Сантьяго Ронкальоло: Barcelona Noir

The building’s interior now resembles a trash heap: broken furniture, cut cables, random clothing, gravel, and garbage, as well as gallons of paint thinner and gasoline covering the floors, which in some places are flooded due to leaking. Humidity has weakened the walls and most of the ceilings have come loose from their moorings. The marble floors in the lobby are flooded, and the Art Deco which distinguished it is gone. (Mael Vallejo, October 23, 2005: “Agoniza el Frontón México,” La Crónica de Hoy .)

As I write this, El Frontón México is still abandoned.

After September 20, 1959, there was nothing published in the Mexican press about the double homicide. Following the description of the incident on the 14th, the rest were allegations: random tips, autopsy reports, interviews with those close to the deceased, and Doña Albina Solaini’s sadness. Nothing else. The murder of Mercedes Cassola and Ycilio Massine was never solved. And their bodies, loveless I suspect, finally said their farewells: they buried Ycilio in Mexico and Mercedes was repatriated to the world from which she’d been expelled.

José Ramón Garmabella: “Reportero de policía, ¡el Güero Téllez! ¿Quién asesinó a los amantes de Lucerna?”; Carlos Monsiváis: “La impunidad al amparo de la homofobia.”

Lolita Bosch: “In This World, and at the Time Mercedes Died” (“En este mundo y en aquel tiempo en el que murió Mercedes”).

José Ramón Garmabella: “Reportero de policía, ¡el Güero Téllez!”

I haven’t been able to find anything anywhere about the word, or words, that were supposedly written in blood at 84-A Lucerna Street in the early hours of September 13, 1959. Ten years later in California, Charles Manson’s gang wrote PIG in large letters on the front door of the Polanski family home.

Roman Polanski’s wife.

Charles Manson founded The Family in 1967, in Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco, two years before they killed Roman Polanski’s pregnant wife. The Family, whose violent philosophy is still followed by some satanic worshippers, had no rules other than those imposed by Charles Manson, who had managed to pull together a group of devoted fanatics; he called himself Satan, Jesus, or God, without distinction. And The Family revered him as such: at his last trial, some of his followers told how they’d seen Manson bring a bird back to life after taking it in his hands and softly blowing on it.

During its first few years, The Family committed various murders that helped the group’s leader polish his philosophy. And in 1969, Manson announced the coming of the Apocalypse: the time had come for the black race to rise against whites. In the end, only 144,000 survivors would remain, taking shelter in a subterranean world from which they could only emerge if led by a new global king: Charles Manson. This is how he tried to convince various African Americans that they should embrace their destiny and kill whites.

Fruit-fly is the name given to women who look for bisexual lovers in gay circles. In the ’50s in Mexico, this was a very tight community “with its fashionistas, painters, jewelers, Porfirian landlords, movie stars, midlevel bureaucrats, writers, all determined to live as freely as possible. The police focused on that community, especially after they found out that Massine was a male prostitute” (Carlos Monsiváis, see footnote 32). That’s something else we didn’t know until now, but which hasn’t made the crime committed on Lucerna Street seem any less terrible. The result is that the rest is just gossip and prejudice. The story just about ends here, except for one phrase.

Carlos Monsiváis: “La impunidad al amparo de la homofobia.”

Almost fifty years after the murders on Lucerna Street.

Which means saucepan in Catalan, although I haven’t found any metaphoric connection with the ideas or incidents in this story.

www.mail.yahoo.com.

It’s possible that if I were to look over this text again, I might include another footnote. Nonetheless, I think those in the final version are representative of its finality. So the only thing left, then, is to be grateful for your careful reading and to wish you a good day. Take care of yourself.

Large wooden carnival figures brought out during festivals and important occasions to dance with and impress children.