Swift as Desire Part 6

Lluvia came running, alarmed by her mother's shouts and thinking that her father's condition had taken a turn for the worse, but when she entered the room she saw what the emergency was, and immediately set about rectifying the situation.

"What is your father saying?"

"He says...it was his duty to take care of you and to fill your life with laughter, and he couldn't do it...he asks you to forgive him for having failed you. His only aim was to love you. He understands he didn't always know how, but you have always been, and will always be, the person he has loved most."

That isn't what don Jubilo had signaled at all, but he loved hearing his daughter interpret his words in that way. He made a sign of complicity and gave a deep sigh. Finally Lluvia had dared to give voice to what she desired more than anything. Lluvia understood this. And she knew that she hadn't made it up; she was convinced that she was simply repeating the words she had heard so long ago, while she was waiting in her mother's womb for the best moment to be born. When Lluvia had interpreted her father's words she had merely been faithful to the voice that had echoed through the corners of their house for so long without ever daring to make itself heard.

When Lluvia saw that her mother's eyes had taken on an unusual shine, she knew her interpretation had been right. She had managed to unearth emotions that had remained buried beneath pride and aloofness for such a long time. Lluvia was about to discover a new side to her mother. At first, she had been surprised by the look of pain on her mother's face when she first saw how sick Jubilo was. She had never imagined her mother could feel so much on his behalf. And now as her mother's eyes glistened with love, Lluvia felt as if she had made a discovery much more important than that made by the archaeologist who found Coyolxauhqui. All these years, beneath layer upon layer of coldness, her mother had kept hidden a loving gaze that could melt anyone's heart! The shine in her eyes came from the deepest recesses of her heart. It was unbelievable that it could have gone unnoticed. Lluvia had a.s.sumed that her parents hadn't communicated at all for a long time, but now she became aware of her error.

She reflected on how in 1842 Samuel Morse had discovered that cables weren't necessary for transmitting messages and that wireless telegraph communication was possible, since electric currents traveled just as swiftly without cables as with them. He made that discovery one day when he saw a boat on a river accidentally cutting through an underwater cable: he realized that this didn't interrupt the message that was in the process of being transmitted.

Similarly, as Lluvia witnessed the way her mother's hand rested on her father's without a word pa.s.sing between them, it proved to her that inside the resonating matrix that makes up the cosmos, the transmission of energy occurs on a permanent basis. She wondered whether this invisible and intangible communication had always existed between her parents, and whether she was only just realizing it now that she had discovered she had a wonderful facility for perceiving it.

Curiously, don Jubilo's illness, which brought so much suffering with it, was what allowed Lluvia to discover that her parents' bond had been unbroken since her birth. She would love to have known this when she was younger. What serenity it would have brought her childhood to realize that although communication between her parents seemed to be broken down, in fact energy continued to circulate from one to the other. Even though the lines were down, their love kept traveling as swift as their desire! She only needed to look at her parents' intertwined hands to understand so many things. Her mother's rage, her constant frustration at not being able to kiss and embrace her husband as she wanted, the way she directed her anger at her children instead of at him. Her father's yearning, the way he sought out music and turned it into a subst.i.tute for Lucha's caresses. In a second it all made sense to her. How she would have liked to understand much earlier, but everything happens in its own time and there is no way to speed things up to one's liking. For example, it took don Jubilo his whole life to rebuild the bridge that had been broken. He finally managed it a mere moment before dying, and he left the world in peace.

He spent most of his final day in a coma, unable to use his telegraph transmitter. He had waited for Lucha to visit him before he died. Lluvia was convinced that the light in her mother's eyes would illuminate her father's way in his travels beyond this world. They said good-bye without speaking, but with much love.

THERE IS NOTHING LIKE popular wisdom. There are so many sayings that ring so tremendously true, and yet their full meaning isn't really felt until one experiences them firsthand. I have often repeated the saying "You never know what you've got till it's gone," but it wasn't until my father died that I understood what these words really meant. His absence is immeasurable. There is no way to explain it, to quantify how alone I now feel. The only thing that is clear to me is that I am not the same anymore. I will never again be don Jubilo's daughter. I will never again feel like a protected child. I will never again know the rea.s.surance that there is a man in this world who will always give me his unconditional support, no matter what.

It is difficult for me to conceive of a world without my papa. He was always by my side, in good times and bad. When I was sick, my papa was there. When I was upset, my papa was there. During celebrations and holidays, my papa was there. During school vacations, my papa was there. Always smiling, always attentive, always ready to help me, whether it was to take my children to school, to crack walnuts for chiles en nogada, or to accompany me to the flea market at Lagunilla. Whatever it was, from the moment he opened his eyes until he shut them for the last time, my papa was always there for me.

I know it's selfish to think this way. The life my papa led in his last months was no life at all. He suffered so much. He hated depending on others. His death was really a blessing, and that it happened the way it did. Surrounded by love, with all the people who loved him so much at his side, in his own bed and not in some cold hospital. The only thing that still pains me is that I didn't manage to take him to see his beloved K'ak'nab again, the beach at Progreso, where he first learned to swim. We had planned the trip, but he was never well enough to let us make it. At least he was able to say good-bye to the sun. The morning he died, he asked me to put him in front of the open window to greet it one last time. He fell into a coma and that afternoon he died. Following his final instructions, we dressed him in his white linen suit, the one he wore when he danced danzon with my mama. And then we brought him to the funeral home.

It was a cloudy afternoon; the sun never made an appearance, but my mother arrived wearing dark gla.s.ses. It was obvious she was wearing them to hide her eyes, which were swollen from so much crying. It didn't surprise me at all. I could identify with her pain. What did surprise me was that she called me by my real name. As we began to walk through the cemetery, my mother took me firmly by the arm and said, "Don't let go of me, Lluvia." She seemed so vulnerable and small! I imagined how lonely she must feel to have lost for the second time the man who had been her husband.

When we returned home from the cemetery, after tearful good-byes with Lolita, don Chucho, Nati, and Aurorita, I closed the door to the room that had been my father's and didn't open it again for a week. I couldn't bear to see his empty bed, his silent radio, his still telegraph, his empty chair, all desolate and abandoned. But after seven days had pa.s.sed, the need to feel my father's presence drew me back into his room and made me sit in his chair. The room still held his scent, and the arms of the upholstered chair still retained his warmth, but he was no longer there. I would never again hear his footsteps, the sound of which had always brought me such peace. From the time I was a little girl, as soon as I heard him come home, I would know everything was going to be all right, that any problem would be lessened just by his presence. Now that was all gone. I thought about the overwhelming experience of watching him die, of being at his side the moment he departed. I had thought I was well prepared for facing his death, but I was wrong. One is never prepared. The mysteries of life and death are too powerful. No mind can fully embrace them. It is very difficult to understand what occurs in the third dimension. We only know that the deceased are no longer here, that they have gone and left us alone. Anyone who has seen a lifeless body knows what I am talking about.

Seeing my father's stiff body lying on his bed reminded me of the horrible feeling I had experienced one day as a child, when I saw a marionette hanging from a nail, after a puppet show. A few moments earlier I had seen it speak, dance, walk, and suddenly there it was, immobile, empty; it had lost its soul, had stopped being a character and become just a piece of painted wood. The difference between the marionette and my papa was that the puppet could come back to life in the hands of the puppet master, but my father couldn't. That body would never again speak, move, laugh, walk. That body was dead, and I now had to sort out his possessions.

I preferred to deal with it right away to avoid prolonging my mourning. I opened his drawers and began to fold his clothes, to organize his records and his books. I set aside his records by Virginia Lopez and Los Panchos for myself. Then I discovered a small box that obviously held his keepsakes. I opened it slowly, out of respect. Inside I found a photograph of my mother when she was about fifteen. An oval picture of me from elementary school. A photo of my children, and one of my brother. A small envelope containing a curl of baby hair and a note in my father's handwriting that said, "memento of my beloved Ramiro." A small notebook with notations of significant Mayan dates, and a detailed drawing of a Mayan stela. A guitar pick and a matchbox. When I opened it, I discovered my first tooth, with a note by my father recording the date it had fallen out.

That day instantly came back to me. My papa had taken me to my bed and helped me put the tooth under my pillow for the mouse to come and take away.

"What's going to happen to my tooth, papa?" I asked.

"Don't worry, m'hijita, the mouse will come and take it away, but in its place he'll leave you some money," he replied.

"I already know that," I insisted, "but later, what's going to happen to my tooth?"

"Later?"

"Yes, once the mouse has it."

"Oh! Well, he's going to keep it in a little box with the rest of his most treasured possessions."

"No, papi, you don't understand. I want to know what's going to happen to my tooth. Is it going to fall apart?"

"Well...yes, but not for many, many years-it will eventually turn into dust-but don't worry about that now, you just go to sleep, my Chipi-chipi."

MY FATHER WAS RIGHT. The "mouse" kept my tooth with the rest of his most treasured possessions, and although it was still in good condition, it is going to end up turning into dust, but not for many, many years. Maybe I will never see it. But these thoughts helped me to overcome my pain. I stayed there for a while thinking about the dust. "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust." Everything that lives ends up as dust. We walk amid dust from b.u.t.terfly wings, flowers, stars, rocks. We breathe the dust of fingernails, hair, lungs, hearts. Each minuscule particle of dust carries with it traces of memories, nights of love. And at that moment, dust stopped being a symbol of acc.u.mulated solitude for me, and became just the opposite. Millions and millions of presences of beings that have lived on Earth are in that dust. Floating there are the remains of Quetzalcoatl, Buddha, Gandhi, Christ.

In that dust were mingled bits of skin my papa had left behind, little pieces of his fingernails, his hair. They were spread over the whole city, over the pueblos he had traveled through with my mother, over my whole house.

Not only that, but my father lived on in my body, in that of my brother, my children, my nieces and nephews. His legacy, both physical and emotional, was present in all of us. In our minds, in our memories, in the way we lived, laughed, spoke, walked. Pondering on this during the funeral, it allowed me to go over and give my brother a heartfelt hug, something I hadn't done in many years. And it allowed me to reconcile myself with life.

With the pa.s.sing of the days, my life has started to return to normal. At times, as I go about my daily business, I get the feeling that my father is accompanying me, and that fills me with a sense of peace. Sometimes I can even hear his voice echo clearly in my head. I'm not sure if my belief that my papa is close by comes from my desire to feel good, but whether it's true or not, I do know that wherever my papa is, he would love to know that I have gone back to taking the astronomy cla.s.ses I gave up when I got married, that I am learning the Mayan language, and that as soon as Federico's son, my grandson, has learned to read and write, the first thing I shall teach him is Mayan numerology, so that his heritage is not forgotten.

Last night I had a very revealing dream. My papi and I were riding in his old car, the '56 Chevy. We were driving to Progreso, on the Yucatan peninsula. The highway was full of b.u.t.terflies. Some of them struck the windshield. I was driving and suddenly my papi asked me to let him drive. Without waiting for my reply, he reached for the steering wheel. Despite his blindness, I wasn't afraid to let him drive. My papa laughed happily and I joined in. I felt a little afraid only on the curves, because he didn't turn the wheel fast enough. On a sharp turn, to my surprise, he kept going straight ahead; but instead of falling into the void, we flew up into the air. We speeded over several provincial cities and in all of them people on the ground waved at us. Many campesinos eagerly waved their sombreros, as if they recognized us. When we reached the ocean, my papi said, "Look, Chipi-chipi," and he quickly jumped in the water and began paddling around. I was surprised, given his Parkinson's, that he could move about so easily.

A sound slowly awakened me from this deep dream and brought me back to reality. It was a message being tapped out in Morse code on the wooden head of my bed, which is turned to face north. Curiously, it came today, on the fourteenth of February. In addition to celebrating love and friendship, in Mexico we also use this day to commemorate telegraph operators, although not many people remember that anymore.

Telegraph operators, those people who played such an important role in the history of telecommunication, have now been forgotten. I can understand why no one would want to remember don Pedro, but it makes me sad that few people would take a moment, before they go on-line on their computers, to remember that in its day the telegraph was as important as the Internet is now, and that telegraph operators made an essential contribution to the enjoyment we have of instant communication today. Well, sometimes life seems ungrateful, but it doesn't really matter. The interesting thing about the communication process is that in one way or another it allows us to express the words that come from within us. Whether they are written, spoken, or sung, they fly through s.p.a.ce charged with the echoes of all the other voices that have preceded them. They travel through the air bathed in the saliva from other mouths, humming with the vibrations from other ears, and throbbing with the beat of thousands of hearts. They cling to the very core of our memories and lie there in silence until a new desire reawakens them and recharges them with loving energy. That is one of the qualities of words that moves me most, their capacity for transmitting love. Like water, words are a wonderful conductor of energy. And the most powerful, transforming energy is the energy of love.

All those whose lives my father helped to change would always call him on February fourteenth to honor him. Today, the first ones to call were Jesus and Lupita. They were very saddened by the news of his death, the death of my papa, the telegraph operator, the man who knew how to unite thousands of people, who knew how to express their hopes and desires. And ultimately, that is all that really matters, that we all remember him. He will always endure in our memory, thanks to the transforming power of his words. And by the way, the words in the message that was tapped out on my headboard were: "Dear Chipi-chipi, death does not exist and life is wonderful. Live it to the fullest! I shall love you always. Your papa."

ALSO BY LAURA ESQUIVEL.

Like Water for Chocolate.

The Law of Love.

Between Two Fires.