Daniel Saldaña París - Among Strange Victims

Jimmie paused for as long as it takes to smile. His eyes opened enormously wide and seemed bluer than ever. Marcelo glanced at Velásquez, his ally in reason in the midst of barbarity, but Velásquez was looking fixedly at the gringo and appeared to have jumped the gun on the hypnosis session. Marcelo saw his friend had, some time ago, become ensnared in Jimmie’s web, and that his predilection for all things magical, perhaps due to his American origins, was much greater than his (Marcelo’s origins were, when you came down to it, European and rationalist).

Marcelo had to make some response, and he knew what it should be: this was all madness and too much like the Mexican B movie Velásquez had recommended to him. He had no intention of getting involved in any such game, and if it hadn’t been for the tequila, it would all have been a waste of time. But he didn’t say any of that. His desire to please at any cost was stronger that his convictions, and he didn’t want to generate disaccord between the gringo and Velásquez, since the fat professor must already have said something about his willingness for the gringo to risk inviting him. So, Marcelo agreed with feigned enthusiasm. He said he was ready to participate in the collective hypnosis session, that they should get out the pocket watch or whatever was needed.

Jimmie gave a triumphal smile, and Velásquez’s previously stern face appeared to relax into an expression of relief. Micaela stood up and, after lifting her skirt to her waist, slid her white panties down to the floor, where they lay like a dead animal. She took Marcelo’s glass, which by then contained not a drop of tequila, and placed it under her skirt. After a moment of general expectation, the tinkle of urine was heard and Micaela took the glass, with a little piss in the bottom, from beneath her skirt. She repeated the ritual with the three other glasses and finally arranged them all in the center of the table; then she poured a shot of tequila into each glass of piss. Jimmie drew the girl to him, sat her on his knees, and kissed her on the mouth. Velásquez was the first to raise his glass, and he then clinked it with those of the gringo and the girl. The three looked simultaneously at Marcelo, and he wondered if they had rehearsed this gesture beforehand. His head hurt, and he thought, “I’m drunk; I’m so sloshed I’m seeing things, and this is not happening.” He raised his glass and enthusiastically clinked it against the others.

He had never tasted anything so delicious.

2

There was just one last thing to be done before the preparatory sessions of hypnosis could begin. Each time Jimmie mentioned it, he lost his cool. According to him, it was dangerous to initiate a session of collective hypnosis with an even number of participants. Once, in Trinidad and Tobago (When had he been in Trinidad and Tobago? thought Marcelo, without believing a word of what the gringo was saying, or only half believing it, as if departing from the promise that it was necessary to compensate for his exaggerations with a veil of incredulity, even though, at heart, one might feel darkly attracted by his exaggerations, by the prospect that they might not be exaggerations), he had tried it with a group of four, and the results had been disastrous. Marcelo interrupted: “Aren’t there supposed to be three of us? Micaela, Velásquez, and me, with you directing us?” No, Jimmie also intended to enter the hypnosis, to guide them from the inside, or something like that. Marcelo thought about Foret, about the photos from his final years, where he still looked like an elegant gladiator, a type of dark superhero, living his double life as a poor poet and fifth-rate boxer, his life as a beggar and the prince of brawling, his multiple lives dedicated to love, and that other life, the only redeeming one, the life he shared with Bea until the summer of 1918. Marcelo thought about Foret because there was nothing in his own predictable life story with a high enough level of mysticism or madness with which to compare and measure the madness of what was taking place. He turned to the great ones. That, thought Professor Valente, is what tradition is: a series of parameters for measuring the madness of the things that happen to us. He believed, with Protagoras, that man was the measure of all things. And Richard Foret, in this case, was man.

Micaela already had a lot of experience in individual hypnotism since Jimmie had been inducing deep states in her for months (Before fucking her? Marcelo wondered), but it was possible that, in a group session, the girl would be unable to control the course of the hypnosis.

The reasoning seemed to him, at best, muddled, but after many failed hints from Jimmie, and Velásquez telling him bluntly, Marcelo understood they wanted him to persuade his “stepson”—as they called Rodrigo — to join the project. Marcelo had never thought of Rodrigo as his stepson, but he now realized he could justifiably be considered as such since Adela and he had been living together for a good while, and were talking about the possibility of prolonging this situation, even after Marcelo’s time in Los Girasoles came to an end.

To Marcelo, the warning — foolishly repeated by Velásquez and the gringo since the day they had drunk Micaela’s urine — not to tell Adela anything seemed curious. Only Rodrigo was to be told, and then he would accept the warm invitation to lose his wits and keep the secret from his mother.

3

Jimmie had seen Rodrigo one day walking through the streets of the town. He had said hello, thinking he was an acquaintance, and the young man had replied with a nod that, to Jimmie, at that moment, seemed touched with some antique grace. He had done his research: Rodrigo was Adela’s son, he had been chucked out of his job in DF, left his ugly, vulgar wife, and had been staying in a small house on the Puerta del Aire estate since the beginning of the year.

The relationship between Jimmie and Adela was, to put it mildly, dire. In Los Girasoles, everyone knew everyone else, and both Adela and Jimmie frequented those circles surrounding the world of academia, where the professors gave mutual demonstrations of their aesthetic sensibility and theoretical versatility: jazz — or even trova; many of them didn’t know the difference — gigs in some café in the center of town, yoga classes given by a professor of economics in the front room of her house, group exhibitions of the photographs taken by the teenage offspring of those same professors.

They had met at one of those events, two years before, neither of them now remembered exactly how, and had flirted listlessly, more to shake off the tedium of provincial life than to get laid or have a real relationship. The fact is that they had exchanged phone numbers — in fact, Adela had given her number to Jimmie, who didn’t have a phone at that time — and arranged to meet for a drink during the week. The date had been a complete failure. Jimmie turned up smelling of marijuana and had forgotten what Adela looked like, so he sat down at a table near Adela’s where another woman, much younger, was drinking a beer alone. Adela watched from her table, filled simultaneously with compassion and rage. The young woman, in contrast to what might be expected of someone who has been suddenly accosted by a dirty gringo smelling of marijuana, had taken it well and let the stranger buy her a drink. Jimmie, convinced he was with Adela, the professor he had met a few days before, didn’t understand what sort of game she was playing. He followed her lead and acted as if it were the first time they had spoken, convinced that her use of a pseudonym — the Adela who wasn’t Adela had told him her name was Natalia — signaled a degree of perversion that would be useful when it came to sex.