Happy Families_ Stories - Carlos Fuentes [119]
“Yes.” With a blow of his hand, Reyes knocked the tray of chocolate and biscuits to the floor. “Yes! You challenged me to emulate you, and I didn’t know how.” His eyes filled with tears. “You lent me the dough to set up a bar.”
“And you got drunk making your customers drunk, you poor idiot,” Don Luis replied, using his napkin to wipe the mess of chocolate and crumbs from his shirt and lap.
“I wanted to be consistent in my vices,” Reyes said with misplaced pride. “Just like you.”
“Pick up what you knocked down.”
Reyes, smiling, obeyed. Don Luis stood, went to the desk, sat, wrote out a check, tore it from the checkbook, and offered it to Reyes.
“Take it. It’s ten thousand dollars. Take the check and get out right now.”
His brother took the check, tore it into pieces, and threw them in Don Luis’s face. “There’s no need. I can imitate your signature. Ask them in the shops. I bought everything on your signature, friend. Ask your servants. Everything I’ve bought has been with your checks signed by me.” He brought his face and his mouthfuls of tortilla up to his brother’s face. “You look confused. That’s why I’ll say it again. Signed by you.” He moved away, satisfied. “It’s an art I learned in order to survive.”
In one hand, Reyes flapped Don Luis’s checkbook like the wing of a wounded bird, and in the other, he waved a silver American Express card. “Look, brother. Life consists in our getting used to the fact that everything will go badly for us.”
5. “No, what do you mean, Don Luis, your brother is a saint. Imagine, he ordered a marble stone for my dear mother’s grave in Tulancingo. I always wanted that, boss, seeing how everybody walks on a grave without a stone, nobody respects a grave marked with little stones and a couple of carnations. And now, thanks to Señor Reyes, my dear mother rests in peace and devotion. And I say to myself, María Bonifacia, God bless the boss’s brother.”
“Well, Señor, I’ve been driving your Mercedes for what? Twelve years? And at the end of the day, what do I have? Taking the bus and traveling an hour to my house. You never thought about that, did you? Well your brother did, he did. ‘Go on, Jehová, here are the keys to your 1934 Renault. You have a right to your own car. What did you think? You’ll never ride a bus again. Of course you won’t.’ ”
“Imagine, boss, I go back to my village on Sunday, and they welcome me with wreaths of flowers saying THANK YOU CÁNDIDO. You know that on the road to Xochimilco, there’s water but no land. Now I have land and water, and my children can take care of cultivating flowers, thanks to the piece of land your brother gave us, that saint.”
“Oh, boss, I’m sorry for the bad impression of your brother I gave you. For years in my village of Zacatlán de las Manzanas, we’ve been asking for a school for the girls because as soon as they’re twelve, they’re deflowered, as they say, and loaded down with kids, and they have to go to work in a rich man’s house, like me. And now the village has a school and a gift of scholarships so the girls can keep studying until they’re sixteen, and then they leave with a diploma and are secretaries or nurses and not just maids like me, and they come to their weddings pure, your brother’s so kind, Don Luisito!”
“The complete works of Wagner. Do you realize what that means, Señor Don Luis? The dream of my life. Before I’d save enough for an opera here, a bel canto selection there . . . No, damn it, begging the Señor’s pardon, now the complete works of Don Ricardo, let’s hope I live long enough to listen to all the CDs, a gift from your brother. Don Luis, it was a lucky day when he came to live in this house.”
6. Morning after morning, Don Luis Albarrán woke with his head full of good intentions. Each evening, Reyes Albarrán came with a new, bad, and worse intention.
“I’m going to imagine that you’re a dream,” Don Luis told him with an evil look.
“Don’t hide from the world anymore, Güichito.”
“I’m afraid of unfortunate people like you. They bring bad luck.”
“We’re brothers.