It was Olga, finally, who rescued him from the incandescent torment of chastity. Ever since Martínez had cornered him in the grade school broom closet, Gregory had been besieged by unconfessable doubts concerning his virility. He had not explored Ernestina Pereda again—or any other girl—under the guise of playing doctor, and his knowledge about that mysterious side of existence was vague and inconsistent. The crumbs of information garnered on the sly in the library merely confused him further, because they contradicted the experience of the street, the jokes the Morales brothers and other friends told, the preachments of the Padre, the revelations of the movies, and the alarms of his fantasies. He wrapped himself in solitude, denying with stubborn determination the perturbation of his heart and the restlessness of his body, attempting to imitate the chaste knights of the Round Table or the heroes of the Far West, but at any moment he could be betrayed by an upsurge of nature. That dull pain and nameless confusion weighed on him for an eternity, until it was more than he could live with, and had Olga not come to his aid he would have been half mad. Olga had seen him born, she had been present at every important moment of his childhood, she knew him like a son; nothing about him escaped her eye, and what she could not deduce through simple common sense she divined through her gifts as a seer, which at best consisted of knowledge of another’s heart, an observant eye, and boldness in improvising counsel and visions of the future. She had no need to call on her gift of clairvoyance to recognize Gregory’s helpless state. Olga was in the fourth decade of her life; the curves of her youth had turned to fat, and the reversals of her gypsy vocation had aged her skin, but she had not lost her grace and style, the lush foliage of her red hair, the swish of her skirts, or her boisterous laugh. She lived in the same house but no longer in one room; she had bought the property and made it into her private temple. In one room she dispensed medicines, magnetized water, and all manner of herbs; in another, therapeutic massages and abortions; and in the large living room she held spiritualist, magic, and divination sessions. She always received Gregory in the room above the garage. One day he seemed especially pale, and she was moved by the primitive compassion that recently had been her essential feeling for him.
“Who are you in love with now?” she said, laughing.
“I’ve got to get out of this fucking place,” he muttered, his head in his hands, defeated by the enemy below his waist.
“Where do you plan to go?”
“Anywhere, straight to hell, I don’t care. Nothing happens here, I can’t breathe, I’m suffocating.”
“It isn’t the barrio; it’s you. You’re drowning inside your own hide.”
The soothsayer took a bottle of whiskey from the cupboard, splashed a stout drink into one glass and another for herself, waited for Gregory to drink it, then poured another. He was not accustomed to strong liquor, and it went to his head; the windows were closed, and the aroma of incense, medicinal herbs, and patchouli was heavy in the air. With a shudder, he caught Olga’s scent. In a flash of loving inspiration, the heavyset woman walked up behind him and wrapped her arms around him; her drooping breasts pressed against his back, her beringed fingers blindly unbuttoned his shirt while he turned to stone, paralyzed by surprise and fear, but then she began to nuzzle his neck, trace his ear with her tongue, whisper words in Russian, explore his body with her expert hands, touch him there where no one had touched him, ever, until with a sob, plunging down a steep precipice, shaken with terror and anticipated joy, and without knowing what he was doing, or why, he turned to her, desperate, tearing at her clothes in his urgency, throwing himself on her like an animal in rut, rolling with her across the floor, kicking his pants down, groping his way into her skirts, penetrating her in a burst of desolation, and immediately collapsing with a scream, as his being gushed from him as if an artery had exploded in his groin. Olga allowed him to rest a moment on her bosom, scratching his back as she had so often when he was a boy, but as soon as she calculated that he was feeling remorse, she got up and went to close the curtains. Calmly, she removed her torn blouse and wrinkled skirt.
“Now I am going to teach you what we women like,” she said with a new smile. “The first thing, my son, is never to hurry. . . .”
“I have to know something, Olga; swear that you’ll tell me the truth.”
“What is it you want to know?”
“My father and you . . . I mean, the two of you. . . .”
“That’s none of your business; it has nothing to do with you.”
“I have to know . . . you were lovers, weren’t you?”
“No, Gregory. I will say this only once: no, we were not lovers. Don’t bring up the subject again, because if you do, that will be the last time I ever see you. Is that clear?”
Gregory wanted so badly to believe her that he asked no more questions.
Beginning with that afternoon, the world changed color for Gregory. He visited Olga almost every day and like an inspired student learned what she had to reveal; he pried into her every hiding place, boldly whispered every known obscenity to her, and discovered, amazed, that he was not totally alone in the universe and that he wanted to live. As his soul soaked everything in like a sponge, his body developed and within a few weeks he grew out of boyhood and his expression became that of a contented man. When Olga realized that he was falling in love from pure gratitude, she berated him furiously and forced him to look at her naked body and make a meticulous inventory of her pounds, her gray hair, and her wrinkles, of the fatigue that came from being cudgeled so many years by destiny, and then she solemnly threatened to send him away if he persisted in such twisted ideas. She described in very clear terms the limits of their relationship and added that he should be beating his breast because he had a brutal fate in store: he would not find another woman who would provide him with free sex at his whim, iron his shirts, put money in his pockets, and ask nothing in return; furthermore, he was still a runny-nosed kid, and by the time he grew up she would be an old woman, and it was up to him to concentrate on his studies and see whether he could climb out of the hole he’d been born in and make something of himself; after all, he lived in the land of opportunity, and if he failed to take advantage of that good fortune, he was a hopeless idiot.
Gregory’s grades improved, he made new friends, he began working on the school newspaper and soon found himself writing inflammatory articles and chairing student meetings for various causes—some bureaucratic, like the schedules for the sports program, others having to do with principle, such as discrimination against blacks and Latins. You got that from your father, Nora sighed, worried, because she did not want to see him become a preacher. Appeased by Olga, he could enjoy reading and spent every spare minute in the public library, where he struck up a friendship with Cyrus, the elderly bibliophile in charge of the elevator. Cyrus manned the controls with one hand and held a book in the other, so absorbed that the elevator operated itself, like a machine on the loose. He looked up only when Gregory appeared; then for a few seconds his anemic, prophet’s face lighted up and a faint smile flickered across the rictus of his lips, but he would immediately regain control and greet Gregory with a growl—to make it very clear that the only bond between them was a certain intellectual affinity. The boy usually showed up about midafternoon, after school, and stayed only half an hour, because he had to work. The old man waited for him from early morning, and as the hour approached caught himself glancing at his watch, always on guard to rein in any untoward emotion, but if Gregory failed to come it was as if the sun had not risen. They were soon good friends. Reeves liked to spend his Saturdays with the old man; he visited him in his shabby room in the boardinghouse where he lived, and at other times they went to the movies or out for a walk, although as it started to get dark Gregory always left to take Carmen dancing. After they knew each other better, Cyrus made an appointment to meet Gregory in the park, using the pretext of discussing philosophy and sharing a picnic lunch. He waited for Gregory, holding a basket from which Fren
ch bread and the neck of a wine bottle protruded, and when he arrived led him to an isolated spot where no one could hear and whispered that he wanted to reveal a life-and-death secret. After making Gregory swear he would never betray him, he solemnly confessed that he was a member of the Communist Party. The boy did not entirely understand the significance of such a confidence, even though the country was at the height of a witch hunt unleashed against liberalism, but he imagined Cyrus’s proclivity as something as contagious and disreputable as a venereal disease. He made inquiries that only further muddied the waters. His mother gave him a vague response about Russia and the massacre of a royal family in a Winter Palace, all so remote that it was impossible to relate it to his time and place. When he mentioned communism to the Moraleses, Inmaculada crossed herself in fright; Pedro forbade him to utter obscenities in his house and warned him of the danger of getting involved in affairs that were none of his business. Politics is a vice; honest, hardworking people have no need for it, declared Padre Larraguibel, whose inclination toward the horrific had increased with the years. He accused Communists of being the Antichrist incarnate and the natural enemies of the United States. He assured Gregory that to speak to one of them constituted an automatic betrayal of a Christian culture and nation, since everything that was said was immediately transmitted to Moscow for diabolical ends. Be careful, you’ll find yourself in trouble with the law and end up in the gas chamber—which you’d deserve for being a damn fool. The Reds are atheists, Bolsheviks: plain bad people who have no business in this country; let them go back to Russia if that’s what they want, he concluded, with a thump of his fist that made his coffee-and-brandy leap from the table. Gregory realized that Cyrus had offered him the ultimate proof of friendship in telling his secret, and in return he vowed not to disappoint his friend as he followed the intellectual path he had recently undertaken. Cyrus stirred Gregory’s passion for certain authors and, every time he posed a question, sent him to look up the information for himself—which was how he learned to use encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other library resources. If everything else fails, he counseled, go through old newspapers. A vast horizon opened before Gregory’s eyes; for the first time it seemed possible that he might leave the barrio, that he was not condemned to stay buried there for the rest of his days. The world was enormous, his curiosity was awakened, along with the desire to live adventures that previously he had seen only in the movies. When he was free from school and work, he spent hours with his teacher, riding up and down the elevator until he was dizzy and had to stagger outside for a breath of fresh air.
He had dinner every night with the Moraleses, and in passing helped Carmen, who was a terrible student, with her homework; then he went to visit Olga, arriving home after his mother and Judy were asleep. Occasionally on the weekend he would seek Nora’s company to talk about what he was reading, but their relationship cooled day by day, and they were never again to enjoy conversations like those from their bohemian life, times when she had told him the plots of operas and deciphered the mysteries of the firmament in the starry skies. He had very little in common with his sister and must have been very distracted not to perceive her unyielding hostility. Their cottage had begun to deteriorate—the wood creaked, and there were leaks in the roof—but the land had risen in value as the city advanced in that direction. Pedro Morales suggested they sell the property and move into a small apartment where their expenses would be lower and maintenance more simple, but Nora feared that if they moved she would lose contact with the ghost of her husband.
“The dead need a permanent hearth; they can’t be moving from one place to another. And houses need a death and a birth. One day my grandchildren will be born here,” she said.
Besides Olga, with whom he shared the wondrous intimacy of uninhibited lovers, Carmen Morales was the person Gregory was closest to. Once Olga had mollified his instincts, he could contemplate his friend’s improbable bosom without discomfort. He wished for her a less sordid fate than that of women from the barrio, who were mistreated by their husbands, worn down by their children, and inconsolably poor; he felt that with a little help Carmen could finish school and learn some skill. He tried to initiate her into reading, but the library bored her; she detested school-work and demonstrated no interest whatever in newspapers.
“If I read more than half a page my head hurts. Why don’t you read it and tell me about it,” she would apologize when he cornered her between a book and a wall.
“It’s because she has those large breasts. The more bosom, the less brain, that’s a law of nature; that’s why the poor miserable females are the way they are,” Cyrus explained to Gregory.
“That old poop is a moron!” Carmen erupted when she learned what he had said, and started wearing falsies in her bra out of pure defiance, with such spectacular results that everyone in the neighborhood had some comment on how extremely well developed the younger Morales girl was.
Her breasts were not all that attracted comment. Her busy-as-a-mouse days were far behind; she had become a fiery girl surrounded by a whirlwind of suitors who dared not cross the delicate line of honor, since on the other side, resolute and suspicious, stood Pedro Morales and his four strapping sons. In many ways, Carmen was no different from other girls her age; she loved parties, she wrote her romantic musings and copied verses in her diary, she fell in love with movie stars and batted her eyes at any boy within flirting distance—that is, if she had eluded her family’s vigilance, or Gregory’s, for he had assumed the role of guardian knight. Nevertheless, unlike other girls, she had a seething imagination that later would save her from a banal existence.
One Thursday as they left school, Gregory and Carmen found themselves facing Martínez and three of his gang. The flow of youngsters leaving the building slowed for an instant and then branched off to avoid them, not wanting to provoke trouble. Martínez had seen Carmen the previous Saturday at a dance and was waiting for her with the arrogance of one who knows he is the stronger. She stopped short, like the students around her who could sense the menace in the air but were incapable of reacting. Martínez had grown very large for his age; he was an insolent giant with a Latin lover’s mustache and assorted tattoos; he affected extreme pachuco style: pomaded hair combed into two high pompadours, pleated pants, shoes with metal tips, a leather jacket, a purple shirt.
“Come ’ere, baby, give us a kiss.” He stepped forward and gripped Carmen’s chin.
She slapped his hand away, and his eyes narrowed to two slits. Gregory seized Carmen by the arm and tried to walk away from that unheroic ambush, but the gang blocked their way. There was no one to turn to: the street had emptied, leaving a terrible void; the remaining students had backed away to a prudent distance, forming a large semicircle around Carmen, Greg, and the aggressors.
“Hey, I know you, you little shitass,” Martínez jeered, giving Gregory a slight push, then added for the benefit of his cronies, “This is the fuckin’ gringo pansy I told you about.”
Still holding Carmen’s arm, Gregory tried once more to make an escape, but Martínez stepped forward menacingly, and Gregory realized that the moment he had feared had come, that there was no way to avoid the threat that had stalked him for years. He breathed deeply, trying to control his terror, forcing himself to think, realizing he was on his own and that none of his schoolmates would come to his defense. There were four gang members, and it was a sure bet they carried knives or brass knuckles. Hatred washed over him like a hot tide, rising from the pit of his belly to his throat; memories flooded back, and for a moment his mind went blank and he sank deep into a murky quagmire. Carmen’s voice pulled him back to the street.
“Keep your hands off me, you bastard,” and she fended off Martínez’s aggression as the sidekicks snickered.
Gregory pushed Carmen to one side and confronted his enemy, their faces inches apart, fists balled, eyes filled with animosity, chests heaving.
“Which do you want, you gringo homo? You want me to ream your
ass again, or would you rather mix it up with me?” Martínez murmured, his voice soft and slow, as if he were speaking of love.