The Shadow of the Shadow (13 page)

THE FOLLOWING WEEK WAS ABSURD enough in its
own way. Nothing happened. The poet was asked to prepare an
advertising campaign for the Torrelavega Mattress Company
(On a Torrelavega mattress you'll feel like you're riding on a celestial
carriage-rejected; Even your wife looks better on a Torrelavega
mattress-rejected; Buy a Mexican mattress for a Mexican mattress
massage-accepted), and he came away with a fat roll of bills in
his pocket after several sleepless nights spent poring over different
designs, posters, and advertisements in search of the proper
slogan.

Tomas the Chinaman got involved in the strike at the Abeja
Mill, and he didn't make it home six nights out of the seven.
Manterola was taken to a private hospital and the newspaper paid
him handsomely for the exclusive eyewitness story of the gunfight
(EL DEMOCRATA REPORTER WOUNDED IN SHOOTOUT). He only
wrote one other story the whole rest of the week, a charming little
item served up to him on a tray by his friend Verdugo, who in spite
of his bandaged hand found a way to get himself mixed up in an
interesting bit of bordello intrigue.

There were no domino games and they never got the chance to
talk things over all together or retell the story of the shootout.

Verdugo and Manterola managed to talk awhile in the hospital where the reporter was recovering from his wounded leg. The
poet went by once to see Manterola, and he ran across Tomas one
evening in a streetcar.

Strangely enough, none of the three attackers survived the
encounter. The four friends only learned their names from the
newspaper reports, confirmed later on when they each appeared before Lieutenant Mazcorro, Chief of Special Investigations for
the Mexico City police. Mazcorro interrogated Manterola in his
hospital room, and he had the lawyer, the Chinaman, and the poet
meet with him in his office at headquarters.

Without having discussed the matter among themselves,
they each told the same story and refused to give any additional
information. None of them claimed to know who would want to
kill them, they denied being involved in any kind of trouble, or
having any personal enemies. They didn't need to talk it through
to get their story straight. It was a private affair between them and
whoever had sent the three men to kill them. And they all were
careful to leave out certain details, like the way the poet kicked the
wounded man in the head or that he was urinating on a lamppost
when the shooting started. Those things were private, too.

Tacitly, they all agreed to postpone further action or comments, and life went on in its own way.

So none of them bothered to try and trace the stolen car their
attackers had been driving, or to track down the buddies of "El
Gallego" Suarez (the dead driver) or Felipe Tibon (the one who
died at the corner with a knife in his throat). The third man went
unidentified.

Mazcorro didn't learn anything worth mentioning from his
interviews with the four friends. Perhaps the most interesting
was his brief session with Manterola, who was under the effects
of tranquilizers and craving a cigarette. The reporter, on the
other hand, found out from the police lieutenant that the dead
Englishman whose suicide wasn't a suicide had a roommate who
had since disappeared. The Aguila Petroleum Company was
demanding an investigation. Apparently, the two men had come
to Mexico to swing an important deal, with a million pesos in
stock certificates in their possession. It occurred to the reporter
that he ought to make a note of the roommate's name, but at the
time the lack of tobacco worried him far more and he ended up
forgetting all about it.

All in all it was a pretty stupid week, although both Tomas
Wong and the lawyer Verdugo, each in his own way, found
themselves with plenty to do.

I T MIGHT HAVE SEEM E D like a contradiction, but it wasn't.
What had started out as a form of self-degradation, the flagrant
rejection of his aristocratic past, somewhere along the line had
turned itself into a kind of simple appreciation of the ephemeral.

It's enough to say that in a country where over a million dead
were witness to ten chaotic years of revolution, there was ample
room for a lawyer who dedicated himself to the defense of ladies
of the evening.

Verdugo's ladies were a motley troupe, dolled up in swirling
skirts, fashionable hats, coats, frayed shawls, and Spanish lace
mantillas that had seen better days. From the rouged misses who
sold their bodies, their time, and their compassion for a few pesos
a day, to the gay chorus girls who expected sooner or later to land
themselves some young officer or well-to-do merchant, they all
availed themselves of the lawyer's professional skills. Verdugo plied
his understanding smile and barrister's know-how from within
an office whose confines were encompassed by the brim of his
hat and a borrowed table in any one of numerous cantinas, cafes,
tearooms, brothel sitting rooms, the back rooms of liquor stores, or
dance-hall dressing rooms.

Reflecting on the unique nature of his particular contribution
to the common good, Verdugo read out loud from his friend
Pioquinto Manterola's article concerning his role in the dramatic
story of Maria Luz de Garcia:

She was raised an orphan and an only child in the impoverished home ofher aunt, Francisca jurado. Enduring the slow
slippage of the hours, a lackluster existence deprived of the glad affects of a normal childhood and with no one to share the
cornucopia of tenderness that truly belonged only to her dead
mother, in repeated scenes worthy of Toulouse's macabre palette,
the child suffered the harpy's beatings without protestation, the
aunt begrudging her a corner of her house and a crust of bread,
not out ofany heartfelt commiseration for the orphan girl, but
rather looking forward to the day when this heap of flesh and
bones would cease to merely occupy space and become productive.
It was thus that one day the cruel aunt turned her niece over
to the care of one Ema Figueroa, a woman of faded beauty
who presides over a house of ill-gotten pleasures in the heart
of the aristocratic Roma district. The innocent Maria de Luz
was offered up in sacrce to the deities of Hedonism during
a party in honor of a certain wealthy personage, and there,
unable to flee, as ff hypnotized, a mere child of ffteen years,
she was dressed in silks and served up as the main course to
whomsoever was willing to pay the matron's exorbitant price.

Is this what we choose to cal/prostitution? Or is it rather
another example of the perfidy of our society, which abandoned
this child, deprived her of her rights, and sank her into the
depths of moral corruption?

The story, however, has a happy ending. It was to the girl's
greatgood fortune that she happened to meet, one day this week,
the lawyer A. Verdugo who, discovering her unhappy state,
and armed only with a single long-barreled revolver, forced
his way into the bordello where she was being held against her
will and rescued her from the clutches of her jailers.

But these same individuals, in no way slow to react,
thinking only of protecting their investment, and the influence they seem to enjoy in the Tenth Police Precinct, accused
this well-known barrister ofthe crime of kidnapping a minor.
Little did they know with whom they were dealing.

Mr. Verdugo, whom we have had occasion to write about
at other times in the pages of this newspaper, explained the situation with such vehemence and veracity before Captain
Ponce, that this officer of the public order was moved not
only to dismiss the charges against the lawyer, but ordered the
incarceration of the aforementioned Madame Figueroa, along
with her bodyguard and procurer, a man who goes by the alias
The Snake.

It would be unfitting to end this account without adding
that Maria de Luz Garcia (obviously a pseudonym adopted
to protect the innocent girl's identity) is now employed in a
reputable commercial establishment in this capital city.

"Well, what do you think, Maria?"

"They didn't say anything about how you set dona Ema's house
on fire."

"Thatwas the work of an anonymous arsonist," replied Verdugo,
firing up a long cigar and pouring himself another glass of mezcal.
He gazed dreamily at the afternoon light drifting in through the
open window, painting white splotches across the elusive form of
the naked woman moving languidly by the side of the bed.

"It's not really like they say. I only wanted to get out of that
place, but that old witch wouldn't let me. I never said I was going
to quit going to bed with whoever I felt like," said the girl.

"I rather think what we're dealing with here is the twin reality
of a puritanical newspaper establishment and the fact that our
friend Manterola had to fill up his column... Besides which, yours
is simply a problem of independence. And I'm a strong believer
in independence. It is true, however, there isn't a whole lot of
difference between dona Ema's place and what Manterola calls a
respectable commercial establishment... All in all I prefer it here in
your apartment," said Verdugo, cautiously flexing the fingers of his
bandaged hand.

"He didn't put anything in about all that money you took from
behind the painting at dona Ema's."

"Let's just call that my honorarium, my dear girl, and a lawyer's fee, like his services, are strictly confidential."

"Confidential, my ass. What about sharing some of it with the
client?"

"All you had to do was ask, miss," answered the lawyer, smiling.
But his smile turned bitter. The man that he'd invented, the
character he'd assumed, the one that answered to his name, wore
his suits, his hat, his wound, was all of a sudden not very fond of
himself. Verdugo concurred with Manterola's opinion that a man
lives during the day the autobiography he writes for himself the
night before. But today he had the feeling someone had handed
him the wrong book, even as the light slipping through the halfclosed Venetian blinds sketched beautiful figures over the woman's
naked flesh.