Surprisingly, Álvaro Damián had taken charge. He was sitting in Quim's chair (Quim was standing in a corner) and signing several checks to the bearer. Belano and Lima were smiling. Lupe seemed worried but resigned. María asked Laura Damián's father what was going on. Laura Damián's father looked up from his checkbook and said that the Lupe problem had to be solved as quickly as possible.
"I'm going north, mana," said Lupe.
"What?" said María.
"Here, with these guys, in your dad's car."
It didn't take me long to figure out that Quim and Laura Damián's father had convinced my friends to take Lupe with them and go wherever they wanted, thus lifting the siege of the house.
What surprised me most was that Quim was letting them take the Impala. That was something I certainly hadn't expected.
When we left the room, Lupe and María went to pack. I followed them. Lupe's suitcase was almost empty because when she fled the hotel she'd left most of her clothes behind.
After the countdown to midnight on TV we all hugged: María, Angélica, Jorgito, Quim, Mrs. Font, her sister, Laura Damián's father, the architect, the painters, Quim's cousin, Arturo Belano, Ulises Lima, Lupe, and I.
There came a moment when none of us knew whom we were hugging anymore or whether we'd hugged the same person more than once.
Until ten it had been possible to see the shapes of Alberto and his sidekicks through the gate. By eleven they weren't there anymore and Jorgito was brave enough to go out into the garden, look over the wall, and scan the whole street. They were gone. At twelve-fifteen we all made our way stealthily to the garage and the goodbyes began. I hugged Belano and Lima and asked them what would happen to visceral realism. They didn't answer me. I hugged Lupe and told her to take care of herself. In return I got a kiss on the cheek. Quim's car was a white Ford Impala, the latest model, and Quim and his wife wanted to know who the driver would be, as if at the last minute they were having second thoughts.
"Me," said Ulises Lima.
As Quim explained some of the finer points of the car to Ulises, Jorgito said that we should hurry up because Lupe's pimp had just come back. For a few seconds everyone started talking in normal voices and Mrs. Font said: the shame of it all, to be reduced to this. Then I hurried off to the Fonts' little house, got my books, and came back. The car's engine was already running and everyone looked frozen in place.
I saw Arturo and Ulises in the front seats and Lupe in back.
"Someone will have to go open the gate," said Quim.
I offered to do it.
I was on the sidewalk when I saw the lights of the Camaro and the lights of the Impala go on. It looked like a science fiction movie. As one car left the house, the other approached, as if the two were magnetically attracted to each other, or drawn together by fate, which the Greeks would say is the same thing.
I heard voices. People were calling my name. Quim's car passed me. I saw the shape of Alberto getting out of the Camaro and the next moment he was alongside the car my friends were in. His friends, still sitting in the Camaro, yelled at him to break one of the Impala's windows. Why doesn't Ulises hit the gas? I thought. Lupe's pimp started to kick the doors. I saw María coming through the garden toward me. I saw the faces of the thugs inside the Camaro. One of them was smoking a cigar. I saw Ulises's face and his hands, which were moving on the dashboard of Quim's car. I saw Belano's face looking impassively at the pimp, as if none of this had anything to do with him. I saw Lupe, who was covering her face in the backseat. I thought that the window glass couldn't withstand another kick and the next moment I was up next to Alberto. Then I saw that Alberto was swaying. He smelled of alcohol. They'd been celebrating the new year too, of course. I saw my right fist (the only one I had free since my books were in my other hand) hurtling into the pimp's body and this time I saw him fall. I heard my name being called from the house and I didn't turn around. I kicked the body at my feet and I saw the Impala, which was moving at last. I saw the two thugs get out of the Camaro and I saw them coming toward me. I saw that Lupe was looking at me from inside the car and that she was opening the door. I realized that I'd always wanted to leave. I got in and before I could close the door Ulises stepped on the gas. I heard a shot or something that sounded like a shot. They're shooting at us, the bastards, said Lupe. I turned around and through the back window I saw a shadow in the middle of the street. All the sadness of the world was concentrated in that shadow, framed by the strict rectangle of the Impala's window. It's firecrackers, I heard Belano say as our car leaped forward and left behind the Fonts' house, the thugs' Camaro, Calle Colima, and in less than two seconds we were on Avenida Oaxaca, heading north out of the city.
II
THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES
1
Amadeo Salvatierra, Calle República de Venezuela, near the Palacio de la Inquisición, Mexico City DF, January 1976. My dear boys, I said to them, I'm so glad to see you, come right in, make yourselves at home, and as they filed down the hall, or rather felt their way, because the hall is dark and the bulb had burned out and I hadn't changed it (I haven't changed it yet), I skipped joyfully ahead into the kitchen, where I got out a bottle of Los Suicidas mezcal, a mezcal only made in Chihuahua, limited run, of course, of which I used to receive two bottles each year by parcel post, until 1967. When I returned the boys were in the front room looking at my paintings and examining some books and I couldn't help telling them again how happy their visit made me. Who gave you my address, boys? Germán, Manuel, Arqueles? At which they looked at me as if they hadn't understood and then one of them said List Arzubide. But sit down, I said, have a seat, ah, my good friend Germán List Arzubide, he's not one to forget me, is he still the same big old wonderful man? And the boys shrugged their shoulders and said yes-well of course he'd hardly have shrunk, would he? but all they said was yes-and then I said let's try this mezcalito and I handed them two glasses and they sat there looking at the bottle as if they were afraid a dragon might come shooting out of it, and I laughed, but I wasn't laughing at them, I was laughing for sheer glee, it made me so happy just to be there with them, and then one of them asked if they'd heard right, if that was really what the mezcal was called, and I passed them the bottle, still laughing, I knew the name would impress them, and I stepped back a little to get a better look at them, God bless them, they were so young, with their hair down to their shoulders and carrying all those books-the memories they brought back!-and then one of them said are you sure this won't kill us, Señor Salvatierra? and I said what do you mean kill you, this is the essence of health, the water of life, drink it without fear, and to set an example I filled my glass and downed half of it and then I served them, and at first the rascals just wetted their lips, but little by little it grew on them, and they started to drink like men. Well, boys, how is it? I said, and one of them, the Chilean, said that he'd never heard of a mezcal called Los Suicidas, which struck me as a little presumptuous, there must be two hundred brands of mezcal in Mexico at the very least, so it would be hard to know them all, especially if you weren't from here, but of course the boy didn't realize that, and the other one said it's good, and then he said I've never heard of it before either, and I had to tell them that as far as I knew no one made it anymore, the factory went out of business, or burned down, or was sold and turned into a bottling plant for Refrescos Pascual, or the new owners didn't think the name was good for sales. And for a while we were quiet, the two of them standing and me sitting, drinking and savoring each drop of Los Suicidas and thinking who knows what. And then one of them said Señor Salvatierra, we want to talk to you about Cesárea Tinajero. And the other one said: and about the magazine Caborca. Those boys. Their brains and their tongues were interconnected. One of them could start to talk, then stop in the middle of what he was saying, and the other one would pick up the sentence or the idea as if he'd begun it himself. And when they spoke Cesárea's name I raised my eyes and looked at them as if I were seeing them through a curtain of gauze, surgical gauze, to be precise, and I said don't call me Señor, boys, call me Amadeo, which is what my friends call me. And they said all right, Amadeo. And they spoke the name Cesárea Tinajero again.