My name is José, though those that know me call me Pepe, and others, generally those that do not know me well or have an easy rapport with me, call me Pepe el Tira. Pepe is a nickname that’s affectionate, friendly, cordial, which doesn’t bring me down or build me up greatly, a nickname that expresses a certain tender respect, if you will allow me the expression, instead of a cold, distant respect. After comes the other name, the alias, the hump I drag behind me without griping, without taking offence, to a certain measure because most never—almost never—use it in my presence. Pepe el Tira, which is like some arbitrary mixing of affection and fear, fond wishes and offenses in the same dark sack. Where does the word Tira come from? From tyrannical, tyrant, one who does whatever he wishes without having to answer to anyone for his actions, who enjoys, in a word, impunity. What is a tira? A tira is, to my people, a cop. And they call me Pepe el Tira because I am, precisely, a cop, a profession just like any other, but which few are willing to enter. If had known what I know now when I entered the force, I probably wouldn’t have been willing to enter it either. What was it that drove me to become an officer? Many times, more lately, I have asked myself this question, and I have never come up with a convincing answer.
I was probably stupider in my youth than others. Perhaps there was a romantic slight (but I can’t bring myself to remember having been in love at that time). Perhaps it was just my fate—since I found myself to be different from the others I sought a solitary vocation that would allow me to pass my time in absolute solitude but would, at the same time, carry certain practical aspects and not constitute a burden on my people.
What was certain was that a policeman was needed, and I introduced myself, and the top brass, after looking me over, didn’t hesitate even a minute before giving me the job. One of them, maybe all, although taking care not to comment on the fact, knew beforehand that I was one of the nephews of the singer Josefina. My siblings and my cousins, the rest of the nieces and nephews, never excelled at anything and were happy. I too, in my own way, was happy, but in me the relation to Josefina was noticeable, it wasn’t in vain they named me after her. Perhaps this influenced the chiefs in their decision of giving me the job. Perhaps not and I was the only one who came forward the first day. Perhaps they didn’t expect anyone else to present themselves and they feared that, if they put me off, I would change my mind. The truth is I don’t know what to think. The only certainty is that they made me an officer and from day one I dedicated myself to roving the sewers, at times through the primary ones—through which water was running—other times through the secondary ones—where there are tunnels that my town had dug without stopping, tunnels that serve as access to other food sources, or that serve solely as an escape, a way to connect the mazes that, seen superficially, don’t go anywhere, but without a doubt have direction, that form a part of the framework my people use to move about and survive.
At times, partly because it was my responsibility and partly because I had grown bored, I left the primary and secondary sewers and entered the dead sewer works, an area in which only our scouts or those involved in some risky business enterprise would travel, most of the time alone, although on occasion they travel accompanied by their families, by their obedient offspring. There was, as a general rule, nothing down there, with the exception of some terrifying sounds, but at times, as I cautiously covered these inhospitable spaces, I would come across the cadaver of a scout or the cadaver of a developer or the cadaver of their dear children. In the beginning, when I still was inexperienced, these discoveries startled me, they reworked me to the point that I stopped seeming like myself. What I did then was gather the body, take it out of the dead sewers, and carry it to the advanced police post, though here there was never anyone. I proceeded to determine, as well as I could, through my own means the cause of death. Later I went to seek out the forensic specialist and he, if he was in a good mood, got dressed or changed his clothes, picked up his satchel, and accompanied me back to the post. Once there, I left him alone with the cadaver or cadavers and left. As a rule, policemen of my town don’t return to the scene of the crime. Rather they attempt, vainly, to mingle with our colleagues, go about their duties, snatch a bit of conversation, but I was different. It didn’t upset me to return to inspect the crime scene, search for details that had slipped my notice, replicate the steps that the poor victims took, or sniff out and study, with great care, the direction in which they were fleeing.
After a few hours, I returned to the post and there would find, affixed to the wall, the note from the specialist. Causes of death: slitting of the throat, expired from exsanguination, lacerations in the paws, broken necks, my species never surrenders without a fight, without struggling to the last breath. The killer would be a carnivore lost in the sewers, a snake, at times a blind alligator. To pursue them was pointless: they were probably going to die of starvation in a short time.
Whenever I took a break, I sought the company of the other policemen. I met one, very old and thinned out by age and by our work, who in his time had known my aunt and who liked to talk about her. Nobody understood Josefina, but everyone loved her or pretended to love her and she was happy with this or pretended to be. Those words, like many others that the old officer uttered, made no sense to me. I have never understood music, an art that we engage in rarely, if ever at all. In reality, we don’t practice and, for this reason, don’t understand hardly any type of art. At times a rat appears that paints, let’s say for instance, or a rat that writes and recites poetry. As a rule we don’t ridicule them. In fact quite the opposite, we pity them, because we know that their lives are doomed to solitude. Why solitude? Well because in our town art and contemplation are disciplines we can’t practice and the exceptions, the oddities, are scarce. And if, for example, a poet or some vulgar orator comes up, it is most likely that the next poet or orator will not be born until the following generation, so the poet finds himself deprived of maybe the only one who could appreciate his effort. And I don’t want to say that our people don’t linger during the commotion of their daily lives and listen to the poet and even applaud him or take up an offering so that the orator could be permitted to live without working. The opposite, we do everything within our power, which is not much, to provide the exception the impression of understanding and interest, sine we know that he is, basically, a being in need of attention. But after a time, like a house of cards, all these simulations collapse. We live as a community and a community only needs daily labor, the constant utilization of every one of its members to an end that displaces individual desires but is, however, the only thing that guarantees our continued existence as individuals.
Of all the artists we have had, or at least of all those that still remain—like skeletal question marks—in our memory, the greatest, without a doubt, was my aunt Josefina. Great to the degree that what she demanded of us was immense; her greatness so immeasurable, to the degree that the people of my town submitted or pretended to submit to all her whims.
The old officer liked to talk about her, but his recollections, it didn’t take long to realize, were as flimsy as rolling papers. At times he said that Josefina was fat and tyrannical, a person with whom a relationship required extreme patience or an extreme degree of sacrifice, two virtues that converge at more than just one point and are hardly scarce among us. Other times, instead, he said that Josefina was a shadow whom he, then a youth recently admitted to the police force, had glimpsed only fleetingly. A trembling shadow, capable of eerie shrieks that constituted, at the time, her entire repertoire, that—I will not say it drove them to insanity—but yes, plunged into extreme sadness certain followers, rats and mice whom we no longer remember, that were perhaps the only ones who caught a glimpse of anything in the musical art of my aunt. What? They probably never even knew what themselves. Something, anything, a yearning pool. Perhaps something similar to wanting to eat or needing to fuck or the desire to sleep that at times overcomes us, as beings that work endlessly need to sleep from time to time, above all in winter, when the temperature drops, as they say the leaves drop from the trees in the outside world, and our frozen bodies demand a warm corner next to the bodies of our companions, a den heated by our coats, the familiar movements, familiar sounds—neither vile or noble—that comfort us at night, or at least what our basic senses denote as night.
Sleep and warmth are the principal inconveniences of being an officer. The police are accustomed to sleeping alone, in improvised burrows, at times in unknown territories. Of course, whenever we can, we try to break with this custom. Some times we nestle together in our own burrows, officer with officer, everyone silent, everyone with their eyes closed and their ears and noses alert. It does not happen often, but at times it is possible. Other times we walk into the bedrooms of those who, for one reason or another, live on the border of the perimeter. They, since there is nothing else to do, naturally accept our company. Sometimes we wish them goodnight, before dropping, exhausted, into tranquil, restorative sleep. Other times we only grunt our name, since the people know who we are and no one fears our presence. They receive us well. They don’t fuss over us or show any joy, but they don’t throw us out of their dens. At times, someone, with their voice still frozen with sleep, says Pepe el Tira, and I respond, yes, yes, good night. After only a few hours, however, while most folks still sleep, I wake myself and return to work; the labors of an officer never come to an end, so our sleep schedules inevitably must conform to our incessant activity. Making the rounds in the sewers, otherwise, is a task that requires a maximum of concentration. Generally we don’t see anyone, don’t cross paths with a soul, we can follow the principal routes and the secondary routes, and advance into the tunnels that our own workers had constructed but which are now abandoned, and during the entire course we don’t run into a single living creature.
Yeah, we pick up shadows, sounds, discarded objects in the water, distant screams. At first, when they’re young, these sounds keep an officer in a constantly startled state. As time passes, however, one becomes accustomed to them and even though we try to keep ourselves alert, we lose our fears, or we incorporate them into the daily routine, which is basically to say we lose them. Some officers even sleep in the dead sewers. I never met any of them, but older officers would tell stories in which an officer, an officer from another era certainly, if he was tired, would go to bed right there in a dead sewer. How much is truth and how much is jest in these stories? Disregard it. The way things are at the moment no officer would dare sleep there. The dead sewers are places that, for one reason or another have been forgotten. The workers that dig tunnels, when they hit upon a dead sewer, block off the tunnel. The sewage there, they say, flows drop by drop, needless to say that the putrefaction is unbearable. It can be stated that our village only utilizes the dead sewers for fleeing from one zone to another. But the fastest way of accessing the sewers is swimming, but to swim near such a place involves more danger than we normally accept.
It was in a dead sewer that my investigation started. A group of ours, a group of settlers who with the passage of time had procreated and established themselves a little way off from the perimeter, sought me out and informed me that the little girl of one of their older rats had disappeared. While one half of the group worked, the other half put itself to the search for the youth, who was named Elisa and who, according to her friends and family, was incredibly attractive and strong, in addition to possessing an alert mind. I didn’t know with any certainty what constitutes an alert mind. Vaguely I associated it with happiness, though not with curiosity. That day I was tired and after examining the vicinity in the company of one of her relatives, I supposed that poor Elisa had been a victim of some predator prowling around the outskirts of the new colony. I searched for traces of the predator. I only came across old tracks that indicated that across this spot, before the settlement arrived, other animals had passed through.
Finally I discovered a trace of fresh blood. I told Elisa’s relative to return to the den—from there I would continue on alone. The trail of blood had a curious irregularity: although it ended next to one of the canals, it reappeared a couple yards farther down (on occasion many yards farther down), but not on the opposite side of the canal, as would have been natural, rather on the same side from which it had submerged. If the predator hadn’t been attempting to cross the canal, why did it go under so many times? The trail, on the other hand, was insignificant, meaning Elisa’s attempts at protecting herself from the predator, whoever this was, seemed to have been talked up at first. After a short time I arrived at my dead sewer.
