to manage three ranches between there and Sabinas, that he would be generously compensated but that he would have time off only on certain weekends. In fact, his volley had a ways to go but Doña Zulema interrupted him with an order: Let’s go inside, please! I dislike exhibitionism! They obeyed the director of the play, as it were, and now the same scene was enacted in the living room: his mother trying to hug him and he pushing her away with a flick or two while the volume of her relentless rant rose. Not on her life! though, fearful that this would continue, Doña Zulema issued another order, this time definitive:
“Demetrio, forgive her already! Pity your poor mother.”
And he, still pompous and peevish, mumbled:
“You know what, Auntie? I’ve been thinking about this for several days. Now I just want to let some time pass before I decide to forgive her.”
Doña Telma, crying out her eyes, took refuge in a bedroom.
Then Demetrio continued his story about how he’d deposited a large portion of his money in a bank in Monclova, in an account where he’d always have access to his—
“That’s enough! Go to your mother and ask her to forgive you. I demand it.”
“Neither you nor the Holy Father can demand anything of me. Right now I’m going to go sleep in the hills.”
“The hills!? Really, Demetrio, don’t be so ungrateful. Your mother is an elderly woman, you must take pity on her. You are making a big mistake.”
Opportune words—were they arm-twisting? Two individuals on the verge of tears. Both flushed, by the way. And the emotional surprise—at last! The big guy went to his little mother.
There the lachrymose huddle.
Here, in the living room, the hostess atremble, proud to have played the part of the sensible despot.
Let it be known, then, that mother and son remained in that saint-filled room all night long. Also, that they prayed together and slept together. It was good they didn’t dine. It would have done them harm. Also good that they emerged from the room the next morning holding hands. Both poised and apparently without any trace of ugliness still soiling their souls. To sleep together but without touching. As for the rest, the three at the table and eating a breakfast of fried eggs, bread, and café con leche. The conversation was decidedly pleasant.
Plans and more plans.
No restraint from anybody to anybody.
Flowing, fortuitous?
Doña Telma was resigned to returning to Parras alone. She dared not try to persuade her son to tell such an unfortunate ranch job to go to hell … And, to repeat: there was no occasion for either lady to express even the most oblique reproach. The reins, so it seems, were being loosened, ex professo. The two señoras, therefore, exhibiting some backward intelligence, allowing an ignominy to pass. Their combined synthesis of an unfortunate syllogism was this: that Demetrio would field the blows as they came. Neither Parras nor Sacramento nor Monclova but rather grim isolation—out there! where—who knows! in the so-called outskirts of Sabinas, Coahuila. All that was thought but not by those two gray-haired dames.
Good-bye hugs, finally, at early morn. Let’s agree that the three of them slept outside, each on his or her own cot, and definitely without covers … For the heat at that time of year …
Ah, Doña Telma departing, carrying a light suitcase. She walked (let’s mention the swish of her skirt keeping time with the shrugging of her shoulders) as if she wanted to shrink, let us say, under the authority of the sun. It would seem that her disappearance was going to be real, in spite of her having been forgiven and even though her son had curled up like a baby in their shared bed. As the brightness effaced her, there rose in the aunt and the nephew some kind of hypothesis that the señora had taken on a true maternal stance, that is, she was able to place herself in limbo awaiting circumstances that would bring her news of his good or ill fortune without her trying to affect the course of events. Perhaps she would never see her son again, perhaps she would see him soon, who knew, but in the meantime, while she was boarding the horse-drawn carriage that would take her to La Polka, and then to the boat and then to the train, she understood that her exhausting trek had had the desired effect, for she had planted in Demetrio a sentimental uncertainty, such as the