The Savage Detectives

III
THE SONORA DESERT

JANUARY 1

Today I realized that what I wrote yesterday I really wrote today: everything from December 31 I wrote on January 1, i.e., today, and what I wrote on December 30 I wrote on the 31st, i.e., yesterday. What I write today I'm really writing tomorrow, which for me will be today and yesterday, and also, in some sense, tomorrow: an invisible day. But enough of that.

JANUARY 2

We were on our way out of Mexico City. To entertain my friends, I asked them some tricky questions, questions that were problems too, and enigmas (especially in the Mexican literary world of today), even riddles. I started with an easy one: what is free verse? I said. My voice echoed inside the car as if I were speaking into a microphone.

"Something with no fixed number of syllables," said Belano.

"And what else?"

"Something that doesn't rhyme," said Lima.

"And what else?"

"Something with no regular placement of stresses," said Lima.

"Good. Now a harder one. What is a tetrastich?"

"What?" said Lupe beside me.

"A metrical system of four verses," said Belano.

"And a syncope?"

"Oh, Jesus," said Lima.

"I don't know," said Belano. "Something syncopated?"

"Cold, cold. Do you give up?"

Lima 's eyes were fixed on the rearview mirror. Belano looked at me for a second, then he looked past me. Lupe was looking behind us too. I didn't want to look.

"A syncope," I said, "is the omission of one or several phonemes within a word. For example: bosun for boatswain, o'er for over. All right. Moving along. Now an easy one. What's a sestina?"

"Six six-line stanzas," said Lima.

"And what else?" I said.

Lima and Belano said something I couldn't hear. Their voices seemed to drift inside the Impala. Well, there is something else, I said. And I told them what it was. And then I asked them whether they knew what a gly-conic was (it's a verse in classical meter that can be defined as a log-aoedic tetrapody catalectic in syllabam), and a hemiepes (which is the first foot of a dactylic hexameter, in Greek meter), or phonosymbolism (which is the independent emotional significance that the phonic elements of a word or verse can assume). And Belano and Lima didn't know a single answer, never mind Lupe. So I asked them whether they knew what an epanorthosis was, which is a figure of logic that consists of restating what's been said to qualify or amend or even contradict it, and I also asked them whether they knew what a pythiambic was (they didn't), or a mimiambic (they didn't), or a homeoteleuton (they didn't), or a paragoge (they did, and they thought that all Mexican and most Latin American poets were paragogic), and then I asked them whether they knew what a hapax or hapax legomenon was, and since they didn't know, I told them. It's a technical term used in lexicography or works of textual criticism to indicate an expression that appears just once in a language, oeuvre, or text. And that gave us something to think about for a while.

"Ask us an easier one," said Belano.

"All right. What's a zéjel?"

"Fuck, I don't know, I don't know anything," said Belano.

"What about you, Ulises?"

"It sounds like Arabic to me."

"And you, Lupe?"

Lupe looked at me and didn't say anything. I couldn't help laughing, probably because I was so nervous, but even so, I explained what a zéjel was. And when I had stopped laughing I told Lupe that I wasn't laughing at her or her ignorance (or lack of sophistication) but at all of us.

"All right, what's a Saturnian?"

"No idea," said Belano.

"Saturnian?" said Lupe.

"And a chiasmus?" I said.

"A what?" said Lupe.

Without closing my eyes, and at the same time as I was seeing everyone, I saw the car speeding like an arrow along the roads leading out of Mexico City. I felt as if we were floating on air.

"What is a Saturnian?" said Lima.

"Easy. An old Latin verse form whose principles of versification are unclear. Some think it was quantitative, others that it was accentual. If the first hypothesis is accepted, the Saturnian can be broken down into an iambic dimeter catalectic and an ithyphallic, although other variations exist. If the accentual explanation is accepted, it's made up of two hemistiches, the first with three tonic accents and the second with two."

"Which poets used the Saturnian?" said Belano.

"Livius Andronicus and Naevius. Religious and commemorative poetry."

"You know a lot," said Lupe.

"He really does," said Belano.

I was seized by laughter again, laughter that was expelled instantly from the car. Orphan, I thought.

"It's just a question of memory. I memorize the definitions, that's all."

"You haven't told us what a chiasmus is yet," said Lima.

"Chiasmus, chiasmus, chiasmus… Well, a chiasmus is the presentation of the elements of two sequences in reverse order."

It was nighttime. The night of January 1. The early morning hours of January 1. I looked back and it didn't seem as if anyone was following us.

"All right, how about this," I said. "What's a proceleusmatic?"

"You made that one up, García Madero," said Belano.

"No. It's a foot in classical meter consisting of four short syllables. It doesn't have a set rhythm and may therefore be considered a simple metrical figure. What about a molossus?"

"You really did make that one up," said Belano.

"No, I swear. A molossus, in classical meter, is a foot consisting of three long syllables across six beats. The ictus can fall on the first and third syllables or only on the second. It has to be combined with other feet to form meter."

"What's an ictus?" said Belano.

Lima opened his mouth and closed it again.

"An ictus," I said, "is the downbeat, the temporal stress. Now I should say something about the arsis, which is the accented part of the Latin metrical foot, which means the syllable on which the ictus falls, but let's continue with the questions instead. Here's an easy one for you, something everyone can get. What's a bisyllable?"

"A two-syllable line," said Belano.

"Very good. About time," I said. "Two syllables long. Very rare and also the shortest possible line in Spanish meter. It almost always appears linked to longer verses. Now a harder one. What's an asclepiad?"

"No idea," said Belano.

"Asclepiad?" said Lima.

"It comes from Asclepiades of Samos, who used it most often, although Sappho and Alcaeus used it too. It takes two forms: the lesser asclepiad, which is made up of twelve syllables distributed in two Aeolic cola (or elements), the first consisting of a spondee, a dactyl, and a long syllable, the second of a dactyl and a trochaic dipode catalectic. The greater asclepiad is a verse of sixteen syllables formed by the insertion of a dactylic dipode catalectic in syllabam between two Aeolic cola."

We were almost out of Mexico City. We were going over eighty miles an hour.

"What is an epanalepsis?"

"No idea," I heard my friends say.

The car headed down dark avenues, through neighborhoods with no lights, down streets where there were only women and children. Then we swept through neighborhoods that were still celebrating New Year's Eve. Belano and Lima were looking forward, at the road. Lupe's head was resting against the window. She seemed to have fallen asleep.

"And what's an epanadiplosis?" No one answered me. "It's a syntactic figure consisting of the repetition of a word at the beginning and end of a sentence, line, or series of lines. An example is García Lorca's "Green oh how I love you green."

For a while I was quiet and I looked out the window. I had the feeling that Lima was lost, but at least no one was behind us.

"Keep going," said Belano, "we'll get one."

"What is a catachresis?" I said.

"That one I used to know, but I've forgotten," said Lima.

"It's a metaphor that's become part of common everyday speech and is no longer perceived as a metaphor. For example: needle's eye, bottleneck. And an Archilochian?"

"That one I do know," said Belano. "It has to be the meter that Archilochus used."

"Great poet," said Lima.

"But what is it?" I said.

"I don't know. I can recite a poem by Archilochus, but I don't know what an Archilochian is," said Belano.

So I told them that an Archilochian was a two-line stanza (dystich), and that it could take various forms. The first consisted of a dactylic hexameter followed by a dactylic trimeter catalectic in syllabam. The second… but then I began to fall asleep and I listened to myself talk or to my voice echoing inside the Impala saying things like iambic dimeter or dactylic tetrameter or trochaic dimeter catalectic. And then I heard Belano reciting:

Heart, my heart, so battered with misfortune far beyond your strength,

up, and face the men who hate us. Bare your chest to the assault of the enemy, and fight them off. Stand fast among the beam-like spears.

Give no ground; and if you beat them, do not brag in open show, nor, if they beat you, run home and lie down on your bed and cry.

And then I opened my eyes with a great effort and Lima asked whether the poem was by Archilochus. Belano said simón, and Lima said what a great poet or what a fucking amazing poet. Then Belano turned around and explained to Lupe (as if she cared) who Archilochus of Paros had been, a poet and mercenary who lived in Greece around 650 B.C., and Lupe didn't say anything, which I thought was an appropriate response. Then I sat there half asleep, my head against the window, and listened to Belano and Lima talking about a poet who fled the battlefield, caring nothing about the shame and dishonor that the act would bring upon him, in fact boasting of it. And then I started to dream about someone crossing a field of bones, and the person in question had no face, or at least I couldn't see his face because I was watching him from a distance. I was at the foot of a hill and there was hardly any air in the valley. The person was naked and had long hair and at first I thought it was Archilochus but it really could have been anyone. When I opened my eyes it was still night and we had left Mexico City.

"Where are we?" I said.

"On the road to Querétaro," said Lima.

Lupe was awake too, and she was watching the dark countryside with eyes like insects.

"What are you watching?" I said.

"Alberto's car," she said.

"No one's following us," said Belano.

"Alberto's like a dog. He has my smell and he'll find me," said Lupe.

Belano and Lima laughed.

"How will he be able to find you when I've been doing ninety-five miles an hour ever since we left Mexico City?" said Lima.

"Before the sun comes up," said Lupe.

"All right," I said, "what's an aubade?"

Neither Belano nor Lima made a sound. I imagined they were thinking about Alberto, so I started to think about him too. Lupe laughed. Her insect eyes sought me:

"All right, Mr. Know-It-All, can you tell me what a prix is?"

"A toke of weed," said Belano without turning around.

"And what is muy carranza?"

"Something very old," said Belano.

"And lurias?"

"Let me answer," I said, because all the questions were really for me.

"All right," said Belano.

"I don't know," I said after thinking for a while.

"Do you know?" said Lima.

"I guess not," said Belano.

"Crazy," said Lima.

"That's right, crazy. And jincho?"

None of the three of us knew it.

"It's so easy. Jincho is Indian," said Lupe, laughing. "And what is la grandiosa?"

"Jail," said Lima.

"And what is Javier?"

A convoy of five freight trucks passed in the left lane heading toward Mexico City. Each truck looked like a burned arm. For an instant there was only the noise of the trucks and the smell of charred flesh. Then the road was plunged into darkness again.

"What's Javier?" said Belano.

"The police," said Lupe. "And macha chacha?"

"Marijuana," said Belano.

"This one is for Garcia Madero," said Lupe. "What's a guacho de orégano?"

Belano and Lima looked at each other and smiled. Lupe's insect eyes weren't watching me but the shadows unfurling threateningly out the back window. In the distance I saw the lights of one car, then another.

"I don't know," I said, as I imagined Alberto's face: a giant nose coming after us.

"A gold watch," said Lupe.

"What about a carcamán?" I said.

"A car," said Lupe.

I closed my eyes: I didn't want to see Lupe's eyes and I rested my head against the window. In my dreams I saw the black carcamán, unstoppable, Alberto's nose riding in it with a couple of off-duty policemen ready to beat the shit out of us.

"What's a rufo?" said Lupe.

We didn't answer.

"A car," said Lupe, and she laughed.

"All right, Lupe, how about this one, what's la manicure?" said Belano.

"Easy. The mental hospital," said Lupe.

For a moment it seemed impossible to me that I'd ever made love with a girl like Lupe.

"And what does dar cuello mean?" said Lupe.

"I don't know, I give up," said Belano without looking at her.

"The same thing as dar caña," said Lupe, "but different. When you dar cuello you wipe somebody out, and when you dar caña you might be wiping somebody out, but you might also be fucking." Her voice sounded as ominous as if she had said antibacchian or palimbacchian.

"And what does it mean if you dar labiada, Lupe?" said Lima.

I thought about something sexual, about Lupe's pussy, which I'd only touched and not seen, about María's pussy and Rosario's pussy. I think we were going more than one hundred and ten.

"To give someone a chance, of course," said Lupe, and she looked at me as if she could guess what I was thinking. "What did you think it was, García Madero?" she said.

"What does de empalme mean?" said Belano.

"Something that's funny but hurts because it's true," said Lupe, undaunted.

"And a chavo giratorio?"

"A pothead," said Lupe.

"And a coprero?"

"A cokehead," said Lupe.

"And echar pira?" said Belano.

Lupe looked at him and then at me. I could feel the insects hopping from her eyes and landing on my knees, one on each knee. A white Impala just like ours shot past heading for Mexico City. As it disappeared through the back window it honked several times, wishing us luck.

"Echar pira?" said Lima. "I don't know."

"When more than one man rapes a woman," said Lupe.

"Gang rape, that's right, you know them all, Lupe," said Belano.

"And do you know what it means if you say somebody's entrado en la rifa?" said Lupe.

"Of course I know," said Belano. "It means you've already gotten involved in the problem, you're mixed up in it whether you want to be or not. It can also be taken as a veiled threat."

"Or not so veiled," said Lupe.

"So what would you say?" said Belano. "Have we entrado en la rifa or not?"

"All the way," said Lupe.

The lights of the cars that were following us suddenly disappeared. I had the feeling that we were the only people on the road in Mexico at that hour. But a few minutes later, I saw the lights again in the distance. There were two cars, and the distance separating them from us seemed to have decreased. I looked forward. There were insects smashed on the windshield. Lima was driving with both hands on the wheel and the car was vibrating as if we'd turned onto a dirt road.

"What is an epicede?" I said.

No one answered.

For a while we were all silent as the Impala sped forward in the dark.

"Tell us what an epicede is," said Belano without turning around.

"It's an elegy, recited in the presence of the dead," I said. "Not to be confused with the threnody. The epicede took the form of a choral dialogue. The meter used was the dactylo-epitrite, and later elegiac verse."

No reply.

"Fuck, this goddamn road is pretty," said Belano after a while.

"Ask us more questions," said Lima. "How would you define a threnody, García Madero?"

"Just like an epicede, except that it wasn't recited in the presence of the dead."

"More questions," said Belano.

"What's an alcaic?" I said.

My voice sounded strange, as if it wasn't I who'd spoken.

"A stanza of four alcaic verses," said Lima, "two hendecasyllables, one endecasyllable, and one decasyllable. The Greek poet Alcaeus used it, which is where the name comes from."

"It isn't two hendecasyllables," I said. "It's two decasyllables, one endecasyllable, and a trochaic decasyllable."

"Maybe," said Lima. "Who cares."

I watched Belano light a cigarette with the car lighter.

"Who introduced the alcaic stanza into Latin poetry?" I said.

"Man, everyone knows that," said Lima. "Do you know, Arturo?"

Belano had the lighter in his hand and he was staring at it, although his cigarette was already lit.

"Of course," he said.

"Who?" I said.

"Horace," said Belano, and he slid the lighter into its socket and then rolled down the window. The air ruffled my hair and Lupe's.

JANUARY 3

We had breakfast at a gas station outside of Culiacán, huevos rancheros, fried eggs with ham, eggs with bacon, and poached eggs. We each drank two cups of coffee and Lupe had a big glass of orange juice. We ordered four ham and cheese sandwiches for the road. Then Lupe went into the women's room, and Belano, Lima, and I went into the men's room, where we proceeded to wash our faces, hands, and necks, and use the facilities. When we came out the sky was a deep blue, as blue as I'd ever seen it, and there were lots of cars driving north. Lupe was nowhere to be seen, so after waiting a prudent amount of time, we went looking for her in the ladies' room. We found her brushing her teeth. She looked at us and we left without a word. Next to Lupe, bent over the other sink, was a woman in her fifties, brushing long black hair that fell to her waist.

Belano said we had to go into Culiacán to buy toothbrushes. Lima shrugged and said he didn't care. I said that I thought we had no time to lose, although actually time was the only thing we had more than enough of. In the end, Belano got his way. In a supermarket on the outskirts of Culiacán we bought toothbrushes and other personal hygiene things that we would need and then we turned around and left without going into the city.

JANUARY 4

We passed through Navojoa, Ciudad Obregón, and Hermosillo like ghosts. We were in Sonora, although I'd felt as if we were in Sonora ever since Sinaloa. Sometimes we saw pitahayas, nopals, or saguaros rising alongside the road in the noonday glare. In the Hermosillo municipal library, Belano, Lima, and I searched for traces of Cesárea Tinajero. We couldn't find anything. When we got back to the car Lupe was asleep on the backseat and two men were standing on the sidewalk, motionless, watching her. Belano thought it might be Alberto and one of his friends and we separated to approach them. Lupe's dress had ridden up around her hips and the men were masturbating, their hands in their pockets. Get lost, said Arturo, and they went, turning to watch us as they retreated. Then we were in Caborca. If that's what Cesárea's magazine was called, it must have been for some reason, said Belano. Caborca is a little town northwest of Hermosillo. To get there we took the federal highway to Santa Ana and from Santa Ana we turned west along a paved road. We passed through Pueblo Nuevo and Altar. Before we got to Caborca we saw a turnoff and a sign with the name of another town: Pitiquito. But we drove on and got to Caborca, where we wandered around the town hall and the church, talking to everyone, searching in vain for someone who could tell us something about Cesárea Tinajero until night fell and we got in the car again, because Caborca didn't even have a boardinghouse or a little hotel where we could stay (and if it did we couldn't find it). So that night we slept in the car and when we woke up we headed back to Caborca, got gas, and drove to Pitiquito. I have a hunch, said Belano. In Pitiquito we had a good meal and we went to see the church of San Diego del Pitiquito, from the outside, because Lupe said she didn't want to go in and we didn't really feel like it either.

JANUARY 5

We're heading northeast, along a good road, as far as Cananea, then south along a dirt road to Bacanuchi, and then on to 16 de Septiembre and Arizpe. I've stopped going along with Belano and Lima to ask questions. I stay in the car with Lupe or we get a beer. In Arizpe the road is better again and we head down to Banámichi and Huépac. From Huépac we head back up to Banámichi, this time without stopping, and return to Arizpe, turning east along a hellish dirt track to Los Hoyos, and from Los Hoyos, along a much better road, to Nacozari de García.

On the way out of Nacozari a patrolman stops us and asks for the car's papers. Are you from Nacozari, officer? Lupe asks him. The patrolman looks at her and says no, why would she think that, he's from Hermosillo. Belano and Lima laugh. They get out to stretch their legs. Then Lupe gets out and she and Arturo whisper to each other a little. The other officer gets out of his car too and comes over to talk to his partner, who is busy deciphering Quim's papers and Lima's driver's license. The two officers watch Lupe, who has walked a few yards away from the road, into a stony yellow landscape with darker patches, minuscule plants colored a nauseating brownish-purple-green. The brown, green, and purple of permanent exposure to an eclipse.

So where are you from? says the second officer. From Mexico City, I hear Belano answer. Mexiquillos? says the patrolman. More or less, says Belano, with a smile that frightens me. Who is this jerk? I think, but I'm thinking about Belano, not the policeman, and about Lima too, who's leaning on the hood of the car and staring at a point on the horizon, between the clouds and the quebrachos.

Then the policeman returns our papers and Lima and Belano ask him the shortest way to Santa Teresa. The second patrolman goes back to his car and gets out a map. When we leave the patrolmen wave goodbye. The paved road soon becomes a dirt road again. There are no cars, just a pickup truck every once in a while loaded with sacks or men. We pass towns called Aribabi, Huachinera, Bacerac, and Bavispe before we realize that we're lost. Just before dark a town suddenly appears in the distance that might or might not be Villaviciosa, but it's too much effort to find the way there. For the first time, Belano and Lima look nervous. Lupe is immune to the pull of the town. As far as I'm concerned, I don't know what to think: I might feel strange things, I might just want to sleep, I might be dreaming for all I know. Then we turn down another terrible road that seems to go on forever. Belano and Lima want me to ask them tough questions. I assume they mean questions about meter, rhetoric, and style. I ask them one and then I fall asleep. Lupe's sleeping too. In the time it takes me to fall asleep, I hear Belano and Lima talking. They talk about Mexico City, about Laura Damián and Laura Jáuregui, about a poet I've never heard of before, and they laugh, apparently the poet is a nice guy, a good person, they talk about people who are publishing magazines and who I gather are naïve or unsophisticated or just desperate. I like to hear them talk. Belano talks more than Lima, but both of them laugh a lot. They also talk about Quim's Impala. Sometimes, when there are lots of potholes in the road, the car jumps in a way that Belano doesn't think is normal. Lima thinks it's the noise the engine makes that isn't normal. Before I fall into a deep sleep I realize that neither of them knows anything about cars. When I wake up we're in Santa Teresa. Belano and Lima are smoking and the Impala is circling around the city center.

We check into a hotel, the Hotel Juárez, on Calle Juárez, Lupe taking one room and the three of us taking another. The only window in our room looks onto an alley. At the end of the alley, which runs into Calle Juárez, there's a gathering of shadowy figures who talk in low voices, although every so often someone curses or starts to shout for no reason, and after a prolonged period of observation, I see one of the shadows raise an arm and point at the window I'm watching from. At the other end of the alley, trash piles up, and it's even darker, if possible, although among the buildings one stands out, one that's a little more brightly lit. It's the back of the Hotel Santa Elena, with a tiny door that no one uses, except for a kitchen worker who comes out once with a trash can and stops beside the door when he goes back in, craning his neck to watch the traffic on Calle Juárez.

JANUARY 6

Belano and Lima spent all morning at the Municipal Registry Office, the census office, a few churches, the Santa Teresa Library, the university archives, and the archives of the only newspaper here, El Centinela de Santa Teresa. We met for lunch in the main square, next to an odd statue commemorating the victory of the locals over the French. In the afternoon, Belano and Lima are resuming their search. They have a meeting, they said, with the number one man in the literature department at the university, a jerk named Horacio Guerra, who is (surprise!) the spitting image of Octavio Paz, but in miniature, and that goes for his name too, if you think about it, said Belano, so tell me, García Madero, did Horace live in the same era as Caesar Augustus? I told him I didn't know. Let me think, I said. But they were in a rush and they started to talk about other things and when they went off I was left alone with Lupe again, and I thought about taking her to the movies, but since Lima and Belano had the money and I'd forgotten to ask them for some we couldn't go, and we had to settle for walking around Santa Teresa and window-shopping at the stores in the center and then going back to the hotel and watching television in a room off the lobby. There we met two little old ladies who, after staring at us for a while, asked us whether we were husband and wife. Lupe said yes. I had no choice but to play along, though the whole time I was thinking about what Belano and Lima had asked me, whether Horace had lived in the same era as Caesar Augustus, and I thought he had, my instinct would've been to say yes, but I also had the feeling that Horace wasn't exactly a champion of Augustus, and Lupe was talking to the old ladies, snoopy old ladies, as it turned out, and I don't know why but I kept thinking about Augustus and Horace and listening with my left ear to the soap opera that was on TV and with my right ear to Lupe and the old ladies talking, and suddenly my memory went plumph, like a soft wall collapsing, and I saw Horace fighting against Augustus or Octavian and for Brutus and Cassius, who had murdered Caesar and wanted to bring back the Republic, shit, it couldn't have been weirder if I had dropped acid, I saw Horace, twenty-four at Philippi, only a little older than Belano or Lima and just seven years older than me, and that bastard Horace, who was staring into the distance, suddenly turned around and looked at me! Hello, García Madero, he said in Latin, although I don't understand a fucking word of Latin, I'm Horace, born in Venusia in 65 B.C., son of a freed slave (the most loving father anyone could ask for), appointed tribune under Brutus, ready to march into battle, the Battle of Philippi, which we'll lose but which I'm destined to fight, the Battle of Philippi, where the fate of mankind is at stake, and then one of the old ladies touched my arm and asked me what had brought me to the city of Santa Teresa, and I saw Lupe's smiling eyes and the eyes of the other old lady, which were shooting sparks as she watched Lupe and me, and I answered that we were on our honeymoon, our honeymoon, ma'am, I said, and then I got up and told Lupe to follow me and we went to her room where we fucked like crazy or as if we were going to die the next morning, until it got dark and we heard the voices of Lima and Belano, who had come back to their room and were talking, talking, talking.

JANUARY 7

Now we know for sure: Cesárea Tinajero was here. There was no trace of her at the registry, or the university, or the parish archives, or the library, where for some reason the archives of the old Santa Teresa hospital, now called the General Sepúlveda Hospital after the Revolutionary hero, are stored. And yet, at the Centinela de Santa Teresa they let Belano and Lima comb through the morgue and in the news from 1928 there was a June 6 mention of a bullfighter named Pepe Avellaneda, who fought two bulls from Don José Forcat's stock in the Santa Teresa bullring with considerable success (two ears) and of whom there's a profile and interview in the June 11, 1928, issue, in which it says, among other things, that Pepe Avellaneda was traveling in the company of a woman named Cesárea Tinaja [sic], formerly of Mexico City. There are no photographs with the piece, but the local reporter describes her as "tall, attractive, and reserved," although I frankly have no idea what he could mean by that, unless he's saying it to emphasize the difference between the woman and the bullfighter she was accompanying, who is described, somewhat bluntly, as a little man, no more than five feet tall, very thin, with a big dented skull, a description that reminds Belano and Lima of a Hemingway bullfighter (Hemingway's an author I unfortunately haven't read), the typical brave and luckless Hemingway bullfighter, more sad than anything else, deathly sad, although I wouldn't dare say as much with so little to go on, and anyway Cesárea Tinajero is one thing and Cesárea Tinaja is another, which is something my friends refuse to admit, chalking it up it to a misprint, a bad transcription, or the reporter's faulty hearing, and maybe even an intentional slip on Cesárea Tinajero's part, saying her name wrong, a joke, a modest way of hiding a modest clue.

The rest of the article is unremarkable. Pepe Avellaneda talks about bullfighting, saying incomprehensible or incongruous things, but so mildly that he never sounds pedantic. A final clue: the July 10 issue of the Centinela de Santa Teresa announces the departure of the bullfighter (and presumably his companion) for Sonoyta, where he will share billing in the ring with Jesús Ortiz Pacheco, bullfighter from Monterrey. So Cesárea and Avellaneda were in Santa Teresa for about a month, evidently doing nothing, seeing the local sights or holed up in their hotel. In any case, according to Lima and Belano we now had someone who knew Cesárea, who knew her well, and who plausibly still lived in Sonora, although with bullfighters you never know. Their response to my argument that Avellaneda might be dead was that we would still have his family and friends. So now we were looking for Cesárea and the bullfighter. They told outrageous stories about Horacio Guerra. They said again that he was exactly like Octavio Paz. Considering the short time they'd spent with him I don't know how they could know so much about him, but they said that his acolytes in this lost corner of Sonora were carbon copies of Paz's acolytes. As if in this forgotten province, forgotten poets, essayists, and professors were simulating the mass-media actions of their idols.

At first, they said, Guerra was extremely interested in knowing who Cesárea Tinajero was, but his interest evaporated when Belano and Lima explained the avant-garde nature of her work, and how little of it there was.

JANUARY 8

We didn't find anything in Sonoyta. On our way back we stopped in Caborca again. Belano insisted it couldn't be just a coincidence that Cesárea had named her magazine after it. But once again we found nothing to suggest that the poet had ever been there.

In the archives of the Hermosillo paper, on the other hand, we stumbled on our first day of searching upon the announcement of Pepe Avellaneda's death. On the fragile old sheets we read that the bullfighter had died in the Agua Prieta bullring, charged by the bull as he prepared to deliver the coup de grâce, a thing at which Avellaneda had never excelled given how short he was: no matter the size of the bull, he had to leap to kill it and as he leaped his little body was unprotected, vulnerable to the beast's slightest lunge.

It didn't take him long to die. Avellaneda bled to death in his hotel room at the Agua Prieta Excelsior, and two days later he was buried in the Agua Prieta cemetery. There was no service. The mayor, the top municipal authorities, and the Monterrey bullfighter Jesús Ortiz Pacheco attended the burial, as did some aficionados who had seen Avellaneda die and wanted to pay their last respects. The story raised two or three lingering questions and convinced us to visit Agua Prieta.

First of all, according to Belano, the reporter was probably going by hearsay. It was possible, of course, that the main Hermosillo newspaper had a correspondent in Agua Prieta and that this correspondent had sent in his account of the tragic event by telegraph, but what was clear (though why I don't know, incidentally) was that here, in Hermosillo, the story had been embellished, lengthened, polished, made more literary. A question: who sat in the vigil over Avellaneda's body? A curious detail: who was the bullfighter Ortiz Pacheco, whose shadow seemed to cling to Avellaneda's? Was he touring Sonora with Avellaneda or was his presence in Agua Prieta purely coincidental? As we feared, we found no other news of Avellaneda in the Hermosillo archives, as if once the death of the bullfighter had been witnessed, he had fallen into absolute oblivion, which, after all, was only natural. The vein of information was exhausted. So we made our way to the Peña Taurina Pilo Yáñez, located in the old part of the city, a family bar with a faintly Spanish air where the Hermosillo tauromachy fanatics gathered. No one there knew anything about a pint-size bullfighter called Pepe Avellaneda, but when we told them that he was active in the 1920s, and the name of the bullring where he was killed, they referred us to a little old man who knew everything about the bullfighter Ortiz Pacheco (again!) although his favorite was Pilo Yáñez, Sultan of Caborca (Caborca yet again), a nickname that we, unfamiliar with the labyrinthine byways of Mexican bullfighting, thought seemed more fitting for a boxer.

The old man's name was Jesús Pintado and he remembered Pepe Avellaneda, Pepín Avellaneda, he called him, a bullfighter who never had much luck but was braver than most, from Sonora, possibly, or maybe Sinaloa or Chihuahua, although he made his name in Sonora, which meant that he was Sonoran by adoption if nothing else, killed in Agua Prieta on a bill he shared with Ortiz Pacheco and Efrén Salazar, during Agua Prieta's big fiesta, in May 1930. Señor Pintado, do you know whether he had any family? asked Belano. The old man didn't know. Do you know whether he traveled with a woman? The old man laughed and looked at Lupe. All of them traveled with women or picked them up along the way, he said. In those days, men were wild and some of the women were too. But you don't know? said Belano. The old man didn't know. Is Ortiz Pacheco alive? said Belano. The old man said yes. Do you know where we could find him, Señor Pintado? The old man said the bullfighter had a ranch near El Cuatro. What's that, said Belano, a town, a road, a restaurant? The old man looked at us as if he had suddenly recognized us from somewhere, then he said it was a town.

JANUARY 9

To make the trip go faster, I started to draw pictures, puzzles that I was taught in school a long time ago. Although there are no cowboys here. No one wears a cowboy hat here. Here there's only desert, and towns like mirages, and bare hills.

"What's this?" I said.

Lupe looked at the drawing as if she didn't feel like playing, and was silent. Belano and Lima didn't know either.

"An elegiac verse?" said Lima.

"No. A Mexican seen from above," I said. "And this one?"

"A Mexican smoking a pipe," said Lupe.

"And this one?"

"A Mexican on a tricycle," said Lupe. "A Mexican boy on a tricycle."

"And this one?"

"Five Mexicans peeing in a urinal," said Lima.

"And this one?"

"A Mexican on a bicycle," said Lupe.

"Or a Mexican on a tightrope," said Lima.

"And this one?"

"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.

JANUARY 10

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.

The night before he died, for example, as the two bullfighters were drinking at a bar in Agua Prieta and just before they both returned to the hotel, Avellaneda started to talk about Aztlán. At first he spoke as if he were telling a secret, as if he didn't really want to talk, but as the minutes went by he grew more and more excited. Ortiz Pacheco didn't even know what Aztlán meant, never having heard the word before in his life. So Avellaneda explained it to him from the beginning, telling him about the sacred city of the first Mexicans, the city of legend, the undiscovered city, Plato's true Atlantis, and when they got back to the hotel, half drunk, Ortiz Pacheco thought that only Cesárea could be responsible for such wild ideas. She was alone most of the time during the wake, shut in her room or sitting in a corner of the Excelsior's hall, which was done up like a funeral parlor. No women offered her their condolences. Only the men, and in private, since it hadn't escaped anyone that she was just the mistress. She didn't say a word at the burial. There were speeches by the town treasurer, who was also what you might call the official poet of Agua Prieta, and the president of the bullfighting society, but she didn't speak. Nor, according to Ortiz Pacheco, was she seen to shed a single tear. Though she did commission the mason to carve some words on Avellaneda's tombstone, what they were, Ortiz Pacheco couldn't remember, strange words, in any case, in the same style as Aztlán, he seemed to recall, and surely invented by her for the occasion. Invented, not requested, was what he said. Belano and Lima asked him what the words were. Ortiz Pacheco thought for a while but finally said he'd forgotten them.

That night we slept at the ranch. Belano and Lima slept in the main room (there were many bedrooms, but they were all uninhabitable), Lupe and I in the car. I woke up just as the sun was rising and took a piss in the yard, watching the first pale yellow (but also blue) lights slipping stealthily across the desert. I lit a cigarette and spent a while watching the horizon and breathing. In the distance I thought I spotted a plume of dust, but then I realized it was just a low cloud. Low and motionless. It seemed strange not to hear any animal sounds. And yet every once in a while, if you paid attention, you could hear a bird singing. When I turned around, Lupe was watching me from one of the windows of the Impala. Her short black hair was a mess and she seemed thinner than before, as if she were turning invisible, as if the morning were painlessly dissolving her, but at the same time she seemed more beautiful than ever.

We went into the house together. In the main room, we found Lima, Belano, and Ortiz Pacheco, each in a leather armchair. The old bullfighter was wrapped in a serape and he was asleep with a startled expression on his face. As Lupe made coffee, I woke my friends. I was afraid to wake Ortiz Pacheco. I think he's dead, I whispered. Belano stretched, his joints cracking. He said it had been a long time since he slept so well and then he took it upon himself to wake our host. As we were having breakfast, Ortiz Pacheco said that he'd had a strange dream. Did you dream about your friend Avellaneda? said Belano. No, not at all, said Ortiz Pacheco, I dreamed that I was ten years old and my family was moving from Monterrey to Hermosillo. In those days that must have been a very long trip, said Lima. Very long, yes, said Ortiz Pacheco, but happy.

JANUARY 11

We went to Agua Prieta, to the Agua Prieta cemetery. From La Buena Vida to Trincheras first, and then from Trincheras to Pueblo Nuevo, Santa Ana, San Ignacio, Ímuris, Cananea, and Agua Prieta, right on the Arizona border.

On the other side of the border was Douglas, an American town, and in between was customs and the border police. On the other side of Douglas, about forty miles northwest, was Tombstone, where the best American gunmen once gathered. As we were eating at a coffee shop, we heard two stories: one demonstrating the value of all things Mexican and the other the value of all things American. In one, the protagonist was from Agua Prieta, and in the other he was from Tombstone.

When the man who was telling the stories, a guy with long gray-streaked hair who talked as if his head hurt, left the coffee shop, the man who'd been listening started to laugh for no apparent reason, or as if he'd needed a couple of minutes to make sense of the stories he'd heard. Really, it was just two jokes. In the first, the sheriff and one of his deputies take a prisoner from his cell and lead him far out into the country to kill him. The prisoner knows what's happening and is more or less resigned to his fate. It's a harsh winter, day is dawning, and prisoner and executioners alike are complaining of the cold in the desert. At a certain moment, though, the prisoner starts to laugh, and the sheriff says what the hell's so funny, has he forgotten that he's about to be killed and buried where no one can find him? has he lost his mind? And the prisoner says, and this is the punch line, that he's laughing because in a few minutes he won't be cold, but the lawmen will have to walk back.

The other story tells of the execution of Colonel Guadalupe Sánchez, prodigal son of Agua Prieta, who at the moment he faced the firing squad asked, as a last wish, to smoke a cigar. The commanding officer granted him his wish. He was given his last Havana. Guadalupe Sánchez lit it calmly and began to smoke in a leisurely manner, savoring it and watching the sun come up (because like the Tombstone story, this one takes place at dawn, maybe even unfolding on the same morning, the morning of May 15, 1912), and, wreathed in smoke, Colonel Sánchez was so relaxed, so unruffled, so serene, that the ash stayed glued to the cigar, which might have been the colonel's intention, to see for himself if his pulse would quicken, if in the end his hand would shake and show he'd lost his nerve, but he finished the Havana and the ash didn't fall. Then Colonel Sánchez tossed away the butt and said whenever you like.

That was the story.

When the recipient of the stories stopped laughing, Belano asked himself a few questions out loud: is the prisoner who's going to die outside of Tombstone from Tombstone? or just the sheriff and his deputy? was Colonel Guadalupe Sánchez from Agua Prieta? was the commander of the firing squad from Agua Prieta? why did they kill the Tombstone prisoner like a dog? why did they kill mi coronel [sic] Lupe Sánchez like a dog? Everyone in the coffee shop was looking at him, but no one said anything. Lima took him by the shoulder and said: come on, man, let's go. Belano looked at him with a smile and put a few bills on the counter. Then we left for the cemetery and went looking for the gravestone of Pepe Avellaneda, who was killed because he was gored by a bull or because he was too short and clumsy with his sword, a gravestone with an epitaph written by Cesárea Tinajero, and no matter how long we looked, we couldn't find it. The Agua Prieta cemetery was the closest thing we'd seen to a labyrinth, and the cemetery's veteran gravedigger, the only one who knew exactly where each dead person was buried, was away on vacation or out sick.

JANUARY 12

So if you travel with a bullfighter, in the long run you end up liking that world? said Lupe. I guess so, said Belano. And if you're with a policeman, do you end up liking the policeman's world? I guess so, said Belano. And if you're with a pimp, do you end up liking the pimp's world? Belano didn't answer. Strange, because he always tries to answer every question, even when no answer is needed or the question is beside the point. Lima, on the other hand, talks less and less, just driving the Impala with an absent look on his face. Blind as we are, I think we haven't noticed how Lupe is beginning to change.

JANUARY 13

Today we called Mexico City for the first time. Belano talked to Quim Font. Quim said Lupe's pimp knew where we were and was coming after us. Belano said that was impossible. Alberto had followed us to the edge of the city and we'd managed to lose him there. Yes, said Quim, but then he came back here and threatened to kill me if I didn't tell him where you were going. I took the phone and told him I wanted to talk to María. I heard Quim's voice. He was crying. Hello? I said. I want to talk to María. Is that you, García Madero? sobbed Quim. I thought you'd have gone home. I'm here, I said. I thought I heard Quim sniff. Belano and Lima were talking in low voices. They had moved away from the phone and looked worried. Lupe stayed close to me, close to the phone, as if she were cold, even though it wasn't cold. She had her back turned to me, and she was looking toward the gas station where we'd parked. Take the first bus and come back to Mexico City, I heard Quim say. If you don't have money I'll send it to you. We have more than enough money, I said. Is María there? No one's here, I'm alone, sobbed Quim. For a while we were both silent. How is my car? that voice from another world said suddenly. Fine, I said, everything's fine. We're getting closer to finding Cesárea Tinajero, I lied. Who's Cesárea Tinajero? said Quim.

JANUARY 14

We bought clothes in Hermosillo and a bathing suit for each of us. Then we went to pick up Belano at the library (where he'd spent the morning, in the firm belief that a poet always leaves a written trail, a belief borne out by none of the evidence so far) and went to the beach. We paid for two rooms at a boardinghouse in Bahía Kino. The sea is dark blue. It was the first time Lupe had seen it.

JANUARY 15

An excursion: our Impala set off down the road that dangles along one side of the Gulf of California, to Punta Chueca, across from the island of Tiburón. Then we went on to El Dólar, across from the island of Patos. Lying on a deserted beach, we spent hours smoking weed. Punta Chueca-Tiburón, Dólar-Patos: they're only names, of course, but they fill my soul with dread, as one of Amado Nervo's contemporaries might say. What is it about those names that makes me feel so upset, sad, fatalistic, that makes me look at Lupe as if she were the last woman on earth? A little before nightfall we headed farther north, to where Desemboque rises. Darkness in my soul. I think I actually shuddered. And then we turned around and went back to Bahía Kino along a dark road. Every so often we'd pass a pickup full of Seri fishermen singing one of their songs.

JANUARY 16

Belano has bought a knife.

JANUARY 17

Back in Agua Prieta. We left Bahía Kino at eight in the morning. The route we took was from Bahía Kino to Punta Chueca, Punta Chueca to El Dólar, El Dólar to Desemboque, Desemboque to Las Estrellas, and Las Estrellas to Trincheras. About one hundred and fifty miles along terrible roads. If we had taken the Bahía Kino-El Triunfo-Hermosillo route, the highway from Hermosillo to San Ignacio, and then the road to Cananea and Agua Prieta, we would almost certainly have had a more comfortable trip and gotten there sooner. And yet we all decided that it was better to travel along roads without much traffic, or with no traffic at all, and we liked the idea of stopping at La Buena Vida again. But we got lost in the triangle between El Cuatro, Trincheras, and La Ciénaga and finally we decided to drive all the way to Trincheras and visit the old bullfighter another time.

When we parked the Impala at the gates of the Agua Prieta cemetery, it was starting to get dark. Belano and Lima rang the bell for the watchman. After a while, a man with a face so sun-beaten that it looked black came to the door. He was wearing glasses and had a big scar on the left side of his face. He asked us what we wanted. Belano said that we were looking for the gravedigger Andrés González Ahumada. The man looked at us and asked who we were and what we wanted him for. Belano said it was about the bullfighter Pepe Avellaneda's grave. We want to see it, we said. I'm Andrés González Ahumada, said the gravedigger, and this is hardly the time of day to visit a cemetery. Please? said Lupe. And why are you so interested, if you don't mind my asking? said the gravedigger. Belano went up to the bars and spent a few minutes conferring with the man in a low voice. The gravedigger nodded several times and then he went into his little hut and came out again with an enormous key he used to let us in. We followed him along the cemetery's main path, a walk lined with cypresses and old oaks. When we turned down the side paths, however, we saw some cactuses native to the region: choyas and sahuesos and a nopal or two, as if to remind the dead that they were in Sonora and not some other place.

This is the bullfighter Pepe Avellaneda's grave, said the gravedigger, gesturing toward a niche in a neglected corner. Belano and Lima went over and tried to read the inscription, but the niche was four levels up and night was already falling over the cemetery paths. There were no flowers at any of the graves, except one where four plastic carnations hung, and most of the inscriptions were covered in dust. Then Belano interlaced his fingers, making a little seat or stirrup, and Lima stepped up, pressing his face to the glass over Avellaneda's photograph. What he did next was wipe the plaque with his hand and read the inscription aloud: "José Avellaneda Tinajero, matador, Nogales 1903-Agua Prieta 1930." Is that all? I heard Belano say. That's all, replied Lima's voice, hoarser than ever. Then he jumped down and did as Belano had done, making a step with his hands so that Belano could climb up. Give me the lighter, Lupe, I heard Belano say. Lupe went up to the pathetic figure composed of my two friends and without saying anything handed him a box of matches. What about my lighter? said Belano. I don't have it, mano, said Lupe, in a sweet voice that I still wasn't used to. Belano lit a match and held it up to the niche. When it went out he lit another, and then another. Lupe was leaning against the wall across from him, her long legs crossed. She was staring at the ground, looking pensive. Lima was staring at the ground too, but his face only expressed the effort of supporting Belano's weight. After using up seven matches and burning the tips of his fingers a few times, Belano gave up and got down. We walked back out toward the gate of the Agua Prieta cemetery without speaking. There, by the door, Belano gave the gravedigger a few bills and we left.

JANUARY 18

In Santa Teresa, when we went into a café with a big mirror behind the bar, I realized how much we had changed. Belano hasn't shaved for days. Lima doesn't need to shave, but he probably hasn't combed his hair since around the time Belano stopped shaving. I'm all skin and bones (I've been screwing three times a night, on average). Only Lupe looks good, or anyway better than she did when we left Mexico City.

JANUARY 19

Was Cesárea Tinajero the dead bullfighter's cousin? Was she a distant relative? Did she ask them to put her own last name on the plaque, give Avellaneda her own name, as a way of saying this man is mine? Did she add her name to the bullfighter's name as a joke? A way of saying Cesárea Tinajero was here? It hardly matters. Today we called Mexico City again. All quiet at Quim's. Belano talked to Quim, Lima talked to Quim. When I tried to talk the phone went dead, although we had plenty of coins. I got the impression that Quim didn't want to talk to me and that he hung up. Then Belano called his father and Lima called his mother and then Belano called Laura Jáuregui. The first two conversations were relatively long, formal, and the last was very short. Only Lupe and I didn't call anyone in Mexico City, as if we didn't feel like it or didn't have anyone to talk to.

JANUARY 20

This morning, while we were eating breakfast at a café in Nogales, we saw Alberto behind the wheel of his Camaro. He was wearing a shirt the same color as the car, bright yellow, and next to him was a guy in a leather jacket who looked like a cop. Lupe recognized him right away: she turned pale and said Alberto's here. She didn't let her fear show, but I knew she was afraid. Lima followed Lupe's gaze and said yes, it was Alberto and one of his buddies. Belano watched the car go by through the big café windows and told us we were hallucinating. I saw Alberto perfectly clearly. Let's get out of here now, I said. Belano looked at us and said no way. First we would go to the Nogales library and then head back to Hermosillo to continue our search, as we had planned. Lima agreed. I like your stubbornness, man, he said. So they finished their breakfasts (neither Lupe nor I could eat anything else) and then we left the café, got in the Impala, and dropped Belano off at the door to the library. Be brave, for fuck's sake, don't go imagining things, he said before disappearing. Lima watched the library door for a while, as if trying to come up with a reply, and then he started the car. You saw him, Ulises, said Lupe, it was him. I think so, said Lima. What will we do if he finds me? said Lupe. Lima didn't answer. We parked the car on a deserted street, in a middle-class neighborhood, with no bars or stores in sight except for a fruit stand, and Lupe started to tell us stories from her childhood and then I started to tell stories about when I was a boy too, just to kill time, and although Ulises didn't open his mouth once and started to read a book, still sitting behind the wheel, you could tell he was listening because every so often he would raise his eyes and look at us and smile. At noon we went to pick up Belano. Lima parked close to a nearby plaza and said that I should go to the library. He would stay with Lupe and the Impala in case Alberto showed up and they had to get out of there fast. I walked the four blocks to the library quickly, looking straight ahead the whole way. I found Belano sitting at a long wooden table, stained dark by the passage of time, with several bound volumes of the Nogales local paper. He was the only person in the library, and when I got there he raised his head and motioned for me to come and sit next to him.

JANUARY 21

The only image I took away from the Nogales newspaper's obituary of Pepín Avellaneda is of Cesárea Tinajero walking along a dreary desert road hand in hand with her little bullfighter, a little bullfighter who's struggling not to keep shrinking, who's struggling to grow, and who in fact begins to grow little by little, say until he reaches five and a half feet, then disappears.

JANUARY 22

In El Cubo. To get from Nogales to El Cubo you have to take the highway to Santa Ana and head west, from Santa Ana to Pueblo Nuevo, Pueblo Nuevo to Altar, Altar to Caborca, Caborca to San Isidro, then take the road to Sonoyta, on the Arizona border, but turn off onto a dirt road before you get there and go about fifteen or twenty miles. The Nogales newspaper talked about "his faithful companion, a devoted teacher in El Cubo." In the town we went to the school, and one glance was enough to tell us that it had been built after 1940. Cesárea Tinajero couldn't have taught here. Though if we dug around under it, we might be able to find the old school.

We talked to the teacher. She teaches the children Spanish and Pápago. The Pápagos live in Arizona and Sonora. We asked the teacher whether she was Pápago. No, she isn't. I'm from Guaymas, she tells us, and my grandfather was a Mayo. We ask her why she teaches Pápago. So the language won't be lost, she tells us. There are only two hundred Pápagos left in Mexico. You're right, that's not many, we admit. In Arizona there are almost sixteen thousand, but only two hundred in Mexico. And how many Pápagos are left in El Cubo? About twenty, says the teacher, but it doesn't matter, I'll keep teaching. Then she explains that the Pápagos don't call themselves that. They call themselves O'Odham and the Pimas call themselves Óob and the Seris call themselves Konkáak. We tell her that we were in Bahía Kino, in Punta Chueca, and El Dólar and we heard the fishermen singing Seri songs. The teacher is surprised. There are seven hundred Konkáak, she says, if that, and they don't fish. Well, these fishermen had learned a Seri song, we say. Maybe, says the teacher, but more likely they fooled you. Later she invited us to her house for dinner. She lives alone. We asked her whether she wouldn't like to live in Hermosillo or Mexico City. She said no. She likes this place. Then we went to see an old Pápago woman who lived half a mile from El Cubo. The old woman's house was adobe. It consisted of three rooms, two empty and one in which she lived with her animals. And yet the smell was hardly noticeable, swept away by the desert wind that came in through the glassless windows.

The teacher explained to the old woman in her language that we wanted news of Cesárea Tinajero. The old woman listened to the teacher and looked at us and said: huh. Belano and Lima looked at each other for a second and I knew they were wondering whether the old woman's huh meant something different in Pápago or whether it meant what we thought it did. A good person, said the old woman. She lived with a good man. Both of them good. The teacher looked at us and smiled. What was the man like? said Belano, gesturing to indicate different heights. Medium tall, said the old woman, skinny, medium tall, light-colored eyes. Light like this? said Belano, picking an almond-colored branch from the wall. Light like that, said the old woman. Medium tall like this? said Belano, holding up his index finger to a level suggesting someone on the short side. Medium tall, that's right, said the old woman. And what about Cesárea Tinajero? said Belano. Alone, said the old woman, she left with her man and came back alone. How long was she here? As long as the school, good teacher, said the old woman. A year? said Belano. The old woman looked through Belano and Lima, as if she didn't see them. She looked sympathetically at Lupe, asking her something in Pápago. The teacher translated: which of these men is yours? Lupe smiled. She was behind me and I couldn't see her, but I knew she was smiling. She said: none of them. She didn't have a man either, said the old woman. One day she went away with him and later she came back alone. Was she still teaching? said Belano. The old woman said something in Pápago. She lived in the school, translated the teacher, but she didn't teach anymore. Things are better now, said the old woman. Don't be so sure, said the teacher. And then what happened? The old woman spoke in Pápago, stringing together words that only the teacher understood, but she looked at us and at last she smiled. She lived in the school for a while and then she left, said the teacher. It seems she lost weight, was very thin, but I'm not sure, the old woman gets things mixed up sometimes, said the teacher. Though considering that she wasn't working, that she didn't have a salary, it seems only natural that she would lose weight, said the teacher. She must not have had much money for food. She ate, said the old woman suddenly, and we all jumped. I gave her food, my mother gave her food. She was skin and bones. Her eyes sunken. She looked like a coral snake. A coral snake? said Belano. Micruroides euryxanthus, said the teacher. Poisonous. So clearly you were good friends, said Belano. And when did she leave? After a while, said the old woman, without specifying how much time she meant. For the Pápagos, said the teacher, measuring time is as meaningless as measuring eternity. And how was she when she left? said Belano. Thin as a coral snake, said the old woman.

Later, a little before dusk, the old woman came with us to El Cubo to show us the house where Cesárea Tinajero had lived. It was near some corrals that were so old they were falling apart, the wood of the cross-pieces rotten, next to what must have been a toolshed, although it was empty now. The house was small, with a dried-up yard to one side, and when we got there we could see light through its only front window. Should we knock? said Belano. There's no point, said Lima. So we went walking back again, through the hills, to the old Pápago woman's house, and thanked her for everything, and then we said good night and headed back alone to El Cubo, although really she was the one who was left alone.

That night we slept at the teacher's house. After we ate, Lima settled down to read William Blake, Belano and the teacher took a walk in the desert and went into her room when they got back, and after Lupe and I washed the dishes, we went out to smoke a cigarette while we watched the stars, and made love in the Impala. When we came back into the house we found Lima asleep on the floor with the book in his hands and a familiar murmur coming from the teacher's room, indicating that neither she nor Belano would appear again for the rest of the night. So we covered Lima with a blanket, made a bed for ourselves on the floor, and turned out the light. At eight in the morning the teacher went into her room and woke up Belano. The bathroom was an outhouse in the backyard. When I returned, the windows were open and there was café de olla on the table.

We said goodbye outside. The teacher didn't want us to give her a ride to the school. When we got back to Hermosillo, I had the feeling that not only had I already been over every inch of this fucking land, but that I'd been born here.

JANUARY 23

We've been to the Sonora Cultural Institute, the National Indian Institute, the Bureau of Folk Culture (Sonora Regional Branch), the National Education Counsel, the Records Office of the Ministry of Education (Sonora Region), and the Peña Taurina Pilo Yáñez for the second time. Only at the last was anybody friendly.

Traces of Cesárea Tinajero keep appearing and disappearing. The sky in Hermosillo is bloodred. Belano was asked for papers, his papers, when he requested the old registers of rural teachers, which had to contain a record of Cesárea's destination after she left El Cubo. Belano's papers weren't in order. A secretary at the university told him that at the very least he could be deported. Where? shouted Belano. Back to your country, young man, said the secretary. Are you illiterate? said Belano, didn't you read here that I'm Chilean? You might as well shoot me in the head! They called the police and we went running. I had no idea that Belano was here illegally.

JANUARY 24

Belano is more nervous every day and Lima is more withdrawn. Today we saw Alberto and his policeman friend. Belano didn't see him or didn't want to see him. Lima did see him, but he doesn't care. Only Lupe and I are worried (very worried) about the inevitable showdown with her former pimp. It's no big deal, said Belano, to put an end to the discussion. After all, there are twice as many of us as there are of them. I was such a nervous wreck that I started to laugh. I'm not a coward, but I'm not suicidal either. They're armed, said Lupe. So am I, said Belano. In the afternoon they sent me to the Records Office. I said that I was writing an article for a Mexico City magazine about the rural schools in Sonora in the 1930s. Such a young reporter, said the secretaries, who were painting their nails. I found the following clue: Cesárea Tinajero had been a teacher from 1930 to 1936. Her first posting was El Cubo. Then she taught in Hermosillo, Pitiquito, Bábaco, and Santa Teresa. After that she was no longer part of the teaching force of the state of Sonora.

JANUARY 25

According to Lupe, Alberto already knows where we are, what boarding-house we're staying at, and what car we're driving. He's just waiting for the right moment to launch a surprise attack. We went to see the Hermosillo school where Cesárea had worked. We asked about old teachers from the 1930s. They gave us the former principal's address. His house was next door to what was once the state penitentiary. It's a three-story stone building with a tower that rises above the other guard towers and inspires a feeling of dread. A work of architecture built to last, said the principal.

JANUARY 26

We drove to Pitiquito. Today Belano said that it might be best to go back to Mexico City. Lima doesn't care one way or the other. He says that at first he got tired of driving so much, but now he's gotten to like it. Even when he's asleep he dreams about driving Quim's Impala along these roads. Lupe doesn't talk about going back to Mexico City but she says that the best thing would be to hide. I don't want to be separated from her. I don't have plans either. Onward, then, says Belano. His hands, I notice when I lean over the front seat to ask him for a cigarette, are shaking.

JANUARY 27

We didn't find anything in Pitiquito. For a while we were stopped in the car on the road to Caborca that leads to the turnoff for El Cubo, trying to decide whether we should visit the teacher again or not. Belano had the final say and we waited patiently, watching the road, the few cars that passed every so often, the very white clouds blown over on the wind from the Pacific. Until Belano said let's go to Bábaco and Lima started the car without saying a word and turned right and we drove off.

The trip was long and took us places we'd never been, although I, at least, still had the constant feeling of having seen it all before. From Pitiquito we drove to Santa Ana and turned onto the highway. We took the highway to Hermosillo. From Hermosillo we took the road east to Mazatán, and from Mazatán to La Estrella. That was where the paved road ended, and we continued along dirt roads to Bacanora, Sahuaripa, and Bábaco. From the Bábaco school they sent us back to Sahuaripa, which was the municipal seat and supposedly the place where we could find the record books. But it was as if the Bábaco school, the school from the 1930s, had been swept away by a hurricane. We slept in the car again, like in the beginning. Night noises: wolf spiders, scorpions, centipedes, tarantulas, black widows, desert toads. All poisonous, all deadly. At moments the presence (or the imminence, I should say) of Alberto is as real as the night noises. Outside of Bábaco, where we've returned for no particular reason, we talk before we go to sleep about anything but Alberto. We keep the headlights on. We talk about Mexico City, about French poetry. Then Lima turns out the lights. Bábaco is dark too.

JANUARY 28

What if we find Alberto in Santa Teresa?

JANUARY 29

This is what we find: a teacher who's still working tells us that she knew Cesárea. They met in 1936, when our interlocutor was twenty. She had just been given the job and Cesárea had only been working at the school for a few months, so it was natural that they became friends. She didn't know the story of the bullfighter, or any other man. When Cesárea quit her job it took the teacher a while to understand it, but she accepted it as one of her friend's peculiarities.

For a while Cesárea disappeared: for months, maybe a year. But one morning the teacher saw her outside the school and they resumed their friendship. Back then Cesárea was thirty-five or thirty-six and the teacher considered her a spinster, although she regrets it now. Cesárea found work at the first canning factory in Santa Teresa. She lived in a room on Calle Rubén Darío, which at the time was in a remote neighborhood, dangerous or at least unsuitable for a woman. Did she know that Cesárea was a poet? She didn't. When both of them were working at the school, she often saw Cesárea write, sitting in her empty classroom, in a thick notebook with black covers that she always carried with her. She imagined it was a diary. During the time Cesárea worked at the canning factory, when they met in the center of Santa Teresa to go to the movies or to go shopping, when she was late she often found Cesárea writing in a notebook with black covers, like the previous one, but smaller, a notebook that looked like a prayer book and in which her friend's tiny handwriting flowed like a stampede of insects. Cesárea never read anything to her. Once she asked her what she was writing about and Cesárea said a Greek woman. The Greek woman's name was Hypatia. Sometime later the teacher looked up the name in the encyclopedia and learned that Hypatia was an Alexandrian philosopher killed by Christians in 415. The thought occured to her, maybe impulsively, that Cesárea identified with Hypatia. She didn't ask Cesárea anything else, or if she did, she had forgotten by now.

We wanted to know whether Cesárea read and whether the teacher remembered the names of any books. In fact, she did read a lot, but the teacher couldn't remember a single one of the books that Cesárea borrowed from the library and carried around with her. She worked at the canning factory from eight in the morning until six at night, so it wasn't as if she had much time to read, but the teacher imagined that she stole hours from sleep to spend reading. Then the canning factory had to close and for a while Cesárea was out of work. This was around 1945. One night, after the movies, the teacher went with her to her room. By then the teacher was married and saw Cesárea less often. She'd only been to her room on Calle Rubén Darío once before. Her husband, although he was a saint, wasn't happy about her friendship with Cesárea. In those days Calle Rubén Darío was like a sewer where all the dregs of Santa Teresa washed up. There were a couple of bars where at least once a week there was a fight that ended in bloodshed; the tenement rooms were occupied by out-of-work laborers or peasants who had just immigrated to the city; few of the children had any schooling. The teacher knew that because Cesárea herself had brought a few of them to the school to be enrolled. Some prostitutes and their pimps lived there too. It wasn't a proper street for a decent woman (maybe it was Cesárea's living there that had prejudiced the teacher's husband against her), and if the teacher hadn't realized it before, it was because the first time she went there was before she was married, when she was, in her own words, innocent and heedless.

But this second visit was different. The poverty and neglect of Calle Rubén Darío tumbled down on her like a death threat. The room where Cesárea lived was clean and neat, as one would expect of the room of a former teacher, but something emanated from it that weighed on her heart. The room was painful proof of the nearly impossible distance between her and her friend. It wasn't that it was untidy or smelled bad (as Belano wondered), or that Cesárea's poverty had surpassed the limits of gentility, or that the filth of Calle Rubén Darío extended into every corner, but something subtler, as if reality were skewed inside that lost room, or even worse, as if over time someone (who but Cesárea?) had imperceptibly turned her back on reality. Or, worst of all, had twisted it on purpose.

What did the teacher see? She saw a wrought-iron bed, a table strewn with papers holding more than twenty notebooks with black covers stacked in two piles, she saw Cesárea's few dresses hanging from a cord that stretched from one side of the room to the other, an Indian rug, a little paraffin burner sitting on a night table, three library books (she couldn't remember their titles), a pair of flat-heeled shoes, black stockings peeking out from under the bed, a leather suitcase in the corner, a black straw hat hanging from a tiny rack nailed behind the door, and food: she saw a chunk of bread, she saw a jar of coffee and another of sugar, she saw a half-eaten chocolate bar that Cesárea offered her and she refused, and she saw the weapon: a switchblade with a horn handle and the word Caborca engraved on the blade. And when she asked Cesárea why she needed a knife, Cesárea answered that she was under threat of death and then she laughed, a laugh, the teacher remembers, that echoed past the walls of the room and the stairs until it reached the street, where it died. At that moment it seemed to the teacher as if a sudden, perfectly orchestrated silence fell over Calle Rubén Darío: radios were turned down, the chatter of the living was suddenly muted, and only Cesárea's voice was left. And then the teacher saw or thought she saw a plan of the canning factory pinned to the wall. And as she was listening to what Cesárea had to tell her, in words that were neither faltering nor rushed, words that the teacher would rather have forgotten, but that she remembers perfectly well and even understands, understands now anyway, her eyes were drawn to the plan of the factory, a plan that Cesárea had drawn with great attention to certain details, leaving other parts shadowy or vague, complete with notations in the margins, although sometimes what was written was illegible and other times it was all in capital letters and even followed by exclamation marks, as if Cesárea were seeing herself in her hand-drawn map, or seeing facets of herself that she had until then overlooked. And then the teacher had to sit down on the edge of the bed, although she didn't want to, and close her eyes and listen to what Cesárea was saying. And even though she was feeling worse and worse, she had the courage to ask Cesárea why she had drawn the plan. And Cesárea said something about days to come, although the teacher imagined that if Cesárea had spent time on that senseless plan it was simply because she lived such a lonely life. But Cesárea spoke of times to come and the teacher, to change the subject, asked her what times she meant and when they would be. And Cesárea named a date, sometime around the year 2600. Two thousand six hundred and something. And then, when the teacher couldn't help but laugh at such a random date, a smothered little laugh that could scarcely be heard, Cesárea laughed again, although this time the thunder of her laughter remained within the confines of her own room.

From that moment on, the teacher recalled, the tension in the air of Cesárea's room, or the tension that she imagined in the air, faded until it went away. Then she left and didn't see Cesárea again until two weeks later. That was when Cesárea told her that she was leaving Santa Teresa. She had brought the teacher a going-away present, one of the notebooks with black covers, possibly the thinnest of them all. Do you still have it? asked Belano. No, she didn't have it anymore. Her husband had read it and thrown it away. Or it had simply gotten lost. The house she lived in now wasn't the same one she'd been living in then, and small things often get lost in moves. But did you read the notebook? said Belano. Yes, she'd read it. It was mostly notes on the Mexican educational system, some very sensible and others completely inappropriate. Cesárea hated Secretary of Education Vasconcelos, although sometimes her hatred seemed more like love. There was a plan for general literacy, which the teacher could hardly make out because it was so chaotic, followed by reading lists for childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood, lists that were contradictory when they weren't plainly opposed. For example: two of the books on the first children's reading list were La Fontaine and Aesop's Fables. On the second list, La Fontaine disappeared. On the third list there was a popular book about gangster life in the United States, a book that might (though only might) be appropriate for adolescents, but never for children, which in turn vanished from the fourth list, replaced by a collection of medieval tales. Stevenson's Treasure Island and Martí's The Golden Age remained on all the lists, though they were books that the teacher considered most appropriate for adolescents.

After that, it was a long time before the teacher had any news of Cesárea. How long? said Belano. Years, said the teacher. Until one day she saw her again. It was during Santa Teresa's fiesta, when the city filled with peddlers from every corner of the state.

Cesárea was behind a stand selling medicinal herbs. The teacher walked right past her, but since she was with her husband and another couple she was ashamed to say hello. Or maybe it wasn't shame but shyness. And it might not even have been shame or shyness: she simply wasn't sure whether this woman selling herbs could be her old friend. Cesárea didn't recognize her either. She was sitting behind her table, a plank resting on four wooden boxes, and she was talking to a woman about the goods for sale. She had changed physically: now she was fat, hugely fat, and although the teacher didn't see a single gray hair amid the black, she had wrinkles around her eyes and deep circles under them, as if the journey she had made to Santa Teresa, to Santa Teresa's fiesta, had taken her months, even years.

The next day the teacher came back alone and saw her again. Cesárea was standing up and she looked much bigger than the teacher remembered. She must have weighed three hundred pounds and she was wearing an ankle-length gray skirt that accentuated her fatness. Her naked arms were like logs. Her neck had disappeared behind a giant's double chin, but her head was still Cesárea Tinajero's noble head: big, with prominent bones, her skull arched and her forehead wide and smooth. This time the teacher went up to her and said good morning. Cesárea looked at her and didn't recognize her, or pretended not to. It's me, said the teacher, your friend Flora Castañeda. When she heard the name, Cesárea frowned and got up. She moved around the plank of herbs and came up close to the teacher as if she couldn't see her well from a distance. She put her hands (two claws, according to the teacher) on her shoulders and for a few seconds she scrutinized her face. Oh, Cesárea, what a terrible memory you have, said the teacher, to say something. Only then did Cesárea smile (foolishly, according to the teacher) and say of course, how could she forget her. Then they talked for a while, the two of them sitting behind the table, the teacher on a wooden folding chair and Cesárea on a box, as if the two of them were tending the little herb stall together. And although the teacher realized immediately that they had very little to say to each other, she told Cesárea that she had three children now and that she was still working at the school, and remarked on thoroughly unimportant things that had happened in Santa Teresa. And then she thought about asking Cesárea whether she had married and had children, but she couldn't formulate the question because she could see for herself that Cesárea hadn't married and didn't have children, so she just asked her where she lived, and Cesárea said sometimes in Villaviciosa and other times in El Palito. The teacher knew where Villaviciosa was, although she'd never been there, but it was the first time she'd heard of El Palito. She asked her where the town was and Cesárea said that it was in Arizona. Then the teacher laughed. She said she had always suspected that Cesárea would end up living in the United States. And that was all. They parted. The next day the teacher didn't go to the market and she spent her idle hours wondering whether it would be a good idea to invite Cesárea over for lunch. She discussed it with her husband, they fought, she won. The next day, first thing, she went back to the market, but when she got there Cesárea's stall was occupied by a woman selling kerchiefs. She never saw her again.

Belano asked her whether she thought Cesárea was dead. Possibly, said the teacher.

And that was all. Belano and Lima were pensive for hours after the interview. We got rooms at the Hotel Juárez. At dusk the four of us met in Lima and Belano's room and talked about what to do. According to Belano, first we should go to Villaviciosa, then we could decide whether we wanted to go back to Mexico City or on to El Palito. The problem with El Palito was that he couldn't enter the United States. Why not? asked Lupe. Because I'm Chilean, he said. They won't let me in either, said Lupe, and I'm not Chilean. And García Madero won't get in either. Why not me? I said. Does anyone have a passport? said Lupe. No one did, except for Belano. That night Lupe went to the movies. When she got back to the hotel she said that she wasn't going back to Mexico City. So what will you do? said Belano. Live in Sonora or cross over into the United States.

JANUARY 30

Last night they found us. Lupe and I were in our room, fucking, when the door opened and Ulises Lima came in. Get dressed fast, he said, Alberto is in the lobby talking to Arturo. We did as he ordered without saying a word. We put our things in plastic bags and went down to the first floor, trying not to make a sound. We went out the back door. The alley was dark. Let's get the car, said Lima. There wasn't a soul on Avenida Juárez. We walked three blocks from the hotel, to the place where the Impala was parked. Lima was afraid that there would be someone there, but the spot was deserted and we started the car. We passed the Hotel Juárez. Part of the lobby and the lit-up window of the hotel bar were visible from the street. There was Belano, and across from him was Alberto. We didn't see Alberto's policeman friend anywhere. Belano didn't see us either and Lima thought it wasn't a good idea to honk the horn. We drove around the block. The sidekick, Lupe said, had probably gone up to our rooms. Lima shook his head. A yellow light was falling on Belano and Alberto's heads. Belano was talking, but it might just as well have been Alberto. They didn't seem angry. When we drove by again, they'd each lit a cigarette. They were drinking beer and smoking. They looked like friends. Belano was talking: he moved his left hand as if he was tracing a castle or the silhouette of a woman. Alberto never took his eyes off him and sometimes he smiled. Honk the horn, I said. We drove around the block once more. When the Hotel Juárez appeared again, Belano looked out the window and Alberto lifted a can of Tecate to his lips. A man and a woman were arguing at the main entrance to the hotel. Alberto's policeman friend was watching them, leaning on the hood of a car some thirty feet away. Lima honked the horn three times and slowed down. Belano had already seen us. He turned around, got up close to Alberto, and said something. Alberto grabbed him by the shirt. Belano pushed him and went running. By the time he reached the hotel door the cop was heading toward him and reaching into his jacket. Lima honked the horn three more times and stopped the Impala sixty feet from the Hotel Juárez. The policeman pulled out a gun and Belano kept running. Lupe opened the car door. Alberto appeared on the sidewalk outside the hotel with a gun in his hand. I had been hoping he was carrying the knife. As Belano got into the car, Lima took off and we sped away along the dimly lit streets of Santa Teresa. Somehow we ended up heading in the direction of Villaviciosa, which we thought was a good sign. By around three in the morning we were completely lost. We got out of the car to stretch our legs. There wasn't a single light anywhere. I'd never seen so many stars in the sky.

We slept in the Impala. We woke up at eight the next morning, freezing cold. We've been driving and driving around the desert without coming to a town or even a miserable ranch. Sometimes we get lost in the bare hills. Sometimes the road runs between crags and ravines and then we drop down to the desert again. The imperial troops were here in 1865 and 1866. Just the mention of Maximilian's army can crack us up. Belano and Lima, who already knew something about the history of Sonora before they came here, say there was a Belgian colonel who tried to capture Santa Teresa. A Belgian at the head of a Belgian regiment. It cracks us up. A Belgian-Mexican regiment. Of course, they got lost, although the Santa Teresa historians prefer to think they were defeated by the town's militia. Hilarious. There's also a record of a skirmish in Villaviciosa, possibly between the Belgian rearguard and the villagers. It's a story that Lima and Belano know well. They talk about Rimbaud. If only we'd followed our instincts, they say. Hilarious.

At six in the evening we come upon a house by the side of the road. They give us tortillas and beans, for which we pay a hefty sum, and fresh water that we drink straight from a gourd. Without moving, the peasants watch us while we eat. Where is Villaviciosa? On the other side of those hills, they tell us.

JANUARY 31

We've found Cesárea Tinajero. In turn, Alberto and the policeman found us. Everything was much simpler than I ever imagined it would be, but I never imagined anything like this. The town of Villaviciosa is a ghost town. The northern Mexican town of lost assassins, the closest thing to Aztlán, said Lima. I don't know. It's more like a town of the tired or the bored.

The houses are adobe, although the houses here almost all have front yards and backyards and some yards are cement, which is strange and unlike the houses every other place we've been this crazy month. The trees in the town are dying. As far as I could see, there are two bars, a grocery store, and nothing else. The rest is houses. Business is done in the street, on a curb in the plaza, or under the arches of the biggest building in town, the mayor's house, where no one seems to live.

Finding Cesárea wasn't hard. We asked about her and were sent to the washing troughs, on the east side of town. The troughs are made of stone and they're set in such a way that the water flows from the height of the first one and runs down a little wooden channel, enough for ten women's washing. When we arrived there were only three washerwomen there. Cesárea was in the middle and we recognized her right away. Seen from behind, leaning over the trough, there was nothing poetic about her. She looked like a rock or an elephant. Her rear end was enormous and it moved to the rhythm set by her arms, two oak trunks, as she rinsed the clothes and wrung them out. Her hair was long, it fell all the way to her waist. She was barefoot. When we called her she turned around calmly and faced us. The other two washerwomen turned around too. For an instant Cesárea and her companions watched us without saying anything: the one to her right was probably about thirty, but she could just as easily have been forty or fifty. The one to her left couldn't have been more than twenty. Cesárea's eyes were black and they seemed to absorb all the sun in the yard. I looked at Lima, who had stopped smiling. Belano blinked as if he had a grain of sand in his eye. At some point, exactly when I can't say, we started to walk to Cesárea Tinajero's house. I remember that as we headed down little streets under the relentless sun, Belano attempted an explanation, or several explanations. I remember his silence after that. Then I know that someone led me into a dark, cool room and that I threw myself down on a mattress and slept. When I woke up, Lupe was beside me, asleep, her arms and legs twined around my body. It took me a while to realize where I was. I heard voices and got up. In the next room Cesárea and my friends were talking. When I came in no one looked at me. I remember that I sat on the floor and lit a cigarette. Bunches of herbs tied with sisal hung on the walls of the room. Belano and Lima were smoking, but what I smelled wasn't tobacco.

Cesárea was sitting near the only window and every so often she would look out, up at the sky, and then I don't know why, but I could have cried too, although I didn't. We were there for a long time. At some moment Lupe came into the room and sat down beside me without saying anything. Later the five of us got up and went out into the yellow, almost white street. It must have been near dusk, although the heat still came in waves. We walked to where we had left the car. Along the way we saw only two people: an old man carrying a transistor radio in one hand and a ten-year-old boy who was smoking. It was blazing hot inside the Impala. Belano and Lima got in front. I was sandwiched between Lupe and the immense humanity of Cesárea Tinajero. Then the car crept complaining along the dirt streets of Villaviciosa until we reached the road.

We were outside of town when we saw a car coming from the opposite direction. We were probably the only two cars for miles around. For a second I thought we were going to collide, but Lima pulled over to one side and braked. A dust cloud settled around our prematurely aged Impala. Someone swore. It might have been Cesárea. I felt Lupe's body pressing against mine. When the dust cloud vanished, Alberto and the cop had gotten out of the other car and were aiming their guns at us.

I felt sick: I couldn't hear what they were saying, but I saw their mouths move and I guessed that they were ordering us to get out. They're insulting us, I heard Belano say incredulously. Sons of bitches, said Lima.

FEBRUARY 1

This is what happened. Belano opened the door on his side and got out. Lima opened the door on his side and got out. Cesárea Tinajero looked at Lupe and me and told us not to move. That no matter what happened we shouldn't get out of the car. She didn't say it in those words, but that was what she meant. I know it because it was the first and last time she spoke to me. Don't move, she said, and then she opened the door on her side and stepped out.

Through the window I watched Belano walk forward smoking, with his other hand in his pocket. Beside him I saw Ulises Lima, and a little farther back, rocking like a phantom battleship, I saw Cesárea Tinajero's armor-plated back. What happened next is a blur. I guess Alberto swore at them and asked them to hand over Lupe, I guess Belano told him to come get her, she was all his. Maybe then Cesárea said that they were going to kill us. The policeman laughed and said no, they only wanted the little slut. Belano shrugged his shoulders. Lima looked at the ground. Then Alberto directed his hawkish gaze at the Impala and searched for us, to no avail. I guess the setting sun's reflection shielded us from view. Belano gestured toward us with the hand that was holding the cigarette. Lupe shook as if the cigarette's ember were a miniature sun. There they are, man, they're all yours. All right, then, I'll go check on my woman, said Alberto. Lupe's body clung to my body and although her body and my body were pliant, everything began to creak. Her former pimp only managed to take two steps. As he passed Belano, Belano was on top of him.

With one hand he seized Alberto's gun arm. His other hand shot out of his pocket, gripping the knife he'd bought in Caborca. Before the two of them tumbled to the ground, Belano had buried the knife in Alberto's chest. I remember that the policeman opened his mouth very wide, as if all the oxygen had suddenly vanished from the desert, as if he couldn't believe that a few students were putting up a fight. Then I watched Ulises Lima tackle him. I heard a shot and ducked. When I raised my head in the backseat again, I saw the policeman and Lima rolling on the ground until they came to a stop at the edge of the road, the policeman on top of Ulises, the gun in the policeman's hand aimed at Ulises's head, and I saw Cesárea, I saw the huge bulk of Cesárea Tinajero, who could hardly run but was running, toppling onto them, and I heard two more shots and I got out of the car. I had trouble moving Cesárea's body off the bodies of the policeman and my friend.

All three of them were covered in blood, but only Cesárea was dead. She had a bullet hole in her chest. The policeman was bleeding from an abdominal wound and Lima had a scratch on his right arm. I picked up the gun that had killed Cesárea and wounded the other two and stuck it in my belt. As I helped Ulises up, I saw Lupe sobbing next to Cesárea's body. Ulises told me that he couldn't move his left arm. I think it's broken, he said. I asked him whether it hurt. It doesn't hurt, he said. Then it isn't broken. Where the fuck is Arturo? said Lima. Lupe stopped sobbing instantly and looked behind her: about thirty feet away, sitting astride the pimp's motionless body, we saw Belano. Are you all right? cried Lima. Belano got up without answering. He shook the dust off and took a few shaky steps. His hair was stuck to his face with sweat and he kept rubbing his eyelids because the drops falling from his forehead and eyebrows were getting in his eyes. When he kneeled beside Cesárea's body I realized that his nose and lips were bleeding. What are we going to do now? I thought, but I didn't say anything. Instead I started to walk to work the stiffness out of my frozen limbs (but why frozen?) and for a while I watched Alberto's body and the lonely road that led to Villaviciosa. Every so often I heard the moans of the policeman, who was begging us to take him to a hospital.

When I turned around I saw Lima and Belano talking, leaning on the Camaro. I heard Belano say that we'd fucked up, that we'd found Cesárea only to bring her death. Then I didn't hear anything until someone touched my shoulder and told me to get in the car. The Impala and the Camaro drove off the road and into the desert. A little before dark they stopped again and we got out. The sky was full of stars and you couldn't see a thing. I heard Belano and Lima talking. I heard the moans of the policeman, who was dying. Then I didn't hear anything. I know I closed my eyes. Later Belano called me and between the two of us we put Alberto's and the policeman's bodies in the trunk of the Camaro and Cesárea's body in the backseat. Moving Cesárea's body took us forever. Then we got in the Impala and smoked and slept or thought until morning came at last.

Then Belano and Lima told us that it would be better if we separated. They were leaving us Quim's Impala. They would take the Camaro and the bodies. Belano laughed for the first time: a fair deal, he said. Now will you go back to Mexico City? he asked Lupe. I don't know, said Lupe. Everything went wrong, I'm sorry, said Belano. I think he was saying it to me, not Lupe. But now we'll try to fix it, said Lima. He laughed too. I asked them what they planned to do with Cesárea. Belano shrugged his shoulders. They had no choice but to bury her with Alberto and the policeman, he said. Unless we wanted to spend some time in jail. No, no, said Lupe. You know we don't, I said. We hugged and Lupe and I got in the Impala. I watched Lima try to get in on the driver's side of the Camaro, but Belano stopped him. I watched them talk for a while. Then I watched Lima get in on the passenger side and Belano take the wheel. For the longest time nothing happened. Two cars sitting in the middle of the desert. Can you make it back to the road, García Madero? said Belano. Of course, I said. Then I watched the Camaro start, hesitantly, and for a while the two cars bumped together through the desert. Then we separated. I headed off in search of the road and Belano turned west.

FEBRUARY 2

I don't know whether today is February 2nd or 3rd. It might be the 4th, or even the 5th or 6th. But it's all the same to me. This is our threnody.

FEBRUARY 3

Lupe told me that we're the last visceral realists left in Mexico. I was lying on the floor, smoking, and I looked at her. Give me a break, I said.

FEBRUARY 4

Sometimes I start to think and I imagine Belano and Lima digging a pit in the desert for hours. Then, when it gets dark, I imagine them leaving and losing themselves in Hermosillo, where they abandon the Camaro on some random street. That's as far as my imagination takes me. I know they were planning to travel back to Mexico City by bus. I know they expected to meet us there. But neither Lupe nor I feels like going back. See you in Mexico City, they said. See you in Mexico City, I said before the cars parted ways in the desert. They gave us half the money they had left. Then, when we were alone, I gave half to Lupe. Just in case. Last night we came back to Villaviciosa and slept in Cesárea Tinajero's house. I looked for her notebooks. They were in plain sight, in the same room I'd slept in the first time we were here. The house doesn't have electricity. Today we had breakfast at one of the bars. People looked at us and didn't say anything. According to Lupe, we could stay here as long as we wanted.

FEBRUARY 5

Last night I dreamed that Belano and Lima abandoned Alberto's Camaro on a beach in Bahía Kino and then headed out to sea and swam to Baja California. I asked them why they wanted to go to Baja and they answered: to escape, and then they vanished from sight behind a big wave. When I told her the dream, Lupe said it was silly, that I shouldn't worry, that Lima and Belano were probably fine. In the afternoon we went to eat at another bar. The same people were there. No one has said anything to us about living in Cesárea's house. No one seems bothered by our presence in town.

FEBRUARY 6

Sometimes I think about the fight as if it were a dream. I see Cesárea Tinajero's back again like a stern emerging from a centuries-old shipwreck. All over again, I see her throwing herself on the policeman and Ulises Lima. I see her taking a bullet in the chest. Finally I see her shooting the policeman or deflecting the last shot. I see her die and I feel the weight of her body. Then I think. I think that Cesárea may have had nothing to do with the policeman's death. Next I think about Belano and Lima, one digging a grave for three people, the other watching the work with his right arm bandaged, and then I imagine that it was Lima who wounded the policeman, that the policeman was distracted when Cesárea attacked him and Ulises saw his chance and grabbed the gun and aimed it at the policeman's gut. Sometimes, for a change, I try to think about Alberto's death, but I can't. I hope they buried them with their guns. Or buried the guns in another hole in the desert. Whatever they did, I hope they got rid of the guns! I remember that when I lifted Alberto's body into the trunk I checked his pockets. I was looking for the knife that he used to measure his penis. I didn't find it. Sometimes, for a change, I think about Quim and his Impala, which I guess he'll probably never see again. Sometimes it makes me laugh. Other times it doesn't.

FEBRUARY 7

The food is cheap here. But there isn't any work.

FEBRUARY 8

I've read Cesárea's notebooks. When I found them I thought sooner or later I would mail them to Mexico City, to Lima or Belano. Now I know I won't. There's no sense in doing it. Every cop in Sonora must be after my friends.

FEBRUARY 9

Back in the Impala, back to the desert. I've been happy in this town. Before we left, Lupe said that we could come back to Villaviciosa whenever we wanted. Why? I said. Because the people accept us. They're killers, just like us. We aren't killers, I say. The people here aren't either, it's just a manner of speaking, says Lupe. Someday the police will catch Belano and Lima, but they'll never find us. Oh, Lupe, how I love you, but how wrong you are.

FEBRUARY 10

Cucurpe, Tuape, Meresichic, Opodepe.

FEBRUARY 11

Carbó, El Oasis, Félix Gómez, El Cuatro, Trincheras, La Ciénaga.

FEBRUARY 12

Bamuri, Pitiquito, Caborca, San Juan, Las Maravillas, Las Calenturas.

FEBRUARY 13

What's outside the window?

A star.

FEBRUARY 14

What's outside the window?

A sheet.

FEBRUARY 15

What's outside the window?