“Someone was shooting an automatic; the bullets were soft-nosed and you could hear a dull thud as they hit the walls. I went out into the corridor: some of the pictures with baseball clippings had shattered and the glass cut into my belly as I crawled toward the bathroom. Noriega appeared out of one of the rooms farther along. He was holding a rifle. Without giving him time to take aim, I shot him in the cheek and, as he fell, put another slug right into his brain.
“I guessed I must be running short on ammo so I stuck the revolver in my belt and crawled toward the rifle. That’s when Muerto hit me: the rebound from what I believe was a .38 glanced my ribs. Then he turned me over to see my face and put his Magnum to my head.
“‘Motherfucking bastard motherfucker,’ he screamed.
“Just when I was absolutely certain that Muerto was going to kill me, a bullet entered the back of his neck and exploded. His body fell beside mine. I struggled to sit up, only to find myself looking straight into the face of Muñequita Elizabeth. Or rather at her pistol: god knows how she’d managed to free herself from the cuffs and get hold of one of her rapists’ weapons, but its barrel was now resting against my teeth. I didn’t say a word, just raised my arms and let her cry.
“There was a sliding door behind her; through it I caught a glimpse of Chueca’s back, his shoulders shaking as he attempted to open the door to the parking lot at the side of the building. Muñequita Elizabeth turned her head to face him. She moved the gun from my mouth and slid aside.
“I got to my feet and checked how many bullets I had left: the drum was empty. Muñequita Elizabeth—who was sitting on the floor, leaning back against the wall—held out her pistol. I took it.
“I had no idea how much ammo I had, champ, because in that other life I knew very little about semiautomatic weapons. All I did was check that the safety was off, the way I’d seen it done in movies. Instead of coming out with guns blazing—that day I learned that I don’t like firing like a madman: I prefer taking out the enemy with minimum fuss—I waited. Crouching, I followed Chueca through the parking lot. I calculated that he’d try to start up the white Chevy, the last vehicle in the convoy, parked nearest the main gates. I quickened my pace and, rather than confronting him head-on, slid beneath the chassis. From there, I heard the sound of a padlock and chain. Then the gates opening. I saw Chueca’s feet getting into the Chevy and felt him settling himself behind the wheel. When I guessed he’d be ready to turn over the engine, I rolled to one side and stood by the window holding my weapon in both hands. God is good: he saw my face. I emptied the remaining ammo into him: four of five shots, I guess. Then I opened the driver’s door and pulled the body out by one arm, just to give myself the pleasure of watching it fall into the dust.
“Muñequita Elizabeth passed beside me. She didn’t turn her head to look but continued on through the gates and disappeared into the street. I never saw or heard of her again. I went back inside the Hotel de Beisbolistas to find my buddies.
“I searched Aldana’s clothes for the key to the handcuffs and, in addition, found another bag of coke. In his shoulder holster I also discovered what is to this day my favorite firearm: a Glock 17. I did two lines, took the key and the holster, and went back down the corridor to the bathroom where my friends were chained. It was only then that I became aware of the sound of sirens and patrol cars in the distance.
“I managed to free Benja; he toppled into the bathtub, massaging his arms.
“‘Thanks, bro,’ he said, sobbing.
“Do you know what flashed into my mind at that moment, champ? That sonofabitch fucked Bertha before I did. I mean, I didn’t even have to think about it.
“‘This is for fucking Bertha before I did, you sonofabitch.’
“I killed him with two shots. Then I turned to Chota and, without even giving him time to react, I iced him, too, with a bullet to his brain. The one I did feel sorry about was Piel; he looked in a bad way. Still feverish, he sat up and again asked:
“‘Are we there?’
“‘We’re there. Take it easy.’
“I put an arm under his shoulder and propped him against a piece of rotten wood lying beside the boiler, just to act as a cushion for the bullet. Then I aimed at the back of his head, and when I pulled the trigger, there was hardly a sound. In that short time I’d learned almost everything I needed to kill anyone at all.
“I stayed there a for moment looking sadly at the corpses of my friends. I still miss them.
“When I heard the patrol cars and shouts outside, I slipped the Glock 17 into its holster and escaped across the back patio. The sun was coming up. I passed the acacia I’d seen through the window. Its yellow flowers were so plump and neatly groomed. Have you ever seen them, champ? They smell beautiful in the spring. I jumped over a couple of walls and headed away from the Tlaxcalteca neighborhood to Topo Chico, where we’d all grown up together. To El Pez que Fuma.
“Did I make it to the bakery? ’Course I made it to the bakery, champ. Don’t ask me why no one stopped an armed, bare-chested zombie, covered in blood, walking the streets of Saltillo at dawn. I guess it’s one of those things that are getting more common in this country.
“It wasn’t yet seven. Monday. The spring of ninety-one. As I’d supposed, Bertha and her mother were serving behind the counter while the old man was baking the second batch of bolillos in the backroom. Before going in, I took out the pistol. I wanted Bertha to get a good look at it. If she found out later what had happened, I wanted her to know who I was and what I was capable of, and I wanted her to live in fear of ever seeing me again. I went through the door. At first they just stared at me in surprise, but when they noticed the gun, they were alarmed. The old lady started to scream. Bertha motioned to her to be quiet and said:
“‘What’s up, darling? Are you OK?’
“I remembered Captain Aldana’s last words to his boyfriend. Fuck you, darling. I picked up a bolillo. It was warm. I split it in two and took a bite. Then I remembered I had no money with me to pay so I put the Glock on the counter as a sort of offering or recompense for Bertha and her mother, and went off to finish my bolillo.
“That day I stopped being the ostrich from Clínicas Larios and I became Jacobo Montaña, the man who would later lead the bloodiest cartel in the country—according to the press. Executing Aldana was like eating his heart. What can I say? I became a hired killer; I informed, worked for the CIA, the DEA, trained with the Kaibiles in Guatemala, joined the army as part of a squadron formed to infiltrate the narco cartels; later, I allied myself to a drug baron; then I killed him and took over his business. A decade after that, I was caught and tried; thirty years they gave me, but I escaped from Loma Larga after two. Since then, I’ve lived underground. All this because of one Sunday night. I wasn’t born a hick gomero: I wasn’t some poor kid from the hills, champ; justice grew me up in a single working day.
“Things were going fine until your friend Tarantino turned up. The first time, I thought it was a joke or something worse: a trap. I’d rented an action movie and there I was on the screen; I go into a bar and start negotiating the sale of a few kilos of coke. My first thought was: That’s not my voice. Then I begin to talk like crazy. I tell a bad joke and then someone puts a shot in the head of the guy sitting next to me; the blood splatters onto my face. I said to myself: That never happened. It took me about three movies to understand that I wasn’t the ghost, that I had a double out there in the cinema world, and in this world too.
“I watched all the scenes, all the characters, and each one made me feel worse than before. I’d end up emptying my stomach into the toilet bowl, weak and shivering, but with a rage in my breast that on more than one occasion made me vent my fury on others. Once, I ordered around forty pelados to be killed in a ranchito (there was even a kid of fifteen), and I had their houses demolished with a back-hoe and put their women on the street with nothing but what they were standing in. You know why? Because your friend Quentin appeared in a movie playing me as a
crazy rapist murderer who ends up with vampires sucking his blood.
“They’re nightmares; sketches in which you’re either a devil or a moron, and then you end up dead. Because he always gets killed. It wears me out to think how many times I’ve died on-screen because of the asshole: Wasn’t that enough to make me want to get my fucking own back? Don’t you think a man needs his face to know who he is? Don’t you think it’s a personal affront for someone to go around with your face doing whatever the hell he wants?
“But that’s not why I ordered the boys to bring me his head. That wasn’t the reason. It was for something older and simpler: that scumbag stole my life. He’s kind of like me in the movies, but in real life I wanted to be like him. I wanted to be an actor, to move from the Clínicas Larios commercial to TV and after that to cinema and, one day, to Hollywood. I’m like the mariachi in that other movie: I just wanted them to let me act. And you can bear having your appearance stolen, champ, but not the life you dream of. Am I right or what? I had to have him killed, had to have his head cut off for stealing the same thing Captain Aldana took from me that night in the Hotel de los Beisbolistas. And so I sent for you, and that’s why the feds found me. Now I know what I should have done the very first time I saw him: torn off my own face. But what difference does it make now?”
Can pain educate without destroying? Are we made of the substance of fear? Could Jacobo Montaña overhear himself as he told me his story? Or is what Harold Bloom says about the character and his soliloquy a mere textual illusion? Sometimes I think the invention of the human is an egoistic blind spot we are incapable of making out; you can’t be the fire and light it at the same time. Or can you? Those were the first questions that drummed in my mind as I was leaving the maximum-security prison where my kidnapper and host awaited extradition to the United States.
While Montaña was talking, I was able to see him again, not as the double of my favorite director, but in his real body: the body of a man around fifty who has dedicated half his life to torture. A murderer capable of taking out fifteen-year-olds in a fit of rage. A businessman who destroys homes with backhoes and poison. None of these activities made him less likable or interesting, and that’s the worst of it: there’s no more profound horror than an untroubled conscience.
I returned to Nuevo Laredo and my elderly aunt Rosa Gloria Chagoyán. Our house had been almost completely restored to its former state: my collections of classic DVDs and porn mags were gone forever, but the freshly painted concrete and partition walls were smooth and glossy, and the plumbing, light fixtures, and power sockets all functioned perfectly. It was as if the bazooka attack had never happened. In a weird form of courtesy, the Attorney General’s office decided not to impound any of the things I’d acquired (or rather, that had been showered on me, paid for with blood money) while under the protection of my abductors; after his arrest, Dante Mamulique declared that all the suits and shoes and video games were my own property.
I went back to my normal routine: I prepare gourmet coffee in the mornings while Aunt Rosa Gloria Chagoyán, with the assistance of her aluminum walker, fetches bread; I write three movie reviews a week, occasionally go to the bank, the Treasury, or the property registry; I stream new and old movies at all hours of the day, do my weekly cinematic marathons in multiplexes on the other side of the border. I’m considered a citizen activist who helped capture a public enemy, so my laser visa is respected at any checkpoint.
On the internet I read that Jacobo Montaña had been extradited. He’s doing life in a federal prison in the United States. I don’t know how heavily that weighs on him: even during the days in the bunker, he seemed like a dethroned emperor.
I remembered something that Jacobo perhaps misses in his new abode: the plastic garden of his underground home, with its scent of gardenias and Arabian jasmine. I wish I had a souvenir—a plant pot would be enough—of that artificial illusion, and I’m sure he does too. I remembered something he said during our final interview: I’m going to tell you that story because I love you but don’t know you. Did Jacobo Montaña ever love or know me? Did I ever love or know him, even if only as a fictional character? That is another of the many questions for which I have no answer. A good story should be a question, not an answer. After all, as the most cynical of my university lecturers—he taught marketing and creativity—used to say: “Don’t fool yourself: that thing you call ‘human experience’ is just a massacre of onion layers.”
JULIÁN HERBERT was born in Acapulco in 1971. He is a writer, musician, and teacher, and is the author of The House of the Pain of Others and Tomb Song, as well as several volumes of poetry and two short-story collections. He is the singer in the rock band Los Tigres de Borges and lives in Saltillo, Mexico.
CHRISTINA MACSWEENEY is the translator of The House of the Pain of Others and Tomb Song by Julián Herbert. She was awarded the 2016 Valle Inclán Translation Prize for her translation of Valeria Luiselli’s The Story of My Teeth, and her translation of Daniel Saldaña París’s novel Among Strange Victims was shortlisted for the 2017 Best Translated Book Award. She has also published translations, articles, and interviews on a wide variety of platforms, and contributed to the anthologies Bogotá39: New Voices from Latin America; México20: New Voices, Old Traditions; Lunatics, Lovers and Poets: Twelve Stories after Cervantes and Shakespeare; and Crude Words: Contemporary Writing from Venezuela.
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