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an eye, not even them. Your godfather, Plutarco. Yes, boy, your godfather. Look at him, and look at you there in his arms. There we all are, the day you were baptized, the day of national unity when General Calles returned from exile.”
    â€œBut why did he have me baptized? Didn’t he persecute the Church mercilessly?”
    â€œWhat does one thing have to do with the other? Were we going to leave you nameless?”
    â€œNo, Grandfather, but you also say that the Virgin unites all us Mexicans, how can you explain that?”
    â€œThe Virgin of Guadalupe is a revolutionary Virgin; she appeared on Hidalgo’s banners during the War of Independence, and on Zapata’s in the Revolution, she’s the best bitchin’ Virgin ever.”
    â€œBut, Grandfather, it was because of you I didn’t go to parochial school.”
    â€œThe Church is good for only two things, to be born right and to die right, you understand? But between the cradle and the grave they don’t have any business sticking their noses in what doesn’t concern them, let them stick to baptizing brats and praying for souls.”
    The three of us who lived in the big house in Pedregal only saw each other at supper, which was still whatever my grandfather the General wished. Soup, rice, fried beans, sugary rolls, and cocoa-flavored gruel. My father, the Honorable Don Agustín Vergara, got his own back for these ranch-style suppers by dining from three to five at the Jena or the Rivoli, where he could order steak Diane and crepes suzette. One revolting thing about the suppers was a peculiar habit of Grandfather’s. After we finished eating, the old man would remove his false teeth and drop them into a half glass of warm water. Then he would add a half glass of cold water. He’d wait a minute and pour half this glass into a third. Then again he’d add a portion of warm water to the first glass, pour half of it into the third, and fill the first with warm water from the second. Then he would remove the teeth from the first of the three turbid mixtures swimming with particles of stew and tortilla, steep them in the second and the third, and, having obtained the desired temperature, place the teeth in his mouth and clamp them shut the way you snap a padlock.
    â€œNice and warm,” he’d say, “sonofabitch, a set of teeth like a lion’s.”
    â€œIt’s disgusting,” my father the lawyer Agustín said one night, wiping his lips with his napkin and tossing it disdainfully on the tablecloth.
    I looked at my father in astonishment. He’d never said a word all the years my grandfather had been performing the denture ceremony. The Honorable Agustín had to hold back the nausea the General’s patient alchemy aroused. As for me, my grandfather could do no wrong.
    â€œYou ought to be ashamed. That’s disgusting,” the lawyer repeated.
    â€œHoo, hoo, hoo!” The General looked at him with scorn. “Since when can’t I do what I bloody well please in my own house? My house, I said, not yours, Tín, nor that of any of those fancy-dancy friends of yours.”
    â€œI’ll never be able to invite them here, at least not unless I hide you under lock and key.”
    â€œSo my teeth make you vomit, but not my dough? By the way, how’re things going…?”
    â€œBad, really really bad…” my father said, shaking his head with a melancholy we’d never seen in him before. He wasn’t a grave man, only a little pompous, even in his frivolities. This sadness, however, dissipated almost immediately, and he stared at Grandfather with icy defiance and a hint of mockery we couldn’t understand.
    Later Grandfather and I avoided comment on all this when we went to his bedroom, which was so different from the rest of the house. My father, the Honorable Agustín, had entrusted the details of the decor to a professional decorator, who’d filled