As I crouched there assisting the dog, whose fur was short and bristly, a boot stepped down centimeters away, one boot and then the other. Ankle boots, turquoise blue with a black heel. I glanced up and saw with astonishment that this somewhat unconventional footwear was attached to the young man from the fountain. He was looking straight ahead and didn’t pause, nor slow his pace, as he stepped around our little ensemble.
Again, I had a strong urge to follow but the dog was still relying on me to stand—I released him for a second but he immediately began to cave—and as the paws continued to resist traction I saw the figure nearing the corner, but what could I do, I’d embarked on a good deed and couldn’t depart halfway. After several more minutes of struggle the dog finally managed to stand on his own. Once he was back on all fours the émigrés thanked me, though not as profusely as they should have considering what I had just sacrificed in stopping to help them.
JULIÁN WAS WITH ME WHEN I SAW TOMÁS A THIRD time, on an afternoon when the sky was uncommonly clear. A few factories must’ve been napping, or half the city’s cars on holiday, and even the trees seemed aware of the change and looked more expansive, easing into relaxed forms before the air reverted to its grim chemistry. Instead of staying in the Covadonga, Julián grabbed his camera and tucked a couple of beers into his bag and we headed over to Álvaro Obregón. We loved the avenue’s camellón, a long public walkway that bisected the traffic, its green wrought-iron benches and eloquent trees, their branches twisted into unlikely shapes as if from daily conversations with the wind. Up and down we’d stroll, taking stock of changes like city surveyors. A new record shop here, an intricate balcony renovated over there, further elevation of the pavement here and there and there, a rightward tilt and a shift in contours at the ruins on Chihuahua, and the only features that remained the same were the wide angles of street corners left over from the days when carriages needed to comfortably turn them. Sometimes in the early morning the émigrés would also visit the camellón, I’d see them on my way to school and sense they’d been awake for hours, as if still on a European clock. But what I loved most were the fountains inhabited by bronze sculptures of classical figures solitary or interlocked, caught up in dramas from long ago, blind to the thousands of cars speeding past.
Today the only free bench was across from the hospital, and we sat and took clandestine sips from our beers until the traffic began to thicken. Afterward we resumed our walk, neither of us paying much attention to where we were headed, and before long we ended up in front of the abandoned house on Plaza Río de Janeiro.
The earthquake had also left many mansions empty and in disrepair. Some were being squatted and others had a resident guard camping out in one of the rooms, the light of his candle visible from the street at night. Directly next door, meanwhile, showing more signs of life despite existing in similar limbo, would be a ruin. This particular house had lain abandoned long enough for anyone curious to have gone in to explore. I’d been inside several times with friends, it was the perfect place to smoke cigarettes and pose for imaginary album covers, and once someone had thrown a party and the entire house with its dozen rooms had glowed and crackled with life, until the police arrived, tipped off by the music and candlelight, and drove everyone out. There were plans to develop it, some said, grand plans drawn up by the municipal director general of Caos y Desarrollo Urbano, but for now it still belonged to us.
I followed Julián as he cut a path through the tall weeds that rose around the house like the soil’s unbrushed hair and we paused only briefly at the open lock, corroded by countless rainy seasons and impossible to close. Yet it added to the thrill of trespassing, and we stuck to silence as we stepped into the front room. Clawlike branches groped their way through the broken windowpanes. Shafts of light entered through gaps in the walls, creating checkered patterns on the floorboards. On a rafter overhead, the resident doves, alarmed by our entrance, murmured nervously among themselves, and a few puffed out their feathers to look larger.
Julián had borrowed the camera from his father when he’d left home; at some point he would return it, or perhaps not, depending on whether they spoke again. A compact rectangle of stainless steel, it looked more like a long, thick finger than any device for recording images. The sort of gadget spies might use, or Cold War villains. Minox was its brand name, Julían informed me, as he began to document the beams, the doves, the cracks in the walls, even the dead flies that lay in tiny heaps on the floor as if someone had swept them up and then abandoned the task.
After capturing most of our surroundings Julián went to pose on the edge of a windowsill and asked me to photograph him. I thought of a Russian film I’d once seen—characters in a crumbling house, water dripping in from a punishing sky—and searched for redemptive angles within the surrender and neglect. At first he was tense, I kept telling him to relax, and only after humming to himself was he able to loosen his jaw and drop his shoulders into a more natural position. Through the viewfinder I allowed myself to admire him, his long lashes and craggy nose, and couldn’t help lamenting the orientation of his romantic preferences.
The film was advanced by sliding the camera shut and then back open, a pleasing movement that presented the danger of compulsive picture taking; I had to control my fingers. Julián went to stand by the stairway and rested a hand on the banister. As I began to photograph this new pose, sleeves and trousers growing dustier after every encounter with a surface, his figure seemed to double. At first I thought it was his shadow but the contours didn’t match up. I lowered the camera and there he was, the young man in black, standing on the stair behind him. Sensing a presence, Julián jumped aside.
We didn’t hear you.
No, even after all this time the stairs don’t creak.
He’d been upstairs, he said, his voice a bit deeper than I would have imagined, but heard movement and had come to investigate. At first he thought it was the doves, they seemed to be multiplying, but he then heard humans, too. He glanced at me, fixed his hair, then down at the Minox in my hand.
How did you get in? Julián asked, commenting that the lock, though broken, had still been in place. There are many secret entrances, he said, without explaining why one would need them. They discussed the state of the house, wondered how much longer it would stand without any sort of intervention. And while they spoke I casually studied him, deciding that the portrait from up close was even better than from afar: grayish eyes and tufts of hair in all directions, and a gap between the front teeth, surely excellent for whistling. He seemed older than me, by two or three years, and was unusually pale, not in the synthetic manner of the blond stars of Televisa but rather like a güerito de rancho. His face was very round, almost lunar, and more than anything he reminded me of someone handsome I’d once seen in a music video, not the lead singer but someone in the periphery, on a parallel plane. His clothes, a medley of black, were made of thick cotton, and gave off a strong smell of pot. What brings you here? I asked, realizing I had yet to say a word. He’d recently dropped out of school, he said proudly, and was now working part-time at a bookstore. Which one? A Través del Espejo, on Álvaro Obregón.
Name: Tomás. Tomás Román.
After a few minutes he ended the conversation, said he’d been in the middle of something and had to return to it. An unfinished