The Dream of the City Read Free Page B

repression: more than eighty were dead, nearly two hundred were sent into exile, and seventy life sentences were meted out. The unions and the secular schools were closed down indefinitely. The iron hand tightened its grip on the working class and the more liberal sectors of society.
    To Juan, it seemed like it was only yesterday that he’d gone to the police station to pick up Guillermo, then only three, his cheeks red with mourning. From that moment on, the boy had no one but him and Dimas.
    â€œHelp me make dinner,” said Juan. “That way you can tell me how your day at school went.”
    Guillermo agreed with a smile and took his place beside him in front of the charcoal stove. Juan didn’t want to bother Dimas; he thought he must be very tired from work. He would let them know when he was ready.
    With the remaining potatoes and carrots from the pantry, father and son made a soup to be accompanied with a large loaf of bread. Guillermo talked continuously about the lessons he’d been taught that day by Father Flotats and Juan poured the broth into the bowls—with great effort he had learned to get by with his left hand. The little one said he had been the first in the class to be able to add four rows of numbers and that they had given him a prize for his good handwriting. Juan congratulated him. Guillermo’s intelligence was nothing new; Juan had watched the boy grow and seen his intelligence flourish much faster than any other child his age. His passion and curiosity reminded Juan of Guillermo’s father, Raúl, whose bright-eyed, nonconformist temperament had impelled him to fight for the rights of the working class. How Juan missed his little brother, who had decided to follow in his footsteps and escape the poverty of the village.
    â€œGo get Dimas while I finish setting the table,” he told the boy, who obeyed without complaint.
    Juan listened to the boy’s knuckles rapping the door while he put the spoons and glasses out in the living room. Since Carmela had left them, he had always been the one in charge of cooking and keeping the house in order.
    He heard the door closing and sat down at the square table. The tall, wiry shadow of his elder son followed Guillermo. Juan didn’t know how he did it, but the boy was the only one capable of touching Dimas’s tender side; Dimas was distant with everyone else. When Juan saw his son’s angular face, he knew the dinner wouldn’t be a calm one. Dimas sat down, forming a triangle with the other two. Juan closed his eyes and gave thanks to God for the food they were about to eat. Only Guillermo said “Amen,” while Dimas rolled up his sleeves and began to eat with savor.
    With his spoon sunk in the broth, Juan ventured a comment about what his former coworker had said to him in the streetcar.
    â€œCarles tells me things aren’t good around there. Is it true?” he asked, a bit unsettled.
    Dimas squeezed his lips together. He knew Carles was an old friend of his father’s from work, and if they had run into each other, it was because Juan had been out running his goddamned errands. Juan saw the tension in his son’s face, but the latter restrained himself, nodding curtly and continuing with the conversation.
    â€œWas there ever a time when they went well?” Dimas asked wearily.
    â€œWhen I was working …”
    Dimas interrupted him. He spoke with a heavy voice, a bit louder now.
    â€œWhen you were working, they were already bad. If not, why is your brother dead?” Juan glanced sideways at Guillermo, who went on eating without reacting. “The difference is, you never complained, everything seemed fine to you. … But it’s not! We work more than eleven hours a day and they pay us in scraps.” Dimas turned back to his plate, hoping to calm himself down. He carried on with a somewhat calmer tone: “I’m twenty-eight now and I’ve been working myself