Norte

by Edmundo Paz Soldán

  I listened halfheartedly and then tried to aggravate him by bringing up The Eternonaut by Héctor Oesterheld. “Are you going to include it or not? The intellectual as a man of action in spite of himself. Someone who is critical of any genuine encounter with people.”

  “I’ll mention it. But I can’t give it a full chapter or the thesis would be too long.”

  “Or because it’s just a comic.”

  “You know that’s not why, Michelle. Cut the bullshit.”

  He could be such a pain in the ass. Finally I just made him skip to another subject. We were alike in that way, so self-absorbed, fascinated at hearing ourselves speak, like everyone else in our little world.

  We paid and were getting ready to leave when I told him I needed some downtime that night, I wanted to draw. He looked hurt and annoyed. He had taken for granted that we would spend the night together again, as if sex was the prize for how well his dissertation was coming along. I was being inconsiderate. Last night’s fuck hadn’t been one of our best, but I had to admit it lulled me into a sound sleep.

  Walking back to the studio I had another flash of Fabián’s face in my mind’s eye. I had to stop for a second to catch my breath.

  3

  Stockton, California, 1931

  Martín counts his fingers: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Now the even ones: two, four, six, eight, ten. Now the odd: one, three, five, seven. Nine. And start all over again.

  His head is aching. He can’t stop coughing.

  Sitting on a bench in the train station, he thinks it isn’t bad to do what his mother taught him. When you get angry, it’s best to count and keep on counting. It takes the upset away. Shouldn’t lash out of a sudden. When he was a boy, Martín vented his anger on the toads that would croak on rainy nights and wake him up. He’d go out on the patio or the street, find a colossal stone, and drop it on the toad and squish it. His mother followed him once though and said how can you do such a thing you disgraceful child, and he begged her forgiveness, eyes staring hard at the ground, ears burning like when he felt shameful. And he felt shameful a lot. His life was one long shame on you for all the things that happened to him.

  He was sitting next to a newsstand. Men stopped for newspapers, women for magazines. What happens to all those newspapers and magazines in the dark quiet of the night, when the agent goes home, he wondered. Bet they get to yakkety-yakking, or up to no good, arguing about this and that. Come morning the centerfold of a magazine’s on the front page of a newspaper.

  He wished he could get in on the commotion in the newsstand. The ruckus, the troublemaking. He picked up a magazine once when he had one of those breaks at work, SaTurdAY evening pOst. He stretched out on the ground to read it but couldn’t make sense of nothing. Peculiar language. The cover read:

  An Illustrated Weekly Founded. May 31, 1930.

  Booth Tarkington. David Laurence. F. Scott Fitzgerald.

  The effort drained him. The world carried on. Words ran into each other and piled up. People spoke as if they had a hot potato in their throat. Every word the foreman barked those scorching afternoons spent out laying tracks sounded like an insult. He never could make sense of it, had to wait for the other men to start moving, then he’d follow their lead. What’s he saying? Made his blood boil!

  The foreman was like a cashbox full of peculiar words. He lived to keep them all safe inside. But they’d haul a getaway right through his open his mouth.

  He hacked again. His head exploded with each coughing spell.

  Martín imagined himself asleep in a big bed where words hovered overhead, then scattered into letters that fell down like a hard rain. They weighed heavy and beat hard on his skin. His bed turned into a bog, and the quicksand sucked him down, down. He tried to save himself by clutching at the ends of the longest words, or ones with a th since he liked that sound, but the words shunned him and he sank lower and lower till he woke up startled and covered in sweat.

  But words aren’t what he cares for most in the magazines. It’s the pictures. NoRman RoCKwell was the best of them all. There’s one of a little girl wearing glasses and a pretty red sweater and a green skirt. She is running off to paint with her brushes and pad. Or drawings about drawing, those are slickest. Now there’s an actor on the cover. Gary Cooper in some movie. The Texan. Noooo, they’d correct him: two vowels side by side like owl-eyes are pronounced as a single letter, and not even the same one. Cúper.

  He wanted to draw. Such a fine thing to do, made stuff so easy. Why use words when you can just draw?

  He should have learned English. Specially if he was coming here. It had been some hard times when he was laying the tracks, though work got easier for a spell. No need to speak while picking strawberries or oranges. He’d done all right in the mines, too. Lots of folk like him gathered there, same age and some older ones and even a few kids, from all sorts of towns. Some wore hats and others didn’t. Some wore belts with big buckles shaped like pistols, others didn’t. Some wore boots and others wore sandals with soles made out of tires.

  Now he’s counting his fingers in the train station.

  Yeah, it had gone all right for a spell. No work today though. No work for Mexicans, that is. They told him to watch himself. They like to go after the ones like him, loitering, they like to send them back.

  So if María Santa Ana were a toad, what would he do? Would he squish her with a gigantic stone? No. Teófila and Agustina and Juana and Candelario would be left motherless. Bad enough their father has been away for so long. Now their mother’s running with the Federales, betraying her people. He knew it for truth. His brother Atanacio wrote and told him that el señor gobierno was defacing the churches. The Federales had already got as far as San José de Gracia, confiscated their houses, and ransacked the churches and was using them for stables. The Federales burned the ranch to the ground and killed the animals, Atanacio said, and María Santa Ana had straddled her blood bay horse to wreak havoc on the peasants who had armed themselves with rifles and sabers, shouting “Long live Cristo Rey” and “Long live Santa María de Guadalupe.”

  Martín grasped most of what Atanacio wrote. He answered that if María Santa Ana is collaborating with the Federales, then her children should be taken away from her. Anyone who goes around burning churches is an enemy. That includes María Santa Ana.

  It had happened the minute he’d left. El señor gobierno had been waiting for him to go before defiling the churches. The peasants had waited till he was gone to take up arms. María Santa Ana waited till he was gone to join the struggle and get up to her other things, too. The ranch that he’d gone into debt for is nothing but ashes now. The house built of stone and adobe, all gone. The cows, the pigs, the sheep. His horse was the most painful loss of all. He used to love riding out to hunt rabbits in El Picacho, or into town to sell eggs and peppers.

  It was all his fault. He left. That one single act had called down a catastrophe. María Santa Ana had told him not to go, it wasn’t right to leave on San Bartolomé, there’s a high wind and the devil’s walking loose today, she said. But he went ahead and put on his hat, his overcoat, and paid her no mind. He had said goodbye to each of his daughters and headed for the other side with four of his friends. What else was there to do? The ranch was yielding a little, but even so, it wasn’t enough to pay off the debt.

  Martín wondered if things would return to the way they were if he went back. Would his beloved Mexico be restored to law and order?

  He coughs. His head feels like it’s about to explode. One, four, seven, ten. Two, five, eight . . . eleven?

  Martín’s famished but completely broke. That’s what he deserves for being so open-handed. He sent everything back home and kept too little for himself. They don’t even appreciate his sacrifice. They don’t know what it’s like to live alone. Not even a dog to bark at you. They think the only thing you’re good for is sending money back. That’s why you were born. Why you exist.

  But there’
s no more work, so what’s he supposed to do? His old boarding house is too far away now, it was like a barracks out in the middle of nowhere that he shared with other men who came from places like Jalisco, Zacatecas, Chihuahua, Guanajuato, or Michoacán. Anyway, no cash. He used to get free eggs and beans in the mess hall, he could fix himself something to eat, but the place had been cockroach-infested and it disgusted him, the sink always overflowing with filthy dishes and rank, grease-smeared pans.

  He’s missing out on seeing his daughters and Candelario grow up. Martín keeps photos of his girls in his pocket. And one of himself with María Santa Ana. Such a long time ago. A long time and a place that now seems so far away. When the struggle broke out, Atanacio told him he better not even think of going back. Men were coming with news of el señor gobierno’s cruel ways. Processions were canceled. Statues of the Virgin were hidden in mountain caves for safekeeping. Masses were celebrated in secret rituals and under pain of death.

  Martín hadn’t planned on staying for very long. Now there was no way back.

  Then the rumors started. They took her down to the river. He’d imagined as much. But Martín had no way to share what was on his mind, he was tired of being tongue-tied all the time, constantly misunderstood, and figured it was better to just hush up. Not that he used his mind all that much, a little bit here or there, he had little pieces of ideas that never really settled into a coherent whole.

  His brain: a desert landscape with an occasional prickly pear or acacia bush. Something’s growing in there. Something.

  He could jump a train. Pick any one of the city names from that shifting announcement board, then head to the platform. It’d be a snap.

  All these towns had developed thanks to him. So many afternoons spent under the blazing sun laying tracks, and then he’d see them pop right up where there had been nothing. The tracks were all they needed; so he’d come around and lay them. Then overnight, pop! There they were, ready for the train to come. The train created them. The railroad workers brought the trains, and the trains brought the cities. So it was partly his own doing that they were there in the first place.

  It was so hard to follow directions in this strange language.

  It took so much out of him just to find the barracks. He had memorized how to get to work and back, every single step of the way, so as not to get lost. And he was always worried they might change his routine. What would he do then?

  He can’t stop coughing.

  He was easygoing but not stupid. Mornin,’ mornin’ he’d say. Write to me, he had begged her, please write to me, don’t force me to live in despair like this, like some idiot drunkard, or as if I were feeble-minded.

  At first she wrote, but then nothing. Goddamn her.

  Just tell me it’s all a lie so I don’t have to live in this heartache. I’m afflicted by memories of you, the time I spent by your side. Ana, Ana, Ana. Santa. María. Tasan. Ríama. Tttt. Rrrr. Uuuu. Eeee.

  He felt pain like a jackhammer boring a hole into his skull.

  He should eat something. But he couldn’t pay for it. Maybe he could trade something for food. A drawing? He always had a notebook and pencil on him, at times it was his only form of communication. Cat got your tongue, boy? Someone cut it out? Too bad the others weren’t more like him. Don’t speak, just draw.

  Martín had come to the station to simmer down a little. No work, anyway, what else was he going to do? He sat there on a bench near the newsstand and studied the suited, suspender-wearing men walking by. He listened to the announcements, scanned the posters on the wall, they were so colorful. He let his mind wander untethered. Counted the light fixtures hanging from the ceiling, the windows that let in the light. He stood on the platform and watched the trains come and go. The cars were shiny-new, the metal was freshly painted and they purred down the tracks, whistling as they approached the station, but they didn’t blow smoke. Nothing like the old, graffiti-riddled trains he remembered from childhood, boxcar walls covered in graffiti. As a boy, he’d wait till sundown, sneak in with a few cans of paint, and devote hours to painting murals from memory—talk about determination.

  María Santa Ana, oh she was a cutie, and so much fun to be around. A real doll. How’s he supposed to get over something like her? She was the center of everything. A hot number. Her ass drooped a little maybe, but no matter: her big titties made up for everything else. She had the kind of curves a man could hold on to. Others used to gawp at her. Most women get fat and ugly when they get old, and that’s when you have to say oh, she’s so nice, she’s so good. But his María Santa Ana was both at the same time: a good-looker and a good woman.

  They weren’t together but a year before she got pregnant. They took that tiny next step and got married. Some people recited that old proverb “Get married, Johnny, and stones will turn to bread.” Others said, “Get married, Johnny, and bread will turn to stone.” She listened to the first group.

  A daughter was born. Then another. And another. And then the boy, but by that time Martín wasn’t around anymore.

  As a couple they got used to keeping hushed around the house. First man who said something out loud to María after he left probably startled her to death. No doubt it made her go sweet, though. And lightning can strike the same place twice.

  He had been a whole man when she found him, but now he was broken, alone.

  How could he stand it?

  He drifted over to the wall and remained standing there between the men’s and women’s toilets. He took his pencil out and wrote “It’s going to rain today” in big letters on the white wall.

  And again he wrote: “It’s going to rain today.” And again. And again.

  He wrote it seven times before the officer stopped him and asked him for his papers. Martín just looked at him and kept quiet. The officer asked him for his name. He didn’t say a word.

  Another officer showed up.

  They took him to a room in the station where another officer started screaming at him, tried to get him to answer, in any language. The man looked like he was about to snap and warned him as much with a cocked fist. “Now what? Yeah, that’s right, now what?” Martín took out his pencil and paper. He drew a winged horse. Then he drew a steam engine with the smoke coming out in rings that escaped the frame of the page. A few tunnels and empty town squares. He drew the cobblestone and colored in some of the mosaic pattern in black.

  “Fuckin’ retard,” one of the cops said. He enunciated his words so that Martín would understand. He had wits enough to know that there was nothing good in those words. No matter, he was accustomed to it by now. People always lost their patience with him.

  They called in an officer who spoke Spanish. He was a burly, square-backed man with a salt-and-pepper mustache. He kept calm and repeated the word carnal several times. He asked what Martín was drawing. Martín acknowledged his presence but didn’t offer an explanation. It wasn’t such a bad place after all. They could holler all they wanted, long as they didn’t touch him.

  “Nice drawings,” the policeman said. “But what the fuck do they mean?”

  If only he could tell them about María Santa Ana. See if they agreed. Surely they would, but then who really knows? They’re cops, they might just take her side. Didn’t his brother say that María took up with the Federales? Didn’t he? Maybe one of them forced himself on her. He should never have left her alone. He should have brought her with him.

  The policeman jotted some words in his notebook. Martín couldn’t decipher them.

  He smoothed his mustache, left, right, left, right. Better not release him. It wasn’t half bad in there. Would they feed him? How long since he’d eaten a decent meal?

  They took him to a cell. They tried to confiscate his notebook but he didn’t let them. He held his palms together as if begging forgiveness or a blessing. One of them said something and they all left.

  He remained vigilant, sketching on the blank pages late into the night.

  He was given a metal tray with
a bowl of meat and lentils. The meat was salty and hard, but he devoured it so quickly he nearly choked. There was a glass of water, a piece of bread, and half an apple. Now he needed to see a doctor. His headache wouldn’t let him rest.

  The police and the Federales must have struck a deal. María Santa Ana gave them his whereabouts and he was being arrested as a prisoner of war. After all, he was behind enemy lines.

  He covered himself with the blanket and lay down on the rickety old cot, which sagged with his weight. He had nightmares of trains bursting into flames, and drowning girls.

  A nice gentleman came to see him the following day. He sat down beside him in a well-lighted room, shook his hand, and smiled.

  I’m Mr. Walker, he said. I’m pleased to meet you.

  Mr. Walker disappeared whenever Martín closed his eyes. When he opened them back up, there he was again, just in front of him. He had brought Mr. Walker into being in a single movement, created him from scratch. Same way he had created his cot and the floor, the walls and the ceiling and the building and the officers and the train station and the city where he had helped lay the tracks and the country where he and four friends had gotten lost while looking for work and the border where they got separated and the town of San José de Gracia where María Santa Ana and Atanacio and his children were living and el Picacho, where he went to hunt astride his blood bay horse.

  But it didn’t matter, he could close his eyes again and his horse appeared and it was the same one yet it was another one, and the town appeared and it was the same one and another one and the sky appeared and it was the Mexican sky and another one.

  Mr. Walker spoke to Martín in Spanish. He said he would defend his rights. He needed to know where he came from so he could call his consulate. They would expel him if he didn’t give his name and nationality.