The Shadow of the Shadow (2 page)

Pioquinto Manterola stretched his legs out under the table,
arched his back over the back of his chair, and put his hands behind
his head. "A bit rusty tonight, aren't you?" he asked the lawyer.

"Nothing lasts forever, sir," said Verdugo dryly.

The Chinaman took his place at the table and started to draw
his bones, lining them up in a single neat row, then shuffling them
around two or three times until he was satisfied.

Two women stepped through the door. They were dressed
comfortably but with style. And yet there was a hint of something
wrong about the way they looked, a kind of falseness highlighting the desired imitation, the sense of professional elegance.

"These women want to talk to you, licenciado," said the
bartender.

Verdugo slid himself into an upright position and placed his
wide-brimmed hat over an unruly mop of hair. He smiled at his
friends.

"Duty calls, gentlemen. If you don't mind, I'll just open up the
office for a few minutes."

His three companions watched as he greeted the two women,
steering them toward a nearby table with a gentlemanly wave of
his hand. As if by magic, the light over the table switched on.
Professional bartenders like Eustaquio were well versed in the
vices and habits of their regular customers. Now, three tables
over from where the others sat and inside a second circle of light
that matched their own, Verdugo the lawyer tipped back his hat
with a flick of his index finger and settled down to listen to his
clients. Taking advantage of a break in the action, the bartender
approached the domino table with a pair of glasses and the bottle
of Havana brandy.

"Excellent, barkeep," said the poet, "only next time try to keep
your fingers out of the glasses. It's simply a matter of hygiene."

Eustaquio ignored him and with Olympic indifference poured
the liquor into the dirty glasses.

"What's our friend up to now?" Manterola asked the others.

"I heard him say yesterday he'd agreed to draft a petition to the
regent on behalf of the ladies of the evening. There was something
about it in your paper today, didn't you read it?"

"To tell you the truth, lately I don't even read my own stuff."

"Seems like everybody's gotten into a big huff because the city
wants to move the red-light district to La Bolsa. The ladies and
their madames over on Daniel Ruiz, Pajaritos, Cuauhtemotzin and
Netzahualcoyotl are asking for a little more time.They say La Bolsa's
too dangerous. There's no police there, and no sewers either. I think
he said they want to move over to your neighborhood instead."

"To Santa Maria?"

"That's what he said."

"I suppose it could be worse. Better than a lot of the riffraff
you see out on the street nowadays."

The Chinaman watched his two friends with a dreamlike air.
Taking advantage of the pause, he'd gone off inside himself to a
place he didn't share with his friends, a place all his own. The place
of his frequent silences. A private place inside the mind of this
thirty-five-year-old Chinaman who, regardless of the fact that he
was born in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, spoke with a marked
accent, swallowing his is and putting the characteristic Z in their
place, maybe as a way of affirming his differentness, as a way of
getting back at this country where the Chinese were persecuted
with an absurd cruelty. Tomas Wong-ex-oil rigger, ex-sailor, extelegraph operator, currently employed as a carpenter in a San
Angel textile mill-inhabited many worlds, including the world
of his private silences and the world of the most bitter workers'
struggle the Valley of Mexico had seen in many years.

Verdugo got up and said good night to his clients, who kissed
him and fussed over him, chattering amiably. The light went out
over their table.

"Another game, gentlemen?"

THE SURROUNDING HUBBUB of the newsroom was just
what he needed to forge that tiny island of silence his thoughts
shared with the rhythmic (he would say musical) tap-tap of the
typewriter and the ring of the bell signaling the approach of the
right-hand margin. He needed that nurturing chaos, the newsroom
filled with lines of singing chorus girls, his coworkers arguing the
finer points of local politics at the top of their lungs or disputing
the latest and always doubtful results from the old Condesa Track
(recently converted to the new sport of auto racing), slamming
the doors on their way in and out, while Rufino the messenger
boy howled disconsolately from a toothache, and some unrequited
lover shamed by one of Manterola's colleagues fired a gun into the
air, threatening to kill himself.

This was the music of the spheres for Pioquinto Manterola.
Only in the midst of that journalistic free-for-all could he truly
retreat into his own thoughts, only there could he really enjoy his
work. A few years ago he'd gone out to Tlaxcala to write a novel
but he'd never gotten past the first page, undone by the silence of
the countryside.

So it was nothing out of the ordinary on that afternoon to find
Manterola chain-smoking Argentino ovals out of a wrinkled pack
while he ran page after page through his typewriter like links of
sausage in a chorizo factory.

He was writing the sad story of the capture of Mario Lombardi
and his multinational gang (with an Italian capo and a Cuban
and a Colombian in its ranks) who had busied themselves during
the last two months drilling through the walls of the Coliseo and
Ambos Mundos Hotels and the Paris Jewelry Shop.

Lombardi, a mechanical genius, confessed that he would leave
the dirty work to his companions while he saved his own talents
for the fine art of safecracking and picking the locks on suitcases
and chests.

It had only been half an hour since Manterola's interview with
Lombardi (hot out of the oven, as they say) and the thing that
impressed him most were the criminal's parting words:

"I worked for years in New York City before the cops tumbled to my game. But this town is something else, you can't get
any work done around here. When they finally kick me out of the
country I'm going to tell all my friends: `Stay the hell away from
Mexico."'

Manterola was fascinated by the ambiguity of the whole
thing: Lombardi telling his friends not to go to Mexico. What
for? Because the police were too tough? Because there was never
enough loot in the safes he cracked? Because the weather was no
good? Because there was too much traffic?

Once he'd filled four double-spaced pages, he ran quickly back
over them, checking for errors, stuck the last page back into the
typewriter to add a few lines praising the work of the secret police
under the leadership of Special Agent Chief Valente Quintana,
and finally went back to the beginning to scrawl a headline:

STAY AWAY FROM MEXICO, LOMBARDI WARNS FRIENDS

He threw his cigarette onto the floor, ground it out energetically
under his shoe, and ran downstairs to the print shop.

"I need three columns, first page, second section."

The editor left off setting type, leafed through Manterola's
manuscript, and nodded.

THE POET FERMIN VALENCIA stood combing his
mustache in front of a broken piece of mirror stuck with a few
big-headed nails against the bluish wall. First he combed it down
so the hair completely covered both his lips, then with two quick
strokes he launched it skyward, first on the left, then on the right.

He stood for a minute admiring his handiwork, but even
the jaunty mustache couldn't lift him out of the blackness of his
depression. In disgust, he threw the comb onto the bed, covered
already with books, dirty clothes, boots, his Colt .45 and cartridge belt, and a heap of empty whiskey bottles (Old Taylor, Old
Continental, Clear Brook-all the product, despite their names,
of the Piedras Negras National Distillery in Coahuila). He stared
unhappily at the mess. He'd slept through what was left of the
night, which wasn't much, in an armchair by the window to avoid
having to clear off the bed at five o'clock in the morning when he'd
gotten in after dominoes and a long late-night walk.

Closing his eyes in the face of so much desolation, he stuck
his arms out in front of him and, playing blindman's buff like he
used to as a child, walked unsteadily toward the door. His hands
touched wood, he turned the knob, and went out.

Passing apartment B on the ground floor, he suddenly realized
it had been days since the landlord had been by to pester him.
It wasn't for lack of money the poet's rent was always exactly a
month and a half overdue. That was just his way of creating some
kind of order in the midst of so much chaos. And besides, he loved
to get old don Florencio's goat.

"Don Florencio?" he called out softly, rapping his knuckles on
the door.

There was no answer and the poet went out into the street.

The First Artillery Regiment Brass Band was playing in the park
("in dedication to the honorable citizens of Tacubaya," according
to the program: Sonoran Echoes, followed by A. Castaneda's Alvaro
Obregon March, and finishing up with selections from the opera
Aida). The poet was never one to turn down something for free,
especially concerts in the park. He liked the Secret Policemen's
Marching Band the best and after that the Mexico City Police
Corps Orchestra which, in the time of Police Chief Ramirez
Garrido, had learned to play the Internationale with such
enthusiasm that it became a regular practice number for them and
they would play it when tuning up before their concerts.