soon forget Oaxaca completely. Nor did he wish to cram himself into that future frame called Parras, on which his mother appeared embossed (unblemished), or better said: where decency sparkled in colorful abstraction … From Nochistlán, which was not by any measure a world cultural center, he would take the bus to Cuautla, which wasn’t either (unless someone would like to claim otherwise). From there he would board a train to Mexico City, which was, of course: that urban area had to be the most important cultural center in the world, wouldn’t you say? And now, getting back on track, so to speak, we are now approaching the drudgery of the culminating leg of the journey. Demetrio knew what it meant to spend thirty hours on a train. Standing up, sitting down, eating poorly, getting depressed as he sank into silence, and it was even worse if someone tried to engage him in conversation. He rudely cut short anybody who dared, even raising a fist as if to fight if a stranger insisted. Once he had done just that: mercilessly slapping a quite shameless man who had provoked him: You think you’re man enough to get into a fistfight with me? He never should have said that, the agronomist’s violent outburst had been most improbable, such a quiet, well-behaved gentleman, so much for that! He had been so fierce that the train conductors forced him off at the next station without refunding even one cent of his fare. The conductors’ last argument (while shoving him) just as the train pulled away was regarding the expense of healing the wounded man, parting palaver that settled accounts between them … On the ground, prone, his suitcase tossed and broken, Demetrio had sworn at the capped men, who could no longer hear the inventiveness of his invectives. The consequences were awful. Sparing many details, suffice it to say that on that occasion the agronomist spent forty-eight hours in that accursed backwater. The tedium of hour upon cheerless hour made him yell at nobody in particular. A madness the locals duly respected. His own private problems had no ramifications, so, why censure him? better he wear himself out shouting his head off, and that’s just what he did, trembling, as if someone had poured a bucket of cold water down his back. How fortunate the muffling gloam hid, for better or for worse, his reddened face! Then the good services of the people at the station, where he slept on a pile of empty, scratchy gunnysacks. But first they gave him two soups: one greenish and the other gray. He slept poorly, in large part because his bedding smelled of burro piss. Horrible! Violence turns into disaster and recovery takes time. Demetrio recalled all this when the interruption came this time around, and the rudeness of his retort consisted of: I’m so sorry, but I don’t want to talk to anybody. I’ve got too many problems. That’s it! and he raised no fist. Precaution. Regret. Good manners.
In any case, he’d reach Saltillo; hmm, Saltillo, who knows what it was … Here it is important to contemplate how singular and solitary his tribulations were: Demetrio strained to carry his enormous suitcase. The wreck of a man ascending and descending the train’s metal stairs. Still to come was the difficulty of the next embarkation: the noisy train trip to Parras, four additional suffocating hours in pursuit of that pre-Christmas joy, the welcoming embrace between mother and son: this, the annual event … irritability upon arrival, for after each had spoken a few kind words he begged to rest: Please, I want to sleep. After those last four hours he just had to! now!
His mother understood. In this deflated state he retired to a room full of altars crowded with saints. A host of sacred eyes spying: upon a sinner seeking refuge. Tomorrow more fuss and bother because they would leave early for Sacramento: trains, stairs, his mother’s excessive chatter: all quite predictable. For now, let us focus on a single fact: Demetrio slept fourteen hours straight, watched over by porcelain saints who would do nothing at all. As fate would have it, he turned his back on them, so to speak: and: Demetrio—was he cold?—also covered his head, but … in sleep’s underworld there appeared words suggesting landscapes of great depths; as for the sleeper, he experienced a succinct sashaying of sensations; barely a murmur … cloying syllables such as: “Hi-ro-shi-ma”: hell? the wedding and God