“I’ll pay you back later; here is the title to the car as a guarantee.” Debts, cheating, street fights, run-ins with the police. “Look, I’m just an idiot. Let the cops catch me.” Violence and jails. “Damn it! Six months in the black Palacio de Lucumberi again!” That was Juan’s life. It took four men to arrest him; they couldn’t handle him. Who knows where such strength came from? He defended himself like a lion. But he never protected himself from his abusive and cheating partners, who made him the scapegoat to save their own skins. Juan had to answer to the charge, and he, the youngest, was going to end up in the slammer. “I’ve had it with partners,” he said once when he got out of jail and set up a small refrigeration shop on avenida Observatorio. Within a year he had to shut down owing to a number of problems with the taxes, the workers, the night watchmen.
Erro had immediately detected Juan’s potential, as well as his restlessness. It was obvious that he was Lorenzo’s brother.
“Brother, do you want to come work in Tonantzintla, Puebla?” Lorenzo said. “Luis Enrique Erro is setting up an observatory.”
Luis Enrique Erro had inscribed a Greek phrase from Aeschylus’ Prometheus above the door of the main building: “God liberated men from the fear of death, giving them illusory hope.” The view of the Cholula valley was unsurpassed. You could contemplate the volcanoes from there most of the year. And contemplate was the word. Nothing could be more propitious for meditating than that landscape, which connected the valley and the mountains, giving weight and reason to the lives of the inhabitants. A number of people rode their bikes to the Talavera pottery factory in Puebla and worked eight hours a day. Life passed to the sound of the church bells. Their tolling brought the poet López Velarde to mind, his
slow conversation with the bell ringer. There were three hundred sixty-six bells—one for each day of the year and an additional one for leap year—housed in the belfries of three hundred sixty-six churches. How would they sound when rung in unison? The cornfields had begun to grow; the cows mooed, and a donkey brayed. The brothers looked at each other nostalgically. “Emilia’s donkey.” Maybe they thought about Florencia, but they never said it aloud.
“De Tena, you may find what you’re looking for here,” said the director to Juan. “These are difficult times, and I know you’ve seen your share. I offer you a discipline that is based on the rigor and the exercise of reason.”
“Reason, in a country where everything is escapism?” Juan said sarcastically, just as his brother would have.
“Yes. Here you will observe and study a fraction of what exists beyond what we understand. I need good mathematicians. Your brother Lorenzo is an observer, and according to your elders, you have a gift for abstraction.”
Juan was surprised.
“I’ve discovered variable stars, Juan, and I keep looking. I believe in the human race.”
“I don’t.”
“At twenty-five? You’ll believe again, my friend. You’ll believe again. As you study what was previously believed to be divine, and as you get closer to the planetary system, you’ll realize the importance of our brains. What you’ll see up there will make you believe in men. You’ll realize that there is communication between the physical and chemical processes of your brain and those in the sky. Your brain can unravel enigmas. The sky below belongs to us. Down here, we live what happens up above. Through this telescope you will see a distance of ten million light-years or more, and out there, galaxies that will influence your biological evolution are waiting to be discovered.”
So this bald hill was the observatory? When he arrived in Tonantzintla, Juan looked at the village, which appeared uninhabited, as did all villages in Mexico. The slope on which Erro was having the observatory built was a solitary mushroom. Not even a hint of a cornfield next to it. “Up there you’ll only find pebbles that
roll down the hill with the rain,” Don Crispin would tell him days later at the general store. His small suitcase weighed him down. Where would he live if no one opened their doors, if no one came out to meet him? You could hear the chickens cackling in the pens. Someone must feed them. Suddenly, around the curve, he saw a pine tree. He would tell Erro: “You can plant trees up there, since there is already a pine tree.” The astronomer would probably respond that he had come to do astronomy, not reforestation.
The winter of transparent air was beginning—long nights and icy mornings. “It’s the best season of the year to observe, brother,” Lorenzo said, happy to see him.
That afternoon Erro had tea with the two brothers. “Doesn’t it seem like an ideal site, Juan? Look, over to the east, Popocatepetl and Iztaccíhuatl; to the west La Malinche; the Pico de Orizaba way over there; and Cortés Pass here. What more could you ask for? Have you noticed the quality of the air? An indispensable condition for observing the sky, Juan. You can make out the Cholula pyramid to the north. Do you see it there—the colonial church built on top of it? Farther down in Chipilo, there is a group of Italians who make the best butter and cheese. So, Juan, my friend, you have the privilege of working in one of the most remarkable places in Mexico.”
The only thing that stood out on the hillside was the observatory’s main building, with the grand staircase—“of Greek proportions,” Erro boasted, smiling. “We would like this to be the Parthenon of Mexican astronomy. We’ll set the equipment up behind it, a Zeiss telescope, a darkroom, an archive room for the plates.”
Standing next to Erro, Lorenzo looked toward Puebla de los Angeles, which seemed to be ever expanding. “Sir, don’t you fear that the same thing will happen in Puebla that did in Mexico City, and we’ll be invaded by more intense lighting in time?” asked Lorenzo, still squinting to see even farther.
“No wonder you have the reputation of being a pessimist, Tena, my friend. Graef says it will be a long time before we have to deal with such misfortune.”
Erro depended on Carlos Graef Fernandez’s insight. Graef had
great leadership qualities and was good at bringing people together. As soon as they heard laughter in the hallway, everyone knew. “Here comes Graef!” “Graef is one great big chuckle!” He was the only one in Tonantzintla with a doctoral degree in mathematics from MIT, where he had been Sandoval Vallarta’s student. Erro had gone to Massachusetts to get him to help with the Tonantzintla project. They made an odd pair—Erro, thin and elegant, with a hearing aid that bit off part of his ear; Graef, small, round, and prone to a cordiality that made him lovable.
Trained by the North Americans, Graef was used to group discussions, and some nights he stayed up with Erro until very late. The door to the office was open, and their heated voices could be heard in what sounded like an argument. When Lorenzo stopped at the door, Erro called to him, “Come in, Tena, come in. Pull up a chair. We’re talking about gravity. We could use you.” After that first night, they included Lorenzo in the group. Fernando Alba, calm and reflexive, inspired confidence. Recently married, he lived in Puebla and spent the night at Tonantzintla only on rare occasions. When Alberto Barajas came from Mexico City to see his friend Graef, the discussions became even more passionate. Graef pulled the writing table up in front of him and took notes on loose-leaf paper. His writing was so large he filled a sheet with one or two calculations formulated out loud. Barajas stretched out full length, his feet on Graef’s desk; leaning back, he looked at the ceiling. Graef dictated his calculations until someone suddenly said “No!”
“Why not?” Graef would roar, getting to his feet.
Barajas condescended to sit up and explain before going back to his original position, and Graef went back to his loose-leaf paper.
It drove Lorenzo crazy that there would always be two possibilities in science, and that both were good. Graef was the first to shoot his ideas into arenas Lorenzo had never even contemplated. Graef taught him about physics. Alba shared his knowledge as well. Sometimes Erro had flashes of genius, but he was respectful in front of the scholars—those who were trained doctors, who presented their hypotheses, not waiting for the rest to discuss them. Tena raised his thrilled eyes toward Erro, and that single look gratified the man more than a thousand words. It would have been good to
have a son like that, Erro said to himself, but he wouldn’t have said it for anything in the world to the proud apprentice, who showed a greater aptitude to confront him than to give in to him. Graef, with his usual good humor, inquired curiously, “Let’s see what our friend Tena thinks,” and Lorenzo became involved in a violent discussion once the floodgates were opened.
“That can’t be, my friend, because an electron advances through time and through space.”
When Erro indicated that he had missed something owing to his deafness, they spoke more slowly, but seconds later their ideas were running all over one another at a gallop. Lorenzo was now one of them. His cup of black coffee got cold. When no more butts fit into the ashtray, Erro would get up and empty it, and no one noticed.
Lorenzo asked permission for his brother Juan to attend the improvised discussions, and Graef and Alba, who had him in their classes, agreed immediately. “He has made spectacular progress. In three months he knows more than a second-year student in the College of Science. Bring him. What are you waiting for?” Alba was very enthusiastic. That night Lorenzo was the one who was surprised. Juan jumped into the debate like someone jumping into a bullring. How did he know so much? Where had he learned it? Unlike Lorenzo, who had waited five days to intervene even when he was encouraged by Graef—“Come on, come on, friend; speak up; your eyes are shining”—Juan disregarded respect for his elders.
The fervor of the two brothers was good for Graef, and for Alba, Erro, and Barajas. Juan spoke from intuition, and he almost always came to the same conclusions as Barajas did. “How do you arrive at that, de Tena? Tell me. Write your calculations down right here.” And Barajas would take a sheet from Graef to give to Juan, who couldn’t put anything down on paper. Nevertheless, his conclusions were good. Alba would lean back, satisfied. There was a future for science in Mexico, if you could count on minds of this caliber.
“Sports are very good for scientists,” Shapley had said when they were at Harvard, and Erro followed his advice to the letter. In the afternoon, they played basketball. Erro jumped around like a
grasshopper. A consummate athlete, Graef also played. Since the director took off his hearing aid, it was impossible for him to hear the swearing that went back and forth with the ball.
Happy about the chance reunion with his brother, Juan never ceased to amaze Lorenzo. His presence unleashed endless images, the buried movie of their childhood—Juan behind him in school, Juan dancing frenetically in front of Aunt Tana, calling her a damned witch, Tila covering each glass of milk with a little white sweet roll.
Puebla also amazed them, especially the Tonantzintla hillside, scarcely thirteen kilometers away.
Graef and Alba sized Juan up. “Your brother could become a noted mathematician. He’s lacking theory, but no one can beat him when it comes to practice. His ability has provoked some envy here,” Erro told Lorenzo.
Of his four siblings, Juan was the one Lorenzo knew the least about, and now they were competing in the field of mathematics. Juan’s lean face held traces of suffering, but he joked around, never said anything about himself, avoided every subject except mathematics. He wasn’t concerned about Emilia’s or Leticia’s life; he cared only to hear news about Santiago. He scoffed at the past, and he challenged Lorenzo. The older brother recognized traces of his own character. Juan initiated each conversation with a dare: “I bet you can’t …” Little by little Lorenzo realized that no one had ever given Juan the credit he deserved, not even their old teacher, Father Théwissen. No one, not even he, had done the young man justice. Juan was an above-average student, but since Lorenzo also stood out, his brother’s talent went unnoticed.
At the house on Lucerna, science or culture had less value than good manners. Cayetana signed the report cards without looking at them. She never congratulated her nephews; the only one she acknowledged was Leticia. When Joaquín de Tena gave out allowances on Sundays, he passed Juan over. “That boy is just bad,” Doña Cayetana concluded. How alone little Juan must have felt. No wonder he lived on the street.
“I have a well-founded distrust of that boy,” Cayetana de Tena used to say, irresponsibly cruel. “I never know what he’s doing and even less what he’s thinking.”
Juan’s teachers had rejected him because he questioned their declarations. He asked questions they didn’t know how to answer, or he insisted that such and such a problem had another answer. Every time he raised his hand, the teachers ignored him because they were afraid that he would confirm their ignorance. The geography teacher had attacked him when Juan proved, in front of thirty-seven students, that she didn’t know where the equator was: “You’re crafty and tricky.” She was determined to hurt him, to isolate the remarkable boy, and the community went along with her.
By sixth grade, the last year before high school, Juan had decided to look for another world, and without telling anyone, he headed for the street. He made friends with the storekeeper, the paint-shop owner, the pharmacist, the people he saw en route from his house to school. He asked one for wire, another for alcohol, and in a back patio he set up experiments that caused a sensation. “Light on the street, darkness at home.” Juanito was a hero everywhere but at 177 Lucerna and at school.
Now, at the Tonantzintla Observatory, Lorenzo was filled with amazement. The two brothers shared a mute rage that exploded sometimes and made them tremble, distorting them and their vision of the world. “Where were you, brother?” Lorenzo asked one day when they were heading down to the village and decided to go eat in Puebla. The two were smoking. They each lit their cigarettes with the butt of the previous one. Lorenzo punched him. “Let’s quit smoking one day.”
“I’d rather quit eating.” Juan laughed.
Once again Lorenzo saw himself in Juan.
Riding on the bus, expounding on the enigmas of squaring the circle, enthused by his elder brother’s interest, Juan began to talk about his businesses. As he listed them, Lorenzo grew sullen. Juan, the owner of a foundry, would have another one someday. He had acquired land to construct high-temperature ovens, but since his permits were not in order, the inspectors closed the factory. There was no bribe large enough to keep it open. “I’m only going to be here at the observatory for a season, brother. I’m thinking of traveling to the border to sell sponge iron that I invented for special construction, like overhangs for gas stations, and roofs shaped like wings. I named my invention the Tenalosa. What do you think,
brother? If this business doesn’t work out, there’s another one waiting for me in Tampico, importing and exporting rods.” In his free time, Juan had designed skates.
“Skates, man?”
“Yes, with only one plate, like the ones for ice, and not four wheels but six tiny ones. I know they have potential.” At the first opportunity he said he would visit Emilia in San Antonio and make her a partner: manager of the North American branch.
Lorenzo would have liked to say to him, you’re just like me, brother. Where could this folly take him? Juan never said a word about his personal life, but since Lorenzo also guarded his privacy, they had a gentlemen’s agreement. “We are not more than what we are not,” Sartre had said.
Juan lived in a house in Tonantzintla, just as Lorenzo did, but he never said which one. Although it was easy to find out in such a small village, Lorenzo refrained from asking. Like his aunt Cayetana, he kept his distance from his brother. Without saying it openly, he knew that he did not trust him. He preferred to walk alone than to walk with Juan, whose plans concerned him.
Lorenzo couldn’t conceal his anxiety when Juan didn’t show up one day. According to the residents of Tonantzintla, Juan had undertaken an excursion to Popo, the volcano. Alone? Who knows? Was he bundled up? Who knows? When he left the shop, where he had been standing at the bar drinking beer, he yelled to whoever cared to hear, “I’m going to climb Popo. I’ll make it to the top. See you later.” He said it as though it were no big deal, as if he were going to the cantina in Cholula. Lorenzo got so angry with that brother of his. Aggravated, he kept asking everyone, “Did he go alone or with others?” How irresponsible to take off on an adventure having no ability or skill. Was he a mountain climber? Did he know how to climb? Fucking Juan, I’d like to choke him. How could he risk his life when they needed him at Tonantzintla? Could he become a mountain climber? Did he know the three rules of climbing: first save yourself; second, save whomever you can; and third, if you have to choose, save the person with the best chance of surviving? Would it occur to him to at least save himself?
On the fifth day, beside himself, Lorenzo decided to go after his
brother. Sheathed in a heavy sheepskin jacket, he and Don Candelario, who had offered to accompany him, started to climb. The simple act of thinking that each step Juan took could hurl him to his death sent Lorenzo into a state of extreme tension. At the end of the day, the tension disappeared, and his thoughts were confused. Surely his brain must be deprived of oxygen, because when he stopped to take a breath, he didn’t understand what he kept repeating, no matter how hard he tried. He needed air. Don Cande, on the other hand, seemed alert, although he was breathing rapidly. “You need to drink water,” he said, and passed him a bottle. “Dehydration is dangerous.”
How wise! Lorenzo had a prolonged coughing attack.
“It’s because your lungs get dry up here,” Don Cande explained. “Your throat gets so dry that your ribs can crack from coughing so hard.”
Lorenzo heard his voice in the distance, as if he were twenty meters away. He couldn’t feel his toes or his fingers.
“Professor, you’re as white as a sheet of paper. That’s a bad sign. Let’s go back.”
As if he had been given permission, Lorenzo got up and vomited. When Candelario turned around to descend, Lorenzo followed him without a word. He was silent on the bus to Tonantzintla.
He didn’t even hear Candelario say, “It’s like your brain needs more air or more blood, don’t you think, Professor?”
Lorenzo couldn’t think of anything but Juan, up there, wherever he was.
At the entrance to the observatory, Guarneros, the handyman, said triumphantly, “Professor, your brother arrived right after you left to look for him …”