Richard Brautigan - The Abortion - An Historical Romance 1966

‘It is a little noisy,’ I said.

After we left the border he kind of relaxed and turned towards us and said, ‘Did you come across for the afternoon?’

‘Yes, we thought we’d take a look at Tijuana while we’re visiting her sister in San Diego,’ I said.

‘It’s something to look at all right,’ he said. He didn’t look too happy when he said that.

‘Do you live here?’ I said.

‘I was born in Guadalajara,’ he said. ‘That’s a beautiful city. That’s my home. Have you ever been there? It’s beautiful.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I was there five or six years ago. It is a lovely city.’

I looked out of the window to see a small carnival lying abandoned by the road. The carnival was flat and stagnant like a mud puddle.

‘Have you ever been to Mexico before, Senora?’ he said, fatherly.

‘No,’ Vida said. ‘This is my first visit.’

‘Don’t judge Mexico by this,’ he said. ‘Mexico is different from Tijuana. I’ve been working here for a year and in a few months I’ll go back home to Guadalajara, and I’m going to stay there this time. I was a fool to leave.’

‘What do you do? I said.

‘I work for the governinent,’ he said. ‘I’m taking a survey among the Mexican people who come and go across the border into your country.’

‘Are you finding out anything interesting? Vida said.

‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s all the same. Nothing is different.’

The government man, whose name we never got, left us on the Main Street of Tijuana and pointed out the Government Tourist Building as a place that could tell us things to do while we were in Tijuana.

The Government Tourist Building was small and glass and very modern and had a statue in front of it. The statue was a grey stone statue and did not look at peace. It was taller than the building. The statue was a pre-Columbian god or fella doing something that did not make him happy.

Though the building was quite attractive, there was nothing the people in that little building could do for us. We needed another service from the Mexican people.

Everybody was shoving us for dollars, trying to sell us things that we didn’t want: kids with gum, people wanting us to buy border junk from them, more taxi-cab drivers shouting that they wanted to take us back to the border, even though we had just got there, or to other places where we would have some fun.

‘TAXI!’

‘BEAUTIFUL GIRL!’

‘TAXI!’

‘BEATLE!’

(Wolf whistle.)

The taxi-cab drivers of Tijuana remained constant in their devotion to us. I had no idea my hair was so long and of course Vida had her thing going.

We went over to the big modern Woolworth’s on the Main Street of Tijuana to find a telephone. It was a pastel building with a big red Woolworth’s sign and a red brick front and big display windows all filled up with Easter stuff: lots and lots and lots of bunnies and yellow chicks bursting happily out of huge eggs.

The Woolworth’s was so antiseptic and clean and orderly compared to the outside which was just a few feet away or not away at all if you looked past the bunnies in the front window.

There were very attractive girls working as sales girls, dark and young and doing lots of nice things with their eyes. They all looked as if they should work in a bank instead of Woolworth’s.

I asked one of the girls where the telephone was and she pointed out the direction to me.

‘It’s over there,’ she said in good-looking English.

I went over to the telephone with Vida spreading erotic confusion like missile jam among the men in the store. The Mexican women, though very pretty, were no match for Vida. She shot them down without even thinking about it.

The telephone was beside an information booth, next to the toilet, near a display of leather belts and a display of yarn and the women’s blouse section.

What a bunch of junk to remember, but that’s what I remember and look forward to the time I forget it.

The telephone operated on American money: a nickel like it used to be in the good old days of my childhood.

A man answered the telephone.

He sounded like a doctor.

‘Hello, Dr Garcia?’ I said.

‘Yes.’

‘A man named Foster called you yesterday about our problem. Well, we’re here,’ I said.

‘Good. Where are you?’

‘We’re at Woolworth’s,’ I said.

‘Please excuse my English. Isn’t so good. I’ll get the girl. Her English is… better. She’ll tell you how to get here. I’ll be waiting. Everything is all right.’

A girl took over the telephone. She sounded very young and said, ‘You’re at Woolworth’s.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘You’re not very far away,’ she said.

That seemed awfully strange to me.

‘When you leave Woolworth’s turn right and walk down three blocks and then turn left on Fourth Street, walk four blocks and then turn left again off Fourth Street,’ she said. ‘We are in a green building in the middle of the block. You can’t miss it. Did you get that?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘When we leave Woolworth’s, we turn right and walk three blocks down to Fourth Street, then we turn left on Fourth Street, and walk four blocks and then turn left again off Fourth Street, and there’s a green building in the middle of the block, and that’s where you’re at.’

Vida was listening.

‘Your wife hasn’t eaten, has she?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Good, we’ll be waiting for you. If you should get lost, telephone again.’

We left Woolworth’s and followed the girl’s directions amid being hustled by souvenir junk salesmen, the taxi drivers and gum kids of Tijuana, surrounded by wolf whistles, cars cars cars, and cries of animal consternation and HEY, BEATLE!

Fourth Street had waited eternally for us to come as we were always destined to come, Vida and me, and now we’d come, having started out that morning in San Francisco and our lives many years before.

The streets were filled with cars and people and a fantastic feeling of excitement. The houses did not have any lawns, only that famous dust. They were our guides to Dr Garcia.

There was a brand-new American car parked in front of the green building. The car had California licence plates. I didn’t have to think about that one too much to come up with an answer. I looked in the back seat. There was a girl’s sweater lying there. It looked helpless.

Some children were playing in front of the doctor’s office. The children were poor and wore unhappy clothes. They stopped playing and watched us as we went in.

We were no doubt a common sight for them. They had probably seen many gringos in this part of town, going into this green adobe-like building, gringos who did not look very happy. We did not disappoint them.

There was a small bell to ring on the door. It was not like the silver bell of my library, so far away from this place. You rang this bell by pressing your finger against it. That’s what I did.

We had to wait a moment for someone to answer. The children stayed away from their play to watch us. The children were small, ill-dressed and dirty. They had those strange undernourished bodies and faces that make it so hard to tell how old children are in Mexico.

A child that looks five will turn out to be eight. A child that looks seven will actually be two. It’s horrible.

Some Mexican mother women came by. They looked at us, too. Their eyes were expressionless, but showed in this way that they knew we were abortionistas .

Then the door to the doctor’s office opened effortlessly as if it had always planned to open at that time and it was Dr Garcia himself who opened the door for us. I didn’t know what he looked like, but I knew it was him.