The Crystal Frontier (22 page)

The voices, the theme music, the exhaust from the buses, the polluted air of the city put all of them to sleep except him. And as soon as they got onto the highway to Cuernavaca, he accelerated and went faster and faster. He looked at the couple, the gringa and the yahoo, in his rearview mirror and got mad, as he always did when a dark guy like that took advantage of the chickadees who came looking for the exotic, for romance, and ended up in the hands of sons of bitches like this, crude, disgusting assholes no woman here would give a nickel for. The least he could do was scare the shit out of them.

He drove quickly and began to repeat the descriptions on the tape out loud, until the squatty body in back got riled up and started saying, Careful on the curve here. Listen, don't repeat what the tape says. You think I'm deaf? And the gringa laughed—how exciting!—and only the Spanish lady next to him showed no emotion. She looked at Leandro with a scornful smile and Leandro said to them, This is not a simple tourist trip. It's a cultural trip. That's what they told me at the hotel. If you want to make out, you should have picked another driver.

The dark man in back sank down; the gringa gave him a kiss, and the asshole plunged his circus-clown face—What does this guy think he is, a soap opera star or something?—into the blond hair and didn't make another squawk. But the Spanish lady said, Why do you work at a job you don't like?

*   *   *

Lucky you weren't born stupid. Look at Paquito, the village idiot. Look at how he goes out to the plaza to get some sun, smiling at the sun and the people. You can just see how he wants people to like him. But here in your village that doesn't work. What right does that jackass have to feel happy just because he's alive and the sun shines on his fingernails, on the three or four teeth he's got left, on his almost-always-opaque eyes? Take a good look a him. As if he himself knows that his happiness can't last long, he scratches his head of short hair, perplexed. His hair's not combed and not messed up, because it's so short that the only important thing is knowing if it grows or not. It grows forward, as if invading his narrow and perpetually worried, perpetually furrowed forehead. This morning, the shine of his always-dead eyes contrasts with his wrinkled brow. He looks toward the arches of the plaza. What will happen to him today? He turns off that idea, pushes it shut like an old, dusty drawer. But there is nothing more immediate than the threat. He's defenseless. He realizes he's in the middle of the plaza at noon, under the blazing sun, exposed, with nothing to protect him from the eyes of other people. He raises a hand to his eyes, closes them, hides, disguises himself, and with every passing minute becomes more and more conspicuous. Even people who never notice him are looking at him now. Paquito closes his eyes so no one will look at him that way. He feels terrible pains in his head. If he closes his eyes, the sun will die. He opens them and looks at the stone. Stone plaza. If you don't leave here, you will turn to stone.

*   *   *

The Spanish woman observed him carefully and astutely. First, he wanted to pass for a cultured driver who would show foreigners the beauties of Mexico. It bothered him that instead of him another Mexican was making love to a gringa. It bothered him that they were giving each other sloppy kisses instead of listening to what the cultural tapes said about the Indian ruins. He wanted to get them upset, scare them, drive 120 miles an hour and give his air of culture an edge of savage physical violence. The Spanish woman felt sorry for this little man over forty with the ruddy, almost carrot-colored complexion that she'd noticed in a number of Mexicans in the city, a mixture of blonds and Indians. A sulphur color, really. His carroty reddish-colored hair was obviously dyed, and he wore a blue shirt, a tie, and a suit that was brilliant and silvery, just like the Iberia plane that had brought her to Mexico as the winner of the contest for best tourist guide at the Asturias caves.

Everyone went nuts because she won, but that's what luck's all about—you can't do anything about it.

This man didn't know the two of them did the same kind of work. Still, she couldn't figure him out and amused herself watching the faces he made, all of them so phony it was laughable, angry, disdainful the whole time but know-it-all one minute, fearlessly, savagely macho the next, driven nuts by the couple he envied in the backseat. But more put out, the Spanish woman concluded, because she was smiling at him, staring at him, and not reacting to his driving.

“Why are you looking at me?” he finally blurted out as they got to Cuernavaca. “Do I have two heads or something?”

“You never answered my question. Why do you work at a job you don't like?”

“Hey, since when do we know each other? Who gave you the right to speak familiarly to me?”

“In Spain, we're not that formal.”

“Right. But we're not in Spain now. Around here we respect one another.”

“So, respect yourself first.”

He looked at her, angry and uneasy. What should he do: punch her, kick her out of the car, abandon her in Tres Marías? He couldn't. Would they fire him? Instantly. He always worried about that, though the fact was that people always put up with his nastiness. He banked on it: Be daring, demand respect, don't chicken out, Leandro, risk being fired, and you'll see that people will almost always cave in—they don't want complications, they'll put up with your coarse language. Some won't, and then you play for keeps, you make them get out right in the middle of the Guerrero mountains, you challenge them to walk to Chilpancingo, go ahead. They say they'll complain to the hotel, you speak up about your code of dignity. Who doesn't have run-ins with these arrogant goddamn tourists? If you want, I'll take the matter up with the union—they'll back me up. Want a drivers' strike that will affect not only this lousy hotel but every hotel in town? They calm you down, agree with you: These people are abusive, don't respect a driver's work. Right away they treat us like common cabbies, which we aren't, we're drivers for cultured tourists. With the Europeans, the Japanese we never have problems, we respect them, they respect us, we give high-class service—the fights only happen with the gringos and these Mexican upstarts.

But this woman was Spanish and he didn't know how to deal with her. If he were alone with the gringa and pretty boy here with the moustache studying anatomy in the backseat and ignoring the cultural explanations, treating him like the wild cabbie from Borneo, a wild man behind the wheel, and not giving him the respect he was due … Did she give him any respect? She watched him with a smile on her face that was more insulting than a curse, God knows why, and he watched her, feeling she liked being watched that way, not understanding her, as if she too were a mystery, more a mystery to him than he was to her.

“Come on,” the Spanish woman said brusquely, “you and I do the same work. I'm a tourist guide too. But it seems I like my work and you do nothing but get mad. Why do you do it if you don't like it? Don't be a jerk. Take up another line of work, you fool, there are lots of ways to make a living.”

He didn't know what to say. Thank God the gas station was in sight. He stopped and quickly got out. He put on a show with the attendants, hugging them, exchanging wisecracks, gesturing obscenely. They poked one another in the belly and made jokes full of double entendres. Was he carrying a decent load? the attendants wanted to know. He winked, they squinted suggestively at the passengers. What kind of load was he carrying? He winked, they told him to help himself, tourists were all assholes but they had cash—why them and not us, right? Come on, buddy, have a shot of rotgut to make the trip more enjoyable …

The Spaniard poked her head out the window and shouted at Leandro, “You take a drink and I'll turn you in personally and we'll get out right here, you crook. Why don't you stop trying to be a fucking he-man and do your job, you son of a bitch!”

The attendants laughed their heads off, grabbing their guts, slapping their thighs, holding onto one another for dear life, everyone patting everyone else's ass. Holy shit, Leandro, what'd you do, get married? Or is that your mother-in-law? They sure have you on a short leash, don't they? Better not come around here anymore, son, they've got you yoked up like an ox …

He took off, his face bright red.

“Why did you have to embarrass me like that, lady? I treat you with respect.”

“First off, my name is Encarnación Cadalso, but my friends call me Encarna. We're going to get along just fine. Just screw up your balls. Let me show you how to get along. You can't fool me, you fucker. All you are is an insecure man in a macho suit. You fuck everyone else over and all you do is end up bitter. Let's get to Cuernavaca, which they tell me is a nice place.”

*   *   *

Stone plaza. Eyes of stone. The idiot looks over at the group of thugs sitting in the café. You're with them. They look at Paquito. They make bets. If we start hitting him, will he fight back or not? If he doesn't, will he stay or go? If he stays, will it be so we can hit him some more? Does this asshole like to suffer? Or is he just trying to tire us out so we'll leave him alone? Country of stone: everything here is a matter of bets. Will it rain or not? Will it be hot or cold? Who's going to win, Atlántico or Real Madrid? Does Espartaco get the ears or does he get gored? Is what's-her-name a virgin or not? Is so-and-so a fag or not? Does Doctor Centeno dye his hair? Does Jacinta have false teeth? Did the pharmacist get her tits done? How many bets? Who in this town dares to leave their doors unlocked? How many brave men are there who leave them open? How many bets?

*   *   *

Holding hands and giggling like idiots, the happy couple, the gringa and the boor, gave themselves over to contemplating the gorge from the terrace of Cortés's palace. Encarna and Leandro were studying Diego Rivera's murals of the conquest of Mexico instead, and she said, Were we Spaniards really that bad? Leandro didn't know what to say, he wasn't there to make value judgments, that's how the painter saw it. Well, why do you speak Spanish and not Indian if you're so sorry for the Indians? she said.

“They were really brave,” said Leandro. “They had a great civilization and the Spaniards destroyed it.”

“If that's the case and you love them so much, you should treat them well today,” Encarna said in her hard, realistic manner. “The way I see it is they're being treated worse than ever.”

Then they stopped in a room where Rivera had painted everything Europe owed Mexico: chocolate, corn, tomatoes, chiles, turkey …

“Hold it right there,” exclaimed Encarna. “If he'd put everything Mexico owes Europe, all the walls in this palace wouldn't be enough.”

Leandro ended up laughing at the uninhibited Spaniard's wit, and when they sat down in the café opposite the palace to have a couple of icy beers, the driver let his guard down and began to tell her how his father had been a waiter in the restaurant of an Acapulco hotel, how when he was just a little kid he had to sell candy on the streets of the port. How he felt more dignified with his box of candy on the streets than his father, stuffed into that monkey suit, having to take care of every damn fool who came in to eat.

“It hurt me every time I saw him in that waiter's jacket with a napkin over his arm, arranging chairs, always bent over, always bent over—that's what I couldn't stand, his head always bent over. I told myself that wasn't for me, I'd be anything but I wouldn't bend my head.”

“Listen, maybe your father was just a courteous man by nature.”

“No, what he was was servile, submissive, a slave, like almost everybody else in this country. A few people can do everything, very few; the majority is fucked over forever and can't do anything. A handful of fuckers enslave millions of servile jerks. That's how it's always been.”

“It's hard to make something of yourself, Leandro. I admire your effort. But don't make yourself bitter in the process. You can't just waste your time saying, Why them and not me? Don't let your own opportunities pass you by. Grab them by the tail—you know opportunity doesn't knock twice.”

She asked him why his name was Leandro.

“Encarnación is a pretty name. Who gave it to you?”

“God himself, my boy. I was born on the feast of the Incarnation. What about you?”

“I was named after Leandro Valle. A hero. I was born on the street named after him.”

He told her how as a teenager he stopped selling candy and became a caddie at an Acapulco golf course.

“Know something? At night, I stayed behind to sleep on the fairway. I never had a softer bed. Even my dreams changed. It was then I decided that someday I'd be rich. That soft grass lulled me, it was like a cradle.”

“Did your father help you?”

“No, that's the point. He didn't want me to better myself. You're going to take a tumble, he'd tell me. I found out from my pals at the hotel where he worked that he never told me about offers people made to him for me because I was his son—chances to study, drive a car. All he wanted was for me to be a waiter like him. He didn't want me to be more than he was. That's the thing. I had to make my own opportunities. Caddie. First I drove golf carts, then I became a real driver. Bye-bye, Acapulco. I never saw my father again.”

“I understand you. But you don't have to be foul-mouthed just because your father was a courteous waiter. You have to serve. Both of us do. What do you get by saying all day I have to do this but I don't like it. Don't get even by offending your clients. It just isn't something a gentleman should do.”

Leandro blushed. For a time he said nothing. And then the gringa and her leading man appeared among the laurel trees, motioning that they wanted to go back to the city. It was time.

Leandro got up and stood behind Encarnación. He slid out her chair so she could get up. She was shocked. No one had ever done that for her before. She was even afraid. Was he going to hit her? But not even Leandro knew why he'd performed that act of courtesy.