restored at … He was never thirsty, hard as it is to believe! Although, a while later he did feel the aftereffects of what he had experienced, SO TREACHEROUS, hopefully never again to be so lost.
Anyway, we now find ourselves at La Mena, which we might rightly call a noisy place after taking into account the recounting of the manager’s troubled travels. Two bitter days and: let us say “noisy” because the sole family there welcomed him almost with cheers: what for? Let us look, then, at the basics: the children jumped happily up and down: virtual nonsense? or better to explain it as follows: Bartola, upon seeing him return in the pickup, imagined a horror, almost a goner, so she brought food and healing herbs, though—healing? food? None of it was necessary. Demetrio had returned in one piece. God had seen him through. Hence she exclaimed jubilantly, and Benigno mimicked her heartily, gesticulating four times in the air overhead: the result, now for real, an aha! his was rather jarring, and the children’s leaps that gave the final touch—right? are we done yet? Simulations that—phew! Nonetheless, once calm had been restored Demetrio began to recount in detail what had happened to him: a story lasting an hour and a half: a narrative with punctilious detours, which may have seemed insignificant globs but turned out to be quite substantial, so much so that the family was disappointed when the manager said: Well, that’s all I have to tell you. Too bad, as they all would have wished the tale of those troubles to continue, but what Demetrio wanted was to rest …
Ergo: recuperation for …
The “I’ll never do that again”: sublime.
Understandable.
What wasn’t understandable was any explanation of why Demetrio had kept silent for almost three months and then recounted his adventure with such eloquence … It even seemed he had held back his speech for so long in order to be able to lavishly squander it on a script that had already been chosen by Providence, that is—by whom? Such things, if conceived of as enigmas, can only correspond to God’s will, because only He knows what He composes and decomposes, perhaps because He is always lonely and bored and wants to make up stories …
Could that be?
Before Demetrio went to bed at noon, Benigno cautioned him:
“I think you should have gone to Sabinas and from there taken the main dirt road to Monclova … When you don’t know the desert roads by heart it’s preferable to play it safe.”
Aha!: a sigh in response. And good-bye and thank you and, does “should have” exist? Yes, though it only attains amplitude in the imagination and in games of hypotheses. The “should have” exists in a dream, for it presupposes a marvelous discrepancy that could be anchored in the future, whereby, without further ado, we turn directly to what the manager dreamed at a very slow pace. We will, in fact, summarize it, as long as we make an effort to present it as a disorderly derivation, disposed of, usually, in dribs and drabs and, so, let’s take a look: Renata and Demetrio met in an unknown city—which could it be?—one with lots of very high buildings and imbued with the everlasting fragrance of the sempervivum. There they met, by surprise, at the tip-top of one of those monoliths: such a surprise for both of them: you are and you are not; yes, I am; me too; so, let us hug and kiss on the mouth until we are tired of holding each other so tightly; agreed; and—what are you thinking about? that it wouldn’t be so bad for us to live in this sinful and modern city, this is the center of the world; yes, it’s true, beyond this city nothing would matter to us. Then they embraced only to turn their attention to the activities of the tiny people way down below; a while later she said: it looks like an infinite anthill, we are also ants and this is happiness. That’s where the dream ended. It’s advisable not to encourage the improbable. Nevertheless, when Demetrio woke up he knew he had to go to Sacramento as soon as possible. Likewise he realized that it didn’t make any sense for him to keep working as a ranch manager; he knew he should leave the following day in the pickup: at dawn? that’s right … It’s just that life on the ranch was driving him crazy: oh, rustic sanctity without any