Free Burnt Water by Carlos Fuentes

and then you, that’s how he sees things, his own way, he gave us everything on a silver platter as he always says, and there wasn’t going to be another Revolution where a man could win at a stroke both love and valor, not any more, now we have to prove ourselves in other ways, why should he pay for everything and us for nothing? he’s our eternal dictator, don’t you see? see if we dare show we don’t need him, that we can live without his memories, his heritage, his tyranny of sentiment. He wants people to love him, General Vicente Vergara is our father, by God, and we’re obliged to love him and emulate him, to see if we can do what he did, now that it’s more difficult.
    You and I, Plutarco, what battles are we going to win? what women are we going to tame? what soldiers are we going to castrate? you tell me. That’s your grandfather’s terrible challenge, realize that quickly or you’ll find yourself broken the way he broke me, he laughs and says, let’s see whether you can do what I did, now that it can’t be done any longer, let’s see whether you can find a way to inherit something more difficult than my money.
    â€œViolence with impunity.”
    Evangelina was so innocent, so without defenses, that’s what galled me more than anything, that I couldn’t blame her, but I couldn’t forgive her either. Now that’s something your grandfather never lived through. Only with such a feeling could I triumph over him forever, inside myself, though he supported me and went on mocking me. I’d done something more than he’d done, or something different. I still don’t know which. Your mother didn’t know either. She must have felt guilty of everything, except the one thing I blamed her for.
    â€œHer irritating innocence.”
    My father had been drinking all night. Even more than Grandfather and me. He walked to the hi-fi and turned it on. Avelina Landín was singing something about silver threads among the gold. My father dropped into a chair, like Fernando Soler in the old Mexican film Soulless Woman. I no longer cared whether this, too, was something he’d learned.
    â€œThe medical report said your mother had died by choking on a piece of meat. As simple as that. Those things are easily arranged. Your grandfather and I tied a beautiful scarf around her neck for the funeral.”
    He gulped down the rest of his cognac, put the glass on a shelf, and stood for a long while staring at the palms of his hands, as Avelina sang about the silvery moon reflected on a lake of blue.
    Of course, the business matters were resolved. My father’s friends in Los Angeles covered the hundred-million-peso debt so the fields in Sinaloa would remain untouched. Grandfather took to his bed for a month after the binge we’d had together, but he was back in good form for the tenth of May, Mother’s Day, when the three of us men who lived in the huge house in Pedregal went together, as we did every year, to the French Cemetery to leave flowers in the crypt where my grandmother Clotilde and my mother Evangelina are buried.
    The marble crypt is like our mansion in miniature. They are both sleeping here, said the General in a broken voice, head bowed, sobbing, his face hidden in a handkerchief. I stand between my father and my grandfather, clasping their hands. My grandfather’s hand is cold, sweatless, like a lizard’s skin. My father’s hand blazes like fire. My grandfather sobbed again, and uncovered his face. If I’d looked at him closely, I’m sure I would have asked myself for whom he wept so bitterly, and for whom he wept more, his wife or his daughter-in-law. But at that moment I was simply trying to guess what my future would be. We’d gone to the cemetery without mariachis this time. I would have liked a little music.

The Two Elenas
    â€œI don’t know where Elena gets those ideas. That’s not the way she