Almost Never A Novel

38


Oh my, the queue. We wish to emphasize the number of people looking for a job. More than twenty-five were counted. All men, and Demetrio requested solid references from each: a letter—signed? the name of the reference, and, if he lived in Parras (rather than some nearby locale), precisely where. Sometimes he was swayed by summary impressions; an agreeable smiling face, a placid voice, mild manners, and other such niceties. When someone struck a chord, he was asked to return that afternoon. More revealing exchanges ensued, a deeper digging into the details. That is, to be more precise: in the morning there was a queue and in the afternoon there wasn’t. Three days were sufficient to find someone who might fit the bill. He liked three people, so he focused on them. Next step: inquiries: find out where the reference lived? Go there. Take the trouble. Talk to him, and in each case this was done. A scrupulous mechanism for the selection of the most virtuous. He would have liked Renata to be with him, an already official wife with a good eye, that is: a vast switch of dimensions; women, their premonitions, the notion that they are never wrong. He conducted his investigations laboriously, but the two young men he picked, in the end, seemed to have been sent to him by Providence. Consider Demetrio’s lucky star, perhaps for a time hidden behind clouds, or consider the hopeful prayers in the church, the penitence so well enacted, or, also, let’s remember that it was high time things began to go well for him, in any case these two young men: as the days went by, Ángel and Aníbal, overflowed with industriousness. In fact, they were willing to work more than twelve hours a day, even on Saturdays and holidays, for a quite paltry salary. What joy!

As for Doña Telma, she made less of an effort selecting her servants. Naturally she made sure they were not young, preferring grown women doggedly devoted to the drudgery of domestic duties: washing, sweeping, mopping, cooking, each chore performed to the utmost and with serious intent. No, there was no queue, but there was a high frequency of knocks on the door in response to the more or less arresting announcement the dear lady hung in one of the windows facing the street. A high frequency of questions lasting about four hours on one day, a sufficient span of time to say this one and this one. Modesty was the telling sign, servants should not know how to either speak well or string together a long (elaborate) sentence, far less two, the worst would be if they could connect two ideas. Horrors. Intelligent—what for? Obedient: yes!, like absolutely noble burros. Results in a trice. Without gratuitous strife. It was never okay to argue, or more specifically: when an applicant argued even a little she thereby disqualified herself. Hence we can say that Doña Telma spent little more than two hours choosing two servants (stout middle-aged women, single—how fortunate!), who would be her daily companions and we say this because she had a room for them with two beds. Extraordinary accommodations. Doña Telma, nowise prudent, did not ask for detailed references regarding who, in fact, Amalia and María Fulgencia were, she took her impression from their looks. No, she did not investigate. She did not go to talk to their references, who did exist and lived nearby, a question of walking ten blocks, maybe a bit more. No, nothing but trust, understood pejoratively. Better, therefore, to put her trust in God and Saint Jude Thaddaeus to ensure that her intuition functioned to a tee, whereby: the proof: their behavior when at work. No order she gave brought a scowl to their faces. On the contrary, they obeyed happily and, well, that’s enough about that.

Things were also going well for Demetrio. Once again the overly idle flocked to the pool hall. A prodigious business. A money mill: think of it as an unstoppable force: truly. The employees Ángel and Aníbal seemed never to flag in their hard work, and they always wore a broad smile. Nevertheless, a week after reopening the business for local recreation, the big guy realized that he had to make a trip to Monterrey to buy more cue balls, more quality cues, more fine chalk.

So, off we go! And the big guy left with his two model employees. By truck: an exhausting trip. They would not spend the night in the Sultan of the North, as Monterrey was called. Seven hours there, along a dirt road, and seven hours back, along the same one: a more or less jumpy ride. Their watchword was to buy and to come back. No recreation or even reasonable leg stretching. Such admirable criteria.

And they managed it all almost in one breath, in a manner of speaking, but yes, indeed.

Before the trip to Monterrey there was a banking issue: the mother withdrew money and warned her son as follows: I have very little money left from the inheritance. We must make no mistakes in our investments. The pool hall must do well. We shall deem everything that came before a series of false steps. Now the appropriate precision, for there was no longer any choice. A vantage point from which to glimpse uninhibited growth. This is what mother and son talked about during their dinner for two: Every peso you spend is critical. Whence arose, in a sudden burst, the huge cost of everything wedding related: yes, yes, naturally, there must be a feast, but only for a few guests, but … ; as to the bridal gown, no pompous exhibitionism, no bloated presumption, but not a shoddy garment, either, something middling, but … ; as to the honeymoon: travel, hotels, meals in restaurants, oh, nevertheless, Demetrio thought they should choose one spot and there have their movie moments. A hotel, with a pool. Hopefully! He thought of Piedras Negras, the border town, who knows why. Not Sabinas, nor Monclova nor Saltillo nor Torreón, not Monterrey either or anywhere else. So Piedras Negras—why? Perhaps because it was a place nobody talked about … anyway, we’ll see … More and more discussion, never without Doña Telma’s insidious and recalcitrant warnings: Watch every peso you spend. This is our last chance. But strutting—even embellishing—his stuff, Demetrio rose from his chair and cited the dependability of his lucky star (and the blahblahblah started—oh mercy me!), insisting that anything he did was bound to turn out hunky-dory. All the more so because they had prayed for hours in the church, on their knees—right? remember how much pain there was during the prayers, and still they remained. So we can now move on to what happened in the following weeks. December came and, Congratulations! Christmas and New Year’s celebrations, quite delightful; January came and, Congratulations! February came and, a few ups and downs, but generally good, very good! We now find ourselves in March 1949, in full marvelous ascension. As far as the house goes, hmm, Amalia and María Fulgencia were exceptional; the same goes for Ángel and Aníbal in the pool hall. What splendid hires!

Let’s talk against the grain about Demetrio’s great confidence: mental adjudication: all white, maybe pink, but no other color loomed in his future, for sure: what he’d found, what he’d contributed, all could now finally be seen as rhizomic. No putrescence, therefore, need be descried—ever! And one day with perfect composure the big guy told his employees that he had to leave Parras: a four-day trip, five, six, maybe less. They would be responsible for the business, that is, everything ship-shape, same as they were doing every day, so much so that he sometimes didn’t even stop by. Which explained why he asked for details the following day, so he could deduce a precise picture of his assets. An uphill ride, as usual more difficult than downhill. But we were talking about his trip to Sacramento. In any case, Demetrio went to church without telling anybody. He prayed, just in case. The penitence was wretched, almost artful: on his knees, on the ground, and crawling toward the altar (such a show), his arms spread in the shape of a cross. The forced entreaty: what began with pain would have to end the same. The sacrifice was exemplary, though looking at it up close probably not necessary. It’s just that Demetrio wanted to avoid another robbery: No more robberies, My Lord, have mercy … Please listen to what I am saying, I am begging you fervently. A farce? Almost to a tee. How sincere could he be when at one point in the middle of a prayer Demetrio let slip an unintentional chuckle? Who knows what came into his head …

Anyway April arrived and with it the trip to Sacramento: of great importance. The scale of what he was about to carry out. First he asked Doña Telma for her blessing, and his mother, proud and empowered, hmm, crossed herself with aplomb, yes, well, you should have seen her, this fact alone made her feel grandiose, because she would remain in Parras more regal than ever. Did she also have a lucky star? While we’re at it, we all have one, it’s just that we don’t all think about it. Rather we think of God’s will, which is something else, or the saints’. But what we’d like to make clear here is that thinking about our lucky star, every day, would be a horse of a different color, as they say. One—yes or no?—of an alarming unheard-of size, perhaps the commanding size of an archangel.