Our own trip back to Monrovia was almost without incident. It was long and grueling, but we didn't run into soldiers from either camp. We got to Brewerville at dusk. There we said goodbye to most of the people who'd come with us and the next morning a van from a humanitarian organization took us back to Monrovia. Jean-Pierre was out of Liberia in less than a day. I spent two more weeks there. The cook, his wife, and their son, with whom I became friendly, moved into the Center. The woman worked making beds and sweeping the floor and sometimes I would look out the window of my room and see the boy playing with other children or with the soldiers who were guarding the hotel. I never saw the driver again, but he made it to Monrovia alive, which is some consolation. It goes without saying that for the rest of my time there I tried to track down Belano, find out what had happened in the Brownsville-Black Creek-Thomas Creek area, but I couldn't get any straight answers. According to some, the territory was now under the control of Kensey's armed bands, and according to others, troops under a nineteen-year-old general, General Lebon I think was his name, had managed to reestablish Taylor's control over all the territory between Kakata and Monrovia, which included Brownsville and Black Creek. But I never found out whether this was true or false. One day I went to hear a speech at a place near the American embassy. The speech was given by a General Wellman, and in his own way, he tried to explain the situation in the country. At the end, anyone could ask whatever they wanted. When everyone had left or gotten tired of asking questions that we somehow knew were pointless, I asked him about General Kensey, about General Lebon, about the situation in the towns of Brownsville and Black Creek, about the fates of photographer Emilio López Lobo, from Spain, and journalist Arturo Belano, from Chile. General Wellman gave me a long look before he answered (but he gave everyone the same look, maybe he was nearsighted and didn't know where to get himself a pair of glasses). In as few words as possible, he said that according to his reports General Kensey had been dead for a week. Lebon's troops had killed him. General Lebon, in turn, was also dead, in his case at the hands of a gang of highwaymen, in one of the eastern neighborhoods of Monrovia. So far as Black Creek was concerned, he said: "Peace reigns in Black Creek." Literally. And he had never heard of the settlement of Brownsville, though he pretended otherwise.
Two days later I left Liberia and never went back.
26
Ernesto García Grajales, Universidad de Pachuca, Pachuca, Mexico, December 1996. In all humbleness, sir, I can say that I'm the only expert on the visceral realists in Mexico, and if pressed, the world. God willing, I plan to publish a book about them. Professor Reyes Arévalo has told me that the university press might bring it out. Of course, Professor Reyes Arévalo had never heard of the visceral realists. Deep down he would have preferred a monograph on the Mexican modernists or an annotated edition of Manuel Pérez Garabito, the Pachucan poet par excellence. But by dint of perseverance, I've managed to convince him that there's nothing wrong with studying certain aspects of our most fiercely modern poetry. And in the process, we'll bring Pachuca to the threshold of the twenty-first century. Yes, you could say I'm the foremost scholar in the field, the definitive authority, but that's not saying much. I'm probably the only person who cares. Hardly anyone even remembers the visceral realists anymore. Many of them are dead. Others have disappeared and no one knows what happened to them. But some are still active. Jacinto Requena, for example, is a film critic now and runs the Pachuca film society. He's the one who first got me interested in the group. María Font lives in Mexico City. She never married. She writes, but she doesn't publish. Ernesto San Epifanio died. Xóchitl García works for Mexico City newspaper magazines and Sunday supplements. I don't think she writes poetry anymore. Rafael Barrios disappeared in the United States. I don't know whether he's still around. Angélica Font recently published her second collection of poetry, only thirty pages long, not a bad book, in a very elegant edition. Luscious Skin died. Pancho Rodríguez died. Emma Méndez committed suicide. Moctezuma Rodríguez is involved in politics. I've heard that Felipe Müller is still in Barcelona, married and with a kid. He seems to be happy. Every so often his buddies over here publish some poem he's written. Ulises Lima still lives in Mexico City. I went to see him last break. A real spectacle. To tell you the truth, I was even a little scared at first. The entire time I was with him he called me Professor. But mano, I said to him, I'm younger than you, so why don't we call each other by our first names? Whatever you say, Professor, he replied. What a character. About Arturo Belano I know nothing. No, I never met Belano. Yes, several of them. I never met Müller or Pancho Rodríguez or Luscious Skin. Or Rafael Barrios either. Juan García Madero? No, the name doesn't ring a bell. He never belonged to the group. Of course I'm sure. Man, if I tell you so as the reigning expert on the subject, it's because that's the way it is. They were all so young. I have their magazines, their pamphlets, documents you can't find anyplace. There was a seventeen-year-old kid, but he wasn't called García Madero. Let's see… his name was Bustamante. He only published one poem in a mimeographed magazine that came out in Mexico City, no more than twenty copies of the first issue, and that was the only issue there ever was. And he wasn't Mexican, but Chilean, like Belano and Müller, the son of exiles. No, as far as I know this Bustamante doesn't write poetry anymore. But he belonged to the group. The Mexico City visceral realists. Yes, because there had already been another group of visceral realists, in the 1920s. The northern visceral realists. You didn't know that? Well, they existed. Although talk about undocumented. No, it wasn't a coincidence. More like an homage. A gesture. A response. Who knows. Anyway, these are labyrinths I prefer not to lose myself in. I limit myself to the material at hand and let readers and scholars draw their own conclusions. I think my little book will do well. Worst-case scenario, I'll be bringing Pachuca into the modern age.