"I see what you're getting at, sir-I mean Quim."
"You see what I'm getting at? What am I getting at?"
"You're talking about Lupe's pimp."
"Very good, García Madero. You've put your finger on it: Lupe's pimp. Because what is Lupe to him? His means of support, his occupation, his office; in a word, his job. And what does a worker do when he loses his job? Tell me, what does he do."
"He gets angry?"
"He gets really angry. And who does he get angry at? The person who did him out of a job, of course. No question about it. He doesn't get angry at his neighbor, though then again maybe he does, but the first person he goes after is the person who lost him his job, naturally. And who's sawing away at the floor under him so that he loses his job? My daughter, of course. So who will he get angry at? My daughter. And meanwhile at her family too, because you know what these people are like. Their revenge is horrific and indiscriminate. There are nights, I swear, when I have terrible dreams"-he laughed a little, looking at the grass, as if remembering his dreams-"that would make the strongest man's hair stand on end. Sometimes I dream that I'm in a city that's Mexico City but at the same time it isn't Mexico City, I mean, it's a strange city, but I recognize it from other dreams-I'm not boring you, am I?"
"Hardly!"
"As I was saying, it's a vaguely strange and vaguely familiar city. And I'm wandering endless streets trying to find a hotel or a boardinghouse where they'll take me in. But I can't find anything. All I find is a man pretending to be a deaf-mute. And worst of all is that it's getting late, and I know that when night comes my life won't be worth a thing, will it? I'll be at nature's mercy, as they say. It's a bitch of a dream," he added reflectively.
"Well, Quim, I'm going to see whether the girls are here."
"Of course," he said, not letting go of my arm.
"I'll stop in later on to say goodbye," I said, just to say something.
"I liked what you did last night, García Madero. I liked that you took care of María and you didn't get horny around those prostitutes."
"Jesus, Quim, it was just Lupe… And any friends of María's are friends of mine," I said, flushing to the tips of my ears.
"Well, go see the girls, I think they have another guest. That room is busier than…" He couldn't find the right word and laughed.
I hurried away from him as fast as I could.
When I was about to go into the courtyard, I turned around and Quim Font was still there, laughing quietly to himself and looking at the magnolias.
NOVEMBER 18
Today I went back to the Fonts' house. Quim came to the gate to let me in and gave me a hug. In the little house I found María, Angélica, and Ernesto San Epifanio. The three of them were sitting on Angélica's bed. When I came in they instinctively drew closer together, as if to prevent me from seeing what they were sharing. I think they were expecting Pancho. When they realized it was me, their faces didn't relax.
"You should get in the habit of locking the door," said Angélica. "He almost gave me a heart attack."
Unlike María, Angélica has a very white face, though the underlying skin tone is olive or pink, I'm not sure which, olive, I think, and she's got high cheekbones, a broad forehead, and plumper lips than her sister's. When I saw her, or rather when I saw that she was looking at me (the other times I'd been there she'd never actually looked at me), I felt as if a hand, its fingers long and delicate but very strong, was squeezing my heart. I know Lima and Belano wouldn't approve of that image, but it fits my feelings like a glove.
"I wasn't the last to come in," said María.
"Yes you were." Angélica's voice was assured, almost autocratic, and for a minute I thought that she seemed like the older sister, not the younger one. "Bolt the door and sit down somewhere," she ordered me.
I did as she said. The curtains of the little house were drawn and the light that came in was green, shot through with yellow. I sat in a wooden chair, beside one of the bookcases, and asked them what they were looking at. Ernesto San Epifanio raised his head and scrutinized me for a few seconds.
"Weren't you the one taking notes on the books I was carrying the other day?"
"Yes. Brian Patten, Adrian Henri, and another one I can't remember now."
"The Lost Fire Brigade, by Spike Hawkins."
"Exactly."
"And have you bought them yet?" His tone was mildly sarcastic.
"Not yet, but I plan to."
"You have to go to a bookstore that specializes in English literature. You won't find them in the regular bookstores."
"I know that. Ulises told me about a bookstore where you all go."
"Oh, Ulises Lima," said San Epifanio, stressing the i's. "He'll probably send you to the Librería Baudelaire, where there's lots of French poetry, but not much English poetry… And who exactly are 'you all'?"
" 'You all'?" I said, surprised. The Font sisters kept looking at objects I couldn't see and passing them back and forth. Sometimes they laughed. Angélica's laugh was like a bubbling brook.
"The people who go to bookstores."
"Oh, the visceral realists, of course."
"The visceral realists? Please. The only ones who read are Ulises and his little Chilean friend. The rest are a bunch of functional illiterates. As far as I can tell, the only thing they do in bookstores is steal books."
"But then they read them, don't they?" I said, slightly annoyed.
"No, you're wrong. Then they give the books to Ulises and Belano, who read them and tell what they're about so the others can go around bragging about having read Queneau, for example, when all they've really done is steal a book by Queneau, not read it."
"Belano is Chilean?" I asked, trying to steer the conversation in a different direction, and also because I honestly didn't know.
"Couldn't you tell?" said María without lifting her eyes from whatever it was she was looking at.
"Well, I did notice that he had a slightly different accent, but I thought he might be from Tamaulipas or from Yucatán, I don't know…"
"You thought he was from Yucatán? Oh, García Madero, you poor innocent child. He thought Belano was from Yucatán," San Epifanio said to the Font sisters, and the three of them laughed.
I laughed too.
"He doesn't look like he's from Yucatán," I said, "but he could be. Anyway, I'm not a specialist in Yucatecans."
"Well, he isn't from Yucatán. He's from Chile."
"So how long has he lived in Mexico?" I said to say something.
"Since the Pinochet putsch," said María without lifting her head.
"Since long before the coup," said San Epifanio. "I met him in 1971. What happened was, he went back to Chile and after the coup he came back to Mexico."
"But we didn't know either of you back then," said Angélica.
"Belano and I were very close in those days," said San Epifanio. "We were both eighteen and we were the youngest poets on Calle Bucareli."
"Will you please tell me what you're looking at?" I said.
"Pictures of mine. You might not like them, but you can look at them too if you want."
"Are you a photographer?" I said, getting up and going over to the bed.
"No, I'm just a poet," said San Epifanio, making room for me. "Poetry is more than enough for me, although sooner or later I'm bound to commit the vulgarity of writing stories."
"Here." Angélica passed me a little pile of pictures that they had finished with. "You have to look at them in chronological order."
There must have been fifty or sixty photos. All of them were taken with flash. All were of a room, probably a hotel room, except for two, which were of a dimly lit street at night and a red Mustang with a few people in it. The faces of the people in the Mustang were blurry. The rest of the pictures showed a blond, short-haired boy, sixteen or seventeen, although he might only have been fifteen, and a girl maybe two or three years older, and Ernesto San Epifanio. There must have been a fourth person, the one taking the pictures, but he or she was never seen. The first pictures were of the blond boy, dressed, and then with progressively fewer clothes on. In picture number fifteen or so, San Epifanio and the girl showed up. San Epifanio was wearing a purple blazer. The girl had on a fancy party dress.