The Barbarian Nurseries A Novel - By Hector Tobar Page 0,91
into that closet to get to the other world.” Brandon shared this revelation with Tomás and Héctor with special relish, because it matched his growing sense of the weird urban districts in which he and his brother were traveling. The train had brought them to this place called Los Angeles, where the magical and the real, the world of fantasy books and history, seemed to coexist on the same extended stage of streets, rivers, and railroad tracks. “Did you know that there are Vardurians living close by?” he told his new friends. “The Fire-Swallowers chased them to the railroad tracks and the river. Did you know that?” Tomás and Héctor looked perplexed: They haven’t read those books either, Brandon realized.
“There are many things happening in this city, but I haven’t heard of any Fire-Swallowers,” Tomás said, giving a philosopher’s rub to his chin. Tomás knew more about the real Los Angeles and its vagaries than other boys his age, and he had never imagined it to be anything other than a harsh kingdom ruled by adult realism and caprice. He was a semi-orphan (that’s what Isabel called him sometimes, “un semi-huérfano”), a wily survivor whose parents were slaves to a Colombian drug recipe, and each had dragged him separately through some of the filthiest single-room-occupancy hotels in the city. He had a four-inch-thick file in the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, a set of folders marked with red tabs in the cabinet of the social worker who had lost track of him at about the time he fell to Isabel. He had ridden on top of trains in southern Mexico, snuck into the backs of buses in Calexico, and had once called the Los Angeles City Fire Department’s 911 emergency line when his father’s eyes rolled back and he had stopped breathing on a bus bench on Main Street, an act of heroism that had later earned the boy belt lashes from his recovered father: “Don’t let me fall asleep like that again! You hear me?” Tomás knew his alphabet and went to school now that he lived with Isabel, and he was lucky enough to have a teacher who could see how bright he was despite the fact that he could not read more than a few words at a time. Tomás had learned to place himself in the path of generous and educated people from outside the calculating and cruel milieu that dominated his life—a patient teacher’s aide, an alert produce vendor willing to give a poor boy a banana or an orange or two. The well-read, English-speaking boy before him now struck Tomás as another one of those people, and he concentrated on every word the boy was saying, telling himself that he would one day learn to read books so he could study these stories himself. Tomás did not know books could contain dramatic and violent tales rooted in real life. As Brandon wrapped up the final fate of the characters in the movie, the boys were still dipping their hands into the bowl, and starting to chew at the few unpopped and salty kernels at the bottom of the bowl Isabel had set out for them.
“A train crash? No way!” Tomás shouted in disbelief.
Brandon gave a nod of solemnity. “It was a surprise to me too.”
“¡Tomás!“ Isabel cried from the kitchen. “¡Venite para acá!” His exclamation had alerted Isabel to his presence at the moment she and Araceli were discussing what else to feed the children. Isabel was short of milk and other foodstuffs, and now she summoned Tomás for a quick run to the market. She believed that running errands was the one thing the Other Boy was good for, and when she saw him coming back with groceries, or hunched over the sink washing the dishes, or at the table chopping carrots, she felt less stupid for having been tricked into becoming his guardian. “Andate a la tienda y comprame leche y un poco de ese queso que le gusta a mi hijo,” she commanded. “Y pan también. ¡Apurate!”
Isabel slipped two bills into his palm, money supplied by her Mexican visitor. Tomás was a lithe boy with luminous, summer-burned cherrywood skin, and was an inch or two shorter than Brandon, but when he moved through the house and street it was with the confidence and gracefulness of an adult athlete. He winked one of his smart brown eyes at Brandon as he stepped out the door.