On the first day after their return, when my mama left for her tour of sympathy at the Espiricueta household, my papa took the opportunity to go into town, thinking he would find it in a similar state to when he drove through on the way to collect my sisters.
He was amazed to find that the streets were busy.
The mayor, Carlos Tamez, was outside the post office, where there was a constant flow of people coming and going. They greeted each other hurriedly, both anxious to continue on their way. As the mayor walked past, my father asked him whether the postal service was now operating.
“Partially,” he replied.
There was staff, but since they were just beginning to reorganize themselves, one had to go through to collect one’s letters and telegrams oneself.
“You’re going to need a wagon,” said the mayor before heading off.
It was an ominous and cryptic message that my papa did not understand until he walked into the post office, found what awaited him there, and then returned home for what would perhaps be one of the worst experiences of his life.
By nightfall he was calm again, thanks to the efforts and reassurance of my mama, who in dealing with my papa’s unusual and sudden fit of rage had forgotten her own, equally unusual fury—less sudden in her case because it had been growing slowly since her visit to the Espiricuetas.
She would bemoan this for the rest of her life: Why did I let it happen? Why did I not tell him when there was a chance to fix it?
Because the perfect course of action can only be seen in hindsight, which is why we fill life with so many should haves. In that moment, with the blindness that comes from living in the present, my papa’s temper was fiercer than my mama’s.
22
Letters That Arrived
When he walked into the little post office, Francisco Morales was surprised at the activity and the new faces. The former postmen were not there, though the new supervisor seemed familiar; later, he would learn it was the former boss of the garbage collectors. For the growing town, it had made sense to appoint a postmaster who knew its streets and neighborhoods, replacing the one who, after twenty years of service, had succumbed to the flu—perhaps from an infected letter or from the deadly sneeze that took Doña Graciela by surprise at the post office, giving her no time to take out her embroidered handkerchief.
After him, his subordinates had also met their deaths, one of them, Álvaro, for being the hero or the idiot—depending on who told the story—for coming out of hiding to heed Father Emigdio’s call and write two deadly telegrams.
Now everyone was new to the business of handling and sorting the letters in a practical way. They knew the streets, but first they had to read the handwriting—whether fine or crude—of the sender. With the rush of missives that arrived or that had to be sent when the service was resumed, they felt as if they were drowning under a sea of paper. They did not know where to begin: all of a sudden, they had three months of good wishes, condolences, death notices, interrupted business, last-minute confessions, and everything else.
Adding to the novice postmen’s confusion was the desperation of the local population to receive news from friends and relatives. In their attempt to complete their inventory of survivors, they milled around in the small space, demanding to be seen to immediately and as a matter of priority.
Francisco decided he would wait a day or two. He did not want to become entangled in the human knot that had formed there. When he turned to leave, the postmaster called out to him.
“Don Francisco! Don’t go! We have your correspondence. Well, some. There might well be more letters in the pile. But we already have masses of letters for your address. Take ’em, for mercy’s sake. Clear some space for us here. Hey, kid! Bring Don Francisco’s!” Joaquín Bolaños said to his assistant, before turning back to Francisco. “They sent these to us from Monterrey in their very own bag, to save us the trouble.”
The boy returned carrying a white calico sack. It looked like a pillowcase, but it was stuffed with rectangles of fine paper and tied up to protect its contents. The people there, who were waiting anxiously for perhaps four or five letters, stared at it in amazement: Who had so much to say? To whom? And why?
“All of these are mine?”
“Well, not exactly yours, no. But they’re for one o’ yours.”
“One of my what?”
“One o’ your daughters.”
“I don’t think so. There must be some mistake.”
“Nope. We checked each one of ’em, and the writing’s nice and clear. Eighty-nine letters, all of ’em for Señorita Carmen Morales Cortés. We reckon they’re love letters.”
Francisco took the sack before he could make out what the people were murmuring. He did not need to hear, because he could guess. Love letters for Carmen Morales. Who are they from? they would be thinking. And Will she reply?
He had parked his car near the square, ready to continue with the visits he had planned for the day, so he headed there, slung the sack into the automobile, and climbed in after it. The smell of paper and ink invaded his nose. He forgot about the remaining visits. Instead he went home, furious because his daughter’s name was now making the rounds, and anxious to know who had devoted so many words to her.
Neither Carmen nor Consuelo were at home when he walked in. Nana Pola informed him that they had gone to see the Ardines twins and that Beatriz had not yet returned from her visit to Espiricueta.
Alone, he inspected the letters and confirmed they were indeed all for Carmen and all from the same sender: a certain Antonio Domínguez Garza. They had obviously been written over the course of three months, though he did not know whether the young man had taken them to the post office one by one or, knowing that they would not be sent until the public health crisis was over, had kept them in order to send them all together at a more recent date. At any rate, a fortune had been spent on postage stamps to send some letters that Francisco now wanted to burn without knowing anything more about them.
The fire was crackling. It would have been very easy to set them on fire, a few at a time, and watch them slowly burn. It would also have been easy to open them one at a time to read what this Antonio was saying to his daughter. But he did neither, as much as he felt the need. One never opens another person’s letters or reads them without permission, he had to remind himself.
He would not open them out of good manners, but he did want to kick something. He would have liked to have had something solid to punt—Antonio Domínguez, for instance—but he had to make do with the pile of letters that had formed on the floor as he took them, one after the other, out of the sack.
With frenzied blows, he made the letters fly in all directions, scattering them around his study.
It was at this moment that Nana Pola arrived carrying his hot chocolate, as she did every winter evening if the master was at home. She reached the door but did not dare step through it. Accustomed to seeing him calm in any situation, Pola did not have the courage to speak. Without spilling a single drop of the chocolate she had so carefully prepared, she quickly closed the door and went back to the kitchen, hoping that Señora Beatriz would soon return, because somebody had to do something.
The sight of Francisco Morales lost in a violent dance all around the room, his face flushed, snorting from some indecipherable exertion, would be very difficult to forget or to explain.