 So, without further ado, let's dive right in and enjoy this cool story which will take about 10 minutes to read. Man on Pink Corner, For Enrique Amorim, written in the early 30s. Imagine you bringing up Francisco Rial that way, out of the clear blue sky, him dead and gone and all. Because I met the man, even if this wasn't exactly his stomping ground. He was more up in the north, up around Guadalupe Lake and Baderilla. The truth is, I doubt if I crossed paths with the man more than three times, and all three were on a single night. Though it's not one I'll be likely ever to forget. It was the night La Lujanera came home to sleep at my place, just like that, just up and came. And the same night, Rosendo Juarez left Maldonado, never to return. Of course, you probably haven't had the experience you'd need to recognize that particular individual's name. But in his time, Rosendo Juarez, the sticker they called him, was one of the toughest customers in Villa Santa Rita. He was fierce with a knife, was Rosendo Juarez, as you'd expect with a moniker like that. And he was one of Don Nicoles' Paredes men, Don Nicoles being one of Morel's men. He'd come into the cat house just as dandified as you can imagine, head to foot in black with his belt buckle and studs and all silver. Men and dogs both had a healthy respect for him, and the whores did too. Everybody knew two killings had been laid to him already. He wore a tall sort of hat with a narrow brim, which sat down like this on a long mane of greasy hair. Rosendo was favored by fortune, as they say, and wee boys in the neighborhood would imitate him right down to the way he spit. But then there came a night that showed us Rosendo Juarez's true colors. It's hard to believe, but the story of that night, a night as strange as any I've ever lived through, began with an insolent red-wield hack crammed with men, banging and rattling along those streets of hard-packed clay, past brick kilns and vacant blots. There was two men in black, strumming guitars, and lost in their own thoughts. And the man on the driver's seat, using his whip on any loose dogs that took a mind to mess with the pee-balled in the traces, and one fellow wrapped tight in a poncho riding in the middle, which was the yardmaster that everybody always talked about. And he was spoiling for a fight, spoiling for a kill. The night was so cool, it was like a blessing from heaven. Two of these fellows were riding up on the folded-back cloth top of the hack, and it was as though the loneliness made that rattle trap a veritable parade. That was the first event of the many that took place, but it wasn't until a while afterward that we found out this part. Me and my friends, meanwhile, meantime, we'd been over at Julia's place since early that evening. Julia's place, being a big old barracks-like building made out of sheets of zinc between the Gaona Road and the Maldonado River. It was a place you could pick out from quite a distance off, on account of the light from a brazen big red light, and on account of the hullabaloo, too. This Julia, although she was a colored woman, was as reliable and honest as you could ask for, so there wasn't ever any lack of musicians, good drinks, and girls that could dance all night if they were asked to. But this Lujanera, I mentioned, who was Rosendo's woman, she outdid them all, and by a good long ways. La Lujanera is dead now, senor, and I have to admit that sometimes whole years go by that I don't think about her, but you ought to have seen her in her time with those eyes of hers. Seeing her wouldn't put a man to sleep, and that's for sure. Rotgut, melongas, women, a simpatico kind of curse at you from the mouth of Rosendo Jarez. A slap on the back from him that you tried to feel was friendly like. The truth is, I was so happy as a man could be. I was paired up with the girl that could follow like she could read my mind. The tango was having its way with us, whirling us this way, and then that, and losing us, and calling us back again, and finding us. To make a long story short, we boys were dancing, most like being in a dream, when all of a sudden the music seemed to get louder. And what it was was that you could begin to hear the guitar strumming of those two fellows I mentioned, mixing in with the music there at Julius, and coming nearer every minute. Then the gust of wind that had brought it to us changed direction, and I went back to my own body and my partners, and the conversations of the dance. A good while later, there came a knock at the front door, a big knock, and a big voice too. At that, everybody got still. Then a man's chest bumped the swinging doors open, and the man himself stepped inside. The man resembled the voice a good deal. For us, he wasn't Francisco Real yet, but you couldn't deny he was a tall, muscular sort of man, dressed head to foot in black with a shawl around his shoulders about the color of a bay horse. I remember his face being Indian-like, unsociable. One of the swinging doors hit me when it banged open. Like the damned fool I am, I reached out and swung at the fellow with my left hand, while with my right I went for the knife I kept sharp and waiting in the arm hole of my vest, under my left arm. If we'd have tangled, I wouldn't have lasted long. The man put out his arm, and it was all he had to do, and brushed me aside like he was brushing away a fly. So there I was, half sprawled there behind the door, with my hand still under my vest, holding onto my useless weapon, while he just kept walking like nothing had happened, right on into the room, just kept walking, taller than any of the boys that were stepping aside to make way for him, and acting like we were all invisible. The first row of fellows, pure Italians, and all eyes, opened out like a fan, and fast. But that wasn't about to last. In the pack just behind those first fellows, the Englishman was waiting for him, and before that Englishman could feel the stranger's hand on his shoulder, he floored him with a round house he had waiting. And no sooner had he landed his punch than the party started in for serious. The place was yards and yards deep, but they herded the stranger from one end of it to the other, bumping him and shoving him and whistling and spitting. At first they'd hit him with their fists, but then, when they saw that he didn't so much as put up a hand to try to block their punches, they started slapping him, sometimes with their open hands, and sometimes just with their harmless fringe on their soles, like they were making fun of him. And also, like they were reserving him for Rosendo, who hadn't budged from where he was standing, back against the back wall. And without saying a word, he was taking quick puffs of a cigarette. I will say that, like he already had an inkling of what the rest of us would see clear enough later on. The yardmaster, straight and bloody, and the wind from that jeering mob behind him, was getting pushed and shoved back to Rosendo, whistled at, beaten, spit on. As soon as he came face to face with Rosendo, he spoke. He looked at him, and he wiped off his face with his arm, and he said this, I'm Francisco Rial, from up on the north side. Francisco Rial, and they call me the yardmaster. I've let these poor sons of bitches lift their hands to me, because what I'm looking for is a man. There are people out there. I figure they're just talkers, you know? Saying there's some guy down here in these boondocks that fancies himself a knife fighter, and a bad one at that. Say he's called the sticker. I'd like to make his acquaintance, so he could show me, me, being nobody you understand, what it means to be a man of courage, a man you can look up to. He said that, and he never took his eyes off him. Now a sticker for Rial glinted in his right hand. No doubt he'd had it up his sleeve the whole time. All around, the fellows that had been pushing to get close started backing away, and every one of us was looking at the two of them, and you could have heard a pin drop. Why, even the black gentleman that played the violin, a blind man he was, he had his face turned that way. Just then I heard movement behind me, and I see that in the doorway there's standing six or seven men, which would be the yardmaster's gang, you see? The oldest of them, a weather-beaten, country-looking man with a gray streaked mustache, steps forward and stands there like he's dazzled by all the women and all the light, and he very respectfully takes his hat off. The others just stood there watching, keeping their eyes open, ready to step in, you see, if somebody wanted to start playing dirty. Meantime, what was happening with Rosendo? Why hadn't he come out slashing at that swaggering son of a bitch? He hadn't said a word yet, hadn't so much as raised his eyes, his cigarette. I don't know whether he spit it out or whether it just fell out of his face. Finally, he managed to get a few words out, but so quiet that those of us down at the other end of the room couldn't hear what he was saying. Then Francisco Riel called him out again, and again Rosendo refused to rise to the occasion. So, at that, the youngest of the strangers, just a kid he was, he whistled. La Lujanera looked at him with hate in her eyes, and she started through that crowd with her braid down her back, through that crowd of men and whores, and she walked up to her man, and she put her hand to her chest, and she pulled out his naked blade, and she handed it to him. Rosendo, I think you're needing this, she said. Right up next to the roof, there was this long kind of window that looked out over the creek. Rosendo took the knife in his two hands, and he seemed to be trying to place it like he didn't recognize it. Then all of a sudden, he reared back and flung that knife straight through the window, out into the Maldonado. I felt a cold chill run down my spine. The only reason I don't carve you up for beef steak is that you make me sick, said the stranger. At that, La Lujanera threw her arms around this yardmaster's neck, and she looked at him with those eyes of hers, and she said with anger in her voice, forget that dog. He had us thinking he was a man. Francisco Real stood there perplexed for a second, and then he put his arms around her, like it was going to be forever, and he yelled at the musicians to play something, a tango, a melonga, and then yelled at the rest of us to dance. The melonga ran like a grass fire from one end of the room to the other. Real danced, straight-faced, but without any daylight between him and her. Now that he could get away with it, they finally came to the door, and he yelled, Make ways, boys. She's getting sleepy. That's what he said, and they walked out cheek to cheek, like in the drunken dizziness of the tango, like they were drowning in that tango. I ought to be ashamed of myself. I spun around the floor a couple of times with one of the girls, and then I just dropped her on account of the heat and the crowdedness, I told her, and I slunk down along the wall till I got to the door. It was a pretty night, but a pretty night for who? Down at the corner stood that hack with those two guitars sitting up straight, on the seat, like two Christian gentlemen. It galled me to see those guitars left out like that, to realize that those boys thought so little of us that they'd trust us, not even to walk off with their cheap guitars. It made me mad to feel like we were a bunch of nobodies. I grabbed the carnation behind me, my ear, and threw it in a mud puddle, and then I stood there looking at it, more or less so I wouldn't have to think of anything else. I wished it was already the next day, so I'd have this night behind me. Just then, somebody elbowed me, and it felt almost like a relief. It was Rosendo slipping through the neighborhood all by himself. Seems like you're always in the way, asshole. He muttered as he passed by me. I couldn't say whether to get it off his chest or because he had his mind on something else. He took the direction where it was darkest, down along the Maldonado. I never saw the man again. I stood there looking at the things I'd been seeing all my life, a sky that went on forever, the creek flowing, angry like down below there, a sleeping horse, the dirt street, the kilns, and I was struck by the thought that I was just another weed growing along those banks coming up between the soap warts and the bone piles of the tanneries. What was supposed to grow out of trash heaps if it wasn't us? We was big talkers, but soft when it came to a fight, all mouth and no backbone. Then I told myself it wasn't like that, the tougher the neighborhood, the tougher a man necessarily had to be. A trash heap, the Molonga was having itself a ball, there was plenty of racket in the houses, and the wind brought the smell of honeysuckle. The night was pretty, but so what? There were enough stars that you could get dizzy looking at them, one on top of another up there. I struggled, I tell you, to make myself feel like none of what had happened meant anything to me. But Rosendo's turning tail, that stranger's insufferable bullying, it wouldn't let me alone. The tall son of a bitch had even gotten himself a woman for the night out of it. For that night and many more nights besides, I thought to myself, and maybe for all the rest of his nights, because La Lujanera was serious medicine, Lord knows which way they'd gone. But they couldn't be far, probably at it hammer and tongs right now in the first ditch they'd come to. When I finally got back inside, that perfectly pleasant little dance was still going on, like nothing had ever happened. Making myself as inconspicuous as I could, I peered around through the crowd, and I saw that one and another of our built boys had slipped out. But the guys from the north side were tangling along with everybody else. There was no elbowing or words or anything, everybody was real polite, but everybody was keeping their eyes open. The music was kind of sleepy, and the girls that were dancing with the north side boys were as meek as mice. I was expecting something, but not what turned out to happen. Outside we heard a woman crying, and then a voice that was familiar in a way, but calm, almost too calm, as though it didn't belong to a real person, saying to her, go ahead darling, go on in. And then some more of that woman's crying, then the voice seemed to be getting a little desperate. Open the door, I said. Open the door, you motherless bitch. Open the door. At that, the rickety doors swung open, and La Lujanera stepped in alone. She came in kind of looking over her shoulder, like somebody was hurting her inside. She's got a spirit back there commanding her, said the Englishman. A dead man, my friend, said the yard master then. His face was like a drunkard's. He came in, and he took a few unsteady steps into the clearing that we all made for him, like we had before. He stood there tall and unseeing, and then he toppled like a post. One of the boys that had come with him turned him over on his back, and put his poncho under his head for a pillow. The boy's handed hint, the boy's hands came away bloody. That was when we saw that he had a big knife wound in his chest. His blood was pulling up and turning black, this bright red neckerchief he was wearing. But that I hadn't noticed before, because a shawl had covered it. To try to stop the blood, one of the girls brought over some rotgut and scorched rags. He was in no condition to tell us what had happened, and La Lujanera was looking at him, sort of vacant like, with her arms just hanging down at her sides. Everybody was asking her what happened with their eyes, and finally she managed to find her voice. She said that after she'd gone outside with the yard master there, they went off to a little vacant lot, and just then a stranger appeared, and desperately called out the yard master to fight. And he stabbed him, gave him that wound there, and she swore she didn't know who the man was, but it wasn't Rosendo. Who's going to believe that? The man at our feet was dying. My thought was whoever had fixed his clock, his hand had been pretty steady, but the yard master was tough, he had to give him that. When he came to the door just now, Julia had been brewing up some mate, and the mate went around the room, and came all the way back to me before he was finally dead. Cover my face, he said, when he knew he couldn't last anymore. His pride was all he had left, and he wasn't going to let people gawk at the expressions on his face while he lay there dying. Somebody put that high crown black hat over his face, and he died under it, without a sound. When his chest stopped rising and falling, somebody got up the nerve to uncover him. He had that tired look that dead men get. He was one of the toughest men there, there was back then, from Bataria to the south side, but no sooner was he dead and his mouth shut for all time, I lost all my hate for him. All it takes to die is to be alive, one of the girls back in the crowd said, and then another one said something else in a pensive sort of way. Man thought so highly of himself, and all he's good for now is to draw flies. At that, the North Siders all muttered something to each other, real low, and then two of them at the same time said it out loud. The woman killed him. One of them yelled in her face, asking her if it was her that did it, and they all surrounded her. At that, I forgot all about being meek and not getting in anybody's way, and I pushed through to her like a shot. I'm such a damn fool, it's a wonder as mad as I was, I didn't pull out the little dagger I always carried on me. I could feel almost everybody, not to say everybody, looking at me. Look at this woman's hands, I said with a sneer. Do they look steady enough? Does she look like she'd have hard enough to put a knife in the yardmaster like that? Then I added, cool but tough at the same time. Who'd have thought the deer departed, who they say was a man to be reckoned with on his own turf, would have ended up this way and in a backwater as dead as this is, where nothing ever happens unless some strangers wander in to give us something to talk about and stay around to get spit on afterward. Nobody rose to that date either. Just then, through the silence came the sound of riders, it was the police. For one reason or another, everybody there had reason to keep the law out of this, so they decided that the best thing was to move the body down to the creek. You'll recall that long window that the gleam of the knife sailed through. Well, that's the very same way the man in black went. A bunch of them lifted him up and after they separated him from all the money and whatnot he had on him, somebody hacked off his finger to get to the ring he wore, vultures, senior, to pick over a poor defenseless dead man like that. After another, better man has fixed him. Then a heave-ho and that rushing long-suffering water carried him away. I couldn't say whether they gutted him. I didn't want to look. The gray mustacheed individual never took his eyes off me. La Lujanera took advantage of all the shuffling about to disappear. By the time the law came in to have their look around, the dance had a pretty good head of steam up again. The blind man on the violin knew how to play habaneras like the likes of which you won't hear anymore. Outside, the day began to want to dawn a little. There was a line of arbore posts along the top of a hill, standing there, all along, all alone like because you couldn't see the thin strands of wire between them that early in the morning. I strolled nice and easy on home to my place, which was about three blocks away. There was a light burning in the window, but then it went out. When I saw that, I can tell you I moved a good bit vaster. And then, Borges, for the second time I pulled out that short sharp-edge knife I always carried here under my chest, under my left arm, and I gave it another long, slow inspection. And it was just like new, all innocent, and there was not the slightest trace of blood on it.