“I’m someone else.”
Until finally my brother pulled down the poncho, revealing a pair of frightened eyes.
“We’re not going to hurt you,” my brother said. “We’re going to get the doctor.”
“I’ll come with you,” he said.
But after we said goodbye, that same night, he returned to the bench in the square and the snow-cone seller and the policeman threw a fishing net over him, dragged him off to a field, and thrashed him.
The next morning found him sprawled on a pruned rosebush, his face black and blue and his hair muddied. His shoes were missing, his shirt and pants torn. Solitary as a captive fox, he was surrounded by curious onlookers, and when the corporal saw him lying there he thought he was drunk and ordered a soldier to throw cold water in his face, remarking pityingly, “Poor asshole.”
Two days later, the corporal left the village with his soldiers, Ricardo el Negro’s mother, baskets of fruit, packages of filet, liver and chorizo, live chickens, and bags of cheese.
At midday he took the train to Morelia, seen off by the cacique, the secretary, the judge, the notary, the policemen, the priest, and four leading citizens.
“In your compositions on winter,” our teacher said, “don’t forget about snow.”
Quedito, asleep with his eyes open, suddenly dropped his pencil on his notebook. This prompted the teacher to ask him the “how many” questions: “How many meters in a liter? How many humerus bones in a hand? How many seas flow into a river?”
Questions that made Quedito, awakened by the nudge of another student’s elbow, begin to cry.
At the back of the classroom, amid the rolled-up maps and broken desks, he would doze off.
Or during recess, leaning against a wall, he intently studied a ray of light fracturing on some stones, seemingly oblivious to the voices of his schoolmates playing nearby.
“A plane loaded with …”
“Apples.”
“A plane loaded with …”
“Melons.”
Engrossed in his instant, like an animal or a god.
In the boy’s bathroom, someone had written:
Slutty
Susi
I know
your pink
pussy.
and
Eeny, meeny,
miny, moe
Catch your mother
by the toe
amid muddy handprints that seemed to have crawled towards the window as they wrote, slipped through the empty frame, and slithered into the girls’ bathroom.
The waning light shone drearily on these scrawls, and the names of female schoolmates, illustrated with male and female genitals done in colored pencils, were entangled, with tenderness and violence, in a coitus of shapes and letters.
One afternoon after school Juan and I stayed behind to play soccer. Our teacher was correcting exams in the classroom and had asked us to wait so she wasn’t on her own.
But after playing for a while, my stomach started to hurt, and feeling stiff and weary, I sat down on a rock to look at a yellow flower next to a smaller rock that seemed to sing with color.
Juan went to the bathroom to pee, about when our teacher was locking the classroom door. The corridors were already dark and on the roof a bat began to squeak.
All of a sudden, our teacher peered through the bathroom window to watch Juan peeing and, calling over to me in a hollow voice, told me she was going to go in to see how much he had peed.
Through a crack in the bathroom door, which didn’t close completely, I saw her take his member in her hand. Juan covered his face with his arms. And for a few seconds, or perhaps minutes, I heard him moan.
Then he ran out with his fly unzipped.
She lit a cigarette, exhaled the smoke, and approached me, smiling. Under her arm she carried the book Little by Little, which Juan had left behind. She asked me to bring it to him.
One week later, I was standing outside my house when Ricardo el Negro passed by carrying a football.
When I followed him he began running down the cobblestoned street ever more quickly, bouncing the ball off walls and doors.
Once on the field, he threw the ball far from the entrance and then ran to catch up with it, passing it from one foot to the other until it escaped him.
“Go fetch the ball,” he yelled at me.
“No.”
“If you don’t go, you won’t play.”
“I won’t play.”
We then sat down on the grass, looking at the ground. He was pensive, with a lock of hair on his forehead.
Finally, he stood up to get the ball. And he threw it hard at my face, without hitting me.
I threw it at him too, but missed. And he at me. And we started to play.
Before long he tired. He stopped the ball with his foot.
“I’m not playing anymore.”
He stared hard at me.
“Let’s go to the stream,” he said.
Shortly before we reached the stream he held a finger to his lips, hissing shhh, and crept to the edge of the ravine. His pants and shirt dusty amid the grass and nettles, he stuck out his head under the branches of a tree.
A few minutes later, gaping and intoxicated by what he saw, he whispered throatily, “Now it’s your turn.”
I looked.
A woman was bathing. She was naked underneath the green slip that clung to her body, outlining her curves. Standing in the middle of the stream with water up to her knees and rosy legs like a waterbird’s, her drooping neckline revealed two large milky breasts. Her expression was childlike, and the hair on her bosom resembled plumage.
With both hands she splashed water on her face and soaped her head. She squinted in our direction, seeming not to see us. The foam whitened her hair, like a hat drying in the sun.
Suddenly she raised her slip and with a clay vessel threw water between her thighs. Facing us now, her movements were slow, even lackadaisical.
She was unembarrassed, although I sensed that she saw us when she reached for a bar of soap among the pebbles. Her skin became covered in goose bumps, as if despite the voluptuousness of her body it too was vulnerable to cold and death.
But since she didn’t cover herself though she looked right at us, I thought she hadn’t seen us after all.
Then she took off her slip and was completely naked. As she bent over to pick up the clay vessel her breasts hung down.
All of a sudden Ricardo el Negro made noise shifting his feet. And the woman, who had surely known all along that we were there, yelled, “That’s how the pill is sweetened!” and made an obscene gesture.
We broke into a run.
Sometimes I thought that if Silvia were to spend the night with me in a room, both of us lying in bed, naked, getting closer and closer, perhaps we’d make love. But in order to be together in a room, in a bed, lying naked, the occasion had to arise. And that occasion would only arise if she were in danger at the moment of lying down.
Moreover, for that to happen, Martians had to land in Contepec. And the villagers would have to flee, leaving the two of us on our own, for inexplicable reasons, in a house, in a room, in a bed.
Nevertheless, as the days passed and the occasion never arose, I realized that it was easier to talk to Silvia about what I wanted than for the Martians to land.
All I had to do to let her know what I wanted was to tell her. However, given the indifferent way she looked at me, or rather, didn’t look at me, it was difficult to tell her. And because the subject didn’t have anything to do with our conversation, no opportune moments arose for such a serious announcement.