Mexico City Noir

by Paco Ignacio II Taibo

Andrea Rojas was waiting for me outside. She was watching the construction on the corner: a Polish factory being converted into housing units. It was being painted in loud colors: blue, yellow, and red.

  “Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo used to live there,” she told me. “Each one had their own apartment but he had a bridge built over to her bedroom, since he lived on the other side. Isn’t that romantic?”

  “I would have made the bed bigger. It’s a cheaper solution.” I was a little drunk from the margaritas. Andrea looked at me and I fell into her black eyes.

  “What are you doing over there? Those people don’t want us. They think we’re trash. You should come back to your hometown. The country’s changing. We could do things. We could bring justice to our people. Why do you have to go back?”

  In that moment, I had about a million coherent responses. In almost every case, I told her she was right. But for some reason I didn’t say any of them aloud. I simply held her face and gave her a long, moist kiss. She returned it, and gave me another. I felt like I was in paradise again. Then she pushed me back.

  She shook her head sadly. She didn’t understand me. I don’t understand myself either. She turned and walked off down the street. It was the last time I saw her. Years later, I heard she was at Tlatelolco in ’68 when the army shot at student demonstrators. She vanished that night; I never found out what happened to her or her body. That’s why, on nights when I’m a little drunk and get choked up, I imagine she managed to flee from the massacre and take refuge in Guatemala. Maybe she finished her studies and had a daughter who would become a masked hero fighting for justice in our country, just like she’d dreamed.

  But I know that can’t be true, because in Mexico, films always have happy endings.

  PART II

  DEAD MEN WALKING

  BANG!

  BY JUAN HERNÁNDEZ LUNA

  Roma

  I’m standing in front of the dark barrel of a gun, which is held by a guy who is watching me very carefully and gesturing unsympathetically. I try to move but the guy makes a sign indicating not to or he’ll have to shoot. I obey without taking my eyes from the barrel.

  I’m on the edge of the roof. Down on the street, there’s a parked car with its motor running and lights on. I can’t tell if anybody’s in the car. I stay quiet, waiting for the guy to tell me what to do. My hands aren’t raised, and that worries me, though not too much, because I know that hands in the air don’t correspond to the usual script when there’s a gun involved.

  A shot. If the bullet pierces me, I’ll have to try to stop the hemorrhaging, to stabilize my blood pressure. The stupid projectile will probably be dirty, which means it will cause an infection. Wounded, on my back on the roof of this building, it will be difficult to protect my nerves from possible damage; it will be impossible for me to excise the injured parts and save the rest.

  Arrrggghhh! Mexico City, such a beautiful, dark sky! About to die, I greet you and watch each elusive red cloud as it floats on the south wind.

  Dialogue. Right now there should be dialogue. Threatening phrases that indicate who has the power, and although there’s a gun aimed at me, every word suggests I’m the one with the ace up his sleeve.

  I contemplate that “ace up his sleeve” and immediately regret it. You shouldn’t use clichés, even in real life.

  The guy is still in front of me. I have no idea how long it’s been. I decide to pull another file from my memory and search for the moment that brought us to this point.

  Running. I take quick steps through the street, up some stairs. The neighborhood is totally deserted at this hour, the lights dulled. There are children’s toys scattered on the patio. As I ascend the stairs, I feel somebody after me. The rattle of my feet is echoed by even heavier steps that keep me alert.

  There are shouts. An old woman peeks out her window and sees my sweaty face. I want to try to make a joke, to say something like booooooooo, but the noise of the approaching steps forces me to reconsider, and I keep climbing higher.

  When we get to the roof, I try to run but there’s nowhere else to go. I turn around and find the guy with the gun who tells me to stop, that it’s best to end this once and for all.

  I suppose it is better to end it, but I keep looking at the gun’s barrel and then I see him, and I notice his face, which is scarred by smallpox or acne or one of those damn skin diseases. And then my gaze moves from his damaged face back to the gun barrel.

  I reconsider. So it is not a cliff, it is not a ravine, it is not a planet of martyrdom; it is emptiness that fills this four- or five-story building.

  From the roof, the smoke of a refinery can be seen to the west of the city. At this hour, it’s possible to discern guardian angels leaving to go to sleep; the lights of the city center fusing with the glow of the airport; to hear all the noises from the cars mixing with the tick tock of the hearts of little boys and girls; there’s a mariachi song; coughing and kissing. The moon rises behind the high tower; the west is bloodred, the south only fog, and I’m left to remember poems …

  Friend of mine, whom I love, do not age …

  Running. Running as hard as possible, with everything from childhood in tow.

  This is a heavy burden. Childhood’s too great a burden to carry while fleeing from a gun.

  A smile. Women have twisted smiles. Women are not sincere when they laugh. This is a woman I’m sure I know from years ago, when my hands were trees and planets, and I suppose I knew her and slept with her, but I can’t be sure because her hair, which has been done up in a beauty shop, depresses me, and I can see that she’s insulting me.

  Behind her, there’s the guy whose face is scarred by acne or smallpox or some other damn skin disease.

  I leave the room and the woman follows me. I think she wants to ask me something.

  It takes approximately three days for a corpse’s skin to decompose. It fills up with toxic gases that cause sores on the outside, then the skin succumbs, cracks, and the gases are freed. If the corpse is exposed to the sun, it takes less than ten days for everything to collapse, for the flesh to rot and the scent to spread among the living. In the end, only the skeleton remains, and perhaps remnants of the liver, the toughest organ in the human body, the one that most resists decomposition. An irony if the death has been brought on by cirrhosis.

  I don’t have cirrhosis, nor do I have a body. I am matter floating here on this rooftop where I continue to stare at the barrel of a gun that some guy is pointing at me. To the west, there’s the vast, dark stain that is Chapultepec Forest, to the south there’s the eternal track of my doubts, to the north the shadow of a blonde who’s moving away, to the other north another blonde and another goodbye, until I bring my gaze back to the stain on the west, and again I find the barrel of the gun.

  A few days ago: Tell me that you will not leave me, a voice whispers in my ear, and I hear the whisper as if it were a siren beckoning Ulysses’ ship. And Ulysses—me—I stay firm at the rudder, tied with cords, trying to cross the sea without paying attention to her song. The siren approaches, embraces me, tries to take the rudder and direct me toward an island, but I maintain control and the ship continues its course. Suddenly I notice the ship has ceased to be, it’s not even a simple plank sailing in the blue of the ocean; the boat is a bed, the sea is a room, and at my side there is a woman who whispers in my ear, and where the horizon should be, a door appears instead, and it’s kicked to pieces by a guy who bursts in with a gun in his hand which he aims right at my forehead.

  The siren disappears.

  There is no sea in this life.

  A flight scene must have its limits. It’s impossible to just keep running around the world, there must be boundaries so that certain characters can admit exhaustion.

  I am the guy who holds the weapon in his right hand. There’s a man in front of me looking to escape, but I stop him and tell him that if he makes any strange movements, I’ll have to shoot. My finger touches the gun’s trigger and then, totally,
completely, I absolutely forget the reason for my aggression.

  I don’t want to shoot anymore. I don’t want this gun in my hand.

  A bullet traverses three hundred and twenty meters per second, the equivalent of the speed of a lie, the speed of a bloodthirsty and clumsy and cruel love.

  A .45 caliber bullet destroys approximately twenty centimeters of my heart’s flesh and leaves an exit wound equivalent to three absences, four goodbyes.

  If the emptiness is not empty, if there is no ravine or precipice, if it is only the damn distance of four stories down to the ground, is there any possibility of survival?

  Movement.

  Stop!

  There’s a blonde who looked up my name and info and asked to meet me here. The signs are clear: this is an affair. And I, who am not at all stupid, had been certain that a blonde could only be bedded every two centuries.

  This was my century.

  The guy with the gun shows up midcentury.

  The blonde disappears as the century comes to an end.

  Anachrony.

  When fleeing, it’s important not to leave behind the people you love.

  A dark tunnel. The same way you come into life, the same way you leave.

  Can a tomb be considered a dark tunnel? Is a vagina a dark tunnel?

  Is a penis a dark tunnel?

  Jean Valjean carrying Mario through the barreling darkness …

  The Count of Monte Cristo fleeing through the dark …

  A stethoscope bringing a sign of life is a dark conduit …

  Big bang, the damn dark barrel, the fucking quarks are all black holes …

  Blondes are not good companions for adventures.

  Guns are better companions for adventures.

  Brunettes are not good companions for adventures either.

  The day has not been good.

  More than seventy years old, the lady paces the apartment and a cat follows; she watches it with distrust. Perhaps the cat is just anxious, it almost always gets this way when it rains, maybe because of that thing about how cats don’t like water, but this is a strange cat, it almost never goes outside so it shouldn’t be afraid of the rain; in fact, the lady has never seen the cat outside the house. What’s the cat’s name? The cat has a peculiar name, her husband says it and the cat jumps into his lap, but for a while now she’s been forgetting things, because of that damn disease whose name she would say but it’s obvious she’s also forgotten that, like with so many other things in this world, and she thinks that at this point in her life it may be better to forget things, to loosen the ballast, like a balloon that needs to stay light to withstand—what do they call that?—yes, the last reverses of life. God, if only she knew what a reverse meant, a reverse was a stitch she once learned in her youth which she used when sewing and embroidering and all those things that make a woman more of a woman, manual tasks such as ironing and cooking in order to keep a man happy enough so he’ll maintain the household; so now what can a reverse in life possibly mean? How it is possible that life has a reverse, and if it has a reverse then it must have a forward, but she has never experienced a forward. Life has only been difficult, as she certainly knows. They came to that room in the neighborhood forty years before, just for a while, but the years piled up and a while became always and they’ve lived there ever since, and they had children, of course, three of them, two boys and a girl, all stillborn. That’s why they didn’t want to try a fourth time—why bring the dead into this world when supposedly this is the world of life? No, no children, it was imperative to accept the loneliness and the cats her husband brought to the house, many of which left, tired of the lack of food and the smell of poverty and grease all over the place. Only that one cat stayed with them and lived there, hiding under the furniture, but that night the cat seemed nervous, perhaps because of the rain. She could smell the scent of humidity, her muscles sensed it would rain that night, she was positive. The best thing to do would be to close the window to make sure the armchair in the living room didn’t get wet. She took a step, watched the cat arch its back, and pushed the curtains to close the shutters—and that’s when she saw a man hurrying up the stairs. That struck her as odd; perhaps it was somebody on the way to the roof to collect his laundry before it got wet on the line, but no—in that neighborhood, the men never went up on the roof, much less to gather laundry. She knew she was right when she saw another guy go up after the first one, with the same haste and a pistol in his hand. There was a scream but she does not remember, doesn’t remember the words, knows that there were words but she can’t differentiate between a scream and an insult; if someone says tree, she thinks mud; if they say scissors, she relates it to a day of rest, so she’d rather close the window and wait for the rain to end and for her husband to come home and for the loneliness to settle and the cat—that animal called silence or therapy—to stop meowing so maybe she can hear herself better, to see if she can recall a better memory …

  The barrel of a gun is not just a simple hole, it moves in an undulating way; perhaps the guy who’s holding the weapon is trembling. Just the same, it could be something other than a pistol, perhaps a knife of some sort, but if it’s a knife then it ought to be shinier; maybe a knife is easier to avoid. I cling to this possibility, that at least the sharp edge doesn’t have the speed of a bullet. Or does it? Has anybody ever measured the speed of a blade? In any case, what’s more dangerous, a blade or a bullet? Obviously, it all depends on the placement of the wound. If the knife damages the femoral vein … Do blades shine? I look for the sparkle in the dark but there’s nothing there, then everything is a penumbra, and there is no knife, only a gun.

  Bang!

  Here it comes.

  I feel it. My body bends and shakes from the impact. Instantly, I feel the fervor of blood running under my shirt. I am an open vein, a dark channel, a tunnel.

  And then Jean Valjean arrives in my tunnel carrying Mario. And the Count of Montecristo smiles at me as stoically as a rock.

  And a cascade of blood slips through my hands.

  And I’m here staring at the emptiness of this enormous city.

  With its towers and streets.

  And those little lights.

  And I do not fall.

  I hold on to the eaves because I have an ace up my sleeve: the blonde’s panties in my coat pocket. My great fetish, a souvenir from a glorious night in bed. I also have the words to tell this guy he can go fuck his bitch of a mother, because motherfuckers like me don’t die every day, and then there’s a pause that lets me hear the suusssss of another bullet grazing my chest.

  And soon …

  My life has been both great and fucked.

  Bountiful and idiotic.

  Wonderful and absurd.

  Why not let it be the same way at the end?

  Four or five stories.

  A beautiful fall.

  This fool will not see fear in my face.

  He won’t see anything.

  I am great.

  Is there anything more beautiful than flying toward death?

  That’s what I do.

  JUDAS BURNING

  BY EUGENIO AGUIRRE

  Calle Tacuba

  Holy Week 1954 was especially bloody. Thursday morning, agents from the judicial police discovered the mutilated bodies of four women in debris left at a construction site near Peñón de los Baños. There were bite marks on their breasts and genitals, which had been carved up with exceptional viciousness. The presumed killer, later identified as Goyo Cárdenas, had not only raped and profaned their corpses, he had used a handsaw to chop off their heads and dismember the arms and legs.

  The evening headline, which appeared in the Universal Gráfico’s crime bulletin, was accompanied by horrific photos which provoked terror among working-class women in the areas surrounding Mexico City, especially the prostitutes who trafficked around Dolores alley and Dos de Abril Street, who tried to intimidate the authorities with obscene threats: “Either they double
the number of security guards on these sinful streets or we’ll go on strike and our clients will have no choice but to fuck their wives.”

  “Things are getting tense,” said my father, Don Domitilo Chimal, with dismay, as soon as he finished reading us the unfortunate news. He threw the newspaper on the kitchen table where we were gathered for an evening meal.

  My siblings and I didn’t fully understand what he was getting at, nor the full meaning of his words. But our mamacita covered her face with her hands and began to tremble like a puppet with Huntington’s disease; she ran and locked herself in her bedroom.

  On Good Friday the news was no less bloody. Every year from time immemorial, the Ixtapalapa neighborhood commemorates the Seven Mysteries of the Crucifixion of Jesus with a festival that draws thousands of people from places like Azcapotzalco and Xochimilco, so they can experience “live and in person”—as my Grandmother Eufrásica used to say—“the passion of Christ and all the chingaderas those damned Jews did to him.” So this festival began like every other, except that the compadritos from the Brotherhood of the Redeemer from over in Milpa Alta, wearing the appropriate attire to represent centurions and Roman soldiers, got drunk early and, with the pretext that Pontius Pilate was “a degenerate puto who was constantly sticking his hand between people’s legs,” decided to give him a good thrashing, beating him with fists, swords, and spears, which caught the Pharisees, the Mary Magdalenes who accompanied Christ, and the multitude of gentile onlookers on Calvary off guard and made it impossible for them to get away.

  “The Romans are being total jerks,” we heard Tomás Perrín, the newsreader, announce on station XEW, the one our mother used to turn to every night to hear the radionovelas and her favorite program, the Crazy Monk. “They’re throwing punches left and right. They already beat Pontius Pilate to a pulp and now—what monsters!—they’re striking Barabbas with their wooden swords …”

  Later, the newsreader had to yell so that he could be heard over the noise of the firecrackers and the howls of the mob, but he continued narrating how the Romans of Milpa Alta made mincemeat out of Dimas and Gestas, the thieves, and how they tore the cheeks of the poor man playing Christ with the thorns of his own crown, and how this had caused everyone who could to flee and take refuge in the cellar over at Samsom’s Cures.