Happy Families_ Stories - Carlos Fuentes [19]
Lucas with his face of a psychic reader of tea leaves, very wise with his short brown hair and the tremulous ears of an amiable bat.
And poor little Mateo with pimples on a skin that promised to clear up as soon as he gave the green light to his recent appetite for women.
And in the three of them, the poorly disguised frustration of having to follow in my footsteps and go to the seminary.
“How well you look,” Lucas said to me. “You’ve lost weight and gained some polish at the same time.”
“It’s obvious the seminary has agreed with you,” added Juan.
I looked at them with amused eyes. “No seminary. I’m studying law. I’m going to be an attorney.”
There was a stupefied and at the same time joyful silence.
“But Marcos!” Lucas exclaimed.
“Forget it. Brothers. Listen to me. I’m offering you a way out.” One by one I observed them. “You, Juan, come this year to Guadalajara, enroll in engineering at U.G., and then you, Lucas, say nothing until it’s your turn and follow me to Guadalajara because I have a feeling your field is economics and not mortmain. And you, little brother, don’t give away the game with your impatience. Make love to the girls in the village; here, I’m giving you my supply of condoms, and you go have yourself a time in the brothels here in Los Altos. Then tell me where you want to study, and I’ll arrange it for you.”
I looked at them very seriously. “But it’s our secret, agreed?”
And the four of us, on that unforgettable night of brothers, swore like panthers promising one another not to press the law and to let everything happen without wearing out our luck.
4. Years later, Don Isaac Buenaventura opened the padlock on his trapdoor and went down to the basement. There he knelt in front of the perpetual lights that illuminated each portrait. That of Angelines, his wife. And that of his father, the Cristero Abraham Buenaventura.
And then he said to them, “Don’t blame me as if I were guilty of something. The fires have gone out, and the dogs no longer are barking. Well, before you eat the taco, you have to measure the tortilla. Am I remembering a past that never was? You are my witnesses. That past did exist. The good Christian does have a rosary around his neck and a pistol in his hand. Death to the impious, the sons of Lucifer, the teachers who are tarts. Now who will defend us, mother of the forsaken, father of all battles? And against whom do I defend myself? Are there any Masons left out there, or Communists? My life has been in vain? Ah, no, it hasn’t, I deny it, now I realize that thanks to Marcos and Mateo, Juan and Lucas, I, Isaac Buenaventura, became a rebel again like my father because I prepared the rebellion of my sons, I told them, ‘Let’s see who has the balls to rebel!’ And the four of them were rebels, the four of them were better and more independent than me, the four of them deceived me and left me like Policarpo in the song, who doesn’t roll over even in his sleep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A crucifix of steel. Dogs that bark at the moon. Fires that have gone out. The Church a great corpse. And I, Isaac Buenaventura, with the scaly mustache and a face more wrinkled than a glove and the pride that my sons turned out rebellious, exactly the way I wanted them to be . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Long live Christ the King who performs these miracles for me, for the ways of the Lord are mysterious, and not in vain, Angelines, did I make the sign of the cross on your breasts with the blood of your newborn son Mateo. And not in vain, Father Abraham, did you refuse to drink water before you were shot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . And let the grates creak, the dogs bark, the bells in the village ring in alarm, and the mares in heat and the mares giving birth all moan, because I’m still here guarding the earth, proud of my sons who didn