The Shadow of the Shadow (10 page)

THEY CLOSED OFF ROSARIO STREET, parking a car
at one end and camouflaging it with a few clay flower pots for
appearances' sake. Then they fenced off the other end of the block
and set up the security team, revolvers showing in the men's back
pockets. Banners hung on the walls with the emblems of the CGT
(General Workers Confederation) and the Textile Federation.
Security wore red arm bands, the reception committee wore
green ones. Fry stands bloomed all along the block. There were
literature tables and, in the middle of the street, a small stage for
the orchestra, the singers, and the speakers. At eight o'clock the
people started to arrive.

They came from San Angel, Contreras, Chalco, Tlalpan,
Doctores, San Antonio Abad, and Tacubaya, dressed in their
Sunday best but without the slightest air of pretension, worn-out
vests over clean white shirts, buttons polished to a shine, their
distinctive wide-brimmed hats freshly brushed. Under their vests
they carried their iron,.22 revolvers, Browning automatics, Belgian
pistols bought off the docks in Veracruz, short-barreled Colts,
knives. Theirs was a festive force in a state of war. Red ribbons
hung from their buttonholes with slogans inscribed in golden
letters: NEITHER GOD NOR MASTER. SON OF THE EARTH. FREE OF
CHAINS. PARIAH.

The Barrio Rosales Orchestra arrived shortly after eight and
stormed the bandstand.

Jacinto Huitron was scheduled to speak following the overture
(Wagner, oh well). The skinny anarchist scrambled onto the stage
as the last notes faded away, and opened fire with the following
words:

"Let us invoke the emancipating spirit of Spring! Now is the
time for Jupiter to obliterate the steps of the tyrant's throne, for
Mars to shatter his weapons of war and devour himself, for Janus
to cast down the naves of the temple and crush the worshipers
within, and for Croesus to consummate his union with Temis the
concubine and cut off his own head with his double-edged sword.
Long live Anarchy!"

Fermin Valencia, professional poet, stood in the crowd, cozying up to Odilia the munitions factory worker. But he couldn't keep
his eyes off the lay-poet improvising on stage. What drove these
crazy anarchists to embellish their political message with thirdrate poetry? The band struck up a tango, wild and melancholy, and
the workers danced.

By the time Pioquinto Manterola arrived arm in arm with
the lawyer Verdugo, the orchestra had switched gears and was
sounding off on a lively polka.

Manterola was radiant. It was just his kind of thing. The
noise, the gaiety, were like the gloved hands of a thousand fairies
caressing his senses. He loved to watch the solemn faces of the
textile workers, the men and women with their open, tired smiles,
the girls from the Palacio de Hierro sweatshops, the seamstresses
from the Nueva Francia bonnet factory, the hatmakers, the young
men from Ericsson Telephone halfway between workers and
skilled technicians. The two friends cordially ignored the poet
caught up in his conquest of the beautiful Odilia, and went on to
look for the Chinaman, lost somewhere in the dancing, chattering
multitude that filled the street. They found Tomas at a literature
table arguing with Ciro Mendoza, a young anarchist leader from
the textile mills.

"But we've got to be patient, Tomas," Ciro was saying.

"Patience is fol the bosses," answered Tomas, and noticing his
two friends he waved them over.

"Cilo, I want you to meet a couple of fiends of mine. This is
Pioquinto Mantelola, and this is the illustlious licenciado Veldugo. Veldugo tlanslated Malatesta. Why don't you ask him what
Malatesta had to say about patience?"

"Sorry, Tomas, I don't quote Malatesta at parties."

"This isn't a party. Or well, sure, it's a kind of party, but you
can quote Malatesta here and nobody's going to mind," said the
union leader.

The music was picking up steam and the journalist separated
himself from the conversation and drifted off to mingle with the
dancing couples. At one of the stalls, partygoers threw baseballs
at a caricature of Napoleon Morones, eternal leader of the procapitalist unions. The prize for hitting the effigy three times was
an anarchist songbook. A little farther on they were raffling off the
complete works of Bakunin, and beyond that the Estrella strikers
were raffling off a goat.

A thin young man with a bow tie was in the middle of a fiery
speech. He had the sort of intensity about him that came from
endless days and nights dedicated to the struggle.

"The movement doesn't try and tell you how to think, the
organization isn't looking for sheep. What the movement needs is
militant activists. Criticism isn't something we want to silence, it's
something that has to run free like a rushing river..."

V E R D U G O THE LAWYER stuck one foot in through the
window, grabbed his hat, and slipped into the darkened house.

After leaving the anarchists' ball, and over the journalist's
objections, he'd decided to make a pass by the widow's mansion.
He carried a map of the layout in his head and figured that if
he were caught, at the very worst, he could bow out more or less
gracefully with a story about a midnight rendezvous with his
friend Conchita.

He closed his eyes and waited for them to get used to the dark.
He counted to ten, took a step, and tripped over a chair that shouldn't
have been there. Groping tentatively, he headed for the banister
which would lead him down the stairs to the main floor. Finally,
after a few more collisions and a decidedly unpleasant encounter
with something that could either have been a cat or a giant rat,
he found the stair rail and started to descend. His prodigious
memory told him there should have been twenty-one steps, so
when he got to the twenty-fifth he started to think that either he'd
broken into the wrong house or that, despite his calculations, he
was somehow heading down into the basement. Finally, well past
the thirtieth step, he was forced to conclude the staircase wasn't
the same one he'd seen on the evening of the picture show. Most
likely it was another staircase that led from the front of the house
into the kitchen, or something like that. He was thinking so hard
he hardly noticed when the stairs suddenly ended, the floor leveled
out under his feet, and he found himself standing in front of the
main fireplace, with its marble mantelpiece, just where he would
have expected to find it. He cursed himself, swearing never to trust
his treasonous memory again. Then he reoriented himself in the room and with his arms outstretched groped for the door next to
the swinging door to the kitchen, which Conchita had told him
led to her room. Finally his fingers touched wood and, imitating
the cat he'd run across upstairs, he scratched on the door with his
fingernails. If Conchita was out he could go on and search another
part of the house. He scratched again just to be sure and then heard
a noise coming from the front hall. Someone turned on a light.
The lawyer opened the door and stepped quickly into Conchita's
bedroom. The light from the street shed a vague glimmer over the
empty bed. "Dammit," murmured Verdugo.

"No, Ramon, that's not the way it is." He heard Conchita's
voice.

A man's hoarse voice answered her, but the lawyer couldn't
make out what he said. The sound of their steps approached the
room and, as the voices became clearer, the lawyer slipped inside a
large wardrobe next to the dressing table.

"She thinks she can run the whole show. But the truth is, we
have as much right as any of the others do. As much as her or the
colonel."

"You don't understand. They've been doing all right up until
now, so let them go ahead with it, I say. Our time will come."

"The fact of the matter, Ramon, is that you let yourself be led
around too easily. You're a very servile person when it comes right
down to it. It's in your blood," said Conchita, opening the door.
The lawyer made himself as small as he could inside the wardrobe,
surrounded by Conchita's lacy silk dresses, his head wedged into
the tiny space between the clothes rack and a shelf crammed with
shoe boxes. The door to the wardrobe didn't shut properly and he
could see out into the room through a slight crack.

Now he watched as Conchita stepped inside, trailed by the
hard-faced Spaniard he'd picked out on the night of the party as a
member of the widow's inner circle.' he Spaniard hesitated in the
doorway as if waiting for permission to go any farther.

"Can I come in?"

"I don't know, little boy. Can you? What are you afraid of?"
said Conchita.

The lawyer watched from his hiding place as the Spaniard's
face puckered into a grimace, a look of hatred flashing across his
eyes.

Conchita sat down in front of the dressing table, out of the
lawyer's line of sight. All he could see was her feet.

"Come on in, little boy. And close the door," said Conchita.
"Lucky for you I'm not the widow, she would have kicked you out
of her bedroom in half a second."

Ramon the Spic stepped into the room and flopped down
on the bed. Verdugo could hardly contain himself. He hated to
think he was going to have to stand there and witness the amorous
relations between Conchita and Ramon the Spic.

"Take your shoes off, you dirty pig. I don't know why I even
let you in here."

"Maybe it's because you like to fuck with me," said Ramon
prosaically. Verdugo struggled to keep from laughing out loud.

"You're the most vulgar little boy I know, Ramon," said
Conchita, moving back into Verdugo's field of vision, but this
time without nearly as many clothes on. She wore a transparent
white silk nightgown. The hair on Verdugo's neck stood on end at
the sight of his friend's shapely, swaying buttocks, clearly visible
through the gauzy fabric.

"Ramon, if you don't take your shoes off, I'm going to throw
you out of here right now."

"Excuse me, but I happen to like to do it with my shoes on, you
know that," said the pouty-faced Spic, standing up and allowing
the woman to take his place on the bed. Conchita slid across the
covers, letting off little sparks of static electricity.

"Shit," thought Verdugo, staring longingly at the thick curly
mat of reddish pubic hair between his friend's legs, until the
Spaniard stepped between Conchita and his hiding place, ruining
his view.

"What is it with you, anyway? You think it's more sophisticated to do it with your shoes on, is that it? Makes you feel like
the goddam Prince of Barcelona, or something? And I suppose
you're not going to take your clothes off, either. What, are you
scared someone's going to come in and find us here?"

"Who else comes here?" asked Ramon as he unbuttoned his
trousers.

"Nobody. Who do you think? Hey, stand back a little farther."

Ramon stepped back from the bed and Verdugo could see part
of the woman's body, the nightgown rolled up around her hips, an
exposed breast, her thigh with the scar of an old wound.

"I don't like to do it this way. Let me get on the bed with you,"
whined Ramon.

"Shit and double shit," thought the lawyer. "Complete with
ideological discussion and everything. By now they could have
done it like any normal person and had it over with."

The woman stood up. Even barefoot she was still several inches
taller than the Spic.

"'here, you're fine right there," she said, keeping a couple of
feet between herself and her lover.

"'Ihe things a guy has to put up with in this life...," the lawyer
thought, trying to adopt the contemplative attitude of a monk and
letting his curiosity deflect the guilt he felt as the hidden witness
to a scene that didn't belong to him.