Sea Monsters

by Chloe Aridjis

  THE ELECTRIC BULB MAY HAVE BANISHED SHADOWS from the home but it enhanced all those beyond. The fresas, or rich kids, from school had their own haunts, places like El News, Bandasha, and Magic Circus (a megadisco with dance cages and light shows); I’d been to them a few times for birthdays and other celebrations, but for the most part I kept my distance, it was enough to see these individuals at school, why expose myself to them at night as well, to them and older versions of themselves, or the odd soap opera star from Televisa holding court over buckets of champagne. In fact, why head anywhere but to El Nueve, not even Tutti Frutti or Rockotitlán was as splendid, and whenever I was given permission to go out at night I nearly always went there.

  El Nueve was the nocturnal reply to the daylight hours, the place that drew those of us who preferred European moonlight to the Mexican sun. Located halfway down Londres in the Zona Rosa, it played dark wave, post punk, and industrial, often courtesy of its Scottish DJ, an angular Goth who wore pointy boots and a black suede tassel jacket. At the entrance beckoned the sign ELLAS NO PAGAN, “women don’t pay,” and, even more alluringly, another sign, farther in: BARRA LIBRE, free drinks all night, although it was widely believed that ether was added to the ice to curb the drinking.

  Nearly everyone was dolled up like a waxwork, powder-faced, ashen-faced, striking pose after pose. Some pulled it off while others exuded a stiff, stilted glamour. Tomás narrowed his eyes as I pointed out some of the regulars: there was Adán the Aviator, in his bomber jacket, goggles, motorcycle boots, and aviator cap with earflaps; he always seemed about to lift off yet in reality never left the dance floor. And standing against a wall wrapped in his melancholic aura was El Sauce Llorón, the weeping willow, a magazine editor by day and drama queen by night. Tall with a Roman nose, he was often in tears over insurmountable dramas, real and imagined, his long black hair framing his face like a shroud. It was known he had an on-and-off friendship with El Nueve’s resident transvestites, Carlota and La Bogue, who presided over the rooms like exotic nocturnal flowers. And then there were Los Ultravox, a group of young men in beige raincoats, all in possession of deep voices and slicked-back hair.

  It’s like a permanent Day of the Dead in here, Tomás had complained, despite always being attired in black himself, and then added, on an entirely different note, And there’s too much industrial, bring back the sovereignty of the guitar. At least he seemed appeased when the Scottish DJ put on the Stooges. One of Los Ultravox dropped to the floor and continued his dance there. Out of the corner of my eye I thought I glimpsed the leader of Los Anticristos, a gang with upside-down crucifixes tattooed on their temples who listened to the same music we did and every now and then turned up to jinx our nights by picking a fight, but thankfully the thin figure with a cane turned out to be a new bouncer. I drew Tomás’s attention to the TV set suspended over the dance floor, which beamed specters from overseas. At that moment it was showing a video by the Human League, faces bathed in shadow and noir red lipstick. The speakers began barking out the industrial beats of Front 242. It was pretty funny, I said to Tomás a little timidly, how out of synch the images on the screen were from the melody in the club, indeed as out of synch as our inner picture often was from outer.

  After our third round of vodka the TV screen went black and the fog machine was rolled out, followed by a clap of thunder and the choral surge of Carmina Burana. Signs of midnight. The dance floor was now officially open, and the fog machine released its plumes, which coiled around our legs like a dispatch from wintry lands, their glorious smell a metallic vanilla. Each week, the same theater, the same intoxication. La Bogue and two of Los Ultravox lit cigarettes. The smoke thickened and soon I could hardly see Tomás in front of me. Scared he would disappear or just melt into the ether, I grabbed on to his shirt, and once I had his shirt I leaned into the blankness and kissed him. It was as simple as that. Into the vanishing picture I reached out and showed, without having to show, what I wanted, and met no resistance. I could feel the gap between his teeth, not as distinctly as I’d imagined—I’d expected something nearly architectural—but there was no ignoring its presence, there like a gatekeeper at the front.

  The smoke thinned as Carmina Burana segued into “Lucretia My Reflection.” I shut my eyes and listened to the modulation. But my head began to spin and the floor drew away from me, as the ether, the dry ice, everything flooded in at once. One moment, I murmured to Tomás, and ran to the bathroom, where Doña Susana sat beside a tray of makeup and a plate of coins beside a mirror image of Doña Susana beside a tray of makeup and a plate of coins. I splashed water onto my face, as cold as it would get, and was patting myself dry with a paper towel when I spotted two cowboy boots emerging from under one of the stall doors, as if a person had collapsed.

  I turned around and pulled the door open but there was no one. And yet I couldn’t help sensing the presence of the girl who had overdosed in there one year ago, after swallowing an entire bottle of Valium. We’d found her just in time. She was on her own, as she always was, so our friend Paco had driven her to the hospital to have her stomach pumped. Her parents had arrived at two in the morning, freshly bathed, and her father had squeezed Paco’s hand so tightly his bones nearly cracked. They stayed for ten minutes, whispered a few words to the doctors, and left. To the amazement of everyone, the girl had survived.

  I hadn’t thought about her for a while but now envisioned the scuffed boots from under the door, the black gummy bracelet tangled in her hair as we dragged her out, the denim jacket with a pack of filterless Camels stuffed into a pocket. I’d seen her many times, throwing her arms about the dance floor or fumbling in a corner with the Scottish DJ. In general she kept to herself, only entering into conversation to ask for cigarettes. Why was this person, this drama, from a year ago snaking its way into my thoughts? Tomás was in the other room and something was about to move forward, or perhaps just had, yet this scene felt more real than the one I’d extracted myself from and I felt too drunk and sick to return to the dance floor, so from the bathroom I cut across the bar area and rushed out onto the street, the ELLAS NO PAGAN sign a mockery since of course we did pay, payment was taken in other ways, and besides, by not paying one tends to owe even more.

  I sat down on the steps of a closed chocolate shop to still my head and figure out what to do. There was a line at the taxi stand. It was too late to call my parents and ask them to pick me up. I could walk home, but recent reports of violence came wafting to mind. A few streets away the singer Jordi Espresso had been held at gunpoint for the kilo of gold hanging around his neck. He was fresh out of prison, where he’d spent years composing ballads about prison life, and therefore unarmed. Meanwhile, a rent boy had been stabbed on Hamburgo, and after staggering halfway down the block had collapsed on the hood of a Toyota parked outside the Duca d’Este café. In Polanco a girl and her bicycle were mugged on the corner of Dante and Tolstoi.

  And then, a gift: my friend Mizfit, keys in hand, at his car. I’d been in his blue Golf many times, often up to eight of us piled on one another’s laps, that’s how romances often came about, heading to some distant party with conflicting addresses jotted down on scraps of paper, a caravan of cars, Mizfit usually leading the way, and he would get lost and the motorized caterpillar would follow, utter chaos and anticipation, the music on loud and windows rolled down, and in the end the party would take place in the car rather than at whatever intended destination. That night fortunately it was just me and Mizfit in his Golf, and I took deep breaths as he drove toward La Roma; the journey now seemed twice as long, and his car took every speed bump at the cruelest possible angle.

  At Álvaro Obregón I asked to be let out. It was nearly one. Minimal signs of life troubled the streets. The odd car, relishing the freedom of empty space, hurtled past as I walked down the camellón, the wrought-iron benches vacant apart from the occasional tramp or infatuated couple. I tried to focus on my breathing—slowly, deeply—and avoided thoughts of Tomás and El Nueve. The vert
igo was beginning to subside and yet I still felt full of ether.

  I was about to turn off onto Orizaba when I noticed a strange scene lit by the streetlamps. Sometimes I saw the street kids from the Insurgentes roundabout splashing in the fountains, they’d leave their caps and shoes on the rim, but that night delivered a far more curious sight. A female figure, well past youth, in one of the fountains. She was cupping her hands and pouring water over her head, long tresses falling around her rather hunchbacked body, which in the wan light looked like an irregular pearl with misplaced curves and lumps. Her skin sagged in folds of varying thickness, and the rivulets added more creases as though she were bathing in a reverse fountain of youth. Had one of the fountain’s Greek or Roman statues come to life, I wondered, or was my father having a laugh, was he, or was my vision, playing tricks on me, classical mythology acquiring a pulse, there on the streets of La Roma. But no, unlike the girl in the stall, she was present and real.

  All of a sudden the figure turned in my direction and caught me staring. For a split second we locked eyes, and I realized she was the homeless woman who often sat outside the Sagrada Familia begging for alms on its steps, her skirt as petaled and billowy as the rose window overhead. They said she liked to nap in a pew in the final row, remaining comfortably until the caretaker would tap her on the shoulder to say they were closing the church for the evening. I’d also seen her sleeping on a bench, and at the 7-Eleven adding coffee to her cup of instant chicken soup. Despite her open-air address she was always remarkably clean, and I now saw why. Fearing I’d disturbed her, I quickly looked away and ran the last stretch to my house, my parents thankfully in bed by the time I let myself in.

  NOW AT THE BEACH, I LOOKED BACK WITH NOSTALGIA on the cool, crepuscular grotto of El Nueve. Every shoreline should have at least one grotto, but Zipolite had none. It had bends and curves and some monumental boulders, maybe even a few concave places where one could hide, but it had no grotto to speak of.

  If I hadn’t seen the article, I can say for certain I would have never come to Oaxaca. If I hadn’t happened to reach for yesterday’s newspaper in the kitchen one afternoon, after shutting the windows and sitting down to my chili and avocado sandwich, the trip would have never taken place.

  The television wasn’t working so I’d turned to the only reading material at hand, yesterday’s copy of Excelsior, and spread it out in front of me, allowing my eyes to wander from one crumpled page to the next as I took in the headlines—“Continual Theft in Cemeteries, Bones and Tombstones Missing”—“Dobermans and Tanks Evict Cardenistas”—“Price of Flowers Rises 500%, Authorities Remain Indifferent”—“Old Lady Found Seated in Armchair, Dead for Days”—“Suitcase Thief Detained at Airport.” I was halfway through my sandwich when my eyes landed on a less familiar headline. Lurking on the outskirts of these stories was a different sort of news item, written in a different sort of voice:

  “Ukrainian Dwarfs on the Run.” Twelve Ukrainian dwarfs are on the run from a Soviet circus. The circus and the dwarfs had been touring Mexico since early October, both inland and along the coast. And then, without any warning, they were gone. According to authorities they vanished overnight with nothing but the costumes on their backs, green sequined suits with purple collars, and magenta shoes. After their performance in Xalapa, Veracruz, which, according to members of the audience, had been carried out with great poise and assurance, the troupe had returned to the rusty trailer in which they all slept, absenting themselves from dinner despite their notorious appetites, and in the morning when the German sword swallower knocked on their door, puzzled that not one of them had shown his face at breakfast or gone to help strike the tent, he was met with silence and, upon tentatively letting himself in, an empty trailer in disarray. After months of maltreatment at the hands of the ringmaster, the sword swallower surmised, the dwarfs had had enough. And so they took flight, with nothing but their costumes. No money, no passports, no language apart from their own, no letter or official seal to facilitate their passage. It was assumed by fellow performers, however, that they were on their way to the coast of Oaxaca.

  Twelve Ukrainian dwarfs, escaped from a circus, on the loose, on the run, in our country. No more rules, no more authority. Flight! I tore the page out of the newspaper. I’d keep it in a drawer, no, in a book, no, in my bag. Always important to find a safe place for combustible material. I folded it eight times and slipped it in my bag, where it joined the usual jumble, and then finished, mechanically, the last bit of my sandwich, my thoughts now far removed from such a prosaic activity as eating. An idea was starting to form, an idea reinforced when I went for a stroll, sticking close to home since soon I’d have to return to tackle my homework, and as I walked I began to recall something my parents once told me, that our colonia was created in the early twentieth century by an Englishman named Walter Orrin whose family had founded the Circo Orrín, the first circus in Mexico to be powered by electricity, and he’d invested the profits in real estate and even named the area La Roma in honor of the ancient Roman circus, and certain streets—Morelia, Orizaba, Tabasco, Veracruz—after places around the country where his own circus had received the greatest applause. A circus man built our neighborhood, Luisa, what do you think of that?

  I walked down those streets and down others, too, including Tonalá, where I stopped outside the Goethe Institute to watch the students inside playing table football, enraptured by their game, and reflected on why it was that most language centers had miniature football tables, often placed near the window. I also paused outside our local pet store, and again through the window I observed a cross-cultural communication of sorts, in this case between a bright green parrot snatched from the Lacandon Jungle and a cage-bred canary, and then between a Persian cat, its face lost in a thicket of white, and two skittish Siamese. How would the dwarfs fend for themselves?

  Perhaps we should call the newspaper and see whether there’s any further news, my mother said at dinner.

  They too had seen the article.

  I’m sure they’ll appear, added my father. But now that you mention vanishing acts, he said, turning to me, Basilia Lapadu called today. She says you haven’t shown up for your last three classes.

  Mrs. Basilia Lapadu from Bucharest knew many languages and taught Italian at our school; even on the warmest of days, she wore woolen vests with rhomboid designs. She wasn’t officially my teacher but that autumn my father had asked her to teach me Latin during my lunch break. At first it seemed like a good idea. My solitary lunches would now have a purpose. But before long, inattention and impatience took over. And Mrs. Lapadu was impatient too, constitutionally, and each lesson was an encounter between two short fuses, mine for having committed to learning Latin during my free time, and hers for having agreed to teach Latin during her free time to a girl who didn’t fully acknowledge the sacrifice.

  You committed to a semester.

  I’ve changed my mind.

  Later in life you’ll be thankful. You will always have your Latin.

  The article pitched up in my head but for a while remained dormant, the days driven by other distractions. One Sunday two men turned up with a long-necked truck and went along Álvaro Obregón snipping at the trees along the camellón, leaving some individuals looking miserably shorn. Our neighbor Yolanda from Chiapas opened a hair salon called Yolanda’s of London where there’d once been a shop selling products from Michoacán. My mother’s birthday: lunch out, a walk through Chapultepec Park, and, with diminishing attention, an evening at the theater. Another afternoon with Tomás at La Bella Italia, this time extensively sampling the jukebox despite a noticeable divergence in musical taste. And one day a new lock appeared on the door to the abandoned house, you could see it from a distance, it was so thick and shiny, along with a sign announcing the company Pérez y Morralla.

  But the main development was the construction site. One Saturday morning I was woken up by the sound of a loud drill. I rose from bed and went downstairs just as my fa
ther was heading out to investigate. To our horror, we saw that the house next door was undergoing a transformation. It was barely 8:35 and already a dozen albañiles were engaged in various tasks, some taking a hammer to the wall, others a drill or a shovel to the ground, others erecting an immense scaffolding. From the looks of it, they were planning to gut the entire structure. A man in a linen suit was attaching a city permit to the vestiges of the gate.

  Upon spotting him my father approached, identifying himself as the neighbor, and asked for an explanation. The man replied that the house, which had lain empty for years, had recently been purchased and that the new owners, a family from Monterrey, were planning many changes before they moved in. What sort of changes, my father inquired, and the man in the linen suit replied that the family had survived two kidnapping attempts and were moving to the capital in the hope it was safer than Monterrey but still wanted to fortify their house, so a security consultant, actually two, had advised them on what to build, what to tear down, what to install, what to enclose, basically how to convert their home into a fortress. And now that they’d been given the green light, the workers could begin. My father, clenching his fists, asked how many months the operation would take, to which the man replied, If we’re lucky, no more than six. Six months, my father repeated, and the man said, Yes, well, if we’re very lucky it will be closer to five, straining his vocal cords since at that moment the drill had started up again. And so it was that the empty house beside ours went from dormant ruin to anthill of activity, the inertia replaced by a babel of machines, the parched grass flattened by rubble, the rats and lizards no longer able to recognize their sanctuary.