Amadeo Salvatierra, Calle República de Venezuela, near the Palacio de la Inquisición, Mexico City DF, January 1976. So what did Manuel, Germán, and Arqueles say? I asked them. What did they say about what? one of them said. About Cesárea, of course, I said. Very little. Maples Arce hardly remembered her. Neither did Arqueles Vela. List said he'd only heard of her. When Cesárea Tinajero was in Mexico, he lived in Puebla. According to Maples she was a very young girl, very quiet. And that was all they told you? That was all. And what about Arqueles? More of the same, nothing. And how did you find me? Through List, they said, he told us that you, Amadeo, must have more information about her. And what did Germán say about me? That you really had known her, that before you joined the stridentists you were part of Cesárea's group, the visceral realists. He also told us about a magazine, a magazine that he said Cesárea published back then, Caborca he said it was called. That Germán, I said and I poured myself another shot of Los Suicidas. At the rate we were going the bottle wouldn't last until dark. Drink up, boys, drink up and don't worry, if we finish this bottle we'll go down and buy another one. Of course, it won't be the same as the one we've got now, but it'll be better than nothing. Ah, what a shame they don't make Los Suicidas mezcal anymore, what a shame that time passes, don't you think? what a shame that we die, and get old, and everything good goes galloping away from us.
Joaquín Font, Calle Colima, Colonia Condesa, Mexico City DF, October 1976. Now that the days are going by, coldly, in the cold way that days go by, I can say without the slightest resentment that Belano was a romantic, often pretentious, a good friend to his friends, I hope and trust, although no one really knew what he was thinking, probably not even Belano himself. Ulises Lima, on the other hand, was much friendlier and more radical. Sometimes he seemed like Vaché's younger brother. Other times he seemed like an extraterrestrial. He smelled strange. This I know, this I can say, this I can attest to because on two unforgettable occasions he showered at my house. More precisely: he didn't smell bad, he had a strange smell, as if he'd just emerged from a swamp and a desert at the same time. Extreme wetness and extreme dryness, the primordial soup and the barren plain. At the same time, gentlemen! A truly unnerving smell! It bothered me, for reasons that aren't worth getting into here. His smell, I mean. Characterologically, Belano was extroverted and Ulises was introverted. In other words, I had more in common with Belano. Belano knew how to swim with the sharks much better than Lima did, no doubt about that. Much better than I did. He came across better, he knew how to handle things, he was more disciplined, he could pretend more convincingly. Good old Ulises was a ticking bomb, and what was worse, socially speaking, was that everyone knew or could sense that he was a ticking bomb and no one wanted him to get too close, for obvious and understandable reasons. Ah, Ulises Lima… He wrote constantly, that's what I remember most about him, in the margins of books that he stole and on pieces of scrap paper that he was always losing. And he never wrote poems, he wrote stray lines that he'd assemble into long, strange poems later on if he was lucky… Belano, on the other hand, wrote in notebooks… They both still owe me money…