The Excursion of the Dead Girls

“No, from much farther away. From Europe.” The man looked at me with a smile, as if I'd replied, “From the moon.” He was the owner of the pulqueria at the edge of the village. He stepped back from the table, and as he leaned against the wall, began to study me as if searching for some sign of my bizarre past. Right then it seemed just as bizarre to me as it did to him that I'd come all the way from Europe and wound up in Mexico.—The village was staked like a fortress with giant cacti. Through a gap, I could see gray-brown mountain slopes, stark and wild like a moonscape, casting off any notion that they had ever borne life. Two pepper trees, more ablaze than abloom, glowed at the edge of a desolate gorge. The man was now squatting on the ground beneath the enormous shade of his hat. He was no longer studying me. Neither the village nor the mountains held his attention. He stared without moving at the only thing that still puzzled him: an absolute void.

I leaned back against the wall in the narrow strip of shade. Refuge in this country was much too questionable, much too uncertain for it to be called salvation. Months of illness just past had plagued me here, even though the many dangers of the war hadn't managed to harm me. Thanks to the rescue efforts of my friends, I had been spared the conspicuous calamities as well as the hidden calamities that lay in wait.—Although my eyes burned from heat and fatigue, I could see the stretch of path that led from the village into the wild. The path was so white that as soon as I closed my eyes it remained imprinted