ONE MIDDAY IN JUNE, three tall, broad, mustached men with no suitcases alit from the van that came from the train station.

From the stop they headed towards the Town Hall and disappeared behind a door that closed after them.

They reappeared on Rayón Street and followed each other into the La Barca de Oro cantina. One minute later we heard gunshots.

Later on, don Pedro came to the store, followed by Juan.

“The Norteño,” he said, “killed a secret agent and tried to run away. But another agent, with a .45 in each hand, shot him in the legs.”

“Yeah,” Juan added. “When the Norteño lay wounded on the ground the agent came closer to finish him off, but he spotted doña Blanca looking at him from her window and he didn’t go through with it. He only aimed at his mouth, to scare him. Doña Blanca heard him say, “I won’t kill you yet, just wait.” Then the other agent came over and asked his buddy, “What should we do with him?” “Leave him to me for a while,” the first one replied, sealing the Norteño’s fate with a look as he almost bled to death on the stones.

“He made a mistake,” said don Pedro. “He thought the agents were coming to get him, but they were only going around disarming people. And the dead man showed him his police badge when he came into the cantina. And the Norteño, who had a couple of murders to his name in Sonora, thought they were going to arrest him; so he leaned over as if to let them frisk him and shot the agent in the heart from beneath his jacket. As the shots hit him the deceased emptied his gun into the floor, but the Norteño had already broken into a run. It was then that the other two agents outside fired at him.”

That night, they treated the Norteño in a room in the jail, grudgingly and without anesthesia, so he would die. And they hung him by his arms and beat him with sticks so he would die. But he refused to die.

The next day soldiers arrived from Morelia. The villagers were curious about the agents, who were scared the local people might kill them.

But when the soldiers moved in, it was the people of Contepec who were afraid, since they pointed their rifles at every man, woman, old person, or child who went near them. And from the window of a troop truck a mocking sergeant brandished his machine gun.

So when the soldiers carried off the Norteño and the dead agent, people calmed down. Yet they never paid the carpenter who made the coffin. “Let the village pay,” a corporal who’d stayed on to keep an eye on things told him.

The Norteño didn’t hail from Contepec. In Mexico City he’d become the boyfriend of the baker’s daughter and one day he came to town with her. He opened a cantina, which he would only leave to go home to sleep, and spent customerless afternoons throwing dice. He had a particular dislike for Tequilitas, who used to come in drunk to talk to him.

“Get out,” he’d say. “I prefer to be alone, like a vulture. All alone in my business.”

The new cacique followed the corporal around, anxious to please. The corporal treated him like a subordinate. And not just a subordinate, but one he scorned. Whenever he mentioned him his mouth twisted, as if he were throwing the words at his listeners or spitting out the cacique.

Sitting between two soldiers on a bench in the square, the corporal would pull out his pistol and with his slanty eyes gleaming maliciously take aim at the cross atop the church tower.

“Let’s see if I can hit it,” he’d say.

He limped when he walked, and his right shoe looked flattened, as if it were hollow with no foot inside.

There was a yellow dog, very fierce, who followed him everywhere as if he were his master.

This dog, who growled at everybody, attacked me and Juan one July night, chasing us up a tree, where we remained on a branch for more than half an hour. Finally I slid down and when I saw the dog coming at me I picked up a stone and threw it at him, hitting his head.

The dog began to run in circles, biting the air, as if he’d gone mad.

That morning the corporal went to the market with his soldiers. He sauntered past the stands as though he owned them. He probed and picked up the fruit, and everything from oranges to melons, peanuts to pineapples, mameys to watermelons, dropped into his bag, unpaid for, while the fruit sellers totted up with their eyes what he took from them.

Afterwards he came to the shop and from the threshold asked, “Who does the selling here?”

My father replied, “I do. What do you need?”

“Everything.”

“Everything of what?”

“What’s in the store.”

“If you buy it.”

He looked at the shelves. He looked at my father. His slanted eyes shone with that gleam that precedes laughter. And then he saw me.

“I know this kid,” he said. “He threw a stone at my dog’s head. He left him an idiot … Let’s see …” He turned towards my father. “Give me a shirt, one of the fancy ones. I’m going to give it to my brother when I leave.”

He chose one. And paid only five pesos for it. He asked that it be gift- wrapped. And he walked out of the store, followed by his soldiers.

The corporal’s dog died.

The next day I saw him lying by the bandstand in the square.

At first, from the distance, I thought he was sleeping, but when I walked past later on I realized he was dead.

A policeman dragged him over the cobblestones to throw him to the vultures.

The corporal didn’t seem to feel sorry or even remember that the dog used to always follow him. When he ran into the policeman and saw the dog on the cobblestones his expression didn’t change, and he only seemed annoyed that the policeman wasn’t dragging him fast enough to the outskirts of the village.

Standing in the street, he screwed up his mouth pensively as if about to make a decision, but looked towards the mountain – its blues, its shadows, the sunlit peak, the rocky ravine – as if that moment in time were tearing him out of time, taking him far from the village, from the policeman, from the dog. Yet suddenly his expression lost its calm, and serenity vanished from his face like a fleeting cloud. He turned back to the soldiers and yelled, “Get moving, you lazy bums.”

In the streets a loudspeaker was announcing the movie Bugambilia, which my father was showing at his theater that Sunday.

The soldiers went to the afternoon screening and mingled with the girls, old people, and children.

The corporal arrived once the movie had already begun and insisted the lights be turned back on so he could find a seat. But once the movie started up again he didn’t look at the screen but at the women sitting next to him or in the aisle behind. And, bored by the darkness, he soon left.

Afternoons, from the windows of the Town Hall, the corporal spied on the comings and goings of women on their way to market.

The soldiers on guard made excuses to the campesinos who came to see him, saying he was busy in a meeting, although he was watching them from a side window, like a ghost or a recluse.

Two campesinos, father and son, came looking for him over many days without being able to see him. In his stead they met with the corporal’s secretary, who sent them to his uncle, the judge; who sent them to his cousin, the notary; who sent them to his brother-in-law, the police officer; who told them that the matter depended on the mayor, who was away on a trip … but if it was urgent they should go see the secretary, his nephew … Each one charged them five pesos, for time lost listening to their problem.

The corporal brought Ricardo el Negro’s mother to live with him. She followed him everywhere, like a shadow. He told people he was going to take her to Morelia because she was a good laundress, a good pozole maker, and a good lover.

Ricardo el Negro was very unhappy. Neglected by his mother, he sat outside the Town Hall waiting to see her go in and out, and he followed her from a distance down the street. Fearfully. Because the soldiers threw stones and threatened to castrate him.

Ricardo el Negro’s frightened face amused the corporal, who would happily have had the soldiers capture him to toy with.

Nevertheless, what pained Ricardo el Negro the most was not that his mother was living with the corporal but that whenever they happened to cross paths in the street she pretended not to know him.

She had padlocked the house so he stayed in a doorless room in my father’s orchard and slept on a mattress my brother put out for him. At mealtimes, we brought him something to eat.

One night when my mother was ill, my brother and I went for the doctor. In the square we saw someone sitting on a bench, hiding his head under a poncho as if he didn’t want us to see him. As we drew nearer, the figure compressed itself so firmly against the stone backing that we thought it wanted to disappear into the bench. My brother recognized him.

“Ricardo,” he said.

No one moved beneath the poncho.

“Ricardo,” my brother repeated.

This time, still motionless, a voice that seemed to be the poncho’s said, “I’m not Ricardo … I’m someone else.”

“What do you mean you’re not Ricardo … You’re nobody but him.”

“I’m someone else.”

Until finally my brother pulled down the poncho, revealing a pair of frightened eyes.

“We’re not going to hurt you,” my brother said. “We’re going to get the doctor.”

“I’ll come with you,” he said.

But after we said goodbye, that same night, he returned to the bench in the square and the snow-cone seller and the policeman threw a fishing net over him, dragged him off to a field, and thrashed him.

The next morning found him sprawled on a pruned rosebush, his face black and blue and his hair muddied. His shoes were missing, his shirt and pants torn. Solitary as a captive fox, he was surrounded by curious onlookers, and when the corporal saw him lying there he thought he was drunk and ordered a soldier to throw cold water in his face, remarking pityingly, “Poor asshole.”

Two days later, the corporal left the village with his soldiers, Ricardo el Negro’s mother, baskets of fruit, packages of filet, liver and chorizo, live chickens, and bags of cheese.

At midday he took the train to Morelia, seen off by the cacique, the secretary, the judge, the notary, the policemen, the priest, and four leading citizens.

“In your compositions on winter,” our teacher said, “don’t forget about snow.”

Quedito, asleep with his eyes open, suddenly dropped his pencil on his notebook. This prompted the teacher to ask him the “how many” questions: “How many meters in a liter? How many humerus bones in a hand? How many seas flow into a river?”

Questions that made Quedito, awakened by the nudge of another student’s elbow, begin to cry.

At the back of the classroom, amid the rolled-up maps and broken desks, he would doze off.

Or during recess, leaning against a wall, he intently studied a ray of light fracturing on some stones, seemingly oblivious to the voices of his schoolmates playing nearby.

“A plane loaded with …”

“Apples.”

“A plane loaded with …”

“Melons.”

Engrossed in his instant, like an animal or a god.

In the boy’s bathroom, someone had written:

Slutty

Susi

I know

your pink

pussy.

and

Eeny, meeny,

miny, moe

Catch your mother

by the toe

amid muddy handprints that seemed to have crawled towards the window as they wrote, slipped through the empty frame, and slithered into the girls’ bathroom.

The waning light shone drearily on these scrawls, and the names of female schoolmates, illustrated with male and female genitals done in colored pencils, were entangled, with tenderness and violence, in a coitus of shapes and letters.

One afternoon after school Juan and I stayed behind to play soccer. Our teacher was correcting exams in the classroom and had asked us to wait so she wasn’t on her own.

But after playing for a while, my stomach started to hurt, and feeling stiff and weary, I sat down on a rock to look at a yellow flower next to a smaller rock that seemed to sing with color.

Juan went to the bathroom to pee, about when our teacher was locking the classroom door. The corridors were already dark and on the roof a bat began to squeak.

All of a sudden, our teacher peered through the bathroom window to watch Juan peeing and, calling over to me in a hollow voice, told me she was going to go in to see how much he had peed.

Through a crack in the bathroom door, which didn’t close completely, I saw her take his member in her hand. Juan covered his face with his arms. And for a few seconds, or perhaps minutes, I heard him moan.

Then he ran out with his fly unzipped.

She lit a cigarette, exhaled the smoke, and approached me, smiling. Under her arm she carried the book Little by Little, which Juan had left behind. She asked me to bring it to him.

One week later, I was standing outside my house when Ricardo el Negro passed by carrying a football.

When I followed him he began running down the cobblestoned street ever more quickly, bouncing the ball off walls and doors.

Once on the field, he threw the ball far from the entrance and then ran to catch up with it, passing it from one foot to the other until it escaped him.

“Go fetch the ball,” he yelled at me.

“No.”

“If you don’t go, you won’t play.”

“I won’t play.”

We then sat down on the grass, looking at the ground. He was pensive, with a lock of hair on his forehead.

Finally, he stood up to get the ball. And he threw it hard at my face, without hitting me.

I threw it at him too, but missed. And he at me. And we started to play.

Before long he tired. He stopped the ball with his foot.

“I’m not playing anymore.”

He stared hard at me.

“Let’s go to the stream,” he said.

Shortly before we reached the stream he held a finger to his lips, hissing shhh, and crept to the edge of the ravine. His pants and shirt dusty amid the grass and nettles, he stuck out his head under the branches of a tree.

A few minutes later, gaping and intoxicated by what he saw, he whispered throatily, “Now it’s your turn.”

I looked.

A woman was bathing. She was naked underneath the green slip that clung to her body, outlining her curves. Standing in the middle of the stream with water up to her knees and rosy legs like a waterbird’s, her drooping neckline revealed two large milky breasts. Her expression was childlike, and the hair on her bosom resembled plumage.

With both hands she splashed water on her face and soaped her head. She squinted in our direction, seeming not to see us. The foam whitened her hair, like a hat drying in the sun.

Suddenly she raised her slip and with a clay vessel threw water between her thighs. Facing us now, her movements were slow, even lackadaisical.

She was unembarrassed, although I sensed that she saw us when she reached for a bar of soap among the pebbles. Her skin became covered in goose bumps, as if despite the voluptuousness of her body it too was vulnerable to cold and death.

But since she didn’t cover herself though she looked right at us, I thought she hadn’t seen us after all.

Then she took off her slip and was completely naked. As she bent over to pick up the clay vessel her breasts hung down.

All of a sudden Ricardo el Negro made noise shifting his feet. And the woman, who had surely known all along that we were there, yelled, “That’s how the pill is sweetened!” and made an obscene gesture.

We broke into a run.

Sometimes I thought that if Silvia were to spend the night with me in a room, both of us lying in bed, naked, getting closer and closer, perhaps we’d make love. But in order to be together in a room, in a bed, lying naked, the occasion had to arise. And that occasion would only arise if she were in danger at the moment of lying down.

Moreover, for that to happen, Martians had to land in Contepec. And the villagers would have to flee, leaving the two of us on our own, for inexplicable reasons, in a house, in a room, in a bed.

Nevertheless, as the days passed and the occasion never arose, I realized that it was easier to talk to Silvia about what I wanted than for the Martians to land.

All I had to do to let her know what I wanted was to tell her. However, given the indifferent way she looked at me, or rather, didn’t look at me, it was difficult to tell her. And because the subject didn’t have anything to do with our conversation, no opportune moments arose for such a serious announcement.

For there are people from whom we are so far removed, although they might seem physically near, that we can see them every day and never cross the threshold of their being. Our skins, like walls, and our bodies, like houses, keep us separate every day, like neighbors whose front doors face different directions.

And as in the fable of the wind and the sun where the two compete to strip a traveler of his clothes, and after the wind tries futilely to tear them off with gusts, the sun by shining hot makes him remove them himself, so I understood that it was easier to get along with women who respond with sympathy to our enthusiasm than to triumph in the advances with which we pursue the Silvias of this world, seen over the years looking out of the windows of their homes, each day farther away from us, without our ever entering their eyes, even for a moment.