Swift as Desire (10 page)

The problem was that this gave Lucha time to be alone with her thoughts again and to dwell on what had happened at the market. She blamed it all on her lack of money. If she had had sufficient funds, she wouldn’t have had to accept don Pedro’s offer of help. Financial constraints caused all kind of embarrassments. Right now,
this poor woman, with whom she completely identified, was suffering because of a lack of money, just as she had been at the market. She didn’t like experiencing poverty, being exposed to it. It made her feel vulnerable and helpless. It terrified her to be dependent on a poor man. The world was made for the rich. Poor people had no opportunities. Now she understood why the Mexican Revolution had happened. Being poor was horrible. And if it hadn’t been for accompanying Júbilo all over the country, she could never have imagined the conditions under which thousands of Mexicans were living. She knew Europe better than she knew her own country, and it hurt her now to discover its misery. Eating a bowl of soup at home takes money. Producing the fruits of the earth costs money. Traveling takes money. Building a house requires money. Installing telegraph lines takes money. Communicating with loved ones means money. And when a woman depends on someone else to get money, she can’t make her own decisions. He who pays, rules. Those with money determine what, when, and how much a peasant eats. What kind of corn he plants. Even when the chickens should lay their eggs! It didn’t seem fair to Lucha that one had to pay to send a telegram. That someone else could control contact between people; that only those who could pay for it could use a form of communicating that should belong to everyone. All this was bothering Lucha, and many other things, because she wasn’t accustomed to anyone telling her what to do with her life. The only thing that made her happy again was
that Júbilo had just finished helping the stallholder and they could now go home.

Being close to Júbilo was an immediate comfort. By his side, all her problems disappeared, there were no insurmountable obstacles. Júblio had that gift. Lack of money immediately became unimportant. He didn’t need cash to caress his wife’s hand, to look into her eyes, to kiss her passionately, and to enjoy his erection. As soon as they got home they rushed into the bedroom to make wild love. Lucha was in the process of enjoying the way Júbilo’s penis caressed her as never before, so she was greatly surprised when he brusquely separated from her.

“You feel different, Lucha. You’re not the same.”

Lucha’s heart nearly stopped. She felt she had been found out. She didn’t know how, but she suspected that Júbilo already knew that she had accepted three centavos from don Pedro. She averted her eyes so Júbilo wouldn’t see her bewilderment, and she rapidly began to search for a believable excuse, but she only managed to stammer:

“Different? How?”

Júbilo didn’t answer her. Instead he touched her belly with the palm of his hand and studied it. Suddenly he let out a loud laugh that filled the whole room.

“You’re pregnant,
mi amor!
You’re pregnant!”

He began to cover her with kisses. Lucha was stunned. It was true that her period was a week late, but since it was only such a short time she hadn’t thought anything about it.

“How do you know?” she asked.

“I felt it. I can’t explain it, but you have a different energy.”

It was the first time Lucha had heard anything like that. She knew Júbilo had especially sensitive hands, but she couldn’t imagine his powers extended that far. Yet she wanted to believe him. It wasn’t that implausible. And once she thought about it a little, she decided in fact it was more than likely. Perhaps you could compare it to the way, by putting one hand on a patient’s stomach and tapping gently on it with the other, a doctor can make a diagnosis from the way the sound echoes off the internal organs. It was possible that Júbilo could hear the way her womb echoed.

Lucha stopped doubting him, and immediately accepted that she was indeed pregnant. She had to believe it. That was the only explanation for the dizziness and nausea she had felt when don Pedro had kissed her hand. It was the only thing that made sense. And seen from that perspective, what she had done didn’t seem so wrong. A pregnant woman’s craving was sufficient excuse to salve her conscience. After all, if she hadn’t satisfied that craving, she would have risked her baby being born with a face like an olive. With tears in her eyes, she hugged Júbilo and together they celebrated the wonderful news, unaware that fate had already chosen them as victims of misfortune.

D
ON
J
ÚBILO WOKE UP PANTING
. For the last few days he had been having a recurring nightmare. He was diving at the bottom of the ocean, without an oxygen tank, but breathing as if he had one. His movements were slow and rhythmic. The water was warm and pleasant—a few brightly colored fish accompanied him as he swam. A soft light allowed him to see into the distance. Suddenly, he heard a murmur of voices, followed by laughter. The sounds were coming from the surface. Júbilo lifted his head and observed the bright sunlight filtering through the water, making it sparkle. At that moment, for no apparent reason, he recognized where he was. It was the place where he had first learned to swim. He recognized the waters as those that had washed over the beach in front of his parents’ house so long ago. Júbilo was certain of it. And the laughter he heard in the distance belonged to his grandmother, Itzel; his mother, doña Jesusa; and his father, don Librado. Júbilo wanted to join the group to share in their laughter. He tried to swim ashore and get out of the water, but his
feet were anchored in the sand. Try as he might he couldn’t move them. Then he started to shout, but no one could hear him. The sounds that came out of his mouth were trapped in air bubbles, but when they reached the surface and burst, no sound was released. Júbilo was growing desperate. He shouted louder and louder, but things only got worse. Water began to enter his lungs, he began to drown, and nobody could help him. Fortunately, this time his daughter Lluvia had arrived to awaken him.

“
Papi
, your friends are here. What’s the matter? Did you have a bad dream?”

Don Júbilo nodded his head. For a month now he had been practically unable to speak. He had to make enormous efforts for a few tentative sounds to issue from his mouth, but they were unfortunately totally incomprehensible to those who heard them.

Faced with this situation, Lluvia had immediately begun to search for a telegraph machine. The first place she went to had once been a telegraph office, but when she asked about a transmitter they nearly laughed at her. The telegraph transmitter, as such, had disappeared years ago and no one knew where she could find one. Then it occurred to her that perhaps she might be able to find one at Lagunilla, the flea market, but after several fruitless visits she gave up. She had no choice but to focus her search on antiques shops. She had to visit quite a few, both in the capital and in the provinces, before she found one at last.

When she finally had the telegraph transmitter she immediately wanted to show it to her father, but then she hesitated. She didn’t want to do anything that might upset him. As soon as her father saw it, he would surely want to use it, and it might turn out to be very frustrating for him to send messages that no one could understand. Her children then informed her that a software program existed that allowed one to enter information into the computer via a telegraph transmitter, in Morse code, instead of through a regular keyboard. The computer would then “translate” the information from the telegraph into spoken words and display them on the monitor. That way everyone would be able to understand what her
papá
was “saying.” Lluvia thought it was an amazing invention and she had immediately ordered a copy, but it would take nearly three weeks to arrive by mail. So as not to waste any time, she decided to learn to use the telegraph machine herself in the meantime, or at least to take a basic course that would allow her to understand without the computer the first words her father would “speak.” The first person she asked for help was don Chucho, her father’s childhood friend. But unfortunately he was unable to help, because his wife had had a stroke and had to be hospitalized.

Next she called Reyes, her father’s old friend from work, to see if he could teach her Morse code. Aurorita, her father’s nurse, was also eager to learn: she didn’t want to be left behind. She had been don Júbilo’s nurse long enough to have formed a solid, affectionate relationship
with him. Over the years don Júbilo had become her close friend, her confidant, her adviser. Thanks to his wise advice Aurorita had learned how to handle the crises in her marriage better, to laugh at her problems, and to look at life positively. She was so grateful to don Júbilo that she would do anything she could to somehow repay the affection and support he had selflessly bestowed on her. So now Aurorita devoted the same attention and interest to Reyes’s lessons in Morse code as she did to reading to don Júbilo, taking him out for strolls in his wheelchair, massaging his limbs, and feeding him.

The third member of the group of students was Natalia, the night nurse, whom everyone affectionately called Nati. She attended to don Júbilo during the night shift and just like Aurorita she had established a warm relationship with him. So much so that sometimes Lluvia was awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of laughter coming from her father’s room, even though she slept with her door closed. Don Júbilo’s jokes flew twenty-four hours a day, and Nati’s fresh laugh celebrated them with unmatched enthusiasm. She was the best companion for his sleepless nights. She had a wonderful sense of humor and a truly unique capacity for tenderness. She was a short, round woman who had adopted don Júbilo just as if he were a small child: changing his diapers, giving him baths, and lulling him to sleep by softly singing his favorite boleros and maternally caressing his forehead.

Nati and Aurorita were important members of the trio of “don Júbilo’s women” who now desperately missed
his comforting words, his advice, and his stories. Don Júbilo’s vocal cords, unbearably tense because of the medicines for his Parkinson’s disease, had stiffened like steel bars that imprisoned his words inside him. So Lluvia, Nati, and Aurorita anxiously awaited the moment those words would be liberated from the prison that kept them knotted in his throat.

And so the telegraph machine appeared as the great savior, the great liberator, the great consolidator of hope and affection. And Lluvia, who for so long had resisted the use of technology, now could only bless it, since because of it her father would again be able to communicate with the world. But Lluvia’s problem was that she didn’t belong to the computer generation. Her children knew how to use the contraptions, but she didn’t. She was fifty-one and a very active sportswoman. She didn’t feel old at all. But when confronted with the world of computers, she discovered that she belonged to the old “on/off ” generation, which only knew how to turn appliances on and off, and was light-years away from the computer skills of the younger generation. Her inability to handle the complicated machines created an unbridgeable generation gap. With difficulty, Lluvia had learned how to operate a VCR, and she did so in a very rudimentary fashion. She had no problem watching a movie on video, but she could not program the apparatus so it would automatically record a television program. And the operating instructions didn’t help one bit. It seemed to her that in order to understand them, one needed a
doctorate from Harvard. So whenever she bought a new electronic device, instead of unnecessarily complicating her life, she simply asked her children to show her how to operate it, and stored the instruction booklet in a drawer.

But now life had conspired to force her to try to understand how a computer functioned. And it was driving her crazy. She didn’t understand anything. “Uploading” and “downloading” information seemed foolish to her. From where did one download it? And where was it uploaded to? Where was it stored? When one uploaded information through a portal, where did it go? Perla, her daughter, took on the task of explaining it all to her: that the Internet linked one to an international network of users and what “downloading” meant. That idea she did like. It was beautiful to feel that via the Internet one was connected to the whole world. The Internet, seen from Lluvia’s inexperienced point of view, showed its most pleasant side, and appeared totally inoffensive. Of course, neither Perla nor Federico dared to tell their mother that, for example, the neo-Nazi movement was using it as a means to organize criminal acts and that with a few clicks anyone could obtain sufficient information to construct an atomic bomb. There was no real need. There were always going to be people who used technology toward humanitarian ends and others who chose the opposite. But why talk about that. Their mother already had enough to worry about, just learning how to use the computer and Morse code at the same time.

And if Lluvia was encountering difficulties, well, just think of poor Aurorita and Nati. They had never used a computer in their lives, and when they first put their hands on the keyboard they felt as strange as the first man on the moon must have. But their love for don Júbilo was enough to overcome any obstacles, and Lluvia was surprised by the learning ability the two humble women possessed. Perla had a lot of fun teaching them, but she believed they really didn’t need to try so hard. All they really needed to learn was how to operate the computer. She saw learning Morse code as unnecessary. What was the point, if the computer was going to translate Morse code anyway? But don Júbilo’s women argued, with reason, that they were doing it in case the computer malfunctioned or was down for some reason. They didn’t want to have to depend on technology.

Their training was concentrated. They decided to meet in the evening, after Aurorita finished her shift. They waited for don Júbilo to eat dinner and fall asleep before they started class. Don Júbilo had a hospital bed with rails on the sides that served two purposes: to avoid accidental falls and to aid turning the patient over. From one of the rails, Lluvia hung the baby alarm that she used when her grandson slept at her house, allowing them to listen to any movement her father might make, although he usually slept soundly for about two hours, giving them time for their telegraph classes.