at last. Then my father insisted on sending the furniture to Acapulco, where Marta was living with her man. Consuelo came to pick out stuff, then Delila, and soon we were left in an empty room, just the four walls and us.
When Consuelo came by and saw us sleeping on cardboard on the floor, she said, “Listen, brother, I am not using my big bed at Lupita’s. Why don’t you pay me fifty pesos for it and go over and get it.”
“But, sister,” I said, “my papá sleeps on it when he goes to see Lupita. How can I take it away?”
“I don’t care,” she says. “The bed is mine. After all, I paid for it. I’d rather have your children sleep on it.”
So I paid her and went and got the bed. María and I slept on it and I put the mattress on the floor for the children. When María gave birth to my little girl, Lolita, the baby slept with us on the bed. When Consuelo saw this arrangement, she began to make a fuss.
“What’s the idea? I gave you the bed for the children, not so that …”
I got mad right away, because she was always implying that I mistreated my children. Why, I had slept on the floor all my life! And Roberto and I had been much worse off, because we didn’t have a mattress or sheets like my children did.
“Consuelo, you didn’t give me the bed, you sold it to me. I give the orders in my house … I … me … not you. Don’t come here ordering us around. As soon as I have money, I’ll buy another bed.”
Well, that one kept bothering me about the bed. Finally, I said, “Look, don’t get a hemorrhage about it. Give me back the fifty pesos and beat it, with the bed.” But she didn’t have the money, so the bickering went on. Once, she even waited outside the movies for me, and started an argument when I came out.
“You’re nuts,” I said, and I left her screaming on the corner. I guess I made her mad, because the next day she came to the house, gave María the fifty pesos, and took away the bed.
Then I made a lucky deal in the market and came home with a bedroom set.
“What pretty furniture,” María said. I thought the furniture would animate her, but she was still as indifferent and careless as ever. Wherever I ran my finger, there was dust, fingerprints, filth.
“For the love of God, woman, what do you do all day?” I said to her. “Take a rag with a little oil and polish the furniture. Try to keep the house clean.”
Two weeks later, the wardrobe door was broken. I really got mad and called her everything in the book. First she blamed my brother, then my youngest son. I couldn’t get the truth out of that woman. All I could do was talk.
“What’s the use of getting things, if you let them go to the dogs? You like to live in dirt, okay, let’s live in shit. We’ll see who gets tired of it first. We don’t have much, but at least you don’t go hungry. That’s a boon you have to thank God and me for. Lots of women would be happy just to have a man to lean on; everybody is more considerate to you, just because you are living with a man.
“Possibly you consider me too old. Maybe you feel cheated because I don’t co
me home stinking drunk and kick you awake in the middle of the night. Maybe you feel bored, María? What do you want? I don’t want to crucify you. I crucified one woman, one woman died at my side, and I swear I’d rather leave you than sacrifice you. I don’t want a slave for a wife, I want a companion. Study something, go to work, be active …”
She just listened to me. When I asked a question, she said “Yes” or “No.” I don’t want to throw all the blame on her, but if she hadn’t been that way, my life would now be radically different.
Then her family began to move in on me. That was something terrific! I have lived under the poorest possible conditions, but my wife’s family really shocked me. What happened was that her aunt and grandmother were put out of their room for not paying the rent. One of the aunt’s sons came and asked for permission to sleep there one night. So he stayed.
Then one day his mother, Elpidia, came with her other kid burning up with fever. A strong wind was blowing outside and the señora kept saying, “Where am I going to stay? Imagine, the child is sick and me having to go looking for somewhere to stay.” Well, she didn’t have to draw me a diagram, so I said she could stay until the kid got well.
María had a cousin, Luisa, who was living with her second husband. The kids from her first husband were living with them. This case is in a class by itself! The stepfather violated her little girl, a child of eleven, and got her pregnant. The mother tried to act like she didn’t know what was going on, but she knew all right and continued to live with him. Now that is one thing that is not accepted in my environment, no matter how low it is. The stepfather with his stepdaughter! Never!
Well, Luisa came to our house with the girl, who was in a bad way. The child looked like a pullet, the innocent, nothing but skin and bones. I took her to a doctor and he said she had a frightful case of malnutrition and bronchopneumonia. He didn’t know she was also pregnant! I paid for the doctor and the medicine, and they stayed at our place, seeing the poor kid was so sick.
Then the grandmother came with María’s brothers, supposedly to visit the sick kids, and wham! they stayed too. Now there was Elpidia and her two sons, Luisa and her daughter, the grandmother, my wife’s three brothers, and later, her sister, and another daughter of Luisa’s, my four children, María, Lolita and I. Eighteen of us living in one room! Later, my brother Roberto had no place to stay, so he and his woman moved in too.
Disgust, disgust, disgust, is what I felt on entering my home each day. They were spread all over the floor, day and night. They were messy, dirty people, and the house really stank. The grandmother was the best of the lot. She tried to keep herself clean, but the aunt, Elpidia, was the most shameless of all. She would sit in the corner of the kitchen, delousing her children, pulling out the bugs. As far as I could see, she never even washed her hands. She would offer me food, but how could I eat? Just to see her hands made me sick to my stomach.
María’s little sister always had snot down to her chin. The toilet smelled and they didn’t even bother to close the door when they went. The kids were always screaming, especially in the morning when I liked to sleep. What a racket! It was like all hell let loose. It got to the point where my nerves were getting sick.
My father came by every day, as always. He never said a thing, but I could see he didn’t like all those people being there. My first reaction was to run them out, but my other self kept saying, “Poor things, they have no place to go. Today it’s them, tomorrow it’s me. How can I chase them out?”
I said to María, “Ay, old girl. It’s not that they are a burden, but I’m paying all the expenses and my money is running out … the little capital I had to work with. Tell them, please, to see what they can do for themselves.”
“No,” she says. “How can I tell them to go? You tell them!”
“But it’s your family. Don’t run them out, but break it to them, find a way. It’s not fair, especially now because I am in a tanda and these people are costing me thirty pesos a day here.” My friends in the market organized tandas, so we can have money to operate with. Every week, about ten of us each buys a ticket for fifty pesos and we take turns getting the five hundred pesos in a lump sum. So there I was, paying in fifty pesos a week and supporting all those people!
But María never told her family a thing. The truth is, she was happy with them there. She never looked happier. I got more and more nervous, but I didn’t tell them anything either. My money ran out completely. It got so I asked my father to take back my children because for a long time María was using the expense money to feed her family and gave my kids only black coffee and bread. My poor kids! María and her family gave them a rough time.
I had absolutely nothing. I had to sell the bedroom set, and take María and Lolita to eat at the café on credit. The first one to leave was María’s grandmother, because she was the most considerate. She realized something serious was going on with me, and she took María’s sister and brothers with her. I didn’t chase out the others, but they left one by one, because I had nothing more to give them. It was really a triumph to get rid of that aunt! They had been with us for two months, I was flat broke and deeply in debt by the time they left.
My life has been a tangle of inexplicable emotions. I seem to be one of those morbid persons who enjoy torturing themselves. I curse myself with all the power of my soul. I swear there have been times when I have cried at night, alone in the café. My life has been so sterile, so useless, so unhappy, that, por Dios, sometimes I wish I could die. I am the kind of guy who leaves nothing behind, no trace of themselves in the world, like a worm dragging itself across the earth. I bring no good to anybody; a bad son, a bad husband, a bad father, bad everything.
Looking back over my life, I see that it was based on a chain of errors. I have treated it frivolously. I have been content to vegetate, to survive in a gray twilight, without effort and without glory. I waited for a stroke of luck … for a million pesos, so I could help my father, my children, my friends in need. I couldn’t do things on a big scale, so I did nothing at all.
But now I feel a little more self-confident and more reasonable. I would be proud to set up a modest home, to educate my children, to save my money. I would like to leave something behind me, so that when I die everyone will remember me with affection.
It sounds laughable, but if I could find the appropriate words, I would like to write poetry someday. I have always tried to see beauty, even among all the evils I have experienced, so that I wouldn’t be completely disillusioned by life. I would like to sing the poetry of life … great emotions, sublime love, to express the lowest passions in the most beautiful way. Men who can write of these things make the world more habitable; they raise life to a different level.
I know if I am to be constructive I shall have to fight against myself. More than anything, I must win in the fight against myself!
Roberto
IT AS ON A NIGHT IN DECEMBER, 1952, THAT I WENT TO JAIL IN VERACRUZ. You see, I happened to be in a whore house, passing the time, having myself a little fun. I have always been a lone wolf and there isn’t a place I won’t go to. I had been there quite a while, drinking in the company of a lady. We were at the bar when I saw a guy named “Chicken” Galván come in. So what? … just another one of the local boys, as far as I was concerned. I found out later that he was the son of a high state official and went around accompanied by armed police, which was why he was so arrogant. He would insult and humiliate anybody he wanted to. It was easy for him to talk rough, because he had protection.
It happened that he came over to the bar and stood behind me. I was drinking and turned around. He stood there looking at me, so I looked at him, very natural, right? I didn’t say a thing to him and he didn’t say anything to me. We just looked at each other.
Well, that’s how the pique began, as we say in Mexico. But I wouldn’t take it from the very beginning. They played a danzón, which is the music I like best, and I asked the girl to dance. “Sure, why not?” After al
l, she was with me, wasn’t she? Along about the middle of the number, this boy walked up to me and said, “Step aside, I’m going to dance.”
“O.K., but right now I’m dancing with her,” I said. “Wait until the number is over.”
“What do you mean, ‘Wait!’ In the first place, don’t call me ‘tu.’ And in the second place, I am going to dance, because I feel like dancing.”
“Look, I call you ‘tu’ because that’s the way you talked to me, and, secondly, you are not going to dance with her because even though she is a prostitute, I am not going to let her go, just like that, and that’s all there is to it.” I respect any woman who is with me and I see that she is respected, I don’t care what her social status is.
Well, then the fun started. He let me have one with his right that still hurts every time I think of it, and down I go. That did it! There was no way of getting out of the argument now, was there? Because, if there is anything I’ve got, it is that I never run away from a fight. I got up, and two or three of his cops came over and wanted to grab hold of me. What this guy had fixed up was that once the argument got serious, down to fists, the cops would step in, grab his enemy and he would begin to slug him to his heart’s content. But he said, “No. Leave him be! I can take care of this bastard all by myself.”
The police stepped aside. And so we mixed it up, but rough. I once used to box and he was not much of a boxer, so, frankly, I was getting the better of him. All of a sudden, he pulled a gun and threatened me. I don’t scare when I see a weapon. Instead of getting scared and backing off, I go absolutely blind mad and try to beat them to a pulp.
He said, “Today you die, you son-of-a-whore.”
“Let’s see about it. Anybody can pull a pistol … that’s easy … but it’s something else again to shoot it … you’ve got to have guts.”
“You’ll see right away,” he says.
Then I pulled my knife and wounded him. I can’t say it was a mortal wound, but I did wound him. I stuck him three times, twice in his body and once in the hand.