It didn't take him long to die. Avellaneda bled to death in his hotel room at the Agua Prieta Excelsior, and two days later he was buried in the Agua Prieta cemetery. There was no service. The mayor, the top municipal authorities, and the Monterrey bullfighter Jesús Ortiz Pacheco attended the burial, as did some aficionados who had seen Avellaneda die and wanted to pay their last respects. The story raised two or three lingering questions and convinced us to visit Agua Prieta.
First of all, according to Belano, the reporter was probably going by hearsay. It was possible, of course, that the main Hermosillo newspaper had a correspondent in Agua Prieta and that this correspondent had sent in his account of the tragic event by telegraph, but what was clear (though why I don't know, incidentally) was that here, in Hermosillo, the story had been embellished, lengthened, polished, made more literary. A question: who sat in the vigil over Avellaneda's body? A curious detail: who was the bullfighter Ortiz Pacheco, whose shadow seemed to cling to Avellaneda's? Was he touring Sonora with Avellaneda or was his presence in Agua Prieta purely coincidental? As we feared, we found no other news of Avellaneda in the Hermosillo archives, as if once the death of the bullfighter had been witnessed, he had fallen into absolute oblivion, which, after all, was only natural. The vein of information was exhausted. So we made our way to the Peña Taurina Pilo Yáñez, located in the old part of the city, a family bar with a faintly Spanish air where the Hermosillo tauromachy fanatics gathered. No one there knew anything about a pint-size bullfighter called Pepe Avellaneda, but when we told them that he was active in the 1920s, and the name of the bullring where he was killed, they referred us to a little old man who knew everything about the bullfighter Ortiz Pacheco (again!) although his favorite was Pilo Yáñez, Sultan of Caborca (Caborca yet again), a nickname that we, unfamiliar with the labyrinthine byways of Mexican bullfighting, thought seemed more fitting for a boxer.
The old man's name was Jesús Pintado and he remembered Pepe Avellaneda, Pepín Avellaneda, he called him, a bullfighter who never had much luck but was braver than most, from Sonora, possibly, or maybe Sinaloa or Chihuahua, although he made his name in Sonora, which meant that he was Sonoran by adoption if nothing else, killed in Agua Prieta on a bill he shared with Ortiz Pacheco and Efrén Salazar, during Agua Prieta's big fiesta, in May 1930. Señor Pintado, do you know whether he had any family? asked Belano. The old man didn't know. Do you know whether he traveled with a woman? The old man laughed and looked at Lupe. All of them traveled with women or picked them up along the way, he said. In those days, men were wild and some of the women were too. But you don't know? said Belano. The old man didn't know. Is Ortiz Pacheco alive? said Belano. The old man said yes. Do you know where we could find him, Señor Pintado? The old man said the bullfighter had a ranch near El Cuatro. What's that, said Belano, a town, a road, a restaurant? The old man looked at us as if he had suddenly recognized us from somewhere, then he said it was a town.
JANUARY 9
To make the trip go faster, I started to draw pictures, puzzles that I was taught in school a long time ago. Although there are no cowboys here. No one wears a cowboy hat here. Here there's only desert, and towns like mirages, and bare hills.
"What's this?" I said.
Lupe looked at the drawing as if she didn't feel like playing, and was silent. Belano and Lima didn't know either.
"An elegiac verse?" said Lima.
"No. A Mexican seen from above," I said. "And this one?"
"A Mexican smoking a pipe," said Lupe.
"And this one?"
"A Mexican on a tricycle," said Lupe. "A Mexican boy on a tricycle."
"And this one?"
"Five Mexicans peeing in a urinal," said Lima.
"And this one?"
"A Mexican on a bicycle," said Lupe.
"Or a Mexican on a tightrope," said Lima.
"And this one?"
"A Mexican on a bridge," said Lima.
"And this one?"
"A Mexican skiing," said Lupe.
"And this one?"
"A Mexican about to draw his guns," said Lupe.
"Jesus, Lupe, you know them all," said Belano.
"And you don't know a single one," said Lupe.
"That's because I'm not Mexican," said Belano.
"And this one?" I said, showing the drawing to Lima first and then to the others.
"A Mexican going up a ladder," said Lupe.
"And this one?"
"Gee, that's a hard one," said Lupe.
For a while my friends stopped laughing and looked at the picture and I watched the landscape. I saw something in the distance that looked like a tree. When we passed it I realized it was a plant: an enormous dead plant.
"We give up," said Lupe.
"It's a Mexican frying an egg," I said. "And this one?"
"Two Mexicans on one of those bicycles for two," said Lupe.
"Or two Mexicans on a tightrope," said Lima.
"Here's a hard one for you," I said.
"Easy: a buzzard wearing a cowboy hat," said Lupe.
"And this one?"
"Eight Mexicans talking," said Lima.
"Eight Mexicans sleeping," said Lupe.
"Or even eight Mexicans watching an invisible cockfight," I said.
"And this one?"
"Four Mexicans keeping vigil over a body," said Belano.
JANUARY 10
The trip to El Cuatro didn't go smoothly. We spent almost the whole day on the road, first looking for El Cuatro, which according to what we'd been told was about ninety miles north of Hermosillo along the federal highway, and then, once we'd reached the town of Benjamín Hill, a left turn east along a dirt road where we got lost and came back out on the highway again, this time six miles south of Benjamín Hill, which made us think that El Cuatro didn't exist, until we took the turn at Benjamín Hill again (actually, to get to El Cuatro it's better to take the first left, the one that's six miles from Benjamín Hill) and drove and drove through landscapes that looked lunar sometimes and other times revealed patches of green, always desolate, and then we came to a town called Félix Gómez and there a man planted himself in front of our car with his legs braced and his hands on his hips and cursed us and then other people told us that to get to El Cuatro we had to go a certain way and then turn another way and then we got to a town called El Oasis, which in no way resembled an oasis but rather seemed to sum up all the misery of the desert in its storefronts and then we came out on the highway again and then Lima said that the Sonora desert was a shithole and Lupe said that if they had let her drive we would've been there a long time ago, to which Lima responded by hitting the brake and getting out and telling Lupe to take the wheel. I don't know what happened then, but we all got out of the Impala and stretched our legs. In the distance we could see the highway and some cars heading north, probably to Tijuana and the United States, and others heading south, toward Hermosillo or Guadalajara or Mexico City, and then we started to talk about Mexico City and bask in the sun (comparing our tanned forearms) and smoke and talk about Mexico City and Lupe said that she didn't miss anybody anymore. When she said it I realized that strangely enough I didn't miss anyone either, although I was careful not to say so. Then they all got back in, except for me. I entertained myself by tossing clumps of dirt as far as I could in no particular direction, and although I could hear them calling me I didn't turn my head or make the slightest move toward heading back, until Belano said: García Madero, either get in or stay here, and then I turned around and started to walk toward the Impala, having gotten pretty far away without meaning to, and as I returned I thought how dirty Quim's car looked, imagining Quim seeing his Impala through my eyes or María seeing her father's Impala through my eyes and it really wasn't a pretty sight. Its color had almost vanished under a layer of desert dust.
Then we went back to El Oasis and Félix Gómez and we made it to El Cuatro at last, in the municipality of Trincheras, and we had lunch there and asked the waiter and the people at th
e next table whether they knew where the ex-bullfighter Ortiz Pacheco's ranch was, but they had never heard of him, so we decided to wander around the town, Lupe and I in silence and Belano and Lima talking nonstop, but not about Ortiz Pacheco or Avellaneda or Cesárea Tinajero, but about Mexico City gossip or Latin American books or magazines they'd read just before setting off on this meandering road trip, or movies. Basically, they talked about things that struck me as frivolous, and possibly Lupe too, because both of us were quiet, and after lots of asking we found a man in the market (which was deserted at that hour) who had three cardboard boxes full of chicks and was able to tell us how to get to Ortiz Pacheco's ranch. So we got back in the Impala and set off again.
Halfway down the road from El Cuatro to Trincheras we were supposed to turn left, onto a track that skirted the slopes of a hill shaped like a quail, but when we took the turn, all the hills, every raised bit of ground, even the desert, looked quail-shaped, like quail in different positions, so we wandered down tracks that couldn't even be called dirt roads, battering the car and ourselves too, until the track ended and a house, a building that looked like an eighteenth-century mission, suddenly appeared through the dust, and an old man came out to meet us and told us that this was in fact the bullfighter Ortiz Pacheco's ranch, La Buena Vida, and that he himself (but he only said this after watching us closely for a while) was the bullfighter Ortiz Pacheco.
That night we enjoyed the old matador's hospitality. Ortiz Pacheco was seventy-nine and had a memory fortified by life in the country, according to him, or the desert, according to us. He remembered Pepe Avellaneda (Pepín Avellaneda, the saddest little man I ever saw, he said) perfectly well, and he remembered the afternoon when Avellaneda was killed in the Agua Prieta bullring. He was at the wake, which was held in the parlor at the hotel, where nearly every living soul in Agua Prieta stopped by to offer a final farewell, and at the burial, which was a gathering of multitudes, a dark end to an epic fiesta, he said. Naturally, he remembered the woman who was with Avellaneda. A tall woman, the way short men tend to like them, quiet, though not out of shyness or prudence, but as if she had no choice, as if she were sick and couldn't speak. Was she Avellaneda's lover? No doubt about that. Not his better half, because Avellaneda was married and his wife, whom he'd left long before, lived in Los Mochis, Sinaloa. According to Ortiz Pacheco, the bullfighter sent her money every month or two (or whenever he damn well could). In those days, bullfighting wasn't the way it is now with even the novices getting rich. Anyway, back then Avellaneda was living with this woman. He couldn't remember her name, but he knew that she came from Mexico City and that she was an educated woman, a typist or a stenographer. When Belano said Cesárea's name, Ortiz Pacheco said yes, that was it. Was she the kind of woman who was interested in bulls? asked Lupe. I don't know, said Ortiz Pacheco, maybe she was and maybe she wasn't, but when someone is with a bullfighter, in the long run they end up liking that world. In any case, Ortiz Pacheco had only seen Cesárea twice, the last time in Agua Prieta, which probably meant they hadn't been lovers for long. Still, she exerted an obvious influence on Pepín Avellaneda, according to Ortiz Pacheco.
The night before he died, for example, as the two bullfighters were drinking at a bar in Agua Prieta and just before they both returned to the hotel, Avellaneda started to talk about Aztlán. At first he spoke as if he were telling a secret, as if he didn't really want to talk, but as the minutes went by he grew more and more excited. Ortiz Pacheco didn't even know what Aztlán meant, never having heard the word before in his life. So Avellaneda explained it to him from the beginning, telling him about the sacred city of the first Mexicans, the city of legend, the undiscovered city, Plato's true Atlantis, and when they got back to the hotel, half drunk, Ortiz Pacheco thought that only Cesárea could be responsible for such wild ideas. She was alone most of the time during the wake, shut in her room or sitting in a corner of the Excelsior's hall, which was done up like a funeral parlor. No women offered her their condolences. Only the men, and in private, since it hadn't escaped anyone that she was just the mistress. She didn't say a word at the burial. There were speeches by the town treasurer, who was also what you might call the official poet of Agua Prieta, and the president of the bullfighting society, but she didn't speak. Nor, according to Ortiz Pacheco, was she seen to shed a single tear. Though she did commission the mason to carve some words on Avellaneda's tombstone, what they were, Ortiz Pacheco couldn't remember, strange words, in any case, in the same style as Aztlán, he seemed to recall, and surely invented by her for the occasion. Invented, not requested, was what he said. Belano and Lima asked him what the words were. Ortiz Pacheco thought for a while but finally said he'd forgotten them.
That night we slept at the ranch. Belano and Lima slept in the main room (there were many bedrooms, but they were all uninhabitable), Lupe and I in the car. I woke up just as the sun was rising and took a piss in the yard, watching the first pale yellow (but also blue) lights slipping stealthily across the desert. I lit a cigarette and spent a while watching the horizon and breathing. In the distance I thought I spotted a plume of dust, but then I realized it was just a low cloud. Low and motionless. It seemed strange not to hear any animal sounds. And yet every once in a while, if you paid attention, you could hear a bird singing. When I turned around, Lupe was watching me from one of the windows of the Impala. Her short black hair was a mess and she seemed thinner than before, as if she were turning invisible, as if the morning were painlessly dissolving her, but at the same time she seemed more beautiful than ever.
We went into the house together. In the main room, we found Lima, Belano, and Ortiz Pacheco, each in a leather armchair. The old bullfighter was wrapped in a serape and he was asleep with a startled expression on his face. As Lupe made coffee, I woke my friends. I was afraid to wake Ortiz Pacheco. I think he's dead, I whispered. Belano stretched, his joints cracking. He said it had been a long time since he slept so well and then he took it upon himself to wake our host. As we were having breakfast, Ortiz Pacheco said that he'd had a strange dream. Did you dream about your friend Avellaneda? said Belano. No, not at all, said Ortiz Pacheco, I dreamed that I was ten years old and my family was moving from Monterrey to Hermosillo. In those days that must have been a very long trip, said Lima. Very long, yes, said Ortiz Pacheco, but happy.
JANUARY 11
We went to Agua Prieta, to the Agua Prieta cemetery. From La Buena Vida to Trincheras first, and then from Trincheras to Pueblo Nuevo, Santa Ana, San Ignacio, Ímuris, Cananea, and Agua Prieta, right on the Arizona border.
On the other side of the border was Douglas, an American town, and in between was customs and the border police. On the other side of Douglas, about forty miles northwest, was Tombstone, where the best American gunmen once gathered. As we were eating at a coffee shop, we heard two stories: one demonstrating the value of all things Mexican and the other the value of all things American. In one, the protagonist was from Agua Prieta, and in the other he was from Tombstone.
When the man who was telling the stories, a guy with long gray-streaked hair who talked as if his head hurt, left the coffee shop, the man who'd been listening started to laugh for no apparent reason, or as if he'd needed a couple of minutes to make sense of the stories he'd heard. Really, it was just two jokes. In the first, the sheriff and one of his deputies take a prisoner from his cell and lead him far out into the country to kill him. The prisoner knows what's happening and is more or less resigned to his fate. It's a harsh winter, day is dawning, and prisoner and executioners alike are complaining of the cold in the desert. At a certain moment, though, the prisoner starts to laugh, and the sheriff says what the hell's so funny, has he forgotten that he's about to be killed and buried where no one can find him? has he lost his mind? And the prisoner says, and this is the punch line, that he's laughing because in a few minutes he won't be cold, but the lawmen will have to walk back.
The other story tells of the execution of Colonel Guadalupe Sánchez, prodigal son o
f Agua Prieta, who at the moment he faced the firing squad asked, as a last wish, to smoke a cigar. The commanding officer granted him his wish. He was given his last Havana. Guadalupe Sánchez lit it calmly and began to smoke in a leisurely manner, savoring it and watching the sun come up (because like the Tombstone story, this one takes place at dawn, maybe even unfolding on the same morning, the morning of May 15, 1912), and, wreathed in smoke, Colonel Sánchez was so relaxed, so unruffled, so serene, that the ash stayed glued to the cigar, which might have been the colonel's intention, to see for himself if his pulse would quicken, if in the end his hand would shake and show he'd lost his nerve, but he finished the Havana and the ash didn't fall. Then Colonel Sánchez tossed away the butt and said whenever you like.
That was the story.
When the recipient of the stories stopped laughing, Belano asked himself a few questions out loud: is the prisoner who's going to die outside of Tombstone from Tombstone? or just the sheriff and his deputy? was Colonel Guadalupe Sánchez from Agua Prieta? was the commander of the firing squad from Agua Prieta? why did they kill the Tombstone prisoner like a dog? why did they kill mi coronel [sic] Lupe Sánchez like a dog? Everyone in the coffee shop was looking at him, but no one said anything. Lima took him by the shoulder and said: come on, man, let's go. Belano looked at him with a smile and put a few bills on the counter. Then we left for the cemetery and went looking for the gravestone of Pepe Avellaneda, who was killed because he was gored by a bull or because he was too short and clumsy with his sword, a gravestone with an epitaph written by Cesárea Tinajero, and no matter how long we looked, we couldn't find it. The Agua Prieta cemetery was the closest thing we'd seen to a labyrinth, and the cemetery's veteran gravedigger, the only one who knew exactly where each dead person was buried, was away on vacation or out sick.
The Savage Detectives Page 67
