The Savage Detectives (7 page)

"I follow you," I said.

"A victim of reality, especially if one has friends who are-how to put it-magnetic, wouldn't you say? People who innocently attract trouble or who attract bullies. You're following me, aren't you, García Madero?"

"Of course."

"For example, that Lupe, the girl the two of you saw yesterday. I know her too, believe me, she's been here, at my house, eating here and spending a night or two with us. I don't mean to exaggerate, it was just one or two nights, but that girl has
problems
, doesn't she? She attracts problems. That's what I meant when I was talking about magnetic people."

"I understand," I said. "Like a magnet."

"Exactly. And in this case, what the magnet is attracting is something bad, very bad, but since María is so young she doesn't realize and she doesn't see the danger, does she, and what she wants is to
help
. Help those in need. She never thinks about the risks involved. In short, my poor daughter wants her friend, or her acquaintance, to give up the life she's been leading."

"I see what you're getting at, sir-I mean Quim."

"You see what I'm getting at? What am I getting at?"

"You're talking about Lupe's pimp."

"Very good, García Madero. You've put your finger on it: Lupe's pimp. Because what is Lupe to him? His means of support, his occupation, his office; in a word, his job. And what does a worker do when he loses his job? Tell me, what does he do."

"He gets angry?"

"He gets
really
angry. And who does he get angry at? The person who did him out of a job, of course. No question about it. He doesn't get angry at his neighbor, though then again maybe he does, but the first person he goes after is the person who lost him his job, naturally. And who's sawing away at the floor under him so that he loses his job? My daughter, of course. So who will he get angry at? My daughter. And meanwhile at her family too, because you know what these people are like. Their revenge is horrific and indiscriminate. There are nights, I swear, when I have terrible dreams"-he laughed a little, looking at the grass, as if remembering his dreams-"that would make the strongest man's hair stand on end. Sometimes I dream that I'm in a city that's Mexico City but at the same time it isn't Mexico City, I mean, it's a strange city, but I recognize it from other dreams-I'm not boring you, am I?"

"Hardly!"

"As I was saying, it's a vaguely strange and vaguely familiar city. And I'm wandering endless streets trying to find a hotel or a boardinghouse where they'll take me in. But I can't find anything. All I find is a man pretending to be a deaf-mute. And worst of all is that it's getting late, and I know that when night comes my life won't be worth a thing, will it? I'll be at nature's mercy, as they say. It's a bitch of a dream," he added reflectively.

"Well, Quim, I'm going to see whether the girls are here."

"Of course," he said, not letting go of my arm.

"I'll stop in later on to say goodbye," I said, just to say something.

"I liked what you did last night, García Madero. I liked that you took care of María and you didn't get horny around those prostitutes."

"Jesus, Quim, it was just Lupe… And any friends of María's are friends of mine," I said, flushing to the tips of my ears.

"Well, go see the girls, I think they have another guest. That room is busier than…" He couldn't find the right word and laughed.

I hurried away from him as fast as I could.

When I was about to go into the courtyard, I turned around and Quim Font was still there, laughing quietly to himself and looking at the magnolias.

Today I went back to the Fonts' house. Quim came to the gate to let me in and gave me a hug. In the little house I found María, Angélica, and Ernesto San Epifanio. The three of them were sitting on Angélica's bed. When I came in they instinctively drew closer together, as if to prevent me from seeing what they were sharing. I think they were expecting Pancho. When they realized it was me, their faces didn't relax.

"You should get in the habit of locking the door," said Angélica. "He almost gave me a heart attack."

Unlike María, Angélica has a very white face, though the underlying skin tone is olive or pink, I'm not sure which, olive, I think, and she's got high cheekbones, a broad forehead, and plumper lips than her sister's. When I saw her, or rather when I saw that she was looking at me (the other times I'd been there she'd never actually looked at me), I felt as if a hand, its fingers long and delicate but very strong, was squeezing my heart. I know Lima and Belano wouldn't approve of that image, but it fits my feelings like a glove.

"I wasn't the last to come in," said María.

"Yes you were." Angélica's voice was assured, almost autocratic, and for a minute I thought that she seemed like the older sister, not the younger one. "Bolt the door and sit down somewhere," she ordered me.

I did as she said. The curtains of the little house were drawn and the light that came in was green, shot through with yellow. I sat in a wooden chair, beside one of the bookcases, and asked them what they were looking at. Ernesto San Epifanio raised his head and scrutinized me for a few seconds.

"Weren't you the one taking notes on the books I was carrying the other day?"

"Yes. Brian Patten, Adrian Henri, and another one I can't remember now."

"
The Lost Fire Brigade
, by Spike Hawkins."

"Exactly."

"And have you bought them yet?" His tone was mildly sarcastic.

"Not yet, but I plan to."

"You have to go to a bookstore that specializes in English literature. You won't find them in the regular bookstores."

"I know that. Ulises told me about a bookstore where you all go."

"Oh, Ulises Lima," said San Epifanio, stressing the
i'
s. "He'll probably send you to the Librería Baudelaire, where there's lots of
French
poetry, but not much
English
poetry… And who exactly are 'you all'?"

" 'You all'?" I said, surprised. The Font sisters kept looking at objects I couldn't see and passing them back and forth. Sometimes they laughed. Angélica's laugh was like a bubbling brook.

"The people who go to bookstores."

"Oh, the visceral realists, of course."

"The visceral realists? Please. The only ones who read are Ulises and his little Chilean friend. The rest are a bunch of functional illiterates. As far as I can tell, the only thing they do in bookstores is steal books."

"But then they read them, don't they?" I said, slightly annoyed.

"No, you're wrong. Then they give the books to Ulises and Belano, who read them and tell what they're about so the others can go around bragging about having read Queneau, for example, when all they've really done is
steal
a book by Queneau, not read it."

"Belano is Chilean?" I asked, trying to steer the conversation in a different direction, and also because I honestly didn't know.

"Couldn't you tell?" said María without lifting her eyes from whatever it was she was looking at.

"Well, I did notice that he had a slightly different accent, but I thought he might be from Tamaulipas or from Yucatán, I don't know…"

"You thought he was from Yucatán? Oh, García Madero, you poor innocent child. He thought Belano was from Yucatán," San Epifanio said to the Font sisters, and the three of them laughed.

I laughed too.

"He doesn't look like he's from Yucatán," I said, "but he could be. Anyway, I'm not a specialist in Yucatecans."

"Well, he isn't from Yucatán. He's from Chile."

"So how long has he lived in Mexico?" I said to say something.

"Since the Pinochet putsch," said María without lifting her head.

"Since long before the coup," said San Epifanio. "I met him in 1971. What happened was, he went back to Chile and after the coup he came back to Mexico."

"But we didn't know either of you back then," said Angélica.

"Belano and I were very close in those days," said San Epifanio. "We were both eighteen and we were the youngest poets on Calle Bucareli."

"Will you please tell me what you're looking at?" I said.

"Pictures of mine. You might not like them, but you can look at them too if you want."

"Are you a photographer?" I said, getting up and going over to the bed.

"No, I'm just a poet," said San Epifanio, making room for me. "Poetry is more than enough for me, although sooner or later I'm bound to commit the vulgarity of writing stories."

"Here." Angélica passed me a little pile of pictures that they had finished with. "You have to look at them in chronological order."

There must have been fifty or sixty photos. All of them were taken with flash. All were of a room, probably a hotel room, except for two, which were of a dimly lit street at night and a red Mustang with a few people in it. The faces of the people in the Mustang were blurry. The rest of the pictures showed a blond, short-haired boy, sixteen or seventeen, although he might only have been fifteen, and a girl maybe two or three years older, and Ernesto San Epifanio. There must have been a fourth person, the one taking the pictures, but he or she was never seen. The first pictures were of the blond boy, dressed, and then with progressively fewer clothes on. In picture number fifteen or so, San Epifanio and the girl showed up. San Epifanio was wearing a purple blazer. The girl had on a fancy party dress.

"Who is he?" I said.

"Be quiet and look at the pictures, then ask," said Angélica.

"He's my love," said San Epifanio.

"Oh. And who's she?"

"His older sister."

By about picture number twenty, the blond boy had begun to dress in his sister's clothes. The girl, who was darker and a little chubby, was making obscene gestures at the unknown person who was photographing them. San Epifanio, meanwhile, remained in control of himself, at least in the first pictures, which showed him smiling but serious, sitting in a leatherette armchair or on the edge of the bed. All of this, however, was only an illusion, because by picture number thirty or thirty-five, San Epifanio had taken off his clothes too (his body, with its long legs and long arms, seemed excessively thin and bony, much thinner than in real life). The next pictures showed San Epifanio kissing the blond boy's neck, his lips, his eyes, his back, his cock at half-mast, his erect cock (a remarkable cock too, for such a delicate-looking boy), under the always vigilant gaze of the sister, who sometimes appeared in full and sometimes in part (an arm and a half, her hand, some fingers, one side of her face), and sometimes just as a shadow on the wall. I have to confess that I'd never seen anything like it in my life. Naturally, no one had warned me that San Epifanio was gay. (Only Lupe, but Lupe also said that
I
was gay.) So I tried not to show my feelings (which were confused, to say the least) and kept looking. As I feared, the next pictures showed the Brian Patten reader fucking the blond boy. I felt myself turn red and I suddenly realized that I didn't know how I was going to face the Fonts and San Epifanio when I had finished looking through the pictures. The face of the boy being fucked was twisted in a grimace that I assumed was an expression of mingled pain and pleasure. (Or fake emotion, but that only occurred to me later.) San Epifanio's face seemed to sharpen at moments, like an intensely lit razor blade or knife. And every possible expression crossed the watching sister's face, from violent joy to deepest melancholy. The last pictures showed the three of them in bed, in different poses, pretending to sleep or smiling at the photographer.

"Poor kid, it looks like someone was forcing him to be there," I said to annoy San Epifanio.

"Forcing him to be there? It was his idea. He's a little pervert."

"But you love him with all your heart," said Angélica.

"I love him with all my heart, but there are too many things that come between us."

"Like what?" said Angélica.

"Money, for example. I'm poor and he's a spoiled rich kid, used to luxury and travel and having everything he wants."

"Well, he doesn't look rich or spoiled here. Some of these pictures are really brutal," I said in a burst of sincerity.

"His family has lots of money," said San Epifanio.

"Then you could have gone to a nicer hotel. The lighting looks like something from a Santo movie."

"He's the son of the Honduran ambassador," said San Epifanio, shooting me a gloomy look. "But don't tell anybody that," he added, regretting having confessed his secret to me.

I returned the stack of pictures, which San Epifanio put in his pocket. Less than an inch from my left arm was Angélica's bare arm. I gathered up my courage and looked her in the face. She was looking at me too, and I think I blushed a little. I felt happy. Then right away I ruined it.

"Pancho hasn't come today?" I asked, like an idiot.

"Not yet," said Angélica. "What do you think of the pictures?"

"Hard-core," I said.

"Hard-core? That's all?" San Epifanio got up and sat in the wooden chair where I had been. From there he watched me with one of his knife-blade smiles.

"Well, there's a kind of poetry to them. But if I told you that they only struck me as poetic, I'd be lying. They're strange pictures. I'd call them pornographic. Not in a negative sense, but definitely pornographic."

"Everybody tends to pigeonhole things they don't understand," said San Epifanio. "Did the pictures turn you on?"

"No," I said emphatically, although the truth is I wasn't sure. "They didn't turn me on, but they didn't disgust me either."

"Then it isn't pornography. Not for you, at least."

"But I liked them," I admitted.

"Then just say that: you liked them and you don't know why you liked them, which doesn't matter much anyway, period."

"Who's the photographer?" said María.

San Epifanio looked at Angélica and laughed.

"That really is a secret. The person made me swear I wouldn't tell anybody."

"But if it was Billy's idea, who cares who the photographer was?" said Angélica.