Two weeks have gone by since the peak of the catastrophe, four days without a single incident. The national news bulletins have moved on to other issues and the locals are trying to find a “human angle,” with pathetic results. They interview middle-aged women who lost children during the “kick dance,” as someone christened it and everyone now calls it.

Erre still hasn’t turned up.

Natalia’s pretending nothing happened.

Dad’s behaving like he’s depressed.

Two neighbors were chatting outside, under the mango tree near my window. Lying on the floor by my bed, staring into space, I eavesdropped on their conversation. I could have gone to the window to see their faces, but I was transfixed by the flow of the conversation and was afraid they’d see me and stop. Their voices were so similar that I sometimes wondered if it wasn’t in fact some crazy talking to herself, feigning that delirious dialogue. I don’t remember the exact words, and my memory is undoubtedly filling a few gaps with inventions of its own, but even so, I’m leaving here a record of what I heard, as it seems like a fairly accurate barometer of the hype and rumors of these days.

“How did it start?”

“Just like this.”

“Like what?”

“Like normal, like any old normal day. It was hot but you couldn’t see the sun for all the smoke. Picture it: at around this time, someone is on the Ruta 3 in Santa María, near that former monastery where they say some monks went mad.”

“I don’t know it, but never mind. Go on.”

“It isn’t important. I don’t even think it began in Santa María. It started everywhere at the same time. The point is that a number of people are on that bus, and a woman, traveling alone, gets up from her seat and falls in the aisle. The other passengers are startled.”

“Wait a minute. So the woman is left lying there on the floor?”

“For a while, yes. But then she gets to her feet, all tense and stiff, and, pulling a face, she falls again. Talk about scary. One woman shouts: Help her! and in the back seats, two men look at each other. Then the woman stands up again and falls down, but in a different way. In a different position, with one arm under each leg. She looks like a knot. I’d have said she was epileptic or something, but no one thought of that. Maybe she didn’t have an epileptic face; and she didn’t really thrash or anything, just stood up and fell down again; they weren’t normal convulsions. Anyway, stick with me: one of the passengers approaches and asks if she’s okay, but she doesn’t look around at him. Instead, she writhes in the narrow space between her seat and the one in front. Then she springs up and gives a sort of awkward jump, like a draggletail (I love the word draggletail. My grandma used to use it for everything).”

“Keep to the point. Tell it properly.”

“What a hurry you’re in! Well, the passenger who’d approached looks at her boggle-eyed; he goes a little closer and touches her shoulder.”

“Is she on the floor when the passenger touches her?”

“Yes, but crouching by then. She’s huddled between the two seats.”

“And the bus is still moving?”

“That’s right. But stop distracting me. I was telling you about the man, the one who touched her shoulder to see if he could help. It’s like he’s given the woman an electric shock. Just as soon as he touches her, she throws her arm back and hits a little girl’s leg. By accident, apparently. The girl cries out. The man who tried to help the Woman Who Fell First, who people have dubbed the Good Samaritan, sinks to the floor, just like she did before him. Then he gets up and starts jumping. He’s been infected.”

“And what do all the other passengers do?”

“There aren’t that many of them. Only four seats are occupied, in addition to the Good Samaritan and the Woman Who Fell First: the girl and her mother, a worker on his way home, a kindergarten teacher, and a teenager looking at his cell phone. And the driver, of course, but he hasn’t noticed what’s going on yet. Or he’s pretending not to have noticed.”

“So what happed next?”

“I’m getting there. It isn’t an easy story to tell. I heard it from my brother; he witnessed the second part of it all. But I have to give you a few details.”

“Like that one of the passengers is a kindergarten teacher?”

“Exactly. But I said all that because of the phone. The Teenager points his cell phone into the aisle and starts recording a video of the scene, or uploading it live onto the internet. You must have seen it: the Good Samaritan goes on jumping up and down in the middle of the bus, the Woman Who Fell First is moving very slowly, like a chick hatching from an egg; she looks unhinged.”

“Yes, I watched the video, but I get it mixed up with others I saw from those days.”

“I’ll describe it all, then. The phone moves around a lot and the picture isn’t very clear, but it seems that the Girl’s Mother crosses herself and starts to pray under her breath. The Kindergarten Teacher cautiously approaches the Good Samaritan, walks past him, and squats down by the Woman Who Fell First. The Worker, who’s in the very last seat of the bus, which has slowed down to ascend a steep street, hops off through the open rear door. The Woman Who Fell First makes another sudden movement and the Kindergarten Teacher backs off.”

“I can picture it.”

“The Good Samaritan starts jumping again, limp and twisted, awkward like, as though his rump’s itching, and he’s begun to shout too. Of course, by now the driver’s realized that something odd is going on.”

“And the Teenager?”

“He’s still filming. But now it isn’t a single, long video, but short, fiveor ten-second clips he sends to his friends on WhatsApp.”

“I’ve seen them.”

“The whole world’s seen them. Just think of it, they were on the news in China.”

“Well, go on.”

“You know the rest. You’ve heard it all before. You wanted to know how it started and I’ve told you.”

“But didn’t you say it started in a lot of places at the same time? What about the university?”

“What about it?”

“How did it start there?”

“I’m tired.”

“In a psychology class, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t know where they got that from. It wasn’t a class; it was in a corridor of the department.”

“And…?”

“It’s kind of like what happened on the Ruta 3: a woman falls to the floor. Someone goes to her aid and soon seems to get infected and starts shaking like she’s possessed by the devil as well. Everyone else looks on, stupefied. Nothing much more happened at the university. It soon fizzled out, no one else was infected. And nobody took a video, which is strange.”

“I heard there was a video, but it was taken down from the internet.”

“I don’t think you can do that. But look, I’ll go on telling you about the Ruta 3, the bit my brother saw: the driver stops the bus and asks everyone to get off. Particularly the Woman Who Fell First and the Good Samaritan, who are still moving (he’s jumping and she’s crawling). But they ignore him. The Girl starts crying, hiding her face in the Girl’s Mother’s lap. Her sister had disappeared a few weeks before. The Girl’s Mother is worn out. She’s spent days going from the police station to the Palacio Municipal, and the Military Zone 24 barracks. She and her younger daughter are on their way home after spending an hour in line at the public prosecutor’s office, without even being seen. Up to then the Girl had held back her tears. And, afraid she’ll start to cry herself, the Girl’s Mother says to her daughter: It’s just a game, we can jump up and down too. It’s a desperate move, but this is a tale of desperate moves.”

“And they begin to jump?”

“Yes, but the driver threatens to throw them all off. The Girl’s Mother hurries the Girl off through the front door. And the Girl goes on jumping when they’re on the sidewalk. She looks quite happy. The Good Samaritan gets off through the rear door and, once in the street, throws himself to the ground again, but this time he’s injured because he slams onto flagstones. My brother says there was blood on the ground. The Woman Who Fell First hears the Good Samaritan cry out and disembarks too.”

“And the Kindergarten Teacher?”

“The Kindergarten Teacher realizes the bus isn’t going any farther on its route. Something extraordinary has happened and she can’t figure it out. She gets off and stands watching the Good Samaritan, who’s clutching his leg and has blood coming through a rip in his pants, around knee level. The Woman Who Fell First throws herself onto the flagstones too but isn’t hurt. It seems she knows how to fall better than the man. The Girl’s Mother and the Girl head off down the road, skipping and elbowing the walls as if they were made of rubber. Several passersby stop to see what’s going on, and among them is my brother. Two women wearing aprons, standing in the doorway of a small shop, witness the scene from farther down the road, but they keep their distance.”

“And the Teenager?”

“He gets off too. There are no passengers left on the bus now. The Ruta 3 continues up the hill a short way and then turns into a side street, where it only just fits. The driver is going home. No way is he even thinking of completing his route. He’s been feeling unwell for days, and now this happens: his passengers throwing themselves onto the floor and screaming like lunatics. He’s in no mood to finish his shift. He arrives home and sits at the table to wait. Two hours later his wife comes back and asks why he knocked off early, and he tells her that everyone on the bus started doing weird things. Then she tells him that she was coming from the market and saw strange things there too: people jumping around and shouting, and others moving very slowly, like they were on downers.”

“But what about the Teenager? You were telling me about him.”

“Oh, yes. The Teenager has gotten bored of the scene and can’t be bothered to go on filming. He’s laughing at the comments his friends post on the group chat where he sent the videos. They’re making fun of faces the Woman Who Fell First makes. They don’t ask or care what is happening: the world’s like that, they think; sometimes things happen that have never happened before. The Teenager puts his phone away and starts to walk home. He’s alone, on a dirt track. Every so often he remembers what he saw on the bus and smiles to himself, or gives a little jump and twists his face a bit, as if he’s imitating the Woman Who Fell First. He wonders what’s happened to those people. If they’re now jumping and shouting somewhere else in town. It suddenly occurs to him that his own behavior wasn’t particularly smart. Maybe they really did need help. He could maybe have done something or asked if he could do something. Instead of filming what was going on, he could have used his phone to call an ambulance. But he doesn’t know what number to ring for an ambulance or the police, he thinks. He doesn’t know any number that isn’t in his contacts. And anyway, the police are never the best option. They fucked up one of his cousin’s eyes when they punched him for smoking pot in a gully near the trout farm. True, his cousin is a bit of a mobster, and he most probably yelled something at them, something abusive. But even so. That’s no reason to beat him up so bad he ends up losing an eye. That’s what’s passing through the Teenager’s mind. And as he’s thinking that and walking home, he gets one more message from the group chat. From a high school friend. His friend says he was on his way to his mother’s stall in the center when he saw some people doing things on the edge of the market. He’s sent a video but it won’t download. The Teenager tries several times without success; something has gone wrong. Then his credit runs out. That’s what you get for sending videos from the bus. And the end of the month is a long way off. His dad gives him fifty pesos to top up his cell phone, in case of emergencies, but he always uses it up early.”

“I heard a different story.”

“Really? Tell me. I don’t believe you can have a more firsthand version than mine, but let’s hear it.”

“I was told that the Kindergarten Teacher and the Teenager walked off together up the street. And they turned off into the forest instead of toward the church. And then went on walking in the forest, hand in hand, as though they’d known each other their whole lives. And they weren’t just walking, but kind of skipping. Like two happy schoolchildren in Switzerland or somewhere like that. But the happy little skips start to change into bizarre leaps. Plus they’re getting dangerously close to the fires. Sometimes she lifts one leg too high, loses her balance, and falls, but she gets up and moves on, still holding the Teenager’s hand, her legs covered in bruises. And he sometimes shakes his head and shoulders, looking down at the ground, like he’s trying to shake off an insect that’s stinging his back. And then he walks on. I heard they went on like that for three days. There are people who say that by some miracle they managed to pass through the flames. Others claim they figured out where the fire was and took another Ruta, or that they came to a river and followed it, with water up to their waists. No one knows if they ate anything during that time, or if they at least sat down at night or slept on their feet, still jumping.”

“To be honest, your version sounds a bit outlandish. But, whatever, you heard all sorts of things during those days. Who knows?”

“Yes, that’s what I thought too. But it’s reliable; it was in the newspaper. Supposedly the Kindergarten Teacher and the Teenager were seen on a path that runs through the ravine, walking aimlessly, falling down and yelling, snorting to get rid of the black ashy snot from their noses, turning their heads in circles until you’d think they’d break their necks. And they went on like that through the scorched undergrowth, bare trees, and dead squirrels. It isn’t clear how they survived, but they continued on and someone saw them first thing in the morning of the third day, passed out on the bank of one of the Lagunas de Zempoala. He was a national park warden who’d gotten up early to collect the trash before the handful of tourists who were still visiting could turn up. He was sweeping the area where a man has a kite stand when he spotted them in the distance, beside the lake, lying half-naked, like a pile of rags. And they say the Warden rang his brother-in-law first because he’s a police officer. And the brother-in-law said, ‘Don’t move them, they must be the ones that were kidnapped a few days ago.’ But when the officer arrived, an hour later, he told his boss over the radio that it wasn’t them; they were a couple of strangers, still alive, but like they were plastered. They thought they’d probably gotten drugged from inhaling so much smoke; they were covered in soot and their clothes were in tatters.”

“And didn’t it occur to anyone to think they had something to do with the mayhem in Cuernavaca?”

“At first, no, because the Teenager and the Kindergarten Teacher weren’t moving; they weren’t contorting themselves or doing any of that stuff they showed on the news. The Huitzilac police had been watching the whole thing in Cuernavaca on TV, but they thought it was just a made-up program, or someone exaggerating the truth. No way were people going to start doing that stuff for no good reason. But then the Teenager and the Kindergarten Teacher recovered. They’d been put in an ambulance and rehydrated, and there was talk of taking them to the health center to be checked over, when suddenly the Teenager made a strange noise, like mooing, and got out of the ambulance and began to shake his body like he was dancing reguetón, but harder. And the Kindergarten Teacher got out too and started moving her hips like she was having sex with the chilly breeze coming off the lagoon, with the mist hanging over the water, with the birdsong and the quad bikes in the distance, and the sound of the first ovens being fired to heat the comal for the tlacoyos.”

“What happened after that? Why have you stopped?”

“I’m trying to remember. I get the stories mixed up. I don’t know if I read this in the newspaper or someone told me…Oh, right. Then one of the police officers aimed his gun at them and told them to quit fooling and hand over the drugs. Because he thought they must have been smoking rock. But the Teenager and the Kindergarten Teacher took no notice. She went on making love to the sounds and the air, and the smoke clouding the sky, and he went on shaking his whole body, and then he ran to the Kindergarten Teacher, grabbed both her hands, and they twirled around like lovers, heading in the direction of the lagoon. And then there was a gunshot. The Teenager fell headfirst into the mud and the Kindergarten Teacher stood very still, as though she’d suddenly woken from a dream where she’d been forced to dress up as a cat.”

“Did they kill him?”

“The Teenager? Of course they did. The police killed him and then they put him back in the ambulance, taking advantage of it still being parked up there. They threw the Kindergarten Teacher into a patrol car and supposedly took her to the station to make a statement. But nothing’s been heard of her since.”

“That’s the part of the story I can most easily believe.”

“But what I do know is that those two are on the disappeareds list. Their faces were shown on a news bulletin, alongside the Good Samaritan and the Woman Who Fell First.”

“I didn’t know that. It’s not the story I heard.”

“What else were you told?”

“About the market.”

“Which part? Was it when the fire broke out?”

“No. Some girl jumped up on a fruit stand and started kicking everything. People got really annoyed and the woman who owns the stand took a broom to her.”

“And then?”

“Everything got in a muddle. A man who was coming up to buy something thought the woman was beating her daughter with the broom handle for the hell of it, and he protested. The Stand Owner began to explain it wasn’t so, that the girl in the technical school uniform had jumped up on her stand without so much as a by-your-leave and had damaged her goods. But the Customer didn’t believe her and when he turned to question the Technical School Girl, she was on the ground moving her hips in a weird way, like she was dancing lying down, and with her eyes bulging, fixed on some point on the market ceiling.”

“I heard about the Technical School Girl too. But in my version, the Stand Owner didn’t hit her on purpose, she just started waving the pole she used to take down the gourds and everyone thought she’d gone blind.”

“Why blind?”

“Because she went off through the aisles waving the pole and knocking into things, as though she was blindfolded at a piñata party. They thought her husband had given her toloache, to get his own back. But then another of the traders said she was a widow, so they had no explanation for why she was acting the fool in the meat section. And that’s where the whole thing really hotted up.”

“What happened?”

“The Stand Owner threw a pig’s head to the floor, she grabbed it by the snout and shook it, showering everything with blood. It splattered the skirt of a gringa who was taking photos and she almost had a dizzy fit. It was like carnival: there was pig’s blood and streamers—nobody knew where they came from. And the gentleman who sells coconut water slipped in the pig’s blood and injured himself. After that, the police turned up and threw them all into the street to carry on their outrages there.”

“Incredible. I’d never have thought I’d live to see anything like it. And what seems to me most concerning of all is something two doctors said later on the radio, when they were commenting on the events: the infected people, the ones who were dancing, experienced some form of joy, an inexplicable jubilation, as if they’d managed to take off a filthy overcoat. Days afterward, some of them died of depression or overexertion, or because they wouldn’t eat. Many more had minor injuries, lost a leg, or fell into a sort of lethargy that they still haven’t overcome. But those who did recover, the ones who were able to break the absurd spell that had them shaking their bodies, and holding hands and going around in circles, all of them have permanent, sweet smiles on their faces thinking of the days, the weeks of carefree dance, the first dance plague since the Middle Ages, that sacred or damned event that took the lives of over four dozen Morelenses, that unplanned revolution that went nowhere but took ahold of girls and boys for two weeks.”