Poso Wells

by GABRIELA ALEMÁN

  “Listen, if they indict me for doing what you want, I’ll lose my license.” The man paced back and forth while he rubbed his sweaty hands. “Do you know what that means?”

  “What I know, Fernández, is that you owe your personal fortune entirely to Vinueza Enterprises . . .”

  “Legally acquired, my dear José María, a fortune legally acquired, the fruit of fulfilling the duties of my profession,” the man interrupted, staring fixedly at José María, who sat comfortably in front of an enormous window overlooking the city’s waterfront promenade.

  “And you bought this office with the proceeds from your contract to notarize all the real estate transactions for the city’s urban renewal program. Do you remember who got you that contract?” While José María spoke, his skin acquired its characteristic aquatic luminosity. “Along with all of Salém’s contracts for legalizing the squatter settlement land. And when Andrés’s father decided to change his will, you were the one to rewrite it for him. Remember what happened with that inheritance, Fernández?”

  “I acted strictly in accordance with the law, José María. You know very well what a notary does in this country: he advises both parties in relation to any issue that requires a legal opinion on a contract or other action submitted for his consideration.”

  “I studied law too, Fernández, and in my case I passed the exams. We have notaries in order to avoid disputes, so the courts don’t get clogged with too many lawsuits. A notary’s work is above all preventive, as in the case of wills, which he drafts so as to avoid future legal conflicts after the death of the testator. Remind me, Fernández. Has it been nine years or ten?”

  “Since what?” The man was nervous but also angry, barely containing the annoyance in his voice.

  “Since the trials, Fernández, the trials,” José María answered him calmly.

  “Which ones? Whose?” The notary’s voice had risen in pitch.

  “About the will. You’re not going to tell me you’ve forgotten Señor Vinueza’s will?”

  “What does that have to do with me?” the notary yelled.

  “With you? I can’t believe you’re so incurious, given how involved you were in the process of writing the document. But who am I to try to plumb the depths of human behavior?” José María stood up and walked closer to the window, slowly, letting his last comment permeate the air in the office. “So far, the trial has been going on for ten years—actually, ten and a half. The document is so confusing, offers room for so much speculation and interpretation . . . sometimes one could doubt the competence of its author. The previous version, written by notary number twenty-nine, a friend of the deceased, was a paragon of clarity, but it was so ungenerous toward Andrés. Do you remember that, Fernández?”

  “José María, I don’t understand where you’re taking this, but I can assure you that there’s no way you can suggest I’m guilty of anything.” Fernández had not moved from behind his enormous desk of polished lignum vitae. “Of anything at all.”

  “I think we’re talking past each other, my dear José Manuel. What I came for was to ask you a favor. A favor for a mutual friend.”

  “And I’ve been telling you, for more than an hour, that I can’t do anything. That my hands are tied by the law. That I have a high opinion of Vinueza Enterprises and its management, but there’s nothing I can do.”

  “Is that your last word? Nothing can make you change your mind? Not even these photographs?” José María extended a handful of images toward the notary.

  And he smiled.

  Varas picked the woman up and began to walk toward Montenegro’s house. He had the rope wrapped around his chest, the machete stuck once again in his belt, behind him, and the flashlight and hammer in his pockets. Témoc followed. They descended the unpaved streets as if they were the only inhabitants of Poso Wells. Nobody saw them, nobody wanted to know. They were covered with mud and looked like phantoms. When they reached Montenegro’s house, he opened the door for them.

  “You’re a mess, Gonzalo,” the old man said, while gesturing for them to come in.

  Varas smiled. “If you only knew, Don Montenegro, if you only knew.” Varas and his entourage remained on the front stoop.

  “What do I need to know, muchacho?” Montenegro turned abruptly, disappeared inside, and returned with something under his arm. “Aren’t you coming in? What are you doing out there?”

  He placed a plastic cover over the rattan sofa in the front room.

  “Put the girl down here while you go wash your face.”

  “Can I use one of your bowls to put out water for the dog?” Varas asked from the kitchen.

  “Sure, sure,” Montenegro said.

  Varas came back with a glass for the woman and put Témoc’s bowl on the floor. When he tried to bring the glass to her lips, the woman seemed to see him for the first time. Something in her attitude had changed in the short interval. She stiffened her neck, raised her head, and sat up in the couch. Suddenly she didn’t look like a terrified animal. She took the glass and drank without any help. It was just then, when Varas first saw her as a human being and not as a problem, that he fully realized how strange the situation was. She was covered in a thick layer of gray mud that had dried and was beginning to crack off against the plastic sheet. The dog was soiling the floor of the house with its dirty paws and back, and Varas had to be every bit the mess that Montenegro had implied. He looked at Montenegro again and opened his mouth.

  “Gonzalo, wait, there’s no hurry, you can explain it all later. In the back yard there’s a barrel with water and there’s soap, too, and you know where your towel is. Show the young lady where she can clean up”—a smile passed over his face—“and, by the way, why don’t you do that too?”

  The three went out into the yard. Varas offered a washcloth to the woman and showed her the bar of soap.

  “I’ll bring you some clothes, I’ll be back,” he told her, while he climbed the steps to the back door.

  When he returned, the woman had removed the shirt he’d put on her and was throwing water on her naked body. Varas was mad at himself again. Though he wanted to keep watching her body appear from under the mud, he opted, against his will, to cough.

  “I’m leaving you some pants and a shirt.”

  He climbed up the steps once more and, although he intended to step inside, he stayed there, like a peeping tom, unable to resist. When he came back down, she was drying her hair and still hadn’t dressed. Varas began to throw water on Témoc and, when he finished and the woman showed no sign of leaving, he began to undress too. He had to turn his back while washing because his body was betraying him again. Témoc, meanwhile, never stopped wagging his tail while she rubbed the towel on his back and scratched him behind the ears. Varas thought that any observer would take them for a happy family. That showed what appearances were worth.

  “Does that offer you a different perspective?” José María said, continuing to smile and watching the notary’s face as he studied the photos.

  “All I can say is that you ought to hire a better photographer, because it’s hard to make anything out,” the notary answered.

  “Tomorrow morning, some or all of these pictures could appear in the paper, sufficiently enlarged,” José María responded in the same neutral tone as before.

  “So?”

  “José Manuel, I’m afraid we’re still not communicating. Those are pictures of your son, he’s naked in some rather compromising positions, and not exactly with a girl.”

  “That’s what I’m saying, who would be interested in them?” The notary poured himself a glass of whiskey and raised the bottle toward José María. “I imagine you’d like a drink too?”

  “I don’t want to drink with you, and I don’t have all day. To make things clear between us—and I’m only going to say this once—if you don’t notarize all the documents I gave you with the new date, then these pictures and more like them will appear in every newspaper we have in this country. Do you understan
d?” Now the calm had vanished from his voice.

  “The one who doesn’t seem to understand is you, José María. That signature is false, we both know it, and I’m not going to risk my career for a document. And don’t worry about the pictures, because nobody’s family will go up in smoke if you publish them. I’ve known about it for years, my son and I had a long conversation, and the whole city knows his tastes. Where have you been hiding, José María? You work too much, you don’t get out enough, you ought to take a vacation once in a while.” He drank a long swallow of whiskey and swirled the ice in the glass, producing a delicate tinkling sound. “And if that’s all, you know where the door is. I’ve got work to do.”

  VI

  Órale Pinche Güey

  As soon as he started up the stairs, Varas realized what had been nagging at him since he had rushed out of Poso Wells with the girl and the dog, jumping into the first taxi that was willing to pick them up. He had forgotten his keys, left them at Montenegro’s. It didn’t worry him that much, though, because a little shove was all it would take to force his feeble latch and most likely topple the door. When they got to the third floor, he could hear music coming down the stairwell. Their luck was beginning to change, he thought. At the fifth floor they left the stairs and made their way along a dim hallway partially lit by a small window revealing battered walls. By the time they reached the end, the music had grown deafening. Varas had barely touched the last door when it opened as if by a miracle. A man in his early thirties with wide sideburns and the aggressive appearance of an indie rocker stood in the doorway. His ravishing smile completely contradicted his avant-garde cynic’s attire.

  “Carnal!” the man shouted over the din.

  “Turn down the fucking volume, pinche güey, or I’m throwing you out even if you do live here,” Varas responded with a big smile of his own.

  “Mamón! Let me give you a hug.” Benito del Pliego did not make the slightest move in the direction of the stereo.

  “At least change the record, man. You know what your fucking favorite alternative rockers did after this album, don’t you? They started singing covers of Julio Jaramillo, finally came to their pinche Mexican senses.”

  Benito remained standing there in the doorway as if he were talking to the postman, or so absorbed in the conversation that he failed to realize Varas was waiting in his own doorway to come in. “And loyalty?” he demanded. “And my obsessions, güey? What about them? They must count for something. And don’t start in on my homeboys. When you pick a fight about Café Tacuba, that argument never ends well.”

  “No argument, ñañito,” Varas said, reaching for the best Quichua term of affection and resisting the trendy temptation to attempt to sound more mexicano than thou. “I’m tired, brother. All I want is a cold beer.” As he said that, his shoulders sagged. In front of his friend, he could reveal just how vulnerable he felt.

  “Sure, sure, but what else do you expect?” Benito continued. He stepped back at last, allowing Varas’s living room to come into view: a collapsing couch, two wooden chairs with caned seats, piles of books, a barely functioning stereo—decibel level excepted—with a halfway broken CD player and a cassette player in equally bad shape. An old black-and-white TV completed the furnishings, along with two big planters, one holding a fern and the other a croton, both looking healthy and leafy under a picture window. “I mean, I’m a defectuoso from the D.F., Mexico City in my blood.”

  “The hell you are, mi poeta. What about your Spanish grandfather, your father from Veracruz, and mother from Manabí? You’ve got about as much Distrito Federal in your genes as I do.” Varas stepped in, took a quick look around, and added, “Thanks for watering the plants, man. Now if you’ll just do the same for me and my friends”—he turned off the music and pointed toward the door—“you don’t know how many points you’ll have scored with St. Peter when the moment comes.”

  The poet turned around and caught sight of the dog and the barefoot woman for the first time.

  “Let me introduce the mysterious damsel in distress, who very soon, I’m sure, will tell us her name and where she came from,” Varas said, dropping into one of the empty chairs. “And Témoc, the boldest and most loyal of mongrels, named in honor of your national hero number one.”

  Once introduced, Témoc entered as if he’d always lived there. He hopped onto the couch, where he lay down on a pile of papers that had fallen in a corner. The poet followed him. “Órale, your pinche Témoc is making himself comfortable on my poems.” He pulled the papers out from under the animal, which didn’t disturb it at all.

  Varas stood up, took the pages from Benito, and read aloud:

  Surprise is taken for granted in a world turned routine Making a party out of a workday dyes your pages red.

  “Our Temocsito is absolutely fearless,” he remarked, “but as for a literary critic, I don’t know. When did you write this?” The smile never leaving his lips, he added, “Sorry I left you alone for so long, pinche güey.”

  The poet barely heard his friend because he hadn’t taken his eyes off the woman. She had something he’d seen in very few attractive women, in that she didn’t notice the effect she had on men, or rather, she didn’t care. She said nothing, her face gave nothing away, and that vacuum made her irresistible because it allowed you to imagine anything. The poet was starting to like her. No better way to fall in love than with a completely blank slate.

  “Now I get why you’ve been gone so long, hermanito. Come in,” he urged the woman. “Come in.”

  But the silence was enough to suggest to the poet that the situation was less obvious than it seemed and he should make himself scarce while things took their course. There was nothing to drink in the apartment, and Varas had been gone for nearly a month. Benito went to the store for beer, skipping happily down the stairs while humming his favorite Café Tacuba anthem, the one Varas hated most.

  Ya chole chango chilango

  Que chafa chamba te chutas

  no checa andar de tacuche

  y chale con la charola.

  How many times had he argued that it didn’t matter if this was a song no one born outside of Mexico City could understand, let alone those born outside the country whose capital it was? How many times had he explained that three quarters of the globe spoke languages neither he nor Varas could comprehend, and this didn’t keep the world from turning, so who cared? What difference did it make if you couldn’t get half the lyrics as long as the song sounded good and meant something to someone? Words, what the fuck were they? The two of them both spoke Spanish and they still could barely communicate, which didn’t keep them from being soul brothers, carnales de alma, after all. But when he hiked back up the stairs with six cold liter bottles of beer, a gallon of water, a box of coconut cookies, three bars of Manichos and some bones for the dog, he allowed himself to hum a different tune.

  “Valentina, Valentina, I surrender to all of your charms. /If they’re coming for me tomorrow, let them kill me right now in your arms.” This was the best song he knew for keeping the grim reaper at bay, so it wouldn’t hurt to sing it just in case. Because the woman and the dog smelled more like trouble than like an attempt at family life on the part of his friend. Though he hoped—truly—that he was wrong.

  When he opened the door, the stereo was offering up Julio Jaramillo, a pasillo tragic as the best, yet cheerful too. Maybe there really was something to celebrate. No one but Témoc was in the living room. Del Pliego could hear the shower going, and the bedroom door was closed.

  “Maybe you’d care to explain all this to me?” he said to the dog. He walked toward the kitchen while the Ecuadorian Nightingale crooned, “I’m in a world of troubles and shipwrecked by love in the void. . . .”

  “Pinche romantic mamón,” Benito declared, and he disappeared behind the other bedroom door.

  VII

  A Mass for the Dead

  It was a small chapel that had seen better days. The streets of the Barrio del Centenario
were barely lit at night, and from the flowerbeds in front of the church grew weeds that sought footholds in the wall. Missing paving stones gave the sidewalk the appearance of an old man’s mouth with missing teeth, while rodents scurried in and out of these gaps, day and night. To José María, all this made it the ideal spot. He paid the local priest the small sum previously agreed upon for renting the chapel, without specifying why he needed it. He added a few bills to suggest that if the priest asked no questions, he would tell him no lies. What he had forgotten to consider was that the local residents might begin speculating about the cause of the break in the usual routine. He’d bought silence within the church, but hadn’t made any agreement with those outside. When they saw the enormous gilded candelabras, the bouquets of flowers and then the coffin being unloaded from the truck, the locals began asking questions and, when they got no answers, inventing their own. The truck bore the logo of Empresas Vinueza, and soon someone put forward the hypothesis that this was to be the scene of a wake for the man who had disappeared, the renowned businessman Andrés Vinueza, and that rumor soon spread throughout the southern reaches of the city. When José María arrived at noon, he was in a very bad mood. He had more important things to do, he thought, than spend hours in clogged streets traversing the city from north to south. His mood grew still worse when he was greeted by a bevy of television cameras at the chapel door. As soon as he got out of the car, he saw the priest, surrounded by reporters, signaling him. He realized that things had taken an unexpected turn. How had anybody found out? And the press? None of this was in the script. Microphones were shoved in front of his face and questions came at him like machine gun fire.