Norte

by Edmundo Paz Soldán

  She lay down in bed and quickly fell asleep; he thought about leaving the money on the nightstand and taking off, but didn’t want to be curt and decided he’d hang around for at least a few more hours. Sleep never came: he was too sober, overwhelmed by the lack of coherence to the whole murder story. The Baylor professor, slain near a train station . . . The worst part was finding the FBI telegram in McMullen’s folder. The Federales were taking over the investigation. Sons of bitches always got the interesting cases.

  From time to time Fernandez still visited Joyce, the daughter of that elderly woman who had been murdered by the “Train Killer.” Early on he’d shown up at her workplace—a preschool—asking questions about her mother. Had Joyce considered any possible scenarios, did her mother have people working for her, gardeners or plumbers? He followed all possible trails. Joyce never disclosed anything of consequence, and he wasn’t surprised. He kept visiting her anyway, as if he were a doctor making a house call, someone who took care of family members who had experienced a close encounter with death. Joyce told him stories about her mother. Once they even went to see a movie together. It was unprofessional of him, he knew, but loneliness is a poor counselor.

  He sighed and turned the television on, flipping through the channels. He watched the end of a Bruce Willis movie, a Seinfeld rerun, an infomercial on slutty blonds during spring break. Before letting himself doze off he turned to Fox News.

  Dawn Haze Johnson, the anchor of his favorite news program, was complaining about a pedophile in Wyoming and sermonizing about how young parents don’t look after their children properly, don’t supervise their games or friends closely enough. Dawn Haze was an expert at crying over spilt milk; always zealous about finding culprits, she’d go so far as to blame the parents in the case of a daughter who was abducted from her bedroom at three in the morning because they weren’t awake and watching over her while she slept.

  After the pedophile bit came a segment of breaking news about a couple who had been brutally murdered in Weimar, Texas, a town of some two thousand souls. Reverend Norman Bates and his wife Lynn had been bludgeoned to death with a hammer taken from the reverend’s own garage. The killer had entered their home by slashing the screen door with a knife.

  Dawn Haze fondled her blond locks and fiddled with the silver buttons on her shirt before informing her listeners that she’d share her exposé just after the pause. Fernandez let himself be drawn in by the woman’s performance. The commercial break seemed to go on forever.

  He should call McMullen in the meantime to see if there was anything new on the case.

  She was back: the INS authorities have identified fingerprints at the scene of the crime as matching those taken a few days ago in a Houston suburb. The face of Jesús González Riele appeared on screen, a Mexican illegal who had been arrested twice and deported.

  He felt like waking Debbie up. Letting her know about the blurred black-and-white photograph. The brown skin, the downy mustache, the prominent cheekbones, the scruffy black hair. Could it possibly . . . could it be him?

  He looked at her lying next to him, lost in her dream. She wouldn’t much care about the things he had to tell her.

  Dawn Haze was foaming at the mouth: “Immigration laws are so lax that our country is being invaded by Mexicans who are spreading the same type of callous violence they practice over there. It’s time we build a wall and keep them out!”

  Fernandez coughed and got out of bed. He tried not to disturb Debbie while getting dressed. He belonged to only one country, and that was the United States. He had arrived with his parents from Calexico at the age of twelve, and his love of the country and conviction ran deep. Even so, it made him uncomfortable to hear people slander Mexico or the Mexican people. It was so easy to make sweeping generalizations. True, there must be some vicious narcos and thieves coming in, but the vast majority were normal people looking for a new lease on life, for decent jobs. And while we’re at it, what country can outdo the United States when it comes to creativity in violence?

  He regularly got into arguments with Dawn Haze. In truth, the only reason he watched her program was to let himself get all riled up.

  Now he was outraged. But not with Dawn Haze, with Gonzalez Riele, or Reyle, who had just gone and fucked them all over. When Fernandez was eighteen, he had worked as a security guard in the Gap store in downtown Landslide. A kid had come in once to try on some clothes, and as he was exiting the store, one of the other guards on duty noticed he had jeans on under his pants. The guard stopped him and marched him to the back of the store, where they smacked him around a little bit. The kid started bawling, he didn’t have papers, “please don’t arrest me, please don’t.” Fernandez had a hard time convincing the other guards to show mercy, he was just a kid. Fernandez told the boy he’d better not ever do it again. He let him walk. How many times on his beat as a Ranger had he stopped a car for a broken taillight or an expired inspection sticker, to find that the driver was a frightened illegal? He felt sorry for them and let them go. He’d give them a break, and who knows, maybe now they were doing as well or better than he was. But did any of it matter now? All his effort, and the hard work of so many other people, would be eclipsed by the media frenzy and people who wouldn’t remember anything else but the one illegal who was a killer.

  What would Dawn Haze say if she knew that this man might have killed not three but as many as five people? He’d find out soon enough.

  FOUR

  1

  Auburn, 1952–1959

  The professor was now residing in the white building. Nobody would have confused him with the other doctors or nurses. His head was shaved bald. Even when the heat pinched, he always wore long-sleeved shirts and a black, gray, or coffee-colored suit, elegant but boring, Martín thought, though surely they must think the same about his own uniform, this sky-blue pajama-type thing with pants so loose they’d fall straight to his ankles if he forgot to tie them nice and tight.

  In the mornings the professor would keep Martín company in the pottery workshop when nobody else was there, so he could spend some quiet time drawing. Martín would sit down on the floor under the professor’s watchful eye and comb his mind for memories. When something finally caught his attention, he’d observe it through the filter of the magazines he loved to read and shape it together with the drawings and photographs that filled their pages.

  The professor tried to strike up a conversation in Spanish with him one day, but Martín didn’t answer. He changed over into English and continued on about how he’d dedicated his life’s work to studying art made by people who were loco. He used the Spanish word loco, which Martín understood. He said he spent all his time researching “skitzofrenic” art, or “autsaider art,” something like that. The words just kept trickling and dribbling out of his mouth, no way the professor’s teeth could hold them all back, and so it occurred to Martín to draw a pair of long incisors on one of his jockey’s faces, an open mouth like the professor’s that spewed little drops of spittle. Or better: he could draw the words themselves. A man with a stomach chock-full of words that had to be expelled, as if he had swallowed a bunch of rabbits. A puking gush of vowels and consonants floating in green phlegm. Why did people insist on using that other language, it’s like a can of worms. Did they want his head to burst open? Where was their compassion? All he asked was to be left alone to draw. Go take a hike and shut the door behind them.

  Rabbits. He used to hunt them in Picacho. Every once in a while a shot to the stomach would rip one of the tiny bodies apart. But María Santa Ana knew how to cook them fine, following her mother’s recipe. Oh, and that meat she’d cook smothered in onions and beans? And her oven-roasted suckling pig. Aaaahhhhh.

  The professor said he had faith in Martín’s talent. He admired him. He believed he’d found the Mexican Jenri Rusó. Who? Jenri. Russssaaauuuu. Yes. That’s it. He brought Martín notebooks, magazines, and colors. That made everything bearable. The professor could go on chawing words as
much as he wanted, as long as he kept fetching art materials. And Martín drew. He came up with a painstaking ritual that began with removing the pages of a notebook and placing them along the floor to glue them all together and make enough space to draw. Then he’d make his own paste from things like shoe polish, crayons, charcoal, red juice he extracted from certain fruits, and his own spit, with lots of phlegm whenever possible. He mixed it all together in bowls he had learned to make in pottery class. Once everything was ready, he’d painstakingly cut out illustrations and photos from his magazine collection. He liked the soap advertisements best of all, because they always had faces of beautiful women in them that reminded him of María Santa Ana, even though they were white. Sometimes he would glue a face to the far end of some railroad tracks, as if it were a destination, or the promise of one. “Are you homesick?” the professor asked him in English. “Would you like to go home?” But Martín couldn’t understand what he was saying. “Is . . . your . . . wife . . . waiting?” the professor asked in Spanish, and this time Martín could sort of catch what he was trying to say.

  The professor could spend three or four hours at a time just sitting there and watching Martín work. Martín once drew something that looked like a cat, and the professor asked in Spanish if it was a cat. “Sí, gato,” Martín answered and kept drawing.

  The professor then spoke in English: “I thought you were mute.”

  “Miut?” Martín didn’t understand the word.

  The professor left and came back with an English–Spanish dictionary. He showed Martín a series of illustrations. He asked if this were a zapato.

  “Sí, zapato,” Martín responded in a voice so low he could barely be heard.

  “And this is a perro?”

  “Sí, perro.”

  “And this house is tu casa?”

  “Sí, casa.”

  “And this woman is tu mujer?”

  “Sí, mujer.”

  “And this building, iglesia?”

  “Sí, iglesia.”

  “You aren’t mute, Martín.”

  “Miut?” Martín didn’t understand what the professor said.

  The professor looked in the dictionary. Mudo, he said a couple of times. Martín didn’t respond.

  “You don’t speak because you prefer not to, isn’t that so?”

  “Perro,” he said. And then: “Casa, mujer, zapato, gato. Aaaaaaahhhhhh.”

  He closed his eyes. Everything was much better that way. The professor vanished. He should just stay in this peaceful place, in this dark room where he could be all by himself. He felt panic. What if the professor was still there when he opened his eyes?

  A long time passed before he finally dared open them again, and when he did, the professor was gone.

  The professor asked his permission to show his drawings in an art gallery in Sacramento. Martín didn’t really understand what was being requested of him, but he signed the page Whitey handed to him anyway. His signature was undulating and serpentine, the M stretched out like the hills of his town.

  On occasion the professor would bring someone along who translated what he said in English into Spanish. But Martín decided he wasn’t going to speak anymore. They had betrayed his trust.

  The show had been a “success,” the professor told him. Martín now had several visitors dropping by to meet him, local artists, critics, and teachers. Some were sculptors or painters themselves, and of course the professor’s students. The hospital director allowed the visits; he’d even tag along every now and then, proud that one of his patients was fetching so much attention. Martín received his visitors but would have preferred they not come. Why couldn’t they simply drop off their gifts and leave him in peace?

  One patient handed him a pen and paper and gestured for him to scribble something down right then and there. Martín drew a miniature train. The cottony wisps of smoke looked like they wanted to float right off the page. The fat man looked at it and pointed his finger at Martín and fired. Martín smiled, and the fat man burst into tears. Gitupboy and Little Stepbackwards ran over and tried to calm him down. They took him outside.

  What was Martín supposed to do? Throw himself to the floor?

  From then on, the director restricted Martín’s visits. Only the professor was allowed access to him.

  There was another show in a place called Berkeley. And another in a place that was farther away called Syracuse. The professor brought news clippings back with him, and Martín read the headlines: “Wonderful Insane Art.” What was that? The photos showed the professor giving a talk at a university near Syracuse, in a little town called Ithaca. Martín’s drawings could be seen behind the professor.

  There was another show in some place called Oakland. The professor arranged a special leave for Martín so that he could attend. He lent him his black suit, though the arms of the jacket were a little too long for him. One of the orderlies gave him a yellow belt that didn’t really match, and the director gave him a checkered tie that looked like a napkin.

  Martín left the building in a van, accompanied by the red-haired orderly he had nicknamed Firecracker. The professor sat up front.

  The redhead spoke a few words of Spanish and he asked Martín if he knew what year it was. Martín understood the question but didn’t answer.

  Uno nueve cinco cuatro, the orderly said. Martín understood, without understanding.

  When he approached the blue building where his paintings were hanging, Martín read the big letters on one of the walls by the entrance: “The Art of a Schizophrene: Drawings by Insane Artist Martín Ramírez.”

  Schizo, schizo, schizo . . .

  He walked through the rooms in the building accompanied by the professor and the redhead. People came up and asked to have their photo taken with him. He smiled and let them. Then he remembered his decaying black teeth and tried to smile while keeping his mouth closed.

  He liked how clean and well lit the rooms were. His drawings could be appreciated. But the walk took less than ten minutes. He wanted to leave now, go back to his building. His home. Didn’t they understand?

  There was another show in a place called San Francisco. It was going to be even bigger, with more visitors, and the professor explained that his drawings would be displayed in a small room, but there would be the work of other artistas locos.

  Martín ventured to ask: “Locos?” He wasn’t loco.

  “Schizophrenics,” the professor said in English.

  That damn word again.

  “Psychotics,” the professor continued, but Martín couldn’t grasp what he was saying.

  “The sculptures of a patient after a lobotomy.”

  “Lobos. Wolfs?”

  He wanted to draw wolves. They used to prowl the outskirts of his town.

  “That’s right,” the professor said. Lobos.

  The show was one of his all-time best experiences. The professor gave him a folder stuffed with news clippings. He blacked out the photos where his teeth were showing. He wanted to read them but kept getting stuck: that damn language still got in his way. Important people called and asked for an appointment to meet him, but the director said no. One or two were allowed to come with the professor, and he made the introductions, then stepped aside so that they could talk. But Martín never opened his mouth, Martín closed his eyes and made them disappear, and when he opened them again, the important people weren’t there anymore.

  He kept at his drawing. The professor didn’t live in the building anymore, though. No matter: he still came to see Martín three times a week. He scrutinized his drawings, made comments, cataloged them, and then he’d leave. He’d take some of the work with him after asking permission; Martín said yes, assuming he was borrowing them, though truth is, he never brought them back.

  The professor would get irritated with him if he didn’t have anything new. “Martín, we make it so easy for you.” Martín had no idea what the professor was saying, but the tone of voice frightened him. He didn’t want to offen
d the professor. So he would start drawing, and sometimes the professor would watch and say something like “More of the same, we need new things.” And the only thing that Martín absorbed was that they wanted him to continue drawing. No complaints.

  He still suffered from a chronic cough and was so accustomed to the headaches by now that he only noticed them in the scarce moments when he felt relief. At times he’d grow anxious, agitated, and the only way the orderlies could calm him down was with morphine injections or immersing him in cold water, but luckily there were no more treatments with cables.

  The Federales had won the war with the help of the United States. He would forever be a prisoner now. He had to get used to the idea. He could find a way to make peace with his situation and everything else, as long as they let him draw. Like María Santa Ana’s betrayal, not seeing his daughters. And Candelario. Aaaaahhhhh.

  The professor showed up one day looking very solemn. Martín got upset: had something happened, did someone die? The professor guided Martín outside to the patio. They walked along the main path, lined with freshly pruned trees whose trunks were painted white. The sky was marine blue, and the glowing sun had dropped below the hilltops, infusing them with a golden aura. Martín thought about the bare hills of his own town, the muted colors of its landscape.