28

Each time he returned from Mexico City, Lorenzo’s heart contracted at the thought that Fausta might not be at the observatory. She was now part of the Tonantzintla personnel and on the payroll. How old could she be? She gave the impression of having survived many things, maybe too many. How many different bloodlines did she have? Who configured her that way? Lorenzo no longer expected the miracle of self-renewal, yet this woman from hell had given it to him. Fausta used drugs and smoked marijuana. Because she shared her weed and talked like them, the young people felt she was one of them. “What wavelength are you on, My Doc?”

She had approached him, and Lorenzo felt like saying, Don’t call me My Doc, but he stopped himself and vengefully asked her, “Do you always wear the same pants?”

“These are different. Look, My Doc, these have pockets on the cheeks; the other ones were on the sides.” In turn, she asked him, “Why don’t you let your hair grow long?”

“Me?”

“Yes. Like Einstein, long and messy.”

On another occasion she became excited when she heard a rock song. “Do you know Janis Joplin? Have you heard her music? What an amazing human being.”

A few months after arriving in Tonantzintla, she had shown up with her hair spiked straight up. She had cut her beautiful black braids off. Without disguising his dislike, Lorenzo asked her, “How does it stay up like that?”

“With gel, Doctor, the same kind men use. Look, touch it.”

Fausta guided Lorenzo’s hand over her skull. It was completely stiff, as sharp as a bed of nails. His hand bounced off. But she still looked attractive with those spikes on top of her head! In time she got bored with it and let her hair grow out.

For Lorenzo, drugs and marijuana implied a sordid world of hippie clubs, discos, rock, abortion doctors, supermarket robberies, promiscuity, and, consequently, a desolate end. He slept with whomever he wanted to, but he was a man. She obviously had gone much further. Nonetheless, she seemed as pure as the T Tauri stars.

Right now, for him, Fausta was the scourge of Tonantzintla, and soon she would be that of the University of Puebla, considering Luis Rivera Terraza’s enthusiasm. Luis was very worried about his university, and he would give Lorenzo updates. “At least they’re beginning to discuss economic and political problems. Until just recently the only thing that could be considered cultural was the thanksgiving mass.”

Lorenzo and Luis spent hours talking about higher education. According to Luis, as you entered the vestibule of the beautiful Carolino building in Puebla, a blackboard announced, LAW STUDENTS ARE INVITED TO THE THANKSGIVING MASS DURING EXAMS. The archbishop visited them frequently, and peregrinations to the Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe were counted for credit in the history department. “Where are we living, Lencho?” Luis despaired. “The same happened in the physics department, which had only one textbook. And it was the worst, brother, the worst. It was written by Lerena, a Spaniard who knows as much about physics as I do about dressmaking. And just think, about seventy thousand students buy that book.” Luis wrung his hands. “Why don’t you teach a class, Lorenzo, just one? Do it for me.”

“You know I hate it, Luis. Take pity on my research. I spend too little time on it as it is.”

Luis insisted. “I need to find professors who at least don’t confuse weight with mass. Imagine, Lencho, I went into a physics class, and I discovered that the teacher didn’t know the difference between degrees centigrade and degrees Kelvin.”

Terrazas laughed when Lorenzo made fun of his Catholic Communism and his loyalty to Makarenko’s “Pedagogical Poem.” “At the university another teacher showed me what he calls ‘the Mexican race’—an abomination that’s a cross between the Virgin of Co-vadonga and the Virgin of Guadalupe.”

Lorenzo laughed. “Man, you even beat Vasconcelos when you talk about the cosmic race. The fifth race, superior to the other four: white, black, yellow, and bronze, all synthesized in the Mexicans. Pinto beans as good as red beans!”

One morning the walls of Tonantzintla were covered with graffiti: “TENA AND TERRAZAS COMMUNISTS”; “ANTI-MEXICANS”; “REDS, GET OUT”; “ENEMIES OF THE VILLAGE”; “DOWN WITH COMMUNISM”; “TRAITORS”; “TENA AND TERRAZAS ARE QUEERS.” The anticommunist campaign had reached Tonantzintla. Anyone with new ideas was a threat to rural traditions. Puebla was more conservative than any other state, and a liberal was labeled a Bolshevik, straight out of Moscow.

At the University of Puebla, one hundred twenty students squeezed into classrooms built for sixty. When Terrazas told the instructors, “My friends, it’s your duty to stay at the university for eight hours,” one of them protested: “I agree, but do you want me to sit under a tree or on a rock?” How could they demand that a full-time professor stay on campus without even a cubicle to call his own? And many students had no space at home to do their homework.

“We can only handle forty students,” Terrazas said, “because there are ten tables of four, and here we are, the university with the longest tradition in the Republic.”

Lorenzo promised to speak with the Minister of Education, but he and Luis were pessimists by nature. “Poor country! Poor Mexico! What will become of the youth?”

 

 

The problems Terrazas struggled with at the University of Puebla reminded Lorenzo of what he had encountered with the founding of the Institutes at the University City and, years later, at the Academy of Scientific Investigation. Alberto Sandoval Landázuri, the director of the Chemical Institute, had knocked down walls himself to enlarge the space on floors 11, 12, and 13 of the Science Tower. “I know the exact specifications for my laboratory—where I want the glass workshop, the warehouse, where the air and vacuum compressors should go.” He demanded, mallet in hand, that carbon dioxide extinguishers be installed as well as high-pressure water hoses. He didn’t want to take a single risk.

Sandoval had the reputation of being bad-tempered, and he had an extraordinarily energetic voice. Lorenzo had appreciated his directness, thinking, Those are the kind of men I like to deal with. They handled problems the same way. Having tea together in midafternoon became a ritual.

Unlike other men of science, who complained about their wages, for Sandoval Landazuri six hundred pesos a month seemed like a magnificent salary. That total lack of interest in money impressed Lorenzo.

“Something is not right in our Science Tower,” Sandoval had indicated. “Since I’m on the top floor, I notice that my colleagues get off the elevator without saying a word. The different disciplines mutually ignore one another. If we haven’t been able to awaken the curiosity of the scientists, how are we going to convince the general population? Doesn’t it seem like the last straw that our colleagues don’t communicate among themselves? You’re my buddy, Lorenzo. Help me out here.”

And Sandoval Landazuri had laughed when they decided to establish the Academy of Scientific Investigation. “Who will we nominate besides ourselves?” With Lorenzo’s support he chose the members. “No, not that one. He’s a good-for-nothing.” “I can’t stand that offensive bitch.” “He’s a son of a gun; I don’t trust him.” Like Lorenzo, Sandoval Landazuri felt it was urgent to act rather than to theorize. “We’re lagging so far behind, we have neither an infrastructure nor human or economic resources. Our programs are fifty years late. If we aren’t able to interest Mexican businessmen, we’ll never be able to compete with the scientific development of First World countries. Science is a priority, but as long as those idiot politicians don’t understand that, we’re screwed, Lorenzo.”

Lorenzo had liked presiding over meetings at the brand-new academy. They had first admitted twenty-five members, and then another twenty-five. He insisted on excellence. “First-class people, brother, absolutely top-notch. We have to be strict. No mummies or sacred cows. No solemn asses either.” They instituted annual awards for researchers who were under forty years of age. Though they promoted the humanities as well (one of the first to receive an award was a lawyer, Hector Fix-Zamudio), they gave science priority, and it was a great pleasure for Lorenzo to award one to Marcos Moshinsky, the young physicist.

But Lorenzo’s demands had reached unheard-of heights, and some who listened to him were stunned.

“You must have published an article within the last three years. Of course that eliminates Sandoval Vallarta. The older ones who rest on their laurels are not acceptable. Manuel Sandoval Vallarta has not published; therefore he’s out.”

How could Tena be so dismissive of a leader in the field of science? Sandoval Vallarta had accepted him and recognized him at the Colegio Nacional.

“I think what is important is to prove that you’re good in your field,” argued Alberto Barajas. “Your requirements eliminate almost all the mathematicians, among them me, and soon Graef himself.”

Nabor Carrillo intervened. “It’s pure insanity!”

“Marcos Moshinsky, Alberto Sandoval, and I all believe that you must publish continuously to be an active researcher,” said Lorenzo.

“No one can publish as frequently as you do,” insisted Nabor Carrillo. “Show some moderation, man. We are not going to judge the scientific community based on your parameters. There are not many of us as it is, and if you start eliminating people, you must remember that those who follow could become as merciless with you as you are with the ones who showed us the way.”

“If the old ones don’t work, they go in the garbage,” Lorenzo repeated. “If we demand excellence from the young people, we can’t be complacent ourselves.”

“You’re going to end up all alone.”

“I’m willing to take the risk. If we give in now, we’ll fail. Science has not integrated itself into the life of the country. They’re better off in India and in Africa than we are here. Not even thirty percent of Mexicans make it to elementary school, while in First World countries it’s eighty percent. With the exception of the National University and the Polytechnic Institute, our universities shouldn’t even be called that. They aren’t even at high school level. We don’t belong to the elite of research, and you, Barajas, know that better than anyone. If we don’t make a titanic effort at all levels of education, we’re lost.”

“Maybe it isn’t how much we publish, but rather how much we know,” insisted Barajas. “Publish or perish is a gringo influence.”

“Yes, and the only way to become competitive is to contend with the United States.”

“Brother, you seem more like Erro every day,” Nabor Carrillo said. “You have earned your reputation as an ogre. ‘Tena, who fires everyone,’ the kids say. They run from you. They complain to me. You claim you’re forming a scientific group, and you mistreat them.”

“The problem is that you are irresponsible and frivolous, Nabor, just like Walt Disney’s three caballeros. Do you remember? ‘We are the three caballeros …’” Lorenzo executed a few samba steps and added, “All you’re interested in is being recognized.”

“Since you already are, you don’t have that problem. You’re going to sink the academy with your intolerance.”

“On the contrary, I’m going to sink it if I don’t demand the impossible and eliminate the parasites.”

 

 

For the last four years Tonantzintla had invited scientists from the Soviet Union and the United States to visit the observatory to carry out their own research and to give talks to a small number of guests. Everything would go well until Lorenzo got the guest alone. Involved in laborious discussions, hounded until exhausted, the researcher of the hour would end up shaking his head in agreement.

“This is mysticism, my friend, mysticism and not science!” the director would say. He viewed these diatribes as stimulating for the guest, giving him new ideas for his research.

He did the same with the kids who came to visit from the University of Puebla and the National University. He challenged them for hours on end. During the course of the day, Lorenzo worked out his ideas, wrote them down, and discussed them with Luis, and at night he would throw himself into a discussion with his colleagues. Although he was a fierce polemicist, the next morning Luis would find him discouraged, saying, “I don’t know enough about physics.” One clear day he shouted that in a few years he wouldn’t be able to compete with the young people. “I don’t have the academic training, and intuition won’t be enough.” Nevertheless, his only form of dealing with problems was to view them as a challenge.

“Why do you force Harold Johnson to speak Spanish, Lencho? You make him sweat bullets,” protested Rivera Terrazas.

Lorenzo had also corrected Donald Kendall from Texas Instruments, when the visitor said, “I’m an American.”

“I’m an American too. You are from North America,” the director responded decisively. “In spite of the fact that you covet it, you don’t yet have a monopoly on the continent.”

“We’re in Mexico, and this gringo is going to speak our language,” he told Luis.

“We’re wasting a lot of time.”

“It doesn’t matter. I have patience.”

“That’s what you have the least of.”

“The gringo is going to speak Spanish, at whatever cost.”

“What’s the point? What do you gain with that?”

“Respect, so he knows we’re as worthy as he is.”

“Lorenzo, the scientific language is English, the Latin of the modern world. Everyone speaks it—the Germans, the Italians, the Swedes, the Dutch.”

Tena and Rivera Terrazas both shut themselves up in their offices after that discussion.

 

 

In spite of the bad omens, Lorenzo’s integrity had strengthened the academy. However, on opening his correspondence one Monday, he found a card from Alberto Sandoval Landázuri: “No way, brother. I haven’t published anything in the last three years, and I have to be just as strict with myself. We made the rule and shouldn’t break it.” Following his own rule, Sandoval Landazuri resigned from the academy.

Lorenzo missed him at the meetings. After instigating the expulsion of Sandoval Vallarta and Santiago Genovés, he felt more alone all the time. He could guess what comments were made as he passed. “He’s hateful,” he once heard Ignacio Gonzalez Guzmán say. The other members feared an outburst, but Lorenzo wouldn’t let his arm be twisted, although he really missed Sandoval Landazuri and his keen insight. They even had their pasts in common. Both had worked with Guillermo Jenkins.

“Lencho, put aside your pride, forget your repugnance, and go see Jenkins,” suggested Diego Beristain. “He loves Puebla, and if you’re diplomatic, he’ll probably help you. We’re all aware of his fiscal omissions in the sale of alcohol, but he’s a businessman—maybe the only one who can understand you.”

“Just listen to what you’re saying!” said Lorenzo indignantly. “Fiscal ommissions? Is that what you call cheating rats now?”

“Rat or not, go see him. I’ll do everything in my power to help you, but never, even in my wildest dreams, will I have the resources that Jenkins does.”

Owner of half of Puebla, Jenkins had made a huge fortune dishonestly.

The objective closest to Lorenzo’s heart was to give scholarships to students. Jenkins’s personal secretary called him: “The councilman will see you on Monday at twelve noon.”

When Jenkins opened the door to his office and saw Lorenzo, he said, “Ah, the Communist!”

“Ah, the smuggler!”

“So I’m a smuggler? You’re mistaken.”

Lorenzo turned around to leave, and the powerful hand of the ex-U.S. consul rested on his shoulder. “Doctor, come in.”

When Lorenzo finished his exposition, Jenkins said three words: “I’m for it.”

“What do you want in exchange for your support?” asked Lorenzo.

“I want you to invite me to see what you’ve done with the money.

“All right. Maybe you can wash your hands of your sins that way.

As Lorenzo was leaving, a tall, husky man embraced him unexpectedly. “My Lord, are you brave. Jenkins is a great man; he owns the most land in the entire state. Not only is his own fortune colossal, but he’s made his followers immensely rich. Are you familiar with his sugar mill in Atencingo, the one that produces alcohol?”

Lorenzo escaped the embrace, but not the hefty man, who said, “I’m Rivera Terrazas’s friend, but I’d like to be your friend as well. Years ago I belonged to the Communist Party. My name is Alonso Martinez Robles, and I’d like you to join me for lunch. Like you and Professor Terrazas, I believe that the revenue is being badly distributed.”

The astronomer was on the verge of asking what Robles was doing in the reception area of a capitalist with a shady background, but he stopped himself; Robles could have asked him the same question. Fucking capitalism. Really! What shit it was to have to ask a man like Jenkins for help. Nevertheless, he liked the gringo. Like all executives, he got right to the point. Yes or no. And Jenkins had said yes to him.

Sandoval Landazuri told Lorenzo that when he was very young, he had worked as a chemist at the sugar mill in Atencingo. He had measured the sugar with a saccharimeter and verified the percentages of alcohol—until he realized that Jenkins was bribing the inspectors. Making alcohol with fermented sugarcane juice was prohibited, and in Atencingo it was fermented in large metal vats, to then be distilled. “I hung in there for a month, Lencho, and when I found out about a vacancy in the El Mante mill, I applied for the position.”

Like Alberto Sandoval Landázuri, Lorenzo wanted to believe that businessmen would invest in science if you knew the right way to present a project to them. Alberto had had a positive experience with Syntex and Hormona laboratories doing research on steroids. Russell Marker, the chemist, discovered that he could extract saponin from great mullein, a low-growing grass in Oaxaca, and from that he derived sapogenin. With these, they could manufacture male and female hormones using very simple procedures. Somlo, Rosenkranz, and Kaufman, the owners of Syntex and Hormona, became millionaires with the development of the birth control pill.

These discoveries had immediate applications in chemistry and biology, but who invested in astronomy? Lorenzo resented the phrase “You all, you astronomers” because he knew that he was thought of as a lunatic who walked on the roof at night with a paper cone on his head and a cat on his shoulder, ready to take off through the air on his long-distance eyeglass, like a witch. But optics—yes, optics could pique the interest of a businessman because the glass was revenue yielding; it had an immediate relevance. Make our own optic glass to sell more cheaply than imported glass? Could they really compete with Bausch & Lomb? Electronics was also the science of the future, but “we astronomers are lost in the stratosphere, ignorant of world problems.”

However, of all the subjects, astronomy was the most romantic, and the students registered for it, especially the girls. The effervescence at the National Autonomous University was contagious, and Lorenzo was pleased by the young, exuberant faces in the elevator that looked at him with curiosity.

“I have more students all the time,” Paris Pishmish would tell him with an encouraging smile.

“Good ones?” the director would ask suspiciously.

“I’m not sure yet, but some of them ask brilliant questions. I have to study all night to find the answers.”

Graef had faith in the future of science, as did Barajas, who agreed with Graef about everything.

At the university, Rafael Costero informed Lorenzo that young Amanda Silver, a student in the science department, was ranting and raving against him. The director asked to have her come see him.

“They tell me that you’re going around calling me a son of a bitch.”

“Yes, Doctor,” she responded, swallowing hard.

Amanda had read in the newspaper that her teacher Rivera Terrazas, the Communist, who came to the university to teach classes two weeks each month, had been arrested in Puebla. For that she had blamed Lorenzo Tena. What was he doing in Mexico City instead of defending him?

“Ah! Do you believe everything you read in the papers?” Lorenzo picked up the phone, dialed the number for Tonantzintla. Fausta answered, and he asked to speak to Rivera Terrazas. “Luis, I have one of your students here who says you were arrested because of me and that I’m a so-and-so. I’ll let you speak to her.”

Frightened, the girl took the receiver.

“On the contrary, Amanda,” Rivera Terrazas told her. “Tena has always protected me. In 1959, during the railroad strike, he gave me asylum in the observatory. I’m hiding here right now. If you want to come this weekend with your classmates, you’re welcome. There is a bungalow where you can stay.”

Before heading for the door, Amanda looked at the director out of the corner of her eye. She was embarrassed.

Lorenzo stopped her. “Starting tomorrow, you come to work.”

“What about school? I haven’t finished yet. And Dr. Pishmish?”

“I want to see you in Tonantzintla in the afternoon starting tomorrow.”

How would she progress? His faith in women scientists was limited to Cecilia Payne Gaposchkin. The other ones couldn’t even be compared with the men. There was no female Hale or Shapley or Hubble or Hertzprung. Although Erro had named the small road that led up to the observatory after Annie Jump Cannon, to thank her for her enthusiasm about the Tonantzintla project, her contributions didn’t even come close to those of Bo, Schwarzschild, Zwicky, Kuiper, or Hoyle.

As for Amanda, her knowledge of physics, math, electronics, and optics would finally be useful. She repeated “I’ll be an astronomer” as if it were a revelation.

During her stay in Tonantzintla, it surprised her to see the signs that read TENA AND RIVERA COMMUNISTS.

“Outsiders came and painted that in plain daylight,” Tonita informed her while she cleaned the bungalow.

“Let’s whitewash it,” suggested Amanda.

“Miss Fausta already bought the paint.”

“Who?”

“Fausta Rosales. She helps all of us around here.”

A flock of kids, guided by Paris Pishmish, crowded around the forty inches at night. Each had his own specific field of observation, and the following morning they compared their plates. In spite of the fact that Lorenzo demanded a great deal of them, they wanted to gain his confidence and, above all, his approval. “They say he’s a great literary critic and has read all of Thomas Mann.”

Contradicting those who alleged that science was an international activity, impossible to isolate, Lorenzo promoted a science that would serve Mexico. He looked for Mexicans to graduate and compete at the most important universities of Europe and the United States, and although he feared the flight of brainpower, it was a risk he was willing to take, in spite of everything. “Listen, come back. You have a moral obligation to Mexico.” But it was impossible to deny that if Mexico isolated itself, it would drown.

Barajas said, “The talent is everywhere. Look at Chandrasekhar—from an aristocratic Hindu family. He traveled to England and stayed in the United States. It’s impossible for researchers to return to the Third World. Where are our laboratories? None of our scientists could win the Nobel Prize living in a Third World country.”

In Tonantzintla, the kids had little patience. They longed to make a discovery, to find another galaxy and name it after themselves within a month. No humility, none of the slow, laborious toil of bees about which Erro had written. When Lorenzo advised them that the smallest discovery in a hundredth millimeter of the nocturnal dome would be a triumph, they were upset. They burned with their own ambition, the fuel of their youth turning them into shooting stars that were quickly extinguished. They also asked for observation time at Tacubaya, although it was difficult to accomplish much with a refractor telescope that had five meters of focal distance and was thirty-eight centimeters in diameter. They reviewed their plates, and finally, frustrated, they yelled that they would not be observational astronomers but theoretical instead, like Dr. Pishmish.

“Be what you wish, but just work hard,” responded the director.

At nightfall, led by the always inquisitive Rafael Costero, some of them dared to knock on the door to Lorenzo’s bungalow, and he invited them in for tea. They talked about their own futures and politics, about science in Mexico and politics, about electromagnetism and politics. Many nights Lorenzo ended up inviting them to dinner at El Vasco in Puebla to continue the exchange of ideas. He never imagined that the students would want to know more about him, because for him someone’s personal life was of little interest. Was he single or married? Did he have a secret lover? Why did he like to read so much? What books did he recommend to them? They feared him, and they deified him. “Doctor, it seems that you had philosophical training. Were you captivated by Nietzsche? Kant? Sartre? Ortega y Gasset?” Lorenzo spoke to them about Jaeger’s Paideia, just as he had with Diego Beristain, for hours at a time.

With the students, he regained the enthusiasm of his adolescence, but he was tortured by the passage of time and the slow and difficult advancement of Mexican science. Costero surprised him by asking, “Why don’t you invite Fausta Rosales? She’s brilliant!”

“Brilliant?”

“Yes, she has an excellent mind. You can’t believe how we enjoy her. She made friends with Amanda, and they observe together. She’s so conscientious that Amanda is going to give her credit in her master’s thesis.”

“Fausta observes?”

“Yes, Doctor. Besides, her life is fascinating.”

So Fausta had told them about her life, that devil of a woman. She hung around with everyone but him.

Curiously, the students made him think about Fausta. Where did she come from? Why wasn’t she more communicative? How could he get close to her? Had she sold her soul to the devil? If a lot of kids were lacking a spirit of adventure, he thought to himself, Fausta had it to spare.