5
Amadeo Salvatierra, Calle República de Venezuela, near the Palacio de la Inquisición, Mexico City DF, January 1976. Then I said to them: all right, boys, what do we do if the mezcal runs out? And they said: we'll go down and buy another bottle, Señor Salvatierra, Amadeo, don't worry. And thus assured, or encouraged, at least, I took a good swig, emptying my glass. They used to make some fine mezcal in this country, yes sir, and then I got up and went over to my library, my dusty library-how long had it been since I gave those shelves a cleaning!-not because I didn't care about books anymore, certainly not, but because life makes us so fragile and anesthetizes us too (almost without our noticing it, gentlemen), and some people, though this hasn't happened to me, are even hypnotized or end up with the left hemisphere of their brains split down the middle, which is a figurative way of describing the problem of memory, if you follow me. And the boys got up from their seats too and I felt their breath on the back of my neck, figuratively, of course, and then, without turning around, I asked them whether Germán or Arqueles or Manuel had told them what my job was, what I did for a living. And they said no, Amadeo, none of them said anything to us about that. And then I said, pompously, that I wrote, and I think I laughed or coughed for a few long seconds, I write for a living, boys, I said, Octavio Paz and I are the only ones in this goddamned country who make a living that way. And they, of course, remained touchingly silent, if you'll permit me the expression. Silent in the way people say Gilberto Owen was. And then, with my back still to them and my gaze fixed on the spines of my books, I said: I work nearby, in the Plaza Santo Domingo, I write petitions and prayers and letters, and I laughed again and dust rose from the books with the force of my laugh, and then I could see the titles better, the authors, the files where I kept the unpublished material of my day. And they laughed too, a brief laugh that brushed my neck, such discreet boys, until at last I managed to find the folder I was looking for. Here it is, I said, my life and incidentally all that's left of Cesárea Tinajero's life. And then comes the funny part, gentlemen: instead of pouncing greedily on the file to rifle through the papers, they just stood there and asked me whether I wrote love letters. Everything, boys, I told them, setting the file on the floor and filling my glass with Los Suicidas mezcal again, letters from mothers to their children, letters from children to their fathers, letters from women to their husbands in prison, and letters from lovers, of course, which are the best, either because they're so innocent or so steamy, everything mixed together as it is at the druggist's counter and sometimes the writer adds something of his own devising. Well, what a wonderful job, they said. After thirty years under the arches of Santo Domingo it isn't quite what it used to be, I said as I opened the file and began to rummage through the papers, looking for the only copy I had of
Caborca, the magazine Cesárea had edited with so much secrecy and excitement.