* * *
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 enter. 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?