by Hector Camín
As previously agreed, I showed them the business card of my paisano on Bucareli Street. That got me admitted to what at first glance looked like a garden where another guard detail stood watch. A second look made it out to be rather more than a garden. A dense grove of India laurel trees filled much of the space. Their shiny roots snaked in and out of the ground like the tentacles of an octopus, and their fronds kept the fierce sun of Veracruz at bay. There were also clumps of bamboo and oleander bushes spilling torrents of red down the walls. A system of paths led over a reinforced cement bridge. In one corner of the garden was a small kiosk with wooden grillwork and the pinkest honeysuckle imaginable wherever it managed to take hold. One of the guards went to request instructions. I waited with the others, hypnotized by the honeysuckle.
A quarter hour later I was let into another small patio, an enclosed orchard flanked by the rooms that made up the house’s interior. We followed the corridors-all painted cinnamon brown with white striping-that led past the rooms to an even smaller patio that in times past must have been the stable. A handful of people waited there. Next to the wash tubs an enormous oleander bush arched over one wall so lush and red that I at first failed to notice the small doorway through which I was led by the guard.
I entered the penumbra of a large room with an opening at the back leading to a kitchen and another brightly lit patio. In the room was a small parlor set plus a dining area with two glass china cabinets. The room was separated from the two rooms to its right solely by a pair of curtains that revealed, as they waved in the breeze, an old box-spring bed with a brass headboard and a studio with wicker rocking chairs and a large desk where two men were conversing.
What was most distinctive and in a way most disconcerting about the place was the lack of decoration. The dining table expressed even greater austerity than the whitewashed walls. All the chairs had been pushed back against the walls except for the one at the head of the table where there was a plate, on top of which was a lone jar of yogurt or whey. A spoon, a salt shaker, and a sugar bowl were deployed around the plate along with a slender water glass and a honeysuckle bloom from the kiosk.
A man emerged hurriedly from the studio, his pace so rapid he seemed to float. He was wearing a tee shirt and sandals, and his hair was wet from recent bathing. He looked about fifty, his skin leathery from long exposure to the sun. He was short and very dark, his posture decidedly erect. He glanced at me as if I were a piece of furniture and proceeded to the lone chair at the table.
“Have a seat,” he said without looking at me. He took the place at the head of the table.
It was Lázaro Pizarro. Three men followed him into the room. One pulled up a chair for me; one gripped my arm, directing me to sit; and the third took his place behind the seat of the man in the tee shirt. I seated myself as I’d been told and began to observe him. He had a low forehead, and his hair had gone white at the temples. The narrowness of the space between his slightly hooded eyes added to the intensity of his stare which was magnified through his bifocal glasses.
“Have you had breakfast?” He sounded stern and still refused to look at me. He stared into his jar of yogurt, or perhaps whey.
“No.”
“Give him some breakfast.”
One of the men went to the kitchen. Pizarro reached for the sugar bowl and made a precision task of carefully removing the lid. As I watched him jiggle the spoon in his right hand, I saw that half his little finger and a phalange of his index finger were missing. It was an extraordinarily strong hand, a strange instrument of calluses and hard curved nails. There was a malarial whiteness to the skin of its palm, and its sun-cured back was lined with nerves, wrinkles and tendons. His arms and neck matched the hand as did his collarbone and face, especially the forehead. He had the look of someone long acquainted with effort and adversity. They had left their mark on a body that seemed both dignified and mutilated by much hard work.
He put the first spoonful of sugar into the jar and stirred.
“Yogurt or whey?” I asked.
I listened to the echo of my own voice which failed to affect Pizarro’s concentration.
“Fresh cream,” he replied. His voice was thin but resonant, his words clipped. “Cream fresh from the barn. Do you want to try some?” Once again the stern question. He sounded cordial though very much accustomed to giving orders.
“Give him some fresh cream,” he commanded, still without looking at me.
The crackling sound of hot oil and the smell of lit burners wafted from the kitchen where two women and a boy with bare feet were hard at work.
“You weren’t supposed to come until next week,” Pizarro said, poking at his cream.
“That’s right,” I said. “But I was on vacation in Tuxpan. It was nearby, so I decided to come sooner.”
“Once I went to a celebration of the saint’s day of a paisano named Manuel Talamás,” Pizarro said. He continued to work at his cream and had yet to look up from his plate. “He was a very dear friend, and we agreed that I would arrange a serenade to begin after midnight. But it was raining, so I decided to start early. I changed the time to Wednesday, June 10, 1971, at 10:30, and he didn’t hear us arrive. Manuel lived outside of town where there were no street lights and no sidewalks. We got there around 10:20. We began setting up, and people started to gather for the serenade. But that’s not what it sounded like to him. He thought a fight was brewing because he didn’t expect us until later, and he’d had problems in the neighborhood that day. Somebody was after him, or that’s what he thought. The point is he heard us and got confused. He started firing his carbine out the window to defend himself against the mob he thought was coming to lynch him.”
“The woman who keeps house for me is from Tuxpan,” I said. “She came to spend a few days with her family, and I came to see if we could do the interview ahead of time.”
Pizarro’s aide brought a large bowl of heavy cream from the kitchen and put it next to me. “Serve yourself, sir.”
Behind him the barefoot boy brought me white bread rolls—toasted and sliced in half—on one plate and my own sugar bowl, not the one already on the table for Pizarro, but a different one. I praised the fresh cream and served myself generously.
“Juice and fruit.” Pizarro’s order sounded purposely frugal as if he disapproved of my portion of cream. “The climate of Poza Rica is ideal for work,” he said, starting in on his carefully doctored cream. “The gas flares and the natural heat put people in a bad mood so they work harder.”
“In the heat you tire faster,” I said.
“You don’t need to worry about getting tired. Around here nobody’s working so they can live longer. They work because they have to. Being in need is humiliating, and humiliation turns to rage. When you’re angry, you have more energy and you work better. The heat helps sustain the anger. When did you get to Tuxpan?”
“Yesterday”
“You got tired of Tuxpan in a hurry.”
His people brought in an enormous dish of fresh tropical fruit, mangos, pomegranates, melons, bananas, small sapotes, guanábanas, and a plate with cubes of papaya, watermelon disks, sliced lemons. And a glass of orange juice. It was all laid out to my left well away from where my right arm brushed the space occupied by the sugar bowl, the plate, the flower, and Pizarro’s conversation.
“Did you stay at a hotel in Tuxpan?” Pizarro said in the stern voice that made questions sound like statements.
“The Robert Prince, yes.”
“That’s in Poza Rica,” Pizarro said.
“The Hotel del Parque. Excuse me.”
“It’s on the river,” Pizarro remarked as if testing me and requiring an answer.
“Overlooking the shipyard.”
I took some papaya cubes. Before I could finish, the boy in the kitchen was back with a plate of small Veracruzan meat pies oozing with lard, sauce and cheese plus a beaker of atole made from beans.
“Are you from Veracruz?”
“From around
Córdoba.”
“But not from Córdoba itself.”
“Not exactly.”
“Then from where?”
“Near Huatusco.”
“Near Huatusco has a name.”
“I was born in Coscomatepec.”
“Then you’re Veracruzan to the bone. Small towns are the real Veracruz. I’m from Chicontepec.”
He pushed his dish of cream aside, and one of the men immediately removed it from the table. He also picked up the napkin Pizarro had just used to wipe his mouth and the sugar bowl from which he served himself. He was then served carrot juice on a new plate with a fresh napkin. I in turn was served fried eggs swimming in a red sauce laced with an herb called epazote. The boy who brought them placed the fruit dishes a comfortable distance to my left alongside the platter of eggs and a basket of fresh tortillas wrapped in a white cloth. One of the women from the kitchen also appeared and set next to the basket a new plate of very small, perfectly arranged stuffed chiles. Before I could react to the abundant spread before me on the table, the boy brought a steaming mug of atole and another of coffee. The combined aroma brought back memories of my childhood full force.
“Who are your relatives in Tuxpan?” Pizarro said upon taking a first sip of his juice. He continued to ask questions in a tone of voice that made them sound like statements, and he still wouldn’t look at me.
“A family by the name of Ceballos,” I replied. It was the surname of Doña Lila’s family.
“Your relatives or your servants?” Pizarro said after a second sip.
“Relatives of a woman who works for me in Mexico City.”
“It’s an old Tuxpan family. There’s an old lieutenant colonel named Ceballos who fought with Pelaez in the mountains,” Pizarro said, gazing at the sprig of honeysuckle in its fragile vase. “She must be related to those Ceballos.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“She must be. There aren’t that many Ceballos to chose from around here. Do you live in Mexico City?”
“For the last fifteen years.”
I was served a new basket of warm tortillas though I’d barely nibbled at one in the first basket, which was promptly taken away.
“Fifteen is a lot of years,” Pizarro said, then resorted once again to his odd way of asking questions. “Don’t you like your breakfast or did you lose your appetite?”
He took another sip of his juice and dried his lips with his napkin. One of the men quickly removed the glass, the dish, and the napkin. I understood that breakfast was over. What remained in front of him were the things that were there when he came in, the corolla of honeysuckle in its solitary vase.
“You must be a good journalist,” Pizarro said. He slowly looked me over, facing me for the first time. His black eyes were small and set close together. They seemed extraordinarily alive and at the same time ice cold, twice distorted by his bifocal lenses. “And we’re going to let you into our small world. We’ll do it despite your attempt to catch us off guard by showing up early. But I have nothing to hide so long as you’re a man of good will. All I ask is that you try to understand rather than catch us off guard. And you will understand if you try. Otherwise, we’ll just put up with you, but you won’t surprise us again. Eat your eggs while I put my shirt on. People start coming in at eight.”
He got up and left. Alone at the table, I suddenly realized I was totally surrounded by trays laden with fruit, eggs in chile sauce, atole, beans, bite-size meat pies, tortillas and mugs of assorted liquids. It was the exact opposite of the place where Pizarro’s sat. The space he left at the table looked frugal and untouched. It was utterly empty now because, upon getting up, he had also taken with him the vase with the honeysuckle.
I ate some of the eggs in chile sauce and drank some of the atole before Pizarro’s aide approached and told me to follow him. I entered the room with the wicker chairs and the desk. The desk was huge, fit for a pharaoh, though it consisted solely of one broad plank. It was thick and unvarnished but very well polished. Its legs were similarly thick. There were no papers, no drawers, no decoration except a wedge of opaque glass nameplate. Against its red background was lettering the color of aluminum. In lieu of a name it read: Don’t criticize. Work.
Pizarro was seated behind the desk reading newspapers when I entered. He’d put on a white guayabera. Next to him was a man I hadn’t seen before. The man had a clipboard with a ballpoint dangling off it, and whenever Pizarro finished with a newspaper the man set it on a small table against the wall.
“This is from the governor. Someone needs to talk to his pal,” Pizarro said, pointing to a story with a red check mark next to it. All the papers were checkmarked in red or blue. “You can handle the guy from Diario de Xalapa. Don’t let him stay too long. Don’t let him think we’re being defensive. Come in,” he said to me before turning back to his aide. “This is a reporter from Coscomatepec. He’s based in Mexico City. This is my friend and secretary Genaro Roibal.”
The man named Roibal extended his hand without saying a word. He looked about forty. He was white and impeccably shaved with a quasi-military haircut. Though no taller than Pizarro, his muscular physique attested to a serious commitment to the martial arts.
“He’ll be with us,” Pizarro explained, “the same as you, the same as everybody else. Let him see and hear everything. So if he’s willing to understand, he can.”
“Whatever you say, Lacho,” Roibal said as he recovered the last newspaper from the desk. Then, in movements that brooked no nonsense, he gestured for me to sit in the wicker chair beside the desk to the right of Lacho Pizarro. An armed man stood at my side, and there were two more in the doorway to the diningroom. There were no windows, just the intense glare of two neon tubes in the middle of the ceiling. On the white wall behind Pizarro was a heavily retouched portrait of Lázaro Cárdenas with the presidential sash across his chest. He looked very young, his eyes sweetly melancholy as if lost in post-coital contemplation. Beside him was another portrait which, though also large, was considerably smaller and whose subject was José López Portillo, then President of the Republic. To the sides, above and below these two objects of devotion, were far smaller portraits depicting the presidential succession from Ávila Camacho to Echeverría. A purple rag covered the face of Miguel Alemán from the nose down, endowing the former president with a comical resemblance to a bank robber in a western movie.
“What have we got?” Pizarro said.
“El Negro Acosta is back. He came very early,” Roibal replied.
“Money?”
“No,” said Roibal. “The usual.”
“Send him in,” Pizarro said. He pulled a rubber band from the pocket of his guayabera and began fidgeting with it.
El Negro Acosta came in, a huge, dark-skinned Veracruzan with African features and curled eyelashes. He hadn’t shaved in days, and his eyes were bloodshot. He wiped the sweat-and possibly some tears-from his face with a handkerchief that darted in and out of sight between his hands.
He stood before the desk (enormous back, enormous gut, enormous buttocks) trembling like a child. The handkerchief shuttled from one side of his face to the other as he gasped for breath. Finally, he collapsed sobbing into the chair in front of Pizarro.
“What’s the trouble, Negro?” Pizarro said.
“You already know, Lacho. I don’t have to tell you.” El Negro Acosta dabbed his eyes with his handkerchief. He seemed horribly ashamed and out of control at the same time.
“I want you to tell me,” Pizarro said. “Tell me exactly what the trouble is.”
“My wife Antonia, Lacho, the day before yesterday she slit her wrists. She did it in front of the children, and now she’s in the hospital.”
“Where are the children?”
“With their grandparents.”
“You mean Antonia’s parents?”
“Antonia’s, Lacho.”
“And why did your wife slit her wrists?”
The spasm of grief that overcame el
Negro Acosta made him bounce up and down in his chair.
“You know why, Lacho, you know already.”
“I know, but I want you to tell me,” Pizarro said. He ran the palm of his left hand across the top of the desk. “Now quit crying. You’re not even crying for real. You’re crying for a drink because you’re hung over, and I want to talk to you, not your hangover. So talk to me, tell me the whole story.”
El Negro Acosta sat up straight in his chair, smoothed his handkerchief, and wiped his face one last time. “Right, Lacho. I’ll tell you just like you want me to.”
He launched into the sordid tale of a prolonged bender. He drank with friends for two days non-stop, then went home for more money. He was after the savings for his daughter’s quinceañera. He beat up his wife, Antonia, to get it, then left. But the next day he returned with a friend to continue drinking at home. His wife wasn’t around, but his daughter was. He forced her to sit down and drink with them, and then he offered his daughter to the friend as a gift. The girl ran out of the house. This frightened his two small boys, and when they began to cry, el Negro Acosta beat them. Thinking that her daughter, who wouldn’t stop crying, had been raped, his wife stormed back into the house. She grabbed a kitchen knife and accosted the two men who were still drinking. She tried to attack el Negro with the knife, but when he threw her on the floor, she began to slit her wrists. The two boys raced out of the house shouting that their mother was dying, and that brought the neighbors out. They took the wife to the hospital and the children to their grandparents. That was the day before yesterday. Yesterday el Negro Acosta stopped drinking, and today he’d come to see Pizarro. It was the fourth time this sort of thing had happened in the past year.