Marine gribbles, more sonorously known as Limnoria, tunnel into the wood in pairs, with the female forging ahead. Sharp-clawed and seven-legged, they are found in most marine and brackish waters, often present in large numbers. The channels they create run parallel to the surface of the wood and tend to communicate, rendering an infested vessel even more vulnerable to corrosion. Though they roam freely, gribbles have hermitlike instincts, and are loath to leave once they’re ensconced in the burrows they’ve created: why move home when you have a roof and an endless supply of wood, peace, and quiet?
The shipworm, meanwhile, is a bivalve mollusk without shell or gender that changes sex as it grows. Also known as the termites of the sea, shipworms are less endearing in appearance than gribbles, with long, slender bodies and heads that resemble gaping mouths in service of an insatiable appetite that incessantly combs the water. Their bodies become longer as they burrow, leaving a calcareous deposit in their wake.
And finally, the wood piddock. Unlike the other two, the piddock is unable to digest cellulose: it seeks out wood not for nourishment but as protection from whatever dangers the sea may present. Its burrows are shallow and spherical; it attacks in big groups. Like the shipworm, the piddock is bisexual, and similarly content to remain in its chambers once satisfactory lodgings have been found.
The job of these organisms is made easier, and the yielding of submerged wood therefore swifter, thanks to the handiwork of two micro-organisms, fungi and bacteria, who break down the tissue before the others come to dig their channels. Along with this array of wood-boring creatures and their lesser counterparts, wave action adds to the process of demolition. The movement of water, as well as the movement of the seabed as the sand shifts and resettles, furthers the toll on the sunken vessel.
How to ignore the tragedy of the wreck, like that of a carcass in a wildlife program, no longer breathing yet under continued assault—once the mortal blow is dealt, a host of scavengers moves in. But I also cheered for these aquatic hermits who had found a home. Listening to my father describe the scenario made me feel I had access to something vertiginously distant and mysterious and of the various wrecks he mentioned, his favorite, and soon mine, was that of Antikythera, which had lain at the bottom of the ocean for twenty centuries. For twenty centuries, the ship and its contents had remained at the mercy of tides, currents, organisms, and upwellings. For twenty centuries, they lay silenced.
AT NIGHT THE WAVES OF THE PACIFIC WOULD GROW tremendous, swelling in height and in volume, a maritime thunder outdinning every other gesture of nature, and I’d watch as surfers materialized on the horizon like rare mammals from the sea. Dogs would bark at them from the shore with their hackles raised, and I’d wonder whether we all fell prey to some form of coastal delirium, a delirium born from the potent alignment of air, sand, and sea; after all, a mere drop of water can interact with light in an infinite number of ways.
The first three sightings of Tomás were followed by none, so one afternoon when I was feeling fortified—three A’s at school that day—I dropped by A Través del Espejo. As much as I liked the idea of it, I didn’t go there often. The place was topsy-turvy, with erratically packed shelves and signs in different languages and piles of books rising from the floor to the height of children. Positioned at the till as if to contradict its chaos was the owner, a stern woman with a pageboy haircut; she never smiled, never helped, and expressed annoyance whenever someone inquired into the availability or location of this or that book.
I crossed paths with Tomás, nearly brushed sleeves, as I walked in. He was on his way out, accompanied by a couple around his age whom he introduced as the Americans. He was taking them to see an apartment, he said. Which apartment? I asked, wondering whether he was now working in real estate, too. The apartment where William Burroughs shot his wife, he said. These Americans had come into the shop asking whether someone would show them, could pay fifty pesos, and since Tomás had been there once before he volunteered, and got permission for a short break. Do you even know who Burroughs is? he asked me. Yes, I do, I said, though I’ve never read him. My mother had two books of his and every now and then, sensing they held something illicit, I’d peer inside, searching for incendiary words and scenes, but was always left feeling short-changed.
Moments later I was walking down the street with Tomás and the two Americans, the girl chubby and snub-nosed and exuding an impressive confidence, the boy somewhat timid and half her girth. Tomás led us to the corner where Chihuahua meets Monterrey, paused, then turned right on Monterrey and stopped in front of number 122, a gray building with a black door. It opened with a push. We entered the tiled hallway and climbed a chilly flight of stairs but at the first floor our steps were cut short by a floor-to-ceiling grate that blocked access to a whole section of the corridor. A woman in a tracksuit and flip-flops emerged from one of the apartments and asked what we wanted. We’d like to see— No, no, no, the woman interrupted, aware of where the sentence was heading. Number 8 was a private residence. After moving in she and her husband had put up this barrier because people kept coming by, Americans wanting to make a television series, Americans wanting to make a documentary, Americans wanting to do a photo shoot. The young couple pleaded. They said they were students from San Francisco who loved William Burroughs and wanted to see the place where it all happened, the place that made him a writer, the place that made him a different person from when he entered. The woman seemed moved. I could see her studying the eager couple, their Converse high-tops and woven bracelets from the market, and after biting her lip and glancing over at me and Tomás to make sure we weren’t renegades, she finally said, Okay, five minutes, and unlocked the gate.
As far as I could tell, her home contained nothing foreboding apart from the walls being decked in Christmas decorations, with pots of poinsettia on the sills; it was unclear whether these were left over from the previous year or put out a few months early. The windows of the apartment looked onto an interior courtyard whose upper tiers were crisscrossed with laundry. The woman’s husband surfaced from a side room. His jeans were fastened with a string and he spoke and moved in stutters as if he’d suffered a stroke. His wife told him why we were there, upon which he sighed, especially when the young Americans asked whether they knew where in the flat it had all happened, there seemed to be many spaces and they wanted to know which held meaning. The woman pointed to a piano in the living room, an old piano covered in doilies, nearly eighty years old, she said, no one ever played it but in its spot the lady was shot. With forensic hunger the American boy began to circle the piano as if the instrument had absorbed some of the drama from thirty-seven years before, and started taking photos from different angles, his camera clicking loudly each time he pressed down on the button and wound the film.
As he took pictures the woman positioned herself in front of the piano and her husband stuttered over to the arch dividing living room from dining room, and solemnly announced that here was where Burroughs himself had stood, under the arch, and taken aim. Husband at one end, wife at the other. Face-to-face. All movement halted as they set up the scene. Despite their earlier protestations I had the sense they had done this before, inviting friends over to pantomime the famous incident that had taken place under their roof. The seconds passed, taut and bizarre, as each of them stood in their places. I sensed I was being watched. Tomás was staring over at me. Lips curled, eyes slightly narrowed. I wasn’t certain how to meet the expression so I smiled, but since his lips were already curled I couldn’t tell whether he was smiling back. Well, he must be, I decided; perhaps he was thinking what I’d begun to think, that this was a space of couples, first Burroughs and Joan Vollmer, then the married pair who lived here, and the young Californians. And now, Tomás and Luisa. Three couples, albeit one deceased, and us. Different portraits of modern coupledom. Story of an Afternoon with Piano and Couples. Tomás returned his attention to the husband and wife, who continued with their pantomiming as the rest of us stood quietly in our places.
After a minute or so the American girl, now powdered-milk pale, brought the session to an end. Well, thank you, I think we’ve seen enough, she said softly, her hand tightening around her bag strap. It’d been too much, I sensed, she’d gotten more than she’d expected. Thank you, we echoed. The man waved from under the arch but his legs stayed rooted, unfreed from the spell.