Bamba”; whereby Demetrio soon realized that he should buy three more billiards tables in Monterrey. A weekend shopping trip. He went with his two young assistants. However: what about dominoes, in abeyance, and now we must picture him for real: after the three new tables arrived, the big guy had to get rid of the tables and folding chairs destined for dominoes. As a result: only pool tables!, better!, more prosperity! As far as the rest is concerned, let’s note the added attraction of the sale of cold drinks, no alcohol, no, not that.
In the midst of this unparalleled merrymaking at the beginning of the year, Doña Telma carried out her household chores with much more enthusiasm than ever before; she cleaned deeply, things that may have seemed insignificant, like each and every leaf of the potted plants. May all dust disappear completely: how many hours a day did it take her? or, how many orders did she have to give her two servants before they fell in step behind her enthusiasm? Her cleaning perfectionism was consonant with her state of grace.
Because she saw herself as an admonishing spirit who was giving her son a lifesaving solution that would hopefully hold for years, Doña Telma strove daily to bring out the shine in her own environment, matching the abundant drive of her son, who came home every night both exhausted and jubilant, full of ideas so brilliant they seemed preposterous, even if any attempt to carry them out would have to be somehow or other elaborated. More and more flashes of genius pouring into an endless spiraling eddy. Unstoppable progress, therefore, as well as money and enlightenment. The mother’s triumph resided in her conviction that Demetrio would live by her side for, hmm, and just when she started thinking about lustrums and decades, a letter landed in her hands, or rather, the lump of a letter: addressee: Demetrio Sordo, and sender: Renata Melgarejo.
Breaking one spell with another, when viewed from a different angle, led to a problematic detour, considering that Demetrio was already on his way and to suddenly stop: a whiff of love—could it be? causing momentary dis-ease, or a favorable concern to which he should give full sway.
After fondling it for nearly three minutes, Doña Telma decided to peruse all that prolix passion. A tentative trespass, however, when it came to opening it. Hesitant or eager or pressingly perverse or tantalizingly slow, and how to proceed without messing things up. Egipto Cavazos, her servant, gave her a useful suggestion, recommending that she use steam to avoid damaging the seal. The need for delicacy in the operation was obvious; so Egipto offered to attend to this detail, and, well, we can imagine his dexterity, not to mention his presumption: I’ll do it very well. Don’t worry. Likewise the subsequent resealing, which also had to be precise—of course!, but also secret … In Mexico around the beginning of 1948, there appeared a stamp that said Express Delivery and another that said Ordinary Delivery. The latter, which had existed before, though without the degrading adjective, was what the new stamp wanted to distinguish itself from, though the distinction went unnoticed, for there was none, hence the term “express delivery” was nothing more than a pretense people mostly ignored. In reality there was a difference of less than two or three weeks between one kind of delivery and the other, depending on the distance from the point of origin. In this case Renata used the new service, which was supposed to be faster but wasn’t, for the letter had taken almost two months: from Sacramento to Parras! that is—within the same state! We can imagine the journey: once the letter arrived in Saltillo—this is a guess—it was brought to a halt, perhaps a bureaucratic one, in order to give priority to the most urgent. Nevertheless, a delay of almost two months! Why? Imagine if Renata had sent it by ordinary post, how long would it have taken? One month longer at least? Conclusion: mail service was a nightmare. The so-called ordinary assumed neglect, a leaving-for-later, or merely a dead calm, or outright indifference; as for the express delivery, it was the same—wasn’t it? or maybe acting very deliberately, or imagining the postal workers watching the (ordinary) letters pile up for days in the semidarkness and feeling quite smug about not rushing around, or worse: viewed as a work of found art, or something of the sort. All we have to do is