The Revolutionaries Try Again Read online

  —

  Not yet asleep on her living room sofa, as she listens to Tabula Rasa amid boxes she still needs to retape and ship to her new life at NYU’s film program, boxes where she may or may not toss in Antonio’s reddened manuscripts, she wonders if years from now she will only remember Antonio because of Tabula Rasa, the only piece out of all the contemporary pieces he’d included in his compendium that turned into a favorite (in a few days she will move away from San Francisco like everyone else, leaving behind friends who were really acquaintances who paired up with her simply to avoid going out at night by themselves and who will not remember her just as Antonio won’t remember them and she won’t remember him — every moment is an ending, Arvo Pärt said, every five minutes there’s an ending do you understand? — no, I don’t —), and perhaps all that will remain of San Francisco for her will be Tabula Rasa and the vague contours of Antonio at his farewell party (why hadn’t she interrupted his drunk ramblings with questions or asides or by shouting at him why are you leaving? — you didn’t want him to think you cared? — I did and didn’t, do you understand? — on the one hand everything will pass and on the other nothing will pass and I miss Antonio’s dumb sprint toward everything in the world —), and perhaps she will also remember that first night with Antonio at Bistro Stelline, and afterwards how surprised she’d been at how much he’d revealed about himself and how quickly she’d accepted his invitation to come to his apartment, although he didn’t phrase it as an invitation but simply slipped his hand on hers and said come, Masha, no, Antonio, she didn’t say, I just met you, no, Masha thinks as she listens to Tabula Rasa, she will toss Antonio’s ersatz fiction in her recycling bin along with her unused canvases and be done with a life in San Francisco she will not remember once she settles in New York.

  —

  I’d never listened to classical music before, Antonio wrote, at home in Guayaquil no one unwrapped the classical cassette collection compiled by the Encyclopedia Salvat because on the one hand my mother favored the melodrama of José José, not melodrama, no, let’s call it pickled fatalism, while on the other hand I favored the pickled nihilism of Guns N’ Roses: to me symphonic music as elemental as Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique sounded like sap from soundtracks, so to train my ear I started listening to easy Satie piano pieces, then I moved on to Mozart sonatas, a movement at a time, which Annie was glad to supply for me, sharing her recordings of the complete Beethoven sonatas by Richard Goode, of Schumann’s Symphonic Etudes by Alfred Brendel, everything by Sviatoslav Richter and nothing by Glenn Gould, and after I exhausted Annie’s music stash I ventured out on my own, driving to the shopping outlets in Sonoma or Saint Helena and listening to Scriabin’s sonatas or Prokofiev’s piano concertos or whatever I’d purchased at random from the classical music section at Tower Records that same afternoon, no, not at random, those listening / driving sessions were life projects to me so the recordings had to be of (a) longer piano pieces and of (b) composers I didn’t yet know, and perhaps because I didn’t yet know too many classical pieces besides the ones that Annie was introducing me to through analog recordings of Sviatoslav Richter and tapes of master classes she’d attended at Berkeley, which I was borrowing from her because I’d refused to play the little Bach pieces she’d assigned to me from the Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach and therefore needed to know what else was out there, purchasing a recording before setting out to Sonoma or Saint Helena still felt like a chance activity, and although Annie had cautioned me against listening to piano music while driving because the onrush of road underneath obfuscates the nuances that I should be listening for, especially when the markings of a phrase demanded pianissimo, I did it anyway, purchasing Prokofiev’s piano concertos because Annie frowned upon Prokofiev — if you would have lived in San Francisco with me I would have immediately shared with you that as a young student at the St. Petersburg Conservatory Prokofiev would sneak into the concert hall before a performance to pencil wrong notes into the scores, Leopoldo — and then one night at Annie’s house, after she examined the cover of my sheet music binder that read Antonio’s Piano Career, and after she laughed at it as one laughs at the silly refrains of children, I parked outside Gordo’s Taquería on Solano Street and cloistered myself inside my car, forcing myself to listen to the first movement of Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique until it made sense to me, which must have been a long while because the burrito folk started eyeing me suspiciously: by the time I was done training my ear, I had to accept that it was too late; that there was more to playing the piano than pressing the right notes; that I would never achieve a competitive level of pianism and would never become a pianist: well, why not a writer?

  —

  I Am Sitting in a Room by Alvin Lucier: I am sitting in a room, Alvin Lucier said, different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice, and I am going to play it back into the room, again and again, until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves. Was this Antonio’s idea of a prank? Or was his insistence to have her listen to this piece just a pretext to seclude himself with her by his bed? Antonio wasn’t laughing, and the door to his bedroom wasn’t locked, but neither was sufficient evidence to refute her hypotheses. So that any semblance of my speech, Lucier said, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed. What you will hear, then, if you ignore the reverb and the space sounds of the electronic dance music coming from his living room, where his farewell party wasn’t ebbing yet — can you believe it? Antonio’s going back to do the Peace Corps in his own country! — are the natural resonant frequencies of the room, articulated by speech. What you won’t hear is Antonio relaying his unspoken expectation of her to her: concentrate, Masha, music isn’t just counterpoint and variations. But I regard this activity, Lucier said, not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have. I am sitting in a room, different from the one you are in now. After the seventh or eighth iteration she stopped listening in for surprises. Lucier was simply shearing his voice and what remained was metallic noise. His fingers surprised her by grazing her lips. She didn’t smile so he did it again, this time acting as if he was clearing bread crumbs, stepping back, drunk like the rest of them — all of my friends here are party friends, Mashinka — turning his left hand into a bird, fingers like antlers, as he had done the night they stormed out of the premiere of Messiaen’s San Francis de Assisi. Whatever he saw in her face saddened him but he was a quick one, raising his index finger in mockery, as if he had just remembered something important: aha, yes, he had to stop his double decker and tap the other portable player to check that it was still running. Are you recording this, Antonio? He nodded, motioning with his hand to please recite something for him. Sure, why not? She could recite something he wasn’t likely to know: here is my gift, she could recite, not roses on your grave, not sticks of burning incense: alone you let the terrible stranger in, she could recite, and stayed with her alone: only my voice, like a flute, she could recite, will mourn at your dumb funeral feast: but she didn’t feel like giving him that satisfaction. Later that night, at her apartment, she was to recite those lines out loud to herself. They’re opening a new crêpe place on Gough, she said. I’m sorry I didn’t call you about the party, Masha. I figured you would hate it anyway. Or that you would expect to find painters like you, pianists and poets, a salon. All last minute anyway. I’m leaving. I was going to call you and tell you. To Ecuador? Where else, Masha? Berlin, Barcelona, New York? Guayaquil has one performance arts center named after one of our presidents who was praised by Reagan for his strong armed tactics. The shows mostly comedies there? Antonio laughed. Then he sat down on the bench by his bed and cried. Was this another ploy of his to embarrass her? To expose her callousness? To repulse her with his self pity? No. He probably would have cried even if she wasn’t there. Or wouldn’t have cried if she was there but hadn’t dismissed his manuscripts. Or if she would have asked him to tell her more about Alvin
Lucier. How easy it is to discourage aspiring writers. Because of his flower pants and his ruffled shirt she still expected him to turn his crying into a joke. He didn’t. She didn’t know then that this would be the last time she would see him. That her last gestures toward him would be nongestures: no sitting next to him on his bench, arms around his shoulders, trying to convince him to stay. Imagine a different life in Berlin or New York, where you could walk out of operas like Messiaen’s every week. Goodbye, Antonio.

  III / LEOPOLDO AND THE OLIGARCHS

  Along the empty municipal hallway León Martín Cordero dashes to a press room that will have no chairs, no lamps, no bouquets of microphones like those favored by El Loco, no podium but instead a rolltop from where he will enact Leopoldo’s idea of summoning the two thousand four hundred and ninety pipones that El Loco indiscriminately added to the previous payroll. Prostitutes and junkies who would only materialize on payday and whom he wiped from the books on his first day as mayor of Guayaquil, carajo, summoning them now under the pretext that they’ll be reinstated to the payroll, please bring your official letter with you, not knowing that he has also summoned the press so that their cameras will remind the nation of El Loco’s repulsive brand of graft, and yet as Leopoldo waits for León Martín Cordero to finish dashing along the hallway, Leopoldo’s sure León’s not thinking about Leopoldo’s idea or about the lawsuit against him for his alleged human rights violations during his tenure as president, no, not thinking that now they have the nerve to complain, conclave of ingrates, now because they think that I’ve been enfeebled by a minor eye surgery (his right eye was replaced by a glass one) or by a routine coronary bypass (his third in ten years) or because of rumors that I have lung cancer and even

  (Doctor Arosemena cannot yet confirm to Leopoldo if León has Alzheimer’s)

  all of which I’ve survived just as in my youth I survived three bullets unscathed, carajo, now they have the nerve to complain instead of thanking me for ridding this country of terrorists like Alfaro Vive Carajo, now they like to pretend they weren’t panicking about what could’ve happened to their husbands, ay mi Luchito, ay mi Alvarito, all of whom were at risk of being kidnapped like Nahim Isaías had been kidnapped by that tracalada of thieves who called themselves guerrilleros, ay Mister President, ay Leoncito, do whatever it takes to weed them out, now they like to prattle about so called truth panels instead of thanking me like Reagan thanked me by gifting me a miniature .38 caliber automatic that I still carry under my

  (an articulate champion of free enterprise)

  and yet as Leopoldo waits for León Martín Cordero to finish dashing along the hallway, Leopoldo’s sure León’s not thinking about Leopoldo’s plan or about El Loco’s graft or about the lawsuit against León for his alleged human rights violations but about Jacinto Manuel Cazares, who an hour earlier had asked for permission to write León’s biography, arriving precisely when Leopoldo opened León’s door, as if this Cazares individual, a former classmate of Leopoldo who nevertheless looks like the son of a horsekeeper raised by law clerks, had synchronized himself to León, courtesy of some municipal snoop who’d relayed the data from León’s wristwatch, some sneak who shook León’s hand and managed to extract León’s data to the millisecond, some groveler or someone posing as a groveler just like this Jacinto Cazares individual who showed up with Volume III of León’s Thoughts and Works, which had been published by the National Secretariat of Public Information when León was president and that León probably overlooked as a prop of ingratiation because that impossible to find volume describes the most ambitious highway system the country had ever seen, plus it was tagged with so many sticky notes that it looked like a flattened sandwich or a

  (León’s daughter Mariuxi used to collect centipedes)

  look Son, three foreign publishing houses and one international television network have offered me large sums of money to allow them to write about me and I’ve always refused because I’m not going to begin at this stage in my life to have the vanity of having someone write about my life when the only merit I presume to have is that I have fulfilled my duty and above all other considerations have abided by a strict respect for the law.

  Mister President the reporters are here.

  But you are the one leader of this nation who could serve as an example for our youth.

  Mister President?

  From afar León’s leaning on Leopoldo’s shoulder probably looks like gesture of camaraderie, although of course Leopoldo doesn’t care if this is what it looks like, nor does he care that unfortunately no one’s around to witness what this looks like, León’s right hand man here, folks, Leopoldo Arístides Hurtado, nor does it matter if he cares because everyone at the municipality already knows he’s León’s right hand man. What Leopoldo does care about is León’s tubercular coughing. Not that he knows what tubercular coughing sounds like. Although he’s heard something like it before. At the hospice Luis Plaza Dañín that Leopoldo and Antonio used to visit when they were sophomores at San Javier the coughing of the old and the infirm sounded tubercular. Like a calling, too: talk to me, visit me, and at the same time like a refusal: we’re still here! Today León’s coughing is partly Leopoldo’s fault though. Leopoldo knew that if he didn’t intercept León on the way to the press room, if he didn’t slow him down with administrative checklists, León was likely to swagger down the hallway at an overtaxing speed. The same speed León’s been brandishing since he was prefect. The same swagger of someone who could afford to leave his post as head of Industrial Molinera to become senator of Guayas, president of Ecuador, mayor of Guayaquil, of someone who once campaigned on horseback, who once ordered tanks to flank a congress that wouldn’t stamp his decrees, who once traversed the country atop caravans that would quadruple in size from Machala to Naranjal, from Babahoyo to Jipijapa, who toward the end of his presidential campaign gathered at a stadium abloom with signs and flags and chants of bread, roof, and employment in which he swore, in front of god and the Republic, that he will never betray them. Leopoldo grew up with those words. That stadium. León wreathed by a procession of children. Sweating as if inspirited by his people or by a sorrow he must overcome to swear, no, in that stadium León’s voice breaks off, as if allowing the echo of his voice to reach as far as Esmeraldas and Calceta, Macas and Junín. I swear, in front of god and the Republic, but then León breaks off again, as if taking in the gravity of his promise. I swear, in front of god and the Republic, that I will never betray you. On the field and on the stands the crowd bursts. Some are chanting León / León / León. Others are jumping in unison and waving their flags. On his father’s shoulders, Leopoldo waves his flag, too. It’s yellow like the others and tiny like his hands. His father isn’t waving his sign though. He’d been flapping it tirelessly since they boarded a pickup at La Atarazana but now he doesn’t move. Because of the commotion around them Leopoldo cannot tell why his father shivers as if he’s cold. It’s not cold. It’s hot and humid and the headlights are exacerbating the heat and everyone’s soaked and screaming along or in spite of the loudspeakers that are unburdening themselves of songs. His father’s sign is staked on the grass and his hands are resting on it as if it’s a waypost that has appeared just for him. His father’s about to rest his forehead on his hands, oblivious to his son on his shoulders, who’s instinctively tilting backwards as his father tilts forward, but then his father straightens as if he’s been pricked and shrieks. Anda que te parió un burro. My back. Bread, roof, and employment. With León it can be done. The rally ends. León wins. His father flees in the wake of an embezzlement scandal. Leopoldo finds himself one night, groggy and cold, in the dark living room of the old Centenario house. His mother is gone and the bald domestic is watching troglodytes on a screen that flickers like a lantern on a boat. They’re clobbering each other and sniffing the bark of giant palm trees. The living room smells like burnt veal. Then a tidal wave rises like a hand that’s also a spider and swallows everything. The end. Go back to sleep, Neg
rito. León’s tubercular coughing worries him. And yet today Leopoldo didn’t intercept León dashing down the hall. He had too much to coordinate before the press conference about El Loco. Besides, León was busy giving audience to that Jacinto Cazares individual (known at San Javier as Funky Town, Excrement, Thief).

  León tries to contain his coughing with his fist, which seems pointless, although this thought strikes Leopoldo as pointless too, for what else can anyone do? How ungenerous of him. And how ludicrous to make yet another vow of compassion toward his fellow men. As if to rebuke him, León’s coughing ends. He grimaces, irritated at having Leopoldo witness his coughing, or trying to discern why this dark kid’s standing so close to him. León shakes Leopoldo’s hand with both hands as if campaigning at a kindergarten, but before Leopoldo has time to consider the absurdity of León’s gesture he starts coughing again. Down the hall two reporters are peering at them. Leopoldo shields León from the reporters by shifting sideways, placing one hand on León’s shoulder and the other on León’s back, patting it three times, soothing him, before Leopoldo realizes what he’s doing. León doesn’t mind or hasn’t noticed but Leopoldo pulls back nevertheless. The reporters still need an interpretable gesture. Leopoldo leans to León’s ear, cupping his hand as if blinkering them from what he’s conferring about with León, and if Leopoldo could he would blinker himself from seeing León like this, for even the most generous bystander would agree that León looks like a disheveled Santa, or a one eyed wheezer, or a strained Lear unlike the King Lear that Leopoldo’s grandmother, on her farm in the outskirts of Manabí, would perform for Leopoldo after baking him his favorite sugar rolls, tying a white plastic bag on her head like a wig and then hobbling while she proclaimed, in unintelligible English, blo win, crack you cheek, rage!, blo!, her voice steeped in the same excitement she will use years later when Leopoldo’s about to deliver his valedictorian speech, sharing with the distinguished parents in the audience how as a boy, barely reaching the veranda of her balcony, little Leo would spend hours giving speeches to the passing trucks and sometimes even an ambulatory salesman would stop and clap and try to sell little Leo pink ceramic piggy banks — los chanchitos la alcancíaaa — and while Leopoldo delivers his speech his grandmother hears León saying to his wife carajo, that kid sounds just like me.