Norte

by Edmundo Paz Soldán

  I elbowed my way through the crowd and pulled hard at Fabián’s arm. “Please, will you just shut up,” I begged. I covered his mouth but it was useless: he was unbound. Ruth shouted back that he was going to be sorry for having threatened her. A couple of professors stepped in to calm her down; they escorted her out of the exhibition. The security guards mobilized around Fabián, warning him that if he didn’t get hold of himself, they’d arrest him and take him away by force. I promised I’d take him home and look after him myself.

  I had to shove him to get him out of the exhibition. We took a cab. “I want to sleep alone tonight,” he said. Boy did I feel like answering back, but his face had that detached expression I knew so well.

  When the cab stopped in front of his house, I asked him what had happened.

  “I’ll text you tomorrow when I wake up.”

  He stepped out of the cab, and I told the driver to take off.

  I was furious when I walked into my studio, thinking how the two of us had been to completely different shows that evening. I had focused on Ramírez’s work, looking for ways to apply his creativity to my own story; but for Fabián it had served as a means for provoking a messy situation and a concomitant dose of self-pity.

  That was how our lives flowed those days: we did things together, but it didn’t really matter. However much our lives brushed up against each other every now and again, our paths were leading us irreversibly away from each other.

  The man who had aroused me so powerfully was now relentlessly turning into a ghost.

  I would have liked to take pity on him, but I think I was just too exhausted.

  6

  Rodeo, 1999

  Jesús showed up at home with a canvas bag stuffed with jewelry, perfumes and dresses. Renata hugged him and told him she had missed him. She was furious though: this time he’d gone too far, left her alone way too long. Jesús held his tongue so as not to call her puerca, crazy bitch, super puta and if she didn’t shut her fucking mouth he’d dig her eyes out with a knife, smear her body with spit, and throw her over a fucking cliff.

  The gifts shut her up. “What cute earrings, they’re silver too, and this brooch must have cost an arm and a leg.” Lila, the new neighbor who had become her best friend, was right when she said that maybe this was the price of being with Jesús. “It’s his way of life, and you should respect it and not try to compete.” She lived comfortably because he had papers and could cross the border whenever he wanted to for work. Lila wished she were married to someone like that. Who wouldn’t want to be? It was stupid of her to complain.

  Jesús went out and bought several sets of black curtains and hung them over the windows in the house. He told Renata to keep them closed at all times, even when the sun was shining. He had enemies and was afraid of being spied on. He even covered the kitchen windows with newspaper.

  “It looks really weird,” she said. “It’s hot inside, and now we don’t have natural light. How am I supposed to explain it to Lila when she asks?”

  “You tell her that I have rosacea and the doctor ordered me to avoid being exposed to direct sunlight.”

  Renata looked puzzled but didn’t say anything. Jesús’s cheeks did have a slight blush to them, but she worked in a pharmacy and knew full well that you don’t treat rosacea with curtains. Was Jesús going to shy away from sunlight forever? It seemed more likely that he was hiding from some enemy or other, but if that was the case, then what had he done? Who were the enemies?

  She stewed over this for a few days, but quickly got used to the new order of things and forgot.

  Jesús and Renata spent quiet days together. He tried to steer clear of sotol and coke. He had to stay alert, needed his reflexes wide awake. He was sure they were looking for him. He had to take precautions; he’d never give them the satisfaction of locking him away.

  He tried to stick to a routine. He went back to teaching English in the mornings at the nuns’ school. He got there early, avoiding busy streets. He’d stroll around town at dusk. When a cop ticketed him for rolling through a stop sign, he gave up driving and bought a bike. He got a dog, Tobías, who barked at anything that moved. He would take the dog out for a walk, swing by the pharmacy to say hello to Renata, and return home. That was when the images of the past few weeks across the line would overwhelm him, he’d see them as if he were caught in a nightmare: as if the events had never really happened, but the thought of them made his skin crawl.

  He wrote it all down in one of his notebooks. Someday he’d take them to Father Joe. The first notebooks told a bunch of lies, but after a while they got interesting. Father Joe would understand.

  At night he and Renata would visit the cantinas, chill out and listen to rancheras and corridos. He started drinking again. The sotol burned his throat, as if he were losing his tolerance to it.

  One evening, when they got home past midnight, he was drunk and began struggling with the zipper of Renata’s dress. She half shouted, half giggled, “Where are you going so fast?” They didn’t make it to the bedroom; they did it right there on the living room rug. Jesús slapped her in the face, hard. She touched her mouth: her lip was bleeding. Jesús hit her again.

  “Don’t touch me,” she shouted. “Don’t touch me!”

  He wanted to rip her apart. Make her cry for real.

  “Don’t you ever do that again, Jesús. Never. I saw enough of it at home. You hit me one more time and I’m outta here.”

  She scrambled to the bedroom and slammed the door. He heard her whimpering and hiccupping.

  He got up, rammed the door open with a shoulder, took off his belt, and hit her with the metal buckle until her thighs, her back, her cheeks were covered with black-and-blue welts. “You fucking puta, who you think you are, bitch? Ordering me around like that. You think you can give me orders? Me? You lucky I let you live, puerca.” He grabbed her by the throat and nearly strangled her. She gathered herself into a tight ball in a corner of the bedroom, wailing and begging his forgiveness, as he kicked her with the shiny steel tips of his boots.

  After she blacked out, he pulled his pants down and penetrated her again. He cleaned the come off with her dress. He fell asleep right there on the floor.

  The sound of his snoring was what roused Renata. Her legs were sore and her back ached so terribly she had a hard time getting to her feet. She could barely make her way to the bathroom, where she cleaned her wounds with alcohol and washed her body down with a towel soaked in cold water.

  Should she go to Lila’s and tell her what had happened? She couldn’t stop trembling and sobbing. She was frightened.

  She tried to lie down on the sofa for a while. She couldn’t sleep.

  The next morning she made breakfast as if nothing had happened. She didn’t say a word to Jesús and kept her eyes lowered at all times. Her face was too swollen to go out, so she called in sick at La Indolora, saying that she’d taken a tumble and wouldn’t be able to make it to work that day.

  “yu think I don’t now yu laf behin my back fukin hore bich now yu now whats coming KILL THEM ALL no rest no rest the lord is not with yu not with us holy be not thy name nobody free now they now time comes time comes time comes the minut the hour to lik my boots hore unnamedanimals got to eliminat like dogs like cows like pigs like david koresh was the profet and they killd can’t do me no more waco KILL THEM ALL.”

  Lila’s birthday was that weekend. Renata didn’t want to go at first, she would stay home, there was a lot to do, but Jesús bought a video camera and said he wanted to film the party. Renata agreed: she would bandage her cheek, say she had fallen down.

  Jesús had learned how to use the camera by filming Tobías. When he saw how he had caught the dog on the little screen, frolicking here and there with his tongue hanging out, he told himself that this was what he had been missing all along. Next time he crossed the line, he’d bring the camera with him. He’d film these puercas lying on the floor with a knife in their throats and their blood staining the rug.


  Lila had decorated her house with wall-to-wall streamers and with garlands on the windows, giving a festive air more like New Year’s than a birthday party. There were piñatas for the children, paper hats, colorful napkins and matching paper plates. Los Tigres del Norte and Los Tucanes de Tijuana were playing over the loudspeakers. There was a James Bond movie marathon on the television in the living room, with the volume on mute. Every once in a while one of the kids would come in and turn the volume up, and suddenly the room would reverberate with the racket of bullets and explosions over the music, making it seem as though it was all going down in real life. The first time it happened, Jesús was in the bathroom and it shook him up. He turned the volume down again when he got out.

  He snorted a few lines on a card advertising a strip club in El Paso—First Tuesday of every month is SuPEr TuEsDAy $5.00!!!—then splashed cold water on his face. His cheeks were red and his face looked lopsided, as if one side didn’t match the other. His hair was disheveled and in need of a cut. After having spent such a long time on the other side, he saw himself as darker than he really was, skinnier and dirtier.

  He was this one, he was not that one.

  He felt like punching the mirror but kept the urge in check.

  The party lasted into the wee hours of Sunday. Once the children had been put to bed, Lila’s brother, Tomás, sang himself hoarse, decked out in a fancy pair of tight-fitting mariachi pants. Renata helped fix the roast lamb, the fridge was stocked with cans of Tecate, and tequila, mescal, and sotol bottles were arranged in a row on the kitchen table.

  Jesús drank some of everything and got trashed. He vomited on the patio and fell asleep on a bench. Renata needed Tomás’s help to carry him home; they took off his boots, his jeans, his belt, and tucked him into bed.

  When Jesús woke up around noon, Tobías was lying at his feet. His head throbbed and his stomach burned, so he immediately popped a few antacids. Renata tended to him in silence; she brought food to the bedroom—a fiery pozole to cure his hangover—and then went over to Lila’s house to help clean up.

  He finished the pozole and snoozed a little while longer. When he finally woke up again, he switched the radio on, and the first thing he heard was a name that sounded familiar to him. Was it even possible? The announcer barked out the news: US authorities had identified the criminal known as the Railroad Killer, he was an illegal Mexican.

  He roused himself instantly: of course the name was familiar, it was one of the aliases he’d used to cross the border. A slight variation on his own name.

  The US authorities believed the killer had fled into Mexico, and they were negotiating terms of his capture with Mexican officials. There was a chance that a group of FBI agents would be traveling to Mexico, though the Mexican authorities claimed that national sovereignty would be preserved at all times.

  It was dusk. Shadows would soon engulf all of Rodeo.

  He tried to remain calm as he got dressed and gathered his things. His jeans were hanging over a chair, but they had vomit stains on them; he rifled through the closet to find another pair. Tobías sniffed his crotch and Jesús shoved him away.

  He put on a hat and shoved six bullets into the chamber of his gun. He’d better shake a leg. If they’d figured out the alias, it was only a matter of time before they identified him and established his whereabouts.

  Running out of the bedroom, he bumped into Renata, who had just come back from Lila’s house. Her shiny black hair was pulled back into two long braids that were threaded with colorful ribbons, and she was wearing a loose, ruffled red blouse and open-toed sandals that matched her newly painted crimson toenails. The bandage on her cheek was the only thing spoiling the nearly perfect picture.

  “Are you feeling better? Why don’t you rest, stay in bed?”

  “I have to run an errand; I’ll be right back.”

  He went into the bathroom and washed his face with cold water. His eyes were bloodshot and his hair was a wild mess. “My wrath shall come down upon all of them,” he murmured. “The power of a million exploding suns, a rain of fire on their heads. KILL THEM ALL.”

  “What’s up, Jesús? You’re scaring me.”

  She had entered the bathroom and was now leaning against the door frame. Her eyes were open wide and she was biting her lips.

  Jesús spun around and couldn’t hold it back. “Hallowed be not thy fucking name,” he said. He grabbed her, brought her close to him in an embrace, and sobbed. At first the tears came haltingly; then he broke down completely and there was no way Renata could calm him down.

  Tobías came over again, but Jesús kicked him so hard the dog let out a plaintive yelp. He crumbled onto the bathroom floor at Renata’s feet. She stayed quiet, staring down at him. Jesús looked at the earrings she had on, two silver teardrops he’d stolen from—where? From whom? He couldn’t remember which of the victims they’d belonged to. Maybe it was better that way. All those bodies, all those faces, they should melt into a single one.

  “I’m scared,” Jesús said finally. “I’m scared, Renata.”

  “What’s going on? You have to tell me. I can’t help if I don’t know what’s happening.”

  “I’ve done something bad and there are men trying to find me.”

  “There’s always a way out. What exactly do you mean by ‘something bad’?”

  “Something I have to deal with myself.”

  Jesús knew that once he left home and Rodeo, he’d never see Renata again. The years with her were over, same as the other relationships with women he’d ended years earlier. This was the life he’d been given and he shouldn’t complain. He lost some but he won some too.

  He thought back on the games he used to play with María Luisa in the patio and the empty field with the hollow tree, the nights they’d slept together on that mattress, on the sheltering bed. It had been easy to forget about that bitch Rocío. But Renata hadn’t been so bad; he’d restrained himself with her. He hadn’t killed her even though at times he really wanted to. Obviously there was something special about her to have tamed him that way.

  He’d tried so desperately to grab on to something, set down some roots, but the itch to get back on the road was inexorable. Nothing else gave that same wild thrill as crossing the river, jumping a freight train, stretching out on the floor of an empty car or sticking his head out an open door, awash in the coolness of the breeze on his cheeks and the sweaty shirt that stuck to his body, and contemplating the passing desert landscape, the corn and tobacco fields, the towns and cities.

  Jesús got back on his feet. “If anyone comes looking for me, please don’t nark on me.”

  “What could I possibly say? I don’t know anything!”

  He put his hat back on, spun around and strode out of the house. She sat down on the sofa, not sure whether to feel happy or sad. Tobías came over wagging his tail so energetically that his whole rear end moved back and forth.

  FIVE

  1

  Auburn, 1959–1963

  The professor came back to visit Martín one last time. They hugged each other when he walked into the room, and the professor noted how Martín’s health had deteriorated since he’d seen him last, that he was completely toothless now. He had tried to secure a transfer for him to another hospital, since the quality of care at De Witt had been deteriorating over the years: the rooms were overcrowded, the walls and floors were filthy, the yard and gardens were overgrown, and the bathrooms stank. They lacked bandages and sterile needles, iodine and alcohol supplies weren’t restocked responsibly, and the orderlies were trafficking the morphine and surgical instruments.

  The professor felt he owed Martín an explanation for his absence. His Spanish was as nonexistent as ever, so all he managed to say, over and over again, was Helsinki. Martín nodded. He pulled out the years of drawings that had been accumulating in the meantime. The orderlies had respected the professor’s instructions: the paintings were dated at the lower right-hand corner. The professor read them off; Ja
nuary 1957, April 1957, February 1958, May 1959 . . . The subject matter hadn’t changed much. There were riders wearing bandoliers across their chests, undulating hills, trains and tunnels, landscapes and churches, animals and people dancing. The drawings had magazine cutouts pasted to them, collages that asserted Martín’s range of obsessions: the flawless faces of women from advertisements, aerodynamic contraptions displaying the nifty, sleek, modern aesthetic.

  Martín moved his hands in lines between himself and the professor, who understood that Martín wanted him to have the paintings. He thanked him.

  One of the new orderlies showed up to tell the professor his visiting time was over. Seeing people caused Martín to become overstimulated; it wasn’t good for his health. The professor was annoyed: he wasn’t accustomed to being treated that way. But the orderly failed to heed his complaints.

  The professor asked after Martín’s health, and the orderly described his pulmonary difficulties. “Serious enough to be worrying?” “Very.” He asked if there had been any changes in Martín over the years.

  “As far as I can tell,” the orderly responded, “he doesn’t draw as much as he used to. He spends hours sitting in a chair outside, looking toward the garden. It’s as if he were waiting for someone to show up. Whenever a car pulls up to the front door, he stands up and starts waving his arms as if he were greeting someone. The director came for a visit once, and he ran straight to his car to open the door for him. It was all we could do to restrain him. We needed a straitjacket, and even still he kept on crying and shrieking.”

  The professor took a long look at Martín, who was just beside him. He put his hand on his shoulder and squeezed, then gave him a pat on the back. “I missed you,” he said. Martín smiled back. The professor noticed he had tears in his eyes.