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  For example, one kiss was not the same as a thousand, nor one orgasm the same as five. The ether vibrated in a different manner, depending on how often an event had been repeated. This led her to think that numbers not only represented sums of money, as was her mamá’s thinking, but had a much more profound significance, because they had a direct relationship to the cosmos. Whenever one used a number, one was subject to it. Numbers were like archetypes. She found the same occurred with words. Each one had a different resonance and therefore had a different echo in the ether. Then she came up with the idea that there must be an intimate relationship between numbers and words. They must have a connection similar to that between the buttons on a remote control and a television signal, and Lluvia wanted to learn what it was. She began her search that very instant. As a first step, she used her fingers to “write” a word in Morse code. She used her fingertips for the dots, and the length of her fingers for the dashes. In this way she carried out a conversation with herself in dots and dashes. Next, she converted the dots and dashes into corresponding numbers in Mayan numerology, and tried to work out their meaning. Finally, she realized that she had chosen the names of her father and mother, and that the sum corresponded to the month of September 1946.

  This discovery drew her thoughts back to the photograph. Using her fingers again, she counted the months remaining before her mother would give birth: she realized that it would have been far later than the date Raúl was born. She had never been told of the existence of another sibling besides Raúl. What had happened? She knew she couldn’t ask her father that kind of question given his present state of health, so her only other alternative was to make a visit to Luz María Lascuráin, to doña Lucha.

  Chapter 6

  A PART FROM LOVE, there is nothing more important than confidence, and the opportunity to enjoy it is one of the benefits that married life offers. The confidence to bare one’s soul, to expose one’s body before the eyes of one’s companion without the slightest trepidation, to give oneself freely, to open oneself, to abandon oneself shamelessly to another’s arms without fear of being hurt. The confidence to be able to say to one’s husband or wife, “Darling, you have a piece of spinach in your teeth,” or, from another perspective, to be informed that one has snot hanging from one’s nose.

  Love and confidence go hand in hand. Only confidence allows loving energy to flow and insures intimacy between two human beings. The first sign that confidence no longer exists between two people is when one of the parties resists personal contact, when he or she is noticeably unwilling to receive caresses, kisses, hugs.

  During the eight years that Lucha and Júbilo had been married, they had reveled in their confidence in each other. Neither had ever hurt the other, or had given any cause for suspicion. They loved and respected each other despite the huge differences between them. Without a doubt, the most revealing difference had to do with Lucha’s dissatisfaction with the life that Júbilo offered her. What’s more, Júbilo was convinced that this was the reason his wife had not been able to get pregnant again, something that, truthfully, didn’t worry him terribly. Not because he didn’t want to have more children, but because his salary as a telegraph operator was barely enough to provide for Lucha and Raúl, his firstborn. For the time being he couldn’t afford the luxury of feeding more children. Well, at least not in the way Lucha expected. She demanded a lifestyle that Júbilo was very far from being able to provide.

  With the money he had won in the bet with don Pedro, after deducting the amount he had given Jesús and Lupita for their wedding, he had somehow come up with enough for a down payment on a house that was acceptable to his wife. It was small, but comfortable enough and located as close as possible to his in-laws’ residence. It was just inside the colonia Santa María la Rivera, but on the edge bordering on Santo Tomás. The house wasn’t as large as the Lascuráins’, but it was very pleasant. It had an elegant sala with balconies facing the street, three bedrooms with high ceilings and wooden beams that opened onto a tiled corridor at the end of which were a dining room and a bathroom. Next to the dining room was a large kitchen and a back patio where Raúl could play all he liked.

  For a while Lucha felt very happy. The opportunity to settle in the capital and leave behind the nomadic life they had lived until then was more than enough for her. Arranging their scant pieces of furniture was as much fun for her as playing house. She thoroughly enjoyed everything that had to do with setting up their new home. For the first time in their marriage, she felt free to hammer a nail into a wall or to put a vase of flowers anywhere she chose. The houses and hotels where they had previously lived were temporary places that had never belonged to them. And for Lucha it was important to own things before she could enjoy them.

  Júbilo, on the other hand, was able to claim the whole world with just a look. He could enjoy the scent of the gardenias without caring whether they came from the neighbor’s garden or a pot on his own patio. He knew how to take the pain and misfortune of others and make it his own. He knew how to share his friends’ dreams and to celebrate as his own the triumphs of those around him. Perhaps this was the reason he was so successful as a telegraph operator. When he sent a message, he did it with his entire soul, as if acting on his own behalf. And maybe it was for this same reason that he longed for direct contact with the public. In the tiny pueblos where he served as a telegraph operator, he was able to follow the result of the missives he sent, because he saw immediate replies to many of the telegrams, but in the capital his work turned cold, it lost its human warmth. He never found out what happened after the telegrams were sent, and as a result he was less satisfied by his work, it lost some of its meaning. He no longer knew why he worked so hard. His work as a mediator, as someone who brought others together, turned into a job in a large office where he had to send and receive messages as fast as possible, and where speed was valued above efficiency. Júbilo felt somewhat let down, but on the other hand, he knew he was doing the right thing, what Lucha expected from him, what his child needed. He worked for them, not for himself, and that brought its own pleasures. The satisfaction of seeing Lucha set up in her own house and of being able to feed and clothe his child adequately made him very happy.

  Lucha appreciated his efforts, but still the money she received from him wasn’t as much as she expected, especially now that they had a child to care for. She wanted to give Raúl the best education, buy him the best shoes, the best bicycle, the best ball. She felt hampered by the lack of money, so for several years she had been pressuring Júbilo to take on a double shift, and she constantly criticized his lack of ambition. To Júbilo her criticism seemed unjust. It wasn’t that he had no goals in life, they just weren’t the same as the ones Lucha embraced. He wasn’t in a hurry to get rich, that wasn’t his greatest aspiration in life. Jesusa, his mother, had always told him that wealthy people were so poor that they only had money. He agreed with that completely. There were more important things in life than the simple accumulation of capital. To him, a rich man was a man who had the capacity to be happy, and that’s what he tried to be.

  When Raúl was born, Júbilo was barely twenty-two, and Lucha was twenty. They were still very young. They had married so young that Júbilo hadn’t had time to have fun with his friends. The first few months after his first child was born, Júbilo was completely off balance. He saw Raúl as an intruder who came to take away Lucha’s love and attention from him. But as soon as the child began to smile and interact with him, his feelings for his son changed completely. He began to see in Raúl the younger brother he’d never had, and the child soon became his playmate. They developed such a close relationship that when Raúl began to speak, his first word was papá, and when he got hurt, instead of crying and shouting for his mother, he called out for his father. A father who was too young, who seemed more like a big kid himself, and who after a long day of work at the Telegraph Office only wanted to relax, play a little with his son, and then meet his friends to play the guitar
and sing.

  But for Lucha, this indicated his total lack of interest in advancing in life. She felt that Júbilo, instead of wasting his time with “la guitarrita,” should be taking English classes, or French, or accounting, or looking for a better job, anything that would assure her and her son of a more promising future. Because he who only looks at the short term is not well rewarded, shall we say. Raúl was growing up and she wanted to send him to a good private school, like Colegio Williams or somewhere similar. Júbilo didn’t think that was necessary. When he had first arrived in the capital, his father had enrolled him in that very school. But he had been able to attend the school for only a short time because the family’s savings quickly ran out, and they had no choice but to move him to a public school. In fact, Júbilo had been much happier at the public school than he been at Colegio Williams, and he didn’t see any reason why his son wouldn’t feel the same. Lucha, in contrast, had attended the Colegio Francés and she was appreciative of it. She thought receiving a good education was a basic necessity. She never said as much to Júbilo, but she thought the difference between the two of them, in terms of education, was very noticeable. Júbilo didn’t speak English or French, he knew nothing about Europe, he didn’t know how to get ahead in society; therefore, she thought, he was condemned to a mediocre life. Lucha, on the other hand, believed she was capable of finding a good job any time she pleased. Every now and then in their discussions, she would propose this possibility, but Júbilo always rejected it immediately. He didn’t think it was at all proper for his wife to work. He had been raised to be the sole provider for his family.

  So, in order to avoid further arguments about money, Júbilo gave in. He put aside his evenings of playing with Raúl, the trio he was forming with his friends, the songs of Guty Cárdenas, his dreams of singing on XEW, and took a second job as a radio operator for the Compañía Mexicana de Aviación, where he worked after his shift at the Telegraph Office.

  Thanks to the second job, in a short time they were able to buy a new refrigerator, a wringer washing machine, and an electric water heater to replace the wood-burning one. Lucha was content and that made Júbilo happy. For a while, family life improved noticeably. Lucha had time to go for walks, to go to the beauty salon, and to go shopping, since the washing machine, her electric skillet, and her blender saved her a great deal of time. She was very grateful to Júbilo for having bought her these things that were so necessary, and she never tired of praising the merits of the refrigerator and the other domestic appliances. Júbilo barely heard her, since he arrived home dead tired and had to struggle before falling fast asleep to listen to the detailed story of everything his wife had done that day.

  Then Lucha found a new reason to argue with her husband: she criticized his lack of interest in her conversation, and his failure to notice that she had had a manicure and pedicure in his honor. Júbilo lovingly and patiently explained that he wasn’t being inattentive, but that for him it was much more important to use the brief moments they had together to make love to her, instead of wasting his time and energy on idle chat. Lucha became furious and told him she needed someone she could talk to, not just someone to screw: she wasn’t a prostitute. Júbilo ran out of arguments. For him it was much more rewarding to demonstrate to his wife that she still drove him crazy, and he just couldn’t understand why it was more important to Lucha that he sit down to listen to her and look at her.

  Fortunately, these arguments usually didn’t last long. Their first embrace would lead to kisses, hugs, apologies, and forgiveness; and they would end up intertwined in bed.

  It was after one of these reconciliations that Lucha went on the attack again and begged him to let her go out to work. Júbilo, tired of refusing her and finding it harder every day to buy everything Lucha wanted, granted his wife’s request on the one condition that she look for work at the Telegraph Office. He felt that if they were both going to be working, they should at least find a way to be together a good part of the day.

  Lucha’s parents, in spite of their total disapproval of their daughter’s desire to seek work because no woman in the family had ever done so before, decided to help her. Thanks to their influence, they were able to get an appointment with the director of communications, and asked him to give Lucha a job as private secretary to the director of the Telegraph Office. Even though she hadn’t studied to become a bilingual secretary, she spoke perfect English and French. Lucha got the job, not so much because of her command of the two languages but because of her beauty. The director of the Telegraph Office thought that having such a good-looking secretary would elevate his status.

  In fact, Lucha’s presence in the office elevated not only the director’s status but the whole institution’s. Júbilo never became jealous; on the contrary, he felt extremely proud of the fact that this woman who aroused such admiration and desire in others was his wife. Of course, most of his colleagues were his closest friends, and, much as they admired Lucha, no truly sinful thoughts ever crossed their minds. Júbilo could see this in their eyes, so he never saw the least danger in Lucha’s passing among the desks to everyone’s obvious delight, because he was the principal beneficiary. Having his wife in the office was the best thing that could have happened to him. With her at his side, everything glowed. Júbilo and Lucha spent their happiest years there in the Telegraph Office. Sharing a common daily schedule allowed them to maintain their loving relationship. They would gaze lovingly at each other as they passed in the corridors; they looked for one another constantly and took advantage of even the briefest opportunity to give the other a kiss, caress a hand, or exchange a hug. When they were alone together in the elevator, they would kiss and embrace passionately. Sometimes they even went to the extreme of locking themselves in the bathroom to make love. They were more like lovers than spouses, and it was difficult to imagine them as the parents of an eight-year-old boy.

  Looked after by his grandparents, Raúl grew and developed rapidly, and although at first he missed his parents, it wasn’t difficult for him to get used to living surrounded by toys and his grandparents’ loving attention from Monday to Friday, then spending the weekends with his parents. Saturdays and Sundays were like holidays for the Chi family. Júbilo somehow managed to counteract the strong influence that Raúl’s grandparents had on the boy. Júbilo took his son to the markets to eat, to the floating gardens at Xochimilco, he showed him the most interesting corners of the capital so he would have a broader vision of what Mexico really was. He felt it was vital for his son to know his traditions and his cultural heritage before he was exposed to other cultures.

  Lucha would use Júbilo and Raúl’s outings to rest, to lie in the sun on the back patio, and to recover her strength before returning to work on Monday morning. The weekends were often spent in pajamas and a robe, except for the weekends when Raúl went to stay with his grandparents at their house in Cuernavaca, which were spent in bed, totally naked.

  Lucha’s working helped the young couple enjoy several years of renewed passion. With money in her purse for stockings and dresses, she recovered her joy for life and it seemed as if all of her problems had vanished. However, fate was soon to interrupt their lives in an untimely manner and turn them upside down.

  The first sign of the change was the news of Lucha’s new pregnancy, which took them by complete surprise. Neither of them had expected it. They had convinced themselves that Lucha had become sterile after Raúl’s birth. Now, to their dismay, they realized this was not the case. It is also worth mentioning here that this news coincided with the return into their lives of a character they thought was long forgotten: don Pedro, the cacique from Huichapan.

  Don Pedro belonged to a group of opportunists who took advantage of the Mexican Revolution to place themselves in government posts, where they stole everything they could lay their hands on. Shortly after Júbilo won the bet against him in Huichapan, don Pedro joined the PRI, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, and arranged to be appointed as a national re
presentative in congress. Later he went on to occupy various administrative posts, among which director of the Telegraph Office was the least important, but he wasn’t about to complain, he knew he had to show his obedience and loyalty to the party. A person like him, addicted to power, would even be willing to accept the position of a bathroom inspector in a bordello, just to remain inside the inner circle. Besides, from what he saw during his first tour, it wasn’t going to be bad at all. The first thing that caught his attention about the Telegraph Office wasn’t the antiquity or the architecture of the beautiful building, but the ass of the woman who was to be his private secretary, so shapely and, although he didn’t know why, so familiar.

  “Haven’t we met before?” he asked her directly when she was introduced to him.

  “Sí, señor, we met when my husband was working briefly in Huichapan as a telegraph operator, several years ago now,” Lucha responded.

  “Of course! How could I forget that? Your husband won a very memorable bet against me.… Well, well, isn’t life interesting, I’ve just arrived and already I have old acquaintances in the office.”

  The news lay heavier than rotten fish on Júbilo’s stomach. Having such a hateful person as his boss didn’t please him one bit. When they greeted one another they did so coldly, as befits old adversaries. It was obvious that don Pedro was not at all happy either to have the husband of the secretary he’d already been eyeing working under his command. And he was a man whose actions followed his eyes. Only this time it was going to be a little more difficult. The look in Júbilo’s eyes told him that. Curiously, don Pedro would never have recognized his old poker opponent if he hadn’t remembered his wife’s ass. Júbilo had grown a full mustache, which made him look much more handsome and manly. It was don Pedro who hadn’t changed at all. The only thing he had added to was his belly, but the rest was exactly the same. He was still the same unscrupulous man, only now he had more influence and had learned better tricks. Júbilo knew perfectly well what the man was capable of and soon his suspicions were confirmed. When don Pedro took over, he did so completely. He acted as if the whole institution belonged to him—the building, the desks, the telegraph machines, the telegraph operators…and the secretaries—as if he could do whatever he wanted with them, as if he could take, manipulate, and use everyone in any way he wished. Soon rumors began to spread about how he went too far with the secretaries.