Paco Taibo II - Mexico City Noir

Pérez took the day’s bribes, headed down to the dungeons. The cannibal who had been arrested a few days before near San Fernando was there in a moldy cell; a grated night-light dripped stalactites of horror. The scrawny cannibal who had devoured his lover lay trembling there on a concrete bench.

The commander’s daydream about the end of the workday, when he would go home to his wife and children and take refuge from his love for Nausícaa, was interrupted when his deputy arrived with the kitchen gloves and baseball bat.

“It smells like human flesh, like heat,” said Nausícaa.

“Don’t profane this sacristy with your lies. In this city everything filters through, whether it’s sewage or fried food, mint, epazote, thyme, marjoram, incense, or myrrh, you know what I mean? I used to wear perfume when I was a nun, after the abortions, because it made me feel less dirty; it was a pirate essence, a scent the gods could breathe. I stopped being an impure sister and became the Black Brigand. You say that it smells like human flesh. Are you suggesting-”

“No, no, Father Diego Tonatiuh. I recognize the smell from the incident with the cannibal. The case was assigned to Commander Pérez, the guy I told you about. I worked on it too. It was the neighbors who called it in. They’d been complaining for more than a year that something smelled weird in a house near where they lived downtown. We went and we found-”

“More details, hija. Carnality is so exciting.”

“Commander Pérez kicked down the door and stormed in with a submachine gun. There were about five of us, and the ones behind me kept pushing until they had the barrels of their guns you know where.”

“Up your ass.”

“That’s what they always did to me. They said I was a puto . We caught the cannibal stirring a saucepan with a wooden spoon. I don’t know exactly what was in it but it smelled like meat. One of my buddies pulled out his ranger knife and carved into a human leg. We were all dressed in black; we wore knitted caps. Somebody opened the fridge and found two women’s heads. I got dizzy from the smell of the stew-can I say stew? Commander Pérez shoved the cannibal’s head into the pan. One of the other cops pulled me into a room filled with porno magazines and raped me. I let it happen, and then the commander came in and broke the other cop’s face. He totally messed him up. There were teeth on the floor.”

“Would you eat an altar boy with cous cous à la Mexicana?”

“We caught the cannibal but he impregnated me with that stench. That’s why I use so much perfume.”

Perfumed bodies, contraband perfume, insect perfume , thought the priest (the ex-sister, the nun of nuncas, Sister Reckless of the Nuncas). It was too late now for regrets, but she certainly wasn’t going to rob a bank again just to finance a sex change. She was getting older and had little desire to be with anyone except that one man, even though they couldn’t be together anymore because a monkey wrench had been thrown in their destiny. Father Diego Tonatiuh had had a love, a great love, the only true love of his life, and the police had killed him with their wretched justice-they fried his ass with the prod. He had met his love at the convent of the Franciscan Conceptualists, where he’d practiced curettage as a nun, when the man brought his pretty girlfriend in to have an abortion.

The soul of the priest moved away from Nausícaa. He was lost in his memories, gazing upon a canvas of the Immaculate Conception, a childish virgin standing on a windy platform held up by numerous friars in fine embroidered robes; above them, the shield of San Francisco, five scars and white hairs strewn on a book. The priest recalled himself as Sister Reckless standing in a cloister of orange trees. She was rubbing orange blossoms on the hands of the man who brought the girl to get an abortion. It was love at first sight. The man was struck by the nun’s masculine poise. She of the manly presence was, in fact, a small-time bank robber, and he would soon join her in this pursuit. Mockingbirds sang in the halls, canaries twittered, potted azaleas flowered when he whispered in her ear: “Like foam floating on the mighty river, my azalea, life has swept you away in its avalanche.” She had taken a book from her habit, pointed to a painting that had been laminated with mold since the conquest: framed by flowery jungle vines, a centauress with adolescent legs and wearing huaraches climbs on a monkey; the monkey caresses the woman’s breasts with one hand, masturbates with the other. She told the man that this is how his love should be, a faithful rendition of the colonial impetus painted and imagined by Mexican Indians and Andalusian friars with a good dose of the medieval. She read: “My spirit pushes me to write about the metamorphosis of bodies into new ones. O gods! Since you have also changed, do not hesitate, inspire my efforts and take this poem from the world’s beginnings all the way to our times.” The sister had then entered the abortion room and provided the patient with a triple dose of sodium pentobarbital. There was staff at the convent to take care of these problems, and not long after this, there was Sister Reckless of the Nuncas stumbling along the Great Canal, dependent on the generosity of the police. That’s where his lover wound up.

Father Diego Tonatiuh’s mind returned to San Fernando, his breath flew from the cloister of orange trees back to the sacristy and retook the conversation with Nausícaa.

“A few days ago they caught another cannibal close to here, the one we were talking about, the fag.” His voice turned nasally again, vibrating under the hood until it seemed almost hysterical. “If you use perfume it’s because you’re a whore. Don’t make it sound like it’s because you have the saintly smell of a devout nun or because the smell of flesh bothers you. Oh, please forgive me for the whore comment. I have been contaminated by Mexican machismo. Just give me a moment to get back to my normal state.”

“Where are you taking me?” the girl asked when the priest abruptly grabbed her arm. “This stinks of human flesh. I don’t want to go. Let me go! I’m not a whore, I’m a virgin!”

“That is the true abstention, the seventh seal, the rest is macho sodomy and it’s just not worth it… although it has its charms.”

As Father Diego Tonatiuh dragged her out of the sacristy, the stench of flesh burrowed deep in Nausícaa’s heart and burned itself there. The priest noticed this and told her it was because of Father Próspero, who lived in an apartment in the building next to the parish and liked fusion cuisine-very modern for that priest with the torn sneakers. All the Mexican baroque crashed down on her: Nausícaa lived in that very same building.

The girl shot out of the church, desperately seeking an escape. She stumbled on a glass box and came face-to-face with a Christ overwhelmed by millennia of drops of blood.

“Up his ass, hija! Tickle his balls with that cattle prod!” the priest screamed hysterically. “He’s a fanatic and he’s accustomed to such passions. You can do whatever you want to him without remorse-he’s merely one more prisoner here. Scream at him, humiliate him! Nobody can hear you, not even the police. Ha! You can’t even hear yourself!” The priest’s voice echoed like metal splinters through the temple.

In that corner of Mexico City, the sun did not set or rise. It was the sky that was lowered or raised. Night fell on Nausícaa with a layer of reddish soot, like the familiar everyday sky from which people took refuge, trapped in their homes. The young woman gazed on the darkened buildings, a light here and there, the beams of a passing car. The steam from the motors that ran all day now rose from the sidewalk, a dam where the street children made their camp inside the vestibule of San Fernando. To the left and right of the Holy King, Domingo and Francisco watched these creatures ignoring the lessons of discipline. They slept sated with glue, others sweated the glue out in collective fornications. Nausícaa remembered her job. They would scold her. She moved toward a pile and looked at the kids engaging in unseemly activities.