My name is Jacinto

I had never seen a half-made violin before. The wood was very pale-- the colour of warm porridge-- and the front was smooth as a child’s belly.

“You play?”

I turned round quickly, not having realised there was anyone else in the workshop. A guy my age had emerged from behind a pile of guitars and was wiping his hands on an oil cloth.

“My name is Jacinto,” he said in a rather formal way.

“Hi, I’m Perla.” I handed him the instrument and he put it back on the table. ”It’s beautiful. I mean, yes, I play the violin.”

“You’re not from round here, are you?” he asked. I suppose it was my accent, or the way I dress.

“No, well, I was born here but my mother married an Englishman so we went to live in London when I was small.”

“London?” he made it sound so far away and interesting.

Jacinto was looking at me, without saying anything. It was a bit weird but I didn’t mind; he could stare at me for as long as he wanted. Then he broke the silence: “want to see the soul of a violin?”

“See it? What d’you mean?”

He leaned over, brushing very slightly against my arm as he picked up a slim wooden peg, a couple of inches long. “This is it; “el alma,” the soul. You stick it between the back and the top of the violin, under the bridge, it keeps the structure in place.”

Without sensing my disappointment, he unhooked a finished violin and passed it to me.

“Here, shake it. What d’you think’s inside?”

I shook the instrument and felt something very light moving around: a seedcase or dry leaves.

“The soul’s come loose?”

“No,” he said. It’s the sound box of a rattle-snake. Protects against the envy of other musicians. Everyone wants them.”

I burst out laughing and he relaxed. Thank God for that. I passed him the violin and, as he hung it back on the beam, he asked me how long I’d been playing.

“Nine years. Since I was about ten.”

“You must be good.”

“I practice a lot. Four hours a day. But I’m bored with it right now. It feels so rigid and formal. The music is great, well, it’s perfect, really. That’s the problem. It’s all so … done. I don’t feel there’s any freedom in what I play. My uncle says that studying classical music is like sleeping with the Spanish inquisition. D’you know what I mean?”

He nodded wisely but I could tell he didn’t understand at all.

“I play son,” he said, it’s what everyone round here likes.”

“Oh yes, I know. I love it. My uncle has loads of CDs but I’ve never heard it live.”

“Maybe tonight.”

“What d’you mean?”

“Well, I imagine don Antonio is your uncle, I saw you come in here together. Sometimes we go to his house to play at parties. Is it his birthday?”

“No. It’s mine.”

He smiled and was about to say something when my uncle appeared and, in his usual style, slapped Jacinto on the back and said something I didn’t hear. Then he grabbed my arm and we left the workshop together.
+++

That night, my uncle’s house was full of strangers who’d come to celebrate my birthday. There were distant relatives I didn’t know, ageing bohemians, women in rebozo shawls with babies that never cried and a few of the students who were always hanging round Antonio’s kitchen, hoping for slices of wisdom and a glass of mezcal.

We ate and drank and then the kitchen door opened and an oversized cake was wheeled in. At that moment, I heard the first note of the song my mum always sings on my birthday.

Jacinto was playing violin. He looked very different: impeccably clean in a starched white shirt and his cowboy hat pulled down over one eye, like a matinee idol. His boots were pointed and shone like silver. As I expected, he played the violin with the same rustic elegance. My God he was good. Flashy, unstructured and wild, my teacher would have said, but I thought he was perfect. He dug that bow into the violin -- I could hear the soul shaking – then he stroked and cajoled the highest notes with a delicate vibrato that was part posing and partly a necessary release of tension that would otherwise have exploded.

My uncle danced with a woman I’d never seen before. His belly was huge, but he moved his feet like delicate needles, knitting together a pattern that was part of the dance. He gestured for me to join him, but I was happy to sit and stare at the country Paganini who was so deeply absorbed in what he was playing that he didn’t seem to notice I was there. I wondered what my friends in London would make of this: they’d all said I shouldn’t go to Mexico because of the narco drug wars, but if they could see me now they would understand why I’d needed to come back here.

There was so much theatre in all this and I loved it. The musicians were courting us all, they were entertainers, real artists, in my book, anyway. The guitarist was singing something about a crocodile which, judging by the laughter, was a thin disguise for someone everybody knew. Then the music became intense and romantic: something about wanting to extract your heart and devour it with kisses. Between verses, Jacinto embellished the melody on his violin, playing impossible flourishes from memory or from some sort of creative source that he controlled.

No one else seemed phased by all this genius, but I must have given myself away because suddenly the guitarist was improvising something about the birthday girl falling for his violinist. I wanted to hide, but everyone was clapping and laughing, wordlessly welcoming me into their world, so I just had to stand there and take it all in.

The party lasted three or four hours, until the tequila bottles were almost empty and the waiter had unbuttoned his waistcoat and was downing the dregs while he stacked the glasses.

The guitarists were putting away their instruments when Jacinto pushed towards me and led me into the hall. “Happy birthday,” he said and passed me something wrapped up in brown paper. Before I could say anything, he told me he was off to another party and, following a whistle from one of the musicians, ran out of the door.
I went up to my room, opened the parcel and found, inside a layer of tissue paper, a violin bow with the handle inset with mother of pearl flowers. On the other side was inlaid, in tiny pieces of shell, the letters of my name. I lay back on my bed and held the bow above my face. Downstairs there were still the sounds of shouting and laughter but I preferred to stay where I was, staring at the bow and running my fingers across the mother of pearl handle.

How many hearts did he devour with his kisses every night? I wasn’t used to feeling possessive about a guy, especially one I’d only just met, but he’d left me with an inexplicable feeling of panic, like standing on the edge of a diving board, or something. A great musician who wasn’t pompous or boring, it was the best thing I could have hoped for. If I’d known there was another party; maybe I could have gone with him, or persuaded him to stay behind. Maybe tomorrow, I was thinking, as I heard my uncle coming to find me, Quickly, I opened the drawer under my bed and put the bow away.

***
Next morning, while everyone else was sleeping, I left the house and took a mini-bus to the village. I knocked on the door of the workshop but there was no answer. Just as I was about to leave, Gonzalo, the guitarist, answered. He looked like he had a serious hangover.

“Buenos días. Is Jacinto around?”

He shook his head and just stood there. He knew who I was, but didn’t say anything. Then he stood to one side, expecting me to walk into the workshop. I wasn’t sure it was a good idea, but didn’t want to be rude, so I followed him into his back office and we sat down.

“Where is don Antonio?”

“At home. He was asleep when I left. Is something wrong?”
“Can you call him, please? Ask him to come here, right away.”

While we waited, Gonzalo began to tell me what had happened.

After the party, they’d gone to the big house by the lake, on the other side of the mountain. I looked at him blankly. Gonzalo shrugged his shoulders and said that musicians have to live and that times are tough and the narcos love music and pay well. “You get an invitation and you don’t say ‘no’.”

“Did something happen?”

“It was Lolita, the mayor’s, birthday and there was a party. Several bands had already played by the time we arrived and everyone was a bit drunk. We started off with a few sones and things were going fine. Lola was happy, the music was great and the contract was only for a couple of hours. Then a group of men arrived, people started cheering and someone asked for a corrido. I told them, yes, of course, but inside I knew things were about to become difficult.

“What’s a corrido?”

They’re songs that are stories about fighting. In the Revolution there were great corridos. With all these narco killings now, the corridos are really popular again. They tell you what’s happening; about who’s been killed, with all the details. Things the papers don’t say. They make the killers into heroes, like they were leaders of the Revolution, or something. The narcos all want to hear their names mentioned in a corrido.”

“So then what happened?”

“A guy who was hanging around doña Lola went outside and came back with a heavy sack. I know him a bit, he breeds fighting cocks and they call him, ‘el animal’. The bag was sort of broken and scruffy but he pulled out a load of 45s and handed them around the party like toys. I signaled to my musicians that it was time to leave, but that’s when Lola went up to Jacinto and kissed him on both cheeks.”

I tried not to react, but I think Gonzalo could read my expression.

“She said he played like a master and that he could count on her, or something like that. She asked him for another corrido and he played it, but I could tell he wasn’t happy, not at all.

“Lola had gone off somewhere and we were still playing when ‘el animal’ appeared with a rifle and rubbed it up against Jacinto’s face. Seems he was really angry about doña Lola’s flirting, but it wasn’t Jacinto’s fault.”
Gonzalo told me he thought they’d never get out of that house alive. The guy with the sack was asking for more corridos but they didn’t know any, so he began to threaten them. “He mentioned things that you hear about on TV but you don’t want to believe.”

“What happened?”

“Isidro, the other guitarist, told the ‘animal’ he had presents for him in the car, so he was able to leave the house. I thought he wouldn’t come back, but a few minutes later he appeared with a pile of CDs and handed them round to the guys in the party. It was a good idea. Everyone relaxed a bit and started looking at the records and commenting about the songs. Then they went off into another room, to share some polvo , I think, but they dragged Jacinto with them, like he was a hostage or something.

“Isidro and I looked at each other; this was our chance to leave, but we couldn’t go without Jacinto.”

Gonzalo was weeping. I didn’t know what to do so I looked around the tiny office and that’s when I saw my uncle standing there; he’d been listening for quite a while, but we hadn’t noticed him.

“Tell us what happened, Gonzalo” Antonio said.

“We tried to get into the room where we heard shots and shouting. The guy with the sack told us to get out and pointed his rifle at my face.”

Gonzalo lowered his head again. “We left. ‘Took the truck very slowly down the drive and turned on the engine once we were out of sight.”

“What does this mean?” I didn’t understand what was going on; just felt terror and a repulsion towards everyone and everything. I turned towards my uncle for an explanation.

“It means that Jacinto is probably either dead or …”
“Or what?”

“Or he’s been forced to join them. That’s what happens.”
I couldn’t believe Antonio’s calm. The great social fighter; student leader in 1968, literacy campaigner in the 70s, his impeccable credentials had isolated him from my family and converted him into my hero since I was old enough to understand.

He saw me looking at him. “Perla,” he said. “Right now I feel like a foreigner in my own country.”

I couldn’t be angry with him. Everything was so huge and beyond my understanding.

“What can we do?” I asked.

“We will look for him. It won’t be easy but there are still ways. You need to get back to London. I promise I’ll let you know…”

“No. I’m not going anywhere.”

No one spoke for a while, then I asked my uncle why he didn’t speak to Lola, or whatever that mayor was called.
“Lolita Garrido. She’s quite famous round here. In a month she’ll be in Congress.”

“Not as a congresswoman? People voted for her?”

“Yes, that’s how complicated this is.”

There was knocking on the workshop door. Gonzalo squeezed past me and a few minutes later group of people came into the office. There was a lot of talking and weeping and people shouting, mostly the women. There were young girls who could have been Jacinto’s sisters; maybe one of them was his girlfriend or even his wife.
Antonio grabbed my arm and led me towards the door. As we left, an older women touched his elbow.

“Don. You will help us?”

“Of course, Doña Esmeralda. If I can.”

The old lady looked into his eyes. “What happens when we can’t protect the children?”

We drove back to the house in silence. I ran upstairs to my room and lay down on the bed. Then I leaned over, opened the drawer and pulled out the bow. I ran my finger over the mother of pearl flowers. On the other side was my name, but I couldn’t bear to look at it.