~ ~ ~
Willem brought me a DVD as a peace offering: a documentary about the life and work of Juan O’Gorman.
‘What are you apologising for?’ I asked him. ‘For having betrayed me or because your convictions are stronger than our friendship?’
He thought for a minute, confused.
‘You don’t have to apologise,’ I comforted him, ‘but I am grateful for the present. Where did you buy it?’
‘In the morket.’
‘They’re pirating documentaries on Juan O’Gorman? That really is a symbol of progress in this country. O’Gorman’s my favourite.’
‘I know.’
‘How do you know?’
‘By pay’n attention to what yuh say. To reach the Lard, yuh must learn to listen to your fellow man.’
I took the disc from its case and walked over to the machine on top of my TV.
‘Hey,’ I said, ‘the girl from the dog police asked me about you. Want me to set you up? I’ll lend you the apartment if you like, all you’d have to do is bring your own sheets.’
He flushed.
‘Sex befare marriage is a sin,’ he said.
‘You don’t say! Well, marry her then!’
On the TV screen a black-and-white photo appeared, frozen: Juan O’Gorman, his hands resting on the balustrade of a mezzanine in what appeared to be the Casa Azul. In his left hand he held a rolled-up architectural plan, in his right, a cigar. He wore a suede jacket and a pair of woollen trousers, his hair combed back and, behind his glasses, that tormented look that presaged the sadness that would befall him, if it hadn’t already. Willem sensed my fascination.
‘Why d’yuh like these programmes so much?’
‘I’ve told you before: I knew all these guys, well, most of them. Some better than others, but I knew them, I could have been one of them.’
‘And what happened?’
‘What do you think, Villem? Not everyone achieves posterity, the world’s memory wouldn’t be able to remember us all, there wouldn’t be enough streets to pay homage to us all, or parks to host our statues, or film-makers to make documentaries, or space for the tombs in the Rotunda of Illustrious Persons. Life has to make a selection. And it does it ruthlessly.’
‘Gawd disposes.’
The TV began talking about functionalist architecture.
‘God doesn’t exist, my boy, it’s something much more complicated, a mixture of circumstances, talent, chance, connections — genes, even! If you don’t have the winning combination you end up a taco seller. And I wasn’t the exception, by any means. I was the rule. How many of us who used to hang out at La Esmeralda became somebody? The minority!’
‘What’s La Esmeralda?’
‘It’s an art school. All Mexico’s artistic geniuses of the twentieth century passed through its doors, either as professors or students. And the rest of us passed through, too: the cannon fodder, the filler, the extras, the gatecrashers, the ones who didn’t have the combination that gives you a ticket to the history of art. We were there, the ones who one day had to renounce our aspirations, forced by circumstances or by accepting our own limitations. Then there were the ones who pressed on through mediocrity, made art their profession and condemned themselves to a life of ridicule. And on top of that were those who couldn’t do anything but keep on painting, no matter what, and who ended up mad or ill, or died when they were young, martyrs of art. I knew a handful of those ones, the city’s graveyards are full of them. There was one guy who had taken a few classes in La Esmeralda in the thirties and when I was studying there in 1953 he’d turn up at the gates sometimes looking for drinking buddies. I used to like the bohemian life too, so we ended up becoming friends, we were the terror of the bars in town. He showed me his paintings once, they were moving, heart-rending, brilliant. He had talent in spades, just as much as, more, even, than any of the ones who made it. Do you know what happened to him? He ended up destitute. I saw him again in 1960, at my taco stand in the Candelaria de los Patos, you know it? It’s down in the centre of town. He didn’t even recognise me, he was totally gone, he came to ask for some food and I gave him some tacos so he wouldn’t scare my customers off. One day they found him lying in the street where my stand was. He must have been around forty. He died in the street like a stray dog.’
‘What wus he called?’
‘I don’t even know, they used to call him the Sorcerer. I never asked him his real name and now it’s impossible to find out, he was swallowed up by history. Or oblivion, rather.’
‘Gawd has mercy on the fargotten ones.’
‘Are you going to let me watch the film?’
Later on, after Willem finally left, I rewound the video until I spotted a photograph I’d seen out of the corner of my eye, while Willem prattled away, endeavouring to divert my attention from the screen. It was a portrait of Juan O’Gorman embracing a woman called Nina Masarov. I pressed pause and looked at the photo as I sipped my beer, then another beer, and another. Although it was a wedding photo, a postcard the artist had sent to Frida Kahlo from Europe, it was surely the saddest picture I had ever seen: to the artist’s habitual tormented expression was added the resigned, absent look of the bride, who seemed to be perfectly aware that this union had no future. Or worse: that nothing had any future. I guessed she must hail from one of the superpowers of sadness: some central European country, or Germany, Poland, Mother Russia. I looked at the portrait and thought about Marilín, and about all the women who could have been mine and who never, ever were. O’Gorman was right: sometimes life was so sad you had to kill yourself three times. I’d had too much to drink. I opened my notebook and started writing down everything I remembered about Marilín, the way she growled, the length of her legs, that hair of hers she’d never let me touch, just as she never let me touch any part of her.
That night I had a dream: I was dancing a bolero with Marilín and, just as I was about to speak to her, to say one of those daft things lovers say to each other, I felt two light taps on my back. When I turned around I saw the Sorcerer holding a shoe in his right hand, an enormous great shoe he was holding up high and with which he started striking me in the face. Then everything went dark and I didn’t even feel the blow as my body hit the ground. When I awoke, in the dream, I was looking up at the Sorcerer from below, I was still on the ground but we weren’t in the place where I’d been dancing, we were in a bedroom. The walls of the room were covered in paintings of pigeons, dead pigeons, pigeons tied up, their feathers all plucked, their bodies bloody. There was an unmade bed, the rumpled sheets forming a tangled mass in the middle, and paintbrushes and canvases everywhere. It was the Sorcerer of the early days, with the excessive vitality of those who are unable to control the swings between joy and unhappiness, so different to the demented, emaciated Sorcerer at the end of his days. He came over to me and raised his foot, threatening to step on me, and then opened his mouth and said:
‘What’s going on, compadre? This novel’s starting to sound really cheesy.’
‘This isn’t a novel,’ I objected.
‘Oh really! Well that’s what it looks like.’
‘How did we get here?’
‘What does that matter?’