Lost in the City: Tree of Desire and Serafin (11 page)

“Come on,” the girl's mamá said with a sparkle from the sun in her smile.

“The water's fine,” Serafín's mamá said.

“Timid kids.”

The sand was shifting under Serafín's feet. He saw when the girl climbed on a big, fat rock and when she tried to jump to another, like the first one and only a step away. She held out her little hands as if she were going to take flight and then fell on her back with the water caressing her, peaceful, indifferent. They carried her out, her eyes fixed on an indefinite point in the sky, her very white legs dangling like threads.

For a long time Serafín looked at her in the coffin within the circle of candlelight, surrounded by the hushed murmur of prayers.

“Look at her for the last time, my son, because you'll never see her again,” Serafín's mamá told him, wrapping the “never” in a sob as she held a handkerchief to her mouth.

She was wearing a white dress and had her hands crossed over a crucifix on her chest. Serafín tried to imagine what her closed eyes were seeing and felt it was something sweet and far away. He could almost see it himself, but what was it? He looked for it in her eyelids, in the soft lines of her lips, in those hands like wax. What was it like to see death?

In the moment before he left the coffin, something like an answer came to him, a slight ringing in his ears, an unknown flavor in his mouth, a figure that was forming in the swaying smoke from the candles and coming up from the box. He was certain she would continue to be the same, wherever she was, and that her face would always keep that tranquil serenity of lilies.

3

The passenger next to him
was an old man with shriveled cheeks and a humpback, who was doubled over himself. Was he sleeping? Even though Serafín noticed his eyes were open, he wondered if he was asleep because nothing else in his face showed any sign of life. What did he look like? A scarecrow. But Serafín was looking at him with such
questioning eyes, the old man turned and smiled, which made him seem even more like a scarecrow.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hello,” Serafín answered.

Without shifting position, tossing his words toward the open area formed by his thin, half-open legs and occasionally looking at him sideways, the old man added,

“Are you going to the city?”

“Yes.”

“What for?”

“To look for my papá.”

“Do you have any relatives there?”

“No.”

“Where are you going to live?”

“I don't know. First I'm going to look for my papá.”

“And in the meantime?”

“Well, I'll see. Wherever I find myself.”

“You won't find anyone there.”

“I have to go.”

“Do you have any money?”

“Not very much. Some that was left after paying for the bus.” Serafín patted his pocket to be sure it had not fallen out when he got on the bus.

“You're dead.”

“But I have to go, Señor. Really.”

“OK, go, then . . . go to hell!”

And he said no more. As if he had gone to sleep with his eyes open. Serafín felt a strange shiver, more in his bones than in his spirit or on his skin, and did not know if it was because of the old man's curse or because the farther the bus went, the farther his mother was left behind. He leaned up against the window and pressed the plastic bag against his chest, as if in doing so, he could grasp a little of what he was losing. He looked through the window to have something to do, but without paying attention to anything, overcome by what was happening inside him, with a great desire to cry but confident that if he did, everyone in the bus would turn to look at him, pointing at him, perhaps laughing at him. So when the
countryside became cloudy and he caught a salty tear in the corner of his mouth, he lowered his head like the old man beside him and raised the bag until it covered his face. What would they look like, the two of them bent over the same way? What would all those people in front of them think?

That was what always happened to him. Mamá would scold him and he would listen to her scolding with tight lips and then go somewhere to cry for a while. Only a little while, and he went back ready to put up with more scolding. Something happened with tears, although they were very embarrassing, especially in front of strangers. But all curled up like that, at least they would not see him. The memory of that cold kiss he'd received from Mamá overcame him suddenly and brought on a long sob. He imagined her staying behind, standing on the highway at the same place where they'd been waiting for the bus, her figure becoming smaller and smaller until it was a meaningless point, lost in the shimmer of the coming day. He did not see Mamá, he could not see her once he stepped onto the bus, but he was sure she had waited a long time. And he imagined how she would have seen him just as he would have seen her, the images blending together, both going unavoidably farther from each other, each one becoming smaller and smaller for the other one.

.   .   .

He closed his eyes, and sleep began to drag on him. A dream that came from the night before and did not let him awaken completely in the morning. He had gone to bed early, but as he dozed off, he saw Papá come back. He heard it distinctly when he opened the door, and then saw him, taller than usual, enormous, in the opening of the doorway. As tall and dark as the shadow made by the swaying of the lamp. Smiling, with the night coming in behind him, letting in a cold wind that made Serafín shiver, though it did not interfere with his joy in seeing Papá finally return, so he pushed back the covers and sat up on the mattress.

“Papá!”

And it was then he realized it was not true. He'd dreamed it, or better said, he'd almost dreamed it because he had not yet slept.
The door was closed, no one had entered. A bit of empty night filtered through the window, without Papá.

“Go to sleep now. You have to get up early in the morning,” Mamá said, sitting at the table as if watching over Serafín's sleep the last night she would be by his side.

“I saw Papá come in very clearly, Mamá. Very clearly.”

“I also see him every once in a while, but it's pure imagination. If he'd really come in, we'd know for sure he'd come.”

“I was sure he came in.”

“But there's no one. Look.”

“Yes.”

“Go to sleep now.”

“And you, Mamá?”

“I'm going to sleep in a little while. I was just waiting until I got sleepy.”

He was not going to ask, but bit his lip and dared.

“Were you looking toward the door when I saw Papá come in?”

“I looked at you, and saw you see something I didn't see.”

“So nothing really happened?”

“Nothing.”

“It was only a dream?”

“You had hardly started to sleep. Those dreams are the trickiest. Now go to sleep.”

Obediently, he closed his eyes, and a multitude of images came to him. A young Mamá laughing with Papá. Mamá putting a flower in her hair in front of the mirror. A young Papá kissing her on her neck. Papá drinking and talking to Mamá in a voice rising in tone until it hardened into a smothered yell. Mamá listening to him in silence from the corner, where there is a hearth of bleached clay, stirring the pot of coffee, blowing on the coals to revive the embers, or going to tuck in one of Serafín's brothers, the smallest one, who is wriggling like a little snake on a mattress close by. And Mamá saying, I'm dead tired, going to the bed—a metal one, the only one in the room—and undressing in front of them, while Papá takes a drink of tequila, his eyes gleaming. He stands up, caresses her, and whispers something in her ear, laughing nervously. But Mamá rejects him, and Papá returns to the table to talk to himself. He talks
and talks in a monotonous voice that ends up lulling Serafín. At times, when he is angry with Mamá, he yells and hits the table with his fist, threatening to destroy everything, everything, and Serafín never understood very well what that everything included. But sometimes those quarrels finished with Papá waking him up and asking him to keep him company because he felt so lonely. Serafín would sit drowsily at the table, pulling the quilt around himself and holding his face, his sleepiness, in the palm of his hand, and Papá would tell him, as before, about the trips he had made and how Mamá did not love him, kept him suffering here, and he would put his hand between his legs as if to comfort himself.

4

A hard jolt of the bus
woke him up. He looked all around and rubbed his eyes. The old man was sleeping beside him with his head thrown back. Serafín thought if he were dead, he would not look very different. His sharp chin stuck out in front and from his thin lips came a snore that was a muffled whistle.

How long had he slept? The sun already seemed high and there were no clouds in the sky. Occasionally the dense, deep green hills revealed the wavy line of the horizon.

By now he must be far away, and going farther all the time. Where would it all end? Who would be there? In the town's plaza, for instance, that now would be beyond all those hills, lighted by a different sun. He had crossed it so many times, without thinking about being there. Just crossing it. The shadow of the jacaranda trees was falling on the benches of polished wood, and the old people were sitting in its shelter to watch the fountain with three jets and the people passing by. Those old folks. He saw them . . . Would they be there now?

What did he dream? He only remembered a street, or something that was more like a tunnel of oaks or poplars making lines in the sunlight. And someone was running there. Yes, it was himself. His figure came clearer as he remembered the dream. He was in the city, on a street in the city—that was the feeling—and he was running to meet someone. He was going to find him but he bumped
into another man. A man who stopped him and held him up in the air. An old man, skinny and tall . . . He pressed tightly against the window when he realized he had dreamed about the old man in the next seat, and about the city. Why, since he had just met him? Why had he gotten into his dream? He blinked and felt again the same shiver he had felt when he got on the bus. It seemed that the worst thing was to sleep, as always. Why was sleeping always the worst thing?

.   .   .

“And if I do it, Mamá? Ask them to let me off and take a bus going back? It's going to be easier now than later. And Papá has to come back someday, doesn't he? And if not, at least I would be with you. Why should I leave you to go look for him? I wouldn't be alone. I would be with you, even though not with him. What I would like is for the three of us to be together. The way it is now, I don't have either of you. I'm not with you or with him. And I'm not going to have either of you when I get there—that place they call the city.”

.   .   .

The only specific information he had about the city was from a certain Felipe Hurtado. He remembered him very well because he and Papá got drunk together one night and that was all they talked about.

“It's hell there, Román. I swear it's hell itself. You've only gone for a visit and then come back. But stay a little while to look for work and you'll see. For weeks I walked around like a fool, knocking on every door I could find, asking for work or at least that they would offer me a lousy tortilla—that's how broke I was. A tortilla, damn it, I'd take anything, and nobody gave me a thing, Román.”

“Hell doesn't exist,” Papá answered, missing the whole point, simply because he could not bear a religious reference.

“As far as I'm concerned, God can . . .” he said one night when Mamá and the children were praying in front of the image of Jesus with His Heart in Flames, and although he did not dare say the whole sentence, he made an obscene gesture. Mamá only lowered her head and pressed her lips together, as if the prayer might have
choked her. She took Serafín's hand, because he was the child closest to her when they were praying, and said, let's continue, full of Grace, the Lord is with You . . .

“Didn't you hear me? I said, as far as I'm concerned, God can . . .”

But Mamá interrupted him, turning around and looking at him with eyes burning as if just lifted from the embers, leaving him petrified in the middle of the room.

“Be quiet! Or go away so we can finish praying!”

Papá was very drunk, and when he quieted down, even his eyes cleared up, as if Mamá's words—like part of a prayer—had awakened a sudden feeling for the sacred. But the reaction was worse. He burst out laughing and went to urinate in the doorway, there in front of his wife and children, who continued praying. He leaned his body back as if bending over double and threw a spray upward, straight up, while continuing to laugh. Serafín could not forget how he laughed while urinating and Mamá kept on praying, Blessed art Thou among women, and Blessed is the fruit of Thy womb, Jesus.

“Go to Mexico City and you'll see that hell exists, no shit,” Felipe Hurtado replied, taking a drink of his warm beer.

“Well, look, Felipe, as far as I'm concerned . . .” Papá answered, beginning to drag his words, as if they had to run an obstacle course before they got to his lips.

“You're talking just to talk, Román.”

There was a long silence in which they just drank, leaning over the pine table.

“I think . . . sometimes I think hell would be better than here,” Papá said a moment before his head fell from his hand, rolled down the length of his arm, and hit his forehead on the table, with a noise that made Serafín think of a rock falling from a high place and splitting in two. Papá's head split in two, Papá without a head, Papá divided, never again the same old Papá. That night Serafín waited, watching for Papá to stand up and go to bed, with his head whole, as if nothing had happened. Before Felipe Hurtado left, he took his jacket off the spike—a jacket of green corduroy that he had brought from the city and that he showed off every Sunday strutting around the plaza—as he muttered,