The Shadow of the Shadow

For my compadres Rolo and Myriam.
And for Rogelio Vizcaino who, as my lawyer, attended the
rebirth of this novel.

For the Tobi Club

"How strange, the shadow of a man!"

- MAXWELL GRANT (WALTER B. GIBSON)

"There's a certain grandeur in all this mixed-up madness."

G JESUS IBANEZ

"GO AHEAD AND PLAY YOUR DOUBLE-TWOS, my
friend," said Pioquinto Manterola, with a smile. "I dare say even a
poet of your esteemed character can't find a way out of this one."

The poet sank down in his chair, took off his hat, and drummed
his fingers on top of his head, keeping time to a song no one else
could hear. With the other hand, he flipped over the double-twos
and slid it across the marble tabletop.

"They'll screw you coming and going, partner," said the lawyer
Verdugo from across the table. As if to make it clear the game
had gone beyond the point of no return, he downed his glass of
tequila with a single swallow, paused for breath, and with a scarcely
audible "excuse me" reached over and emptied the Chinaman's
glass as well.

The Chinaman played the two/three, leaving Manterola with
the last of the threes.

With only two rounds left to go, Manterola pulled a soiled
handkerchief from his jacket pocket and blew his nose loudly,
breaking the others' concentration.

Almost, though not quite, forty years old, the journalist
Pioquinto Manterola looked much older. Prematurely bald on top
with tufts of curling hair sticking out from under his British tweed
cap; a faint scar, red at the edges, running from behind his left ear
and down his neck; round-lensed glasses perched on a protruding
hooked nose: he had the kind of appearance that routinely drew a
second glance from passersby, an appearance that gave him a vivid
and erroneous air of respectability.

"Pass," said Verdugo the lawyer.

"Permanently, sir," said Pioquinto, playing the two/five. One
by one the lights went out in the bar of the Majestic Hotel, number
16 Madero Street, downtown Mexico City. The last click of the
pool balls cut softly through the air. Soon the only light left would
be the one bulb hanging from the ceiling under its black metal
shade, casting an increasingly stark circle of light around the four
men at the table.

The poet played the five/one; Tomas Wong the Chinaman
passed; Verdugo the lawyer tossed out the double-ones with a
sigh; and Manterola went out with the three/four.

"Count `em up, gentlemen," said Pioquinto Manterola with
satisfaction.

Tomas the Chinaman got up and walked over to the bar. He
focused on a bottle of Havana brandy smiling at him from its
place on the shelf. Following his stare, the bartender found the
bottle, took it by the neck, and poured the Chinaman a generous
glassful. It's an old trick that worked for Tomas nine times out of
every ten, so long as there was a professional behind the bar.

"I count twenty-six, inkslinger. Mark it down," said the poet.
Again, the bones danced across the marble tabletop while the
bartender-somewhat more prosaically-wiped down the counter
with a dirty yellow rag. Then he went out to cover the abandoned
pool tables at the back of the bar. A cuckoo clock, ridiculously out
of place with its little Swiss chalet and its broken beakless bird,
struck two.

Two o'clock on an April morning in 1922, for example.
Tomas the Chinaman sang softly to himself as he strolled
back to his chair:

I'lllemebelyou... It had been a long time since he sang that song,
not since the last time he sang it softly (so softly only she could
hear it) to a German prostitute he lived with for a few months in
Tuxpan back in 1919 (her pink chiffon skirt blowing gently in the
breeze, the ocean like a rolling curtain in the distance).

The poet finished mixing the bones and raised his hands over
the table like a proud chef about to serve his favorite meal. Fermin
Valencia was just over thirty years old and just under five feet tall.
He was born in the port of Gijon, Spain, but the land of his birth
was only a shadowy memory for him now. He left at the age of six
with his widowed father who came to Mexico to set himself up as
a printer in Chihuahua. The poet needed glasses to see anything
at a distance but he almost never used them. Instead he sported a
tremendous mustache which, along with his tall leather boots and
the red handkerchief around his neck, served as memories of the
years he'd spent fighting alongside Pancho Villa in the Northern
Division from 1913 to 1916. It was hard to know what to think
about that face, sometimes peaceful as a child's, sometimes convulsed
with an inner fury. It was hard to tell the difference between wit
and bile, hard to distinguish the amiable youth from the tortured
razor-sharp man. There was something broken somewhere inside
the poet. The only constant was his smile, a smile that expressed
very different things at different times, depending on life's ups and
downs and the humors of the body.