For months I went back and forth, traveling by metro and in crowded buses, calling people I didn't know and didn't want to know. I was mugged three times. At first no one had heard or wanted to hear anything about Ulises Lima. According to some people I talked to, he'd become an alcoholic and a drug addict. A thug who was shunned by his closest friends. According to others, he'd gotten married and was devoting himself full-time to his family. Some said that his wife was of Japanese descent or the only heir of a Chinese family who owned a chain of Chinese cafés in Mexico City. It was all vague and depressing.
One day, at a party, I was introduced to the woman Ulises had lived with for a while. Not the Chinese woman, an earlier one.
She was thin and had hard eyes. We talked for a while, standing in a corner, while her friends did lines of coke. She said she had a son, but that he was the son of another man. All the same, Ulises had been like a father to him.
Like a father to your son? Something like that, she said. Like a father to my son and like a father to me. I watched her carefully. I was afraid that she was making fun of me. Except for her eyes, everything about her radiated helplessness.
Then she talked about drugs, probably the only subject she thought worth discussing, and I asked her whether Ulises Lima used to get high. At first he didn't, she said, he only sold, but while he was with me he started. I asked her whether he wrote. She didn't hear me or maybe she didn't want to answer. I asked her if she knew where to find Ulises. She had no idea. He might be dead, she said.
It was only at that moment that I realized the woman was sick, possibly very sick, and I didn't know what else to say to her, I just wanted to get out of there and forget about her. And yet I stayed with her (or near her, since being in her presence for any length of time was unbearable) until the party ended at dawn. And afterward we even left together and walked a few blocks to the nearest metro station. We got on at Tacubaya. Everyone riding the metro at that time of night seemed sick. She went one way and I went the other.
Amadeo Salvatierra, Calle República de Venezuela, near the Palacio de la Inquisición, Mexico City DF, January 1976. We sat in silence for a while. The boys seemed tired and I was tired. So what happened to Encarnación Guzmán? one of them said suddenly. It was the last question I'd expected to hear and yet it was the only question that made it possible for us to go on. I took my time answering. Or maybe first I answered telepathically, as drunk old men often do, and then, in the face of the obvious, I opened my big mouth and said: nothing, boys. Nothing happened to her, just like nothing happened to Pablito Lezcano or me or even Manuel, if it comes to that. Life left us all where we were meant to be or where it was convenient to leave us and then forgot us, which is as it should be. Encarnación got married. She was too pretty to end up an old maid. It came as a surprise when she showed up one afternoon at the café where we met and invited us all to the wedding. Maybe the invitation was a joke and she was really just coming to boast. We congratulated her, of course, saying wonderful, Encarnación, what a lovely surprise, and then we didn't go to her wedding, although maybe one or two of us did. How did Encarnación Guzmán Arredondo's wedding affect Cesárea? Negatively, I suppose, although with Cesárea one never knew how bad things really were, but she wasn't pleased, no question about that. We didn't realize, but in those days everything was sliding inexorably toward the edge of a cliff. Or maybe that's putting it too strongly. In those days we were all sliding downhill. And no one would try to make the climb back up again, except maybe Manuel, in his own way, but otherwise no one else. Miserable goddamn life, isn't it, boys? I said. And they said: I guess so, Amadeo. And then I thought about Pablito Lezcano, who soon afterward would get married too, and whose wedding I did attend (it was a civil ceremony), and I thought about the banquet hosted by the father of the bride, a lavish celebration in a hall that doesn't exist anymore somewhere near Arcos de Belén, on Calle Delicias, I think, with mariachis and speeches before and after the banquet, and I could see Pablito Lezcano, his forehead shiny with sweat, reading a poem dedicated to his bride and his bride's family that from then on would be like his own family, and before he started to read the poem he looked at me and at Cesárea, who was beside me, and he winked at us, as if to say don't worry, my friends, you'll always be my secret family, or so I thought, although I may have been wrong. A few days after Pablito's wedding, Cesárea left Mexico City for good. We ran into each other one afternoon on the way out of a movie theater, which really is a coincidence, isn't it? I'd gone alone and so had Cesárea, and as we walked we talked about the movie. What movie? I don't remember, boys, it would be nice if it had been something with Charlie Chaplin, but the truth is I don't remember. I do remember that we liked it, that much I can tell you, and I also remember that the theater was across from the Alameda, and that Cesárea and I walked through the Alameda first and then toward the center of town, and at some moment I remember I asked her about her life and she told me that she was leaving Mexico City. Then we talked about Pablito's wedding, and at some point in the conversation, Encarnación Guzmán came up. Cesárea had been at her wedding. I asked how it had been, just to say something, and she told me that it was very pretty and moving, those were her words. And sad, like all weddings, I added. No, said Cesárea, which is what I told the boys, weddings aren't sad, Amadeo, she said, they're happy. But I was really only interested in talking about Cesárea, not Encarnación Guzmán. What will happen to your magazine? I said. What will happen to visceral realism? She laughed when I asked her that. I remember her laugh, boys, I said, night was falling over Mexico City and Cesárea laughed like a ghost, like the invisible woman she was about to become, a laugh that made my heart shrink, a laugh that made me want to run away from her and at the same time made me understand beyond the shadow of a doubt that there was no place I could run to. And then it occurred to me to ask where she was going. She won't tell me, I thought, that's Cesárea, she won't want me to know. But she told me: to Sonora, the land she was from, and she said it as naturally as someone else might tell you the time or say good morning. But why, Cesárea? I said. Don't you realize that if you leave now you're going to give up your literary career? Do you have any idea what a wasteland Sonora is? What are you going to do there? Questions like that. Questions a person asks, boys, when he doesn't really know what to say. And Cesárea looked at me as we walked and said that there was nothing left for her here. Have you gone mad? I said. Have you lost your mind, Cesárea? You have your work here, you have your friends, Manuel thinks highly of you, I think highly of you, Germán and Arqueles think highly of you, the general wouldn't know what to do without you. You're a stridentist, body and soul. You'll help us build Stridentopolis, Cesárea, I said. And then she smiled, as if I was telling her a good joke but one she already knew, and she said that she had quit her job a week ago and that anyway she'd always been a visceral realist, not a stridentist. And so am I, I said or shouted, all of us Mexicans are more visceral realists than stridentists, but what does it matter? Stridentism and visceral realism are just two masks to get us to where we really want to go. And where is that? she said. To modernity, Cesárea, I said, to goddamned modernity. And then, only then, I asked her whether it was true she had quit her job with
mi general. And she said of course it was true. And what did he say? I asked. He went wild, laughed Cesárea. And? That's all, he doesn't believe I'm serious, but if he thinks I'm coming back he'd better wait sitting down, because otherwise he'll get tired. Poor man, I said. Cesárea laughed. Do you have relatives in Sonora? I said. No, I don't think so, she said. So what will you do then? I said. Look for a job and a place to live, said Cesárea. And is that all? I said. Is that all fate has in store for you, Cesárea, my love? I said, although I probably didn't say my love, I may just have thought it. And Cesárea gave me a look, a brief little sideways glance, and said that the search for a place to live and a place to work was the common fate of all mankind. Deep down you're a reactionary, Amadeo, she said (but she said it fondly). And we carried on like that for a while. As if we were arguing, but not arguing. As if we were blaming each other for something, but not blaming each other. And all of a sudden, just before we got to the street where we would part forever, I tried to imagine Cesárea in Sonora, I tried to imagine her in Sonora and I couldn't. I saw the desert or what I imagined the desert to be like back then, because I've never been there, boys, I said, I've seen it over the years in movies or on television, but I've never been there, thanks be to God, and in the desert I saw a spot moving along an endless ribbon and the spot was Cesárea and the ribbon was the road that led to a nameless city or town and then, like a melancholy buzzard, I swooped down and landed my ailing imagination on a rock and I saw Cesárea walking, although it wasn't the same Cesárea I'd known anymore but a different woman, a fat Indian dressed in black under the sun of the Sonora desert, and I said or tried to say goodbye, Cesárea Tinajero, mother of the visceral realists, but only a pitiful croak came out, best regards, dear Cesárea, I tried to say, regards from Pablito Lezcano and Manuel Maples Arce, regards from Arqueles Vela and the incombustible List Arzubide, regards from Encarnación Guzmán and mi general Diego Carvajal, but all that came out was a gurgle, as if I were having a heart attack, heaven forbid, or an asthma attack, and then I saw Cesárea again, walking beside me, as sure of herself and determined and brave as ever, and I said: Cesárea, think carefully, don't be foolhardy, watch your step, and she laughed and said: Amadeo, I know what I'm doing, and then we started to talk about politics, which was a topic that Cesárea enjoyed less and less, as if she and politics had gone mad together, she had funny ideas on the subject, saying, for example, that the Mexican Revolution would come in the twenty-second century, nonsense that's no comfort to anyone, is it? and we talked about literature too, about poetry, about the latest Mexico City news, about the gossip from the literary salons, about the things Salvador Novo was writing, about accounts of bullfighters and politicians and chorus girls, subjects that we tacitly agreed didn't bear close scrutiny, or were hard to scrutinize. And then Cesárea stopped as if suddenly she remembered something very important that she'd forgotten, and she was quiet, looking at the ground or the passersby at that time of day, but without seeing them, she was frowning, boys, I said, and then she looked at me, without seeing me at first, then seeing me, and she smiled and said goodbye, Amadeo. And that was the last time I saw her alive. Cool as could be. And that was the end of everything.