He opened the window. Sleepy children were going to the corners to wait for the school bus. Maids on the way with milk. Drunks going home. Industrial workers starting the hazardous hour-and-a-half trip to the assembly line. Adolescents absolutely lovelorn, convinced that they wouldn’t be loved this time either. Writers who hadn’t slept well going out to take a walk before getting into bed to dream with their eyes open about the novel that wasn’t coming out. Circus magicians mentally practicing the marvelous act that had kept them awake. Farmers without land coming from far away to loathe the bureaucrats of the Agrarian Reform as they stood in line. Remorseful suicides. Pregnant and early-rising mothers; teachers who pulled ingenious algebra lessons out of their hats; insurance salespeople who didn’t believe in insurance; miraculous subway conductors; physicists who couldn’t be like Leonardo da Vinci; journalists on the way home; lottery salespeople who would never win; FM radio station announcers on the way to the job, who knew that once again they would read false news and who dreamed of one of these days passing on the information that was denied them; proud old people who no longer knew how to sleep; nurses of the soul; stray dogs; unpublished poets; blacklisted film directors; democratic bureaucrats on the verge of being fired; rock drummers; compulsive Althuser readers; teenagers swaggering defiantly at six in the morning who couldn’t stop believing they owned a city that adored them; Cardenista bricklayers, zealous conservators of the skill of laying bricks vertically without plumb lines. All the manufacturers of different metropolises, of apparently impossible futures, on their way to the routines pretending that they would be the ones to one day make the city blossom like a flower and become another.
He came out of the bathroom, took the refreshment in his hands, and went into the bedroom preparing to pack a bag. He would go to the woman with the ponytail’s house for a few months. At least to throw off the mariachis. He would be so foolish as to marry her, as absurd as to be a Mexican detective, as strong as fear. And if he left everything? With the artillery and the two volumes of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, he’d have more than enough. That and the ducks…He went to the window again, drawn by the light. It was starting to rain. Why weren’t there ever any rainbows in Mexico City? He liked to see the rain fighting with the light. He lit a cigarette.
Héctor Belascoarán Shayne found himself returning. Among other things, to the same city as before. A city the same as and different from the one of always.
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Return to the Same City: A Héctor Belascoarán Shayne Detective Novel (Héctor Belascoarán Shayne Detective Novels) Page 13