I next saw Rat around the middle of 2015, not long after my father was diagnosed with the advanced cancer that carried him to the grave—before my life became confined to this stained, unmade bed, to these notebooks in which I attempt to give some shape to the unspeakable, as if making origami figures with shadows. At that time, Mariana and I were alternating overnight stays in the hospital; they were exhausting shifts, as my father made use of his last weeks to reproach us incessantly for our life choices (the setbacks in my love life, my sister’s lack of affection). None of us so much as mentioned Teresa’s name, neither during those days of waiting nor later, at my father’s funeral, or when we met the lawyer who was the executor of his will and would organize the sale of the house in Educación.
Although the insatiable tumor continued to devour his organs, there were evenings when my father’s condition would seem miraculously improved, and he’d look more like the fifty-nine-year-old man he really was. He’d ask for the TV to be switched on and express unshakable opinions about anything and everything. Age had accentuated his tendency to authoritarianism: he ranted about the obstinacy of the teacher’s union in relation to proposed changes to the education system, demanded that a firm hand be taken with the demonstrators in the Paseo de la Reforma, and complained about the decline of the Mexican soccer team, all in the same furious tone, in the same jaded voice. The less he knew about a topic, the more he felt justified in airing his views. Naturally, both my sister and I were incapable of remaining confined with him in that small hospital room for any length of time. If I was on duty during one of those outbursts, I’d go out for a walk through the neighboring streets and return twenty minutes later, my patience partially restored.
It was during one of those strolls that I came across Rat. In my mind, I imagined that my father’s illness and the consequent revision of the past that it entailed had in some way called up or attracted Rat. Such occurrences are not unusual: we don’t see a person for many years, and then one day we think about them and then run into them a few hours later in some improbable place. My life, at least, has been full of coincidences of that nature. Even so, Rat was the last person I expected to see that evening.
I didn’t recognize him straight off. A long time had passed since his disappearance from the neighborhood, and he obviously wasn’t the same little bastard who had dated my sister in the days immediately after Teresa’s departure; he was, by then, just another overweight adult. I remember that he had a bald patch on the crown of his head that he attempted to disguise by tying his long hair back in a ponytail. My first thought was that he was someone who looked very much like a degenerate version of Rat. I guess he must have had much the same idea about me—my unshaven chin, tired eyes, and prematurely graying hair made any other assessment unlikely. He was arguing about something with a teenage girl who resembled him enough to be his daughter. I know he recognized me because, just after our eyes had met, he interrupted the angry monologue he was directing at the girl as if he were embarrassed that I might overhear him. Neither of us said anything, but we looked directly at each other for a prolonged moment, and I’m certain that we both remembered that silent parting in the bus terminal, when he left me, bewildered and tearful, with the crumpled bills in my outstretched hand, and walked hurriedly back to his house in Educación to follow his mother’s orders and diligently shower before heading out again to patrol the Rec.
I’ve often tried to understand why Rat urged me to take any available bus. To understand why he lacked the maturity to take me home, where we’d probably have found a sober but hungover Mariana repenting her outburst, sitting in front of the TV and wondering, with increasing concern, where the hell I’d gotten to.
2
THE WHITE LIGHTS ILLUMINATING THE AISLE were switched off as soon as the bus departed the Taxqueña terminal to the sounds of hooting horns and the cries of street vendors. Almost at the same moment, it began to rain. I leaned against the cold window, watching the bustle of the city. The first raindrops fractured the nightscape as they trickled down the glass in unpredictable paths. What was it that determined whether a drop of water ran vertically to the bottom of the pane or zigzagged and merged with other larger droplets? Who dictated the direction those drops took during their rapid descent, guiding them toward the rivers forming in the street? I tried to follow one of them with my finger but very soon lost track of it. My breath misted the glass, contributing to the blur of everything outside the bus. The reds and greens of traffic signals, distorted by the effect of the water on the glass, were dazzling. Had Teresa boarded a bus like that one to travel to Chiapas?
A man in the uniform of another bus company, with water streaming from his hair, appeared beside the driver, and in a hoarse voice recited a speech he knew by heart after thousands of repetitions: “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Excuse me for bothering you during your journey. I represent the workers of the Grupo de Autotransportes Tres Estrellas union and am here to ask for your invaluable assistance. We have been on strike for three months, demanding better working conditions for our comrades. So now we’re selling a variety of products, including crackers and potato chips, to raise funds for the strikers …” The woman sitting beside me smiled and asked if I’d like some
