The Inheritance

Many years ago, a pathetic story happened. This is not a story like any other, it is an unfortunate event that can happen at any time to anyone. This is a story someone shared with me. It is not my creation. It is rather a transcription, in my own way, in which you, dear reader, cooperate putting the approximate date according to your age. The place of events does not matter; the names of the characters do not matter either. Therefore, let’s see.

It was then the year of … no, you better put the year, because if I do I sin of indiscreet and maybe you usually increase or decrease your age and then … Well, then it was two thousand …

There was a family that lived in a nice town. The family was constituted of a young couple who had given the world their contribution to the person of a boy almost perfect. You could say that it was a happy home.

The young head of the family, affectionate and faithful husband, as well as a loving father, had achieved a magnificent economic position. He lavished on his people all their cares, comforts, tastes, and whims imaginable.

He had the great initiative and commercial clairvoyance, which is why his capital was constantly growing.

The wife, a beautiful young woman, was endowed with all the virtues. She loved her husband passionately and deeply as her son with the same passion.

The boy was their doll of flesh and bones, intelligent, funny, and beautiful. The ideal boy.

The perfect home, idealized and dreamed by all the men and women around the world, they had gathered in a perfect and happy marriage.

The Earth, for them, was nothing other than the biblical paradise corrected and improved. It was so much his shower, his happiness, that they did not believe in the expulsion from Eden. They laughed incredulously at everything that meant suffering, pain, sorrow, anguish, incomprehension; for it is natural that he who knows nothing but happiness, ignores the meaning of the word bitterness. And of course, as this is a story, it can be assumed that happiness may be perfect and permanent in this throbbing world of “a twist,” that men want to leave to go to the Moon, Mars, Venus, or anywhere else, so as not to continue in this sea of happiness and beauty. Understood? All right, let’s go forward!

Inexorably, time ripped numbers from calendars. He tore leaves from the trees and uninterruptedly changed calendars. He climbed on their faces and wrinkled them, climbed on their heads, and whitened them with gray hair.

That sweet home, I had changed many calendar stickers. He had greeted thousands and thousands of times in the sun that constantly smiled. Nothing disturbed their happiness. However, there was only one small problem, an insignificant little problem, barely noticeable. The child had been so spoiled, so indulged in his will, that the most insignificant of his desires had to be satisfied in the act.

This solicitous and obsequious satisfaction of their small baby whims was becoming an inalienable right in his infant consciousness: duty in the will of the mother and an obligation in the life of the father. Therefore, the child grew up and up, and with him, his desires, whims, demands, and rights. After two years of life, he had already imposed his will on the happy home. He used it as a defense, tantrums, and fights.

The happy father, to gild the pill of his pandering, said: “He is a precocious child!”

At the age of 15, adolescents will be a law in that eternally happy home. The parents adored their only son and were passionate slaves to their tastes and whims. In four possible cases of resistance on the part of their parents, the boy used the weapon of the threat. I would leave home.

At 21, the age of majority, he was a criminal who, under threat of suicide, had forced his father to make a legal transfer of all his assets as a universal heir.

Apart from these little whims of their only son, loved and pampered, the home was a paradise, all love, affection, and beauty. All poetry and music until one day, the drama was presented.

After a short courtship, the adored son got married, “birds of a feather flock together,” say the saying.

Now, we have the beloved son’s wife, who was also wayward and rivals in her husband’s affection. She could not consent even to the look of her in-laws; therefore, after thinking well, she summoned the owner of the house, and her love said: In this house, we have four family members. For our idyll, there are two, and I tell you clearly: your parents are leaving, or I am leaving.

It is not necessary, argued the owner, we can both go somewhere else.

Not at all, rejected the capricious wife. We stay in this house or get divorced. Your proposition hurts my pride.

The young man’s parents, who by their age had entered the decline of their happy lives, aware that they were of that unheard-of demand, they didn’t want to disturb the harmony of that young marriage, they took a small portion of capital and were expelled from their Eden to roll the world.

In all the stories until today, it was always the children who went out to shoot the land. However, in this one, it is his parents who left for the street.

Well, the days, months, and years passed. The young couple had their first son. The man, despite his temperamental character, had become a small toy in the hands of his capricious wife. The child gave him the tremendous satisfaction of turning him into a father.

The son grew up, but he grew up amid displeasure, protests, threats, and hits that his unhappy parents showed him as a natural path in life.

On the 7th birthday of the son of this capricious marriage, someone knocked on the door when the child was blowing the seven cake candles.

There was an old barbican, disheveled head, lean skin, parchment, and emaciated, wearing filthy rags. He saw the child and drew a smile trying to contain a tear that impertinent peeked at the balcony of his eyes and said: “Dear boy, go and tell the homeowner that his father is tired of rolling in the streets and would like to ask him a place to sleep this night.”

The boy transmitted the message to his mother, and with instructions, from his parents went to the cellar where the old henequen sacks were. He grabbed one and brought it to the old beggar. The child said to him: “Take this good old man. They send you this bag; therefore, you can look for a door, and get some rest.”

Saying this, he closed the gate and returned happily to his cake.

I do not know why that same afternoon the child’s father seized by the hand of his wife came to the cellar and was struck by the sight of a sack of henequen thrown in a corner.

He remembered that a short time before, he had sent his son to give a sack to his father. Therefore, he could rest his tired bones at the doorpost, and he could not understand why the bag was still there so far away.

Intrigued, he called his little son and questioned him affectionately: “tell my son, why is this old bag cornered here? I sent you to give it to the old man who came today to beg (figure 1).”

The boy looked sadly at his father, and with his erected head and a firm voice answered him:

“Yes, father, you sent me to give a sack to my grandfather. However, when I arrived here, there were two old sacks, and I thought if I gave him both to him, there would be none left to you when I receive my inheritance.”

Figure 1. The inheritance. ¹

THE INHERITANCE:

“Take this good old man. They send you this bag; therefore, you can look for a door, and get some rest.”

Inspired by the book “Mitología Cuzcatleca, O, Los Cuentos De Mi Infancia Y Otros” by Dr. José Efraín Melara Méndez.

Credits:
¹ “Mitología Cuzcatleca, O, Los Cuentos De Mi Infancia Y Otros.”