The Dead Girls

by Jorge Ibargüengoitia

  In contrast to the punishment and solitary confinement suffered by the women who were brought back from the farm, Arcángela decided to reduce the sentence of the four who had attacked Rosa—even though she had still not recovered—and permitted them to come out of their rooms during the day, have their meals in the kitchen, eat their fill, be together, and talk to the others. After supper, they had to return to their rooms where the Skeleton would lock them in until the next day.

  It appears that this act of locking a door at night and opening it in the morning earned the Skeleton the enmity of the captives with whom she had been on relatively friendly terms up to that time, even though there was not the slightest doubt that she was unconditionally with the Baladros and, consequently, against the rebels.

  It seems that there was neither provocation nor quarrel. What the four women expected to accomplish is unknown. The incident was like this: One morning after breakfast, the four women were in the kitchen washing dishes when the Skeleton came in. She states that the moment she entered she realized that they were waiting for her; they maintain that they had not been in collusion. The Skeleton claims that she did not even open her mouth; they claim that she insulted them, saying “What the fuck!” (?) The fact of the matter is that before the Skeleton could defend herself, Aurora Bautista struck her in the face with a clay dish, breaking it, and another of the girls—the victim does not know which—hit her over the head with the big wooden spoon.

  Everything seems to indicate that the intention of these four women was to do the same to the Skeleton as the other four had tried to do to Marta: push her into the hole of the old outhouse and bury her alive. It should be noted that this attempt had a better chance of succeeding than the other, because the Skeleton, being so much thinner than Marta, would have fitted into the hole.

  Fortunately for all concerned, the attempt was thwarted. The women were crossing the yard carrying the semiconscious Skeleton when they met Arcángela on her way back to the house from feeding the chickens. What happened then is a demonstration of the power still wielded by a madam over her girls, even at that time. They were so dismayed at seeing her that they were powerless to do anything but obey. Without so much as bothering to put down the dish she held in her hand, Arcángela made the four women carry the Skeleton back to her room, lay her on her bed, and call Serafina—who was in the dining room—to lock them in.

  Captain Bedoya supervised the punishment that night. He made the four guilty girls beat each other with the wooden spoon. It was on this occasion that Aurora Bautista, seized by some obscure impulse, struck Socorro in the mouth several times, breaking two of her teeth. María del Carmen screamed, “You’re killing her!” and the captain intervened, snatching the spoon away from Aurora. (At the trial, the captain brought up this act of humanitarianism on his part.)

  The Skeleton, whose face remained swollen for more than a week, did not participate in the punishment that night nor did she show any signs afterward of holding a grudge against her assailants.

  3

  Captain Bedoya had to go to Mezcala on army business in the middle of December. He took two points into consideration in planning the trip: first, that the price of a hotel room is practically the same if you sleep alone or with somebody; and, second, that with life at the Casino del Danzón getting more and more dismal, and Serafina having been under constant nervous tension for months, she deserved a change. The captain invited her to accompany him, and she accepted.

  They went in the first-class bus. The captain was gallant. He allowed Serafina to have the seat next to the window; and—something else he would never have done for anybody—he got off the bus at one of the rest stops and bought her some candied crab apples that had caught her attention, which he paid for himself. The captain was in uniform; Serafina wore a red kerchief on her head to keep her hair from getting mussed.

  The captain says that as soon as the bus was on the highway Serafina seemed to forget the problems of the house, to relax and become absorbed in watching the scenery, which evoked frequent comments from her, such as “Look at that beautiful field!” or “I wonder what it must feel like to live in a lonely place like that!” All of which, in the captain’s opinion, clearly indicated Serafina’s intention at the time of getting out of prostitution and taking up farming.

  They arrived in the city of Mezcala at eight o’clock in the evening. The captain continued to be indulgent. He rejected the idea of staying at one of the hotels near the bus terminal, considering them “reasonable in price but in a very noisy location.” They took a taxi—which he paid for—to a relatively deluxe hotel in the downtown area. The captain did not become annoyed even when the desk clerk told him the prices of the rooms. He insisted on seeing several so Serafina could choose the one she liked best. They finally decided on a room that overlooked a little park with benches and the atrium of a church.

  Serafina removed her red kerchief and the captain took her to a popular beer garden for supper.

  The next day, the captain spent the best part of the morning at the quartermaster general’s office. Serafina went to the arcade and bought some typical Mezcala candies as a gift for her sister. At midday, on his way back to the hotel, the captain caught sight of her from a distance, leaning over the balcony railing, waving and smiling at him. He says that he had not seen her so happy in a long time.

  After dinner they went to a movie and after the movie they parted, the captain returning to headquarters and Serafina strolling back to the hotel. She describes what happened in the following way. Toward dusk, she was walking along a street the name of which she does not recall. There were many people around. Suddenly, she relates, something on the other side of the street attracted her attention, she could not say exactly what—a silhouette, a gesture—and gave her an uneasy feeling. She says that she kept walking, without knowing what was happening to her at first, and that it took a while before she realized that she had seen Simón Corona in the crowd. All the suppressed anger of years welled up in her, a bitter taste came into her mouth, and she had to stop to spit. She says that she felt the same humiliation all over again of the night in Acapulco when she went into the store, so worried, saw the other door, and realized that Simón Corona had tricked her. And she says that once again she began to feel sorry for herself—she who had been so good to him, to be paid back so ungratefully. She thinks that if she had had the .45 in her purse she would have shot into the crowd of people across the street. But she did not have it with her.

  She says that she became as though crazed. She ran across the street dodging the cars, hit a fat man in the stomach who got in her way, raced down the block as far as the corner and stood there, staring in all directions, but saw no sign anywhere of the man she hated so much.

  She says that she walked up and down streets without knowing where she was going until finally she had to ask directions to get back to the hotel. It was during this lapse of wandering about lost that her desire for revenge was rekindled.

  “It is not possible that such a terrible offense should go unpunished! It is not fair!”

  Captain Bedoya says that when he got back to the hotel, he found Serafina transformed. Instead of her being out on the balcony leaning over the railing as he expected, when he opened the door he saw her sitting in a chair in a corner of the room, almost in darkness. She stared at him. Obviously, she was waiting for him. He had scarcely set foot in the room before she was saying, “There is something in my life you don’t know about.”

  One can imagine the captain taking off his jacket, going into the bathroom and urinating with the door open, as Serafina, standing in the center of the room, relates the story in a voice charged with emotion of her relations with Simón Corona—of whose existence the captain knew nothing—with the words “skunk,” “ingrate,” “unforgivable,” and the like coming up frequently, and ending with her saying, “It was to kill that man that I wanted the .45 pistol you sold me.”

  What happened after that is surpris
ing: Captain Bedoya, instead of telling Serafina that she was talking nonsense and to try to calm down and forget the whole thing, agreed that she was right and promised to help her take revenge.

  Apparently, Serafina spent the next day scouring Mezcala in search of Simón Corona. She did not find him—it was later learned that he was not present in that city at the time—and that what Serafina had seen in the street was an illusion. It cost the captain some effort to convince her to go back to Concepción. She did not relent in her determination to take vengeance and held the captain to his promise and so, a few days later, Serafina, the captain, Brave Nicolás, and Ladder set out for Tuxpana Falls. (See Chapter I.)

  During the trial, Captain Bedoya maintained that the purpose of the trip to Tuxpana Falls was “to throw a scare into Simón Corona,” not to kill him, as might have been suspected from the number of shots pumped into the bakery by Serafina and Brave Nicolás with lethal-caliber arms. The Brave Man’s statement jibes with the captain’s—he claims to be an excellent marksman and that he would have had no problem in hitting his target if he had wanted to. Serafina, however, in reply to the judge’s question “Do you think that this man—Simón Corona—deserved to be killed for having left you standing on a street corner waiting for him when he had no intention of returning?” answered yes and admitted later that she aimed at him from the bakery door but that the .45 “did not obey her.”

  XVI

  Enter the Police

  1

  “Do you suspect who might have been responsible for the attack?” the agent of the attorney general’s office of Tuxpana Falls asked Simón Corona, who was lying, bandaged, on a cot in the first aid station.

  Simon answered instantly that it was Serafina. On being asked for information regarding the presumably guilty party, he gave the address of the Molino Street house, being unaware of the existence of the Casino del Danzón.

  The investigation went through bureaucratic channels from that point on, having been converted into official papers that lay for days in one desk drawer or another, multiplied, returned to their office of origin, were reissued, arrived at another office, remained in other desk drawers for further periods. In this case, it is hard to know which is more remarkable, the tortuousness of justice or its infallibility. The bureaucratic procedures were finalized with the arrival at the desk of the chief of police of Concepción, Teódulo Cueto, of a memorandum that said: “Kindly place señora Serafina Baladro Juárez at the disposition of the attorney general’s office of the state of Mezcala,” and so forth.

  The first thing the chief of police did upon receiving this order was to meet with Captain Bedoya in the Gómez Hotel bar. Chief Cueto denies that such a meeting took place. Captain Bedoya, on the other hand, described what was said during it, as follows:

  He told me that he was notifying me that he had received a warrant of arrest for Serafina and that it would be a good idea for her to have a lawyer on tap. I told him that I could not imagine why there should be a warrant for Serafina and even less why she should need a lawyer. The chief then told me that there had been a shooting in Tuxpana Falls and that her name appeared in the official record. On hearing this, I answered, “Chief, I give you my oath as an officer of the Mexican Army and on the honor of my sainted mother that Serafina knows nobody in Tuxpana Falls, has never set foot in that town, does not know where it is or, probably, even that it exists.”

  The chief said that he appreciated my frankness and that he was certain there was no criminal charge against Serafina, but that he would have to take her into custody, nonetheless. I thanked him for giving me the tip. He told me that in accordance with the instructions he had received, he would have to break the seals on the Casino del Danzón the next day and check over the interior of the premises. He told me he felt sure that he would find everything in order, after which we said good night.

  Captain Bedoya got to the Casino as fast as he could. The news, naturally, caused consternation. The Skeleton says that Arcángela reproached Serafina, saying, “All on account of you and your selfishness! You had to get your revenge and now we are ruined!”

  Serafina answered, “Is it my fault I was born hot-blooded?”

  Orders went flying through the house and there was general mobilization. Ticho mixed mortar in the dining room and began to close up the opening in the wall. Ladder was summoned. The women were ordered to pack up blankets and dishes for spending the night at Los Pirules farm. Serafina tried to locate licenciado Rendón who disappears from the story at this point. The Baladros tried to get in touch with him more than thirty times over the next two weeks without success. Moments of vacillation were not wanting. At one point, Serafina suggested to her sister before witnesses, “Let’s go to the United States.”

  But they went to the farm. Ladder made four trips in his car that afternoon. The eleven remaining girls were together once more. They laid down reed mats in the barn and went to sleep in apparent harmony, with the Skeleton on guard. It was cold. In the morning, Rosa was found to have a high fever. The Skeleton diagnosed it as a chill and gave her marjoram tea. Rosa drank it, seemed to improve, and died three hours later. Ticho buried her at the foot of the embankment in a grave that he dug hurriedly next to the other two.

  2

  The next day, January 14, Chief Cueto broke the seals on the Independence Street house and entered with three uniformed officers and a marshal. Apparently, they made a tour of the house and found nothing that seemed irregular to them. The police spent barely fifteen minutes in the building. The official report of the inspection of the premises omits any reference to the fact that the tortillas found in the kitchen could not have been there for two years.

  Chief Cueto went to Los Pirules farm that same afternoon. The water had seeped out of the irrigation ditch, the road was soft and muddy, and his car got stuck. While the three policemen and the marshal were trying to free it, the inspector walked the two hundred meters to the house. Arcángela and Serafina were standing on the porch as though they were expecting him. Chief Cueto states that before he could even say good morning, Arcángela said to him, “It will be worth ten thousand pesos to you if you report that you couldn’t locate my sister.”

  What the chief replied is not known. (The Baladros never said that they had offered or gave him money.) That night the chief wrote a report, which he sent to headquarters, stating that he broke the seals on the Casino del Danzón, inspected the interior of the premises, and visited Los Pirules farm “without finding the wanted person.” The terms in which the document is couched are definitive. Anybody unfamiliar with the story who read it might assume that the investigation must have ended at that point.

  This was not the case. Chief Cueto returned to the Casino del Danzón the following day accompanied by the three uniformed policemen and the marshal, as on the previous occasion.

  (It should be noted that Chief Cueto’s motives for returning to the Casino del Danzón are as obscure as those for his having warned Captain Bedoya in their conversation at the Gómez Hotel that he was about to make an arrest. He gives the following explanation for his actions: “The amount señora Arcángela offered me was so large that it made me suspect that the señoras Baladro had something more serious on their consciences than the shooting up of the bakery in Tuxpana Falls in which no loss of life or serious casualties were involved. That was the reason I decided to return to the Casino del Danzón and make a more thorough inspection.”)

  On their second visit to the Casino del Danzón, Chief Cueto and his men went through the rooms, up and down the stairs, in and out of the cabaret, checked over the kitchen and the charcoal shed, and finally ended up in the yard. Countless traces of recent occupation must have turned up, but that was not what interested them. The chief paced back and forth over the yard.

  All at once—he states—“I noticed that my feet sank into the ground in a certain spot. I called one of the officers who was with me and told him to get a shovel and dig a hole right there where I was stan
ding. I wanted to see what was underneath.”

  When the officer had dug down about one meter, what was left of one of Blanca’s hands appeared.

  3

  After this sensational discovery, there is a gap of several hours. Chief Cueto sends to Pedrones for reinforcements and waits for them to arrive before taking the next step. He loses more time later taking precautions: one squad of riflemen south of Los Pirules farm to cut off access to the highway; another squad to the north to cover the rear, and so on. The chief is the first to reach the house. He wears a Stetson hat, bulletproof vest, and carries a pistol. The house is empty. When the police break open the barn door, most of the women whom they find inside complain of not having eaten in twenty-four hours.

  One of the prisoners—Aurora Bautista—reports having overheard the Baladros say the word “Nogales.” On hearing this, he moves fast for the first time. He orders the women who were in the barn to be taken to headquarters while he and two policemen get into their car and drive at full speed to Pedrones.

  They reach the terminal in time to hold up a bus about to depart in the direction of Nogales. Chief Cueto climbs aboard and stands in the aisle looking around. Seat numbers 23 and 24 are occupied by two women with shawls over their faces, apparently asleep. They are the Baladro sisters.

  4

  When the Baladros reached the Concepción police headquarters, they were led along a corridor onto which opened the office where the girls who had been rescued from the barn were making their statements. It is said that when the two women passed by in custody, several of them got to their feet and shouted insults at them, the first the sisters had ever received from their employees.

  Captain Bedoya and Serafina had arranged to meet in Nogales. Unaware that the Baladros had been arrested, he slept on the post, got up early, held inspection, had breakfast at the Gómez Hotel, and reached the Plan de Abajo Commercial Bank as it was opening.