From the very first moment, Lorenzo knew that he would love Harvard, where the students grew just like the orchards. Among the well-pruned trees, the apples peeked into the classroom windows. Even a glass of milk was a cultural experience. Lorenzo sat at a drugstore counter and asked in his beginner’s English, “An apple pie and a glass of milk.”
“A glass of what?”
“A glass of meelk.”
“What?”
“Meelk.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“Meelk, meeeelk, milk.”
The waitress stood looking at him fearlessly. Lorenzo then began to milk the udders of a cow in the air. “A glass of cow juice.”
The sadist brought him the glass of milk to accompany his apple pie, and Lorenzo swore he’d never return.
During the first weeks, he felt very alone. Everything at Harvard was calculated so that the young people would do nothing but study. Cambridge, what a pretty redbrick city. He went into the courthouse, attracted by the memory of the Escuela Libre de Derecho and of the movies, where very pale witnesses swore on a Bible and an impassive judge banged his gavel. The mahogany dais was imposing; the twelve good men who would hand down their verdict—honest. They followed the process, interrupted by the cry of the defense attorney: “I object, Your Honor.” A murmur of approval arose from the spectators. Just like in the movies, thought Lorenzo. He admired the beauty of the surroundings, the polished banisters. The lighting re-created cinematographic illumination, but he couldn’t stop thinking about a painting he had seen—The
Literate Ass, a judge with the head of a donkey. When the spectators raised their voices, the square-faced judge with gray hair like Goya’s donkey threatened to clear the room, and Lorenzo took the opportunity to leave. Once outside, he took a deep breath. What a relief to have traded legal codes for the telescope.
Reports about the war in Europe were constantly in the news and in the streets of Cambridge. People spoke in mysterious tones about nuclear energy. Mostly they talked about the losses suffered by the English Royal Air Force and ways to prevent them, of the bombardment of the German war industries, and of planes whose pilots and rear gunners were attacking Berlin. Some pilots had flown more than thirty missions. How heroic England was as it faced the bombings. Lorenzo heard the old physicist Tom Brandes say that this war was a continuation of the one in Spain against fascism, the one made up of brigades of free men who came from all over the world. Brandes had lost many friends, stupendous guys, in the Lincoln Brigade.
Because of Brandes, Lorenzo began to buy the newspaper The Masses. A pacifist, Tom maintained that no war is just, and its consequences are atrocious. Hitler personified evil; they had to put an end to his dementia. Tom alleged that in war, more people die as a result of the stupidity, ignorance, and cowardice of the high command than in combat. Distrust of those in power and creation of a society critical of its governors was the first step toward civilization. How insane to send so many young men to the slaughterhouse. Enlisting in any army was foolishness, not love of country. His words did not sit well in the atmosphere of patriotism that existed among the young men who were waiting to be recruited. “Old codger. Decrepit old man, your brain has gotten soft,” they said.
Tom Brandes perceived that Lorenzo shared his anguish.
Aside from listening to Brandes and watching Movietone newsreels, Lorenzo spent his time at Harvard’s Oak Ridge Observatory. Revueltas had talked to him about the Spanish Civil War. Revueltas’s brother Silvestre, who was a congressional delegate in Valencia in 1937, had returned with passions inflamed for the Republican fight. The Spanish refugees had begun to arrive while Lorenzo lived in Tonantzintla, and he was proud that Mexico was
one of the countries that offered them asylum. Luis Enrique Erro, indignant because the clergy and most of the Catholics supported Franco, became impassioned about the fate of the antifascists, and if it had not been for his excessive preoccupation with the telescope, he would probably have placed a bomb at the Mexican Military Fascist Union.
Spain’s civil war had been fratricide, unlike this one, in which the English, the French, all of Europe, and now the North Americans united in their implacable opposition to the German Nazis. Lorenzo left the movie theater in disgust in search of Tom Brandes: “This is butchery and a crime!” But the probable victory of the Allies somehow still encouraged Lorenzo.
With the Oak Ridge telescope, Lorenzo experienced “the other way to do science” Shapley had mentioned to him in Tonantzintla. This was the most powerful telescope he had ever encountered. No wonder Shapley was able to do what he did. Facing the splendid command console and all its buttons, Lorenzo felt a healthy envy. When will we Mexicans get to this point? he wondered. How great it would be if telescopes were mass-produced and sold like bicycles or refrigerators, and all you had to do was choose the best brand. This telescope reached the weakest and farthest objects Lorenzo had ever seen. He knew he must learn to handle it at any cost. A mirror collected the light from the celestial bodies; the rings of Saturn were spectacular; and seeing Jupiter’s moons, like seeing the moons of Mars, was an unexpected gift. He had become impassioned about planetary nebulae, gaseous wrappings of stars in the last stages of evolution, just before they became white dwarfs. Bart Jan Bok had indicated that planetary nebulae were essential to the study of the chemical evolution of the galaxy. Lorenzo set out to look for objects with emission lines directed toward the center of the galaxy, and he found sixty-seven new planetary nebulae.
He spent much more time in front of the telescope than was required. The war gave him that time. Not even for a moment did he consider giving in to fatigue. He’d die before he’d admit defeat.
Besides the telescope, seeing the modern buildings, the laboratories with unsurpassed equipment, the workshops—all operating to perfection—was a joy. The personnel seemed numerous and
competent, in spite of the fact that they told him there weren’t half as many as there should be, since so many had gone to war. At Harvard they explored the cosmos with all possible instruments. The researchers had everything at their fingertips—visible light, radio, X-rays, ultraviolet, infrared, and cosmic light. The physicists, the astronomers, and the biologists exchanged information. Norman Lewis, rejected from the army because of his poor health, was an expert in radio astronomy. “It’s the only way to find a new civilization,” he told Lorenzo, who bit his tongue so he wouldn’t reply that as far as he was concerned, there was no life on other planets and that extraterrestrials were purely science fiction. He had been amazed in 1938 by the credulity of the people in New York, who ran from their homes, crazed, when they heard Orson Welles announce a Martian invasion on a CBS radio program. So far, no being from other worlds had presented itself on Earth. There wasn’t a single indication or the least bit of proof of extraterrestrial contact. “Let’s share our thinking on this. Come to my house,” Lewis said.
“There are many, many dead planets,” insisted Lorenzo.
“Yes, but there are even more that we have yet to discover. You stick with your extremely weak objects, and maybe among them you’ll discover an artificial one. And if you do, it will be the work of intelligent beings, and then you’ll have to admit that I’m right.”
That night, Norman Lewis reinitiated the discussion. His raised left eyebrow made it seem as if he were always listening for a message from another world: “We radio astronomers are like that.” He laughed. He was very pale, with delicate features and skin as translucent as a porcelain cup. But what Lorenzo noticed the most were his hands; they looked like they belonged to another man—the hands of all of humanity, a worker’s hands, large and callused. When Norman lowered them, Lorenzo missed them.
These days, scientists talked about destruction. Although Norman rejected the military axiom that “the best defense is a good offense,” he declared, “We have to be realistic. Are we going to allow ourselves to be murdered?” An admirer of Oppenheimer, he was dazzled by the supremacy of the United States. There was good science and bad science. He didn’t think it was right that the Russians hid their discoveries.
At one point Lorenzo declared his admiration for the U.S.S.R., as El Pajarito Revueltas would have done, and he thought, This will be the end of the discussion.
But Norman, who was the authority, put an arm around his shoulders and leaned toward him: “You and I have a lot to discuss, but let’s go have dinner first. My friend Lisa is going to make us spaghetti.” Then Lorenzo noticed that there was an insipid blond girl in the laboratory, and she was staring at him.
The next day, when he came out of the darkroom, ready to examine his plates, he saw her again in the hallway. She gestured with her hand. “You’ll see, the gringas are really easy,” Chava Zúniga had told him. Crass gringa! thought Lorenzo. She was nothing like the brown-skinned women he knew. Young girls with that white linen hair that was so blond and straight—it seemed like wet rags. However, Lisa had set her eye on him from the moment she saw him in the astrophysics department with Norman Lewis. She was attending a philosophy of science seminar for her master’s degree. Her tenacity turned out to be so effective that by Friday night, Lorenzo led her to his monastic room, its window looking out onto the orchards. There she seemed more appealing. Her hair smelled of lemon, her white skin as well, and the rosy tips of her nipples were like the noses of those little cats that enchant everyone.
With complete naturalness Lisa found her place in Lorenzo’s minuscule apartment, and a week later the Mexican wouldn’t have known what to do without her. It was true, he observed less, but the Harvard sky became more accessible because of her.
In Tonantzintla, he had begun his true relationship with the sky. In Mexico the sky was his hat, his buddy up above. It belonged to him; it was an animal that included him; it blanketed him, a bear sky, a cow sky, a dog sky. At Harvard it seemed sumptuous and haughty, a sky that did not invite him to enter. It was truly magnificent, but it didn’t breathe with him or give him a big, familiar hug. They were not intoxicated with each other. Here, the Harvard sky observed him: Let’s see what you do with me, little astronomer. It wasn’t fat or affable or round; it didn’t rain or even sprinkle; and sometimes it even tasted like beer.
“Lisa, Mexican beer is the best in the world.” Lisa listened without blinking while she cleared the dishes, and her charitable presence anointed Lorenzo with a sense of security he had never before experienced. He shared his most intimate thoughts with her: “The starry sky lives, it beats, it isn’t unchanging; the same thing happens to it that happens to Earth. Everything moves down here, up there too.”
“The sky isn’t water or earth or air or fire. It isn’t any of those elements, so what is it?” she asked. “Could the sky be a fifth element?” And Lisa would answer herself because she was a good philosophy student. “Aristotle believed that the stars were immovable and that the celestial dome was fixed for eternity.” When she spoke of God, she declared, “God must be adored and not ever mixed in with geometry, astronomy, and philology. The heavens are for the theologians; the stars and the planets are for the astronomers.”
Thanks to her, Lorenzo’s English made rapid progress. He read Tennyson in English. They went to the Harvard University library, where Lisa took out William Blake’s slim volume and made him memorize “Tyger! Tyger! burning bright / In the forests of the night.” She introduced him to the pages in Joyce’s Ulysses that dealt with science. Lisa was growing inside him, encompassing a bigger space all the time. One night she yelled as she came in the apartment door, “I cut my hair!” The mischievous locks, purposely messy, made her look like a little boy. She didn’t wear high heels. If she had, she would have been taller than he. Her long legs looked good sheathed in jeans; she strode, hips forward, hollowing out her waist and chest, which gave the impression of fragility, as if she had to protect her insides.
Lisa taught him the pleasure of making love slowly, settling into Sunday leisure. She pointed to the bed. “We’re going to spend all day here today. We’re going to eat here. I’m going to beautify myself with your semen, your bull’s blood.” At first she shocked him. “I want to enjoy the pleasure. I won’t take your quickies. I’m not going to have sex your way. I refuse. I hate your cleanliness, your rushing, all your reasons to do it fast. I want to enjoy; it’s my right. Leave your rushing in Mexico. That doesn’t fly here.”
Lorenzo realized that until then, he had made love on the run. Cocorito, the waitress, had accepted that he hurried to the bathroom and stayed under the shower longer than he stayed inside her.
When the gang headed by Diego had proposed renting an apartment on calle Abraham Gonzalez “as a group,” Lorenzo hadn’t thought about Cocorito. “You’re driving her crazy. Aren’t you going to take her there? If you don’t, you’re an asshole,” Diego had chided.
When he first saw the waitress, Lorenzo had decided that she was a queen, with her tight belly, her high rump. She moved between the tables as if she were navigating. He watched the graceful movement of her proud head, her pale cedar skin, her radiant mahogany hair. She was a goddess. He could have kissed the floor of La Habana Café, where she spun flirtatiously, the ties of her tiny apron around her waist. Whenever Lorenzo talked, Cocorito was there, coffeepot in hand, ready to listen to him. She left the table only when the manager scolded her. “She’s really got a thing for you, brother. Your gift of gab has her under your spell.” It made Lorenzo’s heart skip a beat that Cocorito would choose him over the rest. She made him into a god, Jupiter, the seducer, the Casanova. When he walked into the café, he would blush, and his heart would race. He, who had never been inhibited in a classroom, barely raised his eyes, confused, and his friends had a field day making fun of his shyness.
The first day, when he took her to the apartment, he was ashamed as he held her hand and they climbed the worn-out stairs. But when he realized that she wasn’t a virgin, all his pleasure vanished. A horrible feeling of loss filled his eyes. He penetrated her a second time, hating her, when seconds earlier he had put her on a pedestal. Even Diego had teased him when he heard Lorenzo say, “Listen, I’d kill for this woman.” He kept taking her while he complained about the deceit.
“What deceit? You didn’t even know her.” Diego laughed at him. “I can’t believe you thought that Cocorito was just waiting for you. You could tell she was experienced from a mile away. You
can’t be that naïve. Were you planning to ask for her hand in marriage?”
The last time Lorenzo undressed next to her and told her that he would not see her again because he was leaving for the United States, Cocorito snuggled against his chest. “You’ll never know how grateful I am that you’ve loved me,” she said. Then she told him about her life, a violated life. Lorenzo felt his nerves in torment and wept in her arms because he was going to leave her.
And what would become of Leticia?
And of Emilia, the eldest?
And of all the women on the face of the Earth?
Now, with Lisa, he had the same sensation of loss. But what he shared with Lisa was the closest he had felt to happiness. Everything went right for her. She chose good movies, books, friends; she carried herself with confidence. Their conversations were good, and the meals were good. She was more mature than most girls her age. Having her at his side, with her concave chest and her tousled linen hair, was a certainty comparable to knowing that the Earth revolves around the sun. And she offered him a different Harvard. Some of the greatest people had been at Harvard—Igor Stravinsky, Bertrand Russell. “Look, this was his house; they lived here; they walked along these pathways. How lucky you are to be here. Lorenzaccio. What luck to belong to the elite—proof that you possess a better mind than the rest.”
On weekends Lisa took him to concerts. Conferences came one right after another without a breath in between, and Lisa didn’t allow him to breathe. “Let’s go, come on, it would be a crime to miss it; we can’t give ourselves that luxury.”
Norman Lewis knocked on their door with those hands that didn’t belong to him: “Where are you going? I’ll go with you.”
The conversation would then exclude her, and Lisa set certain conditions. “Come on, Norman, but I won’t allow you to talk about astronomy.” That was impossible to stick to. Under Norman’s influence, even Lisa imagined how she would greet an extraterrestrial and what she would pull out of the refrigerator to feed him.
She never tired. “Your electromagnetic waves are killing me, Lisa,” Lorenzo told her. “There’s no doubt, you are a solar woman.” She went from one activity to another, and if Lorenzo hadn’t gone to the observatory, she would have dragged him along with her at night as well. “Let’s stay peacefully home today,” begged the Mexican.
“No, no, Lorenzaccio. The only way I’d miss the Corelli Concerto Grosso de Navidad is if I were dead. You have to hear it. It’s essential to your mental health.”
“What is hurting my mental health is all your bustling around, Mrs. Dynamo, widow of acceleration.”
“We’ll be sitting, Lorenzaccio. I have just confirmed that you emit lethal radiation, like X-rays.” Lisa was a human shooting star. Maybe she had a greater number of mobile cells, and her supernumerary structure led her to exercise with the same ease with which her practical spirit and her diligence resolved everyday problems. Without her, Lorenzo would have slept—and how he missed that. But she brought him out into Harvard life. With her he got to know Boston and the other Ivy League universities. The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. It was wonderful, in spite of the fact that Lorenzo saw it all at a gallop, worried about his work, about meeting Bok!
“The closer I am to you, the more energy I receive by the minute, Lisa.” Years later he would ask himself how it was possible that he never got sick. He came to the conclusion that Lisa, purveyor of light and heat, prevented it, and that he had been very fortunate.
Thoughts of Mexico didn’t cause him pain, nor did thoughts of Leticia, because he couldn’t see them. He had entered into the feverish rhythm of competition. He had to show the gringos his worth. Anything you can do, I can do better, he told them with his eyes. Once, on the street, a gringo called him a little Mexican jumping bean.
And they said Cambridge wasn’t a racist town. He would make them see what little Mexican beans were capable of. He was the last to come down from the telescope platform; it was he who closed up the cupola and turned off the console. He spent the entire
night standing, in spite of the intense cold. He wouldn’t even use the heater. The frigid weather cleared the sky; it was never better for observing. He never complained. Pushing himself beyond his limit made him wonder if the cosmos forced its own nature on him. What more could he ask for, since he didn’t belong to the kingdom of feelings? Feelings, what a great hindrance!
One night Lisa pointed upward: “Look at that sweet little star!”
Lorenzo became angry. Stars weren’t sweet or cute or brave or intelligent. They just were. That was why science was so conclusive compared with the humanities.
One night a snowstorm pounded against the cupola. He was so absorbed in his calculations that he didn’t notice. During the night the wind rabidly struck the closed cupola, under which he was making his measurements. It burst against the windows of the building. Only when a six-pointed star fell on his sleeve outside did Lorenzo notice. “It’s snow! It’s snow! I’ve finally seen snow.” He took shelter under a canopy to study it. When the furious flakes stopped spinning in the air, Lorenzo moved into the middle of a vast white desolation that came up to his knees. There wasn’t a soul around; it was too early in the morning. Only the vapor of his breathing kept him company—and the snow. He finally knew what it was. What he had seen on Popo when he went searching for Juan was barely frost. At Harvard, more than just snow-covered, the Earth appeared to have returned to the Ice Age. Two hundred million years ago the Earth was blue ice. The polar caps expanded and froze the oceans; immense winters brought by glacial winds settled on the surface of the Earth. Then came the Pleistocene, and with it, a pale sun, under which humans attempted to survive. How nature had raged against them. As he put one shoe in front of the other in a foot of snow, Lorenzo thought about the concentration of natural forces that governed the world. Could man handle them? This snow was a bomb. What fun the decrease in temperature brought. Where were the animals? How did they protect themselves? A shiver made him lose his footing. If I don’t hurry, it’ll be good-bye astronomy. The shape of an animal was outlined in the distance. What if it were a mammoth? The violence of the storm seemed to come from the beginning of time. In Mexico during the
rainy season, the sky had fallen in, but it was a tropical deluge. This cold that came in from the Arctic made him think that maybe he was the only survivor. All this snowy whiteness defined purity for him for the first time. Feeling like a polar bear, Lorenzo found refuge in Lisa’s arms.
The next day the storm grew worse.
It wasn’t long before the other observers told Shapley, “The Mexican guy is really tough. He hasn’t missed even one night.”
He’d die before he’d miss a single night observing. The Oak Ridge station had a variety of telescopes, and having access to them thrilled him. From the beginning, Lorenzo’s passion was the discovery of very red or very blue weak stars. He spent many hours tirelessly cataloging objects of very pale light, even though he preferred to spend all his time in front of the telescope studying, with great detail and fascination, the most tenuous objects that originated from diffused sources. That was when he detected a new kind of galaxy, of a very blue color, in the halo of the Milky Way. How many of these galaxies were there? Surely a great number. Lorenzo was thrilled because scientists thought that the majority of the galaxies were yellow in color—the nuclei in particular—which indicated that they were dealing with old stars. The existence of blue galaxies signaled their recent formation on a grand scale. This could also mean that he, Lorenzo, was discovering new astrophysical processes. Maybe he could find galaxies with intense ultraviolet radiation. He applied the Tikov method of discovery to the eight-inch Ross refractor. The lens had a color curve with the appropriate slope to discover extremely weak luminous objects. Later he moved on to multiple-image plates that were developed through three successive emulsion filters. If he continued this way, he might discover planetary systems in regions of space close to Earth that were very different from our solar system.