We slept in the Impala. We woke up at eight the next morning, freezing cold. We've been driving and driving around the desert without coming to a town or even a miserable ranch. Sometimes we get lost in the bare hills. Sometimes the road runs between crags and ravines and then we drop down to the desert again. The imperial troops were here in 1865 and 1866. Just the mention of Maximilian's army can crack us up. Belano and Lima, who already knew something about the history of Sonora before they came here, say there was a Belgian colonel who tried to capture Santa Teresa. A Belgian at the head of a Belgian regiment. It cracks us up. A Belgian-Mexican regiment. Of course, they got lost, although the Santa Teresa historians prefer to think they were defeated by the town's militia. Hilarious. There's also a record of a skirmish in Villaviciosa, possibly between the Belgian rearguard and the villagers. It's a story that Lima and Belano know well. They talk about Rimbaud. If only we'd followed our instincts, they say. Hilarious.
At six in the evening we come upon a house by the side of the road. They give us tortillas and beans, for which we pay a hefty sum, and fresh water that we drink straight from a gourd. Without moving, the peasants watch us while we eat. Where is Villaviciosa? On the other side of those hills, they tell us.
JANUARY 31
We've found Cesárea Tinajero. In turn, Alberto and the policeman found us. Everything was much simpler than I ever imagined it would be, but I never imagined anything like this. The town of Villaviciosa is a ghost town. The northern Mexican town of lost assassins, the closest thing to Aztlán, said Lima. I don't know. It's more like a town of the tired or the bored.
The houses are adobe, although the houses here almost all have front yards and backyards and some yards are cement, which is strange and unlike the houses every other place we've been this crazy month. The trees in the town are dying. As far as I could see, there are two bars, a grocery store, and nothing else. The rest is houses. Business is done in the street, on a curb in the plaza, or under the arches of the biggest building in town, the mayor's house, where no one seems to live.
Finding Cesárea wasn't hard. We asked about her and were sent to the washing troughs, on the east side of town. The troughs are made of stone and they're set in such a way that the water flows from the height of the first one and runs down a little wooden channel, enough for ten women's washing. When we arrived there were only three washerwomen there. Cesárea was in the middle and we recognized her right away. Seen from behind, leaning over the trough, there was nothing poetic about her. She looked like a rock or an elephant. Her rear end was enormous and it moved to the rhythm set by her arms, two oak trunks, as she rinsed the clothes and wrung them out. Her hair was long, it fell all the way to her waist. She was barefoot. When we called her she turned around calmly and faced us. The other two washerwomen turned around too. For an instant Cesárea and her companions watched us without saying anything: the one to her right was probably about thirty, but she could just as easily have been forty or fifty. The one to her left couldn't have been more than twenty. Cesárea's eyes were black and they seemed to absorb all the sun in the yard. I looked at Lima, who had stopped smiling. Belano blinked as if he had a grain of sand in his eye. At some point, exactly when I can't say, we started to walk to Cesárea Tinajero's house. I remember that as we headed down little streets under the relentless sun, Belano attempted an explanation, or several explanations. I remember his silence after that. Then I know that someone led me into a dark, cool room and that I threw myself down on a mattress and slept. When I woke up, Lupe was beside me, asleep, her arms and legs twined around my body. It took me a while to realize where I was. I heard voices and got up. In the next room Cesárea and my friends were talking. When I came in no one looked at me. I remember that I sat on the floor and lit a cigarette. Bunches of herbs tied with sisal hung on the walls of the room. Belano and Lima were smoking, but what I smelled wasn't tobacco.
Cesárea was sitting near the only window and every so often she would look out, up at the sky, and then I don't know why, but I could have cried too, although I didn't. We were there for a long time. At some moment Lupe came into the room and sat down beside me without saying anything. Later the five of us got up and went out into the yellow, almost white street. It must have been near dusk, although the heat still came in waves. We walked to where we had left the car. Along the way we saw only two people: an old man carrying a transistor radio in one hand and a ten-year-old boy who was smoking. It was blazing hot inside the Impala. Belano and Lima got in front. I was sandwiched between Lupe and the immense humanity of Cesárea Tinajero. Then the car crept complaining along the dirt streets of Villaviciosa until we reached the road.
We were outside of town when we saw a car coming from the opposite direction. We were probably the only two cars for miles around. For a second I thought we were going to collide, but Lima pulled over to one side and braked. A dust cloud settled around our prematurely aged Impala. Someone swore. It might have been Cesárea. I felt Lupe's body pressing against mine. When the dust cloud vanished, Alberto and the cop had gotten out of the other car and were aiming their guns at us.
I felt sick: I couldn't hear what they were saying, but I saw their mouths move and I guessed that they were ordering us to get out. They're insulting us, I heard Belano say incredulously. Sons of bitches, said Lima.
FEBRUARY 1