Chapter 4: Poker Night

Chapter 4: Poker Night

Returning home after a night of studying at a friend’s house, I noticed my chauffeur wearing a suit and a black bowtie. I had forgotten it was “Poker Night.” My father played poker with a small circle of friends every Monday, alternating every week the home which would serve as their private casino. Óscar was driving as slowly as possible in order to extend the period of time which allowed him peace and quiet. It was not because he disliked the role of bartending, for he fancied himself a better bartender than a driver, but because he couldn’t stand the loudness of the event. In fact, I think Óscar disliked noise in general, for as soon as he entered a vehicle, as long as I was the only person in it, or when he dropped off an adult who happened to be riding along with me, the first thing he would do was lower the volume of the music almost to inaudibility, an action he would execute with confidence and ease—a common emotion in the relationships between certain servants and his jefe’s children—certain I would never object to his decisions.

I played a two-part role for Óscar. One part as a colleague, for my parents were also my jefes, and second, as a son. Although Óscar had a son of his own, he rarely found time to see him during his most fertile years. He had virtually been raised by his wife alone, and currently, his son having grown too old to appreciate his advice, Óscar must have somehow believed he could redeem himself as a father, by bestowing what wisdom he failed to impart unto his own son, onto me. Thus, it was through Óscar that I learned to enjoy the silence of car drives, and it was through him that I began to pay attention to the peculiarities of streets, the height of certain trees, the deformities of speed bumps, and the inefficiencies of governments, the gems of Managua-life.

“They’re all completely different sizes,” he would complain about the speed bumps, which he called “lying-down policemen.” “It’s as if they hired all the fat ladies in the market to build them with their bare hands.”

Indeed, they were all different shapes and sizes; some painted yellow, others black, some only extending halfway through the streets, and cars would swerve around them at even higher speeds to spite their only purpose. But when arriving in San Ramón, all the “lying-down policemen” were flawlessly uniform, as if in the presence of the Chief-of-Police, perpetually prepared to carry out their duties, never “at ease,” all dressed with the same proud diagonal yellow stripes resembling chevrons, each officer at exactly the same distance from the other like a squad of the National Guard along the road which led to the presidential palace in the times of Somoza before the earthquake had put an end to its symmetry.

The main avenue of San Ramón comprised two wide streets, impeccable twins, separated by a stripe of green from which dozens of tall, elegant eucalyptus trees sprang up towards the moonlight, slim branches dancing in the light breeze at night, but during the day drooped down and seemed to whither under the harsh Managuan sun. This boulevard went on like this until it ended at a small roundabout, a circular concrete island on which a bold monument stood erect bearing a golden plaque that shone like a medal, as if San Ramón had been delegated the winner of some contest. During evenings such as this one when Óscar drove me home, the monument was barely recognizable under the imposing shadow of the house which leaned over it like Versailles above its gardens—the home, or rather, the palace of Don José Padilla Marañon.

Arriving home, I was greeted by muffled laughter and shouting emanating from the barroom. It was only after Óscar had closed the barroom door behind him that I resolved to continue walking along the hallway, incognito, past the poker players to enter my room. Just as the exhilaration of success was trickling its way to my lips as a potential smile of accomplishment, the very moment I turned the knob of my door, I heard the familiar call—“Caaarloooooss!” My father’s call was always uttered with the same intonation, imbedded with an exhausted sigh, the way a patient master calls his dog’s name after coming home from work only to step in a puddle of urine, an eager call laden with suppressed anger and yet still thoroughly castigating.   

Throwing my backpack down on my bed as if it was the one who had deprived me of my solitude, I sluggishly retraced my footsteps and reached the barroom which was behind a nearly soundproof glass sliding-door. There, a group of middle-aged men were beckoning my presence like pantomimes. Sliding the door open was like walking into a busy restaurant, or accidentally tuning to a noisy a radio channel where the reporter is in the middle of crowded streets during a saint’s celebration, differing chiefly in that the option of changing the station was lacking.

“Ajaaaa, Chumbo?”

My father never deviated from this phrase which he reserved exclusively for greeting me. In reality it was not a greeting at all, for a true greeting should always be a welcoming. His “Ajaaaa Chumbo?” was the greeting of a king towards his subject, its only purpose to notify the one in question that his majesty was ready to be updated in the affairs of his state. My father never took his eyes off his cards which glistened in the lenses of his reading-glasses, little red hearts and black spades which would have betrayed their handler with their clumsy reflections had it not been for the copious clouds of smoke which formed like genies pouring out of lamps from the thick cigar pressed between his smiling teeth.

“Aja, Papa?” I would respond, believing I was undermining his rule, like the Marxist campesino who greets the owner of a nearby estate by putting his arm around his neck and calling him “comrade.” These public conversations between my father and I, rarely went beyond that point, and, soon enough, the poker players began greeting me with their individual handshakes whose intensity corresponded to the esteem each of them held for me. One by one, I walked around the poker-table like certain recluse men at fancy parties who circle the cheese table, tasting each variety from each platter, contemplating the potency of one with regards to the previous, until a single one catches him off guard with its piercing scent and strong savor, and immediately ceases his circuit only to think, “It must be French!”

It was the firm hand of José Padilla Marañon which halted my progress. His hand continued to grasp mine when I intended to move on, but unable to turn forward, my arm swung my body back into the squinting eyes and grandiose personage of my father’s old friend. He stood up, put his cigar down on the edge of the table, and afforded me a firm hug. Then, pushing me away from his embrace with both hands on my shoulders, he smiled at me with equal connivance as the elation he was currently displaying, as if I had just now whispered in his ear that some beautiful woman of his fancy was secretly waiting for him at some nearby locale. 

“I’ll be damned,” he said, “if it isn’t El Chumbo himself!”

All my father’s friends called me Chumbo, or Chumbito, but the reason for that name would forever remain a mystery to me since no one remembered who had came up with it, or why.

“How have you been? You haven’t stopped by my house recently. You know how fond of you my daughter is. She simply can’t contain herself in your presence. No, but seriously, come visit whenever you like, for dinner or lunch, or even breakfast for that matter! Your mother tells me you are a true gourmet like me! I have no doubt that you are! Un vero e’ propio buon gustaoi as the Italians would say! I know you would love Italy, but you would love France even more. I’ll talk with your mother, and you can come with me on my next trip to Paris. Would you like that? Of course, you would! Alright, it is settled then. Next time I go, you are coming with me, and I’m going to show you the best canard al orange you will ever have in your life! You like duck, don’t you? Well, of course you do! See this cigar?”

He pulled a chair next to his, never taking his eyes off of me as I sat down beside him. “This cigar is the best in the world, it’s from Estelí. You ever been to Estelí? Oh, I have to take you then! I’m an old friend of the producer, Padrón, the most generous man you will ever meet. The very best of society! You know that the best cigars in the world come from Nicaragua, right? No, they aren’t Cuban as you might think. The department of Estelí has the exact same environment as the misty central valleys of Cuba, but they are missing one ingredient, the Nicaraguan charm! No one makes vices better than us; we produce the best rum in the world, the best tobacco in the world… the best women! Ha, but you have to go to Europe to eat well, that’s definitely true.”

“So tell me, your dad here has informed me that you fancy yourself a writer. I keep hearing from all your aunts and uncles about some poem you wrote. So you’re going to grow up to be just like your grandfather, ey? That’s good, that’s good. He was a fine man. Never saw him without a book in hand. But don’t be too much like your grandfather, alright? He was a good man, but when you talked to him, he would barely listen to you, always looking at his watch with a finger in between a book marking the page. All he ever wanted to do was to be left alone and read himself to death! And by God, I think he succeeded! Ha! Well, it doesn’t really matter how simpatico you are as long as you produce great works, I suppose. No one seems to mind that García Márquez and Neruda were Communists, or that DaVinci was a queer! I mean, our own Rubén Darío was a lousy drunkard for Christ’s sake!”

“But if you’re going to write, you have to write about Nicaragua. This place is a goddamn gold-mine for writers! I swear, this place is overflowing with things to write about, especially the people themselves. You might think everyone here is the same, that we Nicas are boring, all conformists and what-not, but nothing can be further from the truth! I’m telling you, you got to pay attention to the little things; it’s the little things that really matter! All these people are a bunch of lunatics! Don’t let their formal demeanor deceive you. There aren’t enough psychologists or priests in the world to save them. I know it seems like this “society” we live in is boring, that it’s not good for your creativity, that nothing ever happens, that everyone gossips about the most uninteresting of events. I thought the same thing when I was your age, but you got to look deeper, trust me, they’re all a bunch of loonies! Alright, alright, I’m all-in, give me a second, alright, I’m talking to the boy, for Christ’s sake!”

  “Whatever you do, just make sure you do it well, and be sure not to write anything boring. No one will read it if it is boring. That’s why I never really got into books so much. It’s not like painting. You don’t have to imagine anything with painting; it’s right there before your eyes. It’s alive. It’s exciting! Some books are terribly boring, and you don’t find out until the very end! When you get to my age, time is precious; you can’t spend your time reading books that turn out to be boring. If a painting is boring, you just move on past it to the next one, no problem!”

Padilla—who was known simply as “Chepe”—could have gone on like this for hours if it was not for the verbal reproach of the fellow players who expressed annoyance for his holding up the game to talk to me about his “bullshit” by periodically encouraging him throughout our conversation, or rather, his monologue, to “leave the poor kid alone.” Soon enough it was his turn to play dealer. Implying that I should take my leave by means of a final kind grasp of my shoulder and a playful slap on my cheek, he put his glasses back on his face and resumed savoring his treasured cigar and began to deal cards, all the while reminding me as I was exiting that I should stop by whenever I wanted, that Consuelita would love to have me over, that his wife was also very fond of me, and that I should come by his art gallery to see the new paintings he was displaying.

“And don’t write anything boring!” he managed to add as I slid the door shut, at last regaining the option to turn down the volume of that exhausting radio almost to the point of silence, just like Óscar would have wanted.

Finally back in my room, I undressed, drew the curtains, and settled cozily into bed, at last earning the leisure to continue reading my book under the night-table lamp. But my solitude was short-lived, for it was not long until I heard the call again.

“Caaarloooooss!” my father’s voice echoed throughout the hallway. “Caaarlooooossss! Calo-Chumbooo!” he yelled, but I was determined not to answer his call, hoping he would tire himself out.  

After a good while had passed, in which the call had long ceased, I was startled to hear the rattling of the doorknob and knock at my door. It was my mother. “You know your father doesn’t like you locking doors in this house,” she said as she walked in, and, at once, the subject was dropped. My mother was always empathetic to my desire for privacy. After depositing the clothes I had carelessly left on the floor into the laundry bin as I changed into my sleeping garb, and after re-organizing certain decorations in my room that didn’t need re-organizing, she let out a long sigh—that artificial, prolonged sigh which exists only to indicate to another that we want our qualms and concerns to be acknowledged—and lied down on my bed next to me, covering her face with a pillow.

“What’s wrong, Mamá?”

 “It’s nothing,” she replied, “Well, it’s just that I spent all day cooking dinner for your father and his friends, and Chepe didn’t have a single bite. I don’t know why I even expected him to—he never does—but I made him one of his favorites this time, risotto in vino bianco! Of course, I specifically went out to find the best Italian white wine I could, and I found a pretty decent bottle, at a not-so-decent price, just so he wouldn’t be able to say that it wasn’t real risotto, and don’t get me started on how difficult it was to try to find a good parmesano. Your uncle had to bring me some from Mexico! But, I guess he didn’t want to take the risk. He wouldn’t eat a single bite. He said he had already eaten before coming. I bet you he thinks I made it with margarine or something!”

“But why is he that way?” I inquired.      

The reason I asked her to explain to me why “he was that way,” was not due purely to curiosity—she had explained the curious habits of Padilla to me a couple of times already—but because I cherished my mother’s point of view and never missed a chance to extract it from her. At this point in my life, she still functioned as a barometer by revealing to me, with the certainty of Dante designating each soul to a layer of Heaven and Hell, where people stood between the poles of good and evil. But surely, curiosity did play a part in my inquiry, for on each occasion she retold a story to me she would reveal details which she had omitted before. Not to mention that with each retelling, I received, again and again, the opportunity to ask her to expound upon any aspect I wished, for my mother was the type of person who was prone to melancholy in that she would always look upon the present as if it was already a nostalgic past, to the degree that when she spoke to me in private, in times such as these, I gathered between the intervals of her speech that she was looking upon my present youthful body but simultaneously entertaining two opposing images in her mind’s eye.

One image was the me of the past, the infant me—a sort of delicate morphling drawn from her most poignant memories, ranging from certain images she cherished, such as of her son returning home from school and smothering her with precious kisses, to other, more painful, and yet more tender images, such as the heartrending figure of my infant face as she grievously pressed my “mascarita” over my nose to ease my breathing during my childhood asthma attacks, an oxygen mask which, in concealing most of my countenance, had the effect of exposing more painfully those little moist eyes which were imprinted, as if seared, unto my mother’s soul. Yet, at the same time, she would visualize another image, the image of the future me which was, in reality, not an image of me at all, for he only barely existed. He was a man whose physiognomy my mother was rendered utterly unable to envisage—not by some stupefying lack of creativity on her part—but due to a certain tyrannical image which she had involuntarily conjured up during one of these instances of timeless reminiscence where she would grieve the past, present, and future: the despotic vision of my room in San Ramón, that room which she was currently seeing me in, differing only in that the lights were off and I was absent from that picture.

And so that night, my mother told me the complete story of Padilla for the first time, including several parts which she had never thought it proper to reveal to me before, but now, feeling that I had grown a little older, and, picturing already in her mind my permanent departure from our house in San Ramón, she felt the desire endow me with as much knowledge as possible. For soon, she felt, I would be out of her life forever. It was indeed this particular characteristic of my mother, her innate faculty of nostalgically regarding the present as the past passed down to her by her father, my grandfather—which would find its heir in me and manifest in my desire to tell stories. For in inheriting her intrinsic desire to regard the “now” with nostalgia, as if it had already expired, one inevitably finds oneself struggling to retain the ability to experience the present, forced to make nearly every single moment into a memory, protection against the current of Time. As my mother was telling me the story of Padilla, I could not help but witness her grow old, her face wrinkle and her hair turn grey, and as I actively avoided the image of a house in which she had ceased to exist, I listened carefully to each word she uttered on that night, paying particular attention to the intonation she applied to them, fearing, even as she spoke, that I was already forgetting the sound of her voice.