12.05. A look at the watch, then the sky. Clouds like nurses escort the sun unhurriedly in this climate. We were all sweltering in the heat, panting; moving was too much effort, speaking … cyanosis. Then, mercifully, a warm breeze’s caress, delightful and refreshing as a cold spray, and Aída was enlivened enough to point out the jacaranda and bougainvillea flowers joggling in response outside. Then a butterfly floundered in, hairy and (begging forgiveness of lepidopterists) repulsive, lighting on Aída’s tanned elbow. Once settled there, Aída took aim and burst it like an apricot or an overripe persimmon … some kind of fruit in any case.
Then Aída — who had a talent for persuading others to abandon a trite subject — performed a quiet gesture to suggest we forget the incident. But, luckily, Hernán brought his camera.
Haiku, improvised (drunkenly) by Luini: The butterfly / angel in my sleep / demon at my wake. Not a proper Haiku. According to the rules, seventeen syllables.
Having been abandoned by Psyche my soul, I was reminded of the book (because I do not hope) that led us to go to Mexico that first time: Zi Benno and I; not Luini. Luini was, is, in every sense of the word, a parvenu.
12.08. A gathering of geniuses in Tlalpan — Einstein, Niels Bohr, Heisenberg, Max Planck, Pauli — and later (as if answering a casting call) — Crick, Oppenheimer, Fermi, Watson, Pauling, de Broglie, etc. This absurd convention defied all rationale: it was the crazy whim of the most important writer in Mexico at the time (whom our friends from the previous night prohibited us mentioning in their presence … luckily we were now in different company!).
Zi and I completed our monographs on time (which were published in The Notebooks of Tlalpan in summer, 1992, and for which, more importantly, we were remunerated). Without the need of Psyche or headphones, I could suddenly hear mingled unsettling cadences from the recent past, the sounds of Amon Düül and Ash Tempel. Howling hordes traversing the steppe [between things forgotten and remembered] avoiding the others, but charging straight for “me.”
Yma Sumac, anyone? Aída to the rescue. A DJ persecuted us before in a similar boat. Then Luini seemed to vanish as my soul rose up and up.
12.12. From a great height, I could see the tiny dot of our boat, and I prayed to return to myself. We all prayed to get close to one another. But the supplication was to no avail, for the prayer was quenched in the utterance. For afterwards, when I opened my eyes, I could see the jungle stretching in the distance, the water of the river lap the shoreline. And then, still presbyopic, I squinted on a little bark where four were tirelessly rehearsing sham civilities — imperceptible in vitro, but, otherwise, obvious — and a fifth, forcing himself to cooperate in the farce, which would seem less ridiculous with repeated exercises in loyalty.
Then I peered at the telltale oval of my watch (sixteen after twelve) and made an effort to rejoin the conversation.
Postscriptum, airport: look again at my wristwatch. Not much elbow room inside that little case. How the hell does Time cover so much ground?
12.17. We spoke again about the Venusón of Guadalajara. At the end of the fifties there was a change of ownership. The girls could now call themselves whatever they wished: Glenda Brian, Pussy Brain, Bermaine [Vermin] Greer, Xenia Brainiac. At the end of the seventies, the establishment itself got a new name (although it seems the large neon sign at the front wasn’t taken down). It was a time when many changes were made, and many shady deals. There was also a newsletter released revealing the names of many notables who’d once attended. Aída jogged her memory again: W. C. Fields, Haile Selassie, John Garfield, Greta Garbo, Elvis Presley, JFK, Ian Fleming, Lee Falk, Lee Hazlewood, Serge Gainsbourg, TL (Tom Lehrer? Timothy Leary?), and an Argentine (to whom I’ll also refer with initials because of my strong bond of friendship with his direct descendant): H.C.
12.22. I recapitulate. The reforms were initiated in 1969, année erotique, when it was rumored the place was bought by one of Hugh Hefner’s henchmen, who renamed it the Venus Club. “The business didn’t change, but the decorations did: the naturalist engravings were all replaced by paintings with an abstract motif, and all the bidets had to have printed on them the signature ‘F. Mutt.’ The interior decorator was an American conceptual artist,” said Hernán (none other than Bob Guteron, he eventually said after making us guess). “It’s still possible to see the originals today,” he added, but then immediately regretted the disclosure. Aída shrugged it off though. She wanted to finish her account: “The business is now owned by a group of Germans,” she said. “And like an old family heirloom taken out of the attic and restored to pride of place, they decided to reinstate the old alphabetical custom of naming the prostitutes. Except now, the names are all gringo: Ada Adcock, Fiona Farlow, Zaida Zorn … a consequence of globalization, no doubt.” “But it was just the same before,” yelled Luini …
In 1980, a certain fugitive called Lady Lumumba had jeopardized the integrity of the entire city-state. She transformed Villa Venus into a kind of mini-Cuba — not the free Cuba, but the communist one — with herself as Fidel Castrobarbarella. Luckily, someone intervened and restored things to normality. Hernán knew her. He didn’t provide any details.
12.29. “Are those names real or did you just invent them?” asked Luini, almost beside himself. And Aída answered him with calm disdain, adjusting her sunglasses with casual precision, “No, I didn’t just invent them. In fact, let me think … O yes, one of them happens to be my best friend.” “O really, which one?”
Samuel Johnson called those people most susceptible to enjoying the privileges and tolerating the hardships of a vulnerable institution “clubbables.”
12.38. After reading the Excelsior, we learned that Federico Prosan (who, at last, had learned how to ride) was heading from Chiapas to Mexico City. That our compatriot had managed to overcome this difficulty was, to Zi Benno and me, a cause of immense joy and patriotic pride. (And we remembered Belgrano, who, before embarking on the Northern Campaign, could only visit the city by dogcart.) That Prosan — after his marriage to the Mexican — became a righteous leader seemed incredible to the people of Buenos Aires, where, while he was still living there (some time before we’d arrived), everyone believed (as one of his best friends told me) “he had the social conscience of an electrical appliance.” But Mexico is different. Mexico changes everyone.
12.42. An author of works I’ve rarely encountered, Federico Prosan had great success in Mexico and the rest of Latin America with a series of novels whose titles were inspired by the argot of a local sport: They’re Copacetic, From Chaco to Pollack, Me to Ye. Then he used another system of naming using ordinary words in unexpected ways: Later, Mirror, Scout …
His last novel, Ingle, inspired by the life of Doug Ingle, the organist of a seventies psychedelic band called Iron Butterfly, was a complete flop. Their most famous song, “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” a mondegreen recently deciphered as “In the Garden of Eden,” thanks primarily to the investigations of Holden Caulfield, who maintains the original was a phonetic rendering of an intoxicated Ingle’s slurred pronunciation to the first literate person (rare in California) who happened to have a pen.