Chapter 5: José Padilla Marañon
The story of J. Padilla is as complicated as it is long. It was only through piecing together several accounts—some of which contradicted each other—from his old friends, my uncles, and my especially my mother, that I was able to finally produce a definitive version of the story of his life—a tale which has its roots before the starting point of my mother’s version, beginning even before his birth. This is a tale in four parts.
Part I
J. Padilla belonged to one of the wealthiest families in Central America. His father was a formidable businessman, who, after having inherited a fortune from old investments during an agricultural boom, had since then multiplied that fortune many times over by freeing himself of all investments which he claimed “reeked of Banana Republic”—meaning coffee, cotton, sugar—through a sharp switch from monoculture to diverse financial institutions and the automobile industry. In short, the name Padilla had acquired monumental significance with regards to wealth, carrying the same connotations when used in Central America, as Rockefeller in the North.
J. Padilla, the man whom my parent’s generation referred to as “Chepe,” was the youngest of three sons. His two older brothers were born from his father’s first wife, an American woman named Leslie Bekker, who, even after decades, continues to be referenced in some circles of Managuan society as the ideal of feminine beauty. However, this union between J. Padilla’s father and the young American proved short-lived and scandalous.
Their relationship rapidly deteriorated once Leslie’s renown for beauty was replaced by her reputation for promiscuity. The rumors of his wife’s infidelity kept J. Padilla’s father in a constant state of terror and paranoia. In an attempt to control his wife’s passions, her husband, J. Padilla’s father, consistently prohibited her more and more liberties. But it was not until his punishments, beginning rationally with threats to leave her—threats she promptly learned to disregard, for he was terminally in love with her— became irrational, that she was ultimately forbidden to leave their mansion in Old Managua for any reason.
Leslie, whose most salient characteristic was her independence and free-spirited nature, in being condemned to permanent house arrest by decree of her increasingly tyrannical husband, quickly became as frantic and vengeful as her husband, and it was not until J. Padilla’s father found her passionately engaged in an orgy with nearly every male employee at their home, eight months pregnant with his second son, that his tenacious love for her finally expired, replaced with a deep-rooted hatred he was to carry in his heart long after he managed, with his political influence and vast wealth, to have her exiled from the country and her citizenship revoked.
The marriage to Leslie was not altogether fruitless. The two sons she bore J. Padilla were endowed with their mother’s fine features, a sharp chin, blonde hair and bright blue eyes, and were consequently regarded as abnormally handsome, earning them the nickname “the Germans.” However, it was not in these two princes where J. Padilla’s father finally found consolation. For, although the golden hair and azure eyes of his sons were highly regarded by the rest of Managuan society, the very mention of his sons’ recessive traits would cause him to grind his teeth.
In the deep-blue ring of their eyes he noticed the same obstinacy he had discovered in Leslie, and indeed it was that ornate moat protecting the naked frankness of their pupils which proved impenetrable for him. Although he avoided spending time with his sons, when he found himself caught by their inquiries—caught by the gaze of those four little blue marbles which repelled him like Oriental evil eyes are said to repel spirits—he would become anxious and dumb like a criminal under investigation, unable to satisfy the detectives, and like a tongue-tied and timid vampire, ghastly pale and failing to see his reflection in the mirror of their eyes, unable to see even a trace of himself in them, he would answer nervously that he was very busy at the moment and couldn’t think straight.
It is commonly said—J. Padilla would testify that his father had said it himself—that the anxieties his father faced during and after this period, known to those familiar with the story as “Hurricane Leslie” nearly killed him, and indeed it was believed that he would soon perish, for those who knew him well said he seemed to have aged thirty years in the span of ten. It was not until he was flown to Miami, after having suffered from a nervous breakdown and a stroke, that he finally recovered.
Carrying the strain of hatred in his heart, he refused treatment by those he designated as “German” doctors, and it was not until a special nurse was brought in that he discovered the remedy to his illness. The nurse was Silvia Marañon, a Nicaraguan woman in her thirties, who, after overhearing gossip of a certain stubborn Nicaraguan man who was dying and rejecting heart treatment, volunteered to assuage and convince him to go through with the surgery.
They were married a year later, and, in order to accommodate the wants of Silvia, whose dream was to return to her humble origins, the Padilla family moved to an rural estate in Diriamba where Silvia could be reunited with her family after nearly two decades of separation, an act which, after countless generations of poverty, finally allowed the name Marañon to blossom with the all the esteem and connotations it now carries in its syllables.
It was in this manner that José Padilla Marañon—the third-born heir to the great fortune of the Padillas, the man known to my parents as “Chepe,” whose handshake would halt my progress on that particular Monday evening when my mother would reveal to me the significance of his name, how he was responsible for conjuring up, with the ambition of a great modernizer, the blueprints of San Ramón—was born in the humble town of Diramba.
The two eldest sons, “the Germans,” continued to live in Managua under the guardianship of a somewhat distant aunt, who, never having found a man which met her standards, remained unmarried, and jumped at the opportunity of raising the two boys as if they were her own. She allotted to them the full extent of her immaterial wealth which was her love, not having found its outlet until now, in addition to the already staggering material wealth, the privileges and luxuries they already enjoyed from their father’s fortune.
It was not until the young J. Padilla reached the age of nine that the whole family would live under the same roof for the first time. His parents, unwilling to deprive their son of a good education, and yet equally unwilling to part with him, decided to leave Diriamba and move into the mansion in what is now Old Managua, enrolling J. Padilla in the same school his step brothers attended.
It did not take very long for young “Chepe,” as they called him in school, to notice the disparity of esteem he held in comparison to his brothers. It seemed everyone, from elementary to high school, knew who “the Germans” were, but when Chepe tried to associate himself with his brothers by informing his classmates of their kinship, his efforts were received with disbelief and laughter, for he bore no resemblance to his brothers. He had previously learned from the forced visits his brothers had paid him in Diriamba that it was pointless to try to win their affections, and so committed himself to an incognito existence.
In his adolescence, it pained Chepe to discover he was known as “the bastard child” by the older students, a nickname he was certain was propagated by own siblings. Feeling ostracized by his peers, Chepe chose to live the early years of his life in a withdrawn manner, always striving to divert attention from himself. Yet, by the time he reached young manhood, and after his brothers had gone off to college in the United States, Chepe’s reputation at school shifted from being “a bastard child” to simply “a Padilla,” and indeed there was no reputation that a last name like Padilla could not wash clean; the surname functioned like certain chemicals created to instantly remove rust off of gold coins, and Chepe, gradually distanced by the natural flow of time from the associations which had tarnished his name, eventually shined with the full luster demanded by his linage.
Part II
The exodus of his two older brothers was a benefit multiplied by the auspicious timing of their departure. J. Padilla was like a emancipated surf, ready to reap the benefits of the fertile soil left behind by a exiled landed elite. Freed from the weight of his brothers’ presence at just the right moment in history, his return from the voyage to see his brothers off to college had the consequence of triggering a golden age in his life and the lives of his peers.
During this time the counterculture was peaking in the United States. The hippie movement was in full swing. The culture of peace and love gradually trickled down south of the border into countries like Nicaragua through certain small groups of affluent youth, for only the sons and daughters of the rich are in the position renounce money and power, being the sole class in possession of either. The higher classes were more exposed and vulnerable to the enticing dreams the United States exported through music and television. And it so happened that these cultural exports found their ports in the minds of certain young men like J. Padilla—youths particularly inclined to dreaming, propelled by wealth and influence—and suddenly a whole new list of words made their way into the vocabulary of young Managuans, words that had already existed: love, peace, non-violence, freedom, words that had been heard in church, but were now said in English, with different intonations, geared towards a different God.
It was a period of prosperity for certain circles of the Managuan youth. The rhythm of this period, which emanated in concentric circles from the person of J. Padilla like sound waves invisible to the eye, but as discernable as music coming from a record player, promised a new way of life, and J. Padilla was its first spokesman. Upon returning from his excursion to drop off his brothers at their respective universities, he had soak up the new words of the epoch like a sponge, and, as he left his brothers behind, he unwittingly brought back with him—in the clothes on his body and the vinyl in his luggage—the raw materials needed to create an entirely new generation of Managuans, those who would comprise the Nicaraguan counterculture, a community whose most influential members would include J. Padilla and my father.
The Nicaraguan counter culture, although absent from all history books marked one of the great surges of idealism in the nation. During the summer of 1969 it flourished. My father, armed with an easy-going personality and keen common sense, allied himself with J. Padilla, a man of inextinguishable passion and wealth, and founded the first and only hippie commune in Nicaragua.
After purchasing ten manzanas of fertile farmland in the northern province of Jinotega, the commune began producing—with the help of a considerable amount of campesinos—the only strawberries ever to have sprung out of Nicaraguan soil! Their vision was based on the hit Beatles’ song “Strawberry Fields Forever,” and after acquiring a white van which J. Padilla painted himself, drawing psychedelic designs and a ripe strawberry, they began selling their rare produce to the highest bidders in Managua. They set up strawberry stands in key locations throughout the capital, kiosks which were managed by their friends. Of course, in time, it became obvious that their main product was in reality marijuana and that the strawberries functioned solely as a cover-up. Later, one of my uncles would tell me, “If you were smoking grass anywhere in Nicaragua during the late sixties and early seventies, you could be sure it came from us.”
The commune assumed the role old country clubs had played for the upper classes in the past. It was reserved for the same people, those Nicaraguans that could afford to spend time in leisure, yet it encompassed a wholly different set of ideals. The dress code shifted from elegantly-conservative to ruggedly-liberal. What used to be considered a bad reputation became a good reputation upon entering the commune. Nudity was commonplace, music was ubiquitous, drugs became wealth, and open-mindedness took the place of intelligence; pleasure became the cornerstone of morality.
“We were free,” another of my uncle of mine once went on, “Love was free! No one had ever heard of anything like AIDs. We let out hair grow long, and when people asked us why we never cut out hair, we were dumbfounded! Our hair grew! It just happened—that was nature! It should have been they, the square ones, the old ones, the conservative ones who should have been explaining to us why they cut their hair! We couldn’t understand it! We lived in our own world! It was glorious! We had everything and we were loving every moment of it. It was us—me, your father, Chepe—we spearheaded the movement. I mean look, man, all those girls who hang out with, they’re all smart, right? You all treat them as equals, right? You respect them, right? That was us, man! We did that!”
And it was during this period, my mother explained, that she fell in love with my father, who would rescue her from her boring existence in Old Managua, taking her away on his motorcycle, against the wishes of her parents, on weekends, and eventually, for entire weeks, to the “Strawberry Fields,” to those misty valleys where the very best Nicaraguans are found, or so my mother believed. “The most humble, the most gracious and the most compassionate souls,” many of which, had at one point or another, worked on their hippie commune without the least signs of envy, never displaying any of the resentments and hatreds which would later break her heart upon returning to Nicaragua after her long absence, expressions of disdain which had greeted her, after years of exile, in the countenances of most country folk after the earthquake and the civil war. People whom she considered, with the confidence and authority of a medieval patriarch, to be utterly corrupted beyond redemption by the plague of Communism, just as the peoples which inhabited the nations surrounding Constantinople, had been defiled and converted by Islam.
But this had yet to happen, and during these idealized years, although they proved fleeting, my parents, enamored by the age of love and peace and freedom, aided by the necessary help of many good-hearted campesinos, reaped the benefits of their luscious fruits, engaging in numerous excursions throughout that fresh, fertile, mountainous region, whether by motorcycle or by “The Strawberry Van,” selling their rare produce at reasonable prices, in each capital town of each department, in Jinotega, Matagalpa, Boaco, and Estelí among others, while other commune members provided kilos of marijuana to meet the demands in the capital.
Yet, this prosperous age of love, elation and liberty, was not, of course, experienced by most Nicaraguans. It ran alongside, parallel to, an epoch of corruption and repression, both simultaneously benefiting from the general economic growth, and equally unnoticed. The Nicaraguan counter culture, being as silent as political corruption, but in nature not nearly as harmful, resulted in the Nicaraguan Age of Love never being documented, nearly being forgotten, remaining solely in the minds of those who played a role in its secret economy. But alas, it shared the fate of every golden age, whether overtly historical or not, and met its decline—but not gradually, like the Spanish Empire running out of fuel—but abruptly, like the sack of Rome, on the evening of the earthquake, December 24th, 1972, when the lights of its only city suddenly burnt out, like a Christmas tree unplugged.
Part III
After the earthquake, and the death of his parents whose remains were never recovered from under the rubble of the city, the details of J. Padilla’s life become less clear. At this point, even my mother’s account is somewhat murky. According to her, J. Padilla’s father had taken him on a trip to Europe the year before he died. There, they visited what his father considered the jewels of the Old World—namely Florence, Venice, and Paris—cities that provided the right conditions for J. Padilla to discover his innate passion for art, especially with regards to architecture and painting, gifts for the soul which Nature had allotted to him from birth.
By the time of his return he had already decided that he would go abroad to Europe for college. This delighted his father, who wanted his son to be a man of “culture and erudition.” He was so delighted, in fact, that upon his return, planning to visit certain European universities, he nearly booked a second trip across the Atlantic right then at the airport, a journey he would have scheduled for that very Christmas, which would prove to be his last, if J. Padilla had not protested, thinking it would be too soon.
During the chaotic aftermath of the earthquake, it was very difficult, if not impossible, to keep in touch with friends and family. Nearly everyone had relatives who died, and no one in J. Padilla’s circles remained in the ruined nation. Most of them fled to neighboring countries, and, as a result, the details of J. Padilla’s life during the months following the death of his parents remain somewhat unclear.
My own parents found refuge in Miami, the city which would prove sanctuary for several upcoming waves of exiles, numbering in the tens of thousands, which would follow in their footsteps throughout the tumultuous 70s and 80s, decades of revolution and civil war which immediately succeeded the ruinous temblor. The fateful seism, having shaken the foundations of order at its center, at the very core, which had been Managua, served as a catalyst, like the splitting of an atom’s nucleus, for the upcoming explosion of passions which would burst from the hearts of the Nicaraguan people.
Like volcanoes, after lying dormant for decades, their slumber disturbed by tremors or anxieties, rendered sleepless by painful fissures in their dreams, the passions within the populace erupted furiously, like angry gods. Gods who, having awoken to a populace which has long ceased to worship them, finding their powers usurped, their names forgotten and their divinity lost, begin to recruit a new army of priests and give sermons about a way “things were meant to be.”
During the aftermath of the inferno, these prophets sprung up rapidly, like certain opportunistic plants which, following a wild-fire, benefit from the nutrients in the charred earth, sprouting strong from the enriched soil recently fertilized by the decaying remains of all that had perished. And it so happened that this new fertile soil, saturated with the dead dream of Old Managua, provided the perfect environment for a new class of people in Nicaragua. A class born from despair, created by uniting people who had previously existed as separate individuals, brought together by a shared rupture in their hearts—pains which these new priests vowed would be soothed only by shouting a common cry, by adopting a common dream—large enough to replace the one that died.
The members of this new religion, exacerbated by the painful shards of their broken dreams—dreams which the earthquake had rendered nightmares—required retribution. Confident in the divinity of their class, the morality of their goals, and attainability of their common dream, they called the retribution their hearts demanded “Justice.” The word permitted them anything so long as it was assumed to ease their pain, their plight, their struggle for utopia which they would only abandon after two decades of delirium. After finding their most pious soldiers war-weary and tired, grown sluggish, burdened with the heavy weight of disillusionment. The once tender hearts of the working class, strained by mourning, would at last grow callous towards the passions that had originally stirred them, impervious like the heart of atheists, devoid of dreams.
The failed revolution and civil war added to the long list of misfortunes in our nation’s history, but it also marked the end of the diaspora, which, to a whole generation of Nicaraguans (myself included) meant the end of exile. But for those of us reared abroad, it signified a return to a homeland where one had never lived, where one had not even been born in. And it was only until then, during those years when the waves of exiles slowly returned home that the intricate story of J. Padilla continues, told by the words of my mother, by becoming the story of San Ramón.
Part IV
“He wasn’t always that way,” my mother had begun that night, in order to justify the peculiar habits of Padilla, “the exile changed him…”
According to my mother, following the earthquake and the loss of his parents, J. Padilla took refuge in his old estate near the small town of Diriamba. There, it seems, he was visited by his two stepbrothers following the funeral of their father and J. Padilla’s mother, in order to discuss the splitting up of their father’s fortune, who had died without leaving a will.
It appears that, J. Padilla, vulnerable in his state of mourning and desiring to hold on to the few good memories he could retain, frustrated by the coldness of his brothers, had impetuously agreed to sign a formal contract which would forever bar him from the affairs of the family business. In compensation he received the right of sole proprietorship over the estate in which he was born and raised, the home he was currently using as sanctuary. The remaining assets were sold and divided equally among the three brothers with the promise that J. Padilla would receive his monthly dividends without “meddling” in the family business. With that settled, his stepbrothers made their way back to New York, leaving J. Padilla alone in the midst of his great estate, his monumental fortune, and colossal solitude.
“I would have done the same;” my mother continued, “I did do the same. But he had even more reason to leave! Just imagine what it must have felt like, living in that old beaten-up mansion God knows where, in that pueblito chocho of his mother’s, completely alone, without a family to support him, without friends either (your father and I had left to Miami) comiendose en gran cable! And on top of that, having to deal with the shame of not having a say in his own father’s business affairs! He abandoned the estate and left for France.”
In France he studied anything and everything relating to the arts: art history, culinary arts, architecture, and after brief period where he fancied himself a writer, he took to painting. Unable to sell more than a handful of his works—at very low prices—he limited himself to the role of art critic and collector. He learned to speak French fluently, and, after taking a couple of courses in Rome, finally gave up on Italian, a language which he would deem “vulgar,” finding it fruitless in enhancing his esteem, after failing to discover a sound stock of ready-made phrases he could employ obsequiously due to the array of dialects which even the elite of that country spoke.
Ultimately, J. Padilla settled down in Paris, the only city he deemed fit for a man of “culture and erudition,” fit for the man he wished to become. He moved into an artist's atelier on the top floor of a building recently renovated in the Art Nouveau style. The apartment was of the most highly valued in the Latin Quarter, endowed with a magnificent view overlooking a vast portion of the city along the Seine. A view which, from the very first evening of his habitation, must have rendered Padilla increasingly delirious, ever more radical a dreamer, driven by the inspiring image before his eyes which now survives only in the form of a photograph, that of the three imposing towers of the Notre Dame: two immaculately dressed soldiers perpetually prepared for duty, animated by the presence of their commander—a third titan, twice as tall and garbed in golden light—that regal scepter that was its steeple, a shining spire which pierced through the impenetrable darkness of the night, challenging the ubiquitous silver glaze of the moonlight, and perhaps even the celestial creature itself, both in luster and dominance.
Enchanted by the spell of his glamorous existence, Padilla commenced squandering his father’s fortune with such haste, so my mother claimed, that one “would have easily mistaken him for Saint Francis of Assisi, instead of the spendthrift that he was!”
Padila served as guide to the Old World to the few fellow countrymen who frequented Europe during the exile. He began procuring connections to influential Nicaraguans through his spacious apartment that functioned like a Nicaraguan embassy. To the visitors, it seemed he was intentionally seeking to rid himself of his wealth, and their perspectives—privileged glimpses into the glamorous life of J. Padilla in Europe—are the memories which make up the missing jigsaw puzzle pieces of the story of J. Padilla’s notorious exile.
But these precious pieces probably do not reach in number more than a dozen or so! And yet this modest array of crystallized memories, even after suffering through years of degradation only to be inspected and revalued under the distorting lens of memory, still must suffice, for even in looking at someone through the skewed surfaces of a flawed jewel, we can still manage to make out the silhouette of the person before us, and if we find ourselves forced to make calls based on our good judgment as to who that person really is—so be it. Those interested will have to make do without the original puzzle pieces which constitute J. Padilla’s exile, cutting up and reshaping the awkward bits made from loose accounts of others, until we can link the Padilla of Diriamba, of the Strawberry Fields, of Old Managua with this new, electric, eccentric, and erudite Padilla whose handshake I shall never forget.
“They say that if there was some grand opera playing in Milan, for example, he would immediately fly there on his private jet,” continued my mother, “If the Queen of England was knighting someone, he had to attend the ceremony. If there was a special film showing in Madrid that week, there would be no doubt in him going to see it. Not to mention that whenever and wherever there was an art exhibition, he was among the first guests to arrive. Supposedly, he was rarely seen without, por lo menos, three or four gorgeous women by his side: actresses, movie stars, daughters of politicians or artists— you name it. I don’t know how true that is though. You know how Nicas exaggerate their stories, but who knows? Chepe had always been a ladies’ man.”
“But, regardless of all the luxuries, regardless of the increasingly good name he was making of himself, I think he was terribly unhappy—or else he wouldn’t have come back…” concluded my mother, only to begin listing certain misfortunes which were known to everyone who knew Padilla and which had likely contributed to his discontent abroad.
“Back in Nicaragua, the government had stolen his beloved estate. His mansion in Old Managua—sold para nada! All his father’s investments, all those businesses which permitted Chepe to live the life he did were—and still are, mind you—totally under the control of his cold-hearted stepbrothers, who through some shady deal with the government somehow managed to avoid nationalization. Chepe was totally out of the picture! Completely uprooted from his past! He couldn’t possibly have been happy.”
“Your father and I first noticed his depression at around the time you were born. It was around the time when he lost the estate, and there seemed to be no hope in the political situation back home. He began calling us weekly to Miami (as opposed to only twice a year for our birthdays.) But of course—no matter how distressed his voice sounded on the phone—he would refuse to come stay with us. In fact, he would be offended every time your father extended the invitation, saying that he wasn’t “Just any bastard,” that he “already had a home.” And when he asked us to come stay with him in Paris, all expenses paid, your father responded by saying that he wasn’t a bastard, either! And they would fight over this nonsense on and off. Truth is we couldn’t get away because your father and I were struggling with setting up our business, so, we didn’t see Chepe again until after the war ended, and Violeta won the presidency.”
“Chepe was one of the first to come back. It took your father and I about five years to muster up the confidence to go back. You were only four-years-old then, when we made our decision. And honest to God I prayed every night from that point on that we were making the right choice. We barely had any money saved up, but when your uncle promised your father a position at his advertising firm, we didn’t have any reason to stay in Miami—save for your asthma. I was too afraid, you see. You should have seen yourself as a child, a pink little infant. Ay! I couldn’t bear the thought! But after waiting for two more years, with all our family members and friends going back and swearing Managua was perfectly safe again, I ran out of excuses. ‘But this is a new Managua,’ they’d say, ‘It’s a whole different story—and besides the electricity going off every now and then—it’s really just like living in Miami.’ Mmhmm, just like living in Miami. Little did I know we’d be living in darkness for an entire year!”
And my mother, exhausted from uttering these words which she had found too “heavy” as she would have said, turned her gaze towards me again and fell silent for a moment, seemingly lost in a memory, or a premonition, until the duration of her trance naturally expired.
“But it was the best decision we ever made, coming home, that is. I wouldn’t rather be any place else. And you turned out alright in the end, didn’t you?” she turned to me again with a smile which lasted no more than an brief instance, for she could see I had noticed the moisture in her eyes.
Regaining her composure, she went on: “But Chepe had been here for a while. As soon as the revolution ended, he married the girl he was with, which turned out to be Cati—thank God for that!— sold his apartment in Paris, and went straight to work on his dream house. And I’ll tell you something. It was a lot easier being back, having those two around, hosting all those parties at the mansion. It felt like being in Old Managua again…at least it did once you got there. Don’t you remember what it was like, the journey there? Arriving on the hillside of San Ramón? Before anyone else lived there, when it was all lush and green? All there was in sight was a far-off church and a couple of humble houses—then you’d find the Eucalyptus trees and get on the avenue leading to the monument. Ay, Dios mio, how things have changed since then! Just look out the window, look at the amount of houses here now! All in just a couple of years…”
“…But it was really great, having everybody back in the same place, after so many years of exile. It was through him, through Chepe, that we discovered San Ramón in the first place, you know. This very neighborhood we live in, this very house,” she mumbled these last words, once again as if lost in an intricate memory, while running her open palm along the smooth wall of my bedroom. “All of it” she said, “It all, at one point, existed solely in his dreams.” Then she stood there, mute, gazing into the wall for about a minute until her thoughts were interrupted by somnolence.
“Speaking of dreams…” she yawned, giving birth to a set of twin tears which made their way down her not-yet-wrinkled face: a sign of her imminent departure. “Before I go, please remember that this Saturday is the Celebration of San Ramón. As you know, the entire family, including your father and I, will be going to the beach for the weekend in order to escape the noise and commotion. If you don’t want to come along, and I know you don’t, you can stay here with Esperanza and keep her company. Just make sure you tell your father in advance.” Then, after a moment of prolonged silence, she glanced at her watch and gave voice to her thoughts. “I should get to bed now; it’s almost two in the morning.”
And so my mother, after affording me a goodnight kiss, retired from my bedroom to her own, leaving my inquiry, the question of why J. Padilla “was that way,” although not wholly unanswered, but largely so, for in recounting the story of J. Padilla to me, my wonder grew tenfold, and I went to sleep with a mind in disarray, baffled by the correlation between earthquakes and speaking fluent French, uncertain as to how the dreams of a man can lead to a neighborhood.
My young mind, stirred and vexed, led me to nightmares from which I awoke several times during the night. At first, I was roused by what sounded like a gunshot, but after hearing subsequent bursts equally as sharp, I reasoned they were fireworks purchased no doubt for the upcoming celebrations. But later, in my awakenings during the course of that sleepless night, I was haunted by unintelligible cries which, although somewhat muted by my nearly closed window, I could still discern their source. They were the unmistakable cries of a hysterical woman, and with haste worthy of Óscar, I shut the window completely.
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