Mexico city station is big and almost all red. It’s platform pillars are painted by red brush strokes, so big the tips of the red crenelations shine in the sun. There is a ticket booth and almost three restaurants. And Pablo Caesar worked in the rail yard. He was the man who checked the coupling on the freight trains and his hands were black from it. His back hurt, but he went about his work whistling and, one day, whilst whistling, he found a dead girl.
Her white dress billowed westward, and, with it’s embroidery and it’s black blotches made from the soot, it looked like the wing of some dalmatian bird. Strapped to her back were paper mache wings, cracked and broken to pieces now. One of her feet was twisted upwards and a bone stuck out of her right arm. A little red flower flapped and leapt from her hand, spiralling away in the wind. Pablo didn’t know what to do, so he did what any Mexican man would do and called a priest.
The priest came tottering across the stones blackened by day after day of passing freight cars. His robes and necklaces flung themselves about his person. He smiled when he saw Pablo, standing by one of the freight cars and wringing his little rail worker hat in his black Mexican hands. Pablo lead the bearded priest round the freight car and when the priest saw the girl his hand shot to his mouth. He said something about angels and went behind the freight car again.
Pablo found the priest with his hands on his knees and white spittle hanging from his lips. The priest said something else about angels and put one hand on the freight car. The priest shook his head and then stood up. He straightened his robes. He knew what to do.
The constable was a portly man who’d been working behind a desk for three years and knew exactly what to do as well. It had been raining and he’d donned his cape at twelve and now it had little droplets on it. When he came across the tracks with his two sub-ordinates and saw the drenched Pablo, he said, “What is the matter?” and Pablo pointed to the girl. The constable nodded and smiled and said, “It is alright to be afraid.” and then gave Pablo a cup of watery coffee.
The constable came up to the girl, and after doing some measurements and checking the girl’s pockets, he told his usual joke, “Well! She’s dead alright!” and his two sub-ordinates laughed.
After three more cups of coffee in a Mexican café, where the windows were almost opaque from dust and grime and the waitress was too big to fit between the tables, the constable decided that it was time to identify the girl.
The word went round and the mother came down to the tracks. She was sick and she still wore her hospital gown and every so often a tiny Mexican man with a hospital uniform tried to stop her from her march. She came up to Pablo and said, “Well, where is she? Is it my Maria?” and Pablo, who’d yet to drink his coffee, simply pointed. She screamed and dashed the tiny Mexican aside and screamed some more.
“Maria! Maria!” she said and collapsed by the tracks, with her hair in her hands and hard shaking tears in her eyes and on her cheeks. “Why has no one moved her? Why is she still here? Why is she so dirty? Why has no one moved her?”
The constable came out of the café then. With his cape billowing in the wind and a pocket watch in his hand, he said: “Madame. Is this your daughter?”
“Yes! Yes! It is my daughter. Why has no one moved her! Oh Maria! Maria!” and she lay down in her hospital gown and held the white dress in her hand and wept into it like a rag and she shook all over and the dress shook in her hand as she dragged it from her eyes to her lips and back again. The constable said: “Madame. Could you answer some questions?”
She said something to Maria.
“What did she last say to you?”
“Maria. What did she last say? What did she last say!” she shook her wet face. “She came to see me. She’d already made the wings. She told me how she was to become an angel and save me.” Then the mother sat up and looked at Maria. She shook her head and then wept into her hands.
“I am sure she is with the angels now,” the constable said.
The mother spat then.
“Thank you constable, thank you for telling me I shall live on due to my dead daughter. Oh thank you, constable. Thank you for that. Thank you!” and she spat at his boot and lay there for a long time.
