The Savage Detectives (73 page)

"A Mexican on a bridge," said Lima.

"And this one?"

"A Mexican skiing," said Lupe.

"And this one?"

"A Mexican about to draw his guns," said Lupe.

"Jesus, Lupe, you know them all," said Belano.

"And you don't know a single one," said Lupe.

"That's because I'm not Mexican," said Belano.

"And this one?" I said, showing the drawing to Lima first and then to the others.

"A Mexican going up a ladder," said Lupe.

"And this one?"

"Gee, that's a hard one," said Lupe.

For a while my friends stopped laughing and looked at the picture and I watched the landscape. I saw something in the distance that looked like a tree. When we passed it I realized it was a plant: an enormous dead plant.

"We give up," said Lupe.

"It's a Mexican frying an egg," I said. "And this one?"

"Two Mexicans on one of those bicycles for two," said Lupe.

"Or two Mexicans on a tightrope," said Lima.

"Here's a hard one for you," I said.

"Easy: a buzzard wearing a cowboy hat," said Lupe.

"And this one?"

"Eight Mexicans talking," said Lima.

"Eight Mexicans sleeping," said Lupe.

"Or even eight Mexicans watching an invisible cockfight," I said.

"And this one?"

"Four Mexicans keeping vigil over a body," said Belano.

The trip to El Cuatro didn't go smoothly. We spent almost the whole day on the road, first looking for El Cuatro, which according to what we'd been told was about ninety miles north of Hermosillo along the federal highway, and then, once we'd reached the town of Benjamín Hill, a left turn east along a dirt road where we got lost and came back out on the highway again, this time six miles south of Benjamín Hill, which made us think that El Cuatro didn't exist, until we took the turn at Benjamín Hill again (actually, to get to El Cuatro it's better to take the first left, the one that's six miles from Benjamín Hill) and drove and drove through landscapes that looked lunar sometimes and other times revealed patches of green, always desolate, and then we came to a town called Félix Gómez and there a man planted himself in front of our car with his legs braced and his hands on his hips and cursed us and then other people told us that to get to El Cuatro we had to go a certain way and then turn another way and then we got to a town called El Oasis, which in no way resembled an oasis but rather seemed to sum up all the misery of the desert in its storefronts and then we came out on the highway again and then Lima said that the Sonora desert was a shithole and Lupe said that if they had let her drive we would've been there a long time ago, to which Lima responded by hitting the brake and getting out and telling Lupe to take the wheel. I don't know what happened then, but we all got out of the Impala and stretched our legs. In the distance we could see the highway and some cars heading north, probably to Tijuana and the United States, and others heading south, toward Hermosillo or Guadalajara or Mexico City, and then we started to talk about Mexico City and bask in the sun (comparing our tanned forearms) and smoke and talk about Mexico City and Lupe said that she didn't miss anybody anymore. When she said it I realized that strangely enough I didn't miss anyone either, although I was careful not to say so. Then they all got back in, except for me. I entertained myself by tossing clumps of dirt as far as I could in no particular direction, and although I could hear them calling me I didn't turn my head or make the slightest move toward heading back, until Belano said: García Madero, either get in or stay here, and then I turned around and started to walk toward the Impala, having gotten pretty far away without meaning to, and as I returned I thought how dirty Quim's car looked, imagining Quim seeing his Impala through my eyes or María seeing her father's Impala through my eyes and it really wasn't a pretty sight. Its color had almost vanished under a layer of desert dust.

Then we went back to El Oasis and Félix Gómez and we made it to El Cuatro at last, in the municipality of Trincheras, and we had lunch there and asked the waiter and the people at the next table whether they knew where the ex-bullfighter Ortiz Pacheco's ranch was, but they had never heard of him, so we decided to wander around the town, Lupe and I in silence and Belano and Lima talking nonstop, but not about Ortiz Pacheco or Avellaneda or Cesárea Tinajero, but about Mexico City gossip or Latin American books or magazines they'd read just before setting off on this meandering road trip, or movies. Basically, they talked about things that struck me as frivolous, and possibly Lupe too, because both of us were quiet, and after lots of asking we found a man in the market (which was deserted at that hour) who had three cardboard boxes full of chicks and was able to tell us how to get to Ortiz Pacheco's ranch. So we got back in the Impala and set off again.

Halfway down the road from El Cuatro to Trincheras we were supposed to turn left, onto a track that skirted the slopes of a hill shaped like a quail, but when we took the turn, all the hills, every raised bit of ground, even the desert, looked quail-shaped, like quail in different positions, so we wandered down tracks that couldn't even be called dirt roads, battering the car and ourselves too, until the track ended and a house, a building that looked like an eighteenth-century mission, suddenly appeared through the dust, and an old man came out to meet us and told us that this was in fact the bullfighter Ortiz Pacheco's ranch, La Buena Vida, and that he himself (but he only said this after watching us closely for a while) was the bullfighter Ortiz Pacheco.

That night we enjoyed the old matador's hospitality. Ortiz Pacheco was seventy-nine and had a memory fortified by life in the country, according to him, or the desert, according to us. He remembered Pepe Avellaneda (Pepín Avellaneda, the saddest little man I ever saw, he said) perfectly well, and he remembered the afternoon when Avellaneda was killed in the Agua Prieta bullring. He was at the wake, which was held in the parlor at the hotel, where nearly every living soul in Agua Prieta stopped by to offer a final farewell, and at the burial, which was a gathering of multitudes, a dark end to an epic fiesta, he said. Naturally, he remembered the woman who was with Avellaneda. A tall woman, the way short men tend to like them, quiet, though not out of shyness or prudence, but as if she had no choice, as if she were sick and couldn't speak. Was she Avellaneda's lover? No doubt about that. Not his better half, because Avellaneda was married and his wife, whom he'd left long before, lived in Los Mochis, Sinaloa. According to Ortiz Pacheco, the bullfighter sent her money every month or two (or whenever he damn well could). In those days, bullfighting wasn't the way it is now with even the novices getting rich. Anyway, back then Avellaneda was living with this woman. He couldn't remember her name, but he knew that she came from Mexico City and that she was an educated woman, a typist or a stenographer. When Belano said Cesárea's name, Ortiz Pacheco said yes, that was it. Was she the kind of woman who was interested in bulls? asked Lupe. I don't know, said Ortiz Pacheco, maybe she was and maybe she wasn't, but when someone is with a bullfighter, in the long run they end up liking that world. In any case, Ortiz Pacheco had only seen Cesárea twice, the last time in Agua Prieta, which probably meant they hadn't been lovers for long. Still, she exerted an obvious influence on Pepín Avellaneda, according to Ortiz Pacheco.