DECEMBER 23

Nothing happened today. And if anything did, I'd rather not talk about it, because I didn't understand it.

DECEMBER 24

A miserable Christmas. I called María. Finally I got to talk to her! I told her what was going on with Lupe and she said she knew everything. What do you know? I said.

"Well, that she ran away from her pimp and that she's finally decided to study at the dance school," she said.

"Do you know where she's living?"

"At a hotel," said María.

"Do you know which hotel?"

"Of course I know. The Media Luna. I go see her every afternoon. She's awfully lonely, poor thing."

"No, she isn't awfully lonely, your father makes sure of that," I said.

"My father is a saint and he's killing himself for despicable brats like you," she said.

I wanted to know what she meant by killing himself.

"Nothing."

"Tell me what the fuck you're trying to say!"

"Don't shout," she said.

"I want to know where I stand! I want to know who I'm talking to!"

"Don't shout," she said again.

Then she said that she had things to do, and she hung up.

DECEMBER 25

I've decided not to sleep with María ever again, but the Christmas holidays, the tension radiating from people on the streets downtown, poor Rosario's plans (she's all set to spend New Year's Eve at a nightclub-with me, of course, and dancing), only make me want to see María again, to undress her, to feel her legs on my back again, to slap (if she asks me to) the perfect tight curve of her ass.

DECEMBER 26

"Today I have a surprise for you, papuchi," announced Rosario as soon as she got home.

She started to kiss me, saying over and over again that she loved me and promising that she was going to start reading a book every two weeks to be "up to my level," which only embarrassed me, finally confessing that no one had ever made her so happy.

I must be getting old, because her verbal excesses gave me goose bumps.

Half an hour later we went walking to El Amanuense Azteca, a public bathhouse on Calle Lorenzo Boturini.

That was the surprise.

"We have to be nice and clean now that the new year is coming," said Rosario, winking at me.

I would've liked to slap her right there, then walk away and never see her again. (My nerves are shot.)

And yet, when we had passed through the frosted glass doors of the bathhouse, the mural or fresco that arched over the front desk seized my attention with mysterious force.

The anonymous artist had painted an Indian scribe writing on paper or parchment, lost in thought. Clearly, he was the Amanuense Azteca. Behind the scribe stretched hot springs, where Indians and conquistadors, bathing in pools set three in a row, were joined by Mexicans from colonial times, El Cura Hidalgo and Morelos, Emperor Maximilian and Empress Carlota, Benito Juárez surrounded by friends and enemies, President Madero, Carranza, Zapata, Obregón, soldiers in different uniforms or out of uniform, peasants, Mexico City workers, and movie actors: Cantinflas, Dolores del Río, Pedro Armendáriz, Pedro Infante, Jorge Negrete, Javier Solís, Aceves Mejía, María Félix, Tin Tan, Resortes, Calambres, Irma Serrano, and others I didn't recognize because they were in the farthest pools, and those really were tiny.

"Cool, huh?"

I stood there with my arms at my sides. Ecstatic.

Rosario's voice made me jump.

Before we turned down the hallway with our little towels and soap, I discovered that at each end of the mural there was a stone wall surrounding the springs. And on the other side of the wall, on a kind of plain or frozen sea, I saw shadowy animals, maybe the ghosts of animals (or the ghosts of plants) lying in wait, multiplying in a seething but silent siege.

DECEMBER 27

We've been back to El Amanuense Azteca. A success. The private rooms are carpeted, with a table, coat rack, and sofa, and a cement stall where the shower and steam taps are. The steam jet is at floor level, like in a Nazi movie. The door between the room and the stall is heavy, and there's a creepy, perpetually fogged-up peephole at eye level (although I have to stoop since I'm taller than the average person it was designed for). There's restaurant service. We shut ourselves in and order cuba libres. We shower, take steam baths, rest and dry ourselves on the sofa, then shower again. We make love in the stall, in a cloud of steam that hides our bodies. We fuck, shower, let the steam smother us. All we can see are our hands, our knees, sometimes the back of a neck or the tip of a breast.

DECEMBER 28

How many poems have I written?

Since it all began: 55 poems.

Total pages: 76.

Total lines: 2,453

I could put together a book by now. My complete works.

DECEMBER 29

Tonight, while I was waiting for Rosario at the bar of the Encrucijada Veracruzana, Brígida came by and said something about time passing.

"Pour me another tequila," I said, "and tell me what you mean."

In her look I caught something that I can only call victory, although it was a sad, resigned victory, more attuned to small signs of death than signs of life.

"What I meant was that time goes by," said Brígida as she filled my glass, "and once you were a stranger, but now you're like part of the family."

"I don't give a shit about the family," I said as I wondered where the fuck Rosario had gone.

"I didn't mean to insult you," said Brígida. "Or pick a fight. These days I don't feel like fighting with anyone."

I sat looking at her for a while, not knowing what to say. I would've liked to say you're being an idiot, Brígida, but I wasn't in the mood to fight with anyone either.

"What I meant was," said Brígida, looking behind her as if to make sure Rosario wasn't coming, "that I would've liked to fall in love with you too, believe me, I would've liked to live with you, give you spending money, make your meals, take care of you when you were sick, but it wasn't meant to be. We have to accept things the way they are, don't we? But it would've been nice."

"I'm impossible to live with," I said.

"You are who you are and you have a cock that's worth its weight in gold," said Brígida.

"Thank you," I said.

"I know what I'm talking about," said Brígida.

"So what else do you know?"

"About you?" Now Brígida was smiling, and this, I guessed, was her victory.

"About me, of course," I said as I swallowed the last of the tequila.

"That you're going to die young, Juan, and that you're going to do Rosario wrong."

DECEMBER 30

Today I went back to the Fonts' house. Today I did Rosario wrong.

I got up early, around seven, and went out to roam the streets downtown. Before I left I heard Rosario's voice saying: wait a second and I'll make you breakfast. I didn't answer. I closed the door quietly and left the tenement.

For a long time I walked as if I were in a foreign country, feeling choked and sick. When I got to the Zócalo my pores opened at last. I started to sweat freely, and my nausea vanished.

Then suddenly I was starving and I went into the first cafeteria I found open, a little place on Madero called Nueva Síbaris, where I ordered coffee and a ham sandwich.

To my great surprise, there was Pancho Rodríguez, sitting at the bar. His hair was freshly combed (it was still wet) and his eyes were red. He didn't look surprised to see me. I asked him what he was doing there, so far from home and so early in the morning.