His first purchase was a pair of sandals from a curb-side vendor. There were ten one-hundred-peso notes in the bundle and the small merchant grumbled at the size of the bill but managed to have it changed in a store when Tony suggested he was moving on without buying. Before he left he asked directions to the central market where he would disappear.
The heat of the day still lingered in the streets, intensifying the thirst that dried his throat and settled a chalky deposit over his teeth. In an attempt to allay these symptoms he stopped at a stall for a bottle of cold beer which helped a good deal, if only temporarily. The master spy, what was his name?—Timberio—had mentioned a thirst after the drugging and he certainly was right. Temporarily fortified, Tony left the main streets and plunged into a narrow corridor that led to the lights and bustle of the market.
Mercado central. The central market. There is one in every Mexican city large enough to be called a city. Each one different, all very much the same. Open on a seven-day-a-week basis, with certain days the most popular. Stands, stalls, counters, corners, merchants, mendicants, noise, music, mariachi bands, beggars, something for everyone, everything for sale. Fruit stands piled high with tropical color; yellow, green and red bananas, black zapote, yellow-orange mango, purple cactus fruit. The herb merchant with his dried and aromatic wares carefully labeled each for its medicinal qualities; this coarse powder for gout and backache, that miraculous flower for cancer, the other to make tea for liver pain. A great bustle and air of excitement everywhere, odor of fresh meat at the rows of butcher stalls, newly dead carcasses flayed and hung, starvation-ribbed dogs under foot snatching at scrap, dodging the angry kicks. Just beyond, in logistic proximity, the food stalls and al fresco restaurants, meat steaming on embers before the consumers’ eyes, great caldrons of beans, hot crispness of tortillas, customers standing or sitting on stools, backs to the crowd.
Everything for sale; knives, machetes, mattresses, mattocks, harnesses, whips, brassieres, bicycles, all there, all could be bought. And in between the grander merchants the single salesmen, the man sitting on his heels with a handful of limes held out before him, the woman with the wooden box spread with the cigarettes from a single packet to be sold one at a time, next to her the chirmoles vendor packing tiny paper cones with the living contents of these wood grubs so favored as a sauce ingredient.
Into this exciting atmosphere Tony plunged, rubbing shoulders and treading on heels as his were tread upon. First the hat vendor with his rising rows of somber sombreros, endless theme played upon wide brim and high crown. A purchase, simple white straw, press on. A beer to wet the throat. White pants, white shirt, the daily dress of the field worker, the farmer. These carefully wrapped in newspaper, a machete added for authenticity, the bundles then stuffed into a straw morral, the bag carried or worn over the shoulder. Tony winked at no one in particular and went, by a circuitous route to be sure he wasn’t followed, in the direction of hombres, the cavernous concrete public toilet. Here, in a metal-sided booth, he effected the change. All traces of the Yankee tourist who had entered vanished, were wrapped in paper and stuffed into the morral, and a man of the people emerged, one more of Mexico’s teeming masses. Now he was invisible.
A small celebration was in order and the swinging, slatted doors of a cantina named La Cucaracha drew him on. His skin was tanned enough, his hair dark enough, his Spanish good enough for this guise. The police would never see him, not notice the gringo spy within the simple farmer. It was a ploy that could not fail. Smoke and loud music from the juke box washed over him and he pushed to the wood bar and called out.
“Beer.”
“The beer here is too warm and I would not recommend it.”
The man who said this stood at Tony’s side, tall, wide shouldered, dressed in the same manner, a tiny glass clutched in his great hand, a look of eternal unhappiness drooping his hanging mustaches even lower.
“What would you recommend?” Tony asked with eager anticipation.
“Mezcal? Gloomily, but it was his natural manner; he was enjoying himself greatly. “The kind from Tequila.”
“A very good idea. Will you join me?”
“I accept with pleasure. I am called Pablo.”
“Antonio.”
With slow anticipation each licked the base of his thumb so the salt would adhere when they shook it on, seized up lime wedges between salty thumb and forefinger, raised the glasses with the transparent distillate of the cornucopious maguey in the other hand, then performed the pleasurable ritual of a lick of salt, a drink of tequila, a bite of lime, to blend all the flavors in the mouth at the same time in the indescribably fine combination that, according to those who know, is the only way to take tequila.
“Now I will buy you a drink,” Pablo said.
“You will not feel insulted if I disagree. The uncle of my wife who recently died left in his will a small sum of money which I now have. He was a good man, this uncle, and liked to drink, so I will buy a bottle with uncle’s money and we will drink to him.”
“That is a very fair and loyal idea. I can tell he must have been a fine man.” Pablo rapped loudly with the thick glass and the bartender hurried with their order.
When the level of the bottle had crept lower, at the end of an interesting anecdote involving some stolen chickens, Tony mentioned a certain feeling of hunger and Pablo nodded solemn agreement and rapped again with his glass.
“Two sandwiches.”
Tony watched, with a measured amount of trepidation, as the bartender cut two rolls in half and from a hulking glass crock removed two very green, large, and exceedingly hot peppers, each of which he mashed into one of the rolls. Then, as a further savory, he poured some of the pickling sauce from the crock over the bread, this sauce being a little bit hotter than the peppers themselves, before placing the finished product on the wood before them. Pablo ate his in regular bites, masticating each mouthful with bovine thoroughness before swallowing, and when he was finished he licked the last drops of flavor from his finger tips. Tony ate his as well, enjoying every bit of it although tears streamed from his eyes all the while; he was out of practice. They sipped at the tequila to hold the nourishing sandwiches down.
Farther down the bar a very drunken man loudly proclaimed that Jalisco was the finest city in Mexico and all other towns made of goat droppings, which is not the truth, and when he became too pushing in his claims someone hit him and he was thrown into the street, so naturally the topic turned to place of birth. Pablo was from the village of Tenoztlan here in the state of Guerrero, not far distant, and he knew, since he cared about these things, that Antonio was not from Guerrero but from a more distant state.
“You are correct. I am from California.”
“That far! But at least we are upon the same sea.”
He assumed that by California the state of Baja California was intended and not the North American state above it, but before Tony could correct him, or decide if he should correct him, another man standing close by spoke first.