He relates that he went to the Barajas Brothers’ warehouse and was shifting crates of tomatoes, baskets of chili peppers, and sacks of potatoes from leaky rooms to dry ones, that he knocked off at two o’clock and went across the street to the market for a giblets taco, that he returned to the warehouse and continued working until eight o’clock at night when the boss called a halt and paid him the twenty pesos he had been promised.
He states that when he returned to the Casino del Danzón there was nobody around to notify that he was back—that is to say, neither the Baladros nor the Skeleton—that he went into the kitchen, saw that there was no dinner, and then went to the charcoal bin in which he lived. He lay down on the cot and fell asleep.
He states: I couldn’t say what time it was when I woke up. The Skeleton was at the door of the bin holding an oil lamp. I said, “My little Skeleton,” and I started to lift her skirt. But she didn’t want to. She just said, “Come with me,” and left. I thought she was going to give me some dinner and so I followed her, but instead of going into the kitchen she went out to the yard where she stopped and said to me, “Get a pick and shovel out of the shed.”
When I came back with the tools, the Skeleton walked off and I followed. We got as far as the other end of the yard—the northwest corner—where she put the lamp down on the ground and said to me, “I want you to do a job without making any noise.”
(She ordered him to dig a rectangular hole two paces long by one pace wide and deep enough so that when he stood up in it his armpits would be on a level with the ground. After giving these directions, the Skeleton went back to the house. Ticho dug easily in the soft earth until his pick began hitting stones and Arcángela and the Skeleton came out of the house and told him to stop. The hole was hardly a meter deep. Ticho goes on to say: Señora Arcángela said, “Leave it at that. It’s better than to risk waking the neighbors.”)
The Skeleton took me to the kitchen, made me a fried egg, and gave me a mug of orange-leaf tea with a shot of alcohol in it. I said, “My little Skeleton,” again and she didn’t want to again so I went back to the bin and went to sleep.
It was getting light when I woke up. The Skeleton was at the door of the bin with the lamp. I said, “My little Skeleton,” but she pushed my hand away and again said, “Come with me.”
We went to the other end of the yard. I saw that somebody had shoveled earth into the hole I made, filling it about half full. “I want you to finish filling this hole,” the Skeleton told me, “and to tamp it down good with the mesquite stump. And, now—get this—if there is any dirt left over, I want you to spread it around the yard with the shovel so that nobody will notice that there was ever a hole there.”
I did the job just like I was ordered. By the time the Skeleton saw the hole filled, the earth tamped down, and the leftover spread around the yard, it was broad daylight. She took me to the kitchen and gave me a plate of cracklings she had just prepared for breakfast. While I was eating them, one of the girls came into the kitchen and asked the Skeleton how Blanca was doing. The Skeleton answered that she took so sick that they had to send her to the hospital again. That was when I got the idea of what it was I had been doing all night.
3
Captain Bedoya states:
July the seventeenth sticks in my mind because it was a very hectic day. Major Marín, who brought the payroll, arrived two days late at the same time as the hay truck that was supposed to have been there by the fourteenth. (He explains that the unloading was delayed because, according to regulations, the detachment had to line up and stand inspection before receiving their pay.) I left the camp with barely enough time to rush to the telegraph office before the money-order window closed. (Captain Bedoya bought a fifty-peso draft to the order of Carmelita Bedoya—his little daughter—accompanied by a message that read: “Congratulations from daddy on the occasion of your saint’s day.” It was sent to an address in Mexico City. The captain’s wife was also named Carmen, but he sent no message or remembrance to her. It should be noted that although the captain had money in the bank he preferred to wait until Major Marín arrived with his pay to send his daughter her present, even if it meant she would get it a day late.) From the telegraph office—Captain Bedoya continues—I went to Serafina’s.
I found her in the dining room, upset and trembling. I asked what was wrong and she told me that she had had a nerve-wracking day because Blanca took a very bad turn. She looked so jittery that I said good night to her, had some supper at the Gómez Hotel, and spent the night on the post. The following day, Serafina told me they had to take Blanca to the hospital.
I said, “The municipal hospital, I hope.”
She answered that, as a matter of fact, the municipal hospital was exactly where they had taken her.
Captain Bedoya had always considered it insanity for the Baladros to be spending money on Blanca. When they hospitalized her in Dr. Meneses’s sanatorium, several witnesses heard him make the following comment: “It’s throwing away money. Maybe that woman will be able to walk again some day but nobody is ever going to fix that face of hers and what good is a whore that gives you the horrors to look at?”
When Blanca was finally brought back to the Casino del Danzón from the hospital, Serafina preferred to say nothing to the captain, until one day he went out to the yard and found the paralyzed woman lying in the bathtub under the lemon tree.
“What’s this?” they say he asked several of the women who were nearby.
They told him it was Blanca. The captain then said, “That woman is no good anymore. What they ought to do is have Ticho carry her out to the garbage dump one of these nights and leave her there for the dogs to eat.”
(Possibly because of such remarks, Serafina preferred not to tell him what had really happened to Blanca.)
Captain Bedoya says: One night in the beginning of August when we were in bed together and the light was out, Serafina told me that she was losing hope of ever being able to reopen the business. I was glad that she was finally seeing reason, because I had given up on that a long time ago. It did not occur to me, though, to ask her what made her change her mind.
I woke up in a good mood the next morning, put on my underwear shorts and a guayabera shirt, and went out to the back of the house to breathe in some fresh morning air. It was a day without clouds, like in the dry season. As I was looking up at the sky I saw vultures. There were two of them and they were flying in circles around a spot that seemed to be right over my head.
I swear I am an atheist, but I got such an awful feeling I crossed myself.
4
Extract of the confrontation between Aurora Bautista and Eustiquio Natera—known as Ticho—during the investigation:
Aurora Bautista: “Isn’t it the truth that when you were carrying a sack of charcoal into the house one day, Doña Arcángela said to you, ‘Cut off a cazaguate branch and drive off those goddam birds that are walking around in the yard.’ Isn’t it true she said that to you?”
Ticho: “I do not recall that occasion.”
Aurora Bautista: “And don’t you remember that you chopped off a handful of branches from the bush and that you went over to where the vultures were and scared them off and that they flew around for a while and then landed back on the ground in the same place again?”
Ticho: “I have chased off vultures more than once in my life. Which time is it you want me to remember?”
Aurora Bautista: “The time that doña Serafina couldn’t stand it anymore, went for her pistol, gave it to you, and said, ‘Shoot the damn things!’ And then doña Arcángela came out to the back and said to you, ‘What are you people trying to do, scare the neighbors?’ Do you remember, now?”
Ticho: “It must have been somebody else who was there at the time.”
Aurora Bautista: “And I suppose you weren’t the one either who was in the kitchen with the Skeleton, Luz María, and me when Captain Bedoya came in and asked for a glass of water and then after he drank it he said, ‘
I wonder where that stink could be coming from.’ And the Skeleton said, ‘It must be that dead dog next door.’ Weren’t you the one who was sitting there then eating a tortilla? (Ticho gave evasive answers to this question and the following ones Aurora Bautista put to him.)
“Isn’t it true that you came in one day with a can and doña Arcángela asked you how much the gasoline cost? Don’t you remember the night you took the pick and shovel and dug a hole in the rear of the yard? . . . and later that night you made a fire that burned for a long time and the next morning the air smelled foul?”
Ticho: “I think you must have dreamed what you are saying. It never happened.”
XII
The Fourteenth of September
1
On September 14, the Baladro sisters had a meeting with señor Sirenio Pantoja—proprietor of houses of prostitution in Jaloste—for the purpose of negotiating the sale of their remaining fifteen girls. This decision suggests that they had by then given up all hope of reopening their businesses.
The meeting took place at eleven o’clock in the morning in Pedrones at an ice cream parlor by the name of La Siberia. The Baladros were obsessed with keeping don Sirenio from suspecting that they were living in the Casino del Danzón—the previous deal with the same man for the eleven women had been arranged on a bench in the Pedrones square—without taking into account, probably, that this secret was known to the women they were selling to him.
It seems that don Sirenio was looking for better terms—the situation was not the same as on the first occasion when he had sought them out; this time, the sisters were making him the proposition. Maintaining that he had had heavy expenses recently, he offered three hundred pesos per girl. This offer was rejected by the Baladros who acted as though they were about to leave in a huff. Don Sirenio went up to four hundred. The Baladros remained in the ice cream parlor. When don Sirenio offered six hundred, they closed the deal. The result of their having spent the morning there will be seen later.
2
The balcony in the cabaret of the Casino del Danzón was not part of the architect’s original plan; it broke the illusion of being at the bottom of the sea that the rest of the decor sought to create, and provoked impassioned protests, it is said, from the young decorator who had acted as adviser to the Baladros on the construction of the brothel. The balcony is there, nevertheless.
It was Serafina’s idea. On her visit to Acapulco, she saw from the street—and never forgot—a vocal trio singing on a balcony, accompanying themselves on guitars, while the tourists ate in the patio below. It occurred to her that on a gala night—that is to say, when a politician or some influential person came in with friends and wanted the place closed to the public—it would be nice to hire a trio, and when the people down on the dance floor and at the tables least expected it, to have the balcony doors open and the singers come out singing “Las Mañanitas” in honor of whoever was paying the bill.
The balcony was built, but no singers ever made use of it. Arcángela and licenciado Canales appeared on it the night of the inauguration of the Casino del Danzón when he gave the “Cry of Independence” that cost him his job, it was from there Arcángela and Serafina watched Blanca’s treatment, and it also played its part in what is now to follow.
It should be noted that the railing of this balcony was never properly installed. The ironworker who made it warned the contractor that it was not secure; the contractor, after checking and finding that this was in fact the case, ordered a mason to reinforce it; the mason promised to take care of it, but never did.
Months later, after the building was finished, Arcángela said, “That railing is loose and has to be fixed. If anybody ever leans on it good and hard, it could break off and he’ll land head first on the floor—and that floor is four meters down.”
Following this observation, nobody thought about the railing again until the fourteenth of September.
3
To get to the balcony one goes down the hall that leads to the rooms. The women were in the hall when the fight started.
This is more or less the picture: There are two women locked in struggle, their faces very close, gripping each other’s hair with both hands. Their features are distorted, eyes now screwed tight with pain, now bulging in their sockets, mouths twisted, lips flecked with spittle; their dresses are disarranged and torn, shreds of a brassiere showing through a bodice. They move together, bodies very close, as though dancing—three steps in one direction, two in another, from time to time, a foot stamped on, a kick in the shin, a knee in the groin. The noises that come from the women are animallike—grunts, gasps, snorts, an occasional short ugly word: “whore,” “bitch,” and so on.
The women were alone when the fight began, but it went on for so long that the others in the house realized that something special was happening and had come out of their rooms into the hall to watch. (The Skeleton was at the market.)
Thirteen women look on while the two tear each other’s hair out without anyone trying to stop them. The reason is that the two women fighting are “soul mates”—that is, lovers—and the others consider their fight a personal matter in which the community should not interfere. And so, the women followed the bitter and even struggle—a shove one way, a pull the other—closely but silently, thinking that it would stop when the combatants were exhausted. The fight would have ended without blood being shed if the Baladros, who were getting out of Ladder’s car, had moved a bit faster; they would have been in time to yell and break it up. Or if the fighters had not had the bad luck to reach the balcony just as one gave the other a violent push that made her hit the railing with her buttock, breaking it loose and causing the two of them, still clutching each other by the hair, to plunge to the floor. Their skulls hit the cement and broke like eggs. The lives of both came to an end at the same moment. Their names were Evelia and Feliza.
4
The Baladros came in by way of señora Benavides’s house, passed through the opening between the two buildings, and were crossing their dining room when they heard steps, thuds, gasps. Arcángela was about to shout, “What’s going on?” when she heard, first a resonant sound (buttock against railing), followed by a rending noise (the railing breaking loose), a reverberating crash (the railing hitting the floor), and a sharp crack (heads against concrete).
It is possible that some of those who saw the accident may have screamed, that one or several of the women rushed down the stairs, but death always ends by imposing silence on those who contemplate it.
One may assume, then, that when the Baladros came through the door that leads from the house into the cabaret, there was silence. They entered a room filled with plaster dust, distinguishing first the twisted railing, then the bodies and, finally, on looking up, the four, five, six, or more women in the frame of the railing-less balcony, staring down.
The suspicions may be ignored—“Who pushed them?”—as well as the recriminations: “You are to blame for not having separated them!” and so forth. The Baladros must have finally come to the realization that the accident was entirely the victims’ fault. Also, they discovered on one of the bodies the possible motive for the quarrel: Blanca’s gold teeth.
Evelia had Blanca’s gold teeth in her brassiere, it being the only part of her clothing in which anything could be hidden since she wore one-piece décolleté dresses without sleeves or pockets.
The story of Blanca’s gold teeth is as follows: Arcángela tried to pull them out of their owner’s jaws while she was ill, but was unable to do so; when Blanca died, Arcángela had so many things on her mind that she forgot to remove them from the corpse; however, when it became necessary to disinter and burn it, she remembered the teeth and decided to salvage them. It was then that she discovered they were gone.
She said nothing, but brooded about the matter for weeks; Blanca’s teeth had been stolen by one of the women living in the house. Serafina, Ticho, and the Skeleton were above suspicion—at least, Arcángela liked to think s
o—consequently, the thief had to be one of the four women who were involved in the treatment and then the burial. On reaching this point in her reasoning, Arcángela’s mind would cloud and she was unable to get any further toward unraveling the mystery. Not only was the guilty one taking refuge under her roof—a roof she and her sister had built with their money—but she was eating the tortillas they were paying for. And, on top of that, she had stolen the gold teeth that were rightfully theirs in return for the sacrifices—and enormous expense—involved in the course of Blanca’s illness.
The mystery was cleared up on September 14. The gold teeth were sticking halfway out of Evelia’s brassiere. Arcángela saw them when she bent over the body, took them, put them in her pocket, and sold them two weeks later to a jeweler in Pedrones for five hundred pesos.
Not only did the guilty one give up the stolen property to its rightful owner when she was found out, but she had already received her punishment.
5
This sudden turn of events leaves part of the story indeterminable. It is only possible to surmise. Evelia and Feliza’s relationship was of ten years’ standing, their companions say. They were constant and placid lovers held up as examples and even envied by other employees. According to the reports, although they lived as husband and wife—Feliza served Evelia at the table and mended her clothes; Evelia administered Feliza’s earnings—they discharged their duties in the brothel conscientiously. After ten years of living together in absolute harmony, with never any sign of discord between them—the slip that Feliza had washed for Evelia was hanging on the clothes line—they ended by killing each other.
The explanation for what happened should perhaps be sought in Blanca’s gold teeth.
The Dead Girls Page 10