Free The Revolutionaries Try Again by Mauro Javier Cardenas Page B

let go, someone help that little boy, for god’s sake, the monkey thrashing Antonio by his hair and Antonio thinking then or later that he got what he deserved, the monkey not letting go of Antonio’s hair even after a pair of brooms descended onhim, the monkey probably thinking we’re both going down, carajo, you and me to the grave.
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    My father did not interrupt my grandmother’s story. He remained silent, concentrating on the uneven horizon inside his wineglass. I could not tell if he had been staring at it for long, or if it was just a passing gesture of wine connoisseurship because I was too distracted by my upcoming speech. After participating in my father’s reckless lifestyle the summer before, I had decided it was my duty to convince him to attend Christmas Mass with us, and for this delicate task I had prepared a speech. I had spent quite some time contemplating not the exact words to deliver but my father’s reaction to them, envisioning a sudden conversion like Saul on his way to Damascus, god’s light passing through me so as to inspirit my every word. In a mixture of rosary prayers and feverish writing, I’d finished my speech the night before. Perhaps a resolute argument, perhaps a series of unconnected allusions to the theological texts I was studying in school, either way, I’d accumulated at least seven or eight pages wrinkled by my scribbling and crossing and waiting for the light to shine. I would address my father after dinner.
    My Aunt Carmen, the only one in my father’s family with enough good looks to marry a bold, young politician, brought up the headline news. The mayor of our city, or perhaps some other elected official that I can no longer recall, had defrauded the municipality and fled.
    Just another crook, my father muttered, aware that my grandmother had urged everyone to vote for that crook during election time. We waited for my father to riff on his remark. He didn’t. This did not imply his mood was improving. Under the table I could see his hands stroking his gray suit pants, as if reassuring them of their own fine tailoring and fabric, which he had once explained to me by pointing at the minute violet stripes that had been woven into them.
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    His father never explained those minute violet stripes to him, Antonio thinks, crossing out the passage about the minute violet stripes, but his father did drag him along to splurge on Italian business suits at the most expensive boutiques in Quito, no, not drag him along, Antonio loved sauntering into those expensive boutiques where the voluptuous saleswomen would dote on both father and son, his father flirting with them and the saleswomen saying your son’s so handsome, Don Antonio, he’s going to stir the cauldron as much as you, a prediction that didn’t come true while he lived in Guayaquil — hide your Smurfs, here comes that ugly Gargamel — but that came true once he arrived in San Francisco — good one, Menudo Boy — and although Antonio likes to believe he has inherited nothing from his corrupt father, he knows he has inherited his father’s penchant for expensive clothes because he splurged even when he couldn’t afford them (and likely will continue to splurge because the realization that a behavior is inherited isn’t strong enough to counter the inherited behavior — you could simply stop buying expensive clothes, Drool — easier to continue to splurge and blame it on my corrupt father? —), and of course to his American acquaintances his penchant for expensive clothes was a source of amusing anecdotes, courtesy of Antonio from faraway Ecuador, but to him his penchant for expensive clothes dispirited him because if he hadn’t splurged he could’ve quit his database job and returned to Ecuador sooner, although he would have never returned to Ecuador without owning a sizable amount of expensive clothes — you’re