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They were accompanied by Amalfitano, who hated these
parties though he had no choice but to endure them from time to time, and the
three readers of Archimboldi. First they had dinner in the center and then they
drove up and down the street that never slept. The rental car was big, but they
still had to sit almost on top of each other and the people on the sidewalks
gave them curious looks, the kind of looks they gave everyone on the street,
until they saw Amalfitano and the three students crammed in the backseat and
then they quickly averted their eyes.

They went into a bar that one of the boys knew. The bar was
big and in the back was a yard with trees and a little fenced-in space for
cockfights. The boy said his father had brought him there once. They talked
politics, and Espinoza translated what the boys said for Pelletier. None of
them was older than twenty and they had a fresh, healthy look. They seemed
eager to learn. Amalfitano, in contrast, seemed more tired and defeated than
ever that night. In a low voice, Pelletier asked him whether something was the
matter. Amalfitano shook his head and said no, although back at the hotel, the
critics remarked that the way their friend had chain-smoked and hardly spoken a
word all night, he was either extremely depressed or a nervous wreck.

The next day, when he got up, Espinoza found Pelletier
sitting on the hotel terrace, dressed in Bermuda shorts and leather sandals,
reading that day's Santa Teresa papers, armed with a Spanish-French dictionary
he'd probably bought that very morning.

"Are we going to the center for breakfast?" asked
Espinoza. "No," said Pelletier, "enough alcohol and rotgut
meals. I want to find out what's going on in this city."

Then Espinoza remembered that the night before, one of the
boys had told them the story of the women who were being killed. All he
remembered was that the boy had said there were more than two hundred of them
and he'd had to repeat it two or three times because neither Espinoza nor
Pelletier could believe his ears. Not believing your ears, though, thought
Espinoza, is a form of exaggeration. You see something beautiful and you can't
believe your eyes. Someone tells you something about . . . the natural beauty
of
Iceland
. . . people bathing in thermal springs, among geysers ... in fact you've seen
it in pictures, but still you say you can't believe it... Although obviously
you believe it... Exaggeration is a form of polite admiration . . . You set it
up so the person you're talking to can say: it's true . . . And then you say:
incredible. First you can't believe it and then you think it's incredible.

That was probably what he and Pelletier had said the night
before When the boy, healthy and strong and pure, told them that more than two
hundred women had died. But not over a short period of time, thought Espinoza.
From 1993 or 1994 to the present day ... And many more women might have been
killed. Maybe two hundred and fifty or three hundred. No one will ever know,
the boy had said in French. The boy had read a book by Archimboldi translated
by Pelletier and obtained thanks to the good offices of an Internet bookstore.
He didn't speak much French, thought Espinoza. But a person can speak a
language badly or not at all and still be able to read it. In any case, there
were lots of dead women.

"So who's guilty?" asked Pelletier.

"There are people who've been in prison a long time,
but women keep dying," said one of the boys.

Amalfitano, Espinoza remembered, was quiet, with an absent
look on his face, probably plastered. At a nearby table there were three men
who kept looking at them as if they were very interested in what they were
talking about. What else do I remember? Espinoza thought. Someone, one of the
boys, talked about a murder epidemic. Someone said something about the copycat
effect. Someone spoke the name Albert Kessler. At a certain moment Espinoza got
up and went to the bathroom to vomit. As he was doing it he heard someone
outside, someone who was probably washing his hands or his face or primping in
front of the mirror, say to him:

"That's all right, buddy, go ahead and puke."

The voice soothed me, thought Espinoza, but that implies I
was upset, and why should I have been upset? When he left the stall there was
no one there, just the music from the bar drifting in faintly and the sound of
the plumbing, deeper and spasmodic. Who brought us back to the hotel? he
wondered.

"Who drove us back?" he asked Pelletier.

"You did," said Pelletier.

That day Espinoza left Pelletier reading newspapers at the
hotel and went out on his own. Although it was late for breakfast he went into
a bar on Calle Arizpe that was always empty and asked for something
restorative.

"This is the best thing for a hangover, sir,"
said the bartender, and he put a glass of cold beer in front of him.

From inside came the sound of frying. He asked for
something to eat.

"Quesadillas, sir?"

"Just one," said Espinoza.

The bartender shrugged his shoulders. The bar was empty and
it wasn't quite as dark as the bars where he usually went in the morning. The
door to the bathroom opened and a very tall man came out. Espinoza's eyes hurt
and he was starting to feel sick again, but the appearance of the tall man
startled him. In the darkness he couldn't see his face or tell how old he was.
But the tall man sat down next to the window, and yellow and green light
illuminated his features.

Espinoza realized it couldn't be Archimboldi. He looked
like a farmer or a rancher on a visit to the city. The bartender put a
quesadilla in front of him. When he picked it up in his hands he burned himself
and he asked for a napkin. Then he asked the bartender to bring him three more
quesadillas. When he left the bar he headed for the crafts market. Some of the
vendors were gathering up their wares and stowing their folding tables. It was
lunchtime and there weren't many people. At first he had a hard time finding
the stall of the girl who sold rugs. The streets of the market were dirty, as
if food or fruit and vegetables were sold there instead of crafts. When he saw
the girl she was busy rolling up rugs and tying the ends. The smallest ones,
the handwoven ones, she put in a long cardboard box. She had a vacant
expression, as if she was far away. Espinoza approached and stroked one of the
rugs. He asked whether she remembered him. The girl showed no sign of surprise.
She raised her eyes, looked at him, and said yes with a naturalness that made
him smile.

"Who am I?" asked Espinoza.

"The Spanish man who bought a rug from me," said
the girl, "we talked for a while."

After deciphering the newspapers, Pelletier felt like
showering and washing off all the filth that clung to his skin. He saw
Amalfitano approaching from a long way off. He watched him come into the hotel
and speak to the desk clerk. Before he came out onto the terrace, Amalfitano
raised one hand weakly in a sign of recognition. Pelletier got up and told him
to order whatever he liked, he was going to take a shower. As he left he
noticed that Amalfitano's eyes were red and there were circles under them, as
if he hadn't slept. Crossing the lobby he changed his mind and turned on one of
the two computers that the hotel provided for its guests in a little room next
to the bar. When he checked his e-mail he found a long message from Norton in
which she gave him what she believed to be her real reasons for leaving so
abruptly. He read it as if he were still drunk. He thought about the young
Archimboldi readers from the night before, and he wanted, vaguely, to be like
them, to exchange his life for one of theirs. This wish was, he told himself, a
form of lassitude. Then he pressed the button for the elevator and rode up with
an American woman in her seventies who was reading a Mexican paper, one of the
same ones he'd read that morning. As he was undressing he thought about how he
would tell Espinoza. There was probably a message waiting for him from Norton.
What can I do? he wondered.

The bite out of the toilet bowl was still there and for a
few seconds he stared at it and let the warm water run over his body. What's
the reasonable thing to do? he thought. The most reasonable thing would be to
go back and postpone any conclusion as long as possible. Only when soap got in
his eyes was he able to look away from the toilet. He turned his face into the
stream of water and closed his eyes. I'm not as sad as I'd have thought, he
told himself. This is all unreal, he said to himself. Then he turned off the
shower, dressed, and went down to join Amalfitano.

He went with Espinoza to check his e-mail. He stood behind
him until he'd made sure there was a message from Norton, and when he saw that
there was, certain it would say the same thing his had, he sat in an armchair a
few feet away from the computers and leafed through a tourist magazine. Every
so often he would lift his eyes and look at Espinoza, who didn't seem about to
get up. He would've liked to pat him on the back, but he chose not to move.
When Espinoza turned around to look at him, he said he'd gotten one just like
it.

"I can't believe it," said Espinoza in a thread
of a voice.

Pelletier left the magazine on the glass table and went
over to the computer, where he glanced through Norton's letter. Then, without
sitting down, and typing with one finger, he found his own e-mail and showed
Espinoza the message he'd gotten. He asked him, very gently, to read it.
Espinoza turned toward the screen again and read Pelletier's letter several
times.

"It's almost exactly the same," he said.

"What does it matter?" said the Frenchman.

"She could have shown a bit more decency in that
regard, at least," said Espinoza.

"In these cases, decency is informing the person at
all," said Pelletier.

When they went out onto the terrace there was almost no one
there.

A waiter, dressed in a white jacket and black pants, was
gathering up glasses and bottles from the empty tables. At one end, near the
railing, a couple in their twenties looked out at the silent, deep green
street, holding hands. Espinoza asked Pelletier what he was thinking about.
"About her," said Pelletier, "of course."

He also said it was strange, or at least curious, that they
were here, in this hotel, in this city, when Norton finally came to a decision.
Espinoza gave him a long look and then said in disgust that he felt like
throwing up.

The next day Espinoza went back to the crafts market and
asked the girl what her name was. She said it was Rebeca, and Espinoza smiled,
because the name, he thought, suited her perfectly. He stood there for three
hours, talking to Rebeca, as tourists and browsers wandered around looking
halfheartedly at the merchandise, as if under duress. Only twice did customers
come up to Rebeca's stall, but both times they left without buying anything,
which made Espinoza feel guilty because in some sense he blamed the girl's bad
luck on himself, on his stubborn presence at the stall. He decided to make up
for it by buying what he imagined the others would have bought. He chose a big
rug, two small rugs, a serape that was mostly green, another that was mostly
red, and a kind of knapsack made of the same cloth and with the same pattern as
the serapes. Rebeca asked whether he was going back to his country soon and
Espinoza smiled and said he didn't know. Then the girl called a boy, who loaded
all of Espinoza's purchases onto his back and went with him to where he had
parked the car.

Rebeca's voice when she called the boy (who had appeared
out of nowhere or out of the crowd, which was essentially the same thing), her
tone, the calm authority she projected, made Espinoza shudder. As he was
walking behind the boy he noticed that most of the vendors were beginning to
pack up. When he got to the car they put the rugs in the trunk and Espinoza
asked the boy how long he'd been working with Rebeca. She's my sister, he said.
They don't look alike at all, thought Espinoza. Then he glanced at the boy, who
was short but also seemed strong, and gave him a ten-dollar bill.

When he got to the hotel, Pelletier was on the terrace
reading Archimboldi. Espinoza asked him what book it was and Pelletier smiled
and answered that it was
Saint
Thomas
.

"How many times have you read it?" asked
Espinoza.

"I've lost count, although this is one of the ones
I've read least."

Just like me, thought Espinoza, just like me.

Rather than two letters, it was really a single one albeit
with variations, brusque personalized twists that opened onto the same abyss.
Santa Teresa, that horrible city, said Norton, had made her think. Think in the
strict sense, for the first time in years. In other words: she had begun to
think about practical, real, tangible things, and she had also begun to remember.
She had thought about her family, her friends, and her job, and nearly
simultaneously she had remembered family scenes or work scenes, scenes in which
her friends raised their glasses and made toasts, maybe to her, maybe to
someone she'd forgotten. Mexico is unbelievable (here she digressed, but only
in Espinoza's letter, as if Pelletier wouldn't understand or as if she knew
beforehand that they would compare letters), a place where one of the big fish
in the cultural establishment, someone presumably refined, a writer who has
reached the highest levels of government, is called El Cerdo, and no one even
questions it, she said, and she saw a connection between this, the nickname or
the cruelty of the nickname or the resignation to the nickname, and the criminal
acts that had been occurring for some time in Santa Teresa.