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Bennett’s Bullets, or How to Be as Good a Writer as I Am

Posted on by sterlingbennett

I say this in all modesty. No one knows more about writing a novel than I do. Except—and it pains me to say this—my editor. That’s my New York editor. Whom I forgive right straight out in front. I speak for my ego here, who at the moment could not come to the pen. Let alone, the lip.

Here’s what I have learned, and I’m talking about the construction of a page-turner—the kind a corporate sales manager might be interested in.

1 – Avoid framework structures. For example, a gripping story found in your grandfather’s effects, say, about a passionate love, terminated by a stray bullet during a revolution in a country whose citizens your potential readers are afraid of.

2 – The story has to start with a shocking event somewhere within the first three lines of the first paragraph. This paragraph should not exceed three lines. For example, your father is murdered, shot in the back while investigating an injustice in a mine. The injustice can’t conflict with the accepted narrative, i.e. the enduring innocence of the country you the writer come from and where your book will sell.

3 – Everyone knows this: show, don’t tell. This is harder than you might think. For example, she is a respected striking London feminist with a thick French-Israeli accent, with a large following, who writes important books. You meet her at a reception, there are not that many people attending, you notice she is isolated, there is a chair next to her, and you go over and say you wonder whether you can ask her a question. You have a short, agreeable conversation about other people’s guilt. An admirer approaches, you cede your place. Then you go visit with other people, laughing and joking. She catches your eye. Her lips are moving. You nod and lean forward to hear what she’s saying across two tables filled with people. She says, “All your irony, come to me after you have cried, then we can have a conversation.” Do not explain, or tell, readers what just happened between you and the famous London feminist. They are intelligent. They can figure it out for themselves, even if you can’t.

4 – Don’t say he said, she said when writing dialogue, if it is obvious who’s speaking. Especially in the case of animals.

5 – Contract verbs in conversation. Say, “When you’ve cried” rather than “When you have cried”—which is less natural.

6 – Do not anticipate something that will happen in the plot by saying it could, might or will happen, no matter how they did it in the medieval epic called the Nibelungenlied—thus robbing the text of suspense. Don’t find an Austrian telescopic sight in someone’s saddlebag and then have him use it to shoot Siegfried two pages later. The reader has already anticipated the shooting, and the suspense is gone.

7 – Also, keep track of the number of elephants, “seven,” in an Indian night-time attack on British colonial forces. The reader will notice if the elephants are suddenly horses, or if all “eight” of the elephants lie dead or dying after the battle. Also, decide whether the moon is out. If it’s not, it’s almost impossible to get a correct count on the elephants.

8 – Pay attention to time. Remember, if a character died on Monday, her body is not still warm on Wednesday.

9 – Logic. If your ex-husband is making a scurrilous remark to his neighbor standing outside the car but has the windows up, the air conditioner on and has driven more than half a block, his neighbor cannot hear him, nor take offense. Only you can.

10 – Beware of sentimentality. Never say a situation is sad. Minimize the appearance of tears. Also beware of showing your imperfect hero saving a child from a fire or a cruel stepfather. Instead, describe a young man rowing across a calm German lake on a beautiful Spring day to a grove of beech trees, where he saws planks from a fallen log, then planes them, whitens them with chalk and, standing amid his bright shavings, shapes a coffin for his sweetheart, who is still alive but dying of tuberculosis. And if this is not adequate, have him place a window over the place where her head will go—with angels engraved on the glass.

11 – Always kill off your hero at the end. Everyone is suspicious of happy endings.

12 – Age: Make sure your hero’s father is older than your hero, so that each generation has at least ten years between it and the one that precedes or follows it. This is especially important in family sagas.

13 – Explicit sex. Do not show the entire penis—only the tip. Have it peeking out like a frog, just above the surface of the bath water. It is well known that this image, mixed with a certain amount of steam in the room, is a turn-on for both sexes.

14 – “Extra words muffle tense dialogue.” That is a direct quote from my New York editor. You might say it’s conversational as well, since that man and I are having a dialog about my writing. Frankly, I find the quote not muffled enough.

15 – Another unhappy quote. “Smart editors muffle mediocrity.”

16 – I near the end by telling you that “that”—the word “that”—carries very little emotional or substantive plot value, and that you should leave it out, when you can, so that it doesn’t dilute the strength of your prose.

17 – Irony: Do not even think the word, let alone use it as a form of communication while writing. Some people do not understand it. See if you can name two.

18 – Again, wit should be divorced from moral comment, and from irony. It taxes me too much to say why.

19 – There is no 19.

20 – 20 is like 19.

21 – If you’re a writer and like metaphors and pithy phrases, make a note of these points and Scotch tape them to your computer, so you will have them when you put pen to paper.

I hope that was helpful.on a beautiful Spring day

Dissent, or Obedience?

Posted on by sterlingbennett

It is strange to be living in a country that may be on the edge of another revolution. It is hard to measure the rage of the population. In fact, it is impossible. My more conservative friends would pooh-pooh the idea; and I think they would be right. They would say, cynically, that it won’t happen this time either; that the leaders will behave as before, the culture of corruption will continue, impunity will reign as it always has; and the media, two giant corporations tied closely to the interests of the ruling group—will continue saying whatever it takes to make our eyes glaze over with confusion and boredom. The focus on the 43 disappeared students in Guerrero has already weakened on Facebook. Soon, everyone will agree that it is old news, and that talking about it is simply a form of chronic whining.

But that still leaves plenty of dissenters—young Mexicans—who will continue to speak out. I do not know what course their rejection of the state’s behavior—the lack of the rule of law—will take.   This time, the context seems to have changed. The disappearance of the 43 has pulled the curtain aside and the nation saw their government trapped by the circumstances. The government lost either way, whether the 43 remained disappeared or whether their bodies were found. By tone or gestures, the leaders, many said, showed they did not really care, their deeds and words rang empty, investigations began late and appeared to look only for the missing but not for those responsible except at the lowest levels. For the government, it appeared to be a George Bush reading My Pet Goat to the kindergarten moment. The whole world saw this; and now there is support and a more broad understanding internationally of what is at play. But will that spur change; will it protect student demonstrators during the next demonstrations?

I have read about people hinting at taking up arms, but that would be a disaster, just as the Mexican Revolution was a prolonged disaster for so many. There is enough violence already. Instead, the leadership at the top must change its way of thinking. They would have to develop a sense of social responsibility. But it is hard to see how that can happen. There seems to some sort of missing gene—like the kind of gene that keeps the U.S. Congress from acting on global warming or from ridding itself of a deep, destructive racism and love of war.   The best that can be hoped for is that the ruling groups have learned something about the depth of the despair, disappointment and outrage among Mexico’s citizens. For things to change, they would have to examine their own roles in maintaining the structure that moves riches and privileges and authority into their hands and away from the vast majority of citizens who battle hunger, lack of a good education, jobs that pay a living wage, the lack of transparency and accountability in their government and a rampant lack of the kind of security that can guarantee life, limb and the pursuit of happiness.

A final question is why there isn’t another way to change the ruling order. There are plenty of studies that show that, sufficiently conditioned by fear and manipulation, people stop resisting, stop speaking out. Plus, is there perhaps some earlier conditioning from as much as a hundred years ago, when people were taught to learn to obey?

Here is one opinion on the subject—my translation—from Friedrich Katz’s book La Servidumbre agraria en México en la época porfiriana, 1980, 2013, Agrarian Servitude in the Era of Porfirio Díaz. These are the words of Manuel F. de la Hoz, at The Second Congress of Tulancingo in 1905, in Mexico—a gathering of hacienda owners, high Catholic dignitaries, and functionaries of the government, where Hoz was arguing that reforms were needed to prevent revolution.

“It must be understood that, if respect for authority is the key to conserving harmony and order among all human groups, then a attitude of subordination must be fomented in the worker toward his immediate superiors, i.e. those who represent (and act for) the patrón (hacienda owner) himself.

“One must note that often the superiors—majordomos, field assistants, apprentices, gang captains—being filled with a sense of their own superiority—often apply the rod (whip) of their command with a heavy hand against the unhappy farm worker. To correct these abuses the hacienda owner should approach, not only because that is required by the laws of justice but also because all power that is exercised tyrannically engenders rebellion and a predisposition toward hate and revenge. In contrast, once he (the hacienda owner) commands from the height of his mission, and once he (the farm worker) who obeys does so from the nobility of his sacrifice, order will resume its rule and there will be no disturbances that turn everything on its head.

“The doctrine imbued in the farm worker since childhood will teach him to support with resignation and happiness the hard law of his humble condition; will inform him of the importance of his obligations and those of his fellows; will teach him to recognize the authority that governs him and to respect, without whispers and rebelliousness, the difference between the classes which God has permitted for the splendor of His glory; (the doctrine) will make his (the worker’s) burden lighter and smooth his supporting obedience.”

Bojón

Posted on by sterlingbennett

People laugh at me when I tell them my name, or they frown, or they work hard to hold down a judgment. Or they feign interest.

“What kind of a name is that?” they say.

I tell them it might be Arabic or French or Brazilian. And that my mother was very dark, with green eyes and long black hair that was as shiny as a raven’s back.

Then they ask me where I was born, and I say I don’t know exactly where, because by time I could speak my mother was ill and soon too sick to talk.

By this time, the person has lost interest or tells me I should be a writer or looks away at a passing someone who is pretty or handsome or walks with their chest out, shoulders down and full of confidence.

When I went to the city hall—I continue explaining—to apply for my Crendential, which is what they call the voting card here, they said I was first far too young and second I didn’t have a last name—not to mention a middle one.

Then my mother died. They dressed her in a long white dress and laid her on her back on a table, put flowers in her hands and placed candles around her. Four people came to see her. One, an older woman said my mother owed her money. Then a neighbor who spent her visiting time looking at dishes and linen and things in my mother’s special box. Then a boy I knew, who wanted to know where I was going to live—and finally a handsome thin man with a mustache and gentle eyes who said he thought he might be my father. He said I should come and live with him in the city. I said I would like to but that I didn’t have a last name, and I didn’t want to leave my mother, who still needed me.

My father said, fine, we’d stay a while, and he and I slept on my mother’s bed, where he said not to worry, I could have his last name Opolo, which he didn’t need anymore. I thanked him and fell asleep. In the morning, my mother’s body was gone, plus all the dishes and linen—plus my father.

At first, besides feeling lonely, I worried about him no longer having a last name, since he had given it to me. But, with time, I thought less and less about him, and more and more about my mother, who was very beautiful, if a little sad. Why I never learned.

I have a voting card now. And I am a teacher for children between five and ten. They call me Señor Bojón. Which is the name I use—because my mother gave it to me and because it reminds me of her.

I grow vegetables and fruit trees. I have a garden area devoted entirely to grapes. I have started making wine each year, which I bottle and store in the first part of an old, unfinished mining tunnel. The label on my bottles says “Bojón” and people have started buying it from me.

One day, a young woman—the mother of one of my youngest students—asked if she could buy a bottle of my wine. I said of course. She and her little girl came home with me and I sold her the bottle. Two days later, she brought me bread she had baked. She was both kind and pretty and seemed to like me. I learned that there was no husband, no father for her daughter. I grew very fond of her but was understandably afraid she might die. I mentioned my fear. She said she would die some day but that we could, if I wanted to, be together until that day came.

For some reason, she had never asked me my name. I was always Señor Bojón. Then one day she asked me.

“Bojón’s my name,” I said.

“But what’s your first name?”

“It’s Bojón.”

“What’s your last name then?”

“Bojón,” I said.

She smiled and said she liked that and took my hand.

I thought I should ask her, too. I knew her first name was Rosa.

“And your last name? I don’t think I know it.”

“Rosa,” she said.

The Hair and the Heart

Posted on by sterlingbennett

Alain Duprés, a student of musicology and great passions, son of a wealthy patrician, and a distant cousin of mine, left Paris for Morelia early in 1913 in search of the Claude Laurent crystal glass flute that had belonged to Mexico’s French Emperor Maximilian. That poor man had so treasured the instrument that when he was facing his firing squad on a hill above Querétero, the Cerro de las Campanas, on the 19th of June 1867, he asked Juarez, head of the rebelling power, to have the flute placed on a velvet-covered table to one side, so he could be watching the morning sun fall across its silver keys at the moment the bullets took away his breath.

President James Madison had once owned one of these flutes. So had Napoleon. So had Emperor Franz I of Austria. Alain Duprés, my distant cousin, loved things that were historical, beautiful, and fragile. He abhorred violence and was glad to be leaving a Europe that was cantering joyfully toward war. That he chose Mexico is not entirely comprehensible because not far south from Morelia’s central plaza, the rugged volcanic mountainsides were astir with revolution and banditry.

Still, he rented a room for a few pesos a week and looked for a teacher, so he could improve his Spanish. He found Miguel Angel, a medical student, who wanted to improve his English. They walked along the old city aqueduct and talked about Cervantes, Rousseau, and Goethe – in a mixture of English, French, and Spanish. After a few months, they spoke only in Spanish.

Miguel Angel told him about Claudia and showed him a daguerreotype of a young woman who he said was the most beautiful woman alive and that there wasn’t a poet alive who would not fall in love with her. That is when Alain Duprés started to write things down, convinced that he too – since he was so affected by the photograph – must have traces of literary talent.

Miguel Angel liked to visit his Aunt Elena in Erongarícuaro, a mostly Purépecha village on the western shore of Lake Pátzcuaro. Sometimes he and Alain took the train from Morelia to Ajuno, then the Ajuno-Pénjamo line to Erongarícuaro. Sometimes they got off early and walked along beside the shimmering lake through fields of corn, wild cosmos, sunflowers, and marigolds.

Miguel Angel rode in the hills, sometimes with his aunt, sometimes with Alain. When he wasn’t riding, he studied the rich bird life near the lake in front of the town. Claudia lived in a large adobe house at the edge of the marsh. Her mother was Mexican. The previous year, her German father had died of tuberculosis. Claudia liked to sit on the balcony of the house overlooking the lake. Men in carriages and on horseback took detours away from the center of town and followed the dirt road between the walls of the house and the marsh, looking up under the broad brim of their hats, hoping to catch a glimpse of her high cheek bones, dark eyes, and light skin.

Miguel Angel said they had been brought together by technology. He watched the birds with a marine spyglass, a birthday gift from his father, purchased in an antique shop in Le Havre. Once, following the flight of a Lesser Black Egret, he swept the glass past the big adobe house and caught a glimpse of her on her balcony – combing her long chestnut hair. The next time he looked, he saw that she was looking back at him through another spyglass, also made of brass and glinting in the sunlight.

They looked at each other. He touched his hat, put down his glass, and wrote large block letters in his notebook, with many dips in his ink well, Estoy observando a los aves, no espiándole, “I’m watching birds, not spying on you.” He held it up but saw that she had stopped looking. He took off his jacket and pinned the sign to the back of it, then put the jacket back on.

When he looked again, there was a sign propped up on the wall of the balcony, “Do men really carry pins?” Miguel Angel replied with, “Do women carry spy glasses?” He pinned this to the back of his jacket and entered farther into the marsh.

He asked his aunt to accompany him bird watching, and she agreed to go, because he spoke with such passion about the birds he was painting. But when they had set up his easel and watched the great squawking Blue Herons and the Lesser White Egrets for a while, and when she had watched him sketch a heron quite badly, she thought, compared to his usual work, two women – one older and one younger – approached them. In the younger one’s eyes she saw the same intensity she had seen in Miguel Angel’s eyes; and in that moment she understood that she had been invited as facilitator, decoy and, probably most important of all, as trustee of a young man’s love.

Over time, and with the help of his Aunt Elena, Miguel Angel began to court Claudia. And over still more time, that young woman gave him a thick lock of her chestnut hair. With a wry look that unnerved him, she said there were other things to give him, but that this was what was available now – a token, so to speak, of what would soon be his. In a moment nearly religious for him, he tucked the hair into a vest pocket, where it made a slight bulge over his heart.

Miguel Angel liked to ride in the hills above Erongarícuaro. He followed the carriage tracks to the railroad tracks, crossed them and often continued on up the mountain rather than turning right to go to the station. One afternoon, while riding high above the town and approaching the tracks, he happened on lumber merchant Doña Herminia, who was hauling four of her prized pine boards behind her donkey Burra, dragging them at a slant, their ends on the ground bumping over the ties of the railroad and the blue-grey gravel underneath.

She was a handsome woman of forty with flashing dark eyes and an ironic twist to her mouth, and the afternoon was bright and hot. She noticed the bulge and asked him whether his heart was swelling and whether it was creating complications. He explained it was a thick lock of his love’s hair. None of which she heard—because she was deaf—but understood anyway, through lip reading and inference.

She said that was good, especially since he didn’t have to stuff it somewhere else, which some men sometimes did out of pretense; and that he had discovered the true way to use one swelling to produce another. And the whole time she talked, she stroked Burra’s haunches with her hand, or caressed the tooth marks on her boards that gleamed yellow and new in the afternoon sun.

The sound of the bees and the fields of wild marigolds, the pine pitch from the boards, Doña Herminia’s bright teeth and her square goat’s eye pupils, the way she touched Burra and moved her hips when she talked about the connection of one thing to another—all this made it difficult for Miguel Angel. And then she tied Burra to a tree, brought out tortillas and an avocado and ripe nísperos – loquats – and arranged all these on a Purépecha shawl with stripes in cobalt and cerulean blue, all this in the shade of pirules – pepper trees, in a place overlooking the lake but hidden from the railroad tracks, the station road, and any path.

Miguel Angel tied off his horse and sat down to eat with her. She took a níspero, put it in her mouth, and chewed till she had extracted the two of its shiny, smooth, almost indecent looking seeds. She spit them onto her hand and passed them to him, then with a finger slowly pushed them back and forth across his palm. With her mouth full and chewing, her fingers explored first the bulge with Claudia’s hair and then the spot she claimed was influenced by it.

All this made the afternoon lie heavy and spinning with first the sound of bees, then the rumble of a passing train, then the sound of hooves moving over trails they could not see—the wind whispering in the upright swaying drying corn. With her large brown eyes fixed on him, she bent his head toward her. She smelled of roasted corn, chewed avocado, níspero juice, wood smoke, and lavender. From her long, smooth, black Purépecha braid, which she laid around his neck, came the smell of burro and something older, much older, that he couldn’t identify. When she laughed, her body jiggled like congealed chicken blood. Globs of tortillas and avocado appeared and disappeared in her opening and closing mouth. Then, beneath him, she packed everything into one cheek and crooned, “She’s my Burra, but you are my burro!” – all this to encouraged his snorting, which she could see but not hear. Her own half-choked calls of Jale!—the command for a horse to move forward—drew out and became a soft braying. Soft, because this was still a dangerous countryside to be lying about in, and having your mind on something else.

Afterward, as Miguel Angel slept a drooling deep sleep, Doña Herminia slipped out the balled lock of the chestnut hair, put some of it in a pocket of her dress, and replaced the rest.

The four newly sawn pine boards were for Silvestre Vernal, who was an enemy of the great hacienda that occupied the broad mountain basin three miles above them. This was a Spanish family that had ruled in the area as long as anyone could remember. The revolutionary chieftain José Inés Cháves García also operated around Pátzcuaro in 1913, defying federal troops under Huerta and causing concern at the hacienda, to the extent it felt compelled to raise its own militia.

Silvestre Vernal was not a revolutionary. But he was a man with a strong sense of justice. He worked alone, breaking horses and mules for people of modest means. At night, when his sense of justice grew keener, he was a bandalero social who took cattle from the hacienda owners and distributed the meat to the hungry. He was about Miguel Angel’s size, but darker. He cherished his wife and his ten-year old boy Marco. When he and his son rode together, bareback, he would reach back and pat the boy on the thigh and feel a great surge of love for the boy.

By day, the hacienda’s private troop, federalized by the Huertista government, descended on the town, looking for conscripts – boys fifteen and older – beating those who refused, occasionally hanging anyone suspected of revolutionary activity, and always looking for Silvestre Vernal. Sympathetic railway workers stopped trains and unloaded one or two steers at a time in places where they knew Silvestre was waiting. Soldiers, with their horses and Mauser rifles, began riding the trains, to protect the interests of the hacienda. The leader of this contingent was the handsome Lieutenant Solorio Cortés, the son of the hacienda owner, who felt God had meant him to have the lovely Claudia for his wife. Claudia’s brother Ruben disliked Miguel Angel because he was a medical student with a future more certain than his own, and for that reason he argued for the candidacy of Solorio as his future brother-in-law.

It was not long after this that Miguel Angel invited Claudia ride with him, but her brother Ruben would not allow it. There was no engagement, he said, and there never would be. Besides, the mountains were filled with soldiers and bandits. It was no place for a young woman of good family; that Miguel Angel continued to ride there showed lack of judgment and said a great deal about his character.

Miguel Angel asked Claudia to be his novia – fiancée, and she put her hand on his chest, above his heart, on the somewhat diminished bulge of her chestnut hair, and nodded her head yes, and then crossed herself – but not before looking around to see who was watching, because such things were still dangerous. The former Díaz government had declared it illegal to practice Catholicism. Plus, she was superstitious and feared that a private act done publicly could bring the civil war to her doorstep, along with yellow fever and cholera and knew what else that drifted in on the lake’s mist.

If they were to be together, said Ruben, it had to be in front of the house, between the lower garden wall and the marsh, where he could watch through the spy glass and that way protect her virtue. And so that was where they walked, beside the lake, each time pressing farther into the reeds, choosing areas where the marsh cane was the tallest and thickest. They found an old dugout canoe that Miguel Angel caulked with tar and kept hidden. The marsh was laced with channels, and they used the canoe to reach a hidden floating island made from a mass of dried cane. It was here they spent afternoons when Ruben was away. They lay on their backs, hand in hand, floating, listening to the rustling of animals they could not see. Once, when they had begun to explore each other, a young Black Angus bull waded nearby, grazing up to his belly in the dark water, snaking his blue tongue out to the lilies he could otherwise not reach. They listened to chickens back on land laying eggs and to burros braying songs of love and distress.

Claudia’s long chestnut hair began to replace the power of what was left of the lock he carried in his vest. It had the usual effect on him but also greater because there was so much more of it. And so they placed their clothes in the canoe, where they would be dry, and lay entwined on the floating island. The warm swamp water seeped up to touch their bodies. When she looked up at him, she saw the clear Mexican sky, strange sounds came out of her mouth and brought out in him what Miguel Angel supposed was the burro – and sent rings of waves rippling far into the marsh.

One afternoon, when the sun was warm and the wind in the pines sounded like a distant train, Miguel Angel dropped down from the mountain and came out into a field of marigolds above the railroad line. Far below him he saw the adobe church tower of Erongarícuaro. Closer in front of him, in the middle of the train tracks, he saw Doña Herminia moving south with Burra toward Ajuno, dragging four of her fine boards, with her colt Burrita trotting along behind. Farther to the right, hidden by the curve, he saw the “Porfirio Díaz,” coming from Ajuno, billowing out black smoke as it accelerated on the last stretch before the curve. Burra had stopped, perhaps because she felt the railroad ties trembling. Doña Herminia was upset and pulling on the lead rope. Her back was to the train. Because she was deaf, she could not hear it. She was craning her neck to see if the boards had caught on something. The track made a long curve around the field. Miguel Angel spurred his horse forward. For a few moments, at one point, he was rushing along beside the train. He could see in the windows. He saw Claudia, who was returning from Pátzcuaro. She was wearing Solorio Cortés’s khaki military hat, with its crimson band. He saw her laughing. He saw Solorio siting next to her. He saw Solorio look across at him.

Miguel Angel cut the curve and reached Doña Herminia before the train. He told Alain later, he saw the recognition in her face, followed by her wicked smile. She dangled in his face the piece of Claudia’s hair she had stolen from him. The engineer saw two people, a burro and a horse on the tracks ahead of him, and pulled the brake with all his force.

Doña Herminia yelled, “Hey, Burro! Look what I have!”

Miguel Angel leaned forward in his saddle to grab her wrist. Delighted, she fought him off and twisted away to keep the hair from his grasp. His horse wheeled and broke away. The colt trotted away from the tracks. Burra stepped off the tracks. The engine hit the boards, now turned sideways, with the sound of a canon shot, and wood flew in all directions. Miguel Angel’s horse hurtled forward in panic. Doña Herminia disappeared under the train.

The train personnel found her under the last car of the three cars, where Solorio Cortés’ soldiers rode in one half, their horses in the other. One foot lay by itself outside the rails. Burra and her colt grazed on marigolds that grew beside the tracks. A splinter roughly the size of a machete had passed through the back of Doña Herminia’s head and come out her mouth, giving her two tongues. Her mouth had frozen in a smirk. Clenched in her right fist they found a nest of chestnut hair.

Miguel Angel’s horse eventually stopped running and slowed to a walk, then wandered unguided across the mountain. Miguel Angel thought about Solorio Cortés’s officer’s hat on Claudia’s head. That was when Silvestre Vernal, bareback and with Marco behind, came out of the trees and approached. Miguel Angel knew who he was and was not afraid. He told Silvestre what had happened. They talked for a while and agreed that it was a terrible thing

The train personnel carefully moved the train half a car length forward. All fourteen passengers stood around Doña Herminia’s body. People presented conflicting stories, but the dominant one, supported by the driver, was that a man on horseback had been fighting with the woman now dead on the tracks. It had been a heated discussion, and she broken away. Then he had wheeled his horse and knocked her down intentionally and fled.

It was murder.

The locomotive driver was concerned for any responsibility he might have in the matter, and so he was relieved when he saw something in Doña Herminia’s hand and, playing the role of detective, plucked out the nest of chestnut hair and placed it in his own palm. No one said anything. It was not Doña Herminia’s hair. Hers was Indian black, the color of the urraca, the Boat-Tailed Grackel; and as for the other, there was only one person in the town who had chestnut hair.

Claudia – who had also been standing there – turned and walked away on a path toward town, by herself, without saying good-bye. The other thirteen passengers watched her leave and discussed what it all meant. Lieutenant Solorio Cortés agreed it was murder. He and his troops threw down the gangplank on the last car, led off their mounts.

Far down the line, toward the station, Silvestre’s son Marco saw them mounting. Both Silvestre and Miguel Angel assumed they were coming for Silvestre. They moved into the trees. Miguel Angel also had a sense of justice, and he suggested they switch hats and vests. Silvestre thanked him, and said they should switch horses as well, for the full effect. Marco said he would ride behind Miguel Angel. And then they spurred their horses ahead.

Miguel rode fast toward town. Silvestre raced on toward the station, where there was a trail that slanted up across the mountain.

When Miguel Angel looked back, he saw the troops pursuing Silvestre, and he did not understand. He stopped to watch. Marco gave a cry, then jumped down and ran across the fields toward the station. Miguel Angel heard the shots and saw Silvestre go down and cursed God for allowing such a lucky shot. He saw his Aunt Elena’s horse continue for a bit, then stop. Marco hurried on toward the station, leaping the furrows of the last the last plowed field.

A few days later, in Pátzcuaro, Alain Duprés, my distant cousin, paid 2 centavos for the Saturday, November 1, 1913 edition of the Catholic newspaper La Actualidad. He found the article he was looking for. The author had not signed his name, probably because he was not sympathetic to the Huertista government, nor to the Huerta–sympathizing officer he was describing.

“Erongarícuaro: Last week, on a warm October afternoon, Federal militia under the command of the young, perhaps short-sighted Lieutenant Solorio Cortés captured a man who he said was the cattle thief Silvestre Vernal Blanco. His troops marched the prisoner, hobbled and wounded, through a brilliant carpet of wild marigolds, up to the wall of Erongarícuaro’s train station, where he slumped down to a sitting position, his hat falling forward over his forehead, waiting for the troops to have a late lunch of cold tortillas and avocado.

“According to sources, the lieutenant sat off to one side, attended by his orderly, as if he wished to avoid contact with a common criminal. The train from Ajuno, delayed by an accident, finally stopped in front of the station. Four passengers got off. The prisoner sat on the southern side of the station. He did not turn his head. The four passengers looked at him quickly and then climbed into the wagon that would take them down into the town. ”

“While they ate, not far from the prisoner, the young troops cut the tip off of the one bullet each would soon use, in this manner forming the blunted Bullet of Mercy. When they had wiped their mouths with the backs of their hands, they emptied the bullets out of their magazines, put them away, then levered the special bullet into their chambers, and stood up.”

“They propped Silvestre Vernal up against the wall he had been sitting against, smoothed his hair and arranged his hat. The prisoner held a hand over the wound on his shoulder. They saw him gaze left and right along the trees bordering the railroad track, as if looking for someone—where a face did appear, it is said, in a stand of pirules, some distance away, just as a ray of sunlight fell across it, as if God had chosen a boy as witness to what was about to happen.”

“When the lieutenant saluted downward with his sabre, two of the rifles misfired, but eight others did not, and the bullets of Mercy danced the bandit Silvestre Vernal against the station wall and left him sitting again, with a look of surprise, until his head fell forward, as if he wanted to study the marigolds which were all about him. “

“The lieutenant coughed asthmatically from the blue rifle smoke, waited for it to drift to one side, then walked slowly through the marigolds, in regulation boots, which were highly polished, so that they squeaked when, according to witnesses, he approached the sitting body. It is said the officer held his arm stiffly at his side and that it trembled. Then he raised his it up and pointed the long-barreled Smith & Wesson, nickel plated, at the soft top of the bowed head, took one large step back to keep from soiling his uniform, and pulled the trigger, therewith delivering the coup de grace.”

“Officer Cortés then leaned over, gripped the man by his hair and brought up the head to see whether the bullets of Mercy had hit their target, which was the prisoner’s chest. Then he leaned still farther forward, lifted his round metal-rimmed glasses with his gun hand – still holding the Smith & Wesson – looked more closely, and saw that the chest had been ripped open and that there was hair growing on the prisoner’s heart.”

“It is said, by the same witnesses, that he was at first moved that God had chosen this way to confirm the evil that had been resting in the man’s soul. Then he rambled along about how disturbed he was to see that the hair was chestnut colored and then, indiscreetly, that the man he had executed was in fact the cattle thief Silvestre Vernal and not a certain medical student from Morelia.”

“In less chaotic times, this writer would hope that a judicial authority would investigate these matters. But there is no such authority beyond Morelia’s city walls, and humanity is so much the worse for it. That the prisoner had hair growing on his heart, the Church, it is thought, on that matter is unlikely to take a position.”

The rest Alain knew because he was there in the back of the crowd when the body was brought into town. It had been tied over a saddle, and the wounds had bled over the face, making the corpse unrecognizable except for what was left of the vest. Claudia was already in front of the Presidencia where the body hung. Friends held her as she sobbed.

News had spread quickly that the murderer of Doña Herminia, the medical student from Morelia, had pushed her in front of the train during some kind of lover’s spat and had already met his fate and now hung head-down in the arches so close to the door of the Pesidencia that you could hardly enter without brushing against him.

Doña Herminia herself lay just to one side on two striped Purépecha shawls of cobalt and cerulean blue, her severed foot placed close to the leg it belonged to and her head on a child’s chair, to accommodate the machete-sized pine splinter that otherwise would have tilted her head forward at an awkward angle. Someone had placed the chestnut hair she was found with in her open palm.

People pushed forward to see the miracle of the hair growing on Miguel Angel’s exposed heart, the same hair – one could not help noticing – that could be seen in Doña Herminia’s hand. The famously flirtatious board merchant, everyone knew, was a few months pregnant, and the child inside her – people agreed – was very likely alive in side her at that very moment. Claudia listened to all this, and sank deeper and deeper into shock. She could not comprehend that the man she loved was dead, nor that her hair—a lover’s pledge—seemed to be everywhere.

Just when she was about to collapse, the boy Marco came up beside her, pulled at her sleeve and through his own sobs tried to tell her that those were his father’s hands and no one else’s. Then Marco’s mother appeared and confirmed, wailing, that it was her husband Silvestre Vernal who hung in front of them. The women who had held Claudia now held Marco and his mother – who held each other and wept.

The crowd ringed them, in silence, and waited while a bowl of water and some rags were brought to wash the corpse’s face to reveal his identity once and for all. And then, just when Claudia saw that it was not her lover, someone tapped her on the shoulder, and she turned to see Miguel Angel standing in front of her, with tears in his eyes.

Alain said it was then he learned what passion was, for Claudia’s face turned from pale to blotches of red; and her right hand came out and slapped Miguel Angel so hard that he stumbled backward and had to be supported by the crowd to keep him from falling. Then she turned on her heel and marched home without looking at anyone.

She did not talk to anyone for a month. She would not talk to Miguel Angel for a year and only let him approach when she decided that the little girl she had given birth to—with chestnut hair—needed her father. Gradually, she forgave him. He became a doctor. They bought an old colonial house Morelia, with a lovely courtyard garden, and moved in.

Alain, my distant cousin, visited them from time to time. He lost interest in Maximilian’s glass flute, since the story around it seemed pale in comparison to the one he had witnessed in Erongarícuaro. Claudia and Miguel Angel had three more children, all of them girls, and all of them with chestnut hair. The man and wife grew very close to each other and lived into their seventies. In strict confidence, they sent Marcos and his mother money, and later sent Marco to the Escuela Libre de Derecho, in Mexico City, to study law.

Solorio Cortés kept his distance from Claudia after the events described above. The locomotive driver, when deposed, reported, in retrospect, that Miguel Angel had tried to pull Doña Herminia away from the tracks, and no case was brought against him. Two years to the day after Lieutenant Solorio Cortés executed Silvestre Vernal against the south wall of the Erongarícuaro train station, his own body, still uniformed, was found hacked by machetes into four pieces, each of which was suspended by a separate rope from the same beam from which Silvestre Vernal’s body had hung, and this time completely blocking the door to the Presidencia. Someone had stuffed two separate lumps of carefully arranged chestnut hair into his mouth, which led to years of speculation about whether it was, in fact, the original hair that had been found in Doña Herminia’s hand, as well as that which had been growing on Silvestre Vernal’s heart.

A Café Mouse in Vienna

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Friends have called me a café ratón, literally a café mouse, a person who spends, according to some, too much time chatting and sipping coffee (tea, in my case, and writing), when they should be gainfully employed somewhere else. Why do I mention this? I will tell you in a moment. A couple of weeks ago, we arrived at the outskirts of Vienna on bicycles, after riding down the Danube Bike Path from Passau, Germany, and rode right into the Old Center—the home, it turns out, of many of the writers who seemed most important to me when I was learning what writing and storytelling was. And where did they hang out, these writers? Why, in the Viennese coffee house like the Hawelka Café. And what was that venerable establishment like? I thank Tereza Ištvánkova and her very good Czech B.A. thesis “Wiener Kaffeehausliteratur in Beispielen,” “Viennese Coffee House Literature through Examples,” for the following description by the Viennese poet Hans Carl Artmann, born in 1921).

The translation is mine: “Here in the Hawelka, headwaiter Herr Fritz, greets his customers with a handshake, ruling over his sector like a British colonel. Water glasses on nicked trays clink on their way through the gray-blue cigarette smoke, held aloft like crystalline birds. Chess opponents pursue their life or death games in silence. On scraps of paper, the artist Kurt Moldovan jots and sketches of Mexico on letter paper, if that is what is what is available, and, elegant as always, greets with equal kindness the pretty and not so pretty girls who enter. Ernst Fuchs, the modern Dürer, orders through his prophet’s beard his one-egg-in-a-glass and lays down his gold-leaf words so that they shimmer lightly as if through a covering varnish. Young actors and actresses play Canasta—because they have no Tarot cards—until the two o’clock closing hour. Poets, painters, sculptors and musicians swarm like bees around the same table. Frantic waiters struggle to get through the forest of chairs. The air is filled with the jubilant war cries of philosophers, as well as with the aroma of Austria 3 which rises in countless smoke rings toward the molded ceiling.”

You can read the original German at the end of this posting.

We had been in Vienna for several days, and I felt paralyzed by its historical dimensions. There was just too much of it. Still, I began listing all the voices and images that had formed me: Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach’s “Die Judenbuche,” an early murder mystery; Franz Grillparzer’s Der Arme Spielmann,” about a man who is a terrible musician but has a noble heart and great courage, none of which win him his love, who instead marries the butcher; Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s “Brief,” a letter that Lord Chandos writes Francis Bacon on the impossibility of language to mean anything after WWI, and “Der Schwierige,” a play about an aristocrat who has returned from the Great War and finds almost all words suspect, clichéd and meaningless. Then there is Rainer Maria Rilke and his poem “Der Panther:” Der Panther Im Jardin des Plantes, Paris 1902:

Sein Blick ist vom Vorübergehn der Stäbe

so müd geworden,dass er nichts mehr hält.

Ihm ist, als ob es tausend Stäbe gäbe

und hinter tausend Stäben keine Welt.

Der weiche Gang geschmeidig starker Schritte,

der sich im allerkleinsten Kreise dreht,

ist wie ein Tanz von Kraft um eine Mitte,

in der betäubt ein großer Wille steht.

Nur manchmal schiebt der Vorhang der Pupille

sich lautlos auf -. Dann geht ein Bild hinein,

geht durch der Glieder angespannte Stille –

und hört im Herzen auf zu sein.

 

My translation: His glance has grown tired from passing back and forth

before the bars, so tired that it no longer sees,

as if there were a thousand bars and behind those no world at all.

The soft gait, the supple strong steps, which turn

in ever-smaller circles, are like a dance

around a center in which stands

a great numbed will.

Only once in a while, the membrane over the pupil rises silently,

then an image enters,

goes through the coiled stillness of his limbs,

and ceases it existence in the animal’s heart.

 

If Rilke thinks this is what has happened to the panther in a modern city, what does he think has happened to us?

Then there Adalbert Stifter and his “Bergkristal,” a short story about two children who take the wrong path on a mountain path, are trapped by a snowstorm and spend the night in the protection of a glacial cave. The boy’s trusting younger sister Sanna agrees with all his reassurances and says, “Ja, Konrad” something like twenty times (in my memory, more). The two feuding villages on either side of the pass come searching for them in the morning and are reconciled by the miracle of their survival. Sanna says Jesus appeared to them during the night. Peter Altenberg held forth at the Central Café and even had his mail delivered there; Karl Kraus’s satirized those who love The Great War, profited from it and invoke the patria as mother, father and homeland; Stephan Zweig is currently remembered through the movie “The Budapest Hotel;” and Arthur Schnitzler dramatized what Freud was formulating in theory. We ate and wrote in the Freud Café. We saw paintings by Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele. We went to the Musikverein one night and heard Mozart played by musicians in white wigs. This was the city of Arnold Schoenberg and Schubert, also of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Buber, who warned us to see the Other as You and not It. Last of all: Lotte Lenya who collaborated with Kurt Weil and Bertolt Brecht (“Mack the Knife”).

I am sure I am leaving many out.

And finally, my favorite saying that supposedly distinguishes Austrians from Prussians (Germans). In WWI: a Prussian officer sends a dispatch with the message, “Die Lage ist ernst, aber nicht hoffnungslos.” The situation is serious but not hopeless. Fighting on the same side and in the same battle, the Austrian commander sends back the message, “Die Lage ist hoffnungslos, aber nicht Ernst.” The situation is hopeless, but not serious. The quote, perhaps apocryphal, I have always thought was gently complimentary of the Austrian character.

*This is the original quote describing the Hawelka Café in German: “Hier im Hawelka begrüßt der Chef des Hauses seine Stammkunden noch mit Handschlag, herrscht der Ober, Herr Fritz, souverän wie ein britischer Oberst, über sein Revier, schwirren auf vernickelten Tabletts die Wassergläser wie kristallene Vögel durch den bleiblauen Zigarettenrauch, werden lautlos erbitterte Schachpartien ausgefochten, Kritiken, wenn nicht anders, so auf Briefpapier verfaßt, der Graphiker Moldovan, elegant wie immer, begrüßt mit der gleichen Liebenswürdigkeit hübsche und weniger hübsche Mädchen, Ernst Fuchs, der Dürer der modernen Malerei, bestellt prophetenbärtig sein „Ei im Glas“ und spricht wohlgesetzte Worte aus Goldplättchen und schimmerndem Firnis, junge Schauspieler und – rinnen spielen bis zur Zweiuhrsperre Canasta, weil sie kein Tarock beherrschen, Dichter, Maler, Bildhauer und Musiker bilden manchmal wahre Bienenschwärme um einen einzigen Tisch, der geplagte Ober kann kaum durch den Sesselwald, und die Luft ist erfüllt von den Wohllauten philosophischer Kampfrufe, wie vom Duft der Austria 3, der in zahllosen Rauchringen nach dem Struckhimmel entschwebt.”

Utah Beach, or the Absence of History

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It was low tide—perhaps not the lowest—when I walked way out away from the dunes, easily as much as a quarter of a mile. I suppose I was looking for some sort of connection and that the solution was to walk in the direction they had come from, the frightened men, boys and men, by the thousands, over time as many as 850,000 of them.image

In places the sands were hard, in others soft. I vaguely remembered a scene, perhaps out of French literature, of a man sinking into quicksand. A two-wheel racing buggy raced back up the beach to the east, with its French jockey whipping away at the high-stepping horse for more speed—or, it seemed, to establish his mastery over the horse, both for himself and for the benefit of the few tourists on the beach that were watching him.

There was very little wind, the sun was out, it was a beautiful day, no one was out that far except for me. There was no trace of what happened; and so I puzzled, once again, what it meant to be standing there at that historic place. The connection, I have found, is easier to past atrocity. Thirty, forty or fifty Yahi people—mostly children and women—trapped and shot down by white men at Kingsley Cave, northeast of Chico, California. Buchenwald, in the hills above Weimar, home at times to both Goethe and Schiller. But what was the atrocity here? A war that is celebrated as my country’s greatest? A history of heroism and triumph—that story—that obscures the atrocity of killing and maiming—the unbearable loss?

I was so far out from the dunes that I enjoyed a near complete privacy. I do not mean to offend. I unzipped and peed on the sand, just at the edge where the tide was beginning to return and therewith I suppose at least established my own presence in history. Then I wondered how many others had done the same thing. Back then. Out of fear, or just because they had to go and there were no bathrooms—only raking machine gun fire and the aircraft cannons depressed to fire down into those who were landing.

On the way back, I stooped to pick up a shell. A lovely thing, dark, scolloped and blue-gray, the progeny of those that had lain there then when no one felt like a hero. Rather, only felt fear. And possibly hope. That the next bullet or exploding shell would not find them and disappear them prematurely into history.

image

The Dogs of Guanajuato

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A friend who is a recent resident of Guanajuato said she had needed to talk to us, to someone, anyone. She had looked over her balcony and watched an adolescent Mexican boy strangle puppies, one by one, that had been kept in a bag. She had screamed down that he should stop it. He ran away, past our house. We saw none of it. We don’t know who it was, though we have ways of finding out.

A lot of people in my town treat dogs as beloved pets when they are small and love to carry puppies through the streets as some kind of cultural statement I don’t really understand. It would be like a culture that got a kick out of carrying parrots around on its shoulders. We occasionally see that here, but it’s rare.

A lot of other people in my town place dogs on their flat concrete roofs to scare away thieves. Often there is no shelter from sun, rain, heat or cold. The dogs are prisoners; and that why Guanajuato is famous for its howling by night—prisoner dogs seeking connection—and for its crowing roosters by morning—or perhaps all day long. For us, both sounds have become white noise and we don’t hear it.

Once, a few years ago, I was looking for a place to paint behind the Olga Costa Museum beside a lovely shaded creek when I came across a large dog hanging by its neck from a tree and very dead. It had taken two people to perform the execution: one strong person to hold the dog up and another person to tie the green string around its neck. The dog must have trusted them enough to let them hold it up in the air. Then they let it down, so that its feet didn’t quite touch the ground. And then watched the results of their work while the animal struggled and died.

What do we call that? Cruelty? A perverse, sick curiosity to see an animal die of asphyxia. I think it is like a hanging. Murder by sociopaths. We know that people do this, and some of us find it horrifying. I have a piece called “The Darkness in My Stories” which addresses this elemental horror in me.

I also wrote about the dog and the green string in my novel Playing for Pancho Villa. I quote the passage below.

“Frank climbed down from the boxcar. Doña Mariana and Manuelito were coming back from their walk along the arroyo. The boy spoke to her in short bursts and kept watching her, as if expecting a response. Doña Mariana answered him, but did not look at him. She saw Frank, but gave no greeting. Frank descended the slope and helped her up to the tracks.
“We  saw  a  dog,”  said  Manuelito.  “It  smelled.”  They walked  toward  the  passenger  car.  “It  had  a  green string  around  its  neck,”  he  said.
Doña Mariana gave Frank a look. They climbed the iron steps at the front end of the car. She made a pillow out her canvas riding hat and had the boy lie down on it. She and Frank chatted a bit about the village, its poverty, the dusty paths and the possible reasons  for  the  train’s  stopping.  The  boy’s  lids  grew   heavy and soon his mouth relaxed, and he was asleep.
The  señora’s  eyes  rested  on  Frank.  “How  is  the   wounded  man?”  she  asked.
“He  needs  a  doctor.”
“I  think  he  has  one,”  she  said.
“He  needs  a  hospital.”  Then,  after  a  pause,  “You walked up the arroyo?”
She said, “Yes,” then looked out the window and said nothing else.
“And  the  green  string?”  Frank  asked.  Then  he   looked out the window toward the arroyo, as if he might see the dog.
“Farther  back,  at  the  base  of  an  old  wall,  there  are trees and shade and pools of clear standing water. I listened  for  the  train  whistle.  We  didn’t  want  to  get   left behind. The place reminded me of arroyos when I was a child. Peaceful, enchanted places, out of the hot sun, with just the barest sound of water. We always looked for pools to swim in. The perfect pool, in a spot of sun to warm us when we got out.
“When  we  started  back  toward  the  train,  we  saw   the dog. A large dog. And probably friendly, because someone had been able to lift it up and hold it while someone else tied the rope, string really, to the tree. It took two people to do it, at least one of them strong. Its rear feet were able to touch the ground. The green string tightened. The creature struggled to hold itself up, but left alone, eventually slowly choked  to  death  from  its  own  weight.”
Frank looked at her.
“There  were  two  men  watching  us  from  up  above, where the houses are. As if they were waiting for our reaction. I looked back at them longer than I would have ever done with strangers, let alone men. I wanted  to  see  if  they  were  the  killers.”
She paused again.
“I  could  not  tell.  There  was  nothing  in  their  eyes  to   indicate  whether  they  had  done  it.”  She  stopped   again, as if considering.
“That  is  what  troubled  me.  That  you  couldn’t  tell   one way or the other. All you could see was indifference. I called up to them and said there was a hanged dog and that they should bury it before it brought disease to the village. There was no reaction at  all,  as  if  that  didn’t  matter.  At  that  point,  I  did  not   want  to  be  there  any  longer,  so  we  left  quickly.”
Frank  didn’t  know  what  to  say.  Instead,  he  took  his Winchester from the corner by the window and laid it across his lap.”

Le Couleur de Chipotle Seco

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(Another attempt at translating one of my short pieces—”The Color of Dried Chipotle”—into French, as a language learning exercise, with much help from my tutor, whose name I will not mention—to protect him from scandal if the translation is just too horrible, to the extent that, if exposed, French cows would fall over dead.)

SIMIPAG c’est le nom du système d’eau dans ma ville coloniale. Cela signifie le Sistema de Agua Potable y Alcantarillado de Guanajuato—le système pour la distribution de l’eau et pour la re-distribution des eaux d’égout. Des générations de travailleurs se sont constamment précipités dans les quartiers ou l’un des fluides avait empiété sur l’autre.

Par hasard, j’ai rencontré un homme dans le café délabré où j’écris, qui avait travaillé pendant des années pour la ville et maintenant, dans sa retraite, était le seul et l’entièrement inconnu historien des sombres cours de l’eau navigable de la ville.

Luís est accro au café et à l’histoire. Son père Juan Gabriel a commencé à travailler pour la ville dans 1916 à l’âge de 17. Il portait un lourde barre pour ouvrir la chaussée et une pelle et marchait derrière son chef, les deux en répondant aux cris de cette señora ou à l’autre qui a signalé que les eaux usées coulaient dans sa maison.

Arturo n’était pas aussi intelligent que son jeune assistant Luís mais il avait la grâce de s’en remettre au jeune homme dans des matières des directions dans lesquelles coulaient des choses et dans d’autres problèmes de la physique. Peu de temps dans le milieu de la nuit—c’était le temps de leur travail—c’était Arturo qui allait chercher un sac de ciment et du sable, pendant que Luís perplexait sur l’emplacement des tuyaux et commencait à ouvrir le callejón avec sa barre de fer. Quand il soulevait le morceau de pierre sur l’endroit où il supposait qu’il avait échoué, il mettait la lanterne de plus prés et observait le mouvement autour de la fuite qui coulait au loin de la conduite et se jettait dans la maison voisine, dont la señora était à la porte qui les avait en premier lieu appelés à la catastrophe.

Elle portait son châle autour de ses épaules, en se plaignant de la fuite, la pluie, l’oscurité, la rapidité de leur progrès et des imbéciles que se propageaient la révolution dans l’état.

“On dois les pendre tous,” a dit-elle. “Il faudrait tirer sur leurs enfants et violer leurs épouses. Dieu va les brûler en enfer, vous verrez.

Luís a gardé ses opinions pour lui. Pendant sa seule nuit de repos semanal, il portait des armes à travers les ruelles, en le faisant vers l’aube quand même la police était endormis.

Pendant que la femme fulminait, il tenait la lanterne prés du tuyau cassé, où toutes les choses se déplaçaient comme il le faisait dans la nuit. En sous-sol, on peut dire. Sauf qu’elles étaient de la couleur de chipotle seco ou de sienne brûlé, comme le dit son ami le peintre—tandis que Luís était de la couleur d’un petit cheval brun. Elles avaient des antennes, probablement pour trouver leur chemin dans l’obscurité pendant qu’elles mangeaient de la merde humaine, combattant entre elles sur les meilleurs pièces qui glissaient dans le tuyau entrainées par la chute d’un seau d’eau d’un lieu plus haut ou bien par le ruissellement de la pluie.

La maison de la señora était en fait assez belle, comme son châle couteux qui brillait à la lumière de la lampe, pendant que sa bouche bougait, en disant des choses sur lui méme et Arturo, qui disait t’elle avait été là una fois avant et qui n’avait pas pris la peine de se laver et quel niveau de scolarité avait-il, Luís, jamais pris la peine d’obtenir; ou pensait-il rejoindre à la revolution et venir dans la nuit l’assassiner dans son lit, en soulévant de côté soigneusement le chat Lobo avant de plonger son couteau dans sa poitrine?

Les insectes grouillaient dans le trou en face de de lui, rouges et rapides dans la lumière de la lanterne. Il pourrait fixer des petits messages sur leur dos, qui diraient aux autres comme lui où vivait cette femme. Ou, plus important, où des armes étaient nécessaires. Des Winchesters, Springfields et Mausers. Sous la ville grouillait un millard des coursiers possibles, qui bougaient où personne ne les pouvait voir, transportant des informations sur comment pénétrer la ville pour le enfoncer l’épée dans son coeur comme dans l’arène des toros.

Il observait de prés. Les insectes haïs semblaient pulser et sautiller. Hop, hop, hop! Arturo ou quelqu’un d’autre s’approchait. Les bêtes le savaient à l’avance. Cela aussi pourrait étre utile quand la ville essayerait de se defendre contre lui même et ses confrères révolutionnaires.

Aruro a mis le ciment sur la ruelle, recouvert d’une bâche. Ils ont mélangé le ciment et le sable avec le fuide de la canalisation rompue et fait la réparation, replacé les pierres et ramassé la lanterne et ils sont repartis, pendant que la femme appelait en disant qu’ils étaient aussi inutiles que les personnes qui complotaient de prendre la ville.

“Cafards!” leur criait elle. “Cafards!”