Woes of the True Policeman

Later he explained that Delorme was the concierge of the building where he lived in the early 1960s. The context in which he referred to him was one of fear. Fears, frights, attacks, surprises, etc. Derville mentions him as part of a list of bizarre writers handed to him by Arcimboldi just before the publication of The Librarian. According to Derville, Arcimboldi confessed that he had grown afraid of Delorme, believing that he cast spells and performed Satanic rituals and black masses in his cramped concierge quarters, by means of which he hoped to improve his written French and the pacing of his stories. And that was all. Padilla promised that he would delve further and report back soon. Was Arcimboldi’s disappearance related to the barbaric writers? He didn’t know but he would keep up the investigation.

12

That night, after rereading the letter for the fourth or fifth time, Amalfitano had to get out of the house. He put on a light jacket and went for a walk. His steps led him to the center of the city, and after wandering around the plaza where the statue of General Sepúlveda stood with its back to the sculpture group commemorating the victory of the city of Santa Teresa over the French, he found himself in a neighborhood that, though only two blocks from the city center, displayed — even flaunted — every stigma, every sign of poverty, squalor, and danger. A no-man’s-land.

The term amused Amalfitano, eliciting feelings of bitterness and tenderness; he too, over the course of his life, had known no-man’s-lands. First the working-class neighborhoods and the industrial belts; then the terrain liberated by the guerrilla. Calling a neighborhood of prostitutes a no-man’s-land, however, struck him as felicitous and he wondered whether those distant danger zones of his youth weren’t simply giant prostitution belts camouflaged in Rhetoric and Dialectic. Our every effort, our long prison revolt: a field of invisible whores, the glare of pimps and policemen.

Suddenly he was sad and also starving. In blatant disregard of gastrointestinal prudence and caution, he stopped at a cart on the corner of Avenida Guerrero and General Mina and bought a ham sandwich and a hibiscus drink that in his fevered imagination was like the jasmine nectar or Chinese peach blossom juice of his childhood. The fucking insane wisdom, the discernment of these Mexicans, he thought as he savored one of the best sandwiches of his life: between two slices of bread, sour cream, black bean paste, avocado, lettuce, tomato, three or four slices of chipotle chile, and a thin slice of ham, which was what gave the sandwich its name and at the same time was the least important part. Like a philosophy lesson. Chinese philosophy, of course! he thought. Which reminded him of the following lines from the Tao Te Ching: “Mystery defines him. And in that mystery lies the gate of all that is most wonderful.” What defines Padilla? he wondered, walking away from the stand toward a big floodlit sign in the middle of Calle Mina. The mystery, the wonder of being young and unafraid and then suddenly afraid. But was Padilla really afraid? or were the signs that Amalfitano interpreted as fear actually indications of something else? In big red letters, the sign announced Coral Vidal, singer of rancheras; a communicative striptease; and a magician, Alexander the Great. Under the marquee, amid a swarm of insomniacs, were vendors of cigarettes, drugs, dried fruit, magazines, and newspapers from Santa Teresa, Mexico City, California, and Texas. As he was paying for a Mexico City paper — any of them, the Excélsior, he told the vendor — a boy tugged at his sleeve.

Amalfitano turned. The boy was dark, thin, about eleven, wearing a yellow University of Wisconsin sweatshirt and running shorts. Come, sir, follow me, he insisted in the face of Amalfitano’s initial resistance. A few people had stopped and were staring at them. Finally he decided to obey. The boy turned down a side street full of tenements that seemed on the verge of collapse. The sidewalks were lined with cars that had been sloppily parked or, to judge by their sorry state, abandoned by their owners. From inside some apartments came a cacophony of angry voices and televisions blaring at full volume. Amalfitano counted at least three signs for cheap hotels. Their names struck him as picturesque, but not as picturesque as the sign on Calle Mina. What did communicative striptease mean? Did the audience undress too or did the stripper announce the items that she was about to take off?