That night, they treated the Norteño in a room in the jail, grudgingly and without anesthesia, so he would die. And they hung him by his arms and beat him with sticks so he would die. But he refused to die.
The next day soldiers arrived from Morelia. The villagers were curious about the agents, who were scared the local people might kill them.
But when the soldiers moved in, it was the people of Contepec who were afraid, since they pointed their rifles at every man, woman, old person, or child who went near them. And from the window of a troop truck a mocking sergeant brandished his machine gun.
So when the soldiers carried off the Norteño and the dead agent, people calmed down. Yet they never paid the carpenter who made the coffin. “Let the village pay,” a corporal who’d stayed on to keep an eye on things told him.
The Norteño didn’t hail from Contepec. In Mexico City he’d become the boyfriend of the baker’s daughter and one day he came to town with her. He opened a cantina, which he would only leave to go home to sleep, and spent customerless afternoons throwing dice. He had a particular dislike for Tequilitas, who used to come in drunk to talk to him.
“Get out,” he’d say. “I prefer to be alone, like a vulture. All alone in my business.”
The new cacique followed the corporal around, anxious to please. The corporal treated him like a subordinate. And not just a subordinate, but one he scorned. Whenever he mentioned him his mouth twisted, as if he were throwing the words at his listeners or spitting out the cacique.
Sitting between two soldiers on a bench in the square, the corporal would pull out his pistol and with his slanty eyes gleaming maliciously take aim at the cross atop the church tower.
“Let’s see if I can hit it,” he’d say.
He limped when he walked, and his right shoe looked flattened, as if it were hollow with no foot inside.
There was a yellow dog, very fierce, who followed him everywhere as if he were his master.
This dog, who growled at everybody, attacked me and Juan one July night, chasing us up a tree, where we remained on a branch for more than half an hour. Finally I slid down and when I saw the dog coming at me I picked up a stone and threw it at him, hitting his head.
The dog began to run in circles, biting the air, as if he’d gone mad.
That morning the corporal went to the market with his soldiers. He sauntered past the stands as though he owned them. He probed and picked up the fruit, and everything from oranges to melons, peanuts to pineapples, mameys to watermelons, dropped into his bag, unpaid for, while the fruit sellers totted up with their eyes what he took from them.
Afterwards he came to the shop and from the threshold asked, “Who does the selling here?”
My father replied, “I do. What do you need?”
“Everything.”
“Everything of what?”
“What’s in the store.”
“If you buy it.”
He looked at the shelves. He looked at my father. His slanted eyes shone with that gleam that precedes laughter. And then he saw me.
“I know this kid,” he said. “He threw a stone at my dog’s head. He left him an idiot … Let’s see …” He turned towards my father. “Give me a shirt, one of the fancy ones. I’m going to give it to my brother when I leave.”
He chose one. And paid only five pesos for it. He asked that it be gift- wrapped. And he walked out of the store, followed by his soldiers.
The corporal’s dog died.
The next day I saw him lying by the bandstand in the square.
At first, from the distance, I thought he was sleeping, but when I walked past later on I realized he was dead.
A policeman dragged him over the cobblestones to throw him to the vultures.
The corporal didn’t seem to feel sorry or even remember that the dog used to always follow him. When he ran into the policeman and saw the dog on the cobblestones his expression didn’t change, and he only seemed annoyed that the policeman wasn’t dragging him fast enough to the outskirts of the village.
Standing in the street, he screwed up his mouth pensively as if about to make a decision, but looked towards the mountain — its blues, its shadows, the sunlit peak, the rocky ravine — as if that moment in time were tearing him out of time, taking him far from the village, from the policeman, from the dog. Yet suddenly his expression lost its calm, and serenity vanished from his face like a fleeting cloud. He turned back to the soldiers and yelled, “Get moving, you lazy bums.”
In the streets a loudspeaker was announcing the movie Bugambilia, which my father was showing at his theater that Sunday.
The soldiers went to the afternoon screening and mingled with the girls, old people, and children.
The corporal arrived once the movie had already begun and insisted the lights be turned back on so he could find a seat. But once the movie started up again he didn’t look at the screen but at the women sitting next to him or in the aisle behind. And, bored by the darkness, he soon left.
Afternoons, from the windows of the Town Hall, the corporal spied on the comings and goings of women on their way to market.
The soldiers on guard made excuses to the campesinos who came to see him, saying he was busy in a meeting, although he was watching them from a side window, like a ghost or a recluse.
Two campesinos, father and son, came looking for him over many days without being able to see him. In his stead they met with the corporal’s secretary, who sent them to his uncle, the judge; who sent them to his cousin, the notary; who sent them to his brother-in-law, the police officer; who told them that the matter depended on the mayor, who was away on a trip … but if it was urgent they should go see the secretary, his nephew … Each one charged them five pesos, for time lost listening to their problem.
The corporal brought Ricardo el Negro’s mother to live with him. She followed him everywhere, like a shadow. He told people he was going to take her to Morelia because she was a good laundress, a good pozole maker, and a good lover.
Ricardo el Negro was very unhappy. Neglected by his mother, he sat outside the Town Hall waiting to see her go in and out, and he followed her from a distance down the street. Fearfully. Because the soldiers threw stones and threatened to castrate him.
Ricardo el Negro’s frightened face amused the corporal, who would happily have had the soldiers capture him to toy with.
Nevertheless, what pained Ricardo el Negro the most was not that his mother was living with the corporal but that whenever they happened to cross paths in the street she pretended not to know him.
She had padlocked the house so he stayed in a doorless room in my father’s orchard and slept on a mattress my brother put out for him. At mealtimes, we brought him something to eat.
One night when my mother was ill, my brother and I went for the doctor. In the square we saw someone sitting on a bench, hiding his head under a poncho as if he didn’t want us to see him. As we drew nearer, the figure compressed itself so firmly against the stone backing that we thought it wanted to disappear into the bench. My brother recognized him.
“Ricardo,” he said.
No one moved beneath the poncho.
“Ricardo,” my brother repeated.
This time, still motionless, a voice that seemed to be the poncho’s said, “I’m not Ricardo … I’m someone else.”
“What do you mean you’re not Ricardo … You’re nobody but him.”