“Thank you. I swear I’ll have the rent tomorrow.”
“You make sure of that. It’s a disgrace what the world has come to. Tenants always in arrears, and the price of everything keeps rising.”
“I know, sir, I know.”
By the time Ulises slipped back into his room and took off his jacket, night had fallen. He was rereading the telegram when the lights went off. It was another of the drills President Camacho had organized. Apagones. As if German bombers really were going to cross the Atlantic and bother with Mexico City. Unlikely, and yet the thought of bombed-out ruins ran through his head, and the images he tried to ignore in the newspaper lodged behind his eyelids late at night. Hitler’s panzers advancing across Europe, turning palaces into rubble. Corpses littering empty fields, as abundant as wildflowers.
He thought about Moisés’s job offer and grimaced. He lit a candle and lay on the bed, his right hand behind his head, staring at the ceiling while he smoked his second cigarette of the day.
Why had he been stupid? Why had he gone after the widow Aguirre? She had three sons, after all. Three fuming, thirtysomething sons who didn’t appreciate that a young man had latched on to their mother, that she’d bought him cuff links and the new camera and even a car.
If only she’d signed the papers. He’d thought she would do it. She’d seemed interested in his business proposition; she’d been ready to hand him a sizable check as a deposit. But then she had the audacity to ask one of her sons for advice, and that son called the other sons, and the scheme came tumbling down.
When the widow Aguirre discovered that there was no hotel development in Acapulco, she’d promptly gone into hysterics. He couldn’t be blamed for that. He hadn’t even been in the room when it happened. It had been her sons, badgering the poor woman, who pushed her to the edge with their questions and their recriminations. But no matter. Afterward, there was nothing to do but to flee with only a few possessions.
He took another puff of his cigarette, let the smoke trail up from thecorner of his mouth. The drill, the darkness that blanketed his city block with the electricity turned off, depressed him. Not that when the lights turned on his spirits would be lifted. The lightbulbs would burst back to life, but what use was a city aglow when he couldn’t enjoy it? When he couldn’t drink highballs at Los Cocoteros and spend the evening dancing with a beautiful woman in a sequined gown?
Yet there was that insidious, nagging fear of the bombers. War drills gave him a chill. Industrialization would save Mexico. That’s what the propaganda posters said. Contribute to the war effort by being a good worker, manufacture the materials the Allies might need, ensure victory. Radio programs dramatized the heroism of the U.S. armed forces in Europe and Asia, assuring everyone that this would all be over quickly. But he kept thinking about pictures of the London Blitz and imagining his neighborhood blown up, houses turned into rubble and cars smoldering on street corners.
The countryside might be safer than the capital, mightn’t it? And even if his fears of war were exaggerated, he needed cash. Needed a secure spot in this world. Needed something more than this endless search for scraps. Moisés looked like shit. A few more years of hard living and Ulises would also start losing his good looks and fit physique.
He didn’t want to leave the city, despite his misgivings about it, yet he was broke, and he was tired, and he needed more certainty than the few pesos he made writing letters, the back-and-forth of lonely hearts. The real dough was available when you met the women in person.
The widow or the spinster. Which one to pick? In the end, his decision came down to money: the ticket to Puerco Ahogado, Veracruz, was cheaper.
—
He was not fond of trains, of their rhythmic rumbling and their wailing, but he was even less fond of buses, and the idea of perching himself inside a crowded tin can was more offensive than the train. Therefore, herode with stoicism to Puerco Ahogado and stepped off the train with a face of grim determination.
He was greeted at the station by vendors selling oranges and chirimoyas, a boy with newspapers under his arm yelling out the headlines, and stray dogs that wagged their tails and hoped for a morsel. The air was uncomfortably moist; it clung to his skin, made him feel like he’d just gotten out of the shower. Or else as if he were a plant in a hothouse.
He urged a young station attendant to pile his suitcases together and tried in vain to spot his ride to the Inclán guesthouse. The minutes ticked by. He wondered if the woman had changed her mind; perhaps she didn’t want to meet him after all. If that was the case, he’d be in dire straits, having to dig into the last bills in his pockets to survive. He was already dissatisfied with this venture and counted the money in his mind.
Ulises fanned himself with his hat. Suddenly, a boy who was eating an ice cream collided with him, staining the lapels of his beige suit with chocolate.
“Excuse us,” his mother said, and shoved the boy away, leaving Ulises to stare at his ruined suit with open-mouthed shock.
He took out a handkerchief and furiously tried to wipe off the stain, which seemed to have the effect of spreading it and making the mess look even worse.
“Mr. Linares?”
“Yes,” he barked irritably, and looked up at a young man in denim overalls who nodded politely at him.
“Hello, sir, Miss Inclán sent me to pick you up. Sorry I’m late, the car wouldn’t start this morning. Something happen to you?”
“It’s fine,” he said.
The man in the overalls helped Ulises with his luggage and they walked the short stretch to a white Ford that looked like it had seen better days. It wasn’t a jalopy, but Ulises could understand why it hadn’t started that morning. He climbed into the back seat.
Puerco Ahogado was nestled into the side of a mountain, and the narrow streets the car navigated were steep and bumpy; it was nothing like the slickness of a large city. The driver spent the short ride from the train station to the house humming songs, indifferent to the condition of the road. The houses they passed were odd, with overhanging eaves to keep the rains at bay, different from the houses in Mexico City. A number of dwellings had formidable carved wooden doors and elaborate grilled windows, and he glimpsed interior patios studded with flowers, many orchids.
When the car stopped and the driver stepped out to unlock the double gates of the house, Ulises took off his sunglasses to better survey his surroundings.
The house was two stories tall, done up in the style of a bygone era, and the sight of it filled him with hope, for it was a large house that must have been constructed at great expense. Nevertheless, he didn’t like the battered sign tied to the gate that read, in big block letters:Rooms for rent, by the week or the month. Inquire inside.It cheapened the whole place.
The driver jumped back in the car and advanced a couple of meters, parking in an interior courtyard shaded by lemon trees. In the center of the courtyard there was a fountain with no running water; it was filled instead with dry leaves and twigs. The air was redolent with a citrusy scent that made him think of Seville. Not that he’d ever been there, but his mother had spoken fondly about growing up among orange groves in Tamaulipas, and she said the orchards there rivaled those in Spain. Ulises remembered how she kissed the top of his head and called him her prince and made pots of marmalade.
A bougainvillea of smoldering purple crept up the side of the front door, growing lush against old bricks and scratched wooden shutters. There in the shadow of this burst of color stood a young woman in a brown skirt, a simple white blouse, and sensible shoes. Her curly hairfell loose past her shoulders, and she wore no earrings or other ornaments.