by Robert Hough
Maria del Mampo continued to leave the House of Gentlemanly Pleasures whenever she wanted to. If there were other Marias who needed shampoo or cigarettes or a can of sugar-cane juice — qué bueno, she had company. If there weren’t, she went out alone, be it early morning or mid-afternoon or the dead of night. This alarmed her fellow Marias.
Ay, Maria, they would say, you can’t act this way! In response, Maria would laugh and femininely place a hand across her chest, as if to say Behave what way, amigas?
But Maria, they would warn, the streets are very dangerous. To this she would cackle — her voice had the pitch of an older woman who smoked too much — and say Dangerous? The streets of this one-horse town? I’m the one they should be afraid of.
One evening, just before midnight, Maria del Mampo decided she needed a cigarette. Though she could easily have had one inside, in the interval between customers, it was a beautiful, clear night; a walk in the cool air, she felt, would do her good. Before stepping onto Avenida Cinco del Mayo, she wrapped herself in a heavy woollen shawl that made her look a little like a war widow. She lit a cigarette and stood for a moment, trying to decide whether she wanted to turn left, towards the drunkard-filled plaza, or right, which would take her out past the radio tower. From the plaza she could hear whooping and fistfights and loud hollered arguments. Under skies lit green and flashing, she turned right and tottered along the hard-packed dust. Gradually, the avenida tapered down to one lane, and the light thrown from windows grew sparse and irregular. Maria walked through pockets of dark, her head filled with memories of her village in Oaxaca. There were so many things she missed from the south: real mole, corn tortillas, decent pulque, her family. With things as crazy as they were in Corazón, she had noticed herself thinking about a return.
And yet.
What was she supposed to do? Crawl back with her parado taped between her legs? Go back to living like a … campesina? She liked having enough money for lipstick, silky underthings, and perfume. She had grown accustomed to smoking real tobacco, not lowly punche. She even liked her work, except when she was tired or when the client was boorish or unwashed, at which time her job was still less onerous than sweating in a field of coffee beans. Most of all, she enjoyed not having to worry about whether she would have enough to eat each day. This in itself was worth fighting for.
She heard boot heels behind her, falling upon hard earth — by her reckoning there were three pairs. Her heart quickened, even though she knew they were probably just clients of Madam, out for a smoke and a stroll. She kept walking, and the steps continued to follow, a tripled echo of her own hurrying steps. When she stopped, they stopped as well, only to resume the moment she continued walking.
— Hey. Puta.
So, she thought, some stupid locals, drunk and probably getting away from their fat, hectoring wives. No wonder they were foul-tempered.
— Hey, another voice said. — Putita. Turn around and show us something.
— Yeah. Take off your shawl. Show us your tetas. We won’t hurt you.
Maria walked more quickly, though at the same time she refused to let herself be frightened. She would turn back towards town where Cinco de Mayo rounded to meet Avenida Hidalgo, and lose these stupid pendejos. Behind her she heard their collective breath quickening and turning shallow.
— Puta, she heard again. — Stop, we just want to talk to you!
She felt herself anger, for in her mind she could picture them: stoop-shouldered, flat-nosed, a head shorter than herself, and so drunk they could barely stand. She had nothing to be afraid of. She was half-male and half-female in a country of machos, and had faced far, far worse. She stopped, suddenly, and was not at all surprised when the men behind her did likewise. She turned. As she suspected, they were vagrants, losers, chump-change morons in tight shirts and jeans stained with diesel and red earth, their feet adorned in the most worn of huaraches. She eyed them with a dead-eyed glare.
— What do you want?
They all bore the slight semicircular sway of drunkards. To her right was a tiny lane filled with metal scraps and old tires. To her left were scrub and low cacti.
— Come on, she said. — I haven’t got all day. What in the chingada do you want?
One of them grinned, revealing metal and black spaces. There was something in the slow, lingering way he did it that frightened Maria, and made her think, for the first time, that she should have listened to her sisters and not gone out walking by herself. The hombre in the middle, a fierce-looking little brute with tattoos on his hands and face, grinned as well. Yet Maria found that she was now most unnerved by the one on the left, who looked solemn and preoccupied, as though thinking hard about something. Her heart sped. Her breathing grew rapid. She bent over, lifted the hem of her skirt, and pulled out her knife, holding it aloft so that its blade flickered green in the light of the corona. Her hand trembled, as did her half-deepened voice.
— Better stay where you are, pendejos.
The silent one chortled, the ugly one in the middle whooped, and the one on the right revealed more metal and black spaces.
And then they were upon her, feeding like degenerate wolves.
{ 26 }
FRANCISCO RAMIREZ HAD TAKEN TO WALKING THE streets late at night, his only goal to exhaust himself and permit the arrival of sleep. He always varied his route, and he started that night by heading towards the ancient Spanish mission at the southeast corner of the village. After touching its cool walls, letting the passage of time they represented put his own problems in perspective, he headed north along the eastern edge of town, his route skirting the plazita containing the desecrated Pozo de Confesiones. Here he paused to give a thought to his old amigo, the molinero Roberto Pántelas, who had recently started walking with the use of a cane. Really, thought Francisco, I must call on him tomorrow and see if there’s anything he needs.
Francisco continued in the direction of the river, a route that took him through the ejido. He stumbled past the sleeping families of his students, who often slept outside to take advantage of the breezes that blew over the desert in the middle of the night. Stepping around one slumbering clump, he heard a raspy voice whispering in the relative quiet.
— Ay, Francisco, what are you doing out so late?
It was a question he had no answer for, except to say that sleep wasn’t coming easily these days.
He then circled past the decimated home of the hacendero Antonio Garcia, where he paused to feel a degree of admiration. When the rest of his ilk had fled back to Europe, when even his wife had decided that she’d had enough, Antonio Garcia had refused to abandon the sorrowful majesty that is México, and for this he would always have Francisco’s respect.
Upon reaching Avenida Cinco del Mayo, Francisco had a choice to make: either turn right and follow the roadway to the bridge, where he sometimes stood and watched the lights of Del Río reflecting on the waters of the river, or turn left and head back into town. He chose the latter. As he neared the town hall, the number of people living on the street increased, and Francisco had to step around lolling bodies in order to traverse the northern edge of the plaza. He walked past the lineup of gringos waiting to get access to the House of Gentlemanly Pleasures, eventually reaching the point at which Cinco de Mayo petered down to a single lane leading out to the tower. It was Francisco’s plan to spit on the base of the incessantly blinking tower — this was becoming a nightly ritual — and then return to his home.
He heard a noise. It was so faint that at first he could barely distinguish it from the moans emanating from within the walls of the brothel. The only difference was that it was coming from a different direction. Francisco took a few more strides and heard it again; for a moment he wondered if the curandera might be lurking somewhere, intending to unnerve him again with her maniacal utterances. He stopped and placed a hand to his ear. This time he was sure he’d heard some sort of feral groan, and he wondered if perhaps a she-wolf had been struck by another hit-and-run driver.
Francisco hurried towards the origin of the sound, and as he did the moans became louder, and more human in tonality. Upon reaching the mouth of a tiny laneway running south, he spotted a body that, judging by the marks in the dust, had been dragged into the alley and left amidst a scattering of junk.
— Dios mío, he uttered while scrambling towards the body, only to discover that it was the man-woman they called Maria del Mampo. Her face was grotesquely swollen, her right leg was bent unnaturally to one side, and her skirt was torn in a way that revealed what her assailants had done to her. Her hands, meanwhile, gripped the sides of her body, as though trying to stem a torrent of pain originating in her ribs. When she heard Francisco’s approach, she turned her head in his direction, moaned again, and mouthed the words Help me.
Francisco ran as fast as he was able to the House of Gentlemanly Pleasures. There he rapped on the back door. When no answer came, he pounded on it, yelling Por favor, por favor, there’s an emergency! Maria de las Montañas answered, her angelic blonde hair falling over the left side of her face.
— Francisco Ramirez! she exclaimed with a smile. — What a surprise! Really, you should be lining up with the gringos, but since it’s an emergency, maybe I could talk to …
— No! he exclaimed. — Maria, please, get Madam.
— Francisco! She retired years ago, you know that. You sure you wouldn’t prefer someone a little closer to your age …
— Maria, please. It’s Maria del Mampo.
Maria de las Montañas blanched. — What is it?
— She’s been hurt.
Maria closed the door and ran to get Madam, leaving Francisco to wait on the street, hopping from foot to foot, aware that any delay might result in loss of life. The door pushed open, and a moment later he was hustling along with Madam, Maria de las Montañas, Maria de la Noche, and a new, strong-armed Guadalajaran called Maria del Cielo. Upon seeing her downed sister, Maria de la Noche ran to the victim’s side. When the rest of the gang pulled up, she looked at Madam with an expression that could only be described as accusatory. The two other Marias ran forward as well, each dropping to her knees and attempting to fan air over Maria del Mampo’s battered face. Every few seconds Maria del Mampo groaned, though in all other respects she seemed barely conscious.
— Can she walk? Madam asked.
There was no response.
— I said, can she walk?
— We don’t think so, Maria de la Noche said stiffly.
— Well then, carry her.
— Sí, said Francisco, stepping forward. — Somebody help me …
With that, Francisco and Maria del Cielo lifted the battered victim and guided her back to the brothel, her feet raising wisps of dust.
— Put her in room number seven, commanded Madam. — It’s the biggest.
As these instructions were carried out, all the other Marias came rushing, many of them quitting in the middle of agreed-upon acts. Predictably, this angered their clients, who started hollering for either a refund or a different Maria. Madam ignored them and ordered whichever girls were working to continue doing so. She then ordered Maria de la Noche to get the injured Maria something strong to drink, and she sent Maria de las Rosas outside to petition the waiting gringos, offering a free interlude to any hombre able to produce a valid medical licence. In this way, a bespectacled doctor from Brownsville was hustled into room number seven to attend to poor Maria del Mampo. Those Marias between clients, meanwhile, huddled around the entrance to the room, sniffling and remembering times when they didn’t feel so hated.
As for Francisco Ramirez, the moment came when he realized that there was nothing more he could do to help, and that his presence in the brothel only threatened to get in the way. Without saying goodbye, he slipped out the same door by which he had entered and began walking back towards the plaza. He had taken only a few steps when he heard his name being yelled behind him. It was Maria de las Montañas, leaning out the door of the house.
— Francisco, she called again. — Come here.
Francisco obeyed, thinking that they must need his assistance in some way that hadn’t occurred to him. When he reached the door, Maria reached out a thin hand and took him by the wrist, guiding him down the main hallway of the brothel towards a door bearing the number nine. She closed it behind them, the clamour of the hallway immediately diminishing.
Francisco looked around the little room. There was a small bed, a wicker chair, and, against one wall, a bureau holding a small basin filled with water. A kerosene lamp was burning on the bureau, the wick turned down so far that the room was all but cast into darkness. Maria de las Montañas remedied this by stepping towards the lamp and turning the small brass knob extending from its side. The room bloomed with light, allowing Francisco to see the room’s other distinguishing feature: the walls were painted a scarlet red.
Suddenly it occurred to Francisco why Maria might have led him there. — Ay, Maria, he stammered. — I …
Maria, who seemed not to be listening, gathered thick tresses of blonde hair in her little hands and then shook them, her hair tumbling over her shoulders. She was wearing a skirt and a simple cloth blouse tied at the front by a thin pink ribbon. Looking into Francisco’s eyes — eyes that had lost the ability to either blink or look away — she pulled on the end of the ribbon, and the blouse tumbled to the floor around her feet.
— Francisco, she said. — Madam has asked me to give you a little reward for helping out this evening. These days, not too many young men are willing to stick their necks out for the town’s fallen women.
— Ay, Maria, he stammered. — I am afraid I am still …
— Sí, sí, you’re still in love with Violeta Cruz, everyone knows this. But first let me ask you something.
She took a step towards him, stopping close enough that he could detect the lovely rosewater perfume she put behind her ears, on her wrists, and in the dimpled recesses that exist where the back meets the swell of the buttocks. She looked up into his eyes, craning her neck to do so.
— When you win back the affection of Violeta Cruz, and she accepts you into both her heart and her hammock, wouldn’t you like to know how to please her with something other than your chiselled good looks?
Maria was standing sufficiently close that the tips of her breasts touched the material of Francisco’s shirt, creating an effect similar to the one achieved by placing a match to a mound of dried leaves.
— Well? she purred. — Francisco?
She then rose to the tips of her toes and kissed him with a passion that, feigned or not, caused Francisco Ramirez to ponder the existence of God, his alter ego the Devil, and the possibility that both could, at least on a physical level, successfully coexist.
— Sí, he answered when their lips finally parted. — I think you might be right.
{ TRES }
{ 27 }
AFTER ANOTHER SUMPTUOUS MEAL, VIOLETA CRUZ and John Romulus Brinkley retired to one of the mansion’s other bedchambers, this one located at the far end of the long dark wood hallway that served as the central passage of the mansion’s second storey. This time, their congress occurred directly across from a painting by Saturnino Herrán, in which the artist had faithfully captured both the nobility, and the vulnerability, of a pre-Columbian Native.
Through her tour of the good doctor’s art collection, Violeta was learning that there were different experiences to be had with the physical expression of love. With Brinkley, there was an almost a regal sense of protection; in his arms she felt sheltered, coddled, pampered even, and definitely impermeable to all the indignities thought up by the world at large. As well, she felt a calm that she had never before known in her life on the other side of the border, and she was finding that this feeling had an almost narcotic effect on her — the more she learned of its taste and texture, the more she wanted it. (Whereas with Francisco — ay, Dios mío, the effect that muchacho had had upon her. Huddled in their desert lee, his thick arms around her, she often found t
hat lurid images formed in her mind — of unbroken horses, of dragons loosed upon a town, of lightning scampering along a desert floor in sheets of buzzing, intense electric blue. And even though these images presaged a loss of control that frightened her, it was nevertheless true that, when in one of the doctor’s art-festooned bedrooms, she occasionally wished she was with Francisco, struggling to survive the bubbling cauldron into which he had pitched her.)
Violeta dined with the doctor the next week as well, their post-meal conjugation occurring in his other other bedroom. This room sported a mural painted by José Orozco, whose stylized depiction of strong, virile Mexicanos made her think, yet again, of Francisco, so much so that, at the moment when the doctor blurted Te amo, Violeta, te amo! she was a long way away, thinking of things that made her feel two-faced and shameful. That night, immediately after the doctor’s culmination, Violeta crawled out of bed and found one of the mansion’s many spotless washrooms. There she cleaned herself with a potion she’d acquired during a midnight trip to the house of the curandera, who’d given her a prophylactic wash composed of herbs, sotol pith, and a mild emetic found in the pineal glands of the desert sidewinder. She’d then returned to bed, feeling guilty about the way she could not give herself fully to one man only.
Violeta returned the following Saturday evening for yet another staff appreciation dinner, her ambivalence thankfully lessened by a week spent in Corazón de la Fuente, which seemed to grow more chaotic with each passing day — one of the Marias had even been attacked, all manner of sordid actions committed against her body. That week’s coupling took place in yet another room, this one graced by a mural by David Alfaro Siqueiros; it was a rendering of México’s revolutionary leaders, and quite frankly it made Violeta nervous. This was more than made up for the following week, when they made amor just inches from a night table supporting a tiny line drawing of an oleander. When Violeta inquired as to its authorship, the doctor smiled and told her that it was by an up-and-coming female artist who, it was rumoured, had a moustache, a single eyebrow, a twisted spinal column, and a romantic involvement with the great Diego Rivera.