He had returned to Loma Grande a year after his departure, but refrained from living in the village owing to his unrelenting fear that someday an American squad car would pick him up. He built himself a hut on a bank of the reservoir, where he watched over Lucio and Pedro Estrada’s fishing gear and boats.
4
The Gypsy parked his pick-up beside the gas pump and handed over the key.
‘Make it forty pesos worth of Nova.’ He got out and walked to the shop beside the gas station to buy a can of beer and, settling on the cooler, drank it. He was tired. The drive to Los Aztecas in the midday heat, on a highway crowded with trailers, had worn him out. He drank the beer, taking pleasure in the foam bubbling down his throat. When the attendant gestured that he had finished gassing up, the Gypsy finished his beer, paid and climbed in.
He felt like a shower and a nap. He knew of a rooming house, the Albatross, where he stayed on and off, and where, for thirty-five pesos, he could have a room with a large bed, private bath, standing fan, breakfast and supper included. The owner, known as La Chata Fernández, managed the establishment with the help of her ado lescent daughter Margarita; both were attentive and cheerful. The Gypsy liked to stay there, not only for the service but because both women were great talkers, full of the latest information for clients staying overnight. It occurred to him they might inform him of anything unusual happening in Loma Grande, whether the man who had shone a light on them that early Sunday morning had identified them and if anything had come of it.
The rooming house was located in an old, one-story building with six rooms around a central living room. Dining room and kitchen were separate from them in another structure. La Chata Fernández had designed it that way with her former partner, Silvia Espinoza, who had left the business when she married a Spanish traveling salesman. Thanks to his friendship with La Chata, the Gypsy could pick the bedroom of his choice, the one in the middle facing north and therefore the coolest.
In spite of the suffocating afternoon, he showered with water as hot as possible.
‘Heat overcomes heat,’ he thought.
He came out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist, opened a window and closed the mosquito netting. A roach appeared beneath the curtain, trying to hide under the chest of drawers. He squashed it with his bare foot, hearing it crunch underneath, and sat down on the bed to wipe his sole. Removing the towel, he spread it on the pillow so as not to soak it with his wet hair. Then he lay down and fell sleep.
When he awoke, it was seven-fifteen. Supper was always served at seven-thirty sharp. He dressed quickly, knowing from Margarita that the menu included prawn soup, Mexican rice and tongue in tomato sauce, and he didn’t want to miss it.
By the time he entered the dining room, most of the other guests were already seated. Some of them he knew: Carlos Gutiérrez, a hydraulic engineer who supervised the area’s irrigation systems; Felipe Fierro, a civil engineer who directed paving operations on the highway from Abra to Los Aztecas; and Javier Belmont, a dentist who had retired to the cotton business. The others, an elderly couple and a short, tired-eyed woman, he had never seen.
After supper, only Margarita, La Chata, Felipe Fierro and the Gypsy remained to chat. Anxious for news, the Gypsy asked La Chata a few questions. Corrected now and then by her daughter washing dishes in the kitchen, she put her elbows on the table and supplied the most important news: another marihuana plantation discovered in Nuevo Morelos; rice fields belonging to the oilworker’s union sold to a federal legislator; ten thousand pesos won on a Pepsi Cola bottle-cap promotion by a member of the Plan de Ayala Ejido; tourists held up at González; a letter sent by a campesino from the Niños Héroes Ejido answered by the governor, and cattle at Rancho la Paloma infested with screw worm. As she mentioned nothing of interest to him, the Gypsy asked, ‘What do you hear from Loma Grande?’
La Chata thought for a moment, pursed her lips and shook her head. ‘Nothing I can think of.’
Margarita came out of the kitchen drying a plate and, leaning against the door jamb, added, measuring her words: ‘I heard that a girl was killed there on Sunday.’
The Gypsy felt as if his lungs had been pierced. He controlled his nerves and slowly inquired, ‘Where did you hear that?’
‘Dulcineo Sosa told me this morning, when I went to the market for prawns.’
‘Did he tell you her name?’ he asked, hoping Margarita would mention another.
‘Yes, but I’ve already forgotten it.’
The Gypsy swallowed: ‘Gabriela?’
The girl thought for a moment and answered in the affirmative: ‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘That was the name he told me.’
Seeing the Gypsy pale, La Chata asked him: ‘Did you know her?’
The Gypsy barely nodded. ‘Just by sight. Her husband used to buy things from me,’ he answered as a drop of sweat slid from his neck down his back.
5
Juan Prieto tensed when he heard voices from the turn in the road. The presence of strangers near the ramp made him nervous, invariably reminding him of American cops coming to arrest him. Then he recognized the voices of Ramón and Torcuato, and came out from behind the tree where he was hiding.
‘What’s up?’ he greeted them.
Ramón and the rest responded in a gabble of unrelated words. Frightened by the noise, a coot took off through the rushes at the edge of the reservoir, leaving an arrow-shaped wake in the still water. Sunlight glinted on fish scales lying around the boats.
Juan pointed to a long net. ‘Give me a hand to spread it out.’
They tied the hundred-meter net to a number of posts. It revealed countless holes and tears, which Juan was required to repair with jute twine. It would take him all morning.
After spreading the net, they retired to some rocks. One of them held an up-turned turtle shell, with the remains of flesh still in it. Macedonio Macedo aimed a kick at it so that he could sit on the rock, but Juan stopped him.
‘Leave it alone, I’m drying it out for the shell.’
Macedonio protested: ‘It stinks.’
Torcuato picked it up and examined it. ‘It’s useless,’ he said; ‘it’s cracked.’
‘Then throw it away,’ said Juan.
‘Next time put in salt or ash,’ suggested Pascual, ‘then it won’t stink and get full of worms.’
‘Or scrape it out,’ added Torcuato.
The five of them sat down on the rocks, while Juan remarked on last month’s large tilapia catch.
Macedonio asked if there were any they could cook for lunch.
‘No,’ answered Juan, ‘but I can net some right now.’
Standing up, he took off his T-shirt and asked Ramón to go with him.
‘We’ll make a fire in the meantime,’ said Torcuato.
Juan and Ramón walked to the edge of the reservoir, removed their shoes and rolled up their pants clear of the water. Juan picked up the cast net and Ramón a tin bucket. Together they waded into the water, startling a dozen frogs, which jumped out of their way in the mud.
Juan swung the net, let the lead weights sink and pulled it in. There were no fish.
‘No luck,’ he said, swinging the net again. At the same time, a pelican dived into the water a few meters away.
‘That’s where the mojarra are; let’s go further out,’ he proposed. They advanced until the water was up to their knees. ‘We’ll surely get some here.’
They fell silent as Juan swung the net again without success.
‘We’ll have to go in deeper,’ suggested Ramón. They kept on another twenty paces until they were wet to their waists. Juan swung the net and, as he pulled it in, felt its weight.
‘Now I got some,’ he said, raising the net. Three tilapia were flapping desperately in its folds.
‘I heard about your girlfriend,’ murmured Juan, as he hooked the gills of a mojarra to pull it out of the net; ‘that was really awful.’
Ramón was ashamed to keep up the lie of his fake romance before
his friend. He ought to confess that his relationship with Adela had barely begun the day they killed her. But he didn’t: he couldn’t betray a woman who had left him a coded expression of love in obscure letters—much less betray the love he himself felt for a nude, warm body in his arms, for a girl photographed in three-quarter profile in black and white, for an absence that was spreading inside him. To reveal the truth to Juan meant the chance of freeing himself from the overwhelming commitment to kill another: his last way out. He decided to cut it off.
‘Yeah, it was awful,’ he added.
Juan pulled a fish out of the net and threw it into Ramón’s bucket.
‘Pedro told me you’re going to get even.’
‘That’s why I need the loan of your pistol.’
Juan freed another fish and dropped it into the bucket. Were it anyone else, he would not lend the weapon; especially as he knew beyond a doubt that it would be used to kill someone. But Ramón being his childhood friend, he could not refuse.
‘Sure. As soon as we finish here, I’ll give it to you,’ he said without turning to look at Ramón.
They caught six more mojarras, left the reservoir and found Torcuato squatting before some wet wood he was trying to ignite. Beside him, Macedonio was blowing on the sparks, trying to get a flame going. Juan handed the fish to Pascual for cleaning while he and Ramón went to the hut for the pistol.
Inside, Juan dug into a sack of dry corn until he felt the Derringer. He cleaned it by blowing off the dust and husks, then crossed the room to take down four cartridges hidden on a beam.
‘They’re all I’ve got,’ he said. He broke the pistol, slipped the cartridges into the chambers and, snapping it shut, handed it to Ramón.
‘It’s ready,’ he said, pointing to the trigger. ‘There’s no safety; you just cock the hammer.’
To Ramón, the weapon in the palm of his hand was like a toy, the little bullets in their shiny brass casing, as well.
‘Can you really kill someone with this little piece of junk?’
‘If you hit the right place, yes…If not, no.’
Ramón cocked the pistol and pointed at random.
‘Watch it,’ barked Juan; ‘don’t let off a shot by mistake.’
Ramón unloaded the pistol and, holding it in his hand, aimed it at Juan. He held the sight on his chest and pulled the trigger.
‘It’s not so easy,’ remarked Juan at the sound of the click.
‘What isn’t?’
‘To blow someone away.’
Ramón shrugged his shoulders.
‘The worst of it,’ continued Juan, ‘is that afterwards there’s no way you can get the victim out of your head,’ and he sighed, still overcome by the memory of the obese American woman, covered with blood after he had beaten her.
Without a word, Ramón lowered the pistol he had been holding at the ready.
‘Do you know what you’re getting into?’ asked Juan.
‘No,’ answered Ramón simply, putting the Derringer and its .25 caliber bullets in his right pants pocket.
6
The Gypsy awoke, bathed in perspiration, drowning in recurrent dreams of Gabriela cut to pieces, Gabriela devoured by worms, Gabriela far away, Gabriela dead, Gabriela lost for ever. He kicked off the sheets and turned on the lamp on the bedside table. Rubbing his eyes, dazzled by the dim yellowish light, he looked out the window into the moonless night. On the other side of the mosquito netting, he could hear the sharp cries of bats hunting insects.
He wanted to smoke, and put his bag on the bed to search for a pack of cigarettes. He kept rummaging, fully aware that he would find nothing, for he had quit smoking ten months before. He closed the bag, put on his pants and a shirt, pulled back the wire mosquito net and jumped into the garden. He could feel the sharp grass against the soles of his bare feet. In the darkness, he distinguished a tiled path that went around the bedrooms towards the street. He followed it until he reached the fence. A toad jumped beside him. He pushed it away with his heel and it continued on its way among the potted plants.
Careful to make no noise, he drew the bolt on the gate. Stepping out, he began to walk towards the illuminated part of the village in the hope of finding someone who would give him a cigarette. He reached the light but found no one, then turned to the plaza and found it deserted. He sat down on a bench to watch the moths fluttering around the street lamps. The mayor had told him that soon all the villages in the region would have electric light. The Gypsy didn’t believe it: he didn’t believe politicians or women.
He didn’t even believe Gabriela Bautista when she told him she loved him and she was willing to leave everything for him. He hadn’t believed it until that very moment.
He began to walk around the plaza, irritated by the hum of the generator breaking the silence of the night. He wanted the silence, to think, and evoke Gabriela. He remembered the morning in August when they had been making love in the back of his pick-up parked at the edge of a muddy dirt road. He recalled the gray horizon over the green crops, rain pattering on the canvas cover. He remembered the look in her deep eyes, her shiny skin, her legs around him, the dampness of her. He remembered their last night together, the chase by lamplight, the race into the underbrush, their intimacy torn apart, their secret discovered, their last love. He imagined Gabriela dead and felt like setting fire to Loma Grande before doing the same to himself.
He returned when flocks of white heron were beginning their morning flight over the rice paddies. As dawn was breaking, he climbed through the window into his room. He stripped, feeling the heat more unbearable than ever at that hour. Finally he fell on the bed and lay there on his back, his eyes fixed on the fan turning beside him.
He did not emerge from the room until late, having bathed and dressed lazily, caught up in a strange fatigue. Only the elderly couple he did not know were in the dining room. He greeted them and remained standing without knowing in which of the nine chairs to sit. La Chata came out of the kitchen carrying a steaming casserole, which she deposited on the table.
‘Hi.’
‘Hi.’
‘Did you oversleep?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Will you have beans?’
‘Yes,’ answered the Gypsy and sat down slowly in the chair in front of him.
La Chata served him, aware that she had never seen the Gypsy so depressed.
The old couple finished their breakfast and retired. The Gypsy began to eat his plate of beans slowly.
‘Stop suffering,’ said La Chata, smiling.
The Gypsy turned to look at her, disconcerted by her attitude, which seemed to be making fun of him.
‘Suffering from what?’ he asked aggressively.
La Chata smiled again, made a pellet out of a piece of bread and threw it to a white cat playing with a dead grasshopper by the kitchen door.
‘It wasn’t the one you thought that was killed.’ She continued watching the cat eat the bread, and added, ‘Margarita got the name wrong.’
La Chata’s revelation confused the Gypsy; he was not sure she was serious.
‘The girl that was stabbed to death in Loma Grande was called Adela, not Gabriela.’
‘How do you know?’
‘The evangelists told me. She was one of the newcomers. They buried her Sunday evening.’
‘What else?’
‘Nothing. The evangelists haven’t been back to Loma Grande since then and don’t know what else may have happened.’
The Gypsy shivered with relief and La Chata pulled her chair closer until she was only a few centimeters away from him.
‘Listen up,’ she said; ‘leave that Gabriela alone unless you really want her killed.’
‘What are you talking about?’
La Chata leaned back. ‘About how you love to play the fool. What made you think the dead girl might have been called Gabriela?’
The Gypsy smiled.
‘It’s obvious that Gabriela has you running in circles. Remember the saying
: a married woman—either you touch her in passing, or you steal her away…’
The Gypsy finished his breakfast and stood up.
‘Thanks,’ he said.
‘What for?’ asked La Chata.
‘For the beans, they were very good…’
Lying on the bed, the Gypsy ruminated: all those nerves and anguish because he believed Gabriela dead could mean only one thing: he was in love with her and ought to take her away. There was no way out; he would go back to Loma Grande next day to get her.
He closed his eyes and tried to make up for the hours of sleep he’d lost the night before.
Chapter XIV
The Best Way to Kill Him
1
He walked five paces from the nopal, cocked the pistol and raised his arm in that direction. Squeezing his left eye shut, he tried to fix the target in the sight. Though he held his breath to steady his aim, he could not stop the Derringer weaving from side to side. Clutching the butt tightly, he fired as soon as he felt sure of his aim, then, with both eyes open, examined the nopal.
Torcuato shook his head in disapproval. ‘You missed,’ he declared, arms crossed.
Juan Prieto examined the nopal carefully for a hole anywhere in it, but there was none. The shot had come nowhere close. Ramón relaxed his grip and lowered the pistol.
‘You aimed too high,’ said Pascual. ‘I saw a puff of dust on the hill.’
It turned out not to be as simple to hit the target as Ramón had thought. The Derringer was too small and too light; he couldn’t get a good grip on it. It was almost impossible to keep the barrel steady.
‘You’re going to have to put the pistol close to his head,’ said Macedonio; ‘you can’t shoot worth a damn.’
Torcuato reacted: ‘Yeah, and the Gypsy’s going to let Ramón get that close? No sir, he’s got to learn to hit the target at a distance.’ He took the pistol from Ramón, broke it, removed the empty shell, blew out the remains of burnt powder in the chamber, moistened his palm with saliva and cocked the pistol again.
A Sweet Scent of Death Page 10
