Read Online Mexico City Noir by Paco Ignacio Taibo II - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Paco Ignacio Taibo II
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angels leaving to go to sleep; the lights of the city center fusing with the glow of the airport; to hear all the noises from the cars mixing with the tick tock of the hearts of little boys and girls; there’s a mariachi song; coughing and kissing. The moon rises behind the high tower; the west is bloodred, the south only fog, and I’m left to remember poems …
Friend of mine, whom I love, do not age …
Running. Running as hard as possible, with everything from childhood in tow.
This is a heavy burden. Childhood’s too great a burden to carry while fleeing from a gun.
A smile. Women have twisted smiles. Women are not sincere when they laugh. This is a woman I’m sure I know from years ago, when my hands were trees and planets, and I suppose I knew her and slept with her, but I can’t be sure because her hair, which has been done up in a beauty shop, depresses me, and I can see that she’s insulting me.
Behind her, there’s the guy whose face is scarred by acne or smallpox or some other damn skin disease.
I leave the room and the woman follows me. I think she wants to ask me something.
It takes approximately three days for a corpse’s skin to decompose. It fills up with toxic gases that cause sores on the outside, then the skin succumbs, cracks, and the gases are freed. If the corpse is exposed to the sun, it takes less than ten days for everything to collapse, for the flesh to rot and the scent to spread among the living. In the end, only the skeleton remains, and perhaps remnants of the liver, the toughest organ in the human body, the one that most resists decomposition. An irony if the death has been brought on by cirrhosis.
I don’t have cirrhosis, nor do I have a body. I am matter floating here on this rooftop where I continue to stare at the barrel of a gun that some guy is pointing at me. To the west, there’s the vast, dark stain that is Chapultepec Forest, to the south there’s the eternal track of my doubts, to the north the shadow of a blonde who’s moving away, to the other north another blonde and another goodbye, until I bring my gaze back to the stain on the west, and again I find the barrel of the gun.
A few days ago: Tell me that you will not leave me , a voice whispers in my ear, and I hear the whisper as if it were a siren beckoning Ulysses’ ship. And Ulysses—me—I stay firm at the rudder, tied with cords, trying to cross the sea without paying attention to her song. The siren approaches, embraces me, tries to take the rudder and direct me toward an island, but I maintain control and the ship continues its course. Suddenly I notice the ship has ceased to be, it’s not even a simple plank sailing in the blue of the ocean; the boat is a bed, the sea is a room, and at my side there is a woman who whispers in my ear, and where the horizon should be, a door appears instead, and it’s kicked to pieces by a guy who bursts in with a gun in his hand which he aims right at my forehead.
The siren disappears.
There is no sea in this life.
A flight scene must have its limits. It’s impossible to just keep running around the world, there must be boundaries so that certain characters can admit exhaustion.
I am the guy who holds the weapon in his right hand. There’s a man in front of me looking to escape, but I stop him and tell him that if he makes any strange movements, I’ll have to shoot. My finger touches the gun’s trigger and then, totally, completely, I absolutely forget the reason for my aggression.
I don’t want to shoot anymore. I don’t want this gun in my hand.
A bullet traverses three hundred and twenty meters per second, the equivalent of the speed of a lie, the speed of a bloodthirsty and clumsy and cruel love.
A .45 caliber bullet destroys approximately twenty centimeters of my heart’s flesh and leaves an exit wound equivalent to three absences, four goodbyes.
If the emptiness is not empty, if there is no ravine or precipice, if it is only the damn distance of
Friend of mine, whom I love, do not age …
Running. Running as hard as possible, with everything from childhood in tow.
This is a heavy burden. Childhood’s too great a burden to carry while fleeing from a gun.
A smile. Women have twisted smiles. Women are not sincere when they laugh. This is a woman I’m sure I know from years ago, when my hands were trees and planets, and I suppose I knew her and slept with her, but I can’t be sure because her hair, which has been done up in a beauty shop, depresses me, and I can see that she’s insulting me.
Behind her, there’s the guy whose face is scarred by acne or smallpox or some other damn skin disease.
I leave the room and the woman follows me. I think she wants to ask me something.
It takes approximately three days for a corpse’s skin to decompose. It fills up with toxic gases that cause sores on the outside, then the skin succumbs, cracks, and the gases are freed. If the corpse is exposed to the sun, it takes less than ten days for everything to collapse, for the flesh to rot and the scent to spread among the living. In the end, only the skeleton remains, and perhaps remnants of the liver, the toughest organ in the human body, the one that most resists decomposition. An irony if the death has been brought on by cirrhosis.
I don’t have cirrhosis, nor do I have a body. I am matter floating here on this rooftop where I continue to stare at the barrel of a gun that some guy is pointing at me. To the west, there’s the vast, dark stain that is Chapultepec Forest, to the south there’s the eternal track of my doubts, to the north the shadow of a blonde who’s moving away, to the other north another blonde and another goodbye, until I bring my gaze back to the stain on the west, and again I find the barrel of the gun.
A few days ago: Tell me that you will not leave me , a voice whispers in my ear, and I hear the whisper as if it were a siren beckoning Ulysses’ ship. And Ulysses—me—I stay firm at the rudder, tied with cords, trying to cross the sea without paying attention to her song. The siren approaches, embraces me, tries to take the rudder and direct me toward an island, but I maintain control and the ship continues its course. Suddenly I notice the ship has ceased to be, it’s not even a simple plank sailing in the blue of the ocean; the boat is a bed, the sea is a room, and at my side there is a woman who whispers in my ear, and where the horizon should be, a door appears instead, and it’s kicked to pieces by a guy who bursts in with a gun in his hand which he aims right at my forehead.
The siren disappears.
There is no sea in this life.
A flight scene must have its limits. It’s impossible to just keep running around the world, there must be boundaries so that certain characters can admit exhaustion.
I am the guy who holds the weapon in his right hand. There’s a man in front of me looking to escape, but I stop him and tell him that if he makes any strange movements, I’ll have to shoot. My finger touches the gun’s trigger and then, totally, completely, I absolutely forget the reason for my aggression.
I don’t want to shoot anymore. I don’t want this gun in my hand.
A bullet traverses three hundred and twenty meters per second, the equivalent of the speed of a lie, the speed of a bloodthirsty and clumsy and cruel love.
A .45 caliber bullet destroys approximately twenty centimeters of my heart’s flesh and leaves an exit wound equivalent to three absences, four goodbyes.
If the emptiness is not empty, if there is no ravine or precipice, if it is only the damn distance of
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