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Coahuila. The country could eat and clothe itself while Cardenas was setting up communal land holdings, which never caught on because what every man wants is his own little plot of land, registered in his own name, see? I was the one that got things rolling, your father just took over the management as I got older. He’d do well to remember that when he gets feisty with me. But I swear I enjoyed it. He must be growing a little backbone. What’s he got on his mind?”
    I shrugged. I’d never been interested in business or politics. Where was the risk and adventure there? Where a risk comparable to what my grandfather had lived through early in his life? Those were the things that interested me.
    Compared to the jumble of photographs of revolutionary leaders, the picture of my grandmother Doña Clotilde is something apart. She has a whole wall to herself, and a table with a vase filled with daisies. I think if Grandfather were a believer he’d have put candles there, too. The frame is oval and the photograph is signed by the photographer, Gutierrez, 1915, Guanajuato. This ancient young woman who was my grandmother looks like a little doll. The photographer had tinted the photograph a pale rose, and only the lips and cheeks of Doña Clotilde glow in a mixture of shyness and sensuality. Did she really look like that?
    â€œLike something out of a fairy tale,” the General says to me. “Her mother died when she was a baby, and Villa shot her father because he was a moneylender. Wherever he went, Villa canceled the debts of the poor. But he didn’t stop at that. He ordered the moneylenders shot, to teach them a lesson. I think the only one who learned the lesson was my poor Clotilde. I carried away an orphan who was happy to accept the first man who offered his protection. There were lots of orphan girls in that part of the country who to survive ended up as whores for the soldiers or, if they were lucky, vaudeville entertainers. Later she came to love me very much.”
    â€œAnd did you always love her?”
    Grandfather, deep in his bedcovers, nodded.
    â€œYou didn’t take advantage of her, just because she couldn’t protect herself?”
    He glared at me and abruptly cut off the light. I felt ridiculous, sitting in the darkness, rocking in the wicker chair. For a while the only sound was the noise of the chair. Then I got up and started to tiptoe out without saying good night. But I was stopped by a single painful vision. I saw my grandfather lying there dead. One morning we’d wake up and he’d be dead, it was bound to happen, and I’d never be able to tell him I loved him, never again. He’d grow cold, and my words, too.
    I ran to him in the darkness and said to him: “I love you very much, Grandfather.”
    â€œThat’s good, boy. The same goes for me.”
    â€œListen, I don’t want to have everything served to me on a silver platter like you say.”
    â€œCan’t be helped. Everything’s in my name. Your father just manages it. When I die, I’m leaving everything to you.”
    â€œI don’t want it, Grandfather; Grandfather, I want to begin from the beginning, the way you did…”
    â€œTimes are different, what do you think you could do now?”
    I half smiled. “I wish I could have castrated someone, like you did.”
    â€œDo they still tell that story? Well, yes, that’s the way it was. Except that I didn’t make that decision by myself, you know.”
    â€œYou gave the order, cut off his balls, and I mean yesterday!”
    Grandfather patted me on the head and said no one knows how such decisions are made, they’re never made by one man alone. He remembered one night by the light of the bonfires, on the outskirts of Gómez Palacio before the battle of Torreón. The man who’d insulted him was a prisoner, and he was a traitor besides.
    â€œHe’d been one of us. He went