The Black Minutes (49 page)

I don’t know what’s going to happen with me. I might stay, accept the attorney general’s offer, in which case I would have to be very careful, Mr. Obregón is dangerous. I might leave, live peacefully somewhere else. But things are going to heat up, there’s no doubt about that. There’ll be problems in Paracuán
.

Now, my love, you have to decide: you can stay or you can leave, you have the right to do whatever you want. Thanks for hearing me out. I just ask you for one thing: if you leave, give me the remote for the TV. It’s the least you can do for a pacifist
.

This is a work of fiction about an imaginary murder and an imaginary city, so any similarity or relationship to reality is courtesy of you, kind reader. Besides a novelist, a singer, and a detective who appear in the story with their real names and do things they never did in real life—though without a doubt they could have done them—the rest of the characters emerged out of a question heard in a dream. My novel is a response to that question and, at the same time, a
saludo
to the following people: Bernardo Atxaga; Ana Berta and Alejandro Magallanes; José Javier Coz; Jis, Trino, Alejandro, and Evelyn Morales; Rogelio Flores Manríquez; Federico Campbell; Élmer Mendoza; David Toscana; Eduardo Parra and Claudia Guillén; Horacio Castellanos and Silvia Duarte for the old man and the trip to Poland; Carlos Reygadas; Mónica Paterna; Raúl Zambrano and Sophie Gewinner; Guillermo Fadanelli; Luis Albores; Elia Martínez; Adela and Claude Heller; Rogelio Amor Tejada; Ricardo Yáñez; Daniel Sada; Karina Simpson; Rogelio Villarreal; Pedro Meyer; Adriana Díaz Enciso; Freddy Domínguez; Paulina Del Paso; Alicia Heredia; Juan José Villela; Coral Bracho and Marcelo Uribe; Claude Fell; André Gabastou and the members of the Paris Workshop, specifically Jorge Harmodio, Miguel Tapia, Cynthia Rosas, Iván Salinas, and Lucía Raphael. I am indebted to each of them, just as I am to Luis and Mónica Cuevas Lara; Ignacio Herrerías Cuevas and Ignacio
Herrerías Montoya; Rosario Heredia Tejada; Gely and Luis Galindo; Taty and Armando Grijalva; Héctor and Andrea Rosas; Sálvador, Pablo, Rosa María, and Modesto Barragán; Silvia Molina; Juan Villoro; Sergio Pitol; Francisco Toledo; Guillermo Quijas; Claudina López; Agar and Leonardo da Jandra; Guita Schyfter; Hugo Hiriart; Guillermo Sheridan; Joaquín and Alicia Lavado; Ulises and Paty Corona; Tedi López Mills and Álvaro Uribe; Gerardo Lammers; Carlos Carrera; Francisco Barrenechea; Jorge Lestrade; Florence Olivier; Amelia Hinojosa; Svetlana Doubin; and Erika and Néstor Pérez Castillo.

For their interest and faith in my novel, Andrew Robinton, Lauren Wein, Amy Hundley, Morgan Entrekin, Christilla Vasserot, Dominique Bourgois, Junot Díaz, Mario Muñoz, Sara and Oswaldo Zavala, Aura Estrada, Miguel Aguilar, Claudio López, and Braulio Peralta share my gratitude with the first generous readers of the manuscript: Sylvia Pasternac, Luis Camarena, Valerie Mejer, Jorge Volpi, Vesta Herrerías, Augusto Cruz, and Francisco Goldman, who were the most critical friends and the most supportive critics, and to whom I owe the urge to write and rewrite this story.