The Barbarian Nurseries A Novel - By Hector Tobar Page 0,16
sold what he had pretty soon after.”
“I’m still living under the dictatorship of the stockholders,” Scott said. He was a midlevel executive at a new company, supervising programmers. “The stockholders measure and quantify everything you do. Most of them you never see, but they seem to know everything you do. Like God, I guess. They’ll turn their backs on you if your numbers aren’t right, and then go off running in the direction of another guy who does have the right numbers. Like a herd.”
This observation caused a pause of agreement and knowing nods. “If you think about it,” Carla Wallace-Zuberi offered, “the whole system is like mob rule.”
“Woe to the land that’s ruled by a child!” the Big Man shouted suddenly, and for no discernible reason. They turned to find his flush face staring at the grass, at nothing, and at that point they all shared the same thought: He’s getting drunk again.
“He’s on a Shakespeare kick,” the Big Man’s wife explained laconically. “He’s saying that one a lot. Because with his new work, he’s getting to know a lot of politicians.”
“That was from one of the Richards,” the Big Man said, holding back a burp, but otherwise recovering himself. “Richard the Second. The Third, maybe. No, the Second.” He was feeling the wine in the sangria, and what a pleasant sensation it was.
“This is what we do for recreation now,” the Big Man’s wife said. “We look for Shakespeare festivals. Sasha says he likes the bard for his speeches. Says he’s studying how they’re put together—so we get to write off all the trips. We saw a Tempest in the redwoods in Santa Cruz. That was memorable. We’ll do Ashland this month and maybe Stratford next year, right, hon?” The Big Man gave an approximation of a nod and started to drift away. He wanted to find that Araceli kid and see if she had any more of that silver-dollar-sized tortilla dish—and maybe talk to her. His wife stood there for a moment, her question unanswered, and now she abruptly left the group too, to look for their son. The others in the group watched them leave in opposite directions, and for a moment the Big Man’s drunken shuffle and his wife’s distracted scanning of the backyard was like a snippet of conversation all by itself, a piece of gossip to mull over.
A few moments later the first of the children jumped into the water with a splash and most of the adults drifted over to the fence that circled the pool. Tyler Smith’s wife took off her blouse and shorts to reveal a one-piece bathing suit underneath, folded her clothes and left them on the grass, and followed her sons into the water. Having exhausted the conversation topics of business, politics, and property values, the guests watched her silently as she took a few moments to touch the water with her palms before plunging gracefully below the surface. In a few minutes there were a dozen children in the pool, water glistening on their buff and khaki skins. With their mixed Asian, African, and European features, their epicanthic folds and proud Armenian noses, their Chinese cheekbones and Irish foreheads that were turning deep saffron in the sun, they resembled a group of children Marco Polo might have encountered on the steppes of the Silk Road, at a crossroads where spices and incense and brass pots were traded at the edge of a river.
The Big Man stood alone by the garden and picked up one of the helmets that had been tossed on the lawn and tried it on: the papier-mâché shell wrapped itself around his curls but refused to reach his ears, so he pulled it off and let it fall to the grass. Next he took a few steps toward la petite rain forest and examined the azaleas, before turning back to study Araceli, who was standing in the middle of the lawn distributing the last plate of finger foods. That woman looks miserable and lonely, like someone forced to sit in a stranger’s room and listen to the silence for days, weeks, years. He again remembered her laughter, all those years ago, and wondered what he could say to make her smile again. How do you make a Mexican woman chuckle? What causes her to let go of her worries and show the sparkle of her teeth like a burst of white fireworks?
Araceli nearly dropped her tray when she caught the Big Man gawking at