[...] as he was talking the whore yawned, not because she wasn't interested in what he was saying but because she was tired, which irritated Sergio and made him say, in exasperation, that in Santa Teresa they were killing whores, so why not show a little professional solidarity, to which the whore replied that he was wrong, in the story as he had told it the women dying were factory workers, not whores. Workers, workers, she said. And then Sergio apologized, and, as if a lightbulb had gone on over his head, he glimpsed an aspect of the situation that until now he'd overlooked.

[...] I started watching TV again, where some guy was saying that he stood in possession, those were his words, stood in possession, like somebody talking about medieval history or politics, of the record for most expulsions from the United States. Do you know how many times he had entered the United States illegally? Three hundred and forty-five! And three hundred and forty-five times he had been arrested and deported to Mexico. All within a span of four years. I admit that suddenly my interest was piqued. I imagined him on my show. I imagined the questions I would ask. I began to think about how to get in touch with him, because there's no denying it was a very interesting story. The guy from Tijuana TV asked a key question: where did he get the money to pay the coyotes to take him to the other side? Because considering the frantic rate at which he was expelled it was clear there was no way he had time to work and save up money in the United States. His answer was breathtaking. He said at first he paid what they asked, but later, maybe after the tenth deportation, he bargained and asked for discounts, and after the fiftieth deportation the pollens and coyotes brought him along out of friendship, and after the hundredth they probably felt sorry for him, he thought. Now, he said to the Tijuana talk show host, they brought him as a good-luck charm, because his presence in some way relieved the stress for everyone else: if anyone was caught that someone would be him, not the others, at least if they knew to steer clear of him once they had crossed the border. Put it this way: he had become the marked card, the marked bill, as he said himself. Then the host, who was bad, asked him one stupid question and one good question. The stupid question was whether he planned to get into the Guinness Book of World Records. The man didn't even know what the fuck he was talking about, he'd never heard of the Guinness Book of World Records. The good question was whether he was going to keep trying. Trying what? asked the man. Trying to get across, said the host. God willing, the man said, so long as he was in good health he would never give up on the idea of living in the United States. Aren't you tired? asked the host. Don't you want to go back to your village or look for a job here in Tijuana? The guy smiled like he was embarrassed and said that once he had an idea in his head he couldn't get rid of it. [...]

[...] No, I don't feel offended or supplanted because I wasn't given the job. The Sonora authorities know me very well and they know I'm a man whose only god is Truth, said Professor Garcia Correa. In Mexico it takes frighteningly little to dazzle us. It makes me cringe when I see or hear or read certain adjectives in the press, certain praise that seems to have been spouted by a tribe of deranged monkeys, but there's nothing to be done, that's Mexico for you, and in time a person gets used to it, said Professor Garcia Correa. Being a criminologist in this country is like being a cryptographer at the North Pole. It's like being a child in a cell block of pedophiles. It's like being a beggar in the country of the deaf. It's like being a condom in the realm of the Amazons, said Professor Garcia Correa. If you're mistreated, you get used to it. If you're snubbed, you get used to it. If your life savings vanish, the money you were putting aside for retirement, you get used to it. If your son swindles you, you get used to it. If you have to keep working when by law you should be doing whatever you please, you get used to it. If on top of that your salary is cut, you get used to it. If you have to work for crooked lawyers and corrupt detectives to supplement your pay, you get used to it. But you'd better not put any of this in your articles, boys, because if you do, my job will be on the line, said Professor Garcia Correa. Mr. Albert Kessler, as I was saying, is a highly qualified investigator. [...]

At nineteen I began to take lovers. My sex life is legendary all over Mexico, but legends are always false, especially in this country. The first time I slept with a man it was out of curiosity. That's right. Not love or admiration or fear, the way it is for most women. I could have slept with him out of pity, because ultimately I pitied the kid I fucked that first time, but the honest truth is it was curiosity. After two months I left him and went off with someone else, an asshole who thought he was a revolutionary. Mexico has an abundance of these assholes. Hopelessly stupid, arrogant men, who lose their wits when they come across an Esquivel Plata, want to fuck her right away, as if the act of possessing a woman like me were the equivalent of storming the Winter Palace. The Winter Palace! They, who couldn't even cut the grass of the Summer Dacha! Well, I got rid of that one soon enough, too, and now he's a fairly well-known reporter who, every time he gets drunk, likes to talk about how he was my first love. My next lovers were chosen because they were good in bed or because I was bored and they were witty or entertaining or strange, so extravagantly strange that only I found them amusing. For a while, as I'm sure you know, I was someone with a certain stake in the university Leftist movement. I even visited Cuba. Then I got married, had my son. My husband, who was also on the Left, joined the PRI. I began to work in journalism. On Sundays I would go home, I mean to my old house, where my family was slowly rotting away, and I would wander the hallways, the garden, look at photo albums, read the diaries of unknown forebears, which were more like missals than diaries, sit quietly for hours next to the stone well in the courtyard, deep in an expectant silence, smoking one cigarette after another, not reading, not thinking, sometimes even unable to remember anything. The truth is I was bored. I wanted to do things, but I didn't know exactly what. Months later I got divorced. My marriage didn't last two years. [...]

read the diaries of unknown forebears, which were more like missals than diaries