Benítez understood that a language was hiding itself so as to be understood only by those initiated into a cabal, a social group, or a criminal caste, but it hid entire cities without even burying them, without hiding them in the liquid oblivion of a sewer — this could only happen in a city without a sewage system!
“We’ve got to give this kid an origin, he can’t wander the face of the earth without a place of origin,” said Benítez’s wife, in a display of good sense. So the two of them covered their eyes and pointed to a spot on the map of the city they had hanging in the kitchen: Atlampa. From that moment on, they said that Orphan Huerta was from Atlampa, that was his neighborhood, Atlampa this and Atlampa that. But one day Don Fernando took the Orphan for a walk through Lomas: first the boy became excited, then he became sad. Benítez asked him what was wrong, and the boy said, “I would have preferred to be from here.”
From here: he stared dreamily at the green lawns, the shutters, and the high walls, the trees and the flowers, but above all the walls, the protection. The sign of security and power in Mexico: a wall around the house.
This boy had a brother — Benítez managed to understand that after deciphering the Orphan’s pidgin — but he’d gone away a year ago. When he left, he asked where the man who had done most damage to Mexico was. General Negro Durazo, chief of the police in charge of order and justice in the times of López Portillo, or Caro Quintero, himself an immoral thug who was a great success in drug trafficking, in seducing women, and who killed people with the same callous indifference as the chief of police. The difference between them was that the drug lord fooled no one, always worked outside the law, and didn’t hide behind the law. The drug lord, concluded the Orphan’s brother, did not do the nation the same kind of damage the police chief did by corrupting the justice system and discouraging the people. He said all that one afternoon after vomiting up that day’s meager, rotten food: “I’m cutting out, bro’, and I’m gonna see if I’m like Caro Quintero, who was a guy who’d try anything, who did himself a lot of good without fucking up the country in the process. Later on, I’ll come back for you, little brother. I swear by this.”
He kissed the cross he made with his thumb and index finger. But the day of his return never came (the Orphan measures time in terms of diarrhea attacks, senseless beatings, blindside attacks, who beat you up, orphan boy? Neither the sun nor the night is any good as a way to tell time: the Orphan can only count on the orphaned hours of the day) and the brother who stayed referred to the absent brother as “the lost child” and what was he? One day he slipped like a rat into the recently opened metro — before, he could use only packed minibuses or go on foot, and then one day it became possible to get on a train redolent of clean, new things, enter through the dust of the anonymous city and pop out like a cork into the boutiques and restaurants and hotels of the Zona Rosa:
No, Benítez said to him, I don’t want you to be a young corpse: one more in this land of sad men and happy children. You’ve got lots of energy, orphan boy, I mean, you feel strong, right? Yessir, Mr. Benítez. Then let me show you how to survive by using jokes, humor is better than crime, right? You (we) have the right to laugh, orphan boy, all of you have at least that right, the right to a giggle, even if your laughter is mortaclass="underline" wear out your power in the joke and perhaps you will find your vocation there; I’m not going to force you, who knows what kind of mind all the kids like you develop in the hells of this world?
The boy asked if someday he would find his lost brother, and Benítez took off his brimless borsalino, patted his bristling head, and told him of course, don’t worry about it, lost children always turn up sooner or later, of course.
Uncle Fern was a wise man: he showed him the way with humor, without Teutonic tyranny, waiting to see what this boy was made of who’d been spit into his hands by the subway, which had transformed the Zona Rosa from an elitist oasis into a lumpen court of miracles. With whom did he hang around, to what ends were his talents put? Bring your friends home, Uncle Fernando told him, I want them to feel welcome here, and so one day there appeared with the Orphan a fat white boy with flat feet and slicked-down black hair. He said he was an orphan, too, like the Orphan, a projectionist in a theater that specialized in classics, where they showed old films. He’d met the Orphan at the entrance to the Hotel Aristos, should I tell your godfather what you were doing, Orph’? The boy with the bristling hair nodded assent and the chubby lad said, “He was beating out a rhythm with the bottle caps on his hat, he beat out a tune on the caps, just imagine what kind of talent he has, sir.”
“And what about you?” asked Benítez.
“Well, I joined up with him, sir. Uh, I’m a little ashamed. I mean, I don’t know if you … Darn, this long hair … I still wear mine that way, even though it’s out of fashion, but I … Well, the fact is that I use pins to keep it in place, see? My black curls, ha ha, well, I could pick out a tune with a hairpin, and I joined up with your godson here…”
They gave a demonstration and agreed to see each other a lot and meet to practice their music in Don Fernando’s house. The fat boy, who never mentioned his name and who evaded answering all questions about his family, expressed himself with difficulty, but now he said goodbye to Don Fernando with his brows worried and in a voice of mundane fatigue and extreme precision:
“Don Fernando, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
He put on his dirty trench coat and went out hugging the Orphan. Two days later, they both returned with a third friend: a dark boy who was peeling and disheveled, barefoot, with a snakeskin belt wrapped around his waist. He was falling to pieces. The Orphan and the fat boy introduced him as Hipi Toltec, but the boy only said in (bad) French: “La serpent-à-plumes, c’est moi.”
His instrument was a matchbox, and soon they began to rehearse together, dedicating themselves to their music. Don Fernando would walk by and look at them with satisfaction, but suddenly two things occurred to him: with each session, the musical harmony of the three boys became stronger and more refined. And he, Benítez, about to turn eighty, still had not exhausted his vital plan, his struggle in favor of the Indians, democracy, and justice, but his physical strength was indeed waning. Perhaps these boys … perhaps they would be his phalanx, his advance guard, his accomplices … They would help him bring his revolutionary plan to fruition.
One Saturday, he gave them three instruments: a set of Indian drums for Hipi Toltec, an electric guitar for the Orphan, and a piano for the long-haired fat boy. There was no need to sign a contract. They all understood they owed each other something.
“A man is nothing without his partner,” the little fat boy enunciated clearly, pulling his gray fedora down over his brows.
But he immediately reverted to his normal personality, saying to Uncle Fernando, “Well … it’s that we need … I mean, we aren’t just three…” Benítez expressed his astonishment: he even counted on his fingers.
“No … it’s that … well … umm … the girl’s missing.”
“The girl?”
“Yes, yes, the girl Ba … She, I mean, plays the piccolo,” the fat boy suddenly declared solemnly, and then he sighed.
Benítez preferred not to ask for explanations and, humoring them, honored their tacit agreement. He bought the little flute and handed it over to the fat boy. That night, in his room, he listened to them practice and could identify all the instruments perfectly: the piano, the guitar, the drums, and the flute.
They baptized themselves the Four Fuckups.
Benítez could find out nothing about the origins of Hipi Toltec; he accepted the invisible existence of Baby Ba and he paid attention to every word the fat boy said, so tongue-tied in ordinary conversation but so sure of himself when he applied dialogues he’d learned in the theater to everyday life.