The S train was full to the point of overflowing by Potsdamer Platz, as was the indignation inside it. Some passengers exchanged monosyllables (a difficult task in German) or mute glances of reproof: How could anyone in that perfect Lutheran world possibly dare to leave a piece of food on the Other’s seat? Were they really unaware that the Great Nightmare consists of unregulated contact with strangers’ fluids or the imprint of their fingers? (Unless, of course, it’s the Romantic, ecological piss deposited quietly on the grass of the Tiergarten by some invisible fox, or a cuddly, injured wild hedgehog that has to be taken to the vet in a taxi.)
As the train was rounding the tight curve into Friedrichstraße station, I smiled to myself, imagining the fate of that disquieting croissant if it were to find a home on the Mexico City metro. Seventy percent of the passengers would have thrown it onto the floor to take possession of the seat. The remaining 30 percent would have discovered an ingenious way to slip it into their pockets.
I isolated myself from my surroundings with a trick that never fails: letting my eyelids droop like someone dozing, and holding tightly on to my half-empty bottle of Berliner Kindl.
A young couple entered the car. He was handsome and athletic. She had an extraordinarily beautiful face and was a little overweight. They were both dressed in sportswear and were carrying identical iPods. The young woman talked nonstop in a quiet, slightly frenzied tone. He said nothing. I imagined the reasons for her ill humor: the boyfriend forcing her to go on a diet and lose a few pounds, lectures on self-esteem, jogging in the Mitte during rush hour.
The scene repeated itself: the couple was about to sit down when the bitten croissant (which, by that time, had become a piece of conceptual art in my eyes) made them stop in their tracks. The beautiful, overweight young woman emitted a few little squeaks directed at her boyfriend, as if he’d put the pastry there. But then, when we’d almost reached Oranienburger Straße, with a courage that put to shame the degenerate he-man descendants of inhospitable if extinct barbarian tribes, the woman bent over and, exhibiting a grace that automatically took her down two dress sizes, nudged the croissant with the tip of her iPod into the space between the cushioned seat and the side of the car. She then ordered her partner to sit by the window while she flopped firmly into the aisle seat.
The number of passengers suddenly decreased: the last of those standing got off at Nordbahnhof, and with them the Hungarian woman and her cell phone. The athletic guy kept glancing at the horn-shaped pastry wedged in the gap to the right of his seat (I guessed he was afraid it would return to life from some unknown form of death), while his girlfriend continued to complain about something that was invisible to me. She was still speaking in a quiet voice, but sounded less ill-humored. The train came out of the tunnel and we entered a leafy area. A prerecorded voice announced Nächste station …
To my surprise, the chubby girl stood up, kissed her companion quickly on the lips, and got off the S-Bahn at Humboldthain, a station with a deceptively suburban air, surrounded by birch trees. I watched her pass through the door and thought: The guy’s a moron. In his shoes, I’d have let her go a little way and then stalked her: the trippy little pig and the big bad wolf. Then I noticed that the athletic young man was watching me watching his girlfriend. It was embarrassing. I let my eyelids droop again and held tightly to my by-then-empty bottle of Berliner Kindl.
By Gesundbrunnen, there was almost no one left in the car. At the other end were an elderly couple, a sour-faced cyclist, and a redheaded woman, but down here only the (ex)boyfriend and I remained. He continued to stare at me. I was still pretending to sleep while spying on him through half-closed lids. The train started up again. Then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, the guy picked up the bitten croissant and, still looking directly at me, opened his mouth wide, stuck out his long Gene Simmons tongue to give the pastry leisurely licks until it was soaked in saliva. He glanced away from me for a moment to check that none of the other passengers had noticed his actions. This done, he returned his gaze to me and, slipping his hand into his sweatpants, wiped what was left of the croissant across the sweat and bacteria of his balls and groin. Once he’d performed these actions, he rose, put the croissant back between the seats with the diligence of a museographer, and, with a wink to me (that I pretended not to see), left the S-Bahn at Bornholmer Straße.
I continued northward to Pankow and the house belonging to the gay couple, where I found my clothes and my tent thrown into the street. I knocked on the door, knocked again, but as no one answered, I ended up sleeping by the stairs to the U-Bahn.
At least it was spring.
Z
I communicate with my psychoanalyst by phone. My psychoanalyst is called Tadeo. Tadeo pretends to be an impartial judge, but I can see he’s in favor of me allowing myself to be bitten. That’s no surprise. He was first eaten five months ago.
“It’s not a matter of ethics,” he says. “It’s about solidarity. Which in your case, at an existential level, means continuing to be alone.”
I almost burst out laughing: he’s talking about existentialism as if he were alive. He’s a good National University kid. I change the subject so as not to appear to be making light of his situation.
“Why not come upstairs so we can talk face-to-face? Or at least mouth to ear.”
“We are mouth to ear.”
“I mean through the door.”
“No, my friend,” he replies in an extremely somber tone, with the insincere serenity imparted by his academic training. “I’ve made it a rule not to smell my patients.”
“Except for Delfina,” I say, hoping to provoke him.
Tadeo clears his throat to cover a brief silence, then responds:
“Delfina has no smell now. And she’s not my patient any longer.”
For the last year I’ve been living in the Hotel Majestic, located on one side of the Zócalo in Mexico City. Once a week, Tadeo comes around and does a home psychoanalysis session. At first he used to come up to my room on the fourth floor, we’d make ourselves comfortable (he’d sit on a poorly upholstered chair; I’d perch on the bed) and chat. We generally left the television on to provide some background noise and deaden the carnivorous clacking of the guest in the next room.
Tadeo was the most sensible man I’d ever met until Delfina (I’ve never seen her, but I imagine she’s good-looking) seduced him and, as a sort of tribute, took a few mouthfuls of his left forearm, thus infecting him and causing (without the shadow of a doubt, unintentionally) six months of therapy to go up in smoke. Since then, Tadeo and I have held our sessions via the insipid phone in the lobby.
“Human,” I say.
“Pardon?”
“What you mean is that Delfina has no human smell now. Wouldn’t it be just the same if you called from your office?”
“Human, yes … Honestly, coming here isn’t just an overreaction. Who’d connect the call? There’s not a soul left in the lobby.”
He talks about professionalism, but he was having sex with his clients, eventually fell for one of them, and, because he was in love, allowed himself to be transformed into a beast. Or, not a total beast: a cannibal in transition. I’ve said this to him, and he acknowledges it, then sadly adds:
“Maybe I should be your patient.”
It’s a pleasantry. We both know that I’m no good; just a frightened, egotistical master of ceremonies, incapable of helping anyone, even when half the human race is mutating toward death or depression.
Tadeo claims it’s not a matter of ethics but solidarity. The truth is that lately it’s been a matter of food. I venture out to try to find some after dark. There are hardly any mature somnambulists around at that time: they prefer to hunt during the day, although twilight is their favorite hour.
(There’s no reliable data, but it appears that the prolonged ingestion of human flesh eventually leads to—among other things—retinal destruction: bright light is painful, and in the darkness they are like moles. When
they go completely blind, they become what I call carnivorous flowers: groaning invalids trailing along the ground. They are still dangerous but strictly sedentary, which makes them relatively simple to avoid.)
In the early days, I was afraid to go outside. I survived on beyond-sell-by-date leftovers from the hotel kitchen: greenish cold cuts, rancid cheese, chocolate, frozen soup, dried fruit … However, as the months have passed, I’ve gained enough confidence not only to make forays to the local stores for provisions but also to have something resembling a social life. My greatest success in that respect has been acting as the emcee of the skateboarding competitions on Eugenia.
My alimentary excursions provide everything I need: from Pachuca empanadas to granola bars, gallon bottles of mineral water to free liquor. The other day, behind the counter of a former print shop, I found a bag of marijuana and another containing what looked like psychotropic pills. I returned them to their place: when it comes to illegal substances, I’m prejudiced.
As long as no one kills me, everything is mine. The country has become a minefield of teeth, but it’s also a bargain basement. Thanks to the fantastical efforts of people whose business instincts drive them to do their duty each day, I enjoy a few of the old services that, in some unconscious way, used to make it pleasant to live among humans: fresh Tetra Brik milk in the mornings, for example. A delivery truck still supplies the 7-Eleven on the corner of Moneda and Lic. Verdad, despite the fact that the store has been looted four times in the last week and no one works there anymore: just a few junkie-faced dispatchers with bite marks on their backs who’ll take your money as soon as they’ve ransacked what little remains in the establishment, all the while shaking like ex-boxers with Parkinson’s.
A few nights ago I came across an amazing windfall: moldy falafel and hummus, two pounds of pistachios seasoned with garlic and hot chili, half a strip of Coronado Popsicles, a bottle of Appleton Estate rum, and an iPod with—among other vaguely obscure gems—Smetana’s “From My Life” … I waited until sundown on Friday to celebrate my discovery. I’d decided to have a picnic: headphones on, I took my booty up to the terrace of the Majestic.
When I recount this episode to Tadeo, he falls back on the analytical approach he’s been using to treat me for just over a month.
“Have you thought about why you did that?”
“Like I said, to celebrate.”
“And you don’t think there might be some other reason? Some hidden vein of your need to put yourself in danger? Sunset is the very worst time for you.”
I try to change the subject again, but he won’t be sidetracked.
“What do you think your neighbors made of it? Did anyone follow you to the terrace?”
“Yeah, one or two of them came to sniff me. Nothing unusual in that. But they did it politely, from a couple of tables away.”
With the exception of Lía, a perfectly human Jewish woman who lives on the second floor and whose only activity is foraging for pirated DVDs around the Palacio de Bellas Artes, all the other guests in the Majestic are bicarnal. While they haven’t yet come to the point of attacking me, their despairing, glazed expressions—exactly like the ones that used to make crack addicts stand out like sore thumbs—follow me everywhere.
Tadeo refuses to let the topic drop.
“Did they say anything?”
He’s beginning to annoy me.
“I wasn’t taking much notice of them, because I was spying on the soldiers.”
“What soldiers?”
“The ones who come around in the afternoon to take down the flag.”
It’s the same old routine every day: in the morning, just before sunrise, an armed patrol parades across the Zócalo, unfurling a green, white, and red flag. When it’s fully extended, they attach a strong rope and hoist it up a concrete-and-metal pole that’s maybe 150 feet high. After that, marching in step with the same panache they displayed on arrival, they leave. The flag, on the other hand, spends the whole day up there, fluttering majestically over thousands of walking corpses and the hundreds of mouths of carnivorous flowers huddled in clumps around the Catedral Metropolitana. In the evening, just before sundown, the soldiers return to collect the gigantic standard: they perform their military ballet in reverse order, detaching and furling the patriotic symbol with exasperating solemnity. Part of their task is to bear the requisite arms. They aren’t just for show: almost every day the soldiers find themselves having to carry out the irksome task of executing a couple of the vermin who, having lost whatever brains they ever had, attack the squad without the least respect for their uniforms. In the majority of such cases the soldiers fire at point-blank range, into the temple: the .45-caliber bullets sound dully on the paving stones and the flesh eaters’ heads plummet to perform the Last Slam Dance of Mexico City. Even so, the soldiers rarely manage to avoid being nibbled. That might be why more than one of them inevitably stumbles or others attempt to keep their wrists hidden, readjusting the dirty bandages covering their peeling skin.
Practically the whole army has been infected to some extent. There’s no telling if this has to do with the constant patrols or the lonely nights in the barracks. And although it’s true that they get the best vaccines, it’s also the case that cells of deserters spring up on a daily basis (or at least that’s what CNN says: the national media have disappeared), at the service of the worm catchers. Anything that still functions here relies on corrupting everything else until it becomes an allegorical mural of destruction.
As happens with any real epidemic, ours began with a few isolated cases, indistinguishable from the general sense of outrage transmitted by the now-defunct (or, depending on how you see it, omnipresent) tabloid press. First, a construction worker murdered his lover and workmate on a building site. The authorities found traces of charred human intestines and heart on a piece of sheet metal placed over hot coals. The accused committed suicide during the trial. A year later, a young poet and professor at the University of Puebla was imprisoned for freezing fragments of his dead girlfriend, which he used as an aid to masturbation. Despite the fact that no one could prove he’d either killed or eaten her, the symptoms this individual displayed in the following years left no room for doubt: he was one of the earliest manifestations of a new reality emerging on the margins, belonging to no kingdom or species. A walking virus.
The first person to come to Mexico to study the phenomenon was an English scientist named Frank Ryan, a virologist whose theory was, in broad outline, that the human species’s tremendous evolutionary leap was due not to mammalian DNA but to the high percentage of viral information in our genome. What at first seemed like a polemical hunch capable of explaining diseases like AIDS and cancer became Ryan’s Law of Evolution, or the Clinamen of the Species: every organic entropy will eventually lead to the triumph of an entity, neither living nor dead, whose only actions are to feed and reproduce by invading host organisms.
The worst thing about our epidemic, what distinguishes it from every other one, is its annoying slowness. Once an organism has been infected, it displays two defining characteristics: first, the irrepressible urge to feed on human flesh—a desire fueled by smell; second, a gradual multiple sclerosis directly proportional to the quantity of human tissue consumed. It is here that individual willpower affects the process, since the ability to administer consumption and restructure the appetite (ridiculous but accurate socioeconomic comparisons employed every day by the Ministry of Health) decides the rate of transformation.
As there is not yet an official list of the evolutionary stages of the organism, in my free time (I have a lot of it) I came up with four categories that I will set out here for the consideration of future carnicovegetal kingdoms:
The transitioning cannibal is the phase in which my psychoanalyst finds himself. It can last anywhere from a week to a year depending on the individual’s medical history, dietary habits, and use of experimental drugs (“Retrovirals and antipsychotics have proved to be helpful,” Tadeo said
the other day in a tone of academic enthusiasm). In this phase the infected subject loses many vital functions, and so needs little food. The subjects’ interaction with their environments is largely unchanged—members of this tribe include the president of Mexico and all his most prominent detractors, leaders of the opposition parties, many doctors and educators, and almost the whole of the business community. The only thing that distinguishes them from someone like me is that they display withdrawal symptoms—nausea, dizziness, hyperventilation—when the smell of real humans is in the air.
The bicarnal creature has reached the stage where it can scarcely resist the temptation to eat you, but, out of a sense of shame, makes its approach with a classic Mexican display of exaggerated good manners: “Would you mind if I accompanied you, sir?” or something similar. This phase is the most revolting of all. I call them bicarnal because, in order to satisfy their appetites, they eat pound after pound of beef, pork, or lamb. They are often found in ruined minimarkets, devouring frozen hamburgers straight from the package. Sitting on the terrace of the Majestic, I once watched a group of them in the center of the Zócalo sacrificing a fighting bull (God only knows where they found it) and then eating the raw flesh. I also call them junkies or worm catchers: their main posthuman activity is trading in corpses. They are the lords and masters of what was once the Historic Center of the capital.
The mature somnambulist walks with a slight hunch and is splattered with the blood of any living thing that has crossed its path. They are blind, feeble, never speak a single word, and, apart from their terrifying appearance, are in fact depressingly dull creatures. They are few in number: this is the shortest stage of the contagion process.
Bring Me the Head of Quentin Tarantino Page 8
