José "Zopilote" Colina, Café Quito, Avenida Bucareli, Mexico City DF, March 1981. This was the closest those deadbeats got to politics. Once when I was at El Nacional, in 1975 or thereabouts, Arturo Belano, Ulises Lima, and Felipe Müller were there waiting for Don Juan Rejano to see them. Suddenly in walks this blonde, not bad looking either (and I'm an expert), and she cuts right in front of all the lousy poets who're sitting there crowded together like flies in the little room where Don Juan Rejano worked. No one complained, of course (they might have been poor but they were gentlemen, the dipshits, and anyway, what the fuck could they say?), so the blonde goes up to Don Juan's desk and gives him a bunch of paper, some translations, I think I heard her say (I have excellent hearing), and Don Juan, God bless him, men like him are few and far between, gives her a big smile and says how are you, Verónica (the oily Spanish son of a bitch, he treated the rest of us like dirt), what good wind brings you here? and this Verónica gives him the translations and they talk for a while, or actually Verónica talks to the old man and Don Juan nods, like he's hypnotized, and then the blond girl takes her check, puts it in her purse, turns on her heel, and vanishes down the filthy rotten hallway, and then, as the rest of us are drooling, Don Giovanni sits there for a minute sort of dazed and lost in thought, and Arturo Belano, who was somebody he always trusted and who was sitting closest to him, says: what is it, Don Juan, what's the matter? and Don Rejas, as if emerging from a fucking dream or a fucking nightmare looks him in the eye and says: do you know who that girl was? speaking with a Spanish-from-Spain accent too, which was a bad sign, since not only did Rejano have a rotten temper, he usually spoke with a Mexican accent, as none of you would have any reason to know, poor old guy, the shitty luck he had at the end, but anyway, he says do you know who that girl was, Arturo? and Belano says no sir, but she looked nice. Who was she? Trotsky's great-granddaughter! says Don Rejas, none other than Lev Davidovich's great-granddaughter Verónica Volkow (or was it granddaughter? no, great-granddaughter, I think), and then, sorry I keep losing my place, Belano said far out and went running after Verónica Volkow, and Lima hurried after Belano, and the kid Müller stayed for a minute to pick up their checks and then he was off like a shot too, and Rejano watched them disappear down the Hall of Filth and he smiled as if to himself, as if to say lousy little fuckers, and I think he must have been thinking about the Spanish Civil War, his dead friends, his long years of exile, maybe he was even thinking of his years as a Communist Party militant, although that was an odd fit with Trotsky's great-granddaughter, but that was Don Rejas, basically a sentimental guy, a good guy, and then he came back down to planet Earth, to the lousy editorial department of the Revista Mexicana de Cultura, El Nacional's cultural supplement, and everyone who was crowded into the stuffy room and languishing in the dark hallway snapped back to reality with him and we all got our checks.

Later, after I'd come to terms with Don Giovanni over a piece about a painter buddy of mine and gone out with two guys from the paper, all ready to start drinking early, I saw them through the windows of a café, I think it was La Estrella Errante, but I can't remember. Verónica Volkow was with them. They'd caught up with her and asked her out for a drink. I watched them for a while, standing on the sidewalk while the guys I was with decided where to go. They seemed happy: Belano, Lima, Müller, and Trotsky's great-granddaughter. Through the windows I watched them laugh, watched them fall all over the place laughing. They were probably never going to see her again. The Volkow girl was clearly a society type and those guys were going to end up at Lecumberri or Alcatraz, it was written all over them. I don't know what was wrong with me, I swear. I felt tenderhearted and Zopilote Colina never goes soft like that. The bastards were laughing with Verónica Volkow, but they were laughing with Leon Trotsky too. It was the closest they would ever get to the Bolsheviks. It was probably the closest they would ever want to get. I thought about Don Ivan Rejanovich, and I felt my chest swell with sadness. But with happiness too, goddamn it. The strangest things happened at La Nacional on payday.

Verónica Volkow, with a female friend and two male friends, International Departures, Mexico City DF airport, April 1981. Mr. José Colinas was mistaken when he said that I would never see the Chilean citizens Arturo Belano and Felipe Müller and their friend, my fellow Mexican citizen Ulises Lima, again. If the incidents he describes, with scant regard for the truth, occurred in 1975, it was probably a year later that I saw the young men in question again. If I'm not mistaken, it was in May or June 1976, on what must have been a clear night, even a bright night, the kind of night that year after year makes Mexicans and bewildered foreign visitors move slowly, with great caution, and that I personally find stimulating but decidedly sad.

There isn't much to tell. It was outside a movie theater on Reforma, the day of the opening of some film, American or European, I can't remember.

It might even have been by a Mexican director.

I was with friends and suddenly, I don't know how, I saw them. They were sitting on the stairs, smoking and talking. They had already seen me, but they hadn't come over to say hello. The truth is that they looked like bums, glaringly out of place there, at the entrance to the theater, among well-dressed, clean-shaven people who edged away as they climbed the stairs. It was as if they were afraid that one of them might reach out his hand and grope them. At least one of them seemed to me to be under the influence of some kind of drug. I think it was Belano. The other one, Ulises Lima, I think, was reading and writing in the margins of a book, singing softly to himself. The third one (no, it definitely wasn't Müller, Müller was tall and blond and this person was short and dark) looked at me and smiled as if he knew me. I had no choice but to nod in return, and when my friends were distracted I went over and said hello. Ulises Lima said hello back, although he didn't get up from the stairs. Belano did get up, like a robot, but he looked at me as if he didn't recognize me. The third one said you're Verónica Volkow and he mentioned some poems of mine that had recently been published in a magazine. He was the only one who seemed to feel like talking. Please God, I thought, don't let him talk to me about Trotsky, but he didn't talk about Trotsky, he talked about poetry, saying something about a magazine he was publishing with a mutual friend (a mutual friend? horrible!) and then he said other things that I didn't understand.

As I was about to go-I was only with them for a minute-Belano looked at me more carefully and recognized me. Ah, Verónica Volkow, he said, and what seemed to me like an enigmatic smile appeared on his face. How's the poetry going? he said. I didn't know how to answer such a stupid question and I shrugged my shoulders. I heard one of my friends calling me and I said I had to go. Belano held out his hand and I shook it. The third one gave me a kiss on the cheek. For a moment I thought he'd have been perfectly capable of leaving his friends there on the stairs and joining my group. See you later, Verónica, he said. Ulises Lima didn't get up. As I was going into the theater I saw them for the last time. A fourth person had arrived and was talking to them. I think it was the painter Pérez Camarga, but I can't say for sure. In any case, he was nicely dressed, well groomed, and he seemed nervous about something. Later, on my way out of the theater, I saw Pérez Camarga or the person who looked like him, but I didn't see the three poets, by which I deduced that they'd been there on the stairs waiting for that fourth person and that after their brief encounter they'd left.