The Dead Girls

by Jorge Ibargüengoitia

  As a result of the colloquies, Cabañas increased taxes, and to placate the disgruntled, at least partially—among the complaints brought up, he remedied the one that cost the least money—he decreed the closing down of houses of prostitution throughout the state.

  The Plan de Abajo Morals Act, which bans prostitution and pandering, and brands as a lawbreaker even a person who delivers soft drinks to a brothel, was presented to the state congress under the sponsorship of Governor Cabañas, debated for half an hour, and passed unanimously to applause on March 2, 1962.

  The enforcement of the law, something nobody anticipated, affected close to thirty thousand persons whose livelihood was directly or indirectly derived from prostitution, as well as the municipal governments, 30 to 40 percent of whose revenue came from the taxes paid by the brothels, and the hundreds of public employees who received gratuities from their proprietors. None of the affected parties put forward objections.

  (It is known that Arcángela, accompanied by licenciado Rendón, appeared in Judge Peralta’s office and offered him five thousand pesos for a writ of amparo that would protect her. The judge describes his reply as having been couched in the following words addressed to licenciado Rendón: “Try to make señora Baladro understand that what she is requesting me to grant her is not precisely an amparo, but rather a judicial instrument that would grant her immunity with respect to a law passed by congress. Explain to her, in addition, that even if what she is asking me for were an amparo, I would be unable to grant it to her at any price, in view of the fact that the governor has personally requested all judges not to hamper enforcement of this law, in which he has taken a particular interest.”)

  3

  The Morals Act was enforced with a stringency unprecedented in the history of the state of Plan de Abajo. By the end of March, not a single brothel remained in operation.

  Serafina and Arcángela Baladro, following what appears to have been prophetic intuition, removed the furniture from the Molino Street house but left the Casino del Danzón intact, with the beds made, on the day the inspectors came to paste the seals over the doors. The sisters say they had a premonition that very soon God was going to grant the miracle of making it possible for them to reopen the model brothel that was so dear to them.

  Touching scenes were to be witnessed the day the Molino Street house in Pedrones was closed. Six trucks filled with furniture and women were lined up at the curb—three whorehouses in the one block. The farewells between some of the girls were quite moving, because the Baladros had disposed of eleven of them to an individual who had businesses in Guatáparo. The sidewalks were crowded with bystanders, people who had never set foot within a brothel but were curious to see what sorts of things had been inside. The policemen on duty kept their eyes averted and were in bad humor because they were losing a source of extra income. When licenciado Avalos arrived to affix the seals, he said to Serafina, “Please don’t take it personally, doña Serafina. I am only doing this because it is my duty.” She had been giving him five hundred pesos a month for the last four years.

  When the seals had been pasted across the doors and the trucks loaded, one of the women who lived on the block came over to Serafina and thanked her in the name of the other neighbors for having paid for the installation of their sidewalks.

  4

  The girls, chairs, beds, basins, mattresses, and bundles of clothing in the trucks reached San Pedro de las Corrientes toward evening of what was a sad day. The proprietresses arrived by car in a foul mood.

  The initial days were difficult, because twenty-six women had to be installed where fourteen had formerly lived and it was necessary to divide the rooms, which left them cramped. Besides, the contractor charged what seemed to Arcángela an outrageous price. She was quite downcast for several weeks, thinking that they were going to be left in poverty. This mood lasted until she made a deal with a señora Eugenia, who operated a business in Mezcala, to transfer another eight girls. This transaction, however, was never consummated because customers began to arrive. Some were former regulars from Plan de Abajo who crossed the state line in search of recreation; others were new and also from Plan de Abajo who, although not frequenters of whorehouses, succumbed to temptation on seeing them prohibited and shut down. The influx of outsiders in search of pleasures forbidden in other parts acted as a stimulus upon the San Pedro de las Corrientes males and impelled them to visit the cabarets more assiduously. “Men are like flies,” Serafina observes, “the more they see lighting in a place, the more they want to light there, too.”

  The México Lindo was packed nightly. On Saturdays, there were not enough women to meet the demand. Serafina bought a new jukebox that she paid for herself. Seeing the Baladros become so prosperous in San Pedro de las Corrientes, Captain Bedoya put in for a transfer to another unit closer by. What bothered him most about his living in Concepción and Serafina in San Pedro was riding in the Scarlet Arrow buses twice a day—he became convinced that his life was going to come to a sudden end in an accident on Dog Hill. Arcángela took to saying that business had never been so good and that what God had taken away with one hand from her sister and herself, He was returning to them with the other. Then came December and the Humberto incident.

  VII

  A Life

  1

  The man comes down the hill, his shoulders drawn up, arms rigid, fists clenched, head twisted, legs now stiff now flaccid, feet finding the ground halfway there or losing contact with the surface, forcing him to take a step back. (Those who saw him go by, it was learned later on, thought he was drunk.)

  It is nine o’clock at night. The way down from the Sanctuary is a steep cobblestone street with steps wherever needed, lined by two-story houses with painted walls and closed doors. There is a streetlight every hundred meters. The center of town is at the foot of the hill. Fireworks from the square light up the sky intermittently. A confusion of sounds is to be heard—sky rockets, brass bands, jukeboxes, mariachis, voices, howls of rustic gusto, yelping dogs. The date is the eighth of December.

  The man’s vitality is at too low an ebb for him to be aware of any of this; he holds his glazed eyes fixed on the ground, absorbed in reaching his goal. The dogs that watch him go by bark at him and then approach to sniff at the blood that had fallen. Following him, fifty meters above on the hill, are two detectives who stop each time he stops, clutching the trunk of a tree to catch his breath. The detectives move on when the man continues his dogged way.

  He faces his sternest test when he reaches the foot of the hill. He stops at the corner and, without raising his eyes, as though recognizing the stones of the street, turns to the right and goes along Allende Street, walking more slowly. The people watch him pass, stumble and bump into a wall, leaving a stain that will go unrecognized until the next day. “The dead man left a mark here with his blood,” the people are to say, pointing out the blackish smear.

  The man staggers, lurching from one foot to the other, loses his sense of direction, stumbles diagonally across the street to bump into a taco stand in a doorway, sending the table, brazier, burning charcoal, frying pan, plates, and tacos flying in all directions to fall clattering on the cobblestones. He continues on his way, his gait more uncontrolled the faster he moves. The people make way for him. The taco woman gives chase and catches up with him, but on seeing his ghastly pallor, before she can give vent to her outrage, falls silent and returns disconsolately to pick up the wreckage and recover her tacos.

  The electric sign says “México Lindo.” Making an agonizing effort, the man succeeds in negotiating the single step at the entrance, separates the panels of the little door, enters the smoke-filled cabaret, pushes two customers aside, leans on a table whose occupants stare, not recognizing him, overturns a drink, and drops to the floor.

  The hum of conversation stops abruptly as a woman screams. The people crowd around. Automatically, the jukebox begins to blare a mambo. Somebody, sensibly, disconnects it. There is not a sound. Serafina, wh
o is at the cash register, crosses the dance floor, pushing her way through the onlookers until she reaches the center of attention where she recognizes the corpse on the floor as her nephew.

  2

  There are as many gaps in what is known about the life of Humberto Paredes Baladro, Arcángela’s son, as there are in what is known about his death.

  He was born in the Molino Street house in 1939. Arcángela was his mother; his father a man on whom there is no information except that his family name was Paredes. (Arcángela pretends not to understand when questioned about this person.)

  Serafina says that several months before Humberto was born, she met her sister in the market and noted that she was pregnant, but made no comment because she considered that “it would have been disrespectful.” She did not know that Arcángela had given birth until she was invited to the christening. Serafina is sure that the child’s mother did not mention his father then or anytime thereafter.

  The boy grew up in the whorehouse, but his mother was determined to make a respectable man of him. The Skeleton says that Arcángela forbade him to go out into the patio, up the stairs, into the rooms, or to enter the yard. The girls were warned not to explain to the child why the men who came to the house were there. This discipline was so effective that Humberto Paredes was totally innocent when he entered school. On his first day, the other children, who knew who he was, gave him an education. When he came home, he asked the Skeleton, “Are you a whore?” The Skeleton said she was and when the boy wanted to know if his mother was one, too, she answered that, no, she was a madam.

  On his third day of school, the principal heard a chorus of rhythmic shouts coming from the yard and when she went out to see what was happening, she found thirty children running and jumping up and down in circles “like redskins” and shouting, “Son of a whore!” In the center was the pupil, Paredes Baladro, crying.

  Humberto was sent home, accompanied by the watchman, with an envelope containing thirty pesos, the fee Arcángela had paid for his registration, and a note from the principal requesting the child’s mother to send him to another school.

  After she had read the note Arcángela realized that the time had come when she and her son had to part. In order to isolate him from any contact with vice, she enrolled him in schools in places far away where nobody would know his mother’s name or suspect what her profession was.

  During this period, Arcángela wrote him long weekly letters in green ink on ruled paper filled with advice, such as to smear lard behind his ears to protect him from catching cold, to sleep with his feet pointing south to avoid the evil eye, and so on. The only copies of these that survive are a few her son had discarded and which remained forgotten among his belongings. His replies were short requests for money, which had no effect—where Arcángela got the idea that money is the worst corruptor of youth is not known—but she preserves them to this day in a lacquered box of scented wood from Olinalá.

  The boy changed boarding schools on a number of occasions. The first time was when the superintendent of the Ignacio Allende School in Muerdago discovered two holes in the bathroom used by his wife. As reported by various of the students on being questioned, the holes, which had been made in the wall of a little-used corridor, were the work of the student Paredes Baladro—twelve years of age—who was charging his schoolmates fifty centavos for a look at the superintendent’s wife in the bathtub and twenty centavos sitting on the toilet.

  A year later, several of the boys at the Juan Escutia School complained to the office that they were being shaken down by the student Paredes Baladro. He was extorting one peso per week from each one and if anybody did not pay he had him beaten up by the student Gutiérrez Carrasco, alias “the Gorilla.”

  It is also known that he entered medical school in Cuévano but did not complete the first year. His studies came to an abrupt end the day he stabbed a classmate—it is not known for what reason. The incident took place in one of the classrooms. The police were called in and a nasty situation developed. Arcángela had to intervene. She paid the medical expenses as well as a large settlement to the victim’s family—luckily, they turned out to be poor and amenable to reason—for withdrawing charges. Arcángela bought off witnesses, bought the judge, and did not rest until he was free. Licenciado Rendón convinced her that it would be best for Humberto to go to the United States until the scandal blew over.

  Humberto Paredes spent a year in Los Angeles. His mother hoped he would learn English and that with this asset he would be able to establish himself in business. She was mistaken only by half. Humberto returned to San Pedro de las Corrientes without knowing how to speak a word of English, but he did bring back poppy seeds that were to give him a source of income during the few years of life remaining to him.

  Humberto Paredes continued living at the México Lindo, but under instructions from the people he worked for, it seems, he rented a house on Los Bridones Street. There, ostensibly, he dealt in seeds, but the house actually must have been where he cached the narcotics and conducted his transactions. It should be pointed out, however, that the police found nothing compromising there after Humberto’s death nor were they able to learn who his contacts were.

  3

  In each of the three extant photographs of him, Humberto Paredes reveals the wide, flat face and square jaw inherited from his mother, the lank hair of the Indian, and the sneering lip of the autocrat—a kind of Benito Juárez of the underworld.

  In the first photograph, the subject appears at the wheel of a Buick convertible—blood-red, according to those who had seen it—which he bought out of the proceeds of his first deal, and the only luxury he ever possessed in his life. There is a huisache tree in the background. In the second photograph, he is in profile, wearing a striped sweater. He is gripping in his right hand the .38 pistol found on him when he was killed. Arcángela maintains, nevertheless, that she never saw her son use a firearm. The wall that can be seen at the rear in this shot is undoubtedly that of the México Lindo. In the third photograph, Humberto appears in swimming trunks, his hair wet. He is looking into the camera and smiling, his arm clasping the waist of a village belle who is wearing a spectacular bathing suit and a bunch of artificial ringlets.

  4

  She says that she had seen him before, in his red car, and that she had a bad impression of him because it seemed to her that “he was only interested in attracting attention”—Humberto wore a red shirt and green eyeglasses, made the exhaust of his car roar, blew the horn constantly, and so on. She was crossing the street one day when he appeared in his car and veered sharply, nearly knocking her down. Seeing that he had frightened her, he stopped, and instead of apologizing, opened the door and invited her to get in. Offended, she continued on her way. He followed in the car, keeping pace with her, but without proffering the sort of comments that men customarily make to women under such circumstances. This seemed strange to her. He continued behind her as far as the hill of the Sanctuary, where there is no thoroughfare. When he saw her start up the slope, he parked the car and followed her at a distance on foot, making no effort to catch up with her and “without calling out vulgar remarks or trying to get close enough to put his hands on me.” She reached home, entered, closed the door, went upstairs to her room and looked out the window in time to see him stand in front of the house, hesitate a moment, and then start down the hill. In the days that followed she mentioned his name to various girl friends who repeated to her what they had heard about him: that he was the son of a procuress; had stabbed a boy when he was still in school; had been in jail and had to leave the country until things blew over; was a drug dealer—besides other imagined crimes imputed to him.

  Federal narcotics agent Demetrio Guillomar arrived in Pedrones with orders to find out who the middleman was between the poppy growers of the region and those who processed the gum, and to obtain the evidence necessary to bring him to trial. Since it was suspected that this middleman was being protected by the local authorities,
Guillomar had instructions not to contact them or make known the reason for his presence. He registered at the Hotel Frances as an insurance salesman and after spending several fruitless weeks in the area, he suddenly learned something. How, is not exactly known. Possibly, Bedoya’s trail—he had discovered the plantations and burned them out—led him to Humberto Paredes, whose name appears in the federal police records for the first time on November 15, 1962, in a report by Guillomar.

  She says she suffered a great deal; that she could not decide whether to believe what people said about Humberto or what her heart told her—that nobody as sweet as he could be bad. She still has the clay pitcher from Cuevano with the words “True Love” on it that he gave her. She did not accept when he invited her for a ride or to have ice cream with him in Muerdago because, in the first place, it was an open car and she might be seen and, secondly, because she thought that getting into a car with a boy meant losing her virginity, which she had made up her mind to maintain intact until marriage. In view of these obstacles, the couple had no choice but to stroll, conversing, along the paths by the river, which are wooded and solitary. On these walks, Humberto told her things about his life that did not jibe with what people said about him and Conchita therefore wondered whether he was telling the truth or deceiving her. She talked to him of the future, her ideas about marriage, how many children she planned to have, what she was going to name them, and how she would bring them up. She did not suspect that these conversations exasperated him, until the day he took her firmly by the arm, led her down an embankment, dumped her on the ground, and tore her panties off. Having accomplished this disconcerted Humberto momentarily, which Conchita took advantage of to run away. He did not pursue her. The following day, Humberto waited for her at a spot where he knew she would have to pass—Conchita was a teacher at a parochial school—and begged her pardon. She told him she never wanted to see him again.