The Savage Detectives

Then we went back to El Oasis and Félix Gómez and we made it to El Cuatro at last, in the municipality of Trincheras, and we had lunch there and asked the waiter and the people at the next table whether they knew where the ex-bullfighter Ortiz Pacheco's ranch was, but they had never heard of him, so we decided to wander around the town, Lupe and I in silence and Belano and Lima talking nonstop, but not about Ortiz Pacheco or Avellaneda or Cesárea Tinajero, but about Mexico City gossip or Latin American books or magazines they'd read just before setting off on this meandering road trip, or movies. Basically, they talked about things that struck me as frivolous, and possibly Lupe too, because both of us were quiet, and after lots of asking we found a man in the market (which was deserted at that hour) who had three cardboard boxes full of chicks and was able to tell us how to get to Ortiz Pacheco's ranch. So we got back in the Impala and set off again.

Halfway down the road from El Cuatro to Trincheras we were supposed to turn left, onto a track that skirted the slopes of a hill shaped like a quail, but when we took the turn, all the hills, every raised bit of ground, even the desert, looked quail-shaped, like quail in different positions, so we wandered down tracks that couldn't even be called dirt roads, battering the car and ourselves too, until the track ended and a house, a building that looked like an eighteenth-century mission, suddenly appeared through the dust, and an old man came out to meet us and told us that this was in fact the bullfighter Ortiz Pacheco's ranch, La Buena Vida, and that he himself (but he only said this after watching us closely for a while) was the bullfighter Ortiz Pacheco.

That night we enjoyed the old matador's hospitality. Ortiz Pacheco was seventy-nine and had a memory fortified by life in the country, according to him, or the desert, according to us. He remembered Pepe Avellaneda (Pepín Avellaneda, the saddest little man I ever saw, he said) perfectly well, and he remembered the afternoon when Avellaneda was killed in the Agua Prieta bullring. He was at the wake, which was held in the parlor at the hotel, where nearly every living soul in Agua Prieta stopped by to offer a final farewell, and at the burial, which was a gathering of multitudes, a dark end to an epic fiesta, he said. Naturally, he remembered the woman who was with Avellaneda. A tall woman, the way short men tend to like them, quiet, though not out of shyness or prudence, but as if she had no choice, as if she were sick and couldn't speak. Was she Avellaneda's lover? No doubt about that. Not his better half, because Avellaneda was married and his wife, whom he'd left long before, lived in Los Mochis, Sinaloa. According to Ortiz Pacheco, the bullfighter sent her money every month or two (or whenever he damn well could). In those days, bullfighting wasn't the way it is now with even the novices getting rich. Anyway, back then Avellaneda was living with this woman. He couldn't remember her name, but he knew that she came from Mexico City and that she was an educated woman, a typist or a stenographer. When Belano said Cesárea's name, Ortiz Pacheco said yes, that was it. Was she the kind of woman who was interested in bulls? asked Lupe. I don't know, said Ortiz Pacheco, maybe she was and maybe she wasn't, but when someone is with a bullfighter, in the long run they end up liking that world. In any case, Ortiz Pacheco had only seen Cesárea twice, the last time in Agua Prieta, which probably meant they hadn't been lovers for long. Still, she exerted an obvious influence on Pepín Avellaneda, according to Ortiz Pacheco.

The night before he died, for example, as the two bullfighters were drinking at a bar in Agua Prieta and just before they both returned to the hotel, Avellaneda started to talk about Aztlán. At first he spoke as if he were telling a secret, as if he didn't really want to talk, but as the minutes went by he grew more and more excited. Ortiz Pacheco didn't even know what Aztlán meant, never having heard the word before in his life. So Avellaneda explained it to him from the begi

That night we slept at the ranch. Belano and Lima slept in the main room (there were many bedrooms, but they were all uninhabitable), Lupe and I in the car. I woke up just as the sun was rising and took a piss in the yard, watching the first pale yellow (but also blue) lights slipping stealthily across the desert. I lit a cigarette and spent a while watching the horizon and breathing. In the distance I thought I spotted a plume of dust, but then I realized it was just a low cloud. Low and motionless. It seemed strange not to hear any animal sounds. And yet every once in a while, if you paid attention, you could hear a bird singing. When I turned around, Lupe was watching me from one of the windows of the Impala. Her short black hair was a mess and she seemed thi

We went into the house together. In the main room, we found Lima, Belano, and Ortiz Pacheco, each in a leather armchair. The old bullfighter was wrapped in a serape and he was asleep with a startled expression on his face. As Lupe made coffee, I woke my friends. I was afraid to wake Ortiz Pacheco. I think he's dead, I whispered. Belano stretched, his joints cracking. He said it had been a long time since he slept so well and then he took it upon himself to wake our host. As we were having breakfast, Ortiz Pacheco said that he'd had a strange dream. Did you dream about your friend Avellaneda? said Belano. No, not at all, said Ortiz Pacheco, I dreamed that I was ten years old and my family was moving from Monterrey to Hermosillo. In those days that must have been a very long trip, said Lima. Very long, yes, said Ortiz Pacheco, but happy.

JANUARY 11

We went to Agua Prieta, to the Agua Prieta cemetery. From La Buena Vida to Trincheras first, and then from Trincheras to Pueblo Nuevo, Santa Ana, San Ignacio, Ímuris, Cananea, and Agua Prieta, right on the Arizona border.

On the other side of the border was Douglas, an American town, and in between was customs and the border police. On the other side of Douglas, about forty miles northwest, was Tombstone, where the best American gunmen once gathered. As we were eating at a coffee shop, we heard two stories: one demonstrating the value of all things Mexican and the other the value of all things American. In one, the protagonist was from Agua Prieta, and in the other he was from Tombstone.