go tell Renata what you, Doña Zulema, and I can already guess. The child went and returned quickly and:
“Renata says she can’t come out and to please not come again.”
The ultimate definition. As Demetrio carried out his contrite retreat his aunt hid behind a tree and from there saw her nephew returning with his head hung low and his fists clenched. She, prodded on, hastened her step so she could open her shop as quickly as possible: of course!: she would stand behind the counter knowing herself to be, let us call it, an actress: her chin leaning crassly on her theatrical hand and her bare elbow resting upon the aforementioned surface: distinguished stillness in waiting: a wait that didn’t last long, given that soon Demetrio’s figure formed a faded outline: at the door: sadness and rage. Now he really did want to spill his guts:
“It makes no sense for Renata to tell me to go to hell only because I kissed her hand … I don’t think I disrespected her. I don’t feel guilty in the least, my kiss was affectionate, completely affectionate! I could never behave in bad faith with a woman I want to marry. And you know, Auntie, as I told you two days ago, we’ve already spoken about getting married, you were even willing to live with her mother … Anyway! Now everything’s ruined. Now Renata doesn’t want to see me—and why?! why?! I don’t understand … Anyway, she was the first one to bring up getting married, I planned to propose to her much later …”
The big guy’s enraged huffing and puffing put an end to his harangue, and from one of his eyes there sprang an unborn tear, which he didn’t wipe away, despite how macho he was, but his bitter feelings finally betrayed him, the tear rolled, trembling, down his left cheek: no way!, because—really—how shameful! Then Doña Zulema spoke:
“Demetrio, I think you made a mistake …”
“A mistake?! What mistake?! I treated Renata just fine and that’s why I don’t want to stay here one minute longer. This puritanical town horrifies me. I’m leaving!”
Or rather, as it was late evening the aggrieved man would go sleep on the top of the hill. His aunt was unable to stop him. Instead she watched, moments later, as he stuffed his dirty clothes into his suitcase, and after a spirited shutting he grabbed the handle and took off down the street. Why watch as he walked away?
30
More and more cars and trucks. A teeming trough. A miracle of motorized and motile phantoms. To tell the truth, and looking at the phenomenon from a different angle, the production of intractable tractors grew in dribs and drabs; whereas bicycle production—a minor news item—appeared to be, by all accounts, incalculable, even though burros were still exceedingly useful. Just think of carrying cargo, which bicycles obviously couldn’t do. Given the foregoing, we really must assert that in 1947 the Mexican automotive industry was at its apogee. Cars, trucks, and tractors were being assembled as quickly as toys, and the demand was growing constantly, in no small part due to the excellent conditions the automotive companies were offering for the purchase of said conveyances.
Not counting the use of tractors (not yet), let’s take Sacramento as an example (and place ourselves smack in the middle of 1947): one could count six cars and eight pickups, whereas at the end of 1946 there had been only two pickups. Let’s also take Parras (much more populous than all the other towns in Coahuila), where there were twenty vehicles at the beginning of the year in question and thirty by the middle of the same year; a tripling, then, because in December 1946 there had been only twelve. We needn’t do a breakdown of cars versus trucks, for all we have to know is that there were three tractors. All this said, let us betake ourselves to Parras, that universal cultural center superior to, let us say, Tegucigalpa, or—what was the previous comparison? anyway, that’s where we are in virtue of the fact that Demetrio was living at his mother’s house; he, whom ill fortune had dogged throughout the central region of Coahuila, arrived and told Doña Telma that life had dealt him a few bad hands, though as yet no blows that had felled him fully … That ranch job had turned out to be a fiasco … He didn’t tell his mother anything, at first, about what had happened with Renata, he