Once upon a time a man went down to hell and was received by a blond hostess wearing a miniskirt and a little blue cap with the English phrase WELCOME TO HELL. The hostess led the new arrival to a luxury suite with a king-size bed, marble bath, Jacuzzi, and a summer wardrobe for night and day, with labels from Madison Avenue, Calle Serrano, and Via Condotti, and sumptuous patent leather shoes, sandals, and moccasins. From there, the new arrival was led to a recreation area with an open bar and five-star restaurants along a tropical beach planted with palm trees, overflowing with stands of coconut palms and towel service.
“I was expecting something else,” said the new arrival.
The hostess smiled and led him to a spot hidden in the luxuriant growth where there was a heavy iron door that the girl lifted up, allowing to escape a terrible sudden burst of flame and the vision of a lake of fire where thousands of naked creatures writhed as they were tortured by red devils with sharp-pointed tails who taunted the damned, piercing them with pitchforks and reminding them that this prison was eternal with no possible remission: the lake, the darkness, the site of “weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 25:30), the place of “the fire that never shall be quenched” (Mark 9:43). Whoever enters here does not leave, despite heretical theories of a final redemption of souls thanks to God’s universal mercy. For if God is infinite love, eventually He has to pardon Lucifer and free the souls condemned to hell. Anathema, let it be anathema. To the devil with anyone who believes in God’s mercy.
This is the hell for Catholics, said the hostess, closing the metal door.
It isn’t true.
I, who am dead, attest to that.
What happens, then? You, readers caught in the web of my novelistic intrigue, will have to wait for the last page to find out. I, Josué, who live in another dimension, can continue the interrupted story and ask for the help of one of my new friends, Ezekiel, whom I found playing with a Spanish deck of cards in a place whose name I have forgotten and that is clearly not of this world. I asked him to move from solitaire to tute, he agreed, he lost, and as payment I requested (since dollars, euros, and pounds are not in circulation there) that he lend me a pair of wings so I could fly over the world and in this way go on with my suspended tale.
Ezekiel, who’s a real pal (a good guy, but draped in togas, that is, sheets with Grecian borders like the ones James Purefoy wears on the television series Rome), asked to go with me because, he said, his territory had been ancient Jerusalem and he had never crossed the borders of Moab, Philistia, Tivia, and Sidon, all enemies of Israel, and the deserts that lead to Riblah, a city Yahweh promised to exterminate in order to demonstrate who was top dog in the Old Testament (in the New, Jesus Christ is the superstar).
Of course he wanted to see Mexico City, a place the most ancient chronicles don’t mention, even though in questions of legends all of them end up resembling one another: Cities are founded, expand, grow, reach their high point, and fall into decadence because they were not faithful to the promise of their creation, because they wear themselves out in battles lost before they’re started, because the horse was not shod in time, because the queen bee died and the caste of drones perished with her… Because the fly flew away.
Yes, I told my new friend the prophet Ezekiel, I’ll take you to a city that goes out of its way to destroy itself but cannot succeed. It changes a great deal but never dies. Its foundation is peculiar: a lagoon (which has dried out), a rock (which was turned into a residential neighborhood), a nopal cactus (which is used to prepare lamb’s quarters and stuffed chiles), an eagle (a species on the verge of extinction), and a serpent (the only thing that survives).
I shouldn’t have said that. Ezekiel exclaimed that the serpent was the protagonist of paradise, the star of Eden, the most historic reptile in history, there are two thousand seven hundred species of serpents gathered, to simplify matters, into ten family groups, they crawl but listen, Josué, are you listening to me? the serpent is an animal that hears, it has auricular openings, eardrums, tympani, cochleae that sing and pick up the vibration of the earth: They know when there will be an earthquake, they count the shovels of earth at burials, they endure being covered over with asphalt superhighways, they survive everything and wait for us blinking, with eyes of glass. They don’t taste with their tongues, those fuckers: They detect odors, serpents have a sense of smell, Josué, in their tongues, they swallow everything because they can extend their lower jaw and catch an eagle, yes, take revenge on the flying animal that has the criminal astuteness of the animal that crawls on the ground.
Ezekiel looked at me half amused and half amazed.
“They have a double penis. Hermipenes, they’re called.”
I didn’t laugh. He became impatient.
“What am I good for?”
“For flying, Prophet.”
I showed him-like this, with my hand raised and the cards fanned out-my winning hand: angel poker, four angels, four faces, four wings, faces of a man, a lion, a bull, an eagle, and the four wings with their four faces joined together as in a nervous fan ready to escape my hands, taking flight with Ezekiel clutching my heels, discovering that the marvelous wings of the cards not only had faces but men’s hands to open the sky (which is a constellation of eyes, in case you didn’t know) and let us be carried by a tempestuous wind until we flew over a valley smothered in mists of burnt-out gas, surrounded by eroded mountains. A place difficult to distinguish though I knew it all too well. A noisy receptacle of fiery arrows calling from the glowering sky we pierced with our wings. Ezekiel and I, the prophet growing more and more animated, in his element, a lame biblical demon capable, I guessed, of raising the roofs of rotting tiles in Mexico Federal District Titlán de Tenoch Palaces city of the besieged City Das Kapital of the Commonwealth, Res Publica, public bull, Confined Bull, listening to the thundering voice of the not very optimistic prophet Ezekiel, move away from the appearance of your city,
(Praga between Reforma and Hamburgo).
Carried away by his prophetic passion (professional and innate in him), Ezekiel exclaimed they are rebel houses, founded on scorpions, they are thrones of dust, they will set obstacles before you, be on guard, endure the fault of the city, do not anticipate ruin and ignominy, rather live and let live but one day let them know the abominations of their parents, the names of the mobs, take out your roll of paper and write, Josué…