Thirteen Heavens Read online

  Pensando en que me querías

  me pasaba yo los días

  rasguñando la pared.

  Al tiempo en que despertaba

  la tristeza me agobiaba

  y volvía yo a beber.

  Buscando en otras mujeres,

  en el vino, en los placeres

  un consuelo a mi dolor;

  allá donde me dormía

  de mi mente renacía

  un consuelo embriagador.

  Al santo señor de Chalma

  yo le pido con el alma

  que te deje de querer;

  porque esta vida que llevo

  si no fuera porque bebo

  no la habría de merecer.

  Recuerda de aquella madrugada

  en la pila colorada

  con otro hombre te encontré;

  sentí que ya no eras mía,

  luego, allá en la pulquería,

  solito me consolé.

  Chaparra yo te maldigo

  pues cuando vivías conmigo

  me juraste un amor;

  Mas nunca me comprendiste

  no supiste lo que hiciste

  sólo fui tu diversión.

  Al fin, la vereda andamos

  si algún día nos encontramos

  para ti no habrá perdón:

  ¡ingrata mujer perjura

  le robaste la ternura

  a mi pobre corazón!

  But Coyuco wasn’t drunk or drinking, enjoying the song playing in his head, thinking of Irma Payno Cruzado, his fiancée, named by her parents after the singer and actress, Irma Serrano, La Tigresa, Coyuco riding in a bus, Costa Line 2513, traveling down the road beneath a sky like any other evening sky at this time of year, a passenger together with eight others from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Normal Rural School of Ayotzinapa, a group of nine students, Coyuco, and half a dozen regular passengers in a bus they commandeered outside of Huitzuco, now heading for Iguala, nineteen miles and less than twenty minutes away, the driver wanting to drop his passengers off in Iguala before taking the students back to Ayotzinapa, and the students agreeing to it, ok, nothing unusual, it’s better not to mention it, we do it all the time, and the two buses they’d taken on the road from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Normal Rural School, expropriated from Chilpancingo in the middle of the month, to get them to just outside Huitzuco in the hopes of getting their hands on other buses, those two buses somewhere back there outside of Huitzuco, and Coyuco, that makes three altogether, we can’t see them now but we know they’re there.

  The students of Raúl Isidro Burgos Normal Rural School intending to use all the buses they seized to take them to Mexico City on October 2nd, in seven days, to attend a march commemorating the army and police massacre in 1968 of hundreds of university and high school students in Mexico City, the Battalón Olympia starting the shooting, that’s what everyone said, Díaz Ordaz Bolaños was president then, and the police and army firing into a crowd outside the Chihuahua Building in La Plaza de las Tres Culturas, tanks bulldozing the plaza, the Tlatelolco massacre, Tlatelolco, from the Nahuatl, meaning “little hill of land,” an area in the Cuauhtémoc borough of Mexico City, the stain of Tlatelolco, a dishonor with everyone watching—I don’t want to be dead because I can’t forget what they did, those who aren’t afraid of God—and now, Coyuco, and at least eight other students, the regular passengers getting off in less than fifteen minutes, they were all traveling in a bus normalistas had commandeered outside of Huitzuco, Coyuco hearing the song, “Las Cuatro milpas,” “Four Little Cornfields,” another canción, and still Mariachi Coculense, or “El Gavilancillo,” “The Young Hawk,” a son Mexicano to give him courage, but he didn’t really need it, he had plenty of courage, Coyuco knowing their songs by heart, his mind interrupting him, hey, what’s wrong, why are you so distracted? but the music wasn’t trespassing on anybody’s land, instead, it was a kind of fuel, a propellant driving him forward, and without knowing it, Coyuco was heading down the highway toward Iguala and nothing that looked like the grace of a good death.

  Nobody but the police or the army could smell blood at any distance, except the mayor of Iguala and his wife, who had a reputation for smelling the liquid that circulates in the bodies of humans in advance of those who only saw it once it was spilling out on the street and running down the gutter cut for carrying off rainwater, so no one had a clue about what was going to happen after nine o’clock that night, maybe a cuervo llanero, if it’d been daylight, a Chihuahuan raven could’ve told them, calling a high-pitched a-a-rk, a bird with surprising talents, sending out a warning, an alert to anyone who’d listen, but it was night, the birds were asleep, or busy, so there was no one to tell anyone to watch out, keep your eyes peeled, life’s treacherous, it’s not just the mayor, José Luis Alacrán, it’s the government on a bigger scale, the Center for Command, Control, Communications and Computer Systems, C-4, in Chilpancingo, in Iguala, the clues are everywhere, don’t be naive, and the police, with something up their sleeve, plan ahead, that’s our motto, the local police waiting for the students of the Raúl Isidro Burgos Normal Rural School, a kind of ambush, a surprise attack, or a gift for improvisation, performing spontaneously or without preparation, and nearby, the political big shots of Iguala were gathered in the Civic Plaza for the second annual report from a regional development agency—the National System for Integral Family Development’s Iguala office—with four thousand acarreados, people bused in to fill the event, a rally in the plaza that was a thinly veiled pre-campaign party for the mayor’s wife, a woman hoping to succeed her husband once he’d left office, the first lady and the Queen of Iguala, but they were in the Civic Plaza, while a couple of second-year students at the Raúl Isidro Burgos Normal Rural School, Fernando Marín and Bernardo Flórez, a.k.a. Cochiloco, were coordinating a majority of first-year students on one of their actividades, an action—they’d got their hands on the first two buses in mid-September in Chilpancingo, Estrella de Oro 1568 and 1531, keeping them at the school, the drivers, too, with meals provided—an action that brought them out tonight to take possession of a few more buses because there weren’t enough of them at the Raúl Isidro Burgos Normal Rural School to get them all to Mexico City on October 2nd, a total now of about a hundred students on an actividad led by student teachers, second-year and first-year students that’d left the all-male Raúl Isidro Burgos Normal Rural School of Ayotzinapa, a Escuela Normal, at around five-thirty in the afternoon with the idea of getting their hands on as many buses as they could find around Iguala, not Chilpo, where they usually went to do their activities, it was too dangerous, second-year students and the mostly first-year students, all of them normalistas, were heading for the bus station in Iguala de la Independencia.

  And now, José Ángel, or Tío Tripa, a normalista, a married man with two daughters, seated in front of Coyuco, it was José Ángel, a rallying voice, a voice of experience because of his age, thirty-three, the bus pulling off the road, and the driver, sounding his horn to clear the way, arriving at the station, it was twelve minutes after nine, Coyuco looking at his watch, and the driver, opening the door to let the regular passengers off, turning his head, looking back at Coyuco and the nine students still sitting on the bus, the driver fixing an eye on José Ángel, and the driver, hang on a minute, I’ll have to get permission to head back to Ayotzinapa, if that’s where you’re going, I’ll take you there, no problem, Coyuco hearing every word, José Ángel nodding his head, Coyuco grinding his teeth when he heard the words no problem, and Coyuco Cisneros, there’re some words I just can’t stand, Coyuco and José Ángel and seven other pairs of eyes watching the driver get down off the bus, eighteen impatient eyes following the driver, or seventeen, Miguel Alfonso’s bad eye didn’t know, he himself couldn’t see much, not blind but blurry, and the driver walking to where a couple of station security guards were posted in order to get the permission he was looking for.

  And José Ángel, a voice in his head, it might be a delay tactic, I don’t like it, but Coyuco
, hearing Los Alegres de Terán playing “Prefiero sufrir,” “I’d Rather Suffer,” still another canción, a little música norteña, with Tomás Ortíz, vocals and bajo sexto, Eugenio Abrego, vocals and accordion, and Spiros “Pete” Arfanos on bass, Coyuco, keeping his mind on the street, but relaxed, not watching the driver speaking to two security guards, he was looking at the passersby, but José Ángel, eyes fixed on the driver who looked at his watch, tapping the watch’s face with a couple of fingers, the driver giving the impression he was listening to what the security guards had to say, nodding, okay, but they weren’t saying much, and a guard, you did your duty, now we’re going to make a couple of calls, and the driver, looking up at the sky, a feather of light from the sunset lingering there, but the sun had already fallen off the edge of the earth, a fiery feather of light hanging like a thread of smoke in the air, the driver scanning the horizon, shooting a glance at the bus, and a few blocks away the political elite, including a colonel from the 27th Infantry Battalion, and four thousand acarreados, peasants bused in to listen to speeches, future voters if the politicians played their cards right, together, they were listening to speeches, an enthusiastic crowd, a burst of applause, a little whistling, but right here, not far from Civic Plaza, the bus driver, talking again with a security guard, the other taking a couple of steps away, speaking into a radio, the driver trying to hear what he was saying, but the station guard standing in front of him, a voice burnt by tobacco and pulque, and the station guard, don’t bother, it’s got nothing to do with you, friend, if you know what’s good for you you’ll mind your own business, and then bringing his phone to his ear, an official on the other end of the line, his superior, the driver kept on listening, each conversation stumbling over the other, mixing words, the driver trying to look like he wasn’t paying attention to anything, a lousy actor, José Ángel watching him, the guard acting like a pro, like he’d been on the stage, confidence and authority, the voices muffled or there was too much noise floating around to hear more than a phrase or two hanging in the air, then words falling to the hard surface at the driver’s feet, he couldn’t gather much out of what he was hearing, the guards rattling off information, one into a phone, the other into a radio, José Ángel, waiting and restless, Coyuco, wide awake and wary, and he wasn’t hearing anything but the loud throbbing and constant pulsating in his blood vessels, his skin beginning to itch, José Ángel and Coyuco, and eight other students were more than anxious that the driver wasn’t going to get back on the bus, and the doors were locked.

  José Ángel holding his phone in his hand, Coyuco, all sound except the voices around him fading in his ears, nobody was jittery but on the alert, a collective spark, a small fiery particle thrown off from a fire igniting the explosive mixture in the bus, here we are! and José Ángel, to himself, you can wait for only so long before waiting isn’t worth the time you spend, and a couple of other students, reaching for their phones, and José Ángel, we’ve got to do it, and now’s the time, mis amigos, or never—just as real events are forgotten, some that never were, that didn’t exist, can be in our memories as if they’d happened, and this situation, the one we’re in now, is as real as the sweat on our skin and the hairs in our nose, you can believe me, aquin achtopa iztlacati ayecmo occepa moneltoca, he who lies once, is not to be believed twice, José Ángel turning to Coyuco, and José Ángel, fuck it, we’re going to take more buses when the others get here and let us out, shouting to the eight other students, when you get hold of the others tell them to get what they can off the street, fill their pockets and hands with rocks, anything, we’ve got to defend ourselves, mis amigos, and tell them to get the fuck over here right now, José Ángel thinking, danger’s heading toward us like spilled blood, and a little panic in his voice, ¡Órale que no tenemos todo el día! we don’t have all day! and all of them on the phone, trying to reach the normalistas on the two buses still outside of Huitzuco, Estrella de Oro 1531 and 1568, buses they’d grabbed at the Chilpancingo bus station ten days earlier, and when they’d reached them, José Ángel, Coyuco, the eight other students, telling them what was going on, and their voices, together, just in case, you’d better pick up rocks, sun-dried bricks, anything you can throw with your bare hands, a little courage in your hearts, a living flame in your balls, so the students still outside of Huitzuco, or they were already on the highway and had to pull over, almost tripping over each other as they clambered out of the buses, each in a fury, loyal figures leaving crimson streaks of light in their wake like they’d swallowed habañeros, running here and there, left and right, collecting rocks of all sizes and shapes, a couple of broken branches, finding a bent wheel rim, a dented hubcap, a thick piece of tire tread, stockpiling them, as many as they could carry and lay at their feet on the floor in the buses next to their seats, and the normalistas, student teachers, and the first- and second-year students, okay, let’s go, the two buses pulling out onto the highway, two vehicles moving as fast as the two drivers could make them go, each with a foot pressing the accelerator to the floor, heading for Iguala and the central bus station.

  Rubén Arenal returning home from the Metropolitan Cathedral of Chihuahua, and the statue of Our Lady of Sorrows, having comforted his broken heart, it was only slightly torn when it came to Little Pascuala, la sombra de la mujer amada, the shadow of the beloved woman, but it was completely shattered when it came to Coyuco, and Our Lady of Sorrows, a statue in the altar on the northern side of the chancel, he’d made the sign of the cross in front of her, bearing a truly broken heart—one thing was vulnerable love, the other the end of Coyuco’s life, Rubén Arenal marking the difference in the degree of his suffering by counting his heartbeats—Rubén Arenal making the sign of the cross and offering a prayer for Ernesto, Guadalupe, he’d almost forgotten about her until he found himself standing in front of the statue, and a prayer for their son, faith in the palms of his hands, and now, as he opened the door of his ground-floor apartment, a simple home, and his pottery studio, Rubén Arenal pulling his shirt over his head, the sweat on his back making it stick to his skin, Rubén Arenal leaving the shirt hanging over the back of a chair, and a song sung by Dueto Río Bravo, Eva Gurrola Castellanos and María de la Luz Pulgarin Gurrola, a melancholy song, “Llorando a mares,” “In a Flood of Tears,” written by Rogelio González, “Llorando a mares” was playing in his head, Rubén Arenal wanting to take a bath, stripping off his clothes, laying his trousers neatly on his bed, and Rocket, it’s time to wash away the sadness stuck to me like paste, or wedged clay, Rubén Arenal, his untidy long hair falling onto his rounded cheeks, his languid, sad eyes, and the marked signs of good health, in contrast with his mood, he turned on the tap and let the water slowly fill the bathtub, at first a bit rusty, or brownish in color, and later, in the bath, another song, Dueto Río Bravo, “Vengan jilgueros,” a canción about goldfinches, written by Ricardo Domínguez, Rubén Arenal scrubbing himself with a sponge made of a sponge gourd, its coarse fibers removing dirt and dead cells from his skin, and a few of his worries, while the window in the ceiling above him threw afternoon light in the shape of a lozenge on the surface of the bath water.

  La Pascualita, or Little Pascuala, veined hands, wide-set sparkling eyes, and an eerie smile, most of the time and almost every day, La Pascualita’s face and figure, as attractive to him as an ordinary world of daydreams, Little Pascuala appearing in Rubén Arenal’s mind, standing before him just as she looked standing in the window of La Popular, but living and breathing, and Rocket, yes, she’s alive! Rubén Arenal wondering if she really was Pascuala Esparza’s daughter, knowing that he’d seen her before, not once but many times, and it wasn’t in the shop window but on the street at night, walking in Chihuahua, although he couldn’t be sure, he might’ve been imagining it, because he never really saw her face, not in full light, a streetlight behind her throwing a shadow on her head, a woman accompanied by her mother in the street at night, arm in arm, a couple of dignified women, maybe Little Pascuala, maybe not, but Rubén Arenal sw
earing he’d seen someone who looked a lot like her, swearing under his breath so no one would hear him, and Rocket, otherwise they’ll drive me out twenty miles southwest of Juárez, on the northern edge of the state, and leave me at Visión en Accion—that’s the place, Vision in Action, an asylum in the desert—in the hands of José Antonio Galván, El Pastor, a charismatic man, a kind of saint, wearing black trousers and a black blazer, it was José Antonio Galván who built it, Visión en Accion, somewhere for people with problems to go for help, drugs and prison, or a faulty brain, Rubén Arenal, rubbing the calluses on the palm of his right hand, the ulnar bursa, and Rocket, I don’t want to be there, en serio, okay, so it’s like a home or family, but I’m not crazy, not yet, I’m pretty sure of what I’ve seen, Little Pascuala’s got a dead ringer who isn’t standing in a shop window, and a question, is it you? yes, it’s you, but Rubén Arenal shaking his head, wet strands of long hair sticking to his face, he wasn’t quite certain, doubting himself except when it came to throwing pots, a ball of clay placed on the wheel head, shaping it, then another, and another, Rubén Arenal looking closely at his face in the bathroom mirror, wrapped in a towel, leaving wet footprints on the floor, searching his studio, picking out clean clothes, getting ready to visit his sister, Luz Elena, Rubén Arenal putting on a T-shirt and a pair of jeans, no socks, combing his hair, looking forward to seeing Avelina, Perla and Cirilo, his nieces and a nephew, and a freezer full of paletas, ice pops, creamy milk-based and fruity water-based flavors, as many as he could eat, he was dying of thirst, as dry as the desert, so it’s his sister, Luz Elena, and her three children, Rubén Arenal already tasting popsicles, freezing his tongue, and a longing for a glass of something cold to drink, a thought for Ernesto, Guadalupe, and Coyuco, Rubén Arenal changing course, heading for La Pascualita, a gleam in his eye, always Little Pascuala, and Rocket, it had to be last night, with the burning heat of the day still playing in the dark, Rubén Arenal and the last time he saw the woman who looked like a double for Little Pascuala, esa mujer celestial, that heavenly woman, who’s existence seemed not to belong to this world, but a higher region, La Pascualita, or her look-alike, dressed in black, walking next to her mother, also dressed in black, a rebozo draped over her shoulders, her mother’s shoulders not La Pascualita’s, and the woman who was a double for Little Pascuala, opening her lips, a few remarks to her mother about the heat, the wind, the night, he didn’t really hear what she said, just the sound of her voice, but her words echoing in his ears, her alabaster fingers pushing a few strands of hair away from her face, but still in shadow, he couldn’t see her eyes, a veined hand, he couldn’t say because there wasn’t enough light, the double for Little Pascuala, graceful, her mother with a rebozo covering her shoulders, black and deep-blue with knotted fringe, a shawl from Pátzcuaro in Michoacán, mother and daughter, ever-shifting, together, walking unhurriedly, taking a stroll, getting some fresh air on a night radiating with heat like a furnace, they rounded a corner and disappeared.