When we reached the operating room, the vision misted over, cracked, fell and shattered, and then the fragments were pulverized by a bolt of lightning, and a gust of wind blew the dust away to nowhere or spread it through Mexico City.
It was time to open my eyes again and say something, anything, to Carlos Coffeen Serpas.
So I said it was late and that I should go. And Coffeen looked at me as if he too had seen something that can normally be seen only in dreams. He stepped back abruptly. Your mother will be home again tomorrow morning, I said. All right, said Coffeen, looking away.
He accompanied me to the door. As I was going down the first flight of stairs, I turned around; he was still there on the landing, watching me, with the door open. I lifted my hand to my mouth and started to say something but soon realized that I was pronouncing incoherent syllables. It was as if I had suddenly become demented. So I stood there with my hand over my mouth, looking at him, unable to speak, until Coffeen closed the door with an expression compounded, as far as I could tell, of fear and fatigue in equal parts. For a few seconds I remained there motionless. I was thinking. Then the light in the stairwell went out and I started going slowly down the stairs, in the darkness, holding on to the banister.
I hailed a taxi on Bolivar.
As it was taking me to my rooftop room, which at the time was in Colonia Escanden, I started crying. The driver glanced across at me. He looked like an iguana. I think he thought I was a whore going home after a hard night. Don't cry, blondie, he said, it's not worth it, things'll look different tomorrow, you'll see. Instead of philosophizing, I said, Why don't you watch where you're going.
By the time I got out of the cab, I had stopped crying.
I made myself a cup of tea, got into bed, and tried to read. I can't remember what. Certainly not Pedro Garfias. Eventually I gave up and drank my tea with the light off. Then day broke once again over the capital of Mexico.
Thirteen
Then I realized what was going on and a fragile, tremulous joy came into my days. My nights with the poets of Mexico City left me exhausted, empty, or on the verge of tears. I moved to a new rooftop room. I lived in Colonia Ñapóles and Colonia Roma and Colonia Atenor Salas. I lost my books and I lost my clothes. But soon I came by other books and, eventually, other clothes as well. I picked up odd jobs at the university and lost them again. I was there every day, circumstances permitting, and saw things that no one else was there to see. My beloved Faculty of Philosophy and Literature, with its Florentine feuds and Roman vendettas. From time to time I ran into Lilian Serpas at the Café Quito or some other place on the Avenida Bucareli and, naturally, we said hello, but we never mentioned her beloved son (although some nights I would have given anything to be asked to go to her apartment again and tell him that she wouldn't be coming home), until at some point she stopped turning up in my haunts like a ghost in a storm, and no one asked after her, and I didn't feel like inquiring about her whereabouts, my spirit had become so fragile, I was so devoid of the curiosity that, in former times, had been one of my most salient traits.
Not long afterward I started sleeping a lot. I never used to sleep much before that. I was the insomniac of Mexican poetry; I read all the poems and praised them all and never missed a gathering. But one day, a few months after having seen Carlos Coffeen Serpas for the first and last time, I fell asleep on a bus to the university and only woke up when someone took me by the shoulders and shook me as if they were trying to get a broken clock going. I woke with a start. It was a boy of about seventeen who had woken me, a student, and when I saw his face I could barely hold back my tears.
From that day on, sleeping became a vice.
I didn't want to think about Coffeen or the story of Erigone and Orestes. I didn't want to think about my own story and the years I had left to live.
So I slept, wherever I happened to be, mainly when I was alone (it was an escape from solitude- as soon as I was on my own, I'd fall asleep), but as time went by the vice became chronic, and I started falling asleep in public, leaning on a table in some bar or sitting oh a hard seat at some student play.
At night the guardian angel of my dreams would come to me and say: Hey, Auxilio, so now you know where they ended up, the kids of Latin America. Shut up, I replied. Shut up. I don't know anything. What do you mean, the kids? I don't know anything at all. Then the voice made a murmuring sound; it said, Mmm, or something like that, as if it found my answer unconvincing. And I said: I'm still in the women's bathroom in the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature, and the moon is melting the tiles on the wall one by one, opening a hole for images to flow through, films about us and the books we read, and the future moving at the speed of light, which we shall not see.
And then I dreamed of idiotic prophecies.
And the small voice said, Hey, Auxilio, what can you see?
The future, I replied. I can see what the future holds for the books of the twentieth century.
And can you make any prophecies, asked the voice, sounding curious, but not in the least ironic.
I don't know about prophecies as such, but I can make a prediction or two, I replied with a dreamer's syrupy voice.
Go on, go on, said the small voice, with unbridled enthusiasm.
I am in the women's bathroom in the faculty building and I can see the future, I said, in a soprano voice, as if I were being coy.
I know that, said the dream voice, I know that. You start making your prophecies and I'll note them down.
Voices, I said in a baritone voice, don't note things down, they don't even listen. Voices only speak.
You're wrong about that, but it doesn't matter, you say what you have to say, and try to say it loud and clear.
Then I took a deep breath, hesitated, let my mind go blank and finally said: These are my prophecies.
Vladimir Mayakovksy shall come back into fashion around the year 2150. James Joyce shall be reincarnated as a Chinese boy in the year 2124. Thomas Mann shall become a Ecuadorian pharmacist in the year 2101.
For Marcel Proust, a desperate and prolonged period of oblivion shall begin in the year 2033. Ezra Pound shall disappear from certain libraries in the year 2089. Vachel Lindsay shall appeal to the masses in the year 2101.
César Vallejo shall be read underground in the year 2045. Jorge Luis Borges shall be read underground in the year 2045. Vicente Huidobro shall appeal to the masses in the year 2101.