Violence isn’t usually part of humanity’s social fabric. The economic crisis pushes more of the neighborhood waste to the city’s center. On Zaragoza Street, in the eastern part of town, assaults on buses by kids with knives became quite common in the ’90s. They robbed workers coming home from their jobs, maids, folks who worked in the markets. Hordes of desperate adolescents would descend on Santa Fe, one of the city’s poorest areas, and steal from beverage trucks. But the neighborhood has changed: today it headquarters the new bourgeoisie. In the grocery stores around Lomas de Chapultepec, right in the heart of Mexico City’s millionaire’s row, a different style of robbery emerged over the last decade. Men would steal from women returning home from shopping; they would confront them in the underground parking lots, armed with the tools of their trade-screwdrivers, picks, scissors-and they’d ask the women for the bags of food. But they rarely took the car, or money. It was theft caused by hunger. In the last few years, there have been fewer of these; social programs have been slowly having an effect.
XI
I’ve said many times that statistics reveal a surprising city: one that has more movie theaters than Paris, more abortions than London, more universities than New York. Where nighttime has become sparse, desolate, the kingdom of only a few. Where violence rules, corners us, silences us into a kind of autism. Shuts us in our bedrooms with the TV on, creates that terrible circle of solitude where no one can depend on anyone but themselves.
XII
The writers in this volume aren’t afraid of trying to exorcise the demons. Though using very different narrative styles, what they have in common is that they speak to, and about, a city they love. They understand that the only way to stop the violence and abuse that surrounds us is to talk about it. They are all professional writers but they are also professional survivors of life in Mexico City. Almost all of them, of us, take refuge in humor, a very dark humor, acidic, which allows us enough distance to laugh at Lucifer.
Another shared element in the stories that follow is an interest in experimentation, in crossing narrative planes, points of view. The neodetective story born in Mexico is not only a social literature but also one with an appetite for moving outside the traditional boundaries of genre.
Because this is the best city on the planet, in spite of itself.
PART I. ABOVE THE LAW
I’M NOBODY BY EDUARDO ANTONIO PARRA
Feet moving: a step, another, then one more. Eyes stare at the squares that make up the sidewalk. Stubborn hands grip the supermarket cart carrying all his things: a poncho, a plate and a pewter spoon, two shabby blankets, a plastic cup, a sun-bleached photo of a woman and a boy, a sweater, a paper bag filled with butts and three cigarettes, barely worn sneakers, a bottle with traces of liquor, several pieces of cardboard, and two empty boxes. His life: what remains of it. He pushes. He moves forward, barely registering the faces passing in the opposite direction. I don’t look. I never pay attention. I haven’t seen a thing, chief, I swear. Around here, I don’t even look at the houses or buildings, just the street signs to know where I’m going. He walks on, not listening to the roar of the engines, or the screams of the horns around the public square, or the voices, or the screeching of tires. I’m nobody. No. I didn’t hear anything. I never hear anything. He was a skinny thing, you know. He doesn’t notice the food vendors, even though they arouse something in him, at the bottom of his belly. He goes on, not feeling the rain, the heat, or the cold. He just keeps moving, measuring the sidewalk through the cart’s wire grid, swerving the wheels to avoid the curbs and holes. Like he does every day, all day long.
Yes, he walks without hearing, without seeing. Always the same. Until the arrival of one of the gray-uniformed security guards from the Secretariat of Communications and Transportation, who opens the door to the parking lot before settling behind the tollbooth window. If it’s the old man with the white mustache on the day shift, he pokes him in the chest with the stick hanging off his waist. But if it’s the fat red-faced guy, he kicks him in the ribs-but softly, without any intention of hurting him.
“C’mon, Vikingo, it’s dawn already. Get a move on.”
And, still between dreams, he asks himself who that Vikingo they’re referring to could be, until, in the midst of a stomachache, cramps, and his own mind’s fogginess, a distant image comes to him of a dim red mane and an unkempt beard, which he remembers seeing in a mirror or reflected on some window.
“Sorry, chief, I didn’t hear you, I swear…”
“You don’t have to swear anything to me. Look how filthy you are today. You asshole, you probably cut yourself with a bottle, right?”
“I’m nobody. No. I didn’t hear a thing.”
“Look, take your damn cart and get outta here. People are gonna be coming to work soon. If the supervisor sees you, he’ll probably fire me for letting a huevon like you sleep in the doorway.”
That’s why he’s up so early, moving his feet and pushing his cart. At first, slowly, trying to ignore the swelling of his joints, the violent beating in his temples. He crosses the avenue amidst cars braking and motorists’ profanities as they head downtown, and he inhales the morning smog as he nears the public square where he parades his humanity before the rushing clerks, the old women on their way home from 8 a.m. Mass at Romero de Terreros, and all the morning joggers.
Everyone turns away, some with disgust, others with fear, when they see his enormous figure dressed in multicolored pants, T-shirts, sweatshirts, sweaters, and the grease-stained coat he drags behind him. Vikingo lifts his gaze, but then covers his eyes with his hand, as if the brightness of the sun brings him bad memories. Later he slowly rounds the public square, over and over again, hoping that at the end of these turns, blackness will have settled in the skies above the city. He doesn’t rest on any of the stone benches, he doesn’t go near the fountain, he doesn’t stroll in the garden, he doesn’t walk between the trees. He never leaves the brick-colored pavement. He walks for hours to exhaust himself, to stop thinking. To get rid of the images from a life he lived many years ago. To give the neighbors time to throw something worth eating or drinking in the trash. To forget about what happens on the streets at night: what happened last night.
