The hooded priest took her by the hand. “Look at the grave of Benito Juárez; he gave the order to shoot the soldier buried at the entrance. He was an Indian too. That’s Mexico City: Everything’s mixed. Fatality and hope are tangled in the same vine. This pantheon still smells of death. Supposedly, everything decomposes in the tropics. But some things are still here even if you don’t see them. Look at the tombstone that says Isadora Duncan-she’s here, but she’s also buried in Nice. That’s how Mexicans are: an admirer had this cenotaph made for her to put next to Juárez the Indian. This is miscegenation!” The priest’s flowing sleeve stretched as he gestured toward the cemetery. “Tell me about your erections.”
The conversation became a murmur reverberating in the crepuscular traffic. When they arrived back at the church, the priest closed the aged oak portico. They made their way down the middle aisle, past the pews now empty of their beatific penitents, whose scents still lingered. A ring of lights like sentries revealed a painting that covered one wall of the nave; hundreds of these sentries guarded a multitude of friars on their knees, gazing up with admiration at the seven martyrs of Ceuta and the seven from Morocco; they praised the Lord on a cross sprouting fir bulbs, and the nine hierarchies of the celestial court in the sky: archangels, thrones, powers, dominions, cherubs, seraphim, angels, principalities, virtues. The painting emanated shadows. A gloom grew on another wall, barely touched by four handfuls of fire coming from the cave of Bethlehem-four is a sacred Indian number. Above the cave, in the stormy sky, a cloud curled up the spiraling stream that represented the native water, water and fire-atl and tlachinolli-and an irascible San Fernando stood on the altar in a niche surrounded by chiaroscuro coils worked by Indian hands.
Night fell on the children scattered around the church and vestibule. A sad figure in a Burberry raincoat bought at the Galleria on New Bond Street in London turned his back on them. A police officer in Mexico earns enough to take a group vacation, and to finance a sex change for a favorite subordinate. This was Commander Pérez. He looked languidly at the vestibule, raised his eyes to San Fernando, King of Castile, flanked by four angels. For him, a devout Christian, San Fernando was a phantom. The police officer’s spirit had taken a different path, one with lyrics to boleros and desire for a young body whose sex he had changed, who now accosted his soul. He breathed with a deep, loving sadness.
Inside, the penitent and the confessor continued through the thick darkness of the hall of tombs. A bell rang for the dead. The altar boy with the small brazier let it toll, sighing when an airplane passed above the church.
“You know what the brains are like in those kids out there?” said the priest. “Like marine sponges with a thousand eyes. They stink of toluene or whatever it is they put in that glue. It perforates their brains. They can be marinated and boiled, then the scent goes away. Do you know what they taste like? Are they the lost ones you’re trying to find? Incidentally, you haven’t even told me your name.”
“Nausícaa,” replied the girl.
“How sophisticated. Who gave you that name?”
“Commander Pérez.”
“I would have named you Xóchitl Fernanda. It’s much more Mexican. My name is Diego Tonatiuh. Before, I was called Temeraria, reckless. Blame it on my father, an anarchist from Aragón who took refuge in this mixed-up city; he was mestiza like me. They say I killed him with a dirty look for making me become a nun.”
At that moment, the altar boy with the small brazier peeked over the pulpit and asked, “Do you want to stay the night?” He looked like a little cherub frolicking after the gentle figure of the Archangel Michael, whose lance had been stolen to skewer the devil. Neither penitent nor confessor responded.
Finally the girl spoke: “I have to go to work, Father… And I never asked you: how long has it been since you changed your sex?”
“Before the deluge, before the plagues of Egypt, before the First Sun, before the Nahui Océlotl that lasted 674 years, and before all those people were devoured by tigers. Then came four more suns, and then the last: San Fernando.”
The priest suddenly fell to the ground in ecstasy and Nausícaa thought the altar boy was speaking through him, the nasally voice of a cherub through the throat of an old monk: “Pange, lingua, gloriosi corporis mysterium, sanguinisque pretiosi… God is fanatical, hija,” he said, convulsing. “He makes me say things, see and hear what’s not real. The body is a mystery and blood is precious…”
The altar boy came down from the pulpit, helped the priest up from the tangle of his robe, and whispered something in his ear. When the priest saw Nausícaa’s astonished look, he told her to pay no mind, it was just an apparition in transit. He recovered his poise, his voice turning deep again.
“If I were to say it in Castilian, it would be something like a soul en route to… Heaven? Limbo? I can’t tell you for sure. Since we’re dealing with a street kid, I don’t even know if he’s been baptized. If I were to say it in Mexican, then it would be a teyolia disguised as an altar boy on his way to one of the four worlds of Mictlán, an inferno for elders from these parts, something akin to a spirit to us Christians. Where will it go? He’s too much of a lazy ass to be leaning on the teat tree in Chichihualco and sucking away for all of eternity. Will you let me see your tits? I don’t like to call them chichis; it’s a Mexicanism that doesn’t sound right to me-remember, I have Aragonese blood. Anyway, let’s go to the sacristy, we’ll be safe there: the soul, teyolia, or whatever you want to call it, told me there’s a man outside from whom we can only expect the worst.”
The altar boy ran off to hide in the chapel’s shadows. Nausícaa glanced his way, and the kid laughed uproariously, then quickly disappeared.
Standing before the façade, Commander Pérez raised the collar of his raincoat and exhaled a sigh of longing. He restrained himself from kicking the children in the vestibule and retraced his steps, like always. His bodyguard was there waiting for him next to the squad car and they returned to the police station.
Pérez took the day’s bribes, headed down to the dungeons. The cannibal who had been arrested a few days before near San Fernando was there in a moldy cell; a grated night-light dripped stalactites of horror. The scrawny cannibal who had devoured his lover lay trembling there on a concrete bench.
The commander’s daydream about the end of the workday, when he would go home to his wife and children and take refuge from his love for Nausícaa, was interrupted when his deputy arrived with the kitchen gloves and baseball bat.
“It smells like human flesh, like heat,” said Nausícaa.
“Don’t profane this sacristy with your lies. In this city everything filters through, whether it’s sewage or fried food, mint, epazote, thyme, marjoram, incense, or myrrh, you know what I mean? I used to wear perfume when I was a nun, after the abortions, because it made me feel less dirty; it was a pirate essence, a scent the gods could breathe. I stopped being an impure sister and became the Black Brigand. You say that it smells like human flesh. Are you suggesting-”
“No, no, Father Diego Tonatiuh. I recognize the smell from the incident with the cannibal. The case was assigned to Commander Pérez, the guy I told you about. I worked on it too. It was the neighbors who called it in. They’d been complaining for more than a year that something smelled weird in a house near where they lived downtown. We went and we found-”