* * *
Two in the morning, in the silver-toned Club of the Aztecs, the sensational Ricky Rola, queen of the cha-cha-cha, cuba libres for everyone, these boys are my buddies, whaddya mean they can’t be seated, you sourass little lemon, just look at those sick green bags under his eyes, crummy little punk, he cleans out the latrines, shut that lemon you call a trap or I’ll squeeze it for you, whaddya mean why is my grandson in his pajamas? why, that’s all the clothes he has, the only time he goes out is at night because he’s sacked out all day with your dear momma and he’s all tired out, whaddya mean, your musicians will protest? my mariachis belong to the union too, sit down, boys, General Vergara’s orders, what did you say, you prick, a waiter says at your service, General, get that, lemon-puss? I’ll bet-you piss vinegar, yellow and rose and blue lights, the Everlasting Lily, Queen of the Sentimental Bolero, they stuffed her into those sequins with a shoehorn, look, General, they lifted those knockers with a derrick after they played soccer with them, that baby could score goals all by herself, she must have a belly button the size of a bullring, they slapped eight layers of paint on her before she came out, General, look at those eyelashes, like black venetian blinds, you’re for sale? you don’t say, how much for those sad eyes, Bubbles? she’s a hypocrite, who’s she singing those pimp songs to, boys, we’ll see about that, charge! troops! a hypocrite, plain and simple, you were making fun of me, let’s have a macho song, get up there on the platform, boys, grab-ass, li’l ole Everlasting Lily, let’s have those cantaloupes, Bubbles, what a screech, respect an artist, go take your bath, Sweatso, go wash off that clown face, stop yelling, it’s for your own good, charge! troops! sing, General, “and on February the sixteenth, Wilson sends to our great nation ten thousand American troops,” let’s hear that sobbing guitar, let’s hear that salty trumpet, “tanks and cannons and airplanes, all looking for Villa, all trying to kill him,” get down you old asshole, after them, my gallant mariachis, and that pansy in the pajamas, giddown, no one plays here but union musicians, musicians, hell, slick-haired greaser gays in little bow ties and shiny tuxedo jackets, shiny? I’ll shine your balls, you old coot, hear that, boys? they’re trying to bully me and I won’t take that, no, by the Holy Virgin, I won’t take that, cut off their balls, Grandfather, right here on the spot, one foot through the bass drum, bass guitar smashing against the snares, rip the guts out of the piano the way they did the horses at Celaya, watch out, Grandpa, for the guy with the saxophone, a right to the belly, butt that bastard’s bass drum, Plutarco, hard at it, troops, I want to see the blood of those low-born bastards running on the dance floor, the guy on the snares has a wig on, Plutarco, grab it, that’s right, egghead, should I crack that before I crack his nuts? kick his ass, Plutarco, and run like hell, all of you, old Lemonade’s called the cops, grab the harp, boys, not a key left in place, here, General, the singer’s eyelashes, and I’m leaving this stack of gold pieces to pay for the damages.
* * *
A little after three in the house of La Bandida, where I was well known, and the Madame herself greeted us, what swanky pajamas, Plutarco, and she felt so honored that the famous General Balls … and what a great idea to bring the mariachis, and could they play “Seven Leagues”? she herself, La Bandida, would sing it because it was her own composition, Seven Leagues was Villa’s favorite horse, serve the rum, come do your stuff, girls, they’ve just arrived from Guadalajara, all very young, you’ll be, at the most, the second person to touch her in her life, General, but if you prefer I can bring you a brand-new virgin, as they say, that was a good idea you had, that’s it, that’s it, right on the General’s knees, Judith, do what I tell you, ayyy, Doña Chela, he looks like something to throw to the lions, my grandpa has a fatter carcass than this, listen, you little bitch, this is my grandfather and I want you to respect him, you don’t have to defend me, Plutarco, now this little flower of the night is going to see that Vicente Vergara’s not something to throw to the lions, he is the lion, come along, little Judith, let’s see if we can find your cot, we’ll see who’s the macho, what I want to see’s the color of your money, there you are, catch it, I like you, a gold piece, Doña Chela, look, the old man’s loaded, “when he heard the train whistle, he reared up on his hind legs and whinnied,” take your pick, boys, my grandfather told the mariachis, remember you’re my troops and don’t haggle.
I sat in the parlor, waiting and listening to records. My grandfather and the mariachis between them had cornered the market on girls. I drank a cuba libre and counted the minutes. After thirty, I began to get worried. I went up to the second floor and asked where Judith worked. The towel girl took me to her door. I knocked and Judith opened it, a tiny little thing without her high heels, stark naked. The General was sitting on the edge of the bed, trouserless, his socks held up by old red garters. He stared at me, his eyes brimming with the moisture that sometimes fell unbidden from his ancient barrel-cactus head. He looked at me sadly.
“I couldn’t do it, Plutarco, I couldn’t do it.”
I grabbed Judith by the nape of her neck, I twisted her arm behind her back, the bitch clawed my shoulder and shrieked, it wasn’t my fault, I did his show for him, everything he asked me to, I did my job, I did my part, I didn’t rob him, don’t look at me like that, I’ll give you your money back if you want, but don’t look at me so sad, please, don’t hurt me, let me go.
I twisted her arm harder, I pulled harder on her frizzy hair, in the mirror I saw the face of a wildcat, screaming, her eyes squeezed shut, high cheekbones, lips painted with silvery pomade, sharp little teeth, sweaty shoulder.
“Was this what my mother was like, Grandfather? A whore like this? Is that what you meant?”
I let her go. She ran from the room, covering herself with a towel. I went to sit beside Grandfather. He didn’t answer me. I helped him get dressed. He muttered: “I hope so, Plutarco, I hope so.”
“Did she put the horns on my father?”
“He looked like a stag when she got through with him.”
“Why did she do it?”
“She didn’t have to, like this girl does.”
“Then she did it because she liked it. What’s bad about that?”
“It was ingratitude.”
“I’m sure my father couldn’t please her.”
“She should have tried to get into the movies, and not come to my house.”
“So did we do her a big favor? It would have been better if my father’d done her a favor in bed.”
“I only know she dishonored your father.”
“Because she had to, Grandfather,”
“When I remember my Clotilde…”
“I tell you she did it because she had to, just like that whore.”
“Well, I couldn’t do it, boy. Must be lack of practice.”
“Let me show you, let me refresh your memory.”
Now that I’m past my thirtieth year, I can remember that night when I was nineteen as if I were living it again, the night of my liberation. Liberation was what I felt as I fucked Judith, with all the mariachis, drunk as hell, in her bedroom, pumping and pumping to the strains of the ballad of Pancho Villa’s horse, “in the station at Irapuato, broad horizons beckoned,” my grandfather sitting in a chair, sad and silent, as if he were watching life being born anew, but not his, not his ever again, Judith red with shame, she’d never done it that way, with music and everything, frozen, ashamed, feigning emotions I knew she didn’t feel, because her body belonged to the dead night, I was the only one who conquered, no one shared the victory with me, that’s why it had no flavor, it wasn’t like those moments the General had told me about, moments shared by all, maybe that’s why my grandfather was so sad, and why so sad forever was the melancholy of the liberation I thought I’d won that night.
It was about six in the morning when we reached the French Cemetery. Grandfather handed over another of the gold coins he carried in his richly ornamented belt to a watchman numb with cold, and he allowed us to ente
r. Grandfather wanted to play a serenade to Doña Clotilde in her tomb, and the mariachis sang “On the Road to Guanajuato” on the harp they’d stolen from the cabaret: “Life is without meaning, there’s no meaning in life.” The General sang with them, it was his favorite song, it reminded him of so many things from his youth: “On the road to Guanajuato, you pass through many towns.”
We paid the mariachis and said we’d get together again soon, friends to the death, and Grandfather and I went home. Even though there was little traffic at that hour, I had no desire to speed. The two of us, Grandfather and I, on our way home to Pedregal, that unwitting cemetery that rises to the south of Mexico City. Mute witness to cataclysms that went unrecorded, the black, barren land watched over by extinct volcanoes is an invisible Pompeii. Thousands of years ago, lava inundated the night with bubbling flames; no one knows who died here, who fled. Some, like me, think that perfect silence, that calendar of creation, should never have been touched. Many times, when I was a boy, when we lived in the Roma district and my mother was still alive, we passed by Pedregal on the way to visit the pyramid of Copilco, stone crown of stone. I remember how, spontaneously, each of us would fall silent when we saw that dead landscape, lord of its own dusk that would never be dissipated by the (then) luminous mornings of our valley, do you remember, Grandfather? it’s my first memory. We were on our way to the country, because then the country was very close to the city. I always sat on a servant’s lap, was she my nurse? Manuelita was her name.
On the way back to the house in Pedregal with my drunk and humiliated grandfather, I remembered the construction of the university, how they polished the volcanic rock, Pedregal put on spectacles of green glass, a cement toga, painted its lips with acrylic, encrusted its cheeks with mosaic, conquered the blackness of the land with an even blacker shadow of smoke. The silence was broken. On the far side of the vast parking lot at the university they parceled out the Pedregal Gardens. They established a style that would unify the buildings and landscape of the new residential site. High walls, white, indigo blue, vermilion, and yellow. The vivid colors of the Mexican fiesta, Grandfather, combined with the Spanish tradition of the fortress, are you listening? They sowed the rock with dramatic plants, stark, with no adornment but a few aggressive flowers. Door locked tight like chastity belts, Grandfather, and flowers open like wounded genitals, like the cunt of the whore Judith that you couldn’t fuck and I could, and what for, Grandfather?
We were approaching Pedregal Gardens, the mansions that must all have been the same behind their walls, Japan with a touch of Bauhaus, modern, one-floor, low roofs, wide picture windows, swimming pools, rock gardens. Do you remember, Grandfather? The perimeter of the development was encircled by walls, and access was limited to a certain number of orange wrought-iron gates tended by guards. What a pitiful attempt at urban chastity in a capital like ours, wake up, Grandfather, look at it by night, Mexico City, voluntarily a cancerous city, hungry for uncontrolled expansion, a hodgepodge of styles, a city that confuses democracy with possessions, and egalitarianism with vulgarity, look at it now, Grandfather, how we saw it that night we spent with the mariachis and the whores, look at it now that you’re dead and I’m over thirty, bound by its broad belts of poverty, legions of unemployed, immigrants from the countryside, and millions of babies conceived, Grandfather, between a howl and a sigh: our city, Grandfather, it won’t long tolerate oases of exclusiveness. Keeping Pedregal Gardens in good condition was like fixing your fingernails while your body rots of gangrene. The gates collapsed, the guards disappeared, the caprice of construction broke forever the quarantine of our elegant leprosarium, and my grandfather’s face was as gray as the concrete walls of the ring road. He’d fallen asleep, and when we reached the house I had to lift him out of the car like a child. How light he was, emaciated, just skin and bones, and what a strange grimace of forgetfulness on a face laden with memories. I carried him to his bed. My father was waiting for me at the door.
He signaled me to follow him through the marble halls to the library. He opened the cabinet filled with crystal ware and mirrors and bottles. He offered me a cognac and I shook my head no. I prayed he wouldn’t ask me where we’d gone, what we’d done, because I would have had to give him an answer he wouldn’t understand, and that, as I’ve already said, hurt me more than it did him. I rejected the cognac as I would have rejected his questions. It was the night of my liberation and I wasn’t going to lose it by acknowledging that my father had the right to interrogate me. I had my silver platter, hadn’t I, why try once more to find out, for myself alone, what love was, what it was to be courageous, to be free.
“What is it you hold against me, Plutarco?”
“That you left me out of everything, even pain.”
I felt sorry for my father as I said it. He stood there for a moment, then walked to the picture window overlooking an interior patio, glass-enclosed, a marble fountain in the center. He drew back the curtains with a melodramatic gesture at the very moment Nicomedes turned on the fountain; it was as if they’d rehearsed it. I felt sorry for him; these were gestures he’d learned at the movies. Every move he made he’d learned at the movies. Everything he did was learned, and pompous. I compared his actions to the spontaneous hell my grandfather knew how to raise. My father for years had been hobnobbing with gringo millionaires and marquises with invented titles. His own certificate of nobility was his appearance in the society pages, his English mustache carefully brushed upward, graying hair, discreet gray suit, a showy handkerchief sprouting from his breast pocket like the dry plants from the Pedregal. Like many vulgar rich Mexicans of his generation, he modeled himself on the Duke of Windsor, a large knot in the necktie, but they never found their Mrs. Simpsons. Pitiful creatures: hobnobbing with some vulgar Texan who’d come to buy a hotel in Acapulco, or a Spanish sardine seller who’d bought his aristocracy from Franco, people like that. He was a very busy man.
He parted the curtains and said he knew his arguments wouldn’t sway me, that my mother had not taken proper care of me, she’d been dazzled by the social scene, it was the time when the European emigres were arriving, King Carol and Madame Lupescu with valets and Pekingese, and for the first time Mexico City felt itself to be an exciting cosmopolitan capital, not a petty town of Indians and military coups. It was inevitable that it would impress Evangelina, a beautiful girl from the provinces who’d had a gold tooth when he first met her, one of those girls from the coast of Sinaloa who become women while still very young, tall and fair, with eyes like silk, and long black hair, whose bodies hold both night and day, Plutarco, night and day glowing in the same body, all the promises, all of them, Plutarco.
He’d gone to the carnival in Mazatlán with some friends, young lawyers like himself, and Evangelina was the Queen. She was paraded along the seawall called Olas Altas in an open car adorned with gladiolas, everyone was courting her, the orchestras were playing “Little sweetheart mine, pure as a newborn child,” she’d preferred him, she’d chosen him, chosen happiness with him, life with him, he hadn’t forced her, he hadn’t offered any more than the others, the way the General had with your grandmother Clotilde, who had no recourse but to accept the protection of a powerful and courageous man. Not Evangelina. Evangelina had kissed him for the first time one night on the beach, and said, I like you, you’re the tenderest, you have handsome hands. And I was the most tender, I was, Plutarco, that’s the truth, I wanted to love. The sea was as young as she, they’d been born together that very minute, Evangelina your mother and the sea, owing nothing to anyone, no obligations, unlike your grandmother Clotilde. I didn’t have to force her, I didn’t have to teach her to love me, as your grandfather had to teach his Clotilde.