The Savage Detectives (14 page)

After I walked Rosario to the door of the Encrucijada Veracruzana (all the waitresses, including Brígida, greeted me effusively, as if I'd become part of the club or the family, all of them convinced that someday I'd be an important person in Mexican literature), my feet carried me unthinkingly to Río de la Loza and the Media Luna hotel, where Lupe was staying.

In the shoe box-size lobby, much more sinister than I remembered it, the wallpaper patterned with flowers and bleeding deer, a squat man with a broad back and big head said there was no Lupe staying there. I demanded to see the register. The clerk told me it was impossible, that the register was absolutely confidential. I argued that it was my sister, separated from my brother-in-law, and that the reason I was there was to bring her money to pay the hotel bill. The clerk must have had a sister in similar circumstances, because he immediately became more understanding.

"Is your sister a thin little dark girl who goes by Lupe?"

"That's her."

"Wait just a second, I'll go knock on her door."

While the receptionist went up to get her I looked through the register. The night of November 30, someone called Guadalupe Martínez had arrived. That same day, a Susana Alejandra Torres, a Juan Aparicio, and a María del Mar Jiménez had checked in. Following my instincts, I decided that Susana Alejandra Torres, not Guadalupe Martínez, must be the Lupe I was looking for. I decided not to wait for the receptionist to come down and I took the stairs in threes to the second floor, room 201, where Susana Alejandra Torres was staying.

I knocked just once. I heard footsteps, a window closing, whispers, more footsteps, and finally the door opened and I found myself face-to-face with Lupe.

It was the first time I'd seen her with so much makeup on. Her lips were painted a deep red, her eyes lined with pencil, her cheeks smeared with glitter. She recognized me at once:

"You're María's friend," she exclaimed with undisguised happiness.

"Let me in," I said. Lupe looked over her shoulder and then stood aside. The room was a jumble of women's clothes strewn in the most unlikely places.

I could tell right away that we weren't alone. Lupe was wearing a green bathrobe and she was smoking furiously. I heard a noise in the bathroom. Lupe looked at me and then looked toward the bathroom door, which was half open. I was sure it must be a client. But then I saw a paper with drawings on it lying on the floor, the mock-up of the new visceral realist magazine, and the discovery filled me with alarm. I thought, rather illogically, that it was María in the bathroom, or Angélica, and I didn't know how I was going to justify my presence at the Media Luna to them.

Lupe, who hadn't taken her eyes off me, noticed my discovery and started to laugh.

"You can come out now," she shouted, "it's your daughter's friend."

The bathroom door opened and Quim Font came out wrapped in a white robe. His eyes were weepy and there were traces of lipstick on his face. He greeted me warmly. In his hand he was holding the folder with the plan for the magazine in it.

"You see, García Madero," he said, "I'm always hard at work, always paying attention."

Then he asked me whether I'd been by his house.

"Not today," I said, and I thought about María again and everything seemed unbearably sordid and sad.

The three of us sat on the bed, Quim and I on the edge and Lupe under the covers.

Really, the situation was untenable!

Quim smiled, Lupe smiled, and I smiled, and none of us could bring ourselves to say anything. A stranger would have assumed that we were there to make love. The idea was gruesome. Just thinking about it made my stomach lurch. Lupe and Quim were still smiling. To say something, I started to talk about Arturo Belano's purge of the ranks of visceral realism.

"It was about time," said Quim. "All the freeloaders and incompetents should be tossed out. The movement only needs the pure of heart, like you, García Madero."

"True," I said, "but the more of us, the better, it seems to me."

"No, numbers are an illusion, García Madero. For our purposes, five is as good as fifty. That's what I told Arturo. Make heads roll. Shrink the inner circle until it's a microscopic dot."

I thought he was going off the rails, and I kept quiet.

"Where were we going to get with an idiot like Pancho Rodríguez, tell me that?"

"I don't know."

"Do you actually think he's a good poet? Does he strike you as a model member of the Mexican avant-garde?"

Lupe didn't say a thing. She just watched us and smiled. I asked Quim whether there was any news of Alberto.

"We're few and soon we'll be fewer," said Quim enigmatically. I didn't know whether he was referring to Alberto or the visceral realists.

"They've expelled Angélica too," I said.

"My daughter Angélica? Good Lord, that is news, man. I had no idea. When was this?"

"I don't know," I said, "Jacinto Requena told me."

"A poet who's won the Laura Damián prize! That takes some nerve, it really does! And I don't say so because she's my daughter!"

"Why don't we go for a walk?" said Lupe.

"Quiet, Lupita, I'm thinking."

"Don't be a pain in the ass, Joaquín, you can't tell me to be quiet. I'm not your daughter, remember?"

Quim laughed softly. It was a rabbity laugh that hardly disturbed the muscles of his face.

"Of course you're not my daughter. You can't write three words without making a spelling mistake."

"What? You think I'm illiterate, you asshole? Of course I can."

"No, you can't," said Quim, making a disproportionate effort to think. A scowl of pain etched itself on his face, reminding me of the expression on Pancho Rodríguez's face at Café Amarillo.

"Come on, test me."

"They shouldn't have done that to Angélica. It disgusts me the way those bastards are toying with people's feelings. We should eat something. I feel sick to my stomach," said Quim.

"Don't be a prick. Test me," said Lupe.

"Maybe Requena was exaggerating, maybe Angélica asked to be let go voluntarily. Since they'd expelled Pancho…"

"Pancho, Pancho, Pancho. That son of a bitch is nothing. He's nobody. Angélica doesn't give a damn whether they expel him, kill him, or give him a prize. He's a kind of Alberto," he added in an undertone, nodding toward Lupe.

"Don't get so upset, Quim, I only said it because they were together, weren't they?"

"What are you saying, Quim?" said Lupe.

"Nothing that's any of your business."

"Test me then, man. What do you think I am?"

"Root," said Quim.

"That's easy, give me paper and pencil."

I tore a sheet out of my notebook and handed it to her with my Bic.

"I've shed so many tears," said Quim as Lupe sat up in bed, her knees raised, the paper resting on her knees, "so many and what for?"

"Everything will be all right," I said.

"Have you ever read Laura Damián?" he asked me absently.

"No, never."

"Here it is, see what you think," said Lupe, showing him the paper. Quim frowned and said: fine. "Give me another word, but this time make it really hard."

"Anguish," said Quim.

"Anguish? That's easy."

"I have to talk to my daughters," said Quim, "I have to talk to my wife, my colleagues, my friends. I have to do something, García Madero."

"Relax, Quim, you have time."

"Listen, not a word of this to María, all right?"

"It's between the two of us, Quim."

"How does that look?" said Lupe.

"Excellent, García Madero, that's what I like to hear. I'll give you Laura Damián's book one of these days."

"How's that?" Lupe showed me the paper. She had spelled the word
anguish
perfectly.

"Couldn't be better," I said.

"Ragamuffin," said Quim.

"Excuse me?"

"Write the word
ragamuffin
," said Quim.

"Yikes, that really is hard," said Lupe, and she set to work immediately.

"Not a word about this to my daughters, then. To either of them. I'm counting on you, García Madero."

"Of course," I said.

"Now you'd better go. I'm going to spend a little while longer giving this dunce Spanish lessons, and then I'll be moving along too."

"All right, Quim, see you around."

When I got up the mattress bounced back and Lupe murmured something but didn't lift her eyes from the paper she was writing on. I saw a few scratched-out words. She was trying hard.

"If you see Arturo or Ulises, tell them it isn't right what they've done."

"If I see them," I said, shrugging my shoulders.

"It isn't a good way to make friends. Or to keep them."

I made a noise like laughter.

"Do you need money, García Madero?"

"No, Quim, not at all, thank you."

"You know you can always count on me. I was young and reckless once too. Now go. We'll get dressed in a little while and then head out for something to eat."

"My pen," I said.

"What?" said Quim.

"I'm going. I'd like my pen."

"Let her finish," said Quim, glancing at Lupe over his shoulder.

"Here, how does that look?" said Lupe.

"You got it wrong," said Quim. "I ought to give you a spanking."

I thought about the word
ragamuffin
. I'm not sure I'd have spelled it right the first time either. Quim got up and went to the bathroom. When he came out he had a black-and-gold mechanical pencil in his hand. He winked at me.

"Give him back the pen and write with this," he said.

Lupe returned my Bic. Goodbye, I said. She didn't answer.

I called María. I talked to the maid. Miss María isn't in. When will she be home? No idea, may I ask who's calling? I didn't want to give my name and I hung up. I sat at Café Quito for a while, waiting to see whether anyone else would come, but it was hopeless. I called María again. No one answered the phone. I went walking to Montes, where Jacinto lives. Nobody was home. I ate a sandwich in the street and finished two poems I'd started the day before. Another call to the Font house. This time the voice of an unidentifiable woman answered. I asked whether it was Mrs. Font.

"No, it isn't," said the voice in a tone that made my scalp tingle.

It clearly wasn't María's voice. Nor was it that of the maid I had just spoken to. The only alternatives were Angélica or a stranger, maybe one of the sisters' friends.

"Who is this, please?"

"To whom do you wish to speak?"

"To María or Angélica," I said, feeling stupid and scared at the same time.

"This is Angélica," said the voice. "To whom am I speaking?"

"It's Juan," I said.

"Hello, Juan. How are you?"

It can't be Angélica, I thought, it simply can't be. But then I thought that everyone living in that house was crazy, so maybe it was possible after all.

"I'm fine," I said, shaking. "Is María there?"

"No," said the voice.

"All right, I'll call again," I said.

"Do you want to leave her a message?"

"No!" I said and I hung up.

I felt my forehead with my hand, thinking I must have a fever. At that moment, all I wanted was to be home with my aunt and uncle, studying or watching TV, but I knew that there was no turning back, that all I had was Rosario and Rosario's tenement room.

Without realizing it, I must have started to cry. I wandered aimlessly for a while, and when I tried to get my bearings I was in the middle of a bleak stretch of Colonia Anáhuac, surrounded by dying trees and peeling walls. I went into a place on Calle Texcoco and asked for a coffee. When it came, it was lukewarm. I don't know how long I spent there.

When I left it was night.

I called the Fonts again from another pay phone. The same woman's voice answered.

"Hello, Angélica, it's Juan García Madero," I said.

"Hello," said the voice.

I felt sick. Some kids were playing soccer in the street.

"I saw your father," I said. "He was with Lupe."

"What?"

"At the hotel where we have Lupe. Your father was there."

"What was he doing there?" The voice was uninflected; it was like talking to a brick wall, I thought.

"He was keeping her company," I said.

"Is Lupe all right?"

"Lupe's fine," I said. "It was your father who didn't seem to be doing very well. I thought he'd been crying, even if he was better by the time I got there."

"Hmm," said the voice. "And why was he crying?"

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe it was regret. Or maybe shame. He asked me not to tell you."

"Not to tell me what?"

"That I'd seen him there."

"Hmm," said the voice.

"When will María be home? Do you know where she is?"

"At the dance school," said the voice. "And I was just leaving."

"Where are you going?"

"To the university."

"All right, then, goodbye."

"Goodbye," said the voice.

I went walking back to Sullivan. When I crossed Reforma, near the statue of Cuauhtémoc, I heard someone call my name.

"Hands up, poet García Madero."

When I turned, Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima were there, and I fainted.

When I woke up I was in Rosario's room, in bed, with Ulises and Arturo on either side of me trying and failing to get me to drink some herbal tea they'd just made. I asked what had happened, and they told me I'd fainted, that I'd thrown up and then I'd started to ramble incoherently. I told them about calling the Fonts' house. I said it was the call that had made me sick. At first they didn't believe me. Then they listened carefully to a detailed account of my latest adventures and delivered their verdict.

According to them, the problem was that I hadn't been talking to Angélica at all.

"And you knew it too, García Madero, and that's why you got sick," said Arturo, "from the fucking shock."

"What did I know?"

"That it was somebody else, not Angélica," said Ulises.

"No I didn't," I said.