Death in Veracruz

by Hector Camín

  “Especially to your bank account.”

  “Especially when it comes to righting historic wrongs, brother. But I’ve got things to tell you. May I invite you to eat?”

  He insisted we dine at the Passy in the Zona Rosa and that we be given a table in the middle of the restaurant. We sat facing the lobby with our backs to the windows and started in on the whiskeys. Before we’d ordered a second round, half the major players in Mexican politics and journalism had passed through that lobby. We were on our fourth round when the director of PEMEX appeared with four top figures from the energy sector, among them Pizarro and La Quina, in tow.

  “Did you see them? Did you see them?” Rojano asked eagerly. “They’re all there, aren’t they? Only Cárdenas is missing, damn it. Do you know Díaz Serrano?”

  “We met at a journalists’ lunch.”

  “If you approach him, will he recognize you?”

  “I’m not approaching him.”

  “But if you did approach him, would he recognize you?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “But, brother, you’re right in the thick of things. There can’t be more than a couple of thousand guys that are in as deep as you, that make things sizzle as President López Portillo likes to say. If you approach Díaz Serrano and tell him who you are, there’s no way he can blow you off, damn it. You’re one of the top half dozen columnists in the country for Christ’s sake. Who doesn’t recognize you, brother?”

  “Díaz Serrano doesn’t know me.”

  “So, I mean, what harm can it do? I need a meeting with Díaz Serrano. Because of my job, brother. Couldn’t you give me a bit of help? For you it’s no big deal, for my town it could be a matter of life or death. Put it in perspective.”

  “The fish is excellent here, and so are the Mexican dishes. The imported wines are also first class.”

  “Don’t jerk me around, brother. Get some perspective.”

  I ordered another drink and the menu from the waiter.

  “How are things in your Totonacan fiefdom?” I asked. “Ready for the leap to petro-modernity?”

  “Ready for the plunge into isolation and misery, brother. It’s something you can’t even imagine. It’s like a colony except the Spanish empire’s been gone for four hundred years. It’s a fossilized remnant from the nation’s past.”

  “That’s nothing to worry about. The whole country’s a fossilized remnant from world history.”

  “No, brother. Just think what it means to be in a place where babies are weaned on pulque. Aspirin is unknown beyond the three blocks at the center of town. Once you get past Tejeda’s fruit and vegetable shop, hardly anyone knows much about either Spanish or aspirin. We’re about to put in a water system, and guess what?”

  “I don’t guess.”

  “The first families to get running water refused to use it. The fact is they’re not using it. They say they don’t know where it comes from, that there must be something wrong with it if it has to be pumped underground where no one can see it.”

  “So you see, they’re not that dumb.”

  “Wrong, brother. They hardly know their ass from their elbow. They think women get pregnant according to the phases of the moon.”

  “Maybe they only screw by moonlight.”

  “They screw anything any time. Day or night. Chickens, sheep, calves or women, they’re all fair game. And they don’t do it in private either. They do it openly to show how macho they are. By the way, I need to make a phone call. Excuse me a minute.”

  They brought my snails and Rojano’s salmon along with a bottle of red wine that Rojano ordered and the highball I ordered. It was then that I saw Roibal enter the lobby. He was impeccably dressed in a very new suit and shoes shined to a high gloss.

  “Mr. Díaz Serrano noticed you were eating here,” Roibal said, “and he asked me to see if you’d like to have coffee with his party when you’re through with your dinner commitment or, if you’d like, you could join them right away for an aperitif. They haven’t eaten yet.”

  “Which is better?”

  “Sooner is always better,” Roibal said. “If you want, I’ll make excuses for you with the mayor.”

  “Then I’d rather drop by for coffee,” I said, just to be difficult, and busied myself with my snail fork.

  “As you wish,” Roibal murmured. He took two steps backwards and withdrew.

  “Your friend invited me for coffee in their private diningroom,” I told Rojano when he returned.

  “With Díaz Serrano?” he said, feigning surprise.

  “With your colleague from Chicontepec,” I said, “and the rest of the colleagues.”

  “Everything that goes down must come up, brother. Do you think I’m doing this for myself? If I’m going to get anything for the poor devils back home, I’ve got to come and make contacts, spend money, rub elbows. All I get from being holed up in Chicontepec is being holed up in Chicontepec. I can’t solve the problems of Chicontepec by staying home. I have to solve them here, brother. That’s the way our system works.” He took a drink, looked around, then turned back to me.

  “What are you going to tell him?”

  “Tell whom?”

  “Díaz Serrano.”

  “I’ll tell him you and I are are sitting here drinking cognac and solving the problems of Chicontepec.”

  “Seriously, brother, what are you going to say to him?”

  We ate. Rojano had his trout and I had my sirloin. We ordered our first cognac around five, and Francisco Rojano, Atty., broke out his cigars. We had yet to light up when Roibal appeared to remind me of my pending invitation. I proceeded to the private dining room where the senior leadership of the Gulf petro-industrial sector was gathered. I received a cordial greeting from Díaz Serrano himself, and the director of PEMEX made a point of personally introducing me to those present. When he got to Pizarro, he said, “I understand you two already know each other.”

  “We’re almost neighbors,” Pizarro replied obsequiously. His manner couldn’t have clashed more with how the imperturbable and remote Pizarro conducted himself in Poza Rica. He turned to La Quina and in the same tone of voice said, “Joaquin, this good journalist is the childhood friend of our friend Francisco Rojano, the mayor of Chicontepec. In fact,” he said, turning to me, “you’re having dinner with Mayor Rojano right here in this restaurant, aren’t you?”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “Then invite him in for coffee and cognac, too,” Díaz Serrano said to Roibal, who was waiting in the doorway through which he’d escorted me.

  Before I could come up with a way to thwart this maneuver, Pizarro changed the subject. “What does the free press have to say for itself, paisano?”

  For the second time that day, I had the clear impression that I was being manipulated according to someone else’s intentions. Rojano appeared, and the conversation degenerated into platitudes. Finally, as the evening was about to end, he got close enough to Díaz Serrano to beg for a meeting. He got his wish in the form of an appointment the following day thanks to his insinuated links to my column and to Pizarro. When we left the private dining room, two girls were sitting at our table drinking our cognac and smoking mentholated cigarettes. I don’t remember their names. It was November 17, 1977.

  By 6:30 the Passy was emptying of its evening diners. An hour later its nighttime clientele began to arrive. We stayed on with an open tab courtesy of PEMEX (as we were advised by the maitre d’) drinking cognac with Rojano’s invitees. We went from there to the suite Rojano had rented in the Hotel Genoa. There was iced champagne in the sala and a rolling mini-bar with more cognac, whiskey, and imported liquors. Rojano’s guests smoked marijuana. They wore silk panties and bras, had partially shaved pubic hair, and preferred anal intercourse. At 10:00 they were still prancing about the suite and making a show of arousing each other. At 11:00 they clocked out. They wrapped themselves in their maxi-skirts and left. After long restorative baths, Rojano and I went back to the Zona
Rosa with its chaos of bars and hustlers. We had a drink at the Sapphire Bar in the Hotel Presidente where Cuco Sánchez played to a full house nightly. From there it was on to the then fashionable Lion’s Bar on Brazil Street, and thereafter to a giant dance hall on Palma where about 1,000 women danced and tendered sex for hire. Most were castoffs from other dance halls with an admixture of young girls recently imported from provincial brothels or migrant girls on their way from the rural poverty to urban prostitution. They served rum when you ordered whiskey and aguardiente if you asked for rum. There was watery beer, cider relabeled as French champagne, and diluted brandy from the flea markets of Tepito. It was all displayed on this darkened dance floor for clients who were themselves the dregs from the better bars and nightspots that shut down at dawn. We ordered a bottle of Anís de la Cadena, of which Rojano declared himself a connoisseur, and shared it with a young girl whom Rojano discovered among the shadows. I woke up in blinding sunlight beside the two of them in an ice cold bed on the third floor of the Hotel León de Brazil. The girl was breathing on my neck. She had wide bands of smudged mascara on her eyelids and cheeks, two skeins of tangled hair, and thick, partially open lips. Minus her nocturnal accessories, she was just another country girl, unwashed and a bit coarse. I nudged Rojano, who was sleeping like a log. He awakened red-eyed, still drunk, and humming a Juan Gabriel song it was impossible not to hear three times a day in Mexico City (“…which is why I am where I always was, in the same place with the same people”). He gave a start upon discovering his acquisition from the night before and began to slap her cheek with his penis to wake her up. I went into the bathroom where I found to my surprise there was hot water. I was drying off when I heard Rojano groan and the girl whimper from beyond the door. When I looked out, I saw Rojano jumping up and down in the middle of the room. The girls legs were forked around his waist, and he was holding her up by her buttocks, penetrating her with every jump in a grotesque kind of dance punctuated by his gasps and her whimpers. She was a slender woman and not very tall, fragile and bony with the physique of an adolescent. She began to laugh and, finally, to show some small signs of pleasure. I wondered if he did that with Anabela. By my estimate at the time, he wouldn’t be able to suspend her like that. By my later estimates, he probably could.

  We checked out around one. With her damp, disheveled hair and evening wear, the girl looked ridiculous amidst the midday commotion of food stalls and professional letter writers doing business from their desks on the sidewalks of Brazil Street. At that moment, she was the saddest semblance of a woman to be found in all of Mexico. Rojano kissed her on the mouth in the doorway of the hotel. He pushed his tongue between her uneven teeth and held her to him in a prolonged embrace that to my eyes mimicked the anti-erotic simplicity of what he’d done to her the night before. He finished kissing her and ran his hands over her buttocks at the height of midday in the middle of Brazil Street. He dispatched her with 1,000 peso bill which he placed between her drooping breasts.

  “Take a taxi,” he told her as if issuing an order to a sister or wife. “And don’t forget me. I’ll go see your mom at the Social Security clinic where she’s having her baby, just like I said. I’ll have you meet with a friend of mine there. And take care of that ass as if it were your own.”

  With a pat on the bottom he sent her into the streaming sunlight of the street. She went unsteadily on her way on frail legs and high heels, her damp hair bleached partially blond, swinging her pocketbook.

  “That’s what happens when they drop out of school,” Rojano said, slowly scratching his crotch. His tie was loosely knotted, and he had a day’s growth of stubble. He threw an arm over my shoulder, and we started walking. “Provided I don’t come down with a case of Vietnamese clap, I consider myself well served.” He continued scratching. “I say that not just for myself but for my community, too. Imagine what it would be like for me to show up in Chicontepec with an inflamed cock. The witch doctor couldn’t cure me so the whole town would be wiped off the map within a year by an army of spiral bacteria, an epidemic of venereal disease that Dr. Pasteur himself couldn’t stop. Because there’s no holding back the onslaught.”

  “What onslaught.”

  “I’ve never seen a raunchier town, brother. The priest has three wives, and he’s limited by professional restriction. I can’t get through a week there without some kind of incident. I even did it with a doe one day. Is there a bar around here?”

  We were two blocks from La Puerta del Sol on Pal ma Street, so we headed in that direction.

  “If I tell you what happened, you’ll think I’m making it up,” Rojano went on. “I mean a group of elders from one of the barrios showed up one day and invited me to a ceremony. It seemed the barrio of San Felipe wanted me to have their staff of leadership, and this involved a ritual for men only. So one afternoon we gathered in the house of the local headman. It was all very formal and hush-hush. First, we sat down to talk, then the bastards opened a jug of mescal to break the ice. Alright, so how about a second jug? Sure. And a puff of marijuana? A joint makes the rounds with the third jug. It’s getting dark, and it turns out they have a special gift for the honorable chief municipal authority, for me that is. But the mayor will need to take a short walk in the forest in order to receive his gift, which he must accept before taking the staff of leadership. So we walk out of town and into the forest, and they tell my aide Echeguren, a great kid you’re going to meet…”

  “I already know him.”

  “Alright, then. These bastards tell him, ‘You can’t come into the forest. This is strictly between the honorable chief municipal authority and the elders of Barrio San Felipe.’ Now I’m thinking, ‘What the hell do these bastards have in store for me once we’re alone in the woods?’ Still, I tell Echeguren, ‘Okay, it’s all right if you wait here for me,’ and I say to myself, ‘But if I’m not back in an hour, burn the fucking town down.’ They light their torches, and we march into the woods for some fifteen minutes along paths that only they can follow. We come to a clearing where three or four other bastards are waiting with torches, all smiles and ceremony like a bunch of Chinamen. So they all gather around me, and the barrio headman repeats that the gift is very special and it is being given to the chief municipal authority as a sign of special appreciation. Once they finish buttering me up, another bastard appears out of the woods leading a doe by a rope, a really beautiful animal, not too tall, not yet fully grown, and quite calm for a deer. They tie her to a stake, step aside, and gesture for me to approach her. So I go ahead and approach her. I pet her muzzle and flanks and express my gratitude to the distinguished headman and elders of San Felipe. And as I’m saying this, I realize they look annoyed at me, and the headman keeps gesturing to me to get going. This continues until one of the headman’s aides comes up and whispers in my ear that, if I don’t show my appreciation for what they’re giving me, then they’ll give me something I will like. And like an idiot, I say, ‘No, the doe is enchanting.’ And more thank yous and more dirty looks, and the bastards are getting restive, then one a bit smarter than the others comes up to me and whispers, ‘With all due respect, honorable chief municipal authority, this animal is being given to you to see if you acknowledge her as female and get from her the same pleasure as we do’. And that’s when it dawned on me. These bastards wanted me to fuck the doe.

  And, what’s more, they wanted me to do it right there in front of them. I remember that bastard Pizarro comparing Anabela to a deer, so what they’re offering me is my wife in animal form, her double, you understand? I mean Pizarro’s word is law in that town, and if he says Anabela’s double in animal form is a deer, then she’s a deer. So here I am deep in the woods with these bastards standing around feeling snubbed and immersed in an I-don’t-know-what symbolic universe with the doe in front of me. God damn it, what do you do then?”

  “What did you do?”

  “What do you mean what did I do? I took a taste of doe. And you want me to tell you the truth?”r />
  “Yes.”

  “Those bastards were right. It was a superb gift. It made me understand why the Greek gods liked to fuck while disguised as animals.”

  “Don’t make excuses.”

  “I mean it. The next time you come to Chicontepec, I’ll make you the gift of a doe.”

  I took what he said as an allusion to Anabela. We went into Puerta del Sol, ordered beer, and went to town on the hors d’ oeuvres.

  “Then we went back to the headman’s house,” Rojano went on. “You know why?”

  “No.”

  “So the headman could offer me his daughters. The oldest was fifteen, the youngest about eight.”

  “Didn’t he have a one-year-old?”

  “No, that’s not how it is. He wanted me to see them so he could save them for me, if you know what I mean. Only the fifteen-year-old was available right away.”

  We ordered shrimp broth, breaded cutlets, and a bottle of cold white wine.

  “After all,” Rojano said philosophically, “everything should be like screwing. You get hot, you come, you relax, then you get hot again. All the other stuff is pure shit. Leave my wife alone, don’t touch your sister, stay away from little boys. And screw animals? How degenerate! So much bullshit. I mean why wouldn’t you share your best lay with your best friend. It’s only natural, I don’t know why it’s such a big deal.”

  I was glad he kept bringing up Anabela. We ordered another bottle of wine, and he started to hand me the check. “Aside from the does,” he said, “we need to talk. I didn’t really come to see the director of PEMEX. I came to put you on notice.”

  He took a drink of wine, wiped his mouth, put his elbows on the table, and hunched forward to speak to me in confidence. After looking around to make sure no one was listening in, he said in a low, flat voice, “The war has begun, brother.”

  He hadn’t shaved. His hair was uncombed, his lips were cracked and dry, and his eyes were bloodshot. In his current state, he looked a bit ridiculous as if he were overacting.