were living it again, the night of my liberation. Liberation was what I felt as I fucked Judith, with all the mariachis, drunk as hell, in her bedroom, pumping and pumping to the strains of the ballad of Pancho Villaâs horse, âin the station at Irapuato, broad horizons beckoned,â my grandfather sitting in a chair, sad and silent, as if he were watching life being born anew, but not his, not his ever again, Judith red with shame, sheâd never done it that way, with music and everything, frozen, ashamed, feigning emotions I knew she didnât feel, because her body belonged to the dead night, I was the only one who conquered, no one shared the victory with me, thatâs why it had no flavor, it wasnât like those moments the General had told me about, moments shared by all, maybe thatâs why my grandfather was so sad, and why so sad forever was the melancholy of the liberation I thought Iâd won that night.
It was about six in the morning when we reached the French Cemetery. Grandfather handed over another of the gold coins he carried in his richly ornamented belt to a watchman numb with cold, and he allowed us to enter. Grandfather wanted to play a serenade to Doña Clotilde in her tomb, and the mariachis sang âOn the Road to Guanajuatoâ on the harp theyâd stolen from the cabaret: âLife is without meaning, thereâs no meaning in life.â The General sang with them, it was his favorite song, it reminded him of so many things from his youth: âOn the road to Guanajuato, you pass through many towns.â
We paid the mariachis and said weâd get together again soon, friends to the death, and Grandfather and I went home. Even though there was little traffic at that hour, I had no desire to speed. The two of us, Grandfather and I, on our way home to Pedregal, that unwitting cemetery that rises to the south of Mexico City. Mute witness to cataclysms that went unrecorded, the black, barren land watched over by extinct volcanoes is an invisible Pompeii. Thousands of years ago, lava inundated the night with bubbling flames; no one knows who died here, who fled. Some, like me, think that perfect silence, that calendar of creation, should never have been touched. Many times, when I was a boy, when we lived in the Roma district and my mother was still alive, we passed by Pedregal on the way to visit the pyramid of Copilco, stone crown of stone. I remember how, spontaneously, each of us would fall silent when we saw that dead landscape, lord of its own dusk that would never be dissipated by the (then) luminous mornings of our valley, do you remember, Grandfather? itâs my first memory. We were on our way to the country, because then the country was very close to the city. I always sat on a servantâs lap, was she my nurse? Manuelita was her name.
On the way back to the house in Pedregal with my drunk and humiliated grandfather, I remembered the construction of the university, how they polished the volcanic rock, Pedregal put on spectacles of green glass, a cement toga, painted its lips with acrylic, encrusted its cheeks with mosaic, conquered the blackness of the land with an even blacker shadow of smoke. The silence was broken. On the far side of the vast parking lot at the university they parceled out the Pedregal Gardens. They established a style that would unify the buildings and landscape of the new residential site. High walls, white, indigo blue, vermilion, and yellow. The vivid colors of the Mexican fiesta, Grandfather, combined with the Spanish tradition of the fortress, are you listening? They sowed the rock with dramatic plants, stark, with no adornment but a few aggressive flowers. Door locked tight like chastity belts, Grandfather, and flowers open like wounded genitals, like the cunt of the whore Judith that you couldnât fuck and I could, and what for, Grandfather?
We were approaching Pedregal Gardens, the mansions that must all have been
It was about six in the morning when we reached the French Cemetery. Grandfather handed over another of the gold coins he carried in his richly ornamented belt to a watchman numb with cold, and he allowed us to enter. Grandfather wanted to play a serenade to Doña Clotilde in her tomb, and the mariachis sang âOn the Road to Guanajuatoâ on the harp theyâd stolen from the cabaret: âLife is without meaning, thereâs no meaning in life.â The General sang with them, it was his favorite song, it reminded him of so many things from his youth: âOn the road to Guanajuato, you pass through many towns.â
We paid the mariachis and said weâd get together again soon, friends to the death, and Grandfather and I went home. Even though there was little traffic at that hour, I had no desire to speed. The two of us, Grandfather and I, on our way home to Pedregal, that unwitting cemetery that rises to the south of Mexico City. Mute witness to cataclysms that went unrecorded, the black, barren land watched over by extinct volcanoes is an invisible Pompeii. Thousands of years ago, lava inundated the night with bubbling flames; no one knows who died here, who fled. Some, like me, think that perfect silence, that calendar of creation, should never have been touched. Many times, when I was a boy, when we lived in the Roma district and my mother was still alive, we passed by Pedregal on the way to visit the pyramid of Copilco, stone crown of stone. I remember how, spontaneously, each of us would fall silent when we saw that dead landscape, lord of its own dusk that would never be dissipated by the (then) luminous mornings of our valley, do you remember, Grandfather? itâs my first memory. We were on our way to the country, because then the country was very close to the city. I always sat on a servantâs lap, was she my nurse? Manuelita was her name.
On the way back to the house in Pedregal with my drunk and humiliated grandfather, I remembered the construction of the university, how they polished the volcanic rock, Pedregal put on spectacles of green glass, a cement toga, painted its lips with acrylic, encrusted its cheeks with mosaic, conquered the blackness of the land with an even blacker shadow of smoke. The silence was broken. On the far side of the vast parking lot at the university they parceled out the Pedregal Gardens. They established a style that would unify the buildings and landscape of the new residential site. High walls, white, indigo blue, vermilion, and yellow. The vivid colors of the Mexican fiesta, Grandfather, combined with the Spanish tradition of the fortress, are you listening? They sowed the rock with dramatic plants, stark, with no adornment but a few aggressive flowers. Door locked tight like chastity belts, Grandfather, and flowers open like wounded genitals, like the cunt of the whore Judith that you couldnât fuck and I could, and what for, Grandfather?
We were approaching Pedregal Gardens, the mansions that must all have been
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