5 - The Bad Thief

Not long after I had the accident and got an eye patch, I was sent to this new place in a part of town I didn’t know. Mexico City is big, though, so there were lots of parts I didn’t know.


The building I lived in was the tallest on the street. It was an apartment block made mostly of cement, while the rest of the buildings were one or two storey houses with red tiled roofs set around courtyards, with a tree or fountain in the centre, hidden behind tall walls with broken glass on the top.


But from my high spot on the top floor I could see into some of their courtyards, and every now and then a maid would come out of one door and disappear into another, or maybe hang around a bit, polishing a window or sprinkling water on the floor and sweeping it up with the dust. And sometimes there would be a cat lying on a step in the sun, a dog scratching itself in a yard, or a crow pecking the eye out of a dead rat in the street.


I heard little of any of these things; I would hear air breathing through gaps in the metal framed windows, and sometimes a fly or mosquito, my own breathing. Every now and then voices would rise from the buildings below, tail ends of arguments, a door slamming, or laughter from a television far away. Then several times a day, a gate would rattle and a blacked-out car would roll into the harsh sun or slip back into the cool mouth of a house.


I spent a lot of time watching that street.


There was no one else in my building.


The first few weeks I would stand outside other doors on other floors, holding my breath and listening, but all I could ever hear was my own blood, pumping through my ears; never so much as a sneeze or a dripping tap. I would stand in the lobby too, watching the electricity meters for signs of life. Only mine whirred, and one other, the water pump and hallway lights, stuttered now and then.


The apartment they gave me was pretty bare. I couldn’t complain really, because no one had ever asked me for rent or anything, I’d never paid a bill, but it could have done with some more furniture, something on the walls. In the kitchen there was a table and two chairs, in the massive living room, nothing at all except an old phone lying on the floor, apparently dead. Sometimes when there was a storm, the phone’s bell would ring faintly; even when all the power had been cut off, that phone would whisper in the dark, like someone far away was trying to call me. I would pick up the receiver sometimes and listen to the crackle down the line, but I never heard a voice.


The bathroom had nothing but the essential: shower, toilet, sink with mirror above, and behind the mirror a small cabinet, some razor blades and moisturiser.


In the bedroom, though, they’d made more of an effort. There was this enormous bed with iron posts, a sofa that looked old but was soft and comfortable, and a couple of straight backed chairs, then this wall of mirrors that you could slide back to open a wardrobe so big I could walk in there and knock about. It was the first time since I was a kid, I think, that I’d had somewhere to hang my clothes, though I didn’t have that much.


The wardrobe had shelves too, and a light somewhere up high that I could switch on with a pull cord, and drawers to put underwear and stuff in, though one was full of rope.


So weekdays I would sit in my apartment, looking out the window at the street or sitting at the kitchen table, doodling, waiting for work.


The deal was they would send me articles, cuttings from newspapers and magazines about trade or business in Latin America, sometimes about uprisings, lynchings and the like in the provinces of Mexico and Guatemala, which was more interesting.


I would find the articles in a manila envelope stuffed in my post box in the lobby, take them up to my flat and sit at the kitchen table, translating them into English.


I wasn’t much good at the translations. My Spanish wasn’t strong enough. When I moved in I found a shelf full of dictionaries in the bedroom, though, and I had plenty of time, so I would work at a sentence or paragraph, thinking I was on the right path, and then come to something that made me stop, think about the whole thing again, and start over. Even on my last go there would still be lots of scratching out, lots of notes in the margins when I stuffed the papers back in the manila envelope and took it down to the post box.


I never got any complaints about bad translations or scratching out, though. I never got any word either way, just an envelope stuffed with money at the end of each week.


Sundays I would have to go out. The deal was that by ten I had to be out the door and not go back until four in the afternoon. That was fine really because I could wander about in one of the big parks or get on a bus and go and see a museum or whatever. But sometimes I might have had a bit to drink the night before, so it wasn’t so easy to get up in the morning.


When I got back from whatever I was doing, the flat would smell of detergent and polish, the wood floors would be gleaming in the sun, stinging my eyes, and my clothes, the bedding, everything would have been washed, and sometimes, as time went on, there would be something simmering on the stove — some spicy prawn soup, maybe, or chicken in a rich sauce, or blue corn tortillas stuffed with beans and chilli, steaming in a tea towel on the counter, and a jug of iced water flavoured with hibiscus or melon. So that was good to come back to, like I had a maid, or even better a woman of my own, though it would have been nicer if she could stay a while to chat, have a coffee or something.


On Saturdays, though, there were no rules at all. So Saturdays were my favourites, and for a bonus, on Saturdays the Market came.


It began with a single stall right opposite my building, set up by this old man with a craggy face. He was always there first, deposited by a clapped out van. He would step slowly out of this van, carrying a straight backed chair which he placed on the pavement facing the road, then this younger man would jump down, drag an enormous cardboard box out the back and plonk it next to the old man, then set up a trestle table in the gutter, jump into his van and drive off, leaving the old man to take things out of the box, one by one, arranging them on his table until it was full.


As the morning went on, other stalls would appear. I would wander off to make coffee or whatever and each time I came back to the window, something new would be there, some simple stalls like the old man’s, others elaborate: whole mobile butcher’s shops, greengrocers selling all kinds of fruits and vegetables, converted steel drums over greasy flames bubbling with black beans, stinking ranks of dried fish, often swarming with tiny flies, butcher’s blocks on which barbecued goat, lamb and beef would be chopped, stuffed brimming over into tortillas and smeared with red or green salsa, chopped red onion and coriander. Then there were stalls with clothes, maids’ uniforms, or household goods like mops and brooms, buckets and washing cloths, batteries, plugs, bulbs, extension leads and the like.


Customers would start to arrive while the stalls round the edge were still being set up, and the early arrivals were usually women in pinafores and sensible shoes, striding to buy vegetables, meat, dried chillies and tortillas, sometimes distracted by something shiny, but rarely buying beyond the basics. Then others would appear, leisure shoppers ignoring the shouts of the traders, whole families strolling up and down, bartering, laughing, arguing, flirting.


The first few weeks, maybe months, I was happy to watch the market from my apartment, leaning out of the window so that I could take in the sounds and smells. I watched the old man mostly, sitting as straight as the back of his chair, rarely moving except to dab a handkerchief on his forehead or under his collar, or reaching into his pockets to take out a drink or snack that he would unfold on the table.


I never saw anyone buy anything from his stall, people rarely stopped, and he made no efforts to attract them, until the day I decided to take a look for myself.


I stood in front of his table, looking at his goods but concentrating more on him. His suit looked like he’d been wearing it since the fifties, but it hadn’t aged while he had shrivelled inside it. He hadn’t turned decrepit, didn’t look like he was suffering from age or in pain; he’d just been left out in the sun for a long time and was dehydrated. You would shrink too.


“Are you looking for anything in particular, güero?” he said.


‘Güero’ was what people called me; all white people are güeros in Mexico.


“I have a lot of useful items here,” he said then.


He didn’t look at me; he looked instead across the street the way I’d come, squeezing the top of his walking stick and pursing his lips. I leaned on my cane and looked at him. His hands were little more than bones in skin.


“I wasn’t looking for anything in particular,” I said. “Just checking out your stall.”


He turned away and I picked up the first thing that came to hand — a shard of metal, maybe six inches long, square cut and rough. The old man shuffled slightly.


“That is a crucifixion nail,” he said. “Used in the crucifixion of Christ.”


I turned the nail over in my hand.


“It doesn’t look that old,” I said.


“No, güero,” he said. “I made it myself, and we used it at the Easter parade, when I was a young man. Back then we meant business. Back then, at the end of the parade, we’d put our Christ on the cross and hammer nails through his hands and feet, just like happened to our Lord; he’d wear a crown of thorns, too.”


“You mean a real person, playing the part of Christ?” I said.


“Yes,” he said. “See?” He held up one of his hands, and at the centre of the palm he had a pinkish scar. “We Mexicans aren’t easily scared, güero, don’t forget it.”


“I won’t,” I said. “So you were nailed up with your own nails?”


“Yes,” he said. “Are you going to buy it? It comes in a set of three. Fifty pesos.”


I put the nail down again. “I’m not sure what I would do with it.”


The old man sneezed, dabbed his nose with his handkerchief. “It has a story you could tell. You could fascinate young women with the story. You like young women don’t you?”


I was looking round the rest of his offerings, and pointed at an old Bakelite radio. “Does the radio have a story?” I said.


“Yes,” he said. “For fifty years it listened to the radio waves and repeated everything it heard. Then it grew tired and died.”


“You mean it’s broken?” I said.


“Yes.”


“How much?”


“Fifty pesos,” he said. “And I’ll throw in the nails.”


I ate tacos on the street corner with the Bakelite radio under my arm and three iron nails in my pocket. When I walked past his stall on the way back to the apartment there was another nail and the radio had been replaced with an old desk fan with two of its three blades missing.


I put the radio on a shelf in the living room where I would be able to see it when I walked in through the door, and the crucifixion nails next to it. I had thought I might repair the radio, but when I opened the back, most of what belonged inside — the coiled aerial, the transformer and rheostat — was missing. But I loved the way it looked, hunched and round shouldered, black as a hearse, designed with dreams of space travel, with a squarish robotic mouth and round dial.


When I came back the following afternoon, the radio had been buffed to a shine and the nails were missing; I found them a few days later in my shoebox.


Next market day I bought some tortillas, chillies and dried beans and took the lot up to the apartment, then went back down to see the old man.


“Are you looking for anything in particular, güero?” he said.


“I bought a radio from you last week,” I said.


He shook his head. “No refunds.”


“I’m not asking for a refund,” I said.


“Then perhaps you would like to buy this tortilla press,” he said, pointing a long bony finger. “It is broken also. Fifty pesos.”


“No thanks,” I said. “My name’s Peter.” I stretched my hand out to him.


Given the way he looked at it, I thought for a moment he was going to refuse the hand, but politeness got the better of him.


“Agustin Lara,” he said, taking a large colourful kerchief out of his pocket and wiping his hands.


I had heard the name before; it belonged to a famous singer and composer. He did look like the man’s photos — slim to the point of skinny, large hooked nose. I smiled.


“I love your work,” I said.


He frowned. “No, that really is my name,” he said. “I have had it for close to eighty years and I’m not going to give it up now. What happened to your eyes?”


I instinctively held a hand up to my patch. “I had an accident,” I said. “I have to wear this during the day.”


“Why?” he said. “Is it empty? Do you have a hole in your head?”


“No,” I said. “It’s a perfectly normal eye. At least it looks like one, but the iris doesn’t work, so it’s very sensitive to light.”


“So it can see?” he said.


“Yes,” I said. “Too much. In fact, even with this patch on, I can still see you, at least the outline of you.”


He looked at me doubtfully and squeezed the handle of his stick. “Show me.”


A few minutes later we were in the lobby of the apartment building, the gloom broken only by the light trickling under the street door, though to me it was painfully bright. Agustin was peering at me with his own foggy blue eyes.


“One has an iris, the other does not,” he said.


I nodded and put the patch back on.


“Interesting,” he said. “What did you say your name was?”


Later, as I sat with him behind his stall, watching the punters walk back and forth, he reached into his box and rummaged around a while, muttering. Eventually he emerged with a bunch of metal and Bakelite objects and placed them ceremoniously in front of me. I examined the objects — coiled aerial, transformer, rheostat, and the heart of it all — a small, beautiful glass valve.


“You’ll find those useful, güero.”


“Thanks,” I said, turning them over on the table.


“Fifty pesos,” he said. “Each.”


Back at the apartment, after the Market had closed and the street was empty again, I fiddled for ages at the table, trying to fit the various items back into the shell of the radio. But I’m not very technically minded, really, and I gave up as darkness and rain began to fall into the well outside my kitchen window. I’m one of those people who’s comforted by the sound of rain; it doesn’t matter where I am as long as I’m under something — a roof, the tin shell of a caravan, canvas of a tent, or just a waterproof over our heads, sheltering at the end of a dark green valley, looking back at the path we’ve walked. So I pulled a chair to the window and sat with my forehead on the pane, listening to water cascade into darkness.


The rain continued all the next day, and I sat in a cafe watching it stream down the steamed up windows, beyond it the passing traffic, the rushing legs and wheels of passers by.


Arriving late and a little drunk at the apartment building, shutting the rain outside, I walked slowly up the darkened stone stairway as music drifted down, growing louder as I rose, as I opened the door to see the radio, proud on the shelf, its dial backlit now, its aerial listening to the waves and its valve repeating what it heard through its broken paper speaker, and what it heard was Agustin Lara singing Maria Bonita. Only one soft light was on, and the rain on the window glowed with light from streetlamps below, the phone whispered on the floor, and the air was air full of delicious smells from the kitchen; it was like coming home.




On the Monday I was still marvelling at the radio. The dial was jammed on a station that played nothing but the likes of Lara, Javier Solis, Los Panchos — superstars of a bygone age. Thanks to that torn speaker the sound was thin and distant, and every now and then the music was interrupted by a man whose voice seemed to have been recorded in a tin can at the bottom of a well. I tried to listen, but I could only catch the odd word, nothing that could break the illusion I was hearing a broadcast made decades before that only now was reaching me.


My fascination was broken by the clang of the street door five storeys below, vibrating through the building, and I began to make my way downstairs.


I was not expecting to meet someone coming up the stairs as I ran down, so that I nearly knocked her over. I pulled back at the last moment, and saw that she had my manila envelope clutched to her chest.


“Hello Peter,” she said.


“Hello Dolores,” I said.


Some time back I had taught Dolores English. Actually, she already spoke it, but she practised it on me. And once we’d gone out for a drink together and she’d kissed me on the cheek. She was the one who drove me to my new place, here on ‘the other side of town’.


“You look well,” she said.


“Thanks, so do you.” She looked great in fact. She was maybe ten years older than me, maybe more, but well looked after, and slim, curvy, with deep black eyes and shoulder length black hair.


“Shall we?” she said, gesturing up the stairs.


I turned and walked up towards the sound of Pedro Infante singing Amorcito Corazon.


Dolores followed me into the apartment and went straight to the kitchen. She put the manila envelope on the table, her enormous handbag on top of it, took an ashtray from one of the cupboards, and sat down. I stood in the doorway watching as she lit a long, thin cigarette.


“Make me some coffee, would you?” she said.


I could feel her watching me as I prepared coffee the way I’d been shown at the last place I lived.


“I’m sorry it’s taken me a while to visit,” she said. “I’ve been away, touring Europe. We closed the school down. It was getting too complicated after Mr. Garcia died.”


Mr. Garcia was Al to me, one of my students and a government minister. He didn’t die so much as get shot – magnicide, they liked to call it in the papers.


I put the coffee in front of her, thick and black; her lipstick stained the lip of the cup.


“So,” she said. “How’s life been here?”


I shrugged. “Saturdays are good.”


“Just Saturdays?” she said, stubbing out her cigarette. “What about the rest of the week? You have everything you need, don’t you? It looks like they’ve been taking care of the place. You’ve been getting work?”


I nodded. “But I get a bit bored, sitting here all day.”


She smiled. “Well, I’m back now anyway. It will be less boring for you.”


I was about to ask her how, but she stood up and straightened her skirt, drawing my eyes to her legs and distracting me completely.


“Come on then,” she said. “I don’t have much time.” And she picked up her bag and left the kitchen.




An hour or so later I was lying on the bed watching her dress. She’d drawn the curtains — it had been the first thing she did when we walked into the bedroom — and was dressing in near darkness, but with my patch off I could see her clearly.


In the living room, the radio was playing a song that I didn’t know, but it had that familiar blend of strings and trumpets they used so well, and it was soothing.


“I have to dash,” she said. “I have so many things to do.”


She was standing now, running her hands down her hips and examining herself in the wardrobe mirrors. I wanted to touch her, to take that dress off.


Her high heels clopped across the wooden floor and she stood over me, untied my hands from the bedstead. I pulled the sheet up to my chin.


“I’m not sure when I’ll be able to come back,” she said. “But you’ll be here anyway, Monday to Friday, right?”


I nodded. “That’s the deal,” I said.


After she’d gone I got dressed and went to the kitchen. She’d left the manila envelope and the ashtray on the table. I emptied the ashtray; the envelope was already empty.




“What did she want then?” said Agustin when I told himabout Dolores turning up. I was just making conversation, really, and I hadn’t told him about the having sex thing.


I shrugged. “Just visiting, I suppose.”


“Don’t talk nonsense,” he said. “A woman like that doesn’t just turn up for a visit. You say she had something to do with this language school where you used to work.”


“Yes,” I said. “I taught her there. Well, I say teach...”


“Did she own the place?” he said.


“The school?” I said. “I don’t think so.”


“Does she own this building?” he said then, pointing at the place I lived.


“No,” I said. “I mean, I don’t know.”


“Ask her,” he said. “Next time you see her.”


I nodded but said nothing. I couldn’t imagine asking her anything.


“So why did you go downstairs when the door banged?”


“No one else lives there,” I said. “So if the door bangs, it means my work has arrived.”


“Your work?”


I nodded. “Monday to Friday, work arrives and I do it.”


“Who brings the work?” he said.


I shrugged. “Dunno.”


“That’s it? ‘Dunno’? You must know something,” he said.


“I never asked,” I said.


Agustin looked at his watch as though time mattered. “Tell me everything you do know,” he said.


So I told him. I told him about my accident and my stay in the hospital, and then how I was sent away from where I was living, about being sent here and Dolores driving me, and the Monday to Friday thing, the Sunday cleaning and Saturday freedom.


Agustin listened with a grim look on his face, clinging onto his stick.


“You’re not allowed to go back?” he said.


“No,” I said.


“This girl you lived with...”


“Pili.”


“Were you in love with her?”


I shrugged. “We were just friends.” It wasn’t the whole truth maybe, but it wasn’t something I wanted to go into now.


“And what’s the connection between Pili and this Dolores?” he said.


“None, as far as I know,” I said.


“Don’t you think it’s all a bit odd?” he said.


I shrugged again. “I suppose so.”


“Why send you away after Garcia was shot; after your accident?” he said. “Why send you to live in that building?”


I didn’t say anything.


“You know why I sit here every Saturday, in this market?” he said then.


“It’s a good spot,” I said.


“Because that land, underneath that building, belongs to me,” he said.


“Really?” I said.


He nodded. “Stolen. I was away visiting my daughter in Veracruz. I fell ill so I was away longer than planned. When I got back one of my neighbours said to me ‘I see you’re finally building on that plot of yours’. That was my plan you see, I’d had the land for years, and I was going to build a house on it, once I’d raised the money.


“So I said ‘not me’. And they said well someone is playing a trick on you and building on your land. So I came down here and I found this, or the start of it. The workmen knew nothing, not even the foreman, but he took my address and said he’d tell his bosses when he saw them. A few days later a man in a suit turns up, handsome fellow, nervous, and he gives me an envelope full of cash. ‘For your plot,’ he says. I gave him it back. No thanks, I said. Don’t you know how difficult it is to find a nice plot like that?”


“Was it a dark grey suit?” I said.


“Yes,” said Agustin. “Don’t interrupt me. He says, ‘listen old man, take the money, I can’t take it back, I’ll say you took it anyway, buy a nice spot in a cemetery and take a holiday for a while.’ I told him that I’d just been on holiday and that I didn’t fancy another one, what with the diphtheria and all. He says fine, just take the money, and sign this piece of paper. I said no, I’m not signing anything, and he said that was fine too, he would sign it. So I took the money, but I didn’t sign.”


“So you come here every Saturday to see who owns the place?” I said.


“I own it,” he said.


“The land,” I said. “Not the building.”


“Arguably,” he said. “Then they moved you in. The caretaker.”


“Me?” I said.


“Yes,” he said.


It sounded like bollocks to me, but I wasn’t going to be rude.


“I’m not sure,” I said. “I don’t really do anything much like a caretaker.”


“You’re not supposed to actually do anything,” he said. “You’re supposed to just be there, and as long as you are, other people are less likely to do anything like try to move in or ask questions about the place. When the time comes they will sell it — some people call it money laundering. I don’t know much about you, but you seem perfect for the job. You don’t ask questions, you seem to be in a complete haze.”


I wasn’t going to argue, so I said nothing. Agustin was quiet for a while too, staring off at some memory or other.


“Is she good looking, this Dolores?” he said then.


“Yes,” I said.


“Smell good?” he said.


I thought about it for a while, about the scent of her, leaning over me, her hot breath on my face.


“Yes,” I said.


“I thought she would,” said Agustin. “Pretty good setup you’ve got there.”


And he smiled at me; he might as well have winked.




I sat with Agustin every Saturday from then on, and every Saturday he sold me something. No matter what it was — a bulb or a kettle, a vase or an old painting — it was always 50 pesos. I thought it was good value. After all I got a day’s entertainment listening to the story of his life, and the story of his life was mostly affairs, and usually with other men’s wives. He was quite graphic too, and it made me laugh, which was good.


“Did you never have a wife of your own?” I said one afternoon as we sheltered together from the rain under an enormous umbrella.


“I did,” he said. “When I was a very young man. She was a flower seller. She had a roadside stall. Very successful. I would visit her stall every day, pull over in my car — it was quite something to have a car back then — and buy mounds of flowers. But she wasn’t impressed. She was polite enough, sold me roses with grace like she would any other customer. Every day I bought more flowers from her, and I tried to talk to her, but I got nowhere. She thought I was just the son of a rich father, a waster.


“Then one day I brought her a gift, an ironwork trellis on which she could display her flowers. She said ‘Where on earth did you get such a thing?’ and I told her I made it; ‘I made it for you, Maria, look.’ And I showed her my hands; they were cut and bruised because to be honest I was a clumsy metal worker. She took my hand in hers and that was it — bang. We married the following year.”


“Oh,” I said. “How come you haven’t mentioned her before?”


He shrugged. “Some things are so special that you want to keep them to yourself.”


“So where is she now?” I said.


“Long gone,” he said, taking the flask out of his pocket and swigging at it. “Died in childbirth.”


I felt a twinge in the pit of my stomach, but it was a distant one.


“My girlfriend died,” I said. “Killed herself.”


Agustin nodded slowly, like this explained something.


“A blow like that can knock a man off his tracks,” he said.


“I suppose,” I said.


“You know,” he said. “Fear of loss can mean you never get a chance to win again.”


I fiddled with an ashtray on the table; I hadn’t had a cigarette for ages, kind of forgot about them, but I was craving one suddenly.


“Maria was her name,” said Agustin. “My wife.”


I nodded. “You said.”


“My daughter, the life that came out of her death, is also named Maria,” he said.


I nodded again.


“I’m an old fashioned kind of man,” he said. “Not much good around the house, so since my daughter left home to get married, I’ve always had a maid to look after me, and every one of them has been called Maria.”


“Really?” I said. “That’s amazing.”


“Not really,” he said. “I just called them Maria; no idea what their real names were.”




Dolores was visiting twice or three times a week by then. She didn’t stay long. She would have a coffee and smoke a cigarette at the kitchen table, ask me what I’d been doing, then we’d go off to the bedroom.


Every day that she came she’d bring the manila envelope with her and put it on the table. On Fridays it would have money in it. We never talked about it.


One day I said to her: “Do you think I’m a caretaker?”


She was sitting on one of the chairs in the bedroom, naked, reapplying her lipstick, though none of it would have come off on me. The curtains flicked in the breeze behind her, letting in bursts of light that jabbed me in my eye.


“What do you mean?” she said.


“This guy I know reckons this building is a money laundering operation and that I’m a caretaker.”


She laughed gently; it occurred to me that she’d probably never guffawed or snorted in her life, just laughed gently.


“It’s just an empty building,” she said. “Someone has given you a place to live and a living to make. You should be grateful.”


“But who?” I said. “And why?”


She put her lipstick back in her bag and shimmied into her short black dress, then sat down again to pull on her stockings.


“Why worry?” she said.


Then I remembered what they'd said, way back: "You have to think of the possibilities, Peter." And I realised that for so long I hadn't thought of any possibilities at all, like I had no imagination.


“I’m not getting anywhere,” I said. “It’s like I’ve not been getting anywhere for years. I’ve just been letting things happen.”


“Who have you been talking to?” she said.


“Agustin Lara,” I said. “He has a stall at the market. He sold me the radio, and the other stuff. He reckons I’m being used to look after this place.”


Dolores sighed. She came to the bed, took the pillow from behind my head and placed it on my face. With my hands tied I couldn’t take it off and I couldn’t see through its thickness, but I heard something being thrown on the bed, felt her sit beside me, heard rummaging, felt a sharp scratch on my side and then a cool sting, some liquid running across my skin.


She removed the pillow and untied me. She was sitting on the side of the bed; her handbag was between my legs.


“You’re delirious,” she said. “Don’t listen to Agustin. He’s a dead man, only he doesn’t know it yet.”


"What did you do to me?" I said. There was a small trickle of blood on my left side.


She smiled and patted my cheek. “Just a little game,” she said. “You were boring me. Things need to get a little more exciting.”


“You cut me,” I said. “Why did you cut me?”


She was still smiling. “I gave you some medicine as well,” she said. “Something to help you stop asking questions. Get some rest. It's Easter next week so I won't be able to visit. You won’t have any work either, but you won’t be bored.”


And she stood, picked up her bag, and left.




Everything was on a loop: consciousness, Agustin Lara singing Maria Bonita, my body slowly bobbing on waves of hot and cold, like a long time before, when I was still a child, delirious to the point of no fear, before anything bad could happen, drifting in and out of the light, bright sun on the net curtains.


The scratch on my side was swollen and itchy; infected, I thought, and I had fever. I knew all this; there was nothing to fear, but there was no one now to press a wet flannel on my brow or bring me glasses of water, and I felt lonely. I filled pans from the kitchen tap and brought them to the bedside, half the contents slapping on the floor before I got there; I soaked towels and pressed them to my chest, until I felt a chill and threw them aside, curled up again between the sheets. Mostly I just slept, drifted on the fever, dreamt I was floating down a tropical river, my fingers dangling from the edge of the boat into tepid water, a mosquito buzzing undeterred round my head.


One hot, dry afternoon after I had fought off several demons, I dreamt of cool hands on my skin, the clammy sheets being stripped from me and replaced with new; soft padding steps around the apartment, the radio louder for a moment, then silent, a body beside me, arms around me, my lips dampened by others, while the window, open now, let in the sound of a bird singing somewhere in the evening light, and I slipped into darkness.




When I woke there was confusion, and it wasn’t just mine. The volume of the crowd must have brought me out still mostly asleep, and almost immediately I crossed the threshold I was sucked into the procession, the people pushed up against each other in a slow moving mass. Some of them were laughing, shouting out to friends in other parts of the crowd, while some women wept, or sent wails of grief into the leaden sky. It was hot, and the air was thick with smoke from incense burners, air that caught the back of my throat and made me almost retch. I pulled the sheet up to my shoulder and felt my beard scratch painfully on the back of my hand; every inch of me was sore, and the scar on my flank was livid.


I didn’t know what I was doing in this dream, being carried along with the weight of the masses, my head and shoulders at least above average, while small women and children struggled to keep their balance. Up ahead I could see a band in full mariachi regalia, their arms animated as they played, but I couldn’t hear them; they were followed by the statue of some saint, a black and gold figure being carried high, rocking side to side as his bearers walked, themselves buffeted by the crowd as flowers flew through the air, some bouncing off, but mostly missing the statue.


Stooped men in cassocks followed, and then Christ, carrying his cross, crown of thorns on his head, flanked by what looked like the Klu Klux Klan. All I could think was at least Christ had some room; that probably, at some point, they would give him some water or wine. I began to push my way forward.


I was weak, my feet were bare and the ground underneath uneven and stony, but I pushed on, looking for space, maybe hoping to find my way out at one of the stations. As I touched their backs some people turned to look at me, squeezed aside, crossing themselves. But when I got closer to the front, they started pushing me, not back but forwards, and they were shouting. I was too tired to understand why they pushed, or what they were saying, I was just glad to be getting somewhere, to get away from the stifling heat and the burning sun on my bare shoulders, the noise of the crowd and cacophony of the mariachi. But fists were digging into my ribs now, rubber soles kicking at my legs, one of them catching a nerve in the back of my knee so I stumbled forward, almost bringing a woman down with me, until I was on all fours beside Christ.


You wouldn’t have expected the cross to be so heavy; you would have thought, if you took time to think about it, that they would have made it of balsa or something, but no. I was bent almost double, dragging this thing through the dust, when I saw something glint in the sun — a digital watch on a centurion’s wrist, and three iron nails in his hand. I might have laughed, but it was getting steep now, and it wasn’t getting any cooler and so far no one had offered me any water or wine, and no one had helped me, not even Dolores, who I saw a little way off as they took the cross from me and lay me on it; she was sitting in a car with a cowboy in the driving seat, no hint of an expression on her face as the cowboy laughed, and pushing through the crowd came Agustin, and behind him a small woman with long dark hair.


It was good to see his craggy face above me, good to feel the water she dabbed on my lips.


“It’s alright güero,” he said. “Don’t worry now. Me and Maria will take care of you.”


I closed my eyes and everything stopped.




“You’re back with the living then.”


Agustin was sitting at the foot of the bed, a beer in one hand and a sandwich in the other.


“Hello Agustin,” I said. “Can I have some water?”


“Do I look like a nurse?” he said, then lifted his chin up slightly and shouted: “Maria!”


Footsteps padded quickly though the apartment and the woman from the crucifixion appeared.


“Oh,” she said. “He’s awake.” She gripped her collar with one hand, pulled the hem of her skirt with the other, and smiled.


“Give him some water before he perishes,” said Agustin.


She helped me sit up and poured me a glass of water from a carafe: it was the most delicious thing I had ever tasted.


“Maria is your saviour, not me,” said Agustin. “Watched over you these past three days.”


“Thank you Maria,” I said. She said nothing.


“I took you down from the cross, though,” said Agustin. “Well, I say took you down, I mean picked you up. They hadn’t actually got you vertical yet. I rescued you from the mob.”


I looked at my hands and turned them over. There were no marks.


“I know,” I said. “Did they think I was playing Jesus?”


Agustin took a swig of his beer. “Jesus doesn’t wear an eye patch,” he said. “They thought you were the bad thief, the real one hadn’t turned up, hung over apparently. So when you arrived, pushing your way through the crowd, well...”


“So that’s why they were giving me a kicking?” I said.


He nodded. “If it’s any consolation, the crowd was very impressed with your acting abilities.”


I looked again at Maria.


“You sell tamales at the market, don’t you?” I said.


“Yes,” she said. “And I come here every Sunday. I found you here last week.”


“Changed your sheets,” said Agustin. “Cleaned you up, gave you medicine.”


“I didn’t come back because I thought the lady would come to you,” said Maria.


Agustin snorted. “I asked around about your lady friend, you know. It wasn’t long before I stopped asking around.”


“How come?” I said.


He finished his beer and put the bottle on the floor; Maria picked it up and left the room.


“I’m an old man,” said Agustin. “But what years I have left I want to live in peace and without pain. I enjoy having all my limbs.”


I thought maybe he was a little delirious now, so I paid him no attention. I pulled myself up and sat on the edge of the bed. I felt weak and hungry, but I also felt good, like I’d gone through some kind of trial and survived, with the warm glow of the newly healed.


“I’m going to move to Veracruz,” said Agustin. “Come with me. Maria’s coming, with her little ones. She’s a good woman that Maria, as good as my own Maria. She looked after you, cooled your brow, fixed your radio.”


“Maria fixed the radio?” I said.


“You think a poor Mexican girl can’t have a diploma in electronic engineering?”


“You’re joking,” I said.


Agustin shook his head and took a bite of his sandwich. “No, we Mexicans work hard for what we get, just sometimes it gets taken off us. So, we’re going to Veracruz, and I’m going to buy a little shop with the money that fellow in the suit gave me, and Maria’s going to fix things. But she needs a younger man to look after her and the kids, and I need someone to keep me company. What do you say güero? You could help us out, you have a drawer full of money there that would go a long way.”


I didn’t say anything for a while. It sounded like a great setup in a way, but I wasn’t one for taking risks.


Agustin brushed crumbs off his knees, and folded his arms. “Maybe it would have been easier if you’d stayed unconscious for a while,” he said. “We’d decided that if you hadn’t risen again after three days we were going to take you anyway, maybe in a barrow, or winch you down from the roof with ropes and a pulley.”


I laughed; it was a nice image.


“It’s not funny,” said Agustin. “Leaving you here would have been like leaving you on that cross. I couldn’t do it; we couldn’t. So what do you say, Peter? We’re leaving tomorrow.”


“I’ll think about it,” I said.


“Good,” he said, standing up and stretching. “Well, I’m off. Got to get ready.”


After Agustin had gone I put on some clothes and went to the kitchen. The radio was playing a ballad that was old, but unfamiliar to me, like romance itself; the light was low so I needed no patch. Maria was wiping her hands on a dishcloth when I came into the room.


“You must be hungry,” she said. “Sit down.”


I sat at the table and she placed a large bowl of pork and bean stew in front of me. It was rich and full of iron. By the time I’d finished my first bowl she was sitting opposite me, drinking coffee.


“When I came last week, you were dreaming,” she said. “Bad dreams.”


I nodded. “Must have been the fever.”


“I was scared at first,” she said. “But I’ve seen my children through enough difficult nights. So after I’d cleaned the apartment, I sat with you. Would you like something else?”


I shook my head. “How long did you sit with me?”


“Maybe two hours,” she said. “I skipped church. I’d seen you before in the market, sitting with Agustin, and I thought that it wasn’t right, a young man looking so sad. Sometimes you would laugh at something Agustin said, but mostly you would stare at the floor, play with that eye patch of yours. He told me you lived here. I didn’t know till then that you were the man I cleaned up after. I wanted to make you happy, so I made food for you, and I fixed your radio, hung your pictures, fixed your shoes.”


“My shoes?” I said.


She nodded. “They had holes in them, a thorn was sticking in the sole of one. Didn’t you notice?”


“No,” I said. “I’m sorry.”


I got us both a beer, and though she didn’t refuse it, she didn’t touch hers.


“I kept hoping you would leave me a note,” she said. “Something to say thank you, some sign that you liked the food I left for you. The radio was always on when I came here, so I thought you liked that, but you didn’t say anything.”


“I do like it,” I said. “I love it.”


“I never knew,” she said. “Because you never left a note.”


“I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought it was just something that was happening. I didn’t think why.”


We were silent for a while. I could hear a car rolling down the street, a car door slamming.


“When I sat with you, it was like you were fighting someone,” she said then. “Running away from something; you were grinding your teeth and shouting out. But then you stopped, you lay dead still, and tears started out of your eyes. I don’t like sadness. When I see it, I have to smother it, so I did something that I never would have imagined doing before.”


“What?” I said.


“I got in the bed with you.”


I remembered then the cooling lips on mine, the dream of other arms.


“You called me by a name that wasn’t mine,” she said.


“What name?”


She bowed her head. “I’m not sure, you were saying a lot of things in English; it was something like Lys.”


She took a watch with a broken strap out of her pocket and stood up. “It’s late,” she said. “I must go. What should I tell Agustin?”


I stood as well. “Tell him I’ll be ready,” I said.


“Good,” she said. And she picked up her bag and made for the door.


“Maria,” I said, just as she was slipping into the dark of the corridor. “Thank you.”


She stopped to listen.


“Thank you for the food,” I said. “And the radio. Thank you for everything. I did notice; you did help me.”


She didn’t turn, but I saw her straighten just a little more.


“My name is Ana,” she said. “But don’t tell him, he would be disappointed.”


It was a quiet night, quite late when I finished my second bowl of pork and beans, tipped the remaining beer down the sink. I went round the rooms switching off the remaining lights. In the street below I saw a large black car parked under a street lamp, but I thought nothing of it; I was too tired to think of anything except tomorrow and a new beginning.


And I was smiling at the thought of this, when the phone began to ring.




REH

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