The night buffalo, p.11
The Night Buffalo, page 11
The sun rose. I carefully pulled away from her and headed toward the window. The day was clear, no clouds, no rain. Tania snored slightly and I turned to look at her. She must have been dreaming; she was making little noises with her lips.
I sat next to her. I looked at her and imagined her in old age. I imagined, on her face, the blister of years: the sunken eyes, weak mouth, worn teeth, the hanging jaw. I imagined her stomach stretched from pregnancies, her dry thighs, her weak forearms, her lessened breasts.
If I married her, what would we talk about sixty years later? What would we remember? Would she sleep next to me this unselfconsciously? Would we make love, kissing our toothless mouths? Who would die first?
I lay down next to her, hugged her again, and slowly fell asleep.
I awoke at noon. It was hot and the sun was shining straight into the room. Tania wasn’t in bed. I sat up and heard the shower running. I walked into the bathroom and sat on the toilet cover.
“Hey,” said Tania, looking at me from behind the transparent shower curtain. She smiled and blew me a kiss.
I asked her to turn and face the wall. I wanted to pee and was embarrassed to do it in front of her. She did, without trying to peek.
“What do you want for breakfast?” I asked when I was done.
“The usual,” she answered.
“The usual” consisted of a plate of tamales and a cup of chocolate atole. We used to buy them on Saturday and Sunday mornings from a woman who set up on the opposite corner from the motel.
“It’s late,” I said. “I’ll check if she’s still there.”
Tania called me over. I approached her, she stuck her head out from behind the shower curtain and kissed me on the mouth.
“You don’t know how much I love you.”
I took a step back and looked at her. She covered her breasts with her arms.
“What are you looking at?” she asked, laughing.
“Nothing.”
“Then stop peeking,” she said and splashed my eyes.
I kissed her again and set out for breakfast.
THE MOTEL WAS EMPTY: Sunday was the day with the least movement. “Football Sunday is a day for chastity and family,” Camariña used to say. I greeted Pancho, who was sweeping the driveway to 813.
“Hey, Pancho,” I called out.
Pancho raised his chin, smiled when he recognized me, waved his hand and kept sweeping.
I ran into Camariña. He had placed a table and chair in the middle of the corridor and was watching the Atlante versus Celaya match on a portable TV.
“Hey, what’s up?” he asked cordially.
“Nothing new.”
He leaned toward me and whispered:
“You made up with your girlfriend, huh?”
I assented. In a paternal gesture, Camariña squeezed my forearm.
“I’m glad,” he said.
On the TV the sportscaster raised his voice over a dangerous play near the goal and Camariña turned to look at the screen.
“I’ll see you in a bit,” I said and went on.
The sun was shining and the air was transparent and cold. As I tried to cross the street I sidestepped a taxi. I was happy, in a good mood.
I found the woman clearing up. I barely made it in time to buy two red tamales and two green ones. There were no sweet ones, Tania’s favorite, and no chocolate atole.
The woman wrapped the tamales in a sheet of newspaper and handed them over to me. I burned my hand on the still boiling water that dripped down the corn leaves and dropped the tamales. The woman laughed, picked them up, and put them in a plastic bag.
“Here you are,” she said, with a trace of jest.
I went back to the motel. As I crossed the street, Camariña gestured for me to come over.
“Come with me,” he said.
He turned off the TV and we went into his office. He asked me to sit down. He took out a cigar, lit it with his metal lighter, and sat behind his desk. He settled in, then brought his face closer to mine, like someone who wants to talk business.
“I heard you wanted to buy the gun from Pánfilo,” he said, right off the bat.
His tone of voice was neutral, without any inflection to indicate if he was angry about this or not.
“Yes,” I confirmed.
“And why do you want a gun?”
I didn’t know how to answer him. Camariña gave the cigar a long drag and exhaled the smoke to one side. The wisps rose, hovered against the roof, and disappeared out one of the ventilation shafts.
“It ain’t good that a kid like you should carry a gun,” he condemned.
I shrugged my shoulders.
“You never know,” I said.
Camariña opened a drawer and took out the gun. He put it on a red cloth and lined up six golden bullets.
“It’s pretty, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“I bought that gun many years ago from a crooked salesman at La Merced market. I’ve only fired it twice, to try it out.”
Camariña held it up to the light and looked at it proudly.
“I thought I was going to get held up every payday and see: no need.”
He cleaned a fingerprint off the barrel with the red cloth.
“I just sent it to the gunsmith; he left it as good as new. Look at it shine, look how smoothly the cylinder turns.”
He touched it for a while, then put it back on the red cloth and pushed it over toward me.
“Here, it’s yours,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because I say so.”
“But…”
“Nothing, man, it’s yours; take it as a payment for the jacket.”
“I gave you the jacket,” I protested.
“Then I’m giving you the gun.”
I ended up accepting it, and to thank him, I gave Camariña a green tamale.
I FOUND TANIA sitting on the bench in front of the dressing table. She was combing her hair, naked (in accordance to an agreement we made where, while we were in 803, neither of us was allowed wear clothes, unless it was too cold).
“Did you get the tamales?”
“Yes,” I answered and put the bag down on the dresser.
“Were there any sweet ones?”
“No,” I said and put the gun and bullets in front of her, “but look what I got.”
Tania turned to look at me, wide-eyed and perturbed.
“Camariña gave it to me,” I clarified.
She grew pale and swept the bullets away with the side of her hand.
“Get it away from me.”
“It’s okay,” I said.
“Get it away,” she ordered.
I picked up the gun, cocked it, and aimed at my reflection in the mirror.
“What are you doing?”
I pulled the trigger and the pistol went “click.” Tania jumped and covered her face with her hands.
“You’re an idiot,” she muttered.
She wrapped herself in a towel and locked herself in the bathroom. I decided to put the gun away in the car. When I got back, Tania was getting dressed.
“I was just playing,” I told her.
“Well, your little games are fucking stupid,” she retorted.
She put on her sweater, grabbed her purse, and headed to the door. I grabbed her wrists.
“Don’t leave,” I implored.
She tried to break free.
“Leave me alone.”
“No, not till you calm down.”
We struggled for a while until she raised her hands.
“All right, I won’t leave, but let me go.”
“You promise?”
“Let go,” she ordered, in a low voice.
I released her wrists and she sat on the bed.
“You scare me, Manuel, you scare me…”
I sat next to her and hugged her.
“I swear, I was just joking.”
“No, you weren’t,” she said, raising her voice, “you wanted to scare me.”
She tried to stand up and I pushed her back onto the bed.
“I swear I didn’t.”
I started to kiss her as I repeated, “I swear, I swear.” She stopped resisting, I undressed her and we made love again.
WE HAD TAMALES for breakfast, lying on the bed. Tania mentioned the possibility of getting a TV for the room. She suggested we buy one at Sears where we could pay it off in installments.
“We don’t need one,” I told her and turned one of her nipples as if it were a knob from an old TV. “We just have to turn this dial to whatever channel we like.”
Tania laughed and pushed me.
“Don’t be stupid,” she said and rubbed her nipple.
I picked up the Ruvalcaba book that was lying on the nightstand and I asked why she had underlined the passage about the bureaucrats buying bread.
“Because.”
“Do you know any bread-buying bureaucrats?” I asked mockingly.
“I used to,” she mumbled and remained pensive.
Her languid expression made me jealous.
“An uncle of mine, my mother’s brother,” she went on, “used to work in one of the commercial areas in the Department of Wildlife. One afternoon, after leaving the office, he went into a bakery to buy bread, and as he was paying, some robbers walked in.”
She stopped for a moment and wet her lips.
“Because he refused to hand over the change, about five pesos, they shot him in the head…”
Suddenly she turned to me.
“I’d never told you?”
“No.”
“He just lay there next to his bread bag. My aunt was left a widow with a two-year-old son and a ten-month-old baby…”
“How long ago was this?”
“I was little—it would’ve been around third or fourth grade of primary school. That was the first funeral I ever went to.”
She choked up and hugged me, worried.
“Don’t do anything crazy.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I don’t want you to die.”
“I’m not going to die,” I assured her. “I promise.”
“I’m not going to die.” Gregorio had uttered just these words one May afternoon. He’d just been released from the hospital with two amputated toes. “I’m not going to die,” he reaffirmed. Tania hugged him guiltily. A few days earlier, after making love to me, she’d whispered, “I hope he dies.” She wanted Gregorio to vanish into thin air, just like that. She wanted him to stop hurting her. She couldn’t deal with the fact that he’d gone crazy. She couldn’t tolerate loving both him and me. She simply couldn’t bear him and had wanted him to die.
“I’m not going to die,” I repeated.
Tania kissed me warily.
“Give the gun back.”
“No!”
“Please.”
“No.”
She squeezed me tightly.
“Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Never,” I said, “never…”
WE DECIDED TO LEAVE at five PM. As we were getting dressed, I told Tania about the box Gregorio had left. She listened intently, focused on my descriptions of the photographs and packets. She said she didn’t know Jacinto Anaya. She didn’t know about the song lyrics either.
“Margarita told me you might know.”
Tania reddened.
“And how the fuck does that bitch know what I think?” she exclaimed, irritated.
I found her anger excessive.
“Don’t talk about her like that, she’s your friend.”
“My friend?” she asked. “Don’t you mean your friend?”
“Both of ours.”
Tania shook her head and said nothing else. As we finished dressing I went over to kiss her. She kissed me coldly.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” she answered drily, and we left the room and I opened the garage curtains. Tania got into her car and lowered her window.
“Bye,” I said.
“Bye.”
She gave me a tight-lipped peck on the cheek, started the car, and drove off. I went back into the room and sat on the bed. The empty room weighed on me, as if the air without Tania were thicker. Maybe she was right: We needed to buy a TV.
WHEN I WAS ABOUT to get into the car, Pancho called out to me.
“It’s dripping something,” he pointed out.
I ducked to see what was leaking. It didn’t look like oil, water, or gasoline. I reached under and touched the front axle. It was blood.
I asked Pancho for a piece of cardboard so I could check under the car. I found a mess of hair, meat, and bones. The cat that hid in the motor had been torn apart, probably by the radiator fan. I poked at the remains with a clothes hanger and removed the animal in strips. It stank of urine and decomposition. Pancho found this very funny and he’d laugh every time I pulled out a foot or part of its back. “It looks like you’re giving your car an abortion,” he said with a humor that made me sad.
I ARRIVED BACK HOME at dusk. I tucked the gun under my shirt so my parents wouldn’t see it. I quickly ran upstairs and hid the gun in a drawer in my bathroom. My precautions were unnecessary: There was no one home.
An hour later, Luis returned from Cuernavaca. He was accompanied by a girl I didn’t know. He introduced her as his girlfriend. I can’t remember her name, much less her face. She was entirely insipid. (Two weeks later, my brother broke up with her.)
A couple of hours later, my parents arrived. My father looked as if he didn’t feel very well. He was pale and out of sorts. My mother explained that they’d gone to eat tacos and that they hadn’t agreed with him. I heard him vomit several times, without complaining. He tried to be discreet when sick, as opposed to my mother, for whom the slightest ailment was the perfect excuse for drama.
I had dinner with Luis and the girlfriend, who looked worried every time we heard my father’s loud retching. “You’re daddy’s really sick,” she said in a saccharine tone between mouthfuls. She didn’t seem to care that the bouquet of gastric juices permeated the house.
I WENT TO BED EARLY. At midnight, my father woke me up by touching me softly on the shoulder. Startled, I opened my eyes, and then relaxed once I made out his features in the dark.
“Where did you sleep yesterday?” he asked.
I didn’t answer.
“How do you feel?” I asked.
“So so.”
He sat down next to me. His face was lit by the light of the moon, streaming through the curtains.
“And you, how are you?” he asked.
“Fine.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” I answered without conviction.
He proposed that the four of us go on a family vacation. Like when we were kids.
“Let’s go to Puerto Vallarta,” he said.
I smiled at the suggestion. We used to go to Puerto Vallarta to celebrate Christmas and New Year’s. I grew up with the idea that Christmas meant heat, beach, and scrawny, yellow palm trees decked out in colored lightbulbs. The snowmen, the white landscapes on the greeting cards, and the fake pine trees felt contradictory. They simply didn’t make sense.
My dad got up, but before he left the room he repeated, “Let’s go to Puerto Vallarta.” He closed the door and I lay there remembering the old, sweaty Christmas dinners under the ceiling fans, raising glasses of warm cider, eating recently defrosted turkey.
THE NEXT DAY I dressed in a black, long-sleeve shirt to go to school: I’d had enough days where I was reminded of my scars. It would be difficult to justify my absences to my professors, who prided themselves on being rigorous and demanding. Someone dying was not a good enough excuse for failing to hand in a project or model. (“What the hell does your aunt Francisca have to do with that mess?” a teacher once barked at a student. He’d handed in a smudged project, sketched on his lap during the funeral mass for his favorite aunt, who had been run over by a soda delivery truck with no brakes.) Professor Molina, the head of department, claimed that designing houses was one of the most serious responsibilities in the world. He used to say: “You grow up, sleep, fight, love, fornicate, eat, hate, and die in a house. These aren’t just constructions, boys, they’re life’s sacred spaces.” He was right, but I wasn’t willing to listen to sermons that morning. No matter how hard you try, life’s sacred spaces can’t compete with life itself, and not even two hundred perfectly constructed walls can silence the sound of a gunshot midafternoon.
Luckily, none of the professors held my absence against me.
IN THE FIRST CLASS I ran into Rebecca. She greeted me, distant and nervous. She sat toward the front of the class instead of all the way at the back, next to me, like we used to. While the teacher lectured on the resistance of concrete, I never took my eyes off the point where her neck and back connected. Once I heard that if you stare fixedly at that point, you can force the person to turn around and look at you. Rebecca never turned around, not then, not on any other occasion, and the exercise only succeeded in making me want to kiss her neck intensely.
I found the classes to be generally bland and pointless, except for Modern Literature, the only optional course I was taking that semester. I’d registered for two reasons: because the professor seemed disdainful of conventional teaching methods, and because he was obsessed with the Beat generation. Kerouac, Burroughs, Ginsberg—they were the only writers he’d talk about. The others—Faulkner, Rulfo, Joyce, Martín Luís Guzmán—he’d barely mention. Personally, I couldn’t care less about the Beats, and the fact that I gave literature a shot was only because Gregorio considered On the Road to be the coolest book he’d ever read (“It’s like an album by the Doors,” he used to say).
I was more interested in the Beats’ life than their work, especially Burroughs, who Gregorio detested. “He’s an old faggot,” he said when he found out that Burroughs was openly gay (Gregorio was so homophobic that he was capable of viciously beating someone only on suspicion). He was into Kerouac: ex-Marine, handsome, ex-football player. “Now he was a tough motherfucker,” he claimed. In the end, however, he wasn’t, and it was Burroughs, sexual preference and all, who outlived them, including Kerouac and Gregorio.
