The Good Conscience by Carlos Fuentes Read Free Book Online

opportunities passed, he sought excuses, and he never had courage to steal Jaime away from Asunción’s strict vigilance, much less enough to talk with him about his mother. Later he heard that Don Chepepón had died, and Adelina had left Guanajuato.
    He was so accustomed to his son’s distance from him that he received the boy’s first advances toward intimacy hesitantly. He advised him, in a whisper, that the aunt and uncle had best not be told what they talked about together. He went secretly to the Oliveros house to bring Jaime home from school, so that they might have at least twenty minutes unobserved. Rodolfo’s life took on clarity: he told himself that he must by all means gain Jaime’s love. With unexpected imagination he made up stories, appealed to the child’s curiosity, and absorbed his attention. Never in his life did Rodolfo know such happiness as that quick year, Jaime’s twelfth. A new spirit came into his plump lazy body. With simple, natural eloquence he would relate events that he scarcely remembered, brightening their usual walk down Zapote to the foot of Jardín Morelos with a patina of anecdotes:
    â€œJust imagine this very street jammed with carriages like the one in the stable. Your Great-grandmother Margarita surrounded by her children, saying hello to all the families that came to Mass on Sunday, and afterward taking chocolate with the Señor Bishop. It must have been beautiful, don’t you think? And imagine, imagine, we had a little machine, something like a bike, to ride back into the past and to meet … even Pipila! Who was Pipila? Why, he was a little boy just like you, and it was thanks to him that the rebels took the Fort. Wouldn’t you like to have known him? Some day we’ll go to the Fort together, and I’ll tell you…”
    He was recompensed: the boy squeezed his hand, showered laughter and smiles upon him, gazed at him with clear eyes.
    Father and son walked surrounded by crowds in the pilgrimage the Day of the Cave. They pushed forward through laughter and flowers on Friday of Sorrows. Hurrying, merry, impatient, they attended the gay ceremony of the opening of San Renovato Dam. Jaime devoured candy and shouted with glee when the gates were opened and the water rushed down while the band played “Over the Waves.” He watched youths try to climb greased poles. He watched dancing, balloons, ferris wheels and merry-go-rounds. The crudely, brightly-painted world of fiesta made his eyes tremble and glow.
    On one of their walks together, Jaime asked: “Tell me about the Revolution.”
    â€œIt began in 1915,” Rodolfo said. “I was at the hacienda and one fine day a gang of armed men rode up and emptied all the barns and burned some of the buildings. That same year the Carrancistas occupied Guanajuato and right away they made their headquarters in our house. Think of it: all those soldiers and their horses milling around in the patio, and your grandmother trembling with fear … and with good reason, too.”
    â€œAnd Mamá Asunción and Uncle Jorge?”
    Rodolfo hesitated: “They had left Mexico.”
    â€œThey left Grandmother Guillermina alone?”
    â€œYes, with Uncle Pánfilo, but … Well, they had just married, they were very young, life was so dangerous…”
    â€œThey left Grandmother alone?”
    â€œShe told them to go. They were so young and they felt they had a right to see something besides massacre and sacking. They … I don’t know.”
    â€œI would like to have known Grandmother Guillermina.”
    â€œAnd of course they couldn’t take her with them. Wild horses wouldn’t have dragged her away from her home!” He smiled.
    â€œThey left her. I would have stayed with her. Why didn’t they?”
    â€œEh! How you ask questions! Today you’re not even looking where you’re walking, all you can do is ask