The Dog Fighter Page 2

  These azulejos in this entrance. He taught me. In English the word for them is tiles. Blue and white tiles. The word azulejo is interesting because some of it is Spanish and some Arabic. Like the word arroz. Rice in English. And sugar for azúcar. Sugar. The word for los azulejos is similar to the entrance itself. A seven pointed horseshoe arch it is called. Some by design of the mestizo and nativo slaves who built it. Some by the design of the Spaniard who forced them to build it. And some from the Moors who designed it first. Remember that the Moors were in Spain for seven hundred years. And then the Spanish crown in Mexico for three hundred. This is how conquest also works. The language of the conqueror nestles into the language of the conquered. It is fascinating verdad? My father put his arm around me then but I turned away from him and he only laughed at this. With time you will understand mi hijo.

  On these long walks we shared my father told me stories of how it was for him when he first arrived in Veracruz. For some time many of his patients did not trust him. They called him a peninsular because he was born in Spain but chose to live in Mexico. But with time word of my fathers quiet generosity spread and soon he was trusted and respected by many. I learned very much from my father during this time but still I did not speak. He spoke enough for the both of us.

  When I am upset with your mother. He said once. Or confused by some idea in my head or something that I have read I enjoy walking. It is the best way for me to rest. I prefer it to sleep.

  Once my father took me to visit a patient who had the flesh of his arm bunched and coming loose from the chemicals he worked with in a tannery. I vomited from the sweet smell of his flesh. My father told me to wait outside while he rubbed balm on the mans skin. On our way home he said to me.

  They do not smell the filth and disease they live in. Just as we do not smell the soap and perfume of our own home.

  Guilt is what makes your father weak. My grandfather once said. Great strength does not feel for anything but itself.

  When my father was not visiting his patients he devoured books entire in afternoons alone. Reading in silence. The words his fever. My father was a quiet man who lived life quietly but felt much and for this and many other reasons my grandfather did not trust him. But still he encouraged my mother to marry my father for what his great strength and size would allow my grandfather in a grandson to shape.

  I tell only you the truth of my secrets. My grandfather whispered to me many times. The candle flame wavering in the black of his eyes. His knotted fingers shaking some. My memory fantastic for the stories he called our secrets. I wanted for your mother to marry this quiet doctor from when I first met him. Be patient while I tell you why. You must trust me in our secrets. And I trusted my grandfathers voice even with his wink and his terrible smile.

  While my grandfather was alive I never had this trust for my father. And when he was dead it was too late. My grandfather took me as a boy to swim against the waves of the Gulf. Waves the ships of the conquistadors had sailed into Veracruz on. And in this swimming I grew into my fathers great strength and size but for my grandfathers designs.

  Your mother did not want to marry your father even for all of her love for him. My grandfather told me. She feared what her blood would do in the son of a man with those shoulders and hands. I did not like his talk of God but that doctor is lost in the maze of his own thinking. I held her hand and told her. Smiling. But he has come here to do good. I told her. And with time I convinced your mother any man who feels guilt like a woman is harmless. You are his son. My grandfather told me. But you are not so harmless. You are of his strength but my blood.

  My father was sitting by the fire in his study reading when my mother brought me to him after I had drowned the kittens. She tried to give to him the length of sugarcane.

  I will not do this. He folded his book across his knee and shook his head. I do not think your grandfather would be so proud of you today. He said to me.

  But the blood of my grandfather was great in my mother. Her jaw clenched and high cheeks red. Her eyes lit by fire. When she beat me with the cane I could hear my grandfather whispering quiet over my mothers cries and with this I felt nothing for her. I felt only for the shadows of men standing over beasts in my dreams that my grandfather spoke of. And so when my grandfather came into the room afterward to kiss my forehead good night and saw this in my eyes his own dead eyes were much with pride.

  Your mother did not want to marry your father. He had told me. Every day for a year your father asked her for her hand but she told him no. She was a beautiful young woman your mother. With a strong mind. But always with the fire in her blood. Your father read to her from books of poetry. He taught her some English. I did not approve of this English but I said nothing to prevent her from marrying him. What an intelligent husband he will make. I said. The fool and his books. His mind lost in the great strength of that body. Strong but harmless. Afraid of me. Allowing me to come and live with them when my hands went bad because he is so kind. How I prayed to God for what I could do with that strength in his son.

  It was on their long walks that my father told my mother that he did not believe in God.

  He said to me once that Jesus was the daydreamer of all great daydreamers.

  Can you see him? Lying on the bank of the river Jordan in the sun. During when he was wandering all those years and no one knew where. Lazy on the bank in the tall grass staring off into the blue of those skies. His hands cradling his head. His ankles crossed out in front of him. Then uncrossed to itch without thinking at the top of his foot with his worn sandal where a fly had landed. A blade of grass in his teeth. The slender shadow of it passing the afternoon across his thinking face. Then there is a cool breeze. It moves the shade of a tree that has been sneaking toward him slow like the answer to a difficult question. Love your brother as you love yourself? He thinks. And then he says out loud smiling to himself. Fools that they are. They will believe that one.

  I kept the beliefs of your father from your grandfather as long as I could. She told me sitting in the wood chair by my bed. I loved him but I was scared. Not even to God Himself in my prayers did I pray for your father for worrying of what God would do to him for these words he spoke. What God would do to me for loving a man who thought this way. But the excitement of these secrets your father and I shared was great. The excitement of sin. But still I feared for your father. And I believed then I could make him different than he is.

  After my grandfathers death my mother sat in the wood chair by my bed telling stories of selfish boys buried in desolate roadside graves. Of men without mothers who are left to wander desert mountains chewing nopal to not die of thirst. I lay with my back to her and my teeth clenched. My father stood in the door of my room listening to these stories. Together they wanted to take the fever of my grandfathers whisper from me. But still I followed him. And still my dreams were the most beautiful and difficult things to see.

  But much changed soon after the death of my grandfather. My mother became pregnant. She and my father both were very happy about this but still I spoke to no one.

  After every day for a year of asking your mother to marry him. My grandfather told me. Your father told her he felt like some fool.

  I told him of my dream of your uncle. My mother said. Of his knife slit eyes.

  But I never saw the flames of those candles in the sad eyes of my mother. With my face to the wall I searched for the men of my grandfathers hiss in her soft voice.

  From a window above a bench in the courtyard where your mother and father sat laughing and talking I listened to them then. To pauses in conversation when I knew they looked one another in the eyes.

  Your uncle his head heavy with his face so swollen crawls across the floor of my room toward my bed at night. My mother continued. His tongue blue from his mouth. Laughing.

  We do not have to have children. Your father told your mother. But she did not believe him. You forget that I am a doctor. He said to her. And that I love you. I sat abov
e this in the window of the courtyard looking down on them knowing that what your father said was a great deception. That even the most great love could not prevent this. But I said nothing. I am the only one not to lie to you.

  When my mother discovered that she was pregnant after my grandfathers death she went to my father. They sat me down in the kitchen and her eyes were with tears. She was smiling.

  We will name him after your grandfather. She told me. But she said this only because they wanted for me to end my silence.

  When your mother learned that she was pregnant with you there was much happiness. But your father asked her if she was sure.

  Indudablemente. She laughed and hugged him around his great neck.

  But not many days after my mother told me she was to have another child she caught me hanging a puppy from a tree. Other children watching this yelled my name while I wrapped hemp rope around the muzzle not to let it bark. I put the noose around the dogs neck and I raised and lowered it like a piñata. I lowered the dog until its back claws touched the ground enough so that it did not choke. And then I raised it and it swung dying until finally it was dead.

  Again my mother begged my father to beat the violence from me but again he folded the book over his knee to not lose his place and he shook his head no. After this my mother woke us many times in the night crying my uncles name. Each time I woke I prayed to my grandfather for her death and the death of the child in her. I did many things to upset her after this. To make her beat me.

  You need to be more calm. I heard my father say to her one night when they thought I was sleeping. For the child. He said.

  Hearing this secret they had I only did more to trouble my mother. Between rows of corn in her garden I dug small holes for mice I found almost dead in their traps. With oil I filled the holes and threw into them matches. I stood over this with other children watching while my own eyes alone were narrow and dark and lit by fire. I stole from these children in their houses if I was invited into them. I beat girls. And when my mother learned of this even as she was more with child she beat me more and more until the strain was so great her jaw and cheeks reddened and I no more needed to pray for the child in her to die because I knew she was doing it herself.

  Your blood is the blood of the men in these stories. My grandfather had said.

  I was fourteen years old when my mother died. In this time while my grandfather was dead my mother was often the most happy I had ever known her. My parents like young lovers. For years I think she was able to end pregnancy in her without my fathers help. I do not think she would allow herself to be with him and for him to be with her and this was much that was difficult in their marriage. Even then I knew I had much to do with this. That the words of my grandfather in me ruined her. But my father was a quiet man. The words he chose were the ones that worked most powerfully.

  He is dead. I heard my father say to my mother about my grandfather. This one will be our own.

  But I prayed for the death of the child within my mother. I prayed to my grandfather. His hissing whisper my God. And the day my mother died a nurse led my father from their room with his face buried in his bloody hands. The room dark but for a candle like the one she had placed beside my grandfathers bed. The smell of blood clean in my memory as the smell of iron rust in cold snow. My mother curled on her side in a drift of white sheets. Her body still. A mess of blood to her side. The candle flame dancing shadows along the walls and up into the corners of the room. I stood in the doorway unable to cry.

  Later that night my father sat in the kitchen by the fire of the stove staring down into his great hands. Dried blood still beneath his fingernails. I stayed to the shadows. At this time I was almost as great in size as my father. And this only at fourteen years of age. My father spoke to his hands as if they were my mother. Begging them to forgive him and hating them for not being strong enough to save her. To keep his words. My father had long despised my grandfather. But for all his strength my father was a weak man. Even in his mind. The stories of my grandfather had been too great. And when my father could not stand the pain of losing my mother and his only son to my grandfather because he did not use those hands he stood and buried them in the hot coals of the stove.

  I did nothing. My father mumbled to the nurse when she wrapped his hands in aloe rags. This is the most strong I ever was.

  I hated this weakness in my father. My grandfathers voice told me that to keep it from myself meant to kill him. But this was not so easy. For weeks after the death of my mother my father sat in his chair surrounded by his books. His hands wrapped in rags healing. Because my father was much respected as a doctor the rooms of our house had more than most. The openings at the tops of the stone walls between the oak beams allowed for the breeze of the Gulf to pass through bringing his crying from corners of all the rooms I listened to. I snuck at night like a murdering thief through the house holding knives in my hand and making hilarious smiles in the reflection of the blade lit by the moon. I studied our staircase to learn where the footsteps made the loudest creaks. I memorized the shadows to move in without being noticed.

  I stood in the door of the room looking onto the empty bed pretending to cry for my mother. Wondering how it felt. The bed the nurse made was never again creased by my fathers weight. He slept sitting in a chair in his study. I stood for hours in the night or sat in a chair by the empty bed watching the moon slowly bring shadows to the room. I sat not asking my mother to forgive me for killing the child in her and herself but thinking of how I was to kill my father. My voice that of my grandfather telling me that he was to blame. How I would hide the blood on my own hands when I killed him. How my father was to blame for my own sins.

  From the fire my fathers hands healed so smooth that he had much difficulty when turning the pages of his books. He sat for hours staring at the words unable to concentrate. He did not return to his work as a doctor. The careful words he had were almost gone now and he spoke only in mumbles. The nurse and some other women came to our house dressed in black shawls. They came with platters of rice and steaming dishes of beans pumpkin and squash. Eyes with much blame and hatred for me. These women they sat with my father in his study holding the beads of their rosary murmuring their prayers before my father silent. At night I crept through the hallways to stand over him where he slept in his chair with a knife blade in my hand held at his throat wondering what the cutting would feel like in the muscles of my forearm. Many times I heard him crying by the fire of the kitchen stove. Talking to my mother in his mumbles after the women had gone. His shoulders hunched. His greasy hair growing long and thin over his eyes. Many of those who knew and visited him believed he had given himself to drink. But we had no money for this. The food we had came from the nurse and the women who came to pray around my father. They sat with my father for some months before one day he stood suddenly with their eyes on him. He began laughing and showing them his scarred hands and his feet dancing before them.

  If your hands cause you to stumble then you must cut them off. He yelled. The women became suddenly terrified of my father and hurried from the room. It is better your Savior said for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and go to hell. My father chased them into the street yelling and singing. One woman dropped her rosary and my father twirled it around his finger like a toy and then wore it like a necklace yelling after them. Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness but is guilty of an eternal sin. These are the words of your Lord!

  After this my father began to wander from our house for days. He slept on the beach or in the sugarcane plantations outside Veracruz. He slept in the tall grass alongside muddy dirt roads where he begged for money from travelers and laughed at those who gave it to him. One time I saw him arguing with a man for stealing bananas from this mans stall in the market. The man pushed my father to the ground and for all his strength my father did nothing. I broke the jaw of a boy who said to me that he had seen my father stealing crumbs from the b
uzzards in the zócalo. Then I told myself that it was not because I cared about my father but because it was a chance to fight. It embarrassed me that my father was now a name followed by laughter and whispers. I refused to admit this but only told myself that my father knew I hated him and so he forgot me. He did not want to see the blame I placed on him with my eyes. The anger. His mind still alive some he learned how to forget who he was.

  Because the nurse and the praying women no longer came to us I fought and stole for food. The old men of Veracruz arranged for me to fight for money boys that were older but not much stronger. I fought wild and lost many times at first. When I was fifteen I fought a man more than twice my age. We fought down by the water in an old warehouse whose blocks were made of crushed stones and sandy cement. The men stood us facing each other and we swung only one at a time and I beat him by receiving less of his punches to my face than his from mine. After this I could not see for two days. Several men carried me through the door of our house and left me on the cold tile floor of our kitchen. My head swollen and my ears hissing a high ring.

  After the fights I lost my eyes were hot with tears from breaking my promise to my grandfather. Snot hung from my nose on my split lips bleeding. My chest breathing heavy fighting breaths. This was the only time I cried and I hated the feeling so much I promised my grandfather I would not lose anymore. But I did still. But not many more.

  By losing you are learning how to win. My grandfather whispered to me and I believe this is true.

  Soon the men of Veracruz came to know my name for something more than the begging of my father. I could not stop thinking of what they said about me. I began drinking some with sailors who told stories of men fighting bears in rings made of snow. Of tigers in distant jungles. I drank with the men I fought before until my eyes were blind with anger and fury and woke the next day with the knuckles of my fists torn and bloody and not remembering how. Occasionally officers from the military with their sunglasses and mustaches came to watch me fight in the alleyways or in abandoned depósitos and they like the other men placed their bets. And then when I was caught stealing by the police they pretended to yell at me but only pushed me around a corner to brush me off and smile. Some even handed me money that I had won them.