There was no going back now, and the orange trees quickly took root in the Linares soil, as Francisco had predicted. So, while they did not flower in the first year, let alone bear fruit—that could take up to three years—by the next year many people, including Beatriz’s brothers, followed suit, now converts to Francisco’s reasoning. When Francisco sent for more trees of various orange varieties that would bear fruit at different times of the year, others did the same.
There were some who struggled to change, whether because of a lack of funds to invest or because they refused to grow fruit trees—their fields were not ladies’ gardens, they said. But in the end, even the most reluctant were persuaded, thanks to a recent exception included in the Agrarian Reform published in the Constitution: any land planted with fruit trees was exempt from expropriation.
Why fruit trees and not sugarcane? The published amendment offered no explanation, but the reason became clear before long: Secretary of the Interior General Plutarco Elías Calles—who would later become president—had just bought the Soledad de la Mota hacienda in the vicinity of the nearby village of General Terán, which he would thereafter devote entirely to growing oranges.
Francisco did not stop to remark or complain about the audacity of a politician enacting a tailor-made law for himself at his convenience. It brought him satisfaction to be one step ahead of any government plan to take his land from him, and if everyone in Linares and in the region saved themselves from being stripped of their property thanks to that law, then all the better.
Without neglecting the cattle ranches, and lamenting that the land in Tamaulipas was not as well suited to fruit, he had devoted himself body and soul to learning—from the books he bought in California—everything there was to know about orange cultivation. After ordering every last trace of sugarcane removed, he himself measured the distance between each hole they would have to dig to receive the orange trees, and then he supervised his men planting each tree. At night he returned home tired and went straight to the bathroom to wash off the earth stuck to his body by sweat, only to carry on working after dinner, studying the method for grafting the sweet orange trees that he would soon grow from seeds. He did not want to keep buying them from another producer.
For the first time in an age, Beatriz saw Francisco motivated. He had good days, when he seemed confident he was on the right path to save his family’s property. She would have liked every day to be like that, but no: it was not in his nature to be so arrogant and triumphalist as to believe he had found the solution to all his problems in something as simple as changing direction. Francisco was a realist. And he had days when he was overcome with anxiety: the agrarians were still circling, and due to the cost of his scheme, he had not been able to finish covering all his estates. He knew it would still take him years.
One night, tucked up in bed, he said to her, “I feel like I’m in a race that I appear to be winning, for the time being. But it’s a long, very expensive race, and I can feel them hot on my heels. And I’m tired.”
“If you get too tired, tell me. I’ll help you.”
And there, lying in bed, Beatriz rested Francisco’s head on her shoulder and stroked the hair on his temple like a child, until he relaxed and fell asleep.
Now she was tired, on her way back to Linares, and the rhythmic rocking of the train stroking its tracks had finally defeated her: for the first time since she began her railway journeys between Linares and Monterrey, Beatriz fell asleep. She was unaware of the ticket collector going past and allowing her to sleep, since he recognized her as a regular passenger. Nor did she notice when they stopped in Montemorelos, where passengers alighted and boarded. And in her deep sleep she did not realize they were passing through Alta: she did not look out, as she always did; or notice Simonopio’s absence; or feel the slight but persistent movement in her belly.
When they reached Linares, the ticket collector took the liberty of waking her.
“We’ve arrived, Señora.”
Dazed, drowsy, but most of all surprised and ashamed she had fallen asleep in public, Beatriz managed to open her eyes to find that, sure enough, they were at Linares Station. She picked up her purse. A porter helped her with her luggage—and all the better, she thought gratefully, because if it had been up to her, she would have left it where it was. She did not have the energy to carry anything. She wanted to be home, in her bed, so she could sleep again.
She was beginning to worry. At first, she had suspected that her chronic tiredness was due to the normal physical circumstances of her age and that the loss of interest in various activities to which she had devoted so much of her time in the past was something normal in a grandmother. But her friends were around the same age—some a little older, some a little younger—and none of them seemed so low in spirits.
She felt a knot in her stomach. One of her grandmothers had died young from pernicious anemia, which had first manifested in a general weakening of the body and mind. She hoped she had not inherited the illness, but she feared she was already exhibiting its early symptoms. She would make an appointment to see the doctor the next day. She would hate to cause more pain or anxiety for Francisco, but she could not willfully continue to ignore her discomfort. If it was bad news, she decided that she would confront it without wasting any more time.
As she left the station, she was surprised to find Simonopio waiting for her with a wide smile on his face. He had just turned twelve, but observing him closely, Beatriz thought he had grown even more in the last week.
“What have you been eating, young man? You’re growing like a weed.”
Simonopio walked up to her. Yes, at twelve years of age he was already taller than she was. Beatriz felt proud, though she also felt older than ever. It seemed like yesterday that Simonopio had arrived as a newborn, wrapped in a shawl and a cloak of bees.
And just look at him now: almost a man.
To her surprise, Simonopio had accepted Francisco’s invitation to travel to California. Beatriz had watched them depart with apprehension, with the sudden worry that Simonopio would not manage such a long journey. But he returned a month later looking much like he did before, as if, in his month of absence, in the constant company of his godfather, he had reversed the transformation that he had undergone in his phase as a wanderer of the wilds. Still, from time to time, that mature look—so out of place and that saddened Beatriz so much when she saw it in his eyes—made an appearance. It was as if, for a moment, a prisoner that Simonopio kept inside him managed to escape, subjecting him to a harsh transformation that lasted until the boy—the one he still needed to be—imposed himself again and sent the invader back behind his eyes.
Francisco had sent her telegrams and letters to keep her informed of any news, uncertain how long it would be before he returned. From the messages, she learned that Simonopio was enjoying all the new things he discovered on their travels and that not even the foreign language was an impediment to him, since he made himself understood without speaking. A little jealous because he had not had such a good time with her in Monterrey, Beatriz learned that he did not complain or cry once. He went everywhere with Francisco and toured the orchards of young trees, row by row, to choose on behalf of his bees and mark the ones that would make the long journey back to Linares with some red ribbon that they gave him for the purpose.