“How can this be!” cried Niña Beatriz, as I walked her to the store.
“I think we were going about this the wrong way,” I said. “We shouldn’t have called the police. They aren’t responsible for this kind of thing. We should go down to City Hall.”
She promised to call the municipal authorities first thing the next day. That Jacinto Bustillo wasn’t going to get his way. Tomorrow morning he and his filth would have to go someplace else. I started back to the apartment. When I got to the Chevrolet, I knocked on the driver’s side window again. “Don Jacinto,” I called, “would you like a cigarette?” He didn’t answer. I knocked again and repeated the offer.
“Get out of here! Leave me alone!” he yelled, without even poking his head out the window.
I shut myself up in my room to watch TV and enjoy a smoke. I cleaned the dirt out from under my nails with my old pocketknife, the one with the bone-coloured handle.
Next morning, Niña Beatriz told me she’d phoned City Hall, but they’d told her it would take days to send the inspectors over because they were swamped with work. Back in the apartment, I leafed through the newspaper. At a quarter to ten, I went down to the Chevrolet to smoke a cigarette and enjoy the morning sun. He got out, right on time, with his empty canvas bag, looking furious, either because he’d seen me or because that was just the way he was. “Good morning, Don Jacinto,” I greeted him brightly, the way you would the most wellliked person in the neighbourhood. He limped past, glaring at me, annoyed. He still reeked of alcohol and stale urine. As usual, I had the whole day ahead of me and nothing to do. “I admire you for what you said to the police last night,” I said. “It’s important to have some character, to not let other people intimidate you. Of course, I’d already warned you they were coming.” I was walking beside him, talking with my hands, happy to be in his company. He stopped.
He stared right into my eyes, and with all the anger he could muster he said, “I’d like to ask you a favour. Leave me alone. Just go away.” He didn’t speak, he spat the words out.
“Don’t worry, Don Jacinto,” I said. “I haven’t got anything else to do. Relax. I’ll go along with you.” He started walking again, as if it were possible to ignore me. “I bet you follow the same routine every day,” I continued. We were heading downtown. He walked at a steady pace, without stopping, his gaze fixed on the ground. “Tell me about your life, Don Jacinto.” But there was no way to break his silence. Maybe he was waiting for me to get tired of this, to give up and trudge back to my sister’s apartment. But I was wound up. I told him about my two sisters, about my parents who’d died before their time, about my unemployment, and about the feelings of loathing that sometimes came over me. I think that was how I managed slowly to soften him up. Under an increasingly hot sun, we walked towards the industrial part of the city. It was an area I was unfamiliar with, where asbestosroofed sheds housed hundreds of women who slaved under the whip of cruel, dirty Chinamen; at least that’s what the newspapers said. It was the perfect setting for Don Jacinto to begin telling me his story, the very excrescence I’d been sniffing out — a sewer of garbage, the remains not of the infamous sweatshops that surrounded us, but of a life so ruined that all that remained of it was the wretch by my side and his yellow Chevrolet.
“An accountant? You? I never would have guessed,” I exclaimed, brimming with curiosity. I was happy that he was finally confiding in me. The sun was nearly unbearable now and I couldn’t get used to the sight of the sweaty old man poking through the dumps near the stream than ran behind most of the factories. He swigged from a bottle of rum that he stubbornly refused to share, distrustful as ever.
I watched him pick up useless junk and throw it into his canvas bag. As though with a picklock, I pried open the story of a man who years ago had been chief accountant of one of the factories we were walking behind. A man who’d been fired suddenly with a generous settlement, but who was nonetheless completely destroyed, not so much because he’d never find another job, or because of the psychological impact of his sudden dismissal, as though the life he’d given to the company had been worthless, but because without a job, he found himself trapped in a miserable home with a repulsive wife and an adolescent daughter who was just like her mother.
“It was revolting, young man, just revolting,” he mumbled after we’d wolfed down sandwiches on a street corner under the midday sun, surrounded by workers changing shifts. He took another swig from his bottle of rum. I lit another cigarette.
The whole time we were walking he’d ask me over and over again what my intentions were, what I was looking for, why I wanted to follow him, to find out about his life. I must be up to something fishy, he said, to be wasting my time like this. But he had nothing to lose now, nothing mattered anymore, not even the yellow Chevrolet. He bought the old heap when he’d decided to give it all up and dedicate himself to mere survival. With nothing but his car, he slept in different parts of the city, far from the filth that the rest of us called family, success, work. In a charming yet evasive way, I answered that I was just curious, I wanted to see the world in a different way. It had nothing to do with sociology or field work. It was more like a premonition that somehow my life had something to do with his wandering.
We left the industrial area and walked to streets crammed with pawnshops, where the foul-smelling man who said his name was Jacinto Bustillo opened his canvas bag to show off his precious junk and was welcomed like a valued customer. I stayed out of the way on the sidewalk, smoking, like a bodyguard hidden behind the crowd of transients. I kept a careful eye on Don Jacinto’s dealings. Every once in a while, he’d take out his bottle of rum and, without allowing the other party to make even the slightest objection, he’d propose a toast. His partner would then raise his own flask, and the deal was sealed.
Admiring him, I said, “You’re a master businessman, Don Jacinto.” He smiled reluctantly and stroked his grey beard.
It was well into the evening and his canvas bag was still full of trash. Each of his transactions took enormous amounts of time, trial and effort. We headed to the red-light district, where sordid, putrid flesh seeped from every seedy hole-in-the-wall.
“Looking for any bar in particular?” I asked. His bottle of rum was nearly empty.
“It’s called Prosperity,” he said.
We walked inside. It was murky, fetid, with sawdust-covered floors and a couple of rickety tables. The tiny, filthy bar sold only hard liquor.
“So the old dirtbag has company tonight,” said a mocking voice at the back. Don Jacinto went up to the bar to have his bottle filled and then straight over to the wretch who’d made the remark, a bald, toothless dwarf with almond-shaped eyes called Coco. Don Jacinto offered me his bottle for the first time. I took a long, hard swallow, enough to set my guts on fire in a single shot, and the burning started right away.
“And who’s this gorgeous creature?” Coco asked lustily.
“A curious little shit who hasn’t left me alone all day,” Don Jacinto said, passing me the bottle again. I took another swig, this time with more conviction. “Who knows what he’s up to.”
“A little angel from heaven,” said Coco, with a perverted sneer. A hateful smile played at the corner of his mouth. I took the bottle from Don Jacinto again, while he insisted that I was a regular piece of shit who’d conspired with a bunch of vile old women last night to get the police to take him away.
“On the contrary,” I explained, “I went to warn you about Niña Beatriz’s intentions. Don’t be ungrateful.”
“Now you’re going to tell us the truth,” Coco said.