He sometimes argued with Bacardí’s architects and associates because, he said, they regarded him not as a person but as a dollar sign (the dollar he explained was the money used in the United States and had recently begun to circulate in Cuba). Someone had told him that talent was not what was important in life, that talent was irrelevant: the most important thing, what conferred power, what governed everything, was money.
‘OK, why don’t
you
design some buildings? Let’s see how much money they make,’ Melecio told the man. Afterwards, people came running after him to apologise, as though they had suddenly lost the source of all this money everyone was constantly talking about. Melecio was tired of all the hypocrisy.
On several occasions, Bacardí took him to the Teatro Tacón. Never had Melecio felt more ill at ease. People looked him up and down, unable to believe their eyes: a Negro in evening dress at the theatre, and in the company of Don Emilio Bacardí no less! Emilio always introduced him with great ceremony as though Melecio was the most extraordinary creation in the universe and everyone would smile their plastic smiles and go on looking him up and down, watching as he walked, whispering among themselves or suddenly bursting into laughter, something Melecio could not bear.
In his years away from Pata de Puerco, Melecio explained, what had meant most to him was not the culture or the wisdom he had assimilated, but the sex he had with María. It was something extraordinary; they did it all the time, rolling about in the grass, in rivers, in banana plantations and the act itself was a mingling of the poems he recited and the songs María sang melding together in whimpers of pleasure, howls of pain, and everything in between, into a strange, deep deliciousness more intense than anything he had ever experienced. Melecio added that he was not mad and he did not expect anyone to understand, but he knew what he was talking about. This part of the letter made everyone laugh. But afterwards the letter returned to his melancholy, his homesickness, to a trace of regret that shrivelled the hearts of Betina and Gertrudis to the size of a kernel of corn.
One day he set aside his drawings and his books of poetry, went to the supervisor who oversaw architectural projects for the Bacardí family and told him he no longer wanted to design.
‘Why not?’ asked the man worriedly.
Melecio answered that he had worked out something which he called the Brick Theory, according to which the brick was the most devilish thing in existence. Not that he expected anyone else to understand, he stressed, but nonetheless he was no longer prepared to design.
‘Brick Theory? What are you talking about, Melecio?’ said the man. ‘Bricks are used to construct buildings and hospitals.’
‘True,’ replied Melecio, ‘but they are also used to build the opulent houses of the rich, the men who control parliament, the lawyers and the landowners.’
‘Bricks feed people’s dreams, mostly feverish dreams of power, of wanting to possess. People start off wanting a small brick house, then they long for a mansion and since it is in the nature of man to always want more, when they have finally acquired luxurious carriages and ships, acquired a family and all the comforts that a family requires, they find themselves wanting to possess other people. The easiest way to do this is to take possession of a country. And so a man runs for president, holds meetings, throws cocktail parties where he serves exquisite delicacies to those who belong to the elite, by which they mean his friends, those people who also live in mansions built of bricks, those people who share his interests. Once elected president, men pass laws in order to protect their property and that of those faithful friends without whom their rise to the presidency would have been impossible. They build roads in the name of prosperity and embezzle millions of pesos in the process. They build hundreds of hospitals, as you said, and dozens of schools but they build them for the benefit of their sons, their nephews, their brothers, their uncles, all those who, like them, are privileged to live in brick houses. And this is where bricks stop. They never reach the villages of mud and ditches and timber shacks, villages like the one where I was raised, those places where most of the citizens of this country live. With every brick I lay, I feel I am contributing to the starvation and the misery of my own people and, what is worse, I am adding to the wealth of the corrupt. That is my Brick Theory. It’s something I don’t expect you to understand, but from today, for me those dreams of concrete and cement are over.’
‘But where will you go?’ said the supervisor. Melecio left him hanging and went to explain his theory to Don Emilio Bacardí. Don Emilio replied that his proposition was somewhat curious but accepted that Melecio had a perfect right to hold it.
‘Curious in what way?’ asked Melecio.
‘It is curious because human cruelty was invented by our ancestors,’ answered Bacardí.
Melecio did not understand.
‘The Greeks and the Romans were the first to invent evil. From them, over the centuries, it was handed down from generation to generation. And where did our forefathers come by evil? Well, if it is true that God made man, then the answer lies above. What I mean by that is that man is possessed of all manner of impulses, good and evil, greed and good sense, jealousy and generosity. The best we can hope is the good in man represents the greater part. If you don’t like this life, if you don’t enjoy living it, you have every right to reject it, but the fact that a man might be greedy, jealous and sometimes even murderous should come as no surprise to anyone.’
They stood for a long time looking closely at each other. Then Melecio hugged Emilio Bacardí long and hard, the embrace of a son for his father.
‘If that’s true, then you should know that the lion’s share of my gratitude I owe to you,’ said Melecio at length. Then he explained that he needed to change his life because he felt unhappy; that if he did not he would become miserable. ‘All I see around me here is wickedness,’ he said. And then, without another word, he embraced Emilio again and walked back to the house.
He went to look for María.
‘I have to keep my promise. It is time for me to go home.’
‘Let me come with you.’
‘No, if I am alone, I can teach more quickly. I will come back and fetch you. Wait for me.’
‘I’ll be here.’
So concluded his encounter with María.
José still had not returned from the cemetery by the time Aureliano had finished reading the letter. Betina prepared some food. Gertrudis excused herself, explaining that she had something she needed to do, then she ran to Grandpa Benicio.
‘What did Papá and Mamá say?’ asked Grandfather.
‘Nothing you want to hear.’
‘I know that they don’t love me.’
‘Of course they love you, but they’re too old to change. You have to be the one to change.’
‘Melecio is right to stay away. Everything here is dead.’
‘Nothing here is dead. What happened to the Benicio I fell in love with?’
Grandpa Benicio hesitated a moment and looked up into the sky: a deep, intense blue crisscrossed towards the east by a convoy of clouds like carts heading towards Santiago. Finally he sighed and said: ‘He died. The Benicio you fell in love with is no more.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean I want you to leave. Go. Go and leave me in peace.’
‘But—’
‘Go, Gertrudis. Live your life. Forget about me.’
The desolation Gertrudis felt in that moment made her think of the desolation of the village. She thought about the prospect of living without Benicio. She thought about how much she missed his body in the night, she thought about her parents, about Melecio. And, as the tears trickled down her face, all these things illuminated by memory seemed desolate.
‘So that’s it. You never want to see me again.’
Grandfather nodded.
‘As you wish, Benicio, I am not going to force you. Just remember one thing: you are not that monster’s son, even if what he told you is true. When you feel unsure, when you don’t remember who you truly are, come and see me and I will remind you.’
Gertrudis did not wait a second longer but turned and slowly walked home. Benicio watched her go, unable to believe the words that had just come from his own lips. He felt that his life had lost all meaning. He stood, mute, watching as the figure of Gertrudis grew smaller and the hatred in his breast grew. Above all, he even hated himself. When his sister had shrunk to the size of a dwarf, Geru turned and shouted, ‘One last thing. You’re wrong about Melecio. He’s not going to stay away. He arrives home in Pata de Puerco at noon tomorrow.’
An hour after his arrival the following day, having bid farewell to Aureliano the coachman and greeted the neighbours, Melecio stepped into his house. In the five years he had been away his parents had aged a great deal. Betina’s hair was streaked with grey, she even had grey hair under her arms. But José looked worse. He was stooped now, almost hunchbacked, there was no other way to describe him: he looked old. Melecio had left behind two strong, healthy individuals and had come home to find two weak and wizened old people.
The new village schoolteacher said that he had missed them terribly, that he should never have abandoned them, but it was impossible now to turn back time. He brought his fingers to his temples as though he were suddenly getting a migraine.
‘You didn’t abandon us,’ said Betina. ‘You went to learn so that you could teach us all to read and write.’
‘It’s true, Melecio,’ said Gertrudis. ‘What is important is that you are here now.’
Melecio looked up and for the first time noticed his sister. He was thunderstruck. She had always been beautiful, but he had never imagined Geru would grow into a nymph.
‘A nymph?’ Gertrudis said curiously.
Melecio explained that there was something called Greek mythology, a collection of stories, myths and legends about the Greeks, people who live in Greece, a distant country as old as the world itself. In these stories, he explained, nymphs were spirits of nature, beautiful maidens who tended to the gods and dwelled in mountains, rivers, woods and springs. Gertrudis was pleased by Melecio’s description.
‘So I’m a nymph?’
‘See for yourself.’ Her brother gave her a box that contained an elegant cotton dress and a pearl necklace. Then, from another box, he took a flat object he called a mirror. Gertrudis’s mouth fell open as she studied herself in the mirror.
‘You see what I mean?’ said Melecio. ‘A nymph.’
Meanwhile, Betina opened the transparent container, the ‘cut-glass bottle’ as Melecio called it. She brought it to her nose and shuddered.
‘What a wonderful thing,’ she said. ‘It smells like rose wine.’
‘It does. But don’t even think about drinking it, it will give you an attack of the shits that could kill you,’ explained her son. ‘That is perfume. You wet your fingertips and dab it behind your ears and on your neck.’
Betina applied a few drops of this strange liquid to her throat and went over to show José. José said he did not need to see it, that he knew what perfume was, that the Santistebans had used perfume all the time and it was the most repulsive thing he had ever smelled.
‘Don’t be jealous, old man,’ said Betina.
‘Jealous of what? You’re not the only one who got presents.’
José tried on the black suit his son had brought him and looked at himself in the mirror. Betina threw her arms around him saying he was the handsomest old man she had ever seen and José prised her off muttering that he was not an old man, that he was still fighting fit. Melecio said he looked a little like Brindis de Salas. ‘What’s that when it’s at home?’ asked José. Melecio explained he was a black Cuban violinist who had played at the German royal court over in Europe, a continent thousands of miles from Pata de Puerco.
And so they went on for a while, trying on their gifts and looking at themselves in the mirror, happy and contented. Betina asked Melecio about María. Her son told her that he would go back and fetch her one day, as soon as everyone in Pata de Puerco had learned to read and write.
‘So where’s Benicio?’ asked Melecio. The faces of Gertrudis and Betina became hard.
‘Where’s Benicio?’ he asked again.
‘Your sister can explain it to you,’ said José.
So Geru took her brother out into the back yard and told him everything that had happened. An hour later, they came back into the house.
‘This thing about them falling in love is hardly news,’ said Melecio. ‘Benicio and Gertrudis have always been in love. You didn’t need to be able to read and write to see that. It is a blessing. Can you imagine how wonderful it must be not to have to waste time searching for the love of your life? Imagine how glorious it must be to know, even as a child, that you have already found them? If everyone were like that, it would save much of the time and energy wasted on trying to solve mankind’s great riddle, the question that constantly haunts us: where am I going? I understand them. Just as I understand why Mamá and Papá don’t approve of your relationship, because they’re old. What I don’t understand is why Papá José threw Benicio out of the house.’
‘I didn’t throw him out of the house. It’s easy for you to say that,’ said José.
Then he began to scold Geru for not telling her brother about how he had been paralysed, how Benicio had turned into a monster, how he had beaten a boy half to death one day. This was not how he and Betina had raised their sons, José said, and then asked Geru why she hadn’t told Melecio about Benicio hanging around with El Mozambique.