The night buffalo, p.20
The Night Buffalo, page 20
“So this is the famous room 803,” he said.
His comment irritated me, but before I could protest Jacinto stood up again.
“Can I use your bathroom?”
“Go ahead,” I said, holding out my hand.
Jacinto went in and locked the door. I got up, took three empty glass bottles from the crate of Cock-Colas and hid them in case things got violent: one under the bed, another behind the curtains, and the third under the nightstand.
Jacinto came out buckling his belt and sat on the stool again. He looked at me fixedly, took out a bandanna from his pants pocket and mopped the sweat off his forehead.
“So this is where you met with Tania,” he asked.
“Yeah, why?”
“It’s pretty shitty, don’t you think?”
“Stop fucking with me,” I said. “And if you’ve got something to say to me, stop beating around the goddamn bush and say it.”
Without reacting, Jacinto carefully folded his bandanna and put it away again.
“Don’t take offense, it was just a thought.”
“Like it was just a thought to send me Gregorio’s letters, right?”
“Maybe.”
“You’re a little old to be playing the middleman.”
“This isn’t a game. Neither Gregorio nor I are playing.”
“Gregorio’s dead, didn’t they tell you?”
He shook his head.
“Stop bullshitting me and tell me what you want,” I said.
Jacinto opened his hands and clicked his tongue several times.
“To tell you the truth, I don’t want anything.”
“Then stop fucking with me.”
He looked at me threateningly.
“You don’t like people to fuck with you, do you? But you sure do like fucking with other people.”
I slid my hand down to where I’d hidden the bottle under the bed.
“Like who?” I asked.
“Gregorio, for one,” he answered.
“Gregorio? Gregorio destroyed everything he touched.”
“Not me.”
“You were lucky.”
He suddenly stood up and pointed at a milk carton.
“Do you mind if I have some?” he asked. “I have to take some medication.”
I poured him some in a plastic cup. Jacinto took out two pills from a blue box and swallowed them with a big gulp.
“Thanks,” he said.
He put the cup on the dressing table, sat down again, and leaned back.
“You’ve never been locked up in a mental institution, have you?”
“No.”
He sighed and looked at the floor as if he were remembering something.
“When you’re in there,” he continued, turning his eyes toward me, “you’re held by very thin strings, and when those strings snap everything becomes a whirlwind. There’s no north, no south, no down, no up, no left, no right. You understand?”
“No, I don’t understand.”
He lifted his hands to his head, pulled his hair back and cleared his throat. His voice sounded deeper.
“Do you know the name of the string that held Gregorio?”
“No.”
“Her name was Tania.”
I laughed at the provocation.
“Well, it turns out,” I added, “that that was the name of my string, too.”
“Yes,” he said and tapped his temple with his index finger repeatedly, “but you’ve never gotten lost in here.”
“Don’t be so sure.”
“No, you don’t know what that’s like. I’m speaking from personal experience. You don’t have the slightest fucking idea.”
“Yes, I do, it’s just that some of us are stronger than others.”
Jacinto bit a hangnail off his thumb and shook his head.
“And you say that it was Gregorio who destroyed everything.”
“Yeah, so much so,” I affirmed, “that he destroyed himself.”
“Or maybe he got a little help.”
“Look,” I told him, “Gregorio was my best friend, I’d known him for a long time and I watched him break apart on his own. There wasn’t much you could do, I can assure you.”
“You weren’t his friend,” he shot back angrily, “you wrecked him.”
“We both hit each other with everything we had—with everything.”
“And who lost?”
“This isn’t about who won or who lost.”
“Who lost,” he insisted.
“Neither of us did, goddammit!”
“He’s dead and you’re here, taking it easy.”
I started waving my hands as I protested.
“He killed himself because he wanted to. What the fuck do I have to do with it?”
“You don’t realize, do you?”
“Realize what?”
“That you’re the one who destroys everything. Why do you think Tania runs away from you all the time?”
I was tempted to pick up the glass bottle and crack it across his head.
“Don’t bring Tania into this again, or I’ll make you swallow your own balls.”
“Oh, that’s scary,” he said.
We remained silent, sizing each other up. Jacinto was large, but I was sure I could beat him down with the bottle.
“Tania’s the reason I’m here,” he said.
“What?”
“She’s scared of you, Manuel, very scared.”
“Whatever Tania feels or doesn’t feel for me, is my problem.”
“Well, she’s fucking terrified of you.”
“Okay, okay, so?”
“Gregorio was afraid of you, too.”
I didn’t answer back anymore. His words, his gaze, ceased being threatening and turned somber.
“You shouldn’t have gone out with Tania,” he said.
“Those things happen.”
“No, those things are avoided.”
“So now you’re a moralist?” I told him.
Jacinto remained silent, wrinkling his brow every now and again.
“Tania and I didn’t fall in love on purpose,” I added, but Jacinto didn’t pay attention.
He took out the bandanna again, wiped the sweat off the back of his neck, and started to talk in a low voice.
“Several years ago, in a place in Africa I went to, it was so hot that the lakes started to dry up…”
He paused to put the bandanna away and went on.
“They dried up so quickly that all that was left was some spots of filthy water, with thousands of fish belly up and stinking. You can’t imagine the smell.”
He finished and was quiet.
“And?” I asked.
He gulped and looked me in the eyes.
“That’s what you must smell like inside,” he answered.
He didn’t say another word. He got up and walked toward the door. I got in his way.
“Where’s Tania?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he answered.
“You know where she went, don’t think I’m an idiot.”
“I really don’t know.”
He stepped aside to go on his way, but I intercepted him again.
“You still haven’t told me lots of things.”
“That’s all I had to say to you.”
I grabbed the pictures of Tania I’d received the previous week and showed them to him.
“What about these?”
He grabbed them and looked at them closely.
“I’ve never seen them before,” he said confidently and gave them back to me.
“Then who brought them?”
“I didn’t. I’ve done my bit.”
“What was your bit?”
He sighed deeply and moistened his lips.
“To show you that you aren’t safe.”
He walked around me and left without closing the door. I sat on the bed, confused. I suddenly realized how much Gregorio had loved me, and how much I still loved him. Shit, who was the King Midas of destruction now?
I spent the rest of the night sitting on the bed, with the door open, without moving, thinking of the festering air of a distant African savannah.
I DIDN’T GO BACK HOME; I stayed to live at the motel. I pay for the room and support myself by working for Camariña. I’m in charge of accounting and I supervise the administration of the rooms. I even made some architectural improvements. The motel looks more modern, more functional, and the clientele has definitely increased. Not much, but it has.
Camariña trusts me completely and only comes to the motel every third day, in the evenings. My accounting is neat and clear, with a detailed balance of income and expenditures. I even report how much we spend on soap a day. He says that if I keep it up, he’s going to make me a partner.
In my room I have a TV, a shelf with books, a sound system, and a phone connected to Camariña’s private line. I bought a copy of Músico de Cortesanas, which I always keep on the nightstand. I still use it as my personal I Ching and it’s almost never wrong.
My relationship with my parents changed for the better once I stopped living at home, especially with my mother. We have lunch together every Saturday. My father still complains about the noise made by the young girl next door; Luis still skips from one lackluster girlfriend to the next, and my mother still makes chicken sandwiches with onions. She’s gone back to work. Now she’s the coordinator of citizen action in the Benito Juárez district. She’s no longer overwhelmed by not being at home, and she no longer feels guilty.
MARGARITA LIED. Neither Joaquín nor her parents found out about our relationship. She told me that, she confessed, to protect herself. She was also afraid of me. I thought she was being unfair. We’d been friends, accomplices, confidants. She knew so much about me that it would’ve been difficult to hurt her. And despite that, I did.
I made love to her three more times: once at her house, another time in 803, and the last in the middle of the street in the early morning. All three times were rushed. She did it with a certain rage and fear. I did it with abandon, indifferently, almost just because I could. Since then we’ve grown distant and our contact has been reduced to a sporadic phone call. I know she has a boyfriend she doesn’t love, to whom she might get married.
ACCORDING TO MANRIQUE, Jacinto went back to the mental hospital. He suffers from severe manic depression. To avoid trouble with him, his stepfather (the minister of the interior) grants him his every whim, one of which was to ask for my release from custody. But with the slightest excuse, he locks him up again. Jacinto is back in the world of Prozac, Tegretol, and ridiculous blue gowns.
TANIA DISAPPEARED. It’s been more than a year and I haven’t heard from her. Her parents have combed through morgues, hospitals, and jails. They travel anguished from one city to the next following up false leads. There’s always someone who is sure they’ve seen her somewhere or other. And there they go to look for her, only to return a few days later, disappointed.
I know Tania is okay, that she thinks about me, that she still loves me. Luis tells me that sometimes, in the middle of the night, the phone rings at home. There’s no voice, just breath, and then they hang up. It’s her, I’m sure of it.
I haven’t been able to forget her. I miss her every night. I sleep naked with the hope that one day she’ll cross the room’s threshold and come lie down next to me. Because I can’t stop loving her. I’ve tried and I can’t do it. I’ve made love to eight or ten more women, and every time I penetrate I remember Tania’s warm belly on me and I close my eyes and think of her.
I’VE BEEN BACK TO THE ZOO. I always head straight to the jaguar pit. I watch the solitary female for hours. Sometimes I can hear a soft purr while she sleeps. It is a sad, ancient purr. I imagine that animals dream and that she dreams of the lost male, with rows of students crowding to watch her, the noise of airplanes overhead.
The female dreams and purrs.
THE LAST MESSAGE I got from Gregorio consisted of an envelope with three earwigs in it and a white, bloodspattered card with the phrase: “The night buffalo dreams of us.” I never found out who sent it.
ONCE I WENT TO SEE A MOVIE. It was about two brothers who were very rebellious in their youth. When they grew up, one became a cop, the other a criminal. The cop chose a tranquil, family life, the crook a dark, nomadic one.
One afternoon, in a bar, the crook accuses his brother of having lost his fire, that he’s been dominated and humiliated, that he’s turned into a caricature of himself. He urges him to recover his fire, to abandon this routine of the boring, responsible man. The cop doesn’t answer. He just breaks a bottle on the bar and cuts one of his forearms with the broken glass. “Hell burns on the inside,” he tells him, dripping blood. The brother looks at him amazed. Calmly, the cop offers him the bloody glass. His brother doesn’t take it and runs away.
THERE ARE MANY NIGHTS I wake up with the blue breath of the night buffalo on my neck. It’s death brushing against me, I know it. It’s the temptation to put a bullet through my forehead, to end it all. It’s the fire that burns me on the inside.
It’s death, I know it.
Guillermo Arriaga, The Night Buffalo
