Guadalajara

"Distance is the only thing that the rich are willing for the poor to keep and call theirs." the man says.

"What?" I say.

We are a crowd of peasants. At least, we probably look that way to everyone at the party on the other side of the river.

If you can call it a river. What it really is, is a wide creek, running chocolate milk. Maybe it isn't really chocolate milk. I can be pretty much sure it isn't chocolate milk, or if it is, it's been left out in the sun too long so it stinks. It's only about twenty feet across. On our side, there is a dirt bank. On the other side there is a low stone wall and then a lawn.

A huge lawn. A lake of lawn, almost. The lawn lake's far reaches lap against a wide flagstone terrace shore, Well, it would lap, except of course it's just grass. The flagstone terrace is a beach to the tall stone cliffs of the mansion. Okay, a very neat, hard edged beach. The mansion looks like it needs gray fog and mist all around it, and a cold wind blowing off the fen. But there isn't any fen. No fog. No mist. Just a bright sunny day making the castle look like someone had woken it up abruptly in the middle of the night and is now interrogating it under a hot light. Somebody has dressed it up in all funny clothes, too. It's all decked out in flags and bunting, garlands and pavilions.

There are a lot of people all over the terrace. People dressed up like maybe the Emmy awards are going on there. Women in big dresses. Men in tight pants and short jackets. A Mariachi band with big sombreros. Black sombreros with gold braid all over them. The band is playing, but people aren't really paying attention. We can hear them talking, loud over the music.
We are the peasants, come to watch the spectacle of the rich. Come to admire and envy, to scoff at the excesses while secretly longing to be there, to be excessive, to be bourgeois, to be conspicuous. To be able to buy beauty, cleverness, love, as we imagine so many of those across the river have. Or perhaps some of us have come simply because the day is dull and here there is music.

On our side, several barefoot couples, smiling with stained and crooked and missing teeth, dance the same dances as the rich across the river. The dust of the dry riverbank rises in soft brown clouds around their legs. Children laugh and throw clods of dirt into the river. One of a crowd of teenage girls calls out a name, her voice clear and loud. Her friends all grab each other's arms, their faces are stretched in grins. They are laughing, like little bells in the sunlight.

Across the river, a waiter, dark hair all I can make out at this distance, looks up and waves. He is balancing a shiny silver tray on one hand and offering whatever's on it to the party guests. The young girls shriek and hide their faces in their hands. They look out over the tips of their fingers, turning and ducking around each other. The waiter turns with his arm up in the air, all his movements are very sharp and clear, like somebody on stage. All his moves now have extra moves, a little extra flip of the hand, leaning forward and pointing his chin at the party guests, waving his other hand above the tray of party food like a magician about to pull a rabbit out of a goldfish bowl. He moves close to a side door in the house, and an older man, fat, with an apron tied high over his round belly, comes out and shakes his finger at the waiter. The apron man is leaning forward, his other hand on his hip. His big belly makes the apron dance like a puppet in front of his legs. The fat apron man takes the tray from the waiter and goes back inside. The waiter waves to his fans and then holds his arms fat out in front of him, leaning way back, like he's got the apron man's big belly in his arms. I'm laughing a little to myself. The teenage girls are holding each other up, laughing, stumbling around in a circle. That's when the man next to me speaks.

"Distance is the only thing that the rich are willing for the poor to keep and call theirs." the man says.

"What?" I say, but I know what he said. I heard it just fine. It's just that I've become used to hearing and speaking Spanish over the last few weeks. For him to speak to me in English, that is weird.

"Distance is the only thing that the rich are willing for the poor to keep and call theirs." the man says. He says it slower this time, making all the vowels and consonants really clear.

"I'm sorry," I say, "I heard you the first time, I just..."

"That's all right." he says.

I'm feeling like he's made an effort and now it's my turn.

I tell him my name and hold out my hand.

"Ambrose Martinez" he says.

He takes my hand in his and pumps it up and down once, then lets go.

His hair is dark a little curly and has white dust in it hair. His skin is light brown cafe au lait skin. His eyes are blue like the water in the river should be blue eyes. His face is a lined and weathered but still pretty handsome face. His body is a never had time to get fat body.

"Did you go to school in the States?" I say.

"No, why?" he says.

"Your English," I say, "it's very good. I thought perhaps..."

"Thank you," he says, "but no, my grandfather, he taught me."

"Your grandfather." I say, "Then he was American?"

"We are all American," he says. He lifts one eyebrow and his mouth quirks up on one side.
I laugh and clap him on the arm. Don't know why I'm being so familiar. Everybody is in a good mood, here. It rubs off.

"Can I buy a fellow American a Corolla?" I say.

"Negro Modello?" he says.

"You got it!" I say.

* * *

Everybody is drifting back up to the barrio, just a little way up the bank. Ambrose leads me down a side street. We go through arches overgrown with vines into a courtyard. There's a tall thin man with a gigantic walrus mustache that covers the entire lower part of his face. How does this guy eat?

"Romo!" Ambrose says.

"Ambrose, Buenas dias!" Romo the walrus man says, "¿Como esta?"

"Bien, gracias." Ambrose says. "Romo, I want you to meet my new friend."

Of course I'm just guessing that's what he's saying. It kinda sounds like that, and he's pointing at me.

"Romo is my sister's husband." Ambrose says to me in English.

"And this is mi sobrina bonita." Ambrose says. He points two fingers at Sobrina, who is carrying two beers. They are wet from the ice bucket.

"Gracias, Sobrina," I say. Sobrina's head jerks a little, and she puts a hand in front of her mouth.

Her eyes go from Ambrose to Romo, and then they roll up in an arc as she turns away.

"Sobrina means niece," Ambrose says to me. "Her name is Carmella."

Romo is laughing. His mustache jumps at each heh, heh, heh sound.

We take our beers through a back door to another smaller courtyard hung with green vines. We sit at a table by the back wall, in the shade. There is tiny fountain making that small water gurgling sound. The water gurgling so quiet you can't hear it when you're talking. Carmella is right behind us with a basket of tortillas and a plate of cheese and apples.

"Gracias, Carmella Sobrina." I say.

"De Nada, señor." Carmella says. She curtsies. Her dress is a black with bright color bands all around it like ruffles dress. Her face is an acorn shape wide straight down the sides and then quick to a point face. Her hair is long black comes to another point in the middle of her forehead hair. Her eyes are blue like that river water should have been blue eyes.

We eat. And drink. Carmella Sobrina brings us another plate and more beers. Tortillas and rice and beans. And then another plate, with a kind of spicy stew and more tortillas. And more beers.

"She must think I am a glutton," I say.

"A glutton, mi amigo," Ambrose says, "is one who escapes the evils of moderation by committing dyspepsia."

I look at him. Man, it sounds so funny. I start laughing so hard I pound the table with my fist. I don't know why that happens. It's got to be some instinctual thing, because lots of people do it. I do it. I pound the table with my fist and make all the beer bottles jump up, and when mine comes back down, the one with beer still in it, it leaves some of the beer up in the air for a second. You'd think maybe the beer would just drop back into the bottle, but the beer doesn't drop nicely back into the bottle, no. It misses the bottle completely and gets all over the table top.

I am not sure what dyspepsia means. I'll have to look it up later.

"You are very funny," I say. My tongue is like twice the size of normal and it kind of forgets where it is supposed to go, so I have to be very careful when I say this.

I clear away some beer bottles. Move them around to make a clear space on the table. There are at least eight or nine beer bottles on the table. It takes a while to put them all to one side or the other.

Ambrose blows a cloud of smoke in my face. He's smoking what looks like a fat cigarette.

"Can, can I have one of those?" I say.

Ambrose puts the cigarette in his mouth, leans back and reaches into his coat pockets. One hand in the side pocket and the other like he's reaching for a gun in a shoulder holster.

I lean my elbows on the edge of the table. It starts to tip. I pull my elbows off the table, but all of the bottles are all different angles and rocking back and forth and I put my hands out to try to hold them all but they all are bouncing and clinking off each other and my hands. One goes over, then two and then a bunch more. They're bouncing around down there on the cobblestones, making that empty bottle bouncing on cobblestone sound. I'm down there on my knees with my arms out trying to catch them all and I can't catch any of them. The noise finally settles down. The last bottle rocks back and forth in a crack once or twice after the others stop. I'm looking out for broken glass. There isn't any. That doesn't seem right to me.

"None broke." I say.

"No?" Ambrose says. He leans over the side of the table, looking down. To me looking up his head looks like it's growing out of the tablecloth. Ambrose hands me a cigarette. He's got the lighter in his other hand. I put the cigarette in my mouth and get it lit, before I can even think of getting back in the chair. I grab the arm of the chair and lever myself back into it. Seems like it wasn't that hard to get into the first time.

"Things I heard my grandfather say," he says.

"Huh?" I say.

"You say I am funny," he says, "I'm telling you they are just things I heard my grandfather say."

"This granfaa....grfa...grand father of yours," I say, "Where did he come from?"

"He was from California." Ambrose says, "When I knew him he was very old and I was very young. I remember him sitting in the chair by the stove in the evenings, trying to keep warm even when it was hot outside. He was a tall man, back all bent and hands twisted with arthritis. His hair was full but white as salt, and his eyes were blue like mine. He had come here during the revolution, to join the Indianismo movement and fight for the return of their lands. He told stories of Pancho Villa and Zapata, and he had witnessed the overthrow of Madero. His Spanish was always kind of rough, and he taught us children to speak and read English."

Ambrose puffs on his cigarette. Carmella Sobrina comes in with a tall glass of brown liquid with ice in it. She puts it on the table in front of me. The glass makes a sharp click against the table top.

"Ice tea," Carmella Sobrina says. "For you."

She squats down and starts to gather up the bottles.

"I'm telling our friend about your great grandfather." Ambrose says in Spanish. I think that's what he's saying.

"Si," Carmella says, "What else is new?"

I think that's what she says.

"My mother," Ambrose says to me in English, "His only child, taught us to be proud of our Mexican heritage, but wanted us to be fluent in both languages. We would play a game where every other sentence had to be in a different language, and we would have to use the right grammar in each. My grandfather, he told us of joining Zapata's army in 1913, when he was already fifty-eight years old. We would sit around him in a half circle and beg for stories from the old days. He was such a good storyteller; his eyes would light up and his voice would be loud or quiet or quick. The heroes of his stories were always handsome and chivalrous and the heroines beautiful and fiery. Our favorite story was always the story of how he met our grandmother."

Carmella Sobrina stands up, clinking. Her fingers have all grown bulbous shiny brown. With labels. All but the thumb of her left hand. She sticks her thumb into the one bottle still on the table.

"Wow." I say.

"Oh wait 'til you hear it." Ambrose says.

"I'm all ears," I say. Carmella Sobrina rolls her eyes again. She turns and walks away from the table, clinking. I watch her dress, the colors swaying left and right and left and right and...

"There had been," Ambrose says, "a big battle against Huerta's troops. Many Zapatistas had died or been injured. Grandfather Ambrose had been wounded by a rifle ball, not seriously, but his age made him susceptible and he came down with malaria. He was unconscious for three days, and they took him to a hospital. He claims that he kept seeing the Angel of the Lord, coming to take him to heaven. One day he opened his eyes and the angel was standing there in front of him, shining white and spreading her wings. He sat up and cried out 'Take me, angel, I am yours forever!' and then fell back to sleep. When he came to his senses, he was amazed to find that the angel was a real nurse, who changed the sheets on the beds. She was beautiful, and his words of delirium had captured her heart. They were married shortly after."

Ambrose takes a sip of his tea. Hot tea. I don't remember him getting hot tea, but there it is. I try the iced tea. It has a tangy flavor to it I don't recognize.

"They were happy," Ambrose says, "and had a beautiful child, my mother. But their happy life did not last. They moved to Guadalajara in the 1920's, but an earthquake caused the house they lived in to fall down. Ambrose was at the market, and after the earthquake he ran back to his house to find it a pile of rubble. He dug frantically for an hour, finding first the broken body of his young wife, and nearby, his daughter, unconscious but alive. He raised her by himself and when she married, her husband, my father, invited Grandfather to live with them. My father was an educated man who had a gentle and loving nature, whom all respected in town. Our small house was full of books, and grandfather Ambrose taught us all to read and write in two languages. He died when I was twelve years old, and there isn't a day since that I haven't thought of him."
Ambrose stops talking. His blue eyes are looking through the wall of the courtyard. I think he is looking across the years. Maybe there's something in his eyes, he's blinking and they look a little damp.

"¡Carmella Sobrina!" I yell, "¡Mas cervesa, por favor!