Norte

by Edmundo Paz Soldán

  Judging by his gestures, the professor had something important to say, but Martín couldn’t decipher the words. He had grown a thin mustache and it itched. He’d ask Little Stepbackwards to shave it off for him. Or maybe Firecracker instead.

  The professor wrote out a word for him. Europe.

  He knew that Europe was a big country and that it was far away. Did he want him to draw it? The problem was he’d never been there.

  The professor gave him a big bear hug. It felt good, and Martín didn’t want to detach himself from the warm body holding him.

  They walked into the main hall. “Take care of yourself, Martín,” he said in Spanish.

  “Cuídese, cuídese,” Martín repeated.

  The professor turned around and walked away until he disappeared altogether.

  Martín never saw him again. Now he spent all his time alone. Wasn’t that what he’d always wanted?

  He stopped drawing at the same pace as before.

  Truth is, he missed him.

  They rotated the orderlies; sometimes they kept him company, but it was never the same. The doctors talked and wrote things down on papers for the orderlies, but their visits were fleeting. His building companions screamed at each other and fought, and there wasn’t a single moment free from bodily fluids oozing and dripping everywhere. He couldn’t stand it. If it wasn’t blood, then someone was pissing in the hallway or vomiting on the tables or over the beds. They stank to high heaven; he probably smelled the same, though, a blend of stale sweat and piss and medicines. If it were up to him, he’d have lived with his eyes closed the whole time. Make everything around him vanish, only keep the images of his life on the ranch that he turned into illustrations.

  He was friendly with some of the people in the pottery classes, but he knew he irritated them.

  What if he started talking? Wasn’t he old enough by now?

  A new doctor came along, short-sighted and flat-footed, and he said that Martín should get to work, start helping out, what was the meaning of this privileged life he was leading doing nothing but drawing and not lifting a finger for anyone else? He wasn’t really sure if that’s what he said, but in any case that’s what happened.

  He went back to working on the grounds. He watered the plants. Cut the grass. Looked at the hills and thought about his hometown. He imagined himself riding around Picacho on horseback, alone or with Atanacio, looking for rabbits and deer to feed the family. He thought of when he and María Santa Ana would go to the market to sell eggs and tomatoes they grew on the ranch. When he’d attend mass with his wife and daughters but not with Candelario. Without his son? Yes, that’s how it was because Candelario hadn’t been born yet, and if Martín hadn’t left San José, he might never have been born.

  He got tired so quickly. His chest hurt. The orderlies talked to the administrator. The new doctor’s orders were revoked. He was to stop helping outdoors. He was allowed to dedicate his time to drawing again. He didn’t think it was because the doctor liked his drawings so much. He figured it was because he was afflicted with sadness.

  He missed the professor.

  2

  Landslide, 2009

  Of the mountains in the south, Luvina is the highest and rockiest. It’s infested with that gray stone they make lime from. They call it crude stone there, and the hill that climbs up toward Luvina they call the Crude Stone Hill. And the ground is steep. They say in Luvina that one’s dreams come up from those barrancas; but the only thing I’ve seen come up out of them was zombies. Sad zombies, scraping the air with their thorny howls, making a noise like a knife on a whetstone.

  That man who was talking fell silent a while, staring out the door. And outside night kept advancing.

  Another thing, sir. You’ll never see a blue sky in Luvina. You’ll see this: those hills silent as if they were dead and Luvina crowning the highest hill with its white houses like a crown of the dead.

  I didn’t want him to tell me about the hills. I wanted to hear more about the zombies.

  Well, as I was saying. Wherever you look in Luvina, it’s a very sad place. You’re going there, so you’ll find out. I would say it’s the place where sadness nests. Where smiles are unknown, as if all the zombies’ faces had been frozen. When the moon is full you can see the figure of the zombies sweeping along Luvina’s streets, bearing a black blanket.

  I left my life there. I went to that place full of illusions and returned old and worn out. And now you’re going there . . . All right. When I got to Luvina the first time, the mule driver who took us didn’t even want to let his animals rest. As soon as he let us off, he turned around. “I’m going back,” he said. My wife, my three children, we stayed there, standing in the middle of the plaza, with all our belongings in our arms. Just a plaza without a single plant to hold back the wind. “What country are we in, Agripina?” I asked my wife. And she shrugged her shoulders. “Go and look for a place where we can eat and spend the night.” She took the youngest child by the hand and left. But she didn’t come back.

  Did the zombies eat them?

  We found her in Luvina’s church with the child asleep between her legs. “I came to pray,” she told us. Nobody was there to pray to. It was a vacant old shack without any doors, and a roof full of cracks. “Did you see anybody?” “Yes, there across the street . . . some women . . . I can still see them. Look, there behind the cracks in that door I can see some eyes shining watching us.”

  That night we settled down to sleep in a corner of the church behind the dismantled altar. That’s when we heard zombies with their long howls coming in and out of the hollow caves of the doors, whipping the crosses of the stations of the cross with their hands full of air. The children cried because they were too scared to sleep. And my wife, trying to hold all of them in her arms. And me, I didn’t know what to do.

  A little before dawn they calmed down. Then they returned. “What is that?” my wife said to me. “What’s what?” “That, that noise.” “It’s the silence. Go to sleep.”

  But soon I heard it too. It was like bats flitting through the darkness very close to us. Bats with big wings that grazed against the ground. Then I walked on tiptoes over there, feeling that dull murmur in front of me. I stopped at the door and saw them. I saw all the zombies of Luvina, their black on the black background of the night. I saw them standing in front of me, looking at me. Then, as if they were shadows, they started walking down the street. No, I’ll never forget that first night I spent in Luvina. Don’t you think this deserves another drink?

  It seems to me you asked me how many years I was in Luvina, didn’t you? The truth is, I don’t know. Time is very long there, as if you had lived an eternity. Because only zombies live there, and those who aren’t born yet. And they’re still there. You’ll see them now when you get there. You’ll see them pass as shadows, clinging to the walls of the houses, almost dragged along by the wind. When the sun pours into Luvina, the zombies appear and suck your blood and the little bit of moisture we have in our skin. I left Luvina and I haven’t gone back and don’t intend to.

  But look at the way the world keeps turning. You’re going there now in a few hours. Maybe it’s been fifteen years since they said the same thing to me: “You’re going to Luvina.” In those days I was strong. But it didn’t work out in Luvina. The name sounded to me like a name in the heavens. But it’s purgatory. A dying place where even the dogs are zombies and there’s not a creature to bark at the silence. And that gets you down. Just look at me. What it did to me. You’re going there, so you’ll soon understand what I mean . . .

  He kept staring at a fixed point on the table. Outside you could hear the night advancing.

  We were sitting in my apartment on the living-room rug. We had opened a bottle of red wine and had been chatting for a while. Night had settled on the windowpanes; a moth fluttered around the yellow halo of the lamp beside my laptop on the folding table. Sam’s face glowed; his body was in shadows and it appeared as if a floating head
were talking to me.

  “It’s great, it has verve. It respects the original but at the same time turns it into something else.”

  “You really think so?”

  “But it’s supposed to be a joke, isn’t it? I mean, I think we’ve had enough of zombies for a while.

  “Don’t you think a book of classic remakes is a good idea? Aureliano Buendía as the Werewolf, for example. And maybe add a few cartoon strips, like Piglia’s anthology La Argentina en pedazos.”

  “I know where you got the idea, my dear, I’m familiar with that novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. But none of it convinces me. I mean, I expect more from you. I’m willing to concede all the paraphernalia of monsters and gothic scenery, as long as the ideas are fresh and original.”

  Fabián was feeling better during those few weeks and had returned to teaching, but I wasn’t in the mood to see him. When my shift ended at Taco Hut, I headed back to my studio hoping to lose myself in my own world. I had been blocked; nothing was coming out right and I couldn’t draw, so I fiddled with versions of classic tales, introducing zombies and vampires. I needed to talk, to feel that someone was really listening to me, so I let Sam come over to hang out again. I made it crystal-clear that I wasn’t interested in getting involved, and he said drop it, although it didn’t take long to realize he hadn’t yet resigned himself to the fact that it was over. “No big deal,” he quipped. I was plenty aware of my shortcomings and knew that his idealized version of me, of what I was capable of being and doing, was hyperbolic.

  I lit a cigarette, reaching up to disconnect the smoke alarm. A cruel idea crossed my mind: why don’t I tell Sam all about what happened with Fabián, about our little trip to El Paso. That would put him off all right, make him stop chasing me. But I guess I didn’t really want him to stop calling. His company was better than nothing. I ended up confessing everything to my mom, but all it did was make her worry. She called me every day now, insisting I go back home for a while, or let her come and stay with me till I’d convalesced properly. I’d change the subject and ask myself why I had to open my big fat mouth. What was it worth? She wanted to give Fabián a “talking-to”—“the jerk’s going to hear what he’s got coming to him”—but I told her not to even think about it.

  I should be in the thick of my novel by now—well, graphic novel that is, calling it a “novel” seems a little pretentious. But well, since I’ve failed to come up with anything original . . .

  “Give yourself a break. You’ve had a rough couple of weeks. After all, you can always count on zombies.”

  “Until you can’t.”

  I opened the window and flicked the cigarette butt out, then we smoked a joint. I thought about my daughter who would never be, and my whole body ached. I would have named her Ana, and she’d have worn her hair in a long braid, like Dr. Carranza, and she would have brought some focus into my life. Coffee-colored eyes with the look of strength and determination that I lacked. I wouldn’t have been a perfect mother, I wouldn’t have known what to do in that world of bibs and diapers, but she’d eventually have turned seven or eight, and then . . .

  The lights in the neighborhood glowed serenely in the night; a neighbor’s panicky voice searching for her cat could be heard against a background din of cars traveling like flashes of lightning along the highway. I refused to let the despair of loneliness get the best of me. I should have been out with my friends in College Station; it was just the time of night when we’d have been trying to make up our minds whether to hit a bar, or maybe a club instead. Always the same old routine, tired of everything and ready for our next adventure.

  “La Jodida called me the other day,” Sam said. “She’s back with Megan, but I suspect she’s also seeing Nissa. Have you ever met her?”

  “Once, at a rave. She’s a very pretty black woman.”

  “She says the sex is great but when they fight it’s atrocious. And she’s noticed that at times her memory fails. She’s going to kick it all on her birthday: the alcohol, the cigarettes, and the coke.”

  I remember hearing Fabián make similar promises the first few weeks we started hanging out, when we’d go bar hopping on Sixth Street. We barely knew each other yet, so he was still trying to impress me. He made it seem as though there were other things more important to him. It took me a few years to finally realize that I had lost the battle way back then, on the second floor of a deserted jazz club when I threatened to leave him if he didn’t lay off the drugs, and he just laughed at me and I caved.

  The world: a place full of highly flammable materials. I was getting burned.

  La Jodida had called me several times too. She’d wake me up early in the morning to tell me she was in bed with Megan, sleeping naked by her side, girl, she’s so hot, and I’d doze off again without answering and wake up a few minutes later and she’d still be talking, I have a squeeze, I’m happy, we’re going to San Juan over break and I’ll introduce her to my parents, they’ll be happy. I didn’t answer, and after a while she’d say you piece of shit, bitch, you’re going to rot in hell, you got me into this and then you wash your hands, and I’d answer what exactly did I get you into, you’re old enough to make your own decisions, and she’d say you made me try it the first time, you think I don’t remember, bitch. I’d hang up but wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep, and I’d walk into the bathroom to take a cold shower and sit down in the tub and let the water wash over me until my skin turned pruney.

  The woman was still looking for her cat, the pitch of her voice growing more and more desperate.

  We returned to the living room. We finished the bottle of wine and he suggested opening another one. A sudden cramp racked my body. I grabbed my stomach with both of my hands and fell to my knees.

  Sam helped get me up and onto the couch. I lay back on the cushions to catch my breath, wait until everything returned to normal.

  “Y’aint getting rid of me, peanut.” He smiled and brought me a glass of water. “My turn.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Sam. Give me a break. I’m tired and everything hurts.”

  His radio show started in an hour. We had agreed that first we’d read my story and then we’d go over his script together. He handed me the folder he’d dropped on the table when he came in. That night’s show featured a list of the top one hundred serial killers. It opened with a reflection on Maldoror, “the first serial killer in Latin American literature.” The music: a few songs by Kasabian—a band that paid tribute to Charles Manson—and a song by Guns N’ Roses composed by Manson himself.

  “I’m not sure about the idea behind the whole thing,” I said. “Doesn’t it seem a tad frivolous to you? I mean, it’s fine to make a list of models, of songs, of rock bands, even writers, but serial killers?”

  “Well, it’s too late to make such big changes to the script, a few small adjustments is all I can do.”

  I was moved that he’d go to such an effort to seek my opinion, that he too had a frivolous side and was more than just a wooden academic. He did his first radio show a few months after we met. Might he have been trying to impress me, to convince me that I was mistaken about him, and I simply missed it?

  I read: “Pedro Alonso López, the ‘Monster of the Andes,’” more than three hundred murders throughout Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador. His mother was a prostitute. He was expelled from his home at eight, sodomized by a pedophile, and then raped a number of times while in prison . . .”

  “I don’t see why you’re giving all the dirty details. Are we supposed to feel sorry for him?”

  “Of course not. But we do have to put things in their context.”

  I didn’t feel like continuing.

  “Do you mind if I stop reading? To tell you the truth, I’d prefer to listen to it, to be surprised. I don’t feel very well and I’m going to lie down in bed and listen to you quietly.”

  “Whatever.”

  He stood up and grabbed his coat. Was he upset?

  “Why don’t you come with me?
We could hang out at Underground after the show.”

  “It’s Monday, Sam.”

  “Who’d have believed the day would come. You staying home.”

  “Are you out of your mind? Can’t you see how bad I feel?”

  “Sure. And over some fucking idiot who’s not worth a second of your time.”

  “Why are you so obsessed about it? If you’re so sure, why don’t you kick him off your committee?”

  “Believe me, I’ve tried. But it’s not possible.”

  “Then you understand me more than you think.”

  I walked him to the door. His goodbye kiss just lightly brushed my lips. I looked at him reproachfully. He pretended not to understand.

  As soon as he left I called Fabián. I asked him to come over. No, he was catching up on his mail and it would him take the whole night. His words slurred a little and I suspected that he’d been drinking. I asked.

  “Everything’s peachy. I’m old enough to take care of myself. I can’t talk right now, the deans have tapped the line. Sons of bitches. They’re looking for reasons to get rid of me. But you know what, they fucking can’t! I have fucking tenure! They’re fucked.”

  He sent me a kiss: “Tomorrow I’ll cook something special, and you’re invited.” He hung up.

  I tried to forget about it. I had to read the book about Ramirez and only had two weeks left to deliver the essay, Ruth had written an email asking how it was coming along.

  I read halfway through an essay and leafed through the reproductions of his work. He was a talented illustrator. It would be hard to live a more wretched life than his. How bizarre that his drawings were now hanging in places like the Guggenheim and the Smithsonian.

  I closed the book. Something in his work was trying to speak to me, but I wasn’t in the mood to listen.

  I ran through the conversation with Sam a few times. I didn’t want to agree with him, but I knew he was right. I ripped up my version of “Luvina.” I went to bed, switched the radio on, and checked my emails one last time before I fell asleep. There was one from Fabián in my inbox: “all i want is for you not to disappear, that you be infinite. that we walk together hand in hand among the ruins of buildings as if nothing had ever happened. that we eat dulce de leche ice cream on a deserted beach and laugh at the Deans. and dance. i always feel as though the best is over. I don’t want to feel as though the best is over.”