Santiago Gamboa - Necropolis

By Christ and his cross, said Eddy Peters, I can see it now, you are writing a book, I can see it in your eyes, the way they’re shining. Let me see if I can guess the plot: you think it wasn’t suicide but murder and that the Coptic Church may be involved? My God, I can just see it: millions of copies, you and your publishers are denounced, there’s a great scandal, but then it all fizzles out and everything goes back to normal. . Do you have a title yet? I looked at him with a neutral expression. There is no title, because there is no book, but if you insist we could call it. . Death of a Biographer, what do you think?

He played with the ball pen in his fingers and said, quite catchy but there’s something missing, I don’t know, maybe it should mention the Church in the title, don’t you think? Then he stood up and said, even though you clearly have no scruples I like you, I must confess. The Coptic Church has nothing to do with that man’s suicide, and it’s not our fault that it happened; you must surely know that suicides are the work of individuals, and that they’re all different? How many reasons can there be to give up on life? To me there are none, because life doesn’t belong to us, it isn’t ours; you may be obsessed with finding out what happened, but you mustn’t lose sight of the fact that the truth doesn’t have to be known by anybody for it still to be the truth. Write your details for me on a piece of paper, how long you’re going to be in the country, and your full name, and if I come across her, I’ll be in touch, now good afternoon.

When we came out, the sun was still beating down. It was a bit early to go back, so we crossed the avenue and went into a café to have a drink. As we were about to sit down at one of the tables, I noticed a woman putting a bill down on the counter and picking up a package. Her face seemed familiar, and a voice told me: talk to her, it’s her.

The woman turned and looked at me in surprise.

Seeing her full-face like that, I realized that it was not from the photographs that I recognized her but. . Was it possible? She was the woman I had seen at the opening cocktail party! Yes, it was her, but it was also Jessica, because she stopped when she heard her name. I asked her if she was who I thought, but she shook her head and headed for the door, so I said, in Spanish, I’m a friend of José Maturana, I have to talk to you. She stopped again and gave me a searching look. Look, let me buy you a coffee, please. We walked to a table. A friend of José? she said, her voice was soft and beguiling, and I replied, yes, I’ve come from the conference, I didn’t know that José was sick and I was impressed by his story, I was the first to reach his room when. . when that happened, you know, I saw his body with the cuts on it, I found his notes, anyway, are you, Jessica?

She put her bag down on the table and said, I know who you are, you’re the writer, aren’t you? I saw you at the conference. I told her I had gone to the church to look for her but the Metropolitan’s secretary had said he did not know her and that there was no Jessica in his church, had she changed her name? No, she said, I asked them not to give out any information about me, that’s why, but why were you looking for me? why are you interested in Maturana? I told her there were things about José that I was trying to understand. I’m not an investigator or anything like that, nor am I, as Peters thought, planning a scandalous book, at least I don’t think so; it’s a very human story and for some strange reason I’d like to find out more, to get to the bottom of it, it just seems the right thing to do.

They brought two coffees in big cups.

Jessica looked at the steaming liquid with an anxious expression, and said, all right, all right, let me tell you a few things, you’re a writer and if you’re going to put this in one of your books it’s best you know what really happened, anyway, it’ll be better if I talk but don’t tell me you’re not going to do a book — I had been sincere, I did not know it yet — I’ve lived surrounded by people who say they won’t do this or they won’t do that, and then it’s the first thing they do, so don’t come to me with that.

Having said this, she began her story.

When he first arrived at the Ministry, José scared me. He was a tall, strong man, with a face pockmarked from smallpox or acne, swollen veins on his arms, bulging muscles, and those horrible lacerations he called tattoos, which he’d gotten in prison. If Walter was an angel who walked preceded by a ray of light, José was the king of shadows. Everything in him was an expression of evil, starting with his eyes. I had seen murderers, really perverse, cynical people, and I knew what was in a cold look like that. But Walter’s affection for him made me lower my guard. Maybe I was wrong, maybe José was like one of those mythological creatures who are all dried up but still have a few drops of life in them, and if somebody can extract those drops they revive, and I imagined that was what Walter had done.

But it was Walter I felt most afraid for, not me. As I said before, I had seen it all, I’d swum all my life in turbulent, shark-infested waters. According to the story José told at the conference, Walter was a violent man who had beaten him up in the penitentiary and as a result of that he had found God. I heard this story many times and the truth was that in the cellblock, when José was pushed, he slipped and hit a hot water pipe, which not only knocked him out but also caused burns, because a nut on the pipe came loose and the water gushed out in a kind of geyser; I assume the mixture of all that led him to see God. Walter wasn’t capable of hitting anyone, let alone like that. He was an angel, as I said before. José, on the other hand, was a tough, violent individual. One day he confessed to me that he had killed a man with his bare hands, that he had never been brought to trial for it, and that it weighed on his conscience. He told me that on one of our excursions to spread the word, when Walter had asked us to work together. He mentioned it in his talk, a dive called the Flacuchenta Bar; of course the things he said about it I don’t remember that way at all. One night, he went to the bathrooms in that filthy place and when he came back he was very pale, and he said, did you see the face of the man who just came out of the bathroom? I hadn’t seen anyone, because I was listening to the music, and he said, oh, Jessica, it’s like a zombie movie, I just saw a dead man come out of the bathroom, you have to believe me, are you sure you didn’t see anyone? and I said, José, if there had been a dead man we would all have seen him, dead people attract attention, but he’d already stopped listening, he was just looking out at the street, very pale and very scared. Then he said, Jessica, that man who just came out of the bathroom is dead and I know because I killed him myself more than five years ago in Charleston. You killed somebody? I said, and he said, with a look of shame on his face, I don’t think he was a great loss to the human race, and I doubt that anyone mourned him, I killed him because he was hitting a woman who wouldn’t let herself be raped in a crack house, you know, one of those places where people go to do drugs; there are women who shoot up and then they’re anybody’s, but even in a place like that there are rules and if the woman shouts, you go away; usually they don’t even realize what they’re doing, but if they push you away you have to respect them, anyway, this man tried to have sex with this woman, this junkie, who had a crying baby next to her, and she resisted, so he started hitting her, but not the way a man hits a woman, with his open hand, but as if he was hitting a cop or another black guy as strong as him. I got up from my chair and grabbed him by the neck, and said, hey, nigger, are you so stubborn you haven’t noticed that she’s a woman? have you already forgotten that you wanted to have sex with her, which, even with a brain like yours, ought to tell you that she’s a woman? The guy tried to punch me, but I caught his hand in mid-air and squeezed it hard until I heard a couple of bones cracking, then I grabbed him by the hair, and before pushing him against a table, I said, you don’t treat a woman like that, let alone a mother, didn’t you see she has a child? I hit him a few times; when I picked him up to look at him he spat out a lump of blood, and I said, the next time I’ll fuck you myself, you son of a bitch, then I grabbed hold of his head and banged it against the wall about five times, as hard as I could; then I slammed it into the screen of a broken old TV set, which smashed into a thousand pieces, and I left him there, blood all over him, with his head stuck in an old TV. Then I walked out onto the street with the woman, who was pushing her stroller and rubbing her swollen cheekbones. I gave her some money so she could go away and that same afternoon I left the city for a while, but the police never came looking for me. One junkie less in the neighborhood, who gave a shit, but now I saw him in the bathroom, Jessica, and I thought, José, if you left him bleeding maybe he didn’t die, maybe that’s why the police never came looking for you.