At the plazas in Loreto and La Soledad, I had money to ease things and met adventurers who didn’t faint over smallpox scars. Some became my friends. We ate sweet rolls, drank muscatel, and sometimes waited out the night to see the sun rise. The moment is so magical there in the center of the city that you’re willing to see Aztecs emerge from the ruins; you’re willing to believe the most fantastic legends. “Fuck her good and she’ll be yours forever. You don’t have any other option. Easy or hard, if you’re the first, you have a chance. What’s to lose? Don’t be such a lightweight; women like men who are determined.” They didn’t know Graciela; they were talking about other women.
I pursued Graciela and she rejected me. Like a dog begging for a caress I went after her. I pleaded with her a thousand times in a thousand ways, I robbed a car to take her for a drive, I pressured, I threatened, and, in the end, I hurt her so badly that a hundred years of regret won’t be enough.
If something has to happen, it will. The black hour came when a passing helicopter reminded me of that bird, when my unfulfilled dreams disappeared in its flight, and then there was a knock on the door to the patio and there she was-fruit for the taking in a flowered dress-precisely on a Friday when Clodomira had warned me that she’d be late. In that fatal second, I knew that we had reached a point of no return. Because… could I have done anything differently?… What else could I do, I ask, what else could I do?… Or must the Squirrel call the garbage man, give him some money, and say,“Just stuff me in your truck and toss me in the incinerator”?
What happened that afternoon was unfortunate. First, because it’s unbearable to hurt the woman you love… A crazed and empty-headed bato, a head filled only with tequila and anger and marijuana, so that you can’t think or regret or get it together to disappoint the prostitutes who hope to see you do it and finally stop acting like a fag… obsessed with finding disdain in the face of the beloved… having made the ridiculous decision to make her pay for not loving you… Add it up and none of it makes sense. It was impossible to even hope that the magic of the first time would transform her rejection into love, like what happens in stories and movies we’ve all seen and know: first, the leading lady throws a furious tantrum; then-nobody knows how this happens-passion emerges.
But passion failed to show this time-Graciela didn’t change and that was the first misfortune. Or perhaps, who knows… The second came in terrible words: “You are going to pay. You are going to die for this.” Her eyes were stone cold when she said this, staring right at me so I’d know she was serious.
Truth be told, nobody gets through life keeping promises. If you don’t believe me, just ask the president. Although Graciela is another story. If she says, “It’s gonna rain,” it’s best to take an umbrella. “You are going to die for this,” said the One & Only. I fell to my knees; sick with remorse I swore eternal love, I promised to live to take care of her, I begged. But it was like talking to a wall, like pleading with a statue.
After that, I only searched for her once. I did it because I still had some hope left, and before I gave up the fight I needed to know once and for all if the prostitutes were right. I just looked for her one more time. I saw her coming and I stepped in her path. Graciela saw me and erased all my doubts. Erased my doubts and my will to live as well.
If I didn’t suffer too much it was only because there wasn’t much time. Finding food in this city takes a whole day. Any kind of enterprise requires surveillance and work. Even robbing a gas station means forgetting about Bonnie and Clyde and studying the situation first. Secrets are revealed by going through the details. There might be money at certain times but not at others; the architecture and number of employees will determine how many men are needed to make the assault; depending on the plan, you can pass for a customer or leave in a customer’s car; you have to know the police patrols in the area, find the best route for a getaway, anticipate alternate paths of escape… myriad problems to solve and the man-hours needed to do it. That way, with days and nights turned into work, pain and love are excessive. In other words, romance and regret have a better chance in the movies; on the streets, you have to break your back.
Pretty soon I was sick of Guatemala. I got myself far away from Graciela and from the scene of the crime. I left the neighborhood, I left the city itself, I traveled the country, coast to coast and up and down. And although the newness was exciting at first, in the end it just seemed like going around the block a million times. New landscapes and different faces hide the fact that, no matter where you are, laws apply to everybody, prison bars all look the same, and cop bullets are cop bullets.
I wandered for four years. Now and then I returned to the city, I visited Clodomira on the sly and found out how things were going in the neighborhood. That’s how I learned that Graciela was now with a heavyweight from Morelos. According to the rumors, some dude tied to the Gulf cartel. And since gossip and perversion go hand in hand-they’re certainly kin-I also found out the street had me pegged. Guatemala invented what it didn’t know. Something had happened between Graciela and the Squirrel, something grave, mysterious, and truculent- everybody’s lack of imagination was so depressing that they all thought the same thing: “That cabron Squirrel must have raped her.” The third nugget of info claimed that, to gain points with his lady, the Morelos heavyweight had put a price on my head. I couldn’t believe it. In the neighborhood, people talk because the air is free. Anybody with a mouth can join the cotorreo and if they don’t have a good story to tell, they just make stuff up. But as the love of my life, Graciela would have never accepted such savagery. I didn’t worry then and I’m even less worried now, when the winds seem to have shifted in the neighborhood. This month’s news is that the Morelos heavyweight was put on a boat and is resting comfortably in La Palma, the high-security prison. So much for him and the stories concocted in Guatemala. I don’t know why I bother with somebody I don’t even know. Must be the loneliness, which grows like pestilence at dawn.
“Your thing is melancholia,” some guy in La Cotorra dared to say to me once. “You hurt everywhere and you don’t know why. Love gone bad, fucked up.” I showed him the sevillana and the guy shut up. But tonight, dizzy and confused, trembling, I remember what he said.
Three-thirty in the morning, three more blocks to my house on this deserted street, and I’m thinking about black coffee, a roll, and a pastry. My aunt goes back and forth from the table to the stove. In the patio there’s a little girl playing with a storybook. I like to read to her and make up stories in which the bird with enormous wings flies us all over the world. Graciela and me in the clouds, looking at houses and fields from above. The little girl’s a big burden but she’ll be pretty when she grows up. The sweet, hot coffee does me good for a moment, but then there’s that ice plunging through my chest, the helicopter above me, that room in the neighborhood and the promise made, my list of creditors, and that man who got put away. As soon as I get up off the ground and this cold leaves my back and the taste of blood disappears from my mouth, I’m going to go tell Graciela I’m sorry, that I’ve always wanted her, for real, like a man, like it must be, but then I fall.
GOD IS FANATICAL, HIJA BY EDUARDO MONTEVERDE
Father… I accuse myself of having changed my sex.” “Is that so, hija? Me too.” The incense in San Fernando Church veiled the confessional in mist. To the side of the Epistle, an altar boy with the crusty face of a seraph, dressed in a red habit, rocked a small brazier. He was just a kid, with scrawny limbs like those street urchins who surrounded the temple.
“What do you do for a living, hija? I’m entranced by your perfume.”
“At night I’m a dancer and by day I search for lost children, though I haven’t found any yet.”
“You’re a crook,” said the priest.
“It’s not what you think. In fact, I used to work for the state police.”
“I used to be a nun. Shall we go outside for a stroll?”
“You’re not going to absolve me?”
“I’ll take care of that later. Let’s save ourselves the confiteor. I’ll confess that it’s
In another confession booth, incense threaded like steam in a bog around the feet of a different priest wearing torn Nikes; it snaked in under his habit and wafted toward his crotch. It was the breath of Fernando III, medieval king and canonized flagellator, whose weightless sword was displayed at the altar and hovered above his spare crown, above the devout women in their prayer shawls. The warrior wore a metal belt that cut into his flesh
