This is the bullfighter Pepe Avellaneda's grave, said the gravedigger, gesturing toward a niche in a neglected corner. Belano and Lima went over and tried to read the inscription, but the niche was four levels up and night was already falling over the cemetery paths. There were no flowers at any of the graves, except one where four plastic carnations hung, and most of the inscriptions were covered in dust. Then Belano interlaced his fingers, making a little seat or stirrup, and Lima stepped up, pressing his face to the glass over Avellaneda's photograph. What he did next was wipe the plaque with his hand and read the inscription aloud: "José Avellaneda Tinajero, matador, Nogales 1903-Agua Prieta 1930." Is that all? I heard Belano say. That's all, replied Lima's voice, hoarser than ever. Then he jumped down and did as Belano had done, making a step with his hands so that Belano could climb up. Give me the lighter, Lupe, I heard Belano say. Lupe went up to the pathetic figure composed of my two friends and without saying anything handed him a box of matches. What about my lighter? said Belano. I don't have it, mano, said Lupe, in a sweet voice that I still wasn't used to. Belano lit a match and held it up to the niche. When it went out he lit another, and then another. Lupe was leaning against the wall across from him, her long legs crossed. She was staring at the ground, looking pensive. Lima was staring at the ground too, but his face only expressed the effort of supporting Belano's weight. After using up seven matches and burning the tips of his fingers a few times, Belano gave up and got down. We walked back out toward the gate of the Agua Prieta cemetery without speaking. There, by the door, Belano gave the gravedigger a few bills and we left.
JANUARY 18
In Santa Teresa, when we went into a café with a big mirror behind the bar, I realized how much we had changed. Belano hasn't shaved for days. Lima doesn't need to shave, but he probably hasn't combed his hair since around the time Belano stopped shaving. I'm all skin and bones (I've been screwing three times a night, on average). Only Lupe looks good, or anyway better than she did when we left Mexico City.
JANUARY 19
Was Cesárea Tinajero the dead bullfighter's cousin? Was she a distant relative? Did she ask them to put her own last name on the plaque, give Avellaneda her own name, as a way of saying this man is mine? Did she add her name to the bullfighter's name as a joke? A way of saying Cesárea Tinajero was here? It hardly matters. Today we called Mexico City again. All quiet at Quim's. Belano talked to Quim, Lima talked to Quim. When I tried to talk the phone went dead, although we had plenty of coins. I got the impression that Quim didn't want to talk to me and that he hung up. Then Belano called his father and Lima called his mother and then Belano called Laura Jáuregui. The first two conversations were relatively long, formal, and the last was very short. Only Lupe and I didn't call anyone in Mexico City, as if we didn't feel like it or didn't have anyone to talk to.
JANUARY 20
This morning, while we were eating breakfast at a café in Nogales, we saw Alberto behind the wheel of his Camaro. He was wearing a shirt the same color as the car, bright yellow, and next to him was a guy in a leather jacket who looked like a cop. Lupe recognized him right away: she turned pale and said Alberto's here. She didn't let her fear show, but I knew she was afraid. Lima followed Lupe's gaze and said yes, it was Alberto and one of his buddies. Belano watched the car go by through the big café windows and told us we were hallucinating. I saw Alberto perfectly clearly. Let's get out of here now, I said. Belano looked at us and said no way. First we would go to the Nogales library and then head back to Hermosillo to continue our search, as we had planned. Lima agreed. I like your stubbornness, man, he said. So they finished their breakfasts (neither Lupe nor I could eat anything else) and then we left the café, got in the Impala, and dropped Belano off at the door to the library. Be brave, for fuck's sake, don't go imagining things, he said before disappearing. Lima watched the library door for a while, as if trying to come up with a reply, and then he started the car. You saw him, Ulises, said Lupe, it was him. I think so, said Lima. What will we do if he finds me? said Lupe. Lima didn't answer. We parked the car on a deserted street, in a middle-class neighborhood, with no bars or stores in sight except for a fruit stand, and Lupe started to tell us stories from her childhood and then I started to tell stories about when I was a boy too, just to kill time, and although Ulises didn't open his mouth once and started to read a book, still sitting behind the wheel, you could tell he was listening because every so often he would raise his eyes and look at us and smile. At noon we went to pick up Belano. Lima parked close to a nearby plaza and said that I should go to the library. He would stay with Lupe and the Impala in case Alberto showed up and they had to get out of there fast. I walked the four blocks to the library quickly, looking straight ahead the whole way. I found Belano sitting at a long wooden table, stained dark by the passage of time, with several bound volumes of the Nogales local paper. He was the only person in the library, and when I got there he raised his head and motioned for me to come and sit next to him.
JANUARY 21
The only image I took away from the Nogales newspaper's obituary of Pepín Avellaneda is of Cesárea Tinajero walking along a dreary desert road hand in hand with her little bullfighter, a little bullfighter who's struggling not to keep shrinking, who's struggling to grow, and who in fact begins to grow little by little, say until he reaches five and a half feet, then disappears.
JANUARY 22
In El Cubo. To get from Nogales to El Cubo you have to take the highway to Santa Ana and head west, from Santa Ana to Pueblo Nuevo, Pueblo Nuevo to Altar, Altar to Caborca, Caborca to San Isidro, then take the road to Sonoyta, on the Arizona border, but turn off onto a dirt road before you get there and go about fifteen or twenty miles. The Nogales newspaper talked about "his faithful companion, a devoted teacher in El Cubo." In the town we went to the school, and one glance was enough to tell us that it had been built after 1940. Cesárea Tinajero couldn't have taught here. Though if we dug around under it, we might be able to find the old school.
We talked to the teacher. She teaches the children Spanish and Pápago. The Pápagos live in Arizona and Sonora. We asked the teacher whether she was Pápago. No, she isn't. I'm from Guaymas, she tells us, and my grandfather was a Mayo. We ask her why she teaches Pápago. So the language won't be lost, she tells us. There are only two hundred Pápagos left in Mexico. You're right, that's not many, we admit. In Arizona there are almost sixteen thousand, but only two hundred in Mexico. And how many Pápagos are left in El Cubo? About twenty, says the teacher, but it doesn't matter, I'll keep teaching. Then she explains that the Pápagos don't call themselves that. They call themselves O'Odham and the Pimas call themselves Óob and the Seris call themselves Konkáak. We tell her that we were in Bahía Kino, in Punta Chueca, and El Dólar and we heard the fishermen singing Seri songs. The teacher is surprised. There are seven hundred Konkáak, she says, if that, and they don't fish. Well, these fishermen had learned a Seri song, we say. Maybe, says the teacher, but more likely they fooled you. Later she invited us to her house for dinner. She lives alone. We asked her whether she wouldn't like to live in Hermosillo or Mexico City. She said no. She likes this place. Then we went to see an old Pápago woman who lived half a mile from El Cubo. The old woman's house was adobe. It consisted of three rooms, two empty and one in which she lived with her animals. And yet the smell was hardly noticeable, swept away by the desert wind that came in through the glassless windows.