Lost in the City: Tree of Desire and Serafin (17 page)

“What are you doing here?”

“I went to sleep.”

“But why here?”

“Because I got so sleepy. I've walked all over these streets looking for my papá. Is he with you?”

Alma was looking at him as if she had caught Serafín's feeling of being deeper and deeper into a dream.

“He was, but he's gone. We were living together in a house near here. I still live there.”

She took his hand and made him stand up. She took him through the fog along streets Serafín knew by heart.

“And it's been so cold, in the middle of December, Serafín,” and she pressed his hand as if trying to give warmth to his whole body.

“Where did my papá go?”

“Don't worry, it's near here. In this same neighborhood. But he has a business going. Let's get you something to eat and I'll tell you about it.”

They turned into a street edged with lines of dwarf trees and soon there was the house. A poplar covered with frost caught the pale light from the distant streetlight on the corner. The house had a rusty railing finished off with arrow tips and a garden with symmetrical trees trimmed as if by scissors. So this was the house, Serafín thought, looking at it with eyes that were now wide-awake; he had passed in front of it so many times. Alma took a single key out of her apron pocket and opened the door quietly.

“We have to be very quiet because the people who live here go to bed at nine o'clock and any little noise will wake them up.”

They entered through a garage with two cars like hearses and went to the rear of the house. The room was tiny, with a cot, a chair, and some rough shelves for clothing. On the cot there was a small, yellowed, blurred photograph (obviously cut from a larger one) of a very thin man with white hair and a listless smile.

“It's Cipriano, my papá. You remember my papá, don't you, Serafín?”

16

It was Cipriano
who realized how the people were exploited. One morning anger overwhelmed him and he began talking to rouse them. How hard do you work, and how much money do you make, and how are you doing at selling corn? Do you realize how much of your life is used up growing corn? Look at how prices have gone up. Add it up. He saw injustice in all of it, this Cipriano. They're taking advantage of you, sucker. Don't you see? What do they offer you and what do they pay? In the cantina they turned their back on him because he would just make their drinks bitter, especially the ones who had just arrived and were not drunk enough yet.

But he did draw people to him, so much so that one night a crowd of at least half the village gathered outside his house. They
even brought infants, so they could hear those words that were going to be repeated later on, like echoes.

He invited them one by one.

“On Sunday, after the seven o'clock Mass, I'm going to talk about your problem here in my house. Everyone's problem. But since I'm going to talk especially about you, it's better to have you come.”

They said when the Municipal President found out about it, he only shrugged his shoulders and clicked his tongue.

“No one's going to touch him,” he said. “No one will go.”

But they did go, many of them.

Cipriano was tall and tough, and that helped him when he spoke in public. He had presence, as they say. He lived in the outskirts of the village, in a house of wood that he himself had built. He knew how to build, cultivate the land, and weave sombreros. Always alone, except for his daughter, and with a pile of books that he had been given here and there over a long period of time. They even said he had written some articles under another name occasionally for a newspaper in Mexico City, but that was never confirmed.

They also said his daughter was not his, but belonged to a poor prostitute, who was beaten to death by a bunch of policemen because she had rejected one of them. Cipriano, who for some strange reason knew her, claimed her body and the child. He buried the woman and was left with the child, who was then already a good ten years old and already giving promise of being as pretty as she would be later on.

.   .   .

Serafín remembered one night when he and his papá went to visit Cipriano. He was weaving one of the sombreros that his daughter would later sell in the market. He had finished the crown and was starting on the brim, adding new fibers.

“Working with your hands is the best way to rest from the books,” he told them agreeably, but without real pleasure in seeing them. He invited them in to sit down and went on with his work.

“I can't offer you any tequila because I don't have any,” he apologized.

“I imagined that, so I brought a little,” Serafín's papá said, taking a bottle out of his knapsack and putting it on the table, which changed Cipriano's forced pleasantness into open disgust.

“Well, you'll drink it alone because I don't drink,” he said dryly.

“If it doesn't bother you . . .”

“Even if it does bother me, it can't be helped.”

But then, as if he felt sorry because he had been abrupt, which was not usual with him, he said,

“If you'd like something to eat, I have tortas with
nopal
and
frijoles
. How about you, Serafín?”

“Thanks, we've already eaten,” his papá said quickly, cutting off the acceptance in Serafín's mouth.

The light wavered outward from a large tallow candle on a ledge. In a corner there was a straw sleeping mat with unraveled edges, and nearby a hammock where Cipriano's daughter was swinging. It was there Serafín got to know her although he did not see her face clearly as she went back and forth.

“How come you're getting the people together on Sunday, Cipriano?”

“You'll see.”

“Man, give us a hint,” and Papá offered the bottle of tequila again, which Cipriano again rejected.

“It's the time for sacrifice.”

“What kind of sacrifice?”

Cipriano's eyes were on his work as he used a needle to tear the palm leaf into thin fibers.

“You're really stubborn, Román. You can't wait until tomorrow? Or did you come to set something up for a friend?” His eyes locked briefly into Papá's, who had to turn his away and look at the bottle of tequila. “Don't have anything to do with the people in power, Román. They always demand more than they give.”

“What do I have to do with that? If anyone here has stood up to the people from the government, I'm the one. I came to see if I could help you, but if you don't trust me, that's the end of it.”

“I only said it just in case. We have to distrust even our own shadows. If I tell you anything, you'll spread it around, even
without meaning any harm, and by tomorrow, everyone will know and it will have already fizzled. So isn't it better to keep quiet?”

“All right.”

“Don't be annoyed. Excuse me if I misjudged you, but we're dealing with the destiny of Aguichapan and lots more. If you really want to help, tomorrow you'll have more than enough opportunities.”

“Whatever you propose, you know I'll pull with you, Cipriano. So it hurt me that you took me for a squealer.”

“My plan is up here,” Cipriano said, touching his forehead lightly. “It's the result of my whole life and all I've read. If someone in the government finds out what it is, they will come and kill me. But that's not important; the tragedy would be if it should frustrate the possibility of salvation for all.”

“If it's like that, forgive me for coming here to pester you.”

“Look, if my own mamá on her death bed asked me, I would not tell her, and that says it all.”

“And I tell you that you can count on me for anything that will help me get out of this dark hole I'm stuck in.”

More than anything else, Serafín remembered Cipriano's bony hands, with veins standing out in very dark blue: veritable rivers with branches, tributaries, deltas.

.   .   .

And in order to say what he did not want to talk about earlier, Cipriano called the people together the following night. There was a dull buzz of voices until he appeared on top of a wooden bench, thinner and with all of his nerves taut, like guitar strings. Outside the house he put pine torches; burning and spitting with the odor of resin, they created a strange atmosphere, both festive and mysterious. He stopped from time to time for brief gulps of air, which then came out as living words. He asked the same questions as always, but to all of them together and also as if to each one, making it seem like a doubly strong interrogation. What were they doing there? Who were they working for? Why believe in God if it meant letting their children die of hunger or, in most cases, grow up hungry, without education, condemned to be slaves for life, as they
themselves were. Yes, slaves: you have to call things what they are. How many hours did they work every day? And why, for whom? Of the promises made, how many have been kept? And they should look at their calloused hands, yes, they should look at their hands, worn and tired from working the earth. And to feed whom? How much of what they raised was for them, for their children? Did they know that in the large cities there were people who made great fortunes they could live on without working for the rest of their lives, just from selling again what they grew?

And suddenly he was quiet, which intensified what he had said, letting the words float by themselves around the people for a while. Then someone raised a long forefinger and asked:

“And what are we going to do to change things, Cipriano? You haven't told us that.”

“Be ready for the sacrifice.”

And again the silence, like the hum of bees frightened by smoke.

“More sacrifices?” someone dared ask. Cipriano definitely expected it because he said emphatically:

“The true sacrifice.”

“Which, Cipriano, which one?” several people asked at the same time.

“The one of thinking first of others instead of ourselves.”

The wind fought with the flames from the pine torches.

“Come on, spit it out without so much blahblahblah,” someone in the back of the group yelled.

“A hunger strike. But a serious hunger strike, until its final consequences. And not here, but in Mexico City itself, and in front of the President of the Republic, in the middle of the Zócalo. Yes, sir! We'll see who will keep us from dying of hunger, right there in the center of injustice, as some say! We'll see if they can stifle our silent scream! If we have only our poor lives to save our children, we'll give them!”

That was when applause rained down on Cipriano, along with cries and insults. One woman carrying an infant even dug her elbow into her husband's side because he applauded.

“You're a madman!”

“Long live Cipriano! I'm going with him!”

“We'd better arm ourselves and arrive shooting!”

“In that case our sacrifice would be futile,” Cipriano said. “How long would it take them to finish us off with the arms they have? The way it is, they're going to have to endure our long agony.”

“But what's the point?”

“So they'll listen to us. So they'll hear our lament and the lament of the ones that came before us and the lament of the ones who will come after us. So they'll find out how deep our pain is. Who hears us here? Nobody. But they'll listen to death. I'd like to see what the newspapers say when hundreds of humble men from the country begin dying of hunger in the very center of the city. Even the tourists and the foreign newspapers will talk about us.”

“What are we going to ask for?”

“Nothing. And everything. Our protest will make them wake up once and for all.”

“They'll put us in jail!”

“If there are enough of us, no.”

“You're really crazy, Cipriano.”

“Why continue life in this filth? If it falls to us to be martyrs, well, so be it.”

“Yes, yes!”

“Most of us are as damned as if we had already died. Isn't it better to offer to humanity what little we have left?”

“What if we rot in the Zócalo and they don't pay any attention to us or give our children anything?”

“It's because of doubts like those that we're the way we are! Justice will be established in the land of men of faith, not fearful men.”

“Yes, yes. We have to help establish justice!”

“But our children will be abandoned!”

“Can they be more abandoned than they are now, with us or without us? Have you seen the future before them, even if we live a hundred years? Ask yourselves and then see if it's worth the sacrifice to offer them another world, not only to our children but to everyone's children.”

“Yeah, by dying in the Zócalo we're going to change the world? Don't kid yourself, Cipriano!”

“Our sacrifice is just a seed, but it will give fruit that will have countless seeds.”

“If people start to commit suicide, there won't be anyone left in the world.”

“Or it'll change the situation for the ones who are left. In them perhaps we'll see the divine light.”

“How will we go?”

“On foot. That way the newspapers will start talking about us before we get there.”

The women gathered to the side in a group, talking anxiously. A really old man said he couldn't survive the trip on foot, would they let him go on the bus even if it was just to die, but they decided unanimously they should go together or not go at all. They began to disperse with a dull buzz of voices, and a few wrote their names on a list that Serafín's papá offered to carry around. Not many, but a good forty. The night closed in again when Cipriano, now alone, put out the torches and went into his house.

17

When the time came,
only thirty of those forty decided to go. They were a small group of men waving good-bye, like a squad of unhappy recruits—perhaps because from the beginning they were imagining how they were going to suffer hunger later. Cipriano in front, guiding them, gesturing and talking constantly, throwing out the words he had kept to himself during his years of silence.