The Long Night of White Chickens by Francisco Goldman

Author:Francisco Goldman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 1992-09-08T04:00:00+00:00

SIXTEEN

Luis Moya Martínez does remember very well that long-ago train ride from New York to Boston. In Brooklyn and then on the train, Roger had given the impression that he did want to hear the details, any details, of what had transpired between his old friend, Luis Moya, and Flor de Mayo Puac. Pues, it almost seemed as if Roger didn’t believe it, and so would not dignify this unbelievably tasteless joke or fantasy or lie by ever mentioning it again. But of course he believed it, or else why was he there, on the El Minuto–man train to Boston with Moya, headed to tell his parents of his decision to return to Guatemala?

But Moya did not actually need or desire a confessor, and the offering of such confessions and confidences is not exactly in his nature. (Secrecy is a church, vos.) He wanted something else from Roger, what only Roger was in a position to remember and tell; though Moya doesn’t think it immodest to add that he also then believed he was offering his old friend a great or at least interesting opportunity. In truth, Roger’s life in New York did not seem so stimulating, he seemed to have become something of a deadbeat there.

Flor had had sisterly concern about this, sometimes even saying, “Maybe Roger should come down here for a while. It might be just what he needs.” Even at a time when she was often rhetorically asking herself, in Moya’s presence, why she had ever come at all or stayed so long who needs this fucking heartbreaking hellhole I want to go someplace unpolluted is there any place like that Moya? Oh gosh, how would you know? . . . (How would Moya know.)

The true mystery of the life and death of Flor de Mayo Puac—Why she came? Why she stayed? As for Los Quetzalitos, she always claimed to have just fallen into it, just as, it is true, Moya could claim to have just fallen into newspaper work and thus all that came after.

Flor said, “Maybe you could help Roger get started in journalism.”

Moya said, “Rogerio is going to come and work at El Minuto for forty quetzales a week? I don’t see it, my love.”

And Flor laughed, “Ay Moya, por favor, no seas tan imbécil! Maybe he could pick up a string or something. He probably thinks it’s really hard to become a correspondent. I mean, hah. At least he speaks Spanish. And, after all, he is half Guatemalan.”

“Whatever that means,” remarked Moya.

“It can mean nothing or it can mean whatever he decides to make of it, this is the nature of the bicultural opportunity, you know what I mean?”

“Opportunity?” asked Moya.

“You know that famous definition of surrealism, don’t you? The chance meeting of an umbrella and a sewing machine on a dissecting table?”

“Ahá, sí pues.”

“Well what about a gringo Russian Jew and a Guatemalan fufurufa Catholic on a dissecting table . . . ?”

After a moment, Moya said, “In a way this

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