started laughing too. We made a toast to life, to the three Beatriz Viterbos, and to many other things.”
“I envy you, and it pisses me off that you didn’t let me go with you. How did it occur to you that the old man might be named Carlos Argentino, like in the story?”
“Coincidence, accident, who knows? With all that was going down, logic suggested his name was Daneri. But logic doesn’t do fiction any justice.”
“Got it. So you hung out with the old couple, just having fun…?”
“With them and with Beatriz Viterbo, the one who was the opposite of Borges’. We toasted to the three Beatrizes: the imaginary one, the one buried in the Dolores crypt, and the housekeeper’s young daughter, the one with the unknown father.”
“The young Beatriz, she’s also Viterbo?…So Mikel told the truth and the old woman got her confused with the aunt who died in 1929? We must investigate. This is a bit much, it doesn’t seem right.”
“I already investigated. The old woman gave her last name to the housekeeper’s daughter, made her her heir, sent her to school, where she’s earning a master’s degree, and, to cap her good work, wants to marry her off to a good man, like Mikel, ‘that poor innocent,’ she said sweetly. You realize she wants to marry her off to your friend, the faggot from Puebla? I tried to object, to explain we hadn’t determined who the killer was yet, blah blah blah. Those three stooges defended the faggot better than the best defense attorney in the country.”
“Look at that. Despite a few coincidences, look how different the stories of Beatriz and Violeta turned out to be. And that luckless Mikel left thinking Beatriz didn’t want anything to do with him, that he was marked for life.”
“I told you he was a faggot. Instead of facing the girl and the old woman and explaining what had happened, he ran away to his mother. He’s a coward, that guy.”
“Ponce, it’d be better if you just shut up, because you had a lot to do with his running away. Although I confess that right now I could give three shits about that crazy guy. All this smells rotten to me-the three Viterbos, your sudden fearlessness, acting like nothing happened and drinking to madness. Didn’t you think for even an instant that they could have drugged your champagne?”
“Well, then I would have gone down to the basement and seen the aleph. What more can you ask from life?”
OUTSIDE THE DOOR BY OSCAR DE LA BORBOLLA
The screams for help crashed through the second-story window with the broken glass. Everybody from the building across the street claimed to have seen the shards hurled like bloody projectiles. The window had turned into a woman’s cry, into the sounds of a torn brassiere and broken matrix. She’s being raped, some of us thought-killed, imagined others-and we all rushed up the stairs. The metal apartment door was jammed. There was no way to open it; the strongest among us slammed against it unsuccessfully. The next-door neighbor called the police but the line was continuously busy. Let’s go get a patrol car, somebody proposed, and two of the other neighbors dashed down to the street. I stayed behind, striking the flat metal of the door with my palms. There was no response from inside and we wouldn’t hear anything again. I was soon informed that the condo was vacant and that the owner had put bars on the bathroom windows.
After a while, the neighbors who had gone in search of a patrol car returned with a promise from a couple of officers to come right away; we elicited the same hope from the phone when a bureaucratic voice finally responded and asked us to spell out the address and summarize the facts. Yes, said the neighbor, it happened about an hour ago, around 2 p.m.
But another hour went by and still the authorities didn’t show. We called again; we even tried the Red Cross, the Green Cross, the fire department-but the phones were dead, busy, or rang endlessly without an answer. It was horrible not being able to do anything, feeling so impotent next to that door blocking our way; we were sure the woman who’d screamed was still alive. We couldn’t hear a thing but we desperately wanted to help her. Plus, the rapist, the killer, was still in there, because no one had left the place after the screams.
I ran down to the street to look for another patrol car, but there wasn’t a single cop, nor an ambulance- nobody. I walked around for a long time and finally, exhausted, I returned to the building, hoping somebody had shown up. But when I saw the others taking action, now with tools, trying to break the locks, I began to curse the irresponsibility of the cops. After all, it was almost 6 p.m. and growing dark and still no help had arrived.
We tried everything with the tools we had: a chisel to loosen the frame, a pickax for leverage to pop the door. But we only managed to chip the point of the chisel and the wall showed barely a scratch. It was even worse with the pickax, because it slipped and cut the leg of the guy from apartment 7, who, accompanied by his wife and a few other neighbors, had to be taken to the hospital, he was bleeding so much.
Then it was after 9 p.m. and nobody had eaten. A neighbor brought coffee for everyone and glorious tacos filled with refried beans. My husband had to stay in bed, she said, because at his age and with all the commotion he’s not feeling well. He’s put up with a lot, we all said, and we thanked her for the tacos. Go take care of him, someone suggested. Don’t worry about us, we understand.
By 11 p.m., those of us who were still there sat down on the stairs, at the foot of that damn door that refused to yield to our demands; worn out, we didn’t even have the energy to bitch about the police.
It was useless to continue keeping watch: we couldn’t go in and we couldn’t hear anything. Perhaps there wasn’t anybody alive to help anymore, perhaps it was too late. Perhaps the killer, the rapist, had gotten away before we’d arrived. We weren’t sure about anything anymore: our certainties had gradually given way to fatigue. What do we do? asked the tenant from apartment 10; he had to go to work in just a few hours. And me, I have a trigonometry test first thing in the morning, said the guy living in apartment 8. The question of what to do floated about on the stairs for a few minutes until I articulated it again: so what do we do? Somebody proposed we take turns on guard duty until dawn, when we could send somebody down to the station to file a complaint and demand that the cops come. But that idea didn’t go anywhere because nobody wanted to stay alone by the door, which could open at any moment and release the rapist or killer; and who could guarantee that it would be just one and not two, and that they wouldn’t be armed? I don’t live in this building, but across the street, I said. Anyway, I need to go home to see if I got a call because I’m expecting a confirmation on a business trip. We each began explaining our needs and by 2 a.m., without having decided who’d go to the station to file the complaint, we decided to just leave.
The message I was hoping for was waiting on my answering machine: the reservation code for a flight that would free me from Mexico City for a week. I hardly had time to pack my suitcase, call for a taxi, and sleep a couple of hours. As soon as I got to the airport I decided to forget about the screams, to concentrate; I had to get my head straight to deal with my business in Guadalajara, to not mess it up. With distance, talk about work, calls to the office, and the detailed report I had to submit upon my return, there was no way I could think about anything else, and the scene on the stairs began to seem to me more like a nightmare than a lived experience.
A month after I got back to Mexico City, I was crossing the street and ran into the man whose leg had been hurt with the pickax. He didn’t know anything either, because his leg had become infected and, between medical appointments and his work, he hadn’t had time to ask about the outcome of that ill-fated night, and neither had his wife. After the accident, she didn’t want to hear any more about it.
