continue in this business our only choice is to change our face, I mean, put a knife to our puss, I mean, the plastic surgeon is waiting for us.”
“You change your face, Don Avocado, you’re uglier than a fasting motherfucker, and don’t mess with my movie-star profile. What would my dear mama say, God rest her soul?”
With these words Jenaro Ruvalcaba fled Michoacan and came back to Mexico City, where his deferred vice- putting his hand on women in Metro cars and buses-flourished in the most dangerous routine of collecting fares from and pinching women in collective taxis, counting at times on the complicity of the driver, at times running the risk that the driver would put him off because of his riders’ protests, searching for farcical ways out disguised as a woman or a boy sailor from whose short pants charms peeked out that were hardly a child’s.
Until the vengeance of Don Avocado extended from Michoacan to D.F. and, denounced as a murderer, a trafficker, and worst of all, a transvestite and pedophile, Jenaro Ruvalcaba ended up in the Aragon prison.
“Where I met him,” I said with troubled innocence.
“And which he left thanks to the imprudence of our… Jerico,” Miguel Aparecido said with a certain uneasiness, for he had not resigned himself to sharing fraternity with either Jerico or me. It was as if his singularity as the son of Max Monroy had been in some way violated by the truth, and although he had esteemed me earlier, he was not inclined to extend his affection to a man who like Jerico did not need (it was the tombstone Miguel Aparecido erected for him) to be a glutton of his own ego.
“You and I, on the other hand”-he embraced me-“we’ll eat from the same plate.”
And he pulled away from me.
“Take care, brother. Take care. Not everybody’s in a safe place.”
HOW LONG SINCE I had eaten at the home of Don Antonio Sangines?
Now as I return to the mansion in Coyoacan, I’m doing so, of course, at my teacher’s invitation and with the clear awareness that this time my brother Jerico would not be there and had not been invited. I didn’t have the courage to ask about him. I knew the answer formulated ahead of time and transformed into a slogan:
“In a safe place…”
The ambiguity of the expression troubled me. It meant precaution and care: a verbal “alert” that referred to being secure or watched over. The disturbing thing about the words was their not saying clearly if someone “put in a safe place” was secure, yes, taken care of, that too, locked in, perhaps, cared for, perhaps, by whom? to what end? With an involuntary shudder I imagined my old friend, recent enemy, and everlasting brother Jerico Monroy Sarmiento handed over to the perfect custody of death, the security of the sepulchre, the precaution of eternity.
If this was what brought me back to Sangines’s colonial house filled with books, ornaments, and antique furniture, he did not seem ready to fall into the repetition-exceedingly banal-of “in a safe place.” Soon the reason for his companionship appeared, and when I arrived, Sangines led me to the breakfast area decorated in Pueblan tiles and came right to the point, saying, “The dream has ended.”
The question surrounding my life authorized him to go on. The seventy years of moderate dictatorship in Mexico, beginning in 1930, had assured economic and social growth without democracy, but with security. Sangines welcomed democracy. He lamented the lack of security because it identified democracy with crime…
He looked at me with a strange dreaminess that spoke clearly of Sangines’s decades of service as a professor of law, court adviser to presidents of the republic, member of the boards of directors of Monroy’s private enterprises. An entire career based on judicious opinion and opportune warning, on objective counsel and advice, with no interest other than the reconciliation of public and private concerns on behalf of the nation.
He didn’t need to say it. I knew it. His eyes communicated it to me. But the sour expression on his face not only gave the lie to all I’ve just said: It misdirected, disputed, and desired it in spite of regrets. In spite of what could be viewed as accommodation, opportunism, flattery, the counselor’s vices stopped at the shore of the courtier to take on, in short, the adviser’s virtues of objective intelligence and reason indispensable to the good governance of the individual and the state, business and society. There was nothing to apologize for. If I didn’t know the rules of the game, it was time I learned them. If I didn’t want to learn them, I’d be left out in the cold, adrift. I thought of Sangines imploring, uncharacteristically pleading for comprehension of Monroy in the stairwell on Praga. This supper at his house, I understood immediately, erased that scene on the stairs. As if it hadn’t occurred.
I understood all this because Sangines communicated it to me indirectly, by means of expressions, qualities, and solicitations that undoubtedly summarized the long journey we had taken together, converging at a point in his long life and my short one.
I grew up, he said, in a society in which society was protected by official corruption. Today, he continued categorically but with a trace of both criticism and resignation, society is protected by criminals. The history of Mexico is a long process of leaving behind anarchy and dictatorship and reaching a democratic authoritarianism… He asked me, after a pause, to forgive the apparent contradiction: not so great if we appreciated the freedom of artists and writers to savagely criticize its revolutionary governments. Diego Rivera, right in the National Palace, describes a history presided over by political hierarchs and corrupt, lying clerics. Orozco uses the walls of the Supreme Court to paint a justice that laughs at the law from the gaudily painted mouth of a whore. Azuela, in the middle of the revolutionary struggle, writes a novel about the revolution as a stone rolling down an abyss, bare of ideology or purpose. Guzman tells of a revolution in power interested only in power, not in revolution: They all order one another murdered in order to continue in the presidency, the great cow that gives milk, dulce de leche, cheese, a variety of butters, and security without democracy: a comforting lowing.
“Today, Josue, the great drama of Mexico is that crime has replaced the state. Today the state dismantled by democracy cedes its power to crime supported by democracy.”
Perhaps I knew this, to a point. I had never admitted it with Sangines’s painful clarity.
“Just yesterday,” Sangines continued, “a highway in the state of Guerrero was blocked by uniformed criminals. Were they fake police? Or simply real police dedicated to crime? What happened on that highway happens everywhere. The drivers of the blocked buses and cars were brutally interrogated and pistol-whipped. The travelers were obliged to get out. Their cellphones were thrown onto a garbage pile. Among the travelers were individuals working for the criminals. Confusion reigned. It turns out some police believed in good faith they were intercepting narcotics and counterfeit money. They were soon disabused of that idea by their superiors and urged to join the criminal gang or be stripped and stranded there as imbeciles and assholes.
“Inexperienced police. Corrupt police. To whom do you turn?”
The prisons are full. There’s no more room, he said, for the criminals.
“You saw San Juan de Aragon Prison. An agreement was reached there between jailhouse sadism and the minimal order guaranteed by Miguel Aparecido. That isn’t the rule, Josue. The prisons in Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Peru can’t hold more criminals. They’re released right away so new malefactors can come in. It’s a never-ending story. Recidivist offenders. Detentions without a trial. Defense made impossible. Badly paid attorneys incapable of defending the innocent. Judges paralyzed by fear. Improvised judges. Courts incapable of functioning. False testimonies. No consistency. No consistency…” the lawyer lamented and almost exclaimed: “How long do you think Latin American democracy will last under these circumstances? How long will it take for the dictatorships to return, applauded by the people?”
I didn’t recall hearing a sigh from Sangines. Now I saw an air of fatality more than resignation in his sour expression.
“Pages and more pages.” He made a large gesture, graceful at the end, with his hand. “We are drowning in paper-”
“And in blood.” I dared to intervene for the first time.
“Papers soaked in blood,” Sangines intoned, almost like a priest singing the
“And do you prefer the law to be defiled by government and not crime?”
“I would like a little more pity,” the licenciado said as if he hadn’t heard me.
“For whom?” I prompted.
“For the poor and the ambitious who have lost their way and their faith in others. Especially for them.”
I thought of Filopater and his own forsaken priesthood. At that moment, the group of three little boys laughed behind the door of the tiled kitchen and Sangines put on an astonished face. The children ran to him, climbed on
