After Elias

by Eddy Boudel Tan

  We didn’t have much money, but she always made sure I had a nice suit to wear to church. It’d often be a size too large, but I would still outgrow it within the year. When the suit no longer fit, she’d take me to the store and buy me another.

  This was my life. Attending school in the day. Watching my father repair cars in the evening. Going to church on the weekend. The same cycle every day, month after month, year after year.

  Of course, it wasn’t quite as miserable as I make it sound. There were many warm people in our lives, and celebrations happened often. Mexico has a way of bringing laughter and colour to even the saddest corners. It was not all bad, but I wanted more. Back then, I dreamed of living in the city.

  I imagined moving to DF — Distrito Federal, what you English speakers call Mexico City. I read about the athletes and celebrities who lived such glamorous lives there. I pictured myself shopping at the markets and sipping coffee in the cafés of Coyoacán. There, in the capital, I could be who I was meant to be.

  I never believed that it would happen though. My mother and father had never stepped foot in DF. They would tell me about the gangs and the crime. Even the violence I romanticized. Anything would have been better than the monotony of my life in that forgettable town.

  I was sixteen when I first fell in love. At least, I thought it was love at the time. My father hired a boy. Business was good, and he needed help I couldn’t give him. I had lost interest in fixing cars when I realized my father was grooming me to become a mechanic. To take over the shop. To become him.

  The boy was nineteen. His name was Miguel. He had hair that was black like a raven and shoulder blades I swore could sprout wings. He looked the same every day: white T-shirt stained black with grease, long hair pulled back in a knot. Another monotonous part of life, but this time it was captivating.

  He was very kind to me. I would help him in the evenings, handing him tools and keeping him company. He would often join us for dinner. During the weekends, I’d linger near the shop when I knew Miguel would be taking his breaks. We’d spend them together, drinking sodas and playing cards.

  He taught me about the stars. I was surprised by how much this grease-covered mechanic knew about astronomy. After the sun set, he would show me the constellations and explain their mythologies. One night he pointed out a very bright star he claimed was the planet Venus. He told me it was named after the ancient goddess of love and that, like love, it would consume a man in flames.

  Everything changed the day after I turned seventeen. We sat in a car he’d been repairing in the shop, eating rice pudding left over from my birthday celebration the night before. It was evening, and we had decided to take a break while my parents were in the house.

  I told him about my dream of moving to the city. He urged me to go. Not only was he the one person who believed I could do it, he encouraged me to. He didn’t see there being a reason to fear the violence or the uncertainty.

  “Escape this place,” he said. “Do whatever it takes. Go as far as your feet will take you.”

  I asked him to come with me, but he had to stay in that awful place to care for his mother, who was very ill. “I dream about leaving here every day,” he said. “Sometimes I wish I had wings so that I could fly far away.”

  Then I took him by the hand. I don’t know what compelled me to do it. Something must have given me courage. Before I knew what was happening, his lips were on mine. Gently at first, then less so. He smelled like motor oil and sweat. He tasted like sugar. We pulled off each other’s shirts, and my hands roamed over the firmness of his chest and the softness of his skin.

  One second I was being consumed by the flames of this boy, the next he was pulled violently away from me. At first, I thought he had fallen out of the car door beside him. Then I realized he was being dragged onto the ground. There was screaming and shouting. Miguel scrambled to his feet, and I watched my father hit him across the face, knocking him back to the floor.

  I was paralyzed for a second before I jumped out of the car and ran to Miguel’s side. “Don’t touch him!” I screamed at my father, who was shouting things I’ll never repeat. Blood dripped from Miguel’s lips. He looked at me with the saddest eyes, then got to his feet and ran away, out of the garage and out of my life.

  That night changed me. My mother cried and prayed, her rosary clutched close to her heart. My father spewed his disgust, accusing Miguel of corrupting me, violating me.

  When they became calmer, I told them that I loved Miguel. I knew what they would think, but I didn’t know how they’d react. Even so, I wasn’t frightened. I was angry. Miguel didn’t violate me. They did.

  I thought my father would be the one to reject me, but it was my mother who delivered the final blow. This woman I loved said something to me that broke my heart.

  The next morning, they gave me some money they had saved and told me to leave. I couldn’t return home until I repented for my sins. They would not support a son who was in open rebellion with god.

  • • • • •

  “Elias,” I said, squeezing his hand. “I’m so angry for you.”

  The sun had slipped behind the edge of the earth, but the glow from the city’s electric lights obscured the stars that looked down on us. The ocean crept closer to our feet.

  “Faith is blind,” he said, “and it can also be blinding. I don’t hate them for what they did. They knew no better. Like I said, they were simple people. Besides, who knows what would have happened had they not thrown me out? I’d probably be rotting in that crumbling place.”

  “Sometimes a terrible thing can be the only catalyst for change.”

  “I think you’re right.”

  “Even so, how could parents do that to their only son?”

  “Remember this whenever you find yourself resenting your family,” he said. “There are worse things than a dismissive father and a self-involved mother. They love you. They’ve proven that, haven’t they?”

  A chill rippled across my skin as my body stiffened. I pretended not to hear his question.

  “What happened next?”

  • • • • •

  I took the money my parents offered and stuffed everything I owned into a backpack. I left without a word in the morning.

  The streets of town seemed even greyer than usual that day. Uglier. I couldn’t wait to leave, to know I would never see them again, but my first priority was to find Miguel. I was going to convince him to come with me. When I arrived at his home, I learned he didn’t want to see me. He wanted nothing to do with me. I screamed his name from the street, but he wouldn’t even come to the door. I never saw him again.

  I spent that night on the floor of the bus station. I had enough money for a ticket to DF and probably three weeks of food if I was careful. I boarded the first bus in the morning. It was crowded and the drive was long, but I didn’t mind. I had never felt so free.

  My first few weeks in DF were a blur. The city was a living, breathing animal. Its veins and arteries connected every limb in the form of sun-seared pavement. Its blood was the constant rush of vehicles and humans, sustaining the vibrancy of the city while choking it with exhaust fumes and garbage. There was no heart. The entire concrete body pulsed as one entity.

  It was both intoxicating and overwhelming. I felt like an outsider, even more than I did in my dusty hometown. I waited for the locals to identify me as alien, as someone who didn’t belong, but nobody seemed to notice. Nobody cared. I was both nobody and everybody.

  I scoured the city for days, looking for work and somewhere to live. I visited every shop, restaurant, and apartment building I could find, travelling from one corner of the city to another. Nothing. It took one week before I found hope.

  Today, Condesa is one of the most fashionable districts in the capital. Its streets are lined with chic restaurants. Its residents have youth and money. Back then, it was different. Like much of the city itself, it was a more dangerous, less prosperous place than it is today.
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  I was walking along a quiet street when I stumbled upon a narrow bar beside a park. It was in the corner of a four-storey building made of brick, and there were tables and chairs scattered along the sidewalk. Inside the bar, the brick walls were painted black. The concrete floor was painted black. Even the counters were painted black. Dozens of dim, bare light bulbs hung from the ceiling at irregular angles throughout the black room, like stars in the night sky.

  The man tending the bar was old, but he was built like a buffalo. He had thick white hair and skin tanned like leather. I’ll admit I was intimidated, but I found the courage to ask him if I could speak to the manager. He examined me slowly and seriously. Then he smiled, transforming his entire face, and said in heavily accented Spanish, “You’re looking at the manager. You’re also looking at the bartender, the accountant, the dishwasher, and the owner.”

  The man was Canadian, but he’d been living in Mexico for many years. In Canada, he was John. In Mexico, he was Juan.

  For the first time in a very long time, it felt like my luck was starting to turn. The head bartender had decided to move out of the city just a week prior. He used to live in an apartment directly above the bar, which Juan rented out. Not only was the job available, but the apartment as well.

  It seemed too good to be true, but of course it wasn’t going to be quite that easy. My mother and father didn’t drink. I had never mixed a cocktail in my life.

  “Listen,” Juan said, “I’m going to give you one chance. It’s a quiet night. Man the bar until we close so I can see what you’re made of.”

  I was nervous, but I did my best. Juan sat at a table for most of the night, sipping mescal and watching me with amusement on his face.

  Finally, it was closing time. I didn’t feel very confident. I had broken two glasses and one guy told him I must be the worst bartender in town. When the room was empty, Juan told me to take a seat at his table. He looked me up and down, from my head to my feet. Then he asked me one question: “Why did you come to this city?”

  I answered honestly. “To be free.”

  It must have been the right answer. He took a chance on me. Even though I had never tended a bar in my life, he gave me the job. Even though I had barely a coin to my name, he leased the apartment to me. I earned neither of these things. This was an act of kindness, and it changed my life.

  The apartment was small and humble. Besides the bathroom, there was only one square room with a stove and refrigerator in a corner. There was one rectangular window that looked out onto the street and patio tables below. There was one bare light bulb in the centre of the ceiling, although the street lamps outside flooded the room with yellow throughout the night.

  It was a simple place — just one of everything I needed to live comfortably — but to me it was paradise. Living in the city, in a home of my own, once seemed like an unattainable dream. Yet here I was, independent and ambitious, with a room that belonged to nobody else but me.

  Juan and I spent much of our time together. We would meet downstairs in the bar every afternoon to prepare for opening, then work together until closing. I would tend the bar while he would chat with the customers. Another bartender would join us on the weekend. Gloria was a cynical, sarcastic woman in her thirties who seemed like she was born to get people drunk.

  I was surprised by how much I enjoyed spending time with Juan. He lived in the apartment across the hall from mine, and I would often hear classical music coming from within. Some days he would knock on my door and invite me to join him for lunch or a trip to the market. We soon became friends.

  I learned he was once a pilot. He had always dreamed of flying as a child, and he applied for aviation training as soon as he was old enough. Within a few years, he was travelling around the world, piloting airplanes that carried hundreds of passengers. He told me incredible stories of his adventures during layovers in faraway places. A romantic rendezvous or two with women in Paris. Drinking snake’s blood with gangsters in Bangkok. Waking up on the beach in Rio, reeking of cachaça and covered in horsehair.

  I listened to these stories, captivated. I’d never thought about what it would be like to fly. I’d never dreamed that I would ever travel by airplane or see the world outside of Mexico.

  Late one night while we enjoyed a quiet drink after closing, I asked him what it felt like to fly.

  “Like I’m free,” he said.

  Juan would often ask about my family and where I came from. I would always find a way to dodge his questions or change the subject. That night was different. I told him about my poor town with the crumbling streets. I told him about my dull father and my devout mother. I told him about Miguel.

  By the end of my story, I was sure he would send me away, like my mother and father did. Instead, he put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Do not let your past determine your future.”

  “And what about you?” I asked, feeling bold. “On the day we met, you asked me why I came to this city. What’s your answer?”

  His face hardened, and I was scared I’d crossed a line. He glanced to the side, thinking, before turning to me with an expression I’d never seen before. I could only describe it as how my mother used to look when she confessed, a mixture of shame and surrender.

  “Sometimes distance is the only cure,” he said. “This city gives me what I need — a place where nobody will remember me when I’m gone.”

  Humans are impossible to satisfy. Once we achieve one dream, we set our sights on another. We always want more. This time in my life was the happiest I had ever been. I had a home that I rented with the money I earned at a job I had become good at. These things had seemed impossible just a few months earlier. Now that I had them, I wanted more.

  I had been living in DF for one year when I began to dream about the world. Despite the immense sprawl of the city, it suddenly felt very small. I realized how much more there was beyond Mexico. I started to fantasize about the places Juan had described to me. The canals of Amsterdam. The skyscrapers of Hong Kong. I wanted this life he had lived twenty years ago.

  Every Monday evening, the only night of the week the bar was closed, I would go to the same grassy field near the airport. I would lie on the grass and gaze at the sky. It was often the colour of burning sand at this time of night, just like it was above my ugly town.

  I would watch the planes glide over the city, ascending and descending in streams that never seemed to stop. I imagined the places they were flying to and arriving from. Places with exotic names. Places with mysterious people.

  At first, I reprimanded myself for thinking I would ever be able to see these places. It was a foolish notion, a childish daydream. As the days and weeks and months wore on, the idea seemed less impossible.

  I had been living in DF for two years when something happened that would change my life again. It was just another ordinary night: the bar had closed, and Juan and I were cleaning up.

  I was laughing at something Juan had said when all of a sudden two men walked through the front door. They were clothed in black from head to toe. The hoods they wore covered their faces. They each had a gun, one pointing at Juan, the other pointing at me.

  “Give us the money!” they shouted. We were too stunned to move at first, but then they screamed again, “Give us the money!” I dropped what was in my hands and stumbled to the cash register. One of the men instructed Juan to go to the back room. He knew about the safe.

  The man kept his gun pointed at me, shouting. He was impatient. I couldn’t think clearly. Finally, my fumbling hands were able to get the register open. The man told me to get to the ground, and I put my hands over my head. He came behind the bar and started grabbing the money.

  I was crouched on the floor — it was sticky with spilled liquor — when the deafening sound of a gunshot rang throughout the black room. I froze. I thought it was me, that I had been shot. There was shouting. Then I heard the two men run out the front door.

  I climbed to my feet, slowly. My ears w
ere ringing. My hands were shaking. But I was alive. There were no bullet wounds.

  I looked around the bar. It was so quiet, so peaceful. Besides the mop and dish rags that had been dropped on the floor, nothing seemed out of place. Everything looked as it should.

  I called out to Juan. There was no answer. I called out his name a few more times, more quietly now as I made my way to the back room. There, I could see why he didn’t respond.

  Juan lay on the floor. The pool of blood underneath him expanded slowly, so red I couldn’t believe it was real. I just stood there as the blood crept toward me. Soon it would cover the entire floor.

  The door to the safe stood open. It was empty.

  When the police arrived, they found Juan’s gun on the floor beneath a desk. They concluded that he had reached for it while the intruder was distracted with emptying the safe. The gun flew from Juan’s hand when he was shot.

  The sun began to rise when the police left, bringing with them plastic bags of evidence and Juan’s large, limp body. Once they were gone, I closed the barred gate and locked the door.

  I spent that morning mopping up the blood. It was already beginning to darken and harden on the floor. I thought this would have been taken care of somehow at a crime scene, but nobody came to wash away these remnants of death.

  The next few weeks were a haze. I would wake up every morning like it were just another day, as though everything were normal. Then I would remember what had happened. My apartment was so quiet, so lonely. There were no longer voices coming from inside the bar. No shadows or light. No clinking of glasses or laughter from the patio tables. Just silence and darkness.

  Then one day I received a phone call. The man told me he was a lawyer. He needed to meet with me. It concerned Juan.

  I met with the man the following day. To my surprise, I learned he wanted to discuss Juan’s will. Juan had no family. He had revised the will just three months before his death, as though he had sensed the end was near. Everything he owned was to be passed on to me. It included the deed to the bar, the two apartments, and more money than I could ever dream of possessing.