That same night, three leaders of Red Ax fell, including “Viollier.” They made me identify him after he was already dead: it was Max, no doubt about it. He was almost intact. It happened at the corner of Argomedo and Raulí. He was on his way in to the “meet.” He didn’t obey the order to stop, they said. Lies. They shot him point-blank. He never even fired. It wasn’t like with Rafa or the Spartan. They didn’t even try to take him alive. Macha crossed in front of him, aiming at him and cutting off his escape. Iris, from the sidewalk across the street, hit him with a single 9mm bullet in his temple. An old woman who’d just arrived heard the bullets and started walking down Raulí; they let her escape and put a tail on her.
FORTY-FIVE
“Let’s go to Wild Cat,” he says, “Come on.” And in the Volvo he gives me a bottle of Christian Dior perfume — a small bottle so I can carry it in my purse — and then he hands me a line on his gold credit card. Flaco is attractive, but you know, the fire of the beginning has cooled over time. But not if we go to the den in Malloco. There, my whole body starts to vibrate again. Sometimes, I go with Flaco to the private room with Louis XV chairs and the faded black velvet sofa. And after a little of the white powder, I start to smolder again, burning up my desperation, my resentment, my twisted sadness. Then, to receive Jerónimo and Rabbit under Flaco’s gaze is to kill them and resuscitate myself. And Flaco loves me then with a renewed passion.
So we went, and I lost him soon after we got there. I went to the bar and drank two pisco and Cokes. I looked for him until I got tired of looking for him. I danced with a big, slightly pudgy guy who squeezed me and whom I didn’t like. He gave me a black mask, soft and flexible. “It’s Italian,” he told me. He gave me a couple of lines. A boy with a shaved head embraced us, a friend of his, and we danced like that, the three of us. Then the two of them were kissing. I went back to the bar and I was drinking another piscola when Flaco appeared; he was laughing with a younger guy, dark, not very tall, thin, with dark glasses. There was a lot of complicity in the laughter of those two. We went into the room with imitation Louis XV chairs, and Flaco took out his little mirror. The other guy followed the rhythm of the music, and he inhaled and looked at me seriously and went on dancing.
“You’ve got white on the nose of your mask,” laughed Flaco. He knew what he wanted from me. The other guy came closer. Flaco told me yes, yes, with his somber voice that conquered me. The other man laughed. I had already given myself over.
Then I recognized him, suddenly and without a doubt. I recognized his smell. He was wearing a T-shirt again, sleeveless this time, and his arms were more muscular than I remembered. He looked at me in the darkness, but he didn’t remember me. My heart jumped when I felt my captor’s arm around me, and Flaco’s clinging gaze. Now it was me who was nervous. I whispered into his ear. “I remember you,” I told him. “I saw you once and you were wearing a green shirt.” He didn’t answer. I don’t think he heard me. He was licking my nipples and he caressed them tenderly and in the darkness he gaped at them and then went back to biting them gently. He was concentrated there. His body was hairless. I like hairless men. Rodrigo was hairless. The Greeks didn’t sculpt men’s hair, except for where it should be: on their heads and down below. Their shapes emphasize a smooth and continuous surface. Hair interrupts the beauty of the muscles. At that moment, I was enjoying his chest, too, I liked that it was bare now and free of hair that would impede my tongue.
And so I understood him, I understood his fascination because I was also kissing his masculine breasts. “Your nipples are big and round like coins, like monedas.” That was the only thing he said to me.
“It was on Calle Moneda,” I told him. “Remember? You pointed your gun at me.” I don’t think he heard me. He seemed really high. He was panting in my ear the same way he had on that frightful day. It was him, no doubt about it. But that day on Calle Moneda he’d been very nervous, he could have fired accidentally. And I felt the cold of the gun barrel on my temple. I’d been more serene than he was. He entered me, his phallus long and thin like a bull’s, reaching deep inside me. I shuddered. Like a good bull, he came in no time. And that was it.
When I came back from the bathroom, they weren’t there anymore. The two of them had left. I went to the bar. I ordered a tequila.
And then, wandering around, I found a shadowy room full of cells, like a gym with weight machines, or like a torture chamber with black leather beds with straps, and handcuffs, masks, nipple clamps, rings to put around a phallus, whips, of course, and crops and various chains: in short, the classic paraphernalia of that particular tribe.
I went into another room, small and dark. In it there was a cross that you could be tied to, whipped, and spit on. And I saw a man wearing a mask, one of those men of indefinite age, short, double chin, long hair, muscles that had once been defined and were now soft waves, a potbellied man, with a fevered and broken spirit — I saw him seek out that place of transformation, of death and resurrection, and place himself up there in the role of a slave. I recognized him by his garlic smell. He was there. He had that high voice, as if he were faking it. My confessor, my all-powerful, my unseen one, my ally, my accomplice, my boss, my corruptor, he was there, a few droplets of sweat shining on his weak lips. At first I didn’t dare look at him for fear that he would recognize me in spite of my mask. My heart sped up, I felt anxiety tightening in my stomach. I should have left, I wanted to and I didn’t want to; I stood there turned to stone before that mortified figure. Behind his mask his eyes were hollow and red; he didn’t notice I was there.
I moved backward and circled around until I was looking at his back. In that place he was so much shorter and fatter and more insignificant. . I saw myself lying down, tied up, naked, and blindfolded, imagining that the one who was pressuring me with his questions and punishments was a beast both beautiful and cruel. I lost myself among the people surrounding the crucified man. It was him, no doubt about it. There’s a memory that remains in the flesh. He was my deus absconditus to whom I had sacrificed myself trying to imagine he was good. At that moment I started to retch, but I held it back.
It was contagious; there was a woman and a strapping, strong boy and a skinny, ugly man with long hair tied in a ponytail. They took turns punishing him with a crop. After a while even I laughed with pleasure, like an idiot, and I spit on his back and I wanted to whip him. In truth, at that moment I wasn’t out for revenge. Real revenge, when it came, if it came, would be something quite different. But I didn’t know that art, and they turned me away.
Now another youth with sunken eyes and gaunt face whom I hadn’t noticed before takes the whip. The crucified man looks at him with imploring tenderness. The other looks back with distant severity. Do they know each other? Is he a detainee? Could he be an informer like me, though he’s the master now? I’ve seen him, it seems to me I’ve even talked with him. A prisoner. But I can’t be sure. Maybe he was an agent, or a whore, who knows.
“More, harder,” the whipped man begs confidently.
The other doesn’t change his rhythm. They search in each other’s eyes. After a while the skin has started to relax and the man with the whip gives it to him harder but keeps a steady rhythm. I watch in fascination. His muscles contract. The other man shouts in pain; it seems like he wants to stop the game. Why doesn’t he? To be like victims burned at the stake, signaling through the flames. The man with the whip is sweating and he goes on whipping, perhaps a little harder still. He yanks off his leather jacket and throws it to the floor, and he’s left in a sleeveless black shirt, sweaty and tight against the muscles of his chest. I like his collarbone, thin and feminine. He starts up the whipping again at a slower, more violent rhythm. His sweet, reddened face shines with sweat. This is not a genital orgasm; it’s a voyage into unknown territories of the mind. They look at each other like they’re hypnotized. There are no shouts now, just a giving in to the love in each lash of the whip.