City Beasts

by Mark Kurlansky

  The smile still on her face, she turned and walked in the other direction even though this was away from their building.

  An easy snatch, thought the coyote, as he slithered into position.

  The girl reached deeply into her large black leather bag with the orange fringe and she pulled out a spray can, which she held in one hand, and held a cellphone in the other. “You know what I’m going to do now? I’m going to give you a face full of mace and then call the cops.”

  So this was how she was. Arthur couldn’t help thinking that he had been right. Role-playing. Power. Sadism. She probably had special outfits. But he also realized that if the police came while he was gasping from mace spray, they would believe anything she said.

  “What do you have to say now?” she said, her metal-studded lips curling up in a smile showing unnaturally white teeth. Did it hurt to smile with all that hardware?

  “You know what I have to say,” Arthur answered, bringing his face so close to hers that he could touch her eyebrow rings with his nose. And then in a hoarse whisper he said, “Nevermore.”

  While she stared back at him quizzically he turned down Bedford Street. It seemed right. He was heading home. He was close. At Grove, Freser yanked him to the left. Freser knows the way, thought Arthur. Freser wanted to go faster. He pulled on the leash. At Bleecker he pulled them left again and up to Tenth Street. After about twenty minutes of this Arthur realized that he was no longer in the Village. Where was Freser going? Where was home? He reached for his cellphone, hoping that it was not completely dead.

  Suddenly something leapt at Freser. He moved out of the way. Something so lifeless he thought it was a fur coat, a very ugly brown-and-gray one, flopped on the sidewalk.

  B.K. never missed. That’s why they called him B.K. He had been getting phone calls with sightings all over the West Village. He picked up the coyote and carried it to his van. “Don’t worry,” he said to Arthur and the few other people who had stopped. “He’s just tranquilized. We’re going to release this guy out where he belongs.”

  “Can you tell me where Barrow Street is?” Arthur asked. But B.K. didn’t hear him. He was always focused on his work.

  Arthur picked up Freser, realizing what had almost happened to him. Was he just a self-centered . . . old person? “Well, Freser,” he said. “Let’s go home. You lead the way.”

  But when he put him back on the sidewalk it was clear that Freser, now free of danger, wanted to go back to enjoying the sounds and smells and was not ready to go home.

  Arthur Mintz wondered how he would ever get home. “Nevermore.”

  The coyote had no such worry. Coyotes know how to travel long distances and they are never lost because they know how to smell and how to listen. He would wake up in a cage and then be taken hundreds of miles away. No matter where this one was released, he was coming back to New York. He liked it here.

  Part Two: Mexico City: In the Capital

  If death’s the reason for love

  we love unfaithful passion

  love the defeated

  those eyes gazing into time

  —Bei Dao, “On Eternity”

  (translated by Yanbing Chen)

  The stench of Cuauhtémoc was almost unbearable. This was saying a lot, considering all the garbage it competed with—the sweet and sour smells of things rotting and the bitter smell of anything they burned for a little heat at night.

  Décima couldn’t wait for him to be eaten. Already the coyote had pulled out a foot—the right one, she thought, but couldn’t be sure from that distance. The coyote was leaning back on his bony haunches, Cuauhtémoc’s foot firmly in his mouth, and pulling. Soon the coyote would have the whole body out and he could drag it off and eat it. The raven circling overhead croaked until another joined him.

  Why, Décima wondered, did a raven always call in another one? Just less for him. The coyote would let him have only eyes, anyway. Décima would have thought the raven would have wanted both eyes for himself, but he always called over a partner. Maybe it was like having Lázaro. If you had a partner, you had to share, but you couldn’t survive on your own.

  It was all Lázaro’s idea in the first place. Look at him now, perched on a stuffed black garbage bag in a valley of cans, triumphantly watching the coyote at work through his new green-tinted sunglasses with black plastic frames and a gringo name printed on one stem.

  It had been Lázaro’s idea to leave Morelos. “Let’s go to the capital,” he said. “There’s money and opportunities in D.F. We will just die here in Morelos.”

  He was right, too. They had nothing there. Décima’s real name was Decimoquinto, the fifteenth. She was their fifteenth child and they never gave her a real name because they hoped she would die or run away. Finally she did. With Lázaro. To the capital. Where there were opportunities.

  Suddenly it was as though she were slapped. Lázaro covered his face. It was that smell, sweeter and stronger than garbage, the stench of Cuauhtémoc days after he died. They should have buried him deeper, but with no shovels it was the best they could do. And the coyotes could probably dig him up, anyway. This one had dragged him out and was pulling him away to eat. Décima would have thought he would be all bones by now, but he had gotten fat, almost like he was made of balloons. He looked ready to pop. One of the ravens had already started on an eye. That was why Cuauhtémoc had made Lázaro promise to bury him with his sunglasses. Sunglasses were important if you wanted to keep your eyes. Sometimes when you are weak and dying the birds don’t wait if you don’t have glasses. They had been friends and Lázaro had the decency to let him die with his glasses. But he wasn’t going to bury him with them.

  Not that Lázaro was going to be able to keep them. Jalisco would take them. They didn’t know his name, only that he was from Jalisco and that he had a machete. A man with a machete could take what he wanted. Sometimes he took Décima. It was very quick from behind sometimes when she went off to relieve herself or if Lázaro went off to relieve himself. Lázaro pretended he didn’t know, that he never saw, because there was nothing he could do and if he tried, Jalisco would kill him and then Décima would be his and he could make her do whatever he wanted. Jalisco was the man with the machete.

  He needed a machete because he had something to defend. He had a house. His house was a wooden box about four feet by four feet by four feet. A few other people in the dump had boxes, but Jalisco’s was made of wood.

  It took only a day until Jalisco punched Lázaro so hard in the side of the head his sunglasses fell to the ground and one dark lens cracked and fell out of the frame. Lázaro was so angry he forgot all about the machete and charged at Jalisco, headfirst, like a goat. Jalisco swung his machete but was off-balance. It was not a good swing. It didn’t take an arm off or anything like that—only a slight gash in the forearm with a small trickle of blood. But it was enough to remind Lázaro that you can’t fight a man with a machete. Perhaps later. There were many bottles here and he could break one and cut Jalisco’s throat while he was sleeping and get back the sunglasses.

  For now, Jalisco could not get the broken lens back in the frame so he covered that side with a piece of cardboard that said “Uvas.” It seemed like bad luck to put a sign over your eye that said “grapes,” but of course ravens probably liked eyes better than grapes. The people around the dump who never knew his name anyway started calling him Uvas. Jalisco did not find this funny but there is only so much you can do with a machete. Décima, who like the ravens could not read, did not understand this debate.

  * * *

  Lázaro and Décima never regretted their decision to move to the capital. Even if at the moment they were living in a garbage dump, this was the Distrito Federal, the city of Aztec kings. At first it did not seem like anything special, just the same kind of houses they had always seen. But then they got to broad boulevards with statues bigger than trees and buildings like palaces lined
up in a row. Some buildings were entirely made of glass. This city was full of big caciques, important rich people, and all you had to do was somehow make a connection to something. If you could sell something, there were plenty of people with money to buy it. Opportunity was everywhere in the capital.

  They walked along Reforma, the biggest avenue they had ever seen, and at a particularly promising intersection they turned right. They saw the U.S. embassy, which was large and white and clean, and they saw people with carts selling food. Décima thought that someday they could have a cart and sell steamed tamales, which she knew how to make because her family had her make them.

  Lázaro thought this was a bit ambitious and maybe they could start with hot yams. “Camote!” he practiced shouting, the way the yam sellers did. They found a small covered market. This was a very good spot to ask for money because people seemed to feel generous when they were buying things. They could understand that. It would be fun to buy things.

  But entire families of Mazahuas had established their places on the sidewalks near the market and they sat there, the women in bright skirts, the men small and tough-looking.

  Lázaro knew from back in Morelos that it was a mistake to get in a fight with indigenous people. It was like they said about the iguana—once they bite you they never let go. So they moved a few blocks away and sat in front of a pink house with a gate, bougainvillea growing on their wall, rich and bright as the Mazahuas’ dresses.

  Every morning a woman who looked like a Mexican but dressed like a gringa would come out, stop, open her purse, and with long fingers with the tips painted to match the bougainvillea offer some pesos—sometimes ten, sometimes a nice tightly rolled fifty-peso note. They were making good money and hiding it in Lázaro’s pants, which was not a good place, but after Cuauhtémoc died he took his boots, which only had a few holes and were too good to feed to a coyote and he could hide the money there. They were sure that soon they would have enough money for a camote cart. Such things were not impossible in the capital.

  At first they spent the night in the neighborhood. The Mazahuas would return to their mountain village. They thought this would give them an advantage with the early-morning shoppers before the rest could get in from the mountains. But Lázaro and Décima started noticing at daybreak the bodies of people who had stayed the night. One man was so badly beaten he probably would never walk again. Another was lying in a puddle of blood, facedown, his pants and shoes missing.

  Lázaro had not journeyed to the capital to end up dead on some street without his pants. It was a Mazahua woman who told them about the garbage dump. It was a long way away but not as far as the Mazahua villages, and it was a place to spend the night. The garbage dump was not their idea of being in the capital. But they could see that they would not survive sleeping on the street in town. After they got the camote cart working, they would find other possibilities. This was only temporary. The Mazahuas, of course, were hoping they would never return. To a Mazahua, a mestizo from Morelos was no different from a gringo.

  They could eat on the way. When the market closed in the evening, there was lots of food to throw away—soft black bananas, mangoes whose orange flesh had turned brown. Sometimes there was even old meat with not too many flies. They could not bring the food back to the dump because that would arouse suspicion. But they could eat it as they went or even gather scraps of wood and light a fire and cook the meat or even roast the old fruit or vegetables they got. It was far better than what you could find to eat at the dump. Life in the capital was going to work for Décima and Lázaro.

  * * *

  The machete wound in his arm was not healing. In fact, the entire arm felt numb. At first it was red, but then it turned a pale, dead-looking color and it started to smell like Cuauhtémoc. Lázaro knew what that smell meant. He had to take care of Décima while he still had some strength. He was growing weaker all the time.

  Jalisco now had a blind spot on the side where his sunglasses were cardboard, and Lázaro came up on that side with the broken-off neck of a Tecate beer bottle and drew the jagged glass as hard as he could across Jalisco’s throat. Jalisco hissed and red bubbles started bulging from his throat. As he fell onto a heap of vegetable peelings, Lázaro grabbed his sunglasses and then, leaning over him, forced his eyes wide open with his fingers and said, “You thought you could have Décima. She’s going to watch the birds pluck your fucking eyes out. What do you think of that, you fucking asshole? Look. The birds are already up there.” And at just that moment an angry shriek came from the sky. He hoped Jalisco heard it, but now he was dead.

  Lázaro dragged him to the edge of the dump, pulling him by one foot like a coyote would do. The coyote was already circling, his big tail dragging, waiting for his meat. Lázaro only had to back off about fifteen feet and wait a few minutes and the coyote was dragging Jalisco away. In the distance he could see a big purplish-black bird swoop down and land on his face.

  Then Lázaro went back to Décima and presented her with the machete. He had thought of bringing her Jalisco’s box, but he knew she would not want to live in his house. Now, with the machete, she could defend herself. “Now you are the one with the machete,” he said as he settled into the garbage. They both knew that he would never get up.

  He lasted four more days. He moved his arm slowly, as though beckoning her. She came over and in a frail whisper he hissed, “Camote!” He smiled and then he died. Then Décima took the machete and dug as deep a hole as she could—maybe three feet deep. She chose a low, flat place, and when the hole was three feet deep she had still not struck ground. She removed all the money from his boot and shoved it in the waistband to her skirt and placed him in the hole with his sunglasses with the one cardboard side securely on his head. Then she covered him with garbage and sat on a pile of trash and waited. All her work was for nothing. It took the coyote an hour to find him and twenty minutes to dig him up and pull him by one foot. The coyote was going to get to chew on Cuauhtémoc’s boots after all.

  “Adiós, mi amor,” she whispered to the man who had taken her to the capital, as the coyote dragged him away. It was the first time she had ever called him—or anyone—“amor.”

  * * *

  Now she had to go into town by herself. At least she had the machete. But it seemed that people would give money to a couple but not a woman alone. Perhaps it was the machete, though she kept it hidden under her skirt. But the finely dressed women gave her nothing. Nor did any passersby. At the end of the day she went behind the market, looking for food. She had not eaten in several days. There was a coconut and she took out her machete and opened it.

  “Look at that,” one man said to his two companions as they slipped behind the market. “A woman alone with a big machete.”

  The three men walked over to her and she knew she was in trouble, knew she should swing the machete, but she was too weak, too tired, too hungry. The men threw her to the ground and started tearing at her clothing. It didn’t take them long to find her roll of money, all of the money she and Lázaro had saved for the camote cart. One man held her arms to the ground and the other held her legs, spreading them far apart. She screamed as loud as she could and one of them grabbed a clay water jug and smashed it over her head.

  * * *

  When she woke up a broken jug was lying next to her and someone was screaming. The money, of course, was gone, as was her machete. Her clothes were ripped. She wished the screaming would stop. She had a terrible headache. She did not know if they had done anything to her. She tried to sit up, but she was very dizzy and the screaming got worse. Objects slipped in and out of focus. She managed to stand up and she somehow staggered all the way back to the garbage dump. It took almost two days. When she got there she collapsed on a soft pile of cardboard with some tin cans. She forced herself to get up but could manage no more than a crawl on hands and knees. She saw someone and crawled toward them. The other person was crawling, too. When she
got close enough she struggled to focus and made out two yellow eyes. They were not cruel eyes, not brutal. They were . . . wise. They were eyes of someone who simply knew what was going to happen.

  Décima lay down and reached to her torn skirt and ripped off a strip of cloth that she wrapped tightly around her head and secured with a knot, which made her headache worse. But she had to cover her eyes. She lay down on the trash and hoped that she would die before the coyote took her. She just wanted the screaming to stop. She could hear the animal breathing. Her last thought was, At least I didn’t die in Morelos.

  SAN SEBASTIÁN

  Begoña and the Bear

  . . . because life is not a show, because a sea of pain is not a proscenium, because a screaming man is not a dancing bear.

  —Aimé Césaire,

  Notebook of a Return to the Native Land

  Hunters have shot dead the last female brown bear native to the Pyrenees, condemning the species to extinction and causing an “environmental catastrophe” for France, the government said. Animal protection groups were last night concerned for the survival of the bear’s 10-month-old orphaned cub which escaped unharmed, but which was barely weaned. His mother, affectionately known by game wardens as Cannelle (Cinnamon), was killed on Monday when a group of boar-hunters shot her in what they claim was self-defense.

  —The Guardian, November 3, 2004

  The last female brown bear native to the Spanish Pyrenees is thought to have died, signalling an end to the species.

  Ecologists have expressed concern after it emerged Camille, a female bear whose territory crossed the mountains in the northeastern Spanish regions of Aragon and Navarre, had not been seen since February 5.

  The bear, who was thought to be around 20 years old, has not been sighted and there had been no reports either of attacks on livestock or on beehives within her territory for eight months, leading the Spanish conservation group, Ecologistas en Accion, to conclude: “The bear is almost certainly dead.”