Teófilo won a fortune in jail playing Spanish rummy and then lost it. Eulalia, who is free, sells coconut candies on the street. Captain Bedoya is in the Pedrones penitentiary, where he is a trusty in charge of a cell block and highly regarded by both guards and prisoners. The Baladros are still in the women’s prison from which they have no expectation of coming out alive. Serafina has a soft-drink business—charging exorbitant prices—and Arcángela sells food prepared by the Skeleton. Both are also moneylenders and have a joint capital estimated by the other prisoners at upwards of a hundred thousand pesos.
Appendix
1. Ticho’s life as told by him.
When I was a small boy, the other children were afraid of me. My parents sent me to school but the teacher did not want me. She said I was too big and might set a bad example. They put me to work carrying—stones, bags of cement, bags of sand. One afternoon, I gave a friend of mine a hug and when I let loose of him he fell down to the ground. The people who saw what happened said I killed him. So they put me in jail. In jail, they had me carrying stones again. Then, the man who carried the dead bodies in the hospital died himself and the doctor came to the jail to look for somebody to take his place. The director of the jail sent for me and said to me: “Go along with this man.” I carried stiffs back and forth for ten years until one morning the doctor said to me, “You can go, now,” and he opened the hospital gate. I went out on the street and started walking. I came to the railroad tracks and began to follow them. I walked at night because there was a moon. In the daytime, I lay in a ditch and slept. When I saw a house I would go to the kitchen—dogs never bark at me—and I would peek in and say to the women there, “I’m hungry,” and they would get scared and give me food. When I came to a town I would beg but nobody gave. One day I was asleep on the sidewalk outside a market and when I opened my eyes doña Arcángela was looking down at me. There were two girls with her carrying baskets. Doña Arcángela said to me, “You sure are big, you are homely as sin, and you look like a dunce. I have a job for you you will like.”
The girls laughed.
From that day on I was a bouncer. My duties were to sit in a chair and be ready for whatever came up.
2. The Whoremaster’s statement.
He states that it was intellectual curiosity that impelled him to go to the México Lindo so often. He describes some of the more noteworthy women he knew in that house. One, who undressed in great embarrassment four or five times every night saying that no man had ever seen her naked before. Another had sexual relations with the narrator on more than twenty occasions and never once recognized him. Another always told the same story: She had just received a telegram saying that her mother had taken sick and needed money urgently, and so forth.
The most interesting part of my visits—says The Whoremaster—would be the conversations I had with doña Arcángela, who always had me sit at her table. She was a philosopher. For example, she believed that after you died your soul remained floating in the atmosphere for a length of time that depended on the memory you left behind in the minds of those who knew you. A bad memory made the soul suffer; a good one gave it joy. When everybody has forgotten the dead person or when all those who knew him have died, the soul disappears.
3. What the judo champion said.
I was among those chosen to represent Mexico City in the Pan American Judo Championships, which were held in the city of Pedrones in 1958. (He describes the accommodations provided them, his impression of the city, and how the Mexico City team was eliminated in the first round, after which they went to the México Lindo.) When the girls found out that we were the Mexico City judo team, they crowded around our table asking for autographs. The madam (Serafina) came over to shake hands with us, had the girls put wreaths of paper flowers around our necks, and gave us a drink on the house.
“Boys, a toast to your victory!” she said to us.
We didn’t have the heart to tell her we had already been eliminated. (He describes the place, makes a comparison between Mexico City and Pedrones prostitutes, finding that the latter are less expensive and more sincere than the former, relates his experiences with a girl named Magdalena, and regrets that the Molino Street house was closed before he had a chance to pay it another visit.)
4. Statement of Don Gustavo Hernández.
Ask me: What is a man doing in a whorehouse every Saturday night when he has a wife and several daughters and a happy home life? I wouldn’t know what to answer you, but that’s how it was—I was like under a spell. Every Saturday night, as soon as the church clock struck nine, I would close my haberdashery shop and go to the México Lindo. The minute I set foot inside the place everything seemed beautiful to me: the decorations, the girls, the music. I didn’t miss a thing. I danced, I drank, I talked, and there wasn’t a woman who came through there between ’57 and ’60 that I didn’t have.
I would get home with the first rays of the sun. “Where were you?” my wife would ask. “At a Catholic Action meeting.” She never believed me. For years she suspected I had a mistress. She doesn’t know I deceived her with forty-three women.
Doña Arcángela would say to me, “Don Gustavo, don’t deny yourself anything. If you don’t have the cash on you, just sign. You are as good as the Bank of Mexico for me.”
Those words were my downfall. One morning, licenciado Rendón walked into the haberdashery store. In his briefcase he had IOUs signed by me for over fourteen thousand pesos. He wanted to know when I was going to pay up.
Doña Arcángela took my haberdashery shop away from me, but I got a scare that cured me of the vice and I never feel tempted to go to a whorehouse anymore. I live a contented life now with my family.
5. The photo.
1. Arcángela Baladro
2. The Skeleton
3. Serafina Baladro
4. Blanca (died, July 17)
5. Evelia (died, September 14)
6. Feliza (ditto)
7. Rosa (died, January 15)
8. Marta (did not fit into the outhouse hole)
9. Aurora Bautista (received compensation)
10 and 11. The women killed by Teófilo Pinto
6. Arcángela’s notebook.
Arcángela’s notebook was found in her room in the Casino del Danzón. It has three sections. The first contains the weekly balance sheet of the employees which has been described in Chapter IX.
The second section is headed “Due from Customers.” It contains the names of the most respectable citizens of San Pedro de las Corrientes, the dates of their IOUs, interest at the rate of 10 percent per month, payments on account, and so forth. All these accounts have been liquidated.
The third section is headed “Payments.” This consists of an itemized list of the amounts Arcángela was paying out to the authorities to be at peace with the township. For example, ten pesos daily to the policemen on the block, sixty to the mayor, sixty to the chief of police, and so on.
The Dead Girls
JORGE IBARGÜENGOITIA was born in 1928 in Guanajato, central Mexico. He twice won the Premio Casa de las Americas, as well as the Premio Internacional de Novela México for Estas ruinas que ves (1975). He worked as a translator, as a teacher of Spanish literature in American universities and as a journalist in Mexico City. He died in 1983.
First published 1983 by Chatto & Windus, London
Picador Classic edition published 2018 by Picador
This electronic edition published 2018 by Picador
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
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ISBN 978-1-5098-7018-9
Copyright © Jorge Ibargüengoitia 1981
Translation copyright © Asa Zatz 1983
Introduction copyright © Colm Tóibín 2018
Cover design: Matthew Garrett, Picador Art Department
Originally published as Las muertas, México: Joaquín Mortiz, 1977
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