And soon…
My life has been both great and fucked.
Bountiful and idiotic.
Wonderful and absurd.
Why not let it be the same way at the end?
Four or five stories.
A beautiful fall.
This fool will not see fear in my face.
He won’t see anything.
I am great.
Is there anything more beautiful than flying toward death?
That’s what I do.
JUDAS BURNING BY EUGENIO AGUIRRE
Calle Tacuba
Holy Week 1954 was especially bloody. Thursday morning, agents from the judicial police discovered the mutilated bodies of four women in debris left at a construction site near Peñón de los Baños. There were bite marks on their breasts and genitals, which had been carved up with exceptional viciousness. The presumed killer, later identified as Goyo Cárdenas, had not only raped and profaned their corpses, he had used a handsaw to chop off their heads and dismember the arms and legs.
The evening headline, which appeared in the Universal Gráfico’s crime bulletin, was accompanied by horrific photos which provoked terror among working-class women in the areas surrounding Mexico City, especially the prostitutes who trafficked around Dolores alley and Dos de Abril Street, who tried to intimidate the authorities with obscene threats: “Either they double the number of security guards on these sinful streets or we’ll go on strike and our clients will have no choice but to fuck their wives.”
“Things are getting tense,” said my father, Don Domitilo Chimal, with dismay, as soon as he finished reading us the unfortunate news. He threw the newspaper on the kitchen table where we were gathered for an evening meal.
My siblings and I didn’t fully understand what he was getting at, nor the full meaning of his words. But our mamacita covered her face with her hands and began to tremble like a puppet with Huntington’s disease; she ran and locked herself in her bedroom.
On Good Friday the news was no less bloody. Every year from time immemorial, the Ixtapalapa neighborhood commemorates the Seven Mysteries of the Crucifixion of Jesus with a festival that draws thousands of people from places like Azcapotzalco and Xochimilco, so they can experience “live and in person”-as my Grandmother Eufrásica used to say-“the passion of Christ and all the chingaderas those damned Jews did to him.” So this festival began like every other, except that the compadritos from the Brotherhood of the Redeemer from over in Milpa Alta, wearing the appropriate attire to represent centurions and Roman soldiers, got drunk early and, with the pretext that Pontius Pilate was “a degenerate puto who was constantly sticking his hand between people’s legs,” decided to give him a good thrashing, beating him with fists, swords, and spears, which caught the Pharisees, the Mary Magdalenes who accompanied Christ, and the multitude of gentile onlookers on Calvary off guard and made it impossible for them to get away.
“The Romans are being total jerks,” we heard Tomás Perrín, the newsreader, announce on station XEW, the one our mother used to turn to every night to hear the radionovelas and her favorite program, the Crazy Monk. “They’re throwing punches left and right. They already beat Pontius Pilate to a pulp and now-what monsters!-they’re striking Barabbas with their wooden swords…”
Later, the newsreader had to yell so that he could be heard over the noise of the firecrackers and the howls of the mob, but he continued narrating how the Romans of Milpa Alta made mincemeat out of Dimas and Gestas, the thieves, and how they tore the cheeks of the poor man playing Christ with the thorns of his own crown, and how this had caused everyone who could to flee and take refuge in the cellar over at Samsom’s Cures.
Then the newsreader screamed: “Oh, they’ve broken my nose and beat the crap outta me!” It seemed they’d snatched the microphone from him; all we could hear was chaos-whistles and sirens indicating the presence of the cops who’d arrived to calm the rabble and send the pranksters to jail.
We were all excited by what we’d heard. But my brothers couldn’t disguise their disgust at the Romans’ transgression. My sisters, contrite and weepy, questioned the heresy and crossed themselves, sure of the punishment waiting for them in the flames of hell. Only our father smiled, with a manic, macabre look, his eyes bright, his brows furrowed, and he announced a decision that had been long in coming and that, to our shame and pain, he would act out the following day.
“It smells of the blessed blood of revenge!” he said with an expression that made my mother shiver. He ignored her, turning to his sons. “Come with me, boys. We still have much work to do.”
So, without a word, we followed him to a small shed located in a corner of the yard. There, Don Domitilo Chimal had installed a workshop to make huge dummies, which we called Judases, and which, according to our traditions, are exhibited and burned on the streets of Tacuba every year on Saturday during Holy Week.
The workshop was a mess. There were twigs and reeds all over the place, buckets of glue, old newspapers, pieces of cardboard, scraps of paper, coils, tins filled with brilliant colors of paint, and, leaning against a stone wall to avoid an explosion or devastating fire, firecrackers and rockets in many sizes whose wicks were covered with pieces of foil that came from the gum that the kids in our neighborhood used to chew.
My father had already hung some of the enormous Judases from wires and cords that stretched across the shed, including ones representing Miguel Alemán, president of Mexico, and several of his henchmen, such as Ernesto Uruchurto and the hated police chief, some general named Mondragón that, to the delight of the locals, would be burned the following day. Dad still needed to finish the Judases for Herod; for the execrable Potiphar; for Lucifer, with his horns and trident; and for the popular Samaritana, who, according to local lore, was even more of a whore than Doña María Conesa, the “White Kitten,” who’d disrobe in any dive near the Capitol, from the Tívoli to the Catacombs.
We went in and I headed straight to the table where he did the carpentry. Don Domitilo had made the twig frame that corresponded to the Samaritana and which now needed to be covered with newspaper and glue to give it body. But my father shoved me out of the way and, contrary to his usual demeanor, screamed: “Don’t touch it, boy! I’m going to do that Judas from head to toe. Help Chema and Jacinto finish the other dummies.”
Though his attitude surprised me, I didn’t want to argue with him so I immediately got to painting Lucifer’s huge body in a rabid red and polishing him with a little rag soaked in turpentine and cola.
We worked all night; by dawn we had finished with the accesories and placed the firecrackers in all the Judases, except the Samaritana, which still needed to have its belly closed, its seams sewn, and a little color added.
“Go and sleep, boys,” whispered my father, stuck in his task. “I’ll finish this dummy and catch up with you.”
I fell asleep as soon as I put my head on the pillow. The only thing I remember dreaming about was a scene from a vampire film I had just had seen at the Chinese Palace and the moans of a woman begging for mercy.
I was awoken by my father’s voice ordering me to come with him to bring the Judases downtown. I quickly got dressed and went out where my brothers were lifting the dummies into a covered peddler’s cart that we always used to transport them.