Happy Families_ Stories - Carlos Fuentes [49]
She says all this to herself, and you recriminate her, and rightly so.
Violence appeared some time ago in Doña Medea’s house. Sorrow treacherously knocked on her door. With warbling knuckles and a goldfinch’s voice. Pure farce. She already carries violence inside herself, with no need for everything that has happened.
Violence at home.
And violence on the street.
Sorrow everywhere.
3. That’s why the old woman moves around the markets and the food stands, that’s why she chats with marketwomen and policemen. That’s why she listens to the music of Agustín Lara and José Alfredo Jiménez. In order to believe that life in the neighborhood has a solution. That it’s the same today as it was yesterday. And if it isn’t, then to exorcize the threat she feels on her skin and in her bones, everything that exists here and that she doesn’t want to admit, as if a good yellow mole would be enough to establish joy and serenity in life. As if, by naming them, the murmuring of a bolero could chase away all the evils of existence . . .
Well, it turns out that Doña Medea Batalla is a woman with antennae, and she knows very well that not only unpleasant but downright wicked things are going on. Behind the spotless facade she has erected, there is a good deal of filth and suffering and crime and resentment. She knows that if some have gotten away from here, others have remained, making a virtue of necessity, whether it’s the crook who finds a way to get a rake-off from misfortune or the scoundrel on the bottom who decides to be smarter than the scoundrels on top.
“Will you do a job for me?”
“A rival in love?”
“No, an enemy in business.”
“Tell your son to take the tied-up dog for a walk.”
“That’s the signal?”
“Walk the mascots.”
“Fear doesn’t ride a donkey.”
“Zero tolerance?”
“What do you mean? Zero remorse.”
“What did you say? I can’t hear you.”
“Clear up your voice with some mallow tea.”
“Ah, now I understand you.”
“Really?”
“One hundred percent.”
“Just don’t torture yourself.”
“Sure. Progress is slow.”
“Isn’t it?”
“And never walk under trees at night.”
“It’s driving me crazy.”
Of course she understands all this. That’s exactly why she is the way she is, does what she does. To live a life different from everybody else’s. To believe that even though her example of charitable availability benefits no one, at least it creates something like an aura of kindly normality in a neighborhood with no standard but evil.
“You know that already.”
Which is why on that night, moved by a strange mixture of reasoning and presentiment, Medea Batalla leaves her poor house, which no one else has entered since her son left.
What’s going on?
Why is everyone leaving their houses, why are businesses closing, why do all the traffic signals stay green? Why are the streets flooded with people, with shouts, with howling sirens?
She knows the people in the neighborhood. She just hasn’t known them so enraged. The neighbors move forward, men and women, they move forward like a single tiger, they move forward with no order but with the strength of a groundswell. They move forward and surround the police. The police threaten with raised fists and voices without timbre, muffled by the growing uproar. People tighten the circle, you aren’t the police, you’re kidnappers, we’ve come to protect you, from what? We can protect ourselves. They told us there are drugs here, you people are drug traffickers. Look, you crooks in uniform, we rule ourselves here, the fewer cops the better, we know how to protect ourselves. The circle is closing, and Medea Batalla, without wanting to, becomes part of the wave. They pull her, they push her, they shove her aside violently, they flatten her like gum against the moving wall of the entire neighborhood surrounding the five policemen who protest with less and less energy. There are drugs, we’re going to search the houses, we’re going to protect you. We can protect ourselves, you’re not police, you’re kidnappers, you’re cradle snatchers. Zero violence, Señora, zero remorse,