My train was carrying me away
from the ruins of Arroyo Alegro towards the West and civilization.
The ruins had bored me; now I was eager to immerse myself in the
novel I was reading, the classic Mexican novel "El Senor de la
Costumbrista", published in the early years of the twentieth
century. I had reached Chapter Five, and the passage where the
heroine, Christina, standing with her adopted daughter, Hira, is
confronting General Lopez in the deserted cattle
station.
Opposite me in the
carriage sat a bearded bronzed man of worn, stern countenance. He
had an arm about the shoulders of a younger, rather stupid-looking
woman, who writhed occasionally under the confinement of the other's
naked arm. It seemed they were related. I took no notice of them
beyond a cursory
glance.
Unexpectedly, the man
leaned forward and tapped me on my left
knee.
"I suffer what it is
humiliation to travel by this Hard Class," he
said.
I told him stiffly that I had
not noticed. But the exchange was not concluded.
"Once I travel always in First
Class, in greatest luxury. Now see what is befallen
me."
Saying nothing, I reflected
that the man should have been grateful for his earlier good fortune.
As I turned again to my novel the man said, "Okay, so I see you have
no pity. You are one of the hard-heart
men."
By agreeing, as I immediately
did, I hoped the fellow would fall silent. Instead, he seemed to
take my words as a challenge.
"My
name is Vlasco Ibanez," he told me, staring at my face. "My family
suffer more than their fair share of misfortune. When I am only a
boy, my father falls by accident from a bridge and is kill. So I
must to go immediately to work. I have no more than four years in
age."
While I reflected that such
things must always happen now to those who can master only the
present tense, his talk flowed
on.
"My mother is make insane by
the disaster. Her sister also is mad many years. Both have the eye
problems. When aged, she studies pataphysics. It's a sickness
caused. My uncle also is crazy and short-sighted. He break his
spectacle and never can he
swim."
Interrupting Ibanez, I said,
with more indignation than I had intended, "I cannot swim
either."
To which he replied
coldly, drawing himself up, "Some people do these things
deliberately."
At this juncture,
the woman by his side, who had not spoken and showed no sign of
listening, decided to take part in the
conversation.
Her milky eyes
indicated she was blind.
Waving her
hand for emphasis, as if conducting a symphony, she said in a shrill
voice, "This person to whom I sit next is my adopted guardian, Sr.
Ibanez - a good man but often cruel. He is not educated like me. His
history is strange. You should hear it. For years he worked without
wages on a coffee plantation. That is a place where coffee is
planted. Hence the name 'plantation', as you might for instance say
'tea plantation', a place where tea is planted, but Sr. Ibanez never
worked on one of that kind. Do I make it
clear?"
As her blind eyes stared at
me, Ibanez said, angrily, "Let me tell this fool this story." As he
spoke, he slapped the woman on the face. He called her Hora the
Whore.
She hit him back. I stared
out of the window at the passing scenery which, frankly, was not
interesting. I shall not describe
it.
"By the age of fifteen," Ibanez
said, when the fight was over, "I reach puberty and desperation.
They will not have me in the ranch house. The porridge is made with
water. The beans of coffee are not selling more. Mr Charles Bush,
the estate-owner, he is anxious. Things are now become so bad I must
to pay them to work there.
"Then
comes the miracle. One day I see a very fine film which is showing
to us. It is an allegory -"
The
woman butted in to explain to me what an allegory was. "It is like a
story that means one thing but not another. Say for instance I say I
am falling down a well, it can be just an image and what is not real
is more important than -"
He
smacked her across the mouth and continued with his tale. "This film
it is call 'Tarzan of the Apes'. A brilliant film. By working among
apes in the jungle, this man Tarzan, he discover he is really a
distant lord. He stay naked.
"From
this time, I invent the famous 'A Man with His Mule'. I take it to
Mr Charles Bush. He cease to drink and is in delight with my idea.
Oh yes, you may sneer, but what a success am I with "A Man with His
Mule'!" The train was going slowly now. I thought of throwing myself
out of the window, though not, perhaps, before I had finished
Chapter Five and found what happened between Christina and General
Lopez.
Unfortunately, I could not
resist asking Ibanez what exactly this "A Man with His Mule" was.
Ibanez told me at length.
He had
never invented anything before, he said, until the day it came to
him that the sale of packaged coffee beans was impersonal. It was
like remaining in Tarzan's jungle. How could there be personal
contact between grower and customer, perhaps hundreds of miles
distant? The answer was to have a short letter from a grower himself
to the coffee-drinkers.
"I invent a
man who is been a German but now he share our nationality. His mule
I call him August, and the man himself I call him Sancho Panzer. It
is a genius stroke." Ibanez struck his forehead to show where the
genius lay.
"Sancho he will say in
his short letter such like, 'Dear Faraway Coffee-Drinker, I am your
friend and I long to see you drink and enjoy my coffee. But I must
work here on the plantation with my mule August. It is a lonely life
but we enjoy hard work. You must come and see to me by yourself one
day. The mule is well, as I hope you are. Your firm friend, Sancho
Panzer.' Each little letter went into each bag of coffee. That is
the start for my brilliant success. Meanwhile, my demented relations
they grow more bad."
He shot an
angry look at his adopted daughter as he spoke. "Soon, what I never
expect - the little letters of Sancho Panzer are answered.
Coffee-drinkers everywhere, they fall in love with this clever nice
man who loves them. So Sancho has to tell more about this place -
which of course I make up to be nice - and also of his mule August -
how many hands high he is and such details. If Sancho Panzer has a
wife, they ask. So I make up a wife Carmen who is a mad thing and
bitch. More letters are coming in with great sympathy for this poor
man. I tell you my tears spring forth when I write his letters for
him."
He paused to see if tears
would spring forth on this occasion. Instead, he allowed his
expression of perennial gloom to fade somewhat as he said, "How the
sales of the coffee grow upward! Now I have fame. Well, some fame,
because the distant coffee friends do not realise that Sancho Panzer
is not real. But then one day is coming a phone call from people in
the city who are rulers of television. This is after the revolution.
I am so please. Here something is I do not
expect.
"The television people wish
to make a series of the man Sancho Panzer and the Mule August, a
kind of comedy, they say. I tell he does not exist ever. They say
they will find both of these people, also Carmen, the mad wife. I
must write what they call the
scripts."
Ibanez looked down at his
hands which dangled between his knees. In a reflective tone, he
said, "Once, I am rich to have a shirt to my backside. I even hire a
blackman-servant to wash the shirt. This boy, he does a lot what he
calls 'strokin' de black mamba', but he is otherwise useful to
me."
Listening, I realised my
finger had gone dead. I had stuck it into my novel to mark the
beginning of Chapter Five of "El Senor de la Costumbrista". Sucking
my finger, I say as best I can, "Well, what good fortune for you.
Congratulations! Now I must get on with my
book."
As I bent my head to it,
Ibanez shouted in a loud voice, "At that very day of success, when I
give party and boast so much, my insane mother-in-law, Monika, she
jump from her bedroom window. The panes of glass are shatter. The
zinnias below are crush. But Monika has only a broken leg. I am
furious. I go to her bed in the hospital and I hit her. Because now
it is in the news that the great celebrity Vlasco Ibanez, triumphant
author and inventer of 'A Man with His Mule', is of a relation with
a mad woman who throws herself always from
windows.
"I kick out the
blackman-servant with his mamba. I am broken man. I take this silly
woman here and go to live in a drain pipe. Many people say I am mad.
The friends, they hurl the
stones."
The train stopped with
such a sudden jerk that I was thrown forward, my face burying itself
in Hora's lap.
"Raise yourself at
once!", called Ibanez. "You pig
dog!"
"Let him be!", shrieked
Hora.
"She's mine!" shouted
Ibanez.
As they began a quarrel, I
jumped out of the train.
We had
stopped at a small wayside halt called Erasmoso. I bought an ice
cream and stuck my nose into Chapter Five of "El Senor de la
Costumbrista". Although I stood at the end of the platform, a
whining voice soon told me I had been discovered by Hora. She seized
my arm, declaring she would always be
true.
I perceived that she was in
love with me.
"This was a brief
love affair, already over," I told
her.
"I know my way around,
mister."
"What? Although you are
blind?"
"I am not virgin, mister.
Sex is not of the eyes
only."
"Sorry, I am trying to
read."
"Why you don't have
sex?"
"Because I edit a small
literary magazine, 'The New Impostor'," I explained. "I don't
suppose you people have ever seen an
issue."
"I read every issue. Is my
favourite."
"Rubbish! You're lying.
You're blind."
Again I turned to
that tempting Chapter Five, eager to see what the General Lopez
would say to poor Christina in that desolate
room.
Ibanez came up. Seeing the
girl so close to me, he said, grabbing my bicep, "I give her to you.
One hundred dollar only!"
"I don't
want her."
"Fifty dollar,
then."
"I told you, I don't want
her."
"She good girl. She virgin.
Thirty-five and she yours."
I
pointed to a printed notice on the side of the shelter. It read in
rather contorted language, THE HABIT OF SOLDING PEOPLE ON THIS
PLATFORM IS TO BE
PROSECUTED.
"It was before the
Revolution," Ibanez explained. "Now we are all capitalists. Thirty
dollars."
At that moment, the train
began slowly to pull out of the platform. Ibanez screamed. "Run! Or
we spend our lives all in Erasmoso!" Plainly, he exaggerated: yet I
ran. We piled together into the last carriage,
gasping.
Really at that moment I
had lost patience with the entire country. Indeed, I had nearly lost
my novel.
"Why did the train not
even toot?", I asked furiously.
"I
know well the driver. He is
bastard."
We lapsed into silence,
breathing heavily. For five minutes I enjoyed the peace. Then the
woman, Hora, said, "So, once more, eternally and for ever-lasting
and all the future of this bad world, the train carries me into more
misery and humiliation and my wretched life of a
dog."
"I'm sorry to hear it,
Hora."
"No, you are not, or you
would not go to a hotel where capitalists
live."
"Are you disappointed that I
would not marry you?"
"Maybe yes,
maybe no. Who can tell? But I do not like you. Rather, I hate you,
maybe. And also I hate your lousy
language."
"Always she complains,"
said Ibanez. "Is no gratitude. A bad woman, probably crazy. Is why I
hit her. My suffering is much greater. My father he fall from the
bridge and get kill because he drink. He should not be at all on the
bridge. My mother go insane by this disaster but she already is much
distable in her mind, like her crazy sister. My uncle is much a dope
fiend. He is born missing a tooth. That's why he can not swim
although he has job as a swimming instructor. All have the
eye-problems and whole family is crazy like my
grandmother."
At last we
arrived in the city. I at once took a taxi to the Hilton Hotel. In
my comfortable suite I enjoyed a shower, washing away the idiot
company of Sr. Vlasco Ibanez and his unattractive charge, Hora.
Downstairs, I sat in the comfortable lounge, ordered a waiter to
bring me a glass of Chardonnay, and settled down to read Chapter
Five of "El Senor de la
Costumbrista".
It was fascinating.
General Lopez holstered his revolver. He revealed to the fair
Christina that he came from a mad family. His father had died when
he was young, his mother became crazed by grief and never spoke
again. Both his aunt and uncle were on drugs. There was also a form
of inherited blindness in the family. He had been forced to join the
military in order to support his unfortunate
relations.
As the general
confessed, tears ran down his bronzed cheeks. Christina, listening,
also shed tears. It was all most affecting to read. One could
empathise with their sorrow, conveyed in faultless prose. He fell
against a counter, weeping uncontrollably. Christina put an arm
about his shoulders. I could tell she would fall in love with him in
Chapter Six. It is well there is a distance between life and art.
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