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When
Epifanio came to visit Haas, one of the guards told him the gringo wouldn't let
the other prisoners sleep in peace. He talked about a monster and was up all
night. Epifanio wanted to know what kind of monster and the guard said a giant,
a friend of Haas's, probably, who would come to rescue him and kill everyone
who had done him wrong. Since he can't sleep he won't let anybody else sleep,
the guard said, and he showed no respect for Mexicans either, he called them
Indians or greasers. Epifanio wanted to know why greasers, and the guard, very
serious, answered that, according to Haas, Mexicans didn't wash, didn't bathe.
He added that, according to Haas, Mexicans had a gland that made them secrete a
kind of oily sweat, more or less like blacks, who, according to Haas, exuded a
particular and unmistakable smell. In fact, the only one who didn't bathe was
Haas, since the prison officials preferred not to make him visit the showers
until they received orders from the judge or the warden in person, who, it
seemed, was handling the business with kid gloves. When Epifanio came
face-to-face with Haas, Haas didn't recognize him. He had big circles under his
eyes and he seemed much thinner than the first time Epifanio had seen him, but
none of the injuries he'd suffered during the interrogation were visible.
Epifanio offered him a cigarette, but Haas said he didn't smoke. Then Epifanio
talked about the
Hermosillo
prison, which was new, with spacious cell blocks and huge yards with exercise
equipment. If Haas pleaded guilty, he said, he would see to it that he be
transferred to
Hermosillo
,
where he would have a cell to himself, a much better one than this. Only then
did Haas look him in the eye and say don't fuck with me. Epifanio realized that
Haas had recognized him and he smiled. Haas didn't return the smile. The expression
on his face, Epifanio thought, was strange, I don't know, scandalized somehow.
Morally scandalized. He asked him about the monster, the giant, he asked
whether the giant was Haas himself, and then Haas did laugh. Me? You have no
clue, he spat. Go fuck your goddamn mother.
The
inmates in the private cells could go out into the cell block yard or spend
their days inside, venturing out only very early, from six-thirty to
seven-thirty in the morning, when the yard was off-limits to the rest of the
inmates, or then after nine at night, when in theory the night count had been
taken and the prisoners had returned to their cells. The rancher who had killed
his wife and children and the mercantile lawyer would go out alone at night,
after dinner. They would stroll around the yard, talk business and politics,
and then go back to their cells. The
narco
kept to the same schedule as the rest of the inmates and could spend hours
leaning against a wall, smoking and gazing at the sky, as his bodyguards, never
far away, traced an invisible boundary around their boss with their presence.
Klaus Haas, when his fever subsided, decided to go out during "regular
hours," as they were described to him by the guard. When the guard asked
whether he wasn't afraid he would be killed in the yard, Haas made a scornful
gesture and said something about the corpselike pallor of the rancher and
lawyer, whose faces were never touched by the sunlight. The first time he went
out into the yard, the
narco,
who
until then had shown no interest in him, asked who he was. Haas gave his name
and introduced himself as a computer expert. The
narco
looked him up and down and kept walking as if his curiosity
had been instantly exhausted. Some prisoners, just a few, wore mended remnants
of what had been the prison uniform, but most wore whatever they wanted. Some
sold sodas that they kept in coolers, the box carried under one arm and later
set on the ground next to the four-on-four soccer matches or basketball games.
Others sold cigarettes and porn shots. The most discreet dealt drugs. The yard
was V-shaped. Half was cement and the other half was dirt and it was flanked by
two walls topped by watchtowers, with bored guards staring out smoking
marijuana. At the narrow end of the V were the windows of some cells, with
clothes strung on lines between the bars. Across the open end, there was a
chain-link fence some thirty feet high, behind which ran a paved road leading
to other prison buildings, and beyond that there was another fence, not as high
but topped with a coil of razor wire, a fence that seemed to rise straight out
of the desert. The first time he went out into the yard, Haas had the momentary
sense that he was walking through a park in a foreign city where no one knew
him. For an instant he felt free. But everybody knows everything here, he said
to himself, and he waited patiently
for the
first inmate to approach him. Within an hour he was offered drugs and
cigarettes, but all he bought was a soda. As he was drinking it, watching the
basketball game, a few inmates came up to him and asked whether it was true he
had killed all those women. Haas said no. Then the inmates asked about his job
and whether selling computers was good money. Haas said it had its ups and
downs. And that businessmen were always taking a gamble. So you're a
businessman, said the prisoners. No, said Haas, I'm a computer expert who
started his own business. He said it so seriously and with such conviction that
some of the prisoners nodded. Then Haas wanted to know what they did outside,
and most of them started to laugh. Hang out, was the only answer he understood.
He laughed too and bought sodas for the five or six of them who were gathered
around him.

The first time he went to the
showers, an inmate they called El Anillo tried to rape him. He was a big man,
but compared to Haas he was small, and by his expression it was clear he was
doing this only because circumstances required him to play the role. If it had
been up to him, his expression said, he would have jerked off peacefully in his
cell. Haas stared him in the face and asked what kind of an adult would do such
a thing. El Anillo didn't understand a word he said and laughed. He had a wide
face and smooth skin and his laugh wasn't unpleasant. The prisoners around him
laughed too. El Anillo's friend, a younger prisoner called El Guajolote, pulled
a shiv out from under a towel and told Haas to shut his mouth and come with
them to a corner. A corner? asked Haas. A motherfucking corner? Two of the
friends Haas had made in the yard got behind El Guajolote and grabbed his arms.
Haas's face was scandalized. El Anillo laughed again and said it was no big
deal. In a corner is no big deal? shouted Haas. In a corner like dogs is no big
deal? Another of Haas's friends stood in the doorway so no one could come in or
out of the showers. Make him suck your dick, gringo, shouted one of the
prisoners. Make the fucker give you a blow job, gringo. Now. Destroy him. The
voices of the prisoners rose. Haas took the shiv away from El Guajolote and
told El Anillo to get down on all fours. If you don't move, cocksucker, nothing
will happen. If you move or you re scared, you'll end up with two holes to shit
from. El Anillo took off his towel and got down on the floor on all fours. No,
not there, said Haas, under the shower. El Anillo got up impassively and moved
under the water. His hair, wavy andcombed backward, fell over his eyes.
Discipline, motherfucker, all I ask for is a little discipline and respect,
said Haas as he stepped into the line of stalls. Then he kneeled behind El
Anillo, whispered to him to spread his legs, and pushed in the shiv slowly all
the way to the handle. Some could see that every so often El Anillo choked back
a little cry. Others could see the very dark drops of blood fall, drops that
dissolved in the water in seconds.

Haas's
friends were called El Tormenta, El Tequila, and El Tutanramon. El Tormenta was
twenty-two and was serving time for having killed the bodyguard of a
narco
who wanted to take advantage of
his sister. Twice in prison someone had tried to kill him. El Tequila was
thirty and was infected with HIV, although not many knew it because he hadn't
yet developed the disease. El Tutanramon was eighteen and his nickname came
from a film. His real name was Ramon, but he had gone three times to see
The Revenge of the Mummy,
which was his
favorite movie, and his friends had christened him Tutanramon, or maybe he'd
given himself the name, as Haas believed. Haas kept them happy by buying them
canned food and drugs. They ran errands for him or served as bodyguards.
Sometimes Haas listened to them talk about the things that mattered to them,
their business, their family life, what they most desired and feared, and he
didn't understand a thing. They seemed like extraterrestrials. Other times it
was Haas who talked and his three friends listened in affecting silence. Haas
talked about self-control, hard work, self-help, every individual controls his
own fate, a man could become Lee Iacocca if he put his mind to it. They had no
idea who Lee Iacocca was. They imagined he was a Mafia boss. But they didn't
ask any questions for fear Haas would lose his train of thought.

When
Haas was moved to the cell block with the rest of the prisoners, the
narco
came over to say goodbye, a
courtesy for which Haas thanked him, touched. If you have any problem, let me
know, the
narco
said, but only if
it's serious, don't bother me with little shit. I do my best not to get in the
way, said Haas. I've noticed, said the
narco.
On her visit the next day, Haas's lawyer asked if he wanted to initiate
proceedings to be returned to a private cell. Haas told her he was fine as he
was, that before long he was going to have to leave the cell and the sooner he
accepted
the reality the better. What can I do for
you? asked his lawyer. Bring me a cell phone, said Haas. It won't be easy to
get them to let you keep a phone in prison, his lawyer said. Oh yes it will,
said Haas. Bring me one.

A week later he asked his
lawyer for another cell phone, and, shortly afterward, another. The first he
sold to a man who was serving time for killing three people. He was an
ordinary-looking guy, on the short side, who was regularly sent money from the
outside, probably so he would keep his mouth shut. Haas told him that the best
way to handle business was with a cell phone and the man paid three times what
the phone had cost. The other he sold to a butcher who had killed one of his
employees, a fifteen-year-old boy, with a cleaver. When the butcher was asked,
half in jest, why he had killed the boy, he answered that the boy was a thief
and had taken advantage of him. Then the inmates laughed and asked if it hadn't
really been because the boy wouldn't let himself be fucked. Then the butcher
hung his head and shook it several times, stubbornly, but not a word issued
from his lips to deny the calumny. He wanted to keep running his two butcher
shops from prison, because he thought his sister, who was in charge now, was
stealing from him. Haas sold him the phone and showed him how to use the
address book and send messages. He charged him five times the original price.

Haas shared his cell with five
other inmates. Farfan was the boss. He was about forty and Haas had never seen
an uglier man. His hair grew down to the middle of his forehead and he had the
eyes of a bird of prey, set as if at random in the middle of a porcine face. He
was potbellied and he smelled bad. He had a straggly mustache to which tiny
bits of food often clung. On the rare occasions when he laughed he sounded like
a donkey and only then did his face seem bearable. When Haas moved into the
cell he thought it wouldn't be long before Farfan picked a fight with him, but
not only did Farfan not pick a fight, he seemed lost in a kind of labyrinth
where all the prisoners were insubstantial figures. He had friends on the cell
block, other tough guys who liked to have him around to watch their backs, but
the only company he sought was that of a prisoner as ugly as himself, a man
named Gomez, skinny and clamfaced, with a birthmark the size of a fist on his
left cheek and the glassy stare of someone permanently high. They would see
each other in the yard and the cafeteria. In the yard they nodded to each
other, and even if they joined larger groups, in the end they would split off
and end up leaning against the wall in the sun or walking pensively from the
basketball court to the fence. They didn't talk much, maybe because they had
little to say to each other. Farfan was so poor when he got to prison that not
even the public defender came to see him. Gomez, who was there for robbing
trucks, did have a lawyer, and after he and Farfan met he got his lawyer to
handle Farfan's paperwork. The first time they fucked was in one of the kitchen
buildings. Actually, Farfan raped Gomez. He hit him, pushed him down on some
sacks, and raped him twice. Gomez's rage was so great that he tried to kill
Farfan. One afternoon he waited for him in the kitchen, where Farfan worked
washing dishes and hauling sacks of beans, and tried to stab him with a shiv,
but it wasn't hard for Farfan to wrestle him down. Farfan raped him again, and
then, while he was still on top of Gomez, he said a situation like this had to
be resolved somehow. To make amends, he let Gomez fuck him. What's more, he
gave him back the shiv in token of his trust, and then he pulled down his pants
and dropped onto the pallet. Lying there with his ass in the air, Farfan looked
like a sow, but Gomez fucked him regardless and they resumed their friendship.

•

Since
Farfan was the strongest, sometimes he forced the others to leave the cell.
Soon afterward, Gomez would come by and the two of them would fuck and then,
when they had finished, they would smoke and talk or lie in silence, Farfan on
his cot and Gomez on another inmate's cot, staring at the ceiling or at the
plumes of smoke that drifted out the open window. Sometimes it seemed to Farfan
that the smoke assumed strange forms: snakes, arms, bent legs, belts cracking
in the air, submarines from another dimension. He narrowed his eyes and said:
that's cool shit, that's a fucking trip. Gomez, who was more pragmatic, asked
what was a trip, what was he talking about, and Farfan couldn't explain. Then
Gomez would get up and look all around, as if searching for his friend's
ghosts, and finally he would say: you're seeing things.
Haas
didn't understand how a cock could get hard when faced with an asshole like
Farfan's or Gomez's. He could understand that a man might be turned on by an
adolescent, a youth, he thought, but not that a man or a man's brain could
signal for blood to fill the spongy tissue of the penis, difficult as that was,
with the sole enticement of an asshole like Farfan's or Gomez's. Animals, he
thought. Filthy beasts attracted by filth. In his dreams he saw himself walking
the corridors of the prison, the different cell blocks, and he could see his
eyes like a hawk's as he strode that labyrinth of snores and nightmares, aware
of what was going on in each cell, until suddenly he could go no farther and he
came to a stop at the edge of an abyss (since the prison of his dreams was like
a castle built on the edge of a bottomless abyss). There, unable to retreat, he
lifted his arms, as if beseeching the heavens (which were as dark as the
abyss), and tried to say something to a legion of miniature Klaus Haases, speak
to them, warn them, impart advice, but he realized, or for an instant he had
the impression, that someone had sewn his lips shut. And yet he could feel
something inside his mouth. Not his tongue, not his teeth. A piece of flesh
that he tried not to swallow as with one hand he ripped out the threads. Blood
ran down his chin. His gums were numb. When at last he could open his mouth he
spat out the piece of flesh and then he got on his knees in the dark and
searched for it. When he found it, after feeling it carefully, he realized it
was a penis. Alarmed, he put his hand to his crotch, afraid his own penis would
be gone, but it was there, so the penis in his hands was someone else's. Whose?
he wondered as blood kept dripping from his lips. Then he felt very tired and
curled up on the edge of the abyss and fell asleep. More dreams usually
followed.