Sometimes he opens the desk drawer, sticks his arm in right to the back and reaches for the box. It’s blue, made of plastic and opens like a treasure chest. Once upon a time, there must have been a ring inside it, the white insert is still there. It was his mother’s. There’s no ring in it anymore, but a triangular fragment of brown stone, with a raised round part in the centre. He’s had it and has kept it there for thirty years. So sometimes he opens the drawer and reaches for the box, finds it, and fondles that little piece of rock in his hands. He was twelve years old when he found it. At the archaeological site of Teotihuacán, in the DeFe in Mexico. On the last real, long, adventurous trip he’d been on with his parents. He’d put it in his pocket like a thief or smuggler of ancient artefacts, and for the rest of the trip he’d looked over his shoulder, watching out for the police or for other, more mysterious presences. Around that time he’d seen a TV show about aliens and Aztecs and Mayans, and there was a whole history of contacts between those aliens and the populations in Mexico, and he hadn’t really understood that much but it’d made a real impression on him and so he thought he’d found a little piece of magic.
When he opens the desk drawer and reaches for the box it means something is wrong. It’s not always something he can put his finger on, but he knows that’s why, because it’s instinctive at first and only conscious later. He’s doing it now because he’s handed over a photo shoot that turned out badly, well, maybe not badly but certainly not as he’d have liked, and then the pay was stingy and the time too tight, and so he was tense as he worked, and anxious too, and didn’t manage to do what he wanted to do. When he saw the first contact prints he thought he might be able to fix something later on but not much, and he isn’t used to touching up nor is he even that good at it. He’d have liked them to come out well, first time round or so, without having to get his hands too dirty.
He flies away when he touches that little piece of rock. He thinks back to when, as a child, he wanted to be an archaeologist, and he was sure he’d make it, what could ever stop him. But then he hadn’t enrolled at university, because life in those years had gone off at a tangent, and he’d made his way travelling the world, working now and then as a photography assistant, the odd publication in newspapers that still paid well then, a month or more for a single story, and then he could count on a helping hand from his parents, which always arrived. At thirty he’d ended up deciding he had to do something to stop living off his wits and family fortunes; when it came to it photography had worked out quite well for him: first of all he got in with a famous fashion photographer, then he’d started doing his first jobs on his own, and now he was even making some money. He didn’t like it much though, because he’d got stuck with those e-commerce jobs photographing hundreds of clothes items, on hangers, under the right lights, the Nikon always on a tripod, unmoving, click, click, click, over and over and over.
He met Guillermo the next evening, when his mind was still on all of those things there and he couldn’t shake them off. These evenings happen more often in winter than in other times of year, whatever work he’s got on. He’s sitting in a bar that he knows he can go to by himself and have a good time anyway, he sat down at the bar and next to him, after a good hour or so, Guillermo arrived. He spoke to the owner about the wine, then turned and smiled such a big smile that it seemed impossible for Alessandro to resist. He’s got black, curly hair and a large mouth. They order a bottle between them, Guillermo says: I don’t know anything about wine, so Alessandro mumbles something, hoping that Luca, who’s the bar owner and has become a bit of a friend, doesn’t overhear him. Then they went out, saying: how about going to a club? And Alessandro looked for a place nearby on Instagram, to walk to, where it looked like there was something going on. He found one, and there was something on. They ended up in the bathroom to sniff some coke, Guillermo had some, but they kissed right away. After two hours of sneaking off into the bathroom, kissing and sniffing some more, sweaty and off their heads from the hormones and the gross cuts in that bag, and the others banging their fists on the doors and them coming out laughing, Guillermo said: I have to go now, my plane is in five hours. Alessandro stopped him, but Guillermo repeated no. He seemed to have gone serious all of a sudden. At home, Guillermo wrote to him on Instagram: I want to be with you. He said: then come. He never replied.
He and Guillermo write to each other for a month, December goes into January and the cold is just as bad, maybe even worse. They send each other photos and sometimes call each other. They get turned on. Alessandro visits him in Barcelona, where Guillermo is for work. He’s a salesman of something or other, IT stuff for big companies, it’s a real job, and maybe that’s why Alessandro doesn’t get him. In Barcelona they fuck right away in the house in El Raval where Guillermo is staying, renting from a friend. At night they talk about Mexico, and Guillermo tells him about the architecture, the dangers of the city, the San Pedro cacti that grow as tall as wild amaranth, a place near Puerto Escondido with buildings designed by Tadao Ando and Álvaro Siza and full of offerings from the world’s best architects. Alessandro thought he was clued up on architecture but Guillermo knows much more than he does, and he doesn’t brag, so he listens to him like a child listens to an adult’s stories. You’d love it, he says. Guillermo has to leave this time too, but in the evening he says to him: you could come to Mexico City with me. Alessandro sleeps on it but he wakes up still excited at the idea. He thinks: if I don’t do these things now. He goes back to Milan, waits a week and books a flight. He writes to Guillermo: I’ve done it. Guillermo answers him after 16 hours: looking forward to it.
Alessandro is scared but happy. It’s the first time he’s done something so rash and it finally seems to him that he has a purpose and a task to do that’s not just work, getting by, paying off debts, but something he really likes. Something to live for. After arriving at Benito Juárez airport, Guillermo doesn’t answer him for two hours, Alessandro doesn’t have a Mexican SIM card so he waits inside where he can use the wi-fi. Then he writes to him on Instagram, arranges to meet in a bar, saying: I’m here with friends, come and meet me, but then we’ll stay out. He gets there by taxi with a black duffel bag weighing about ten kilos. The bar is nice, fun, not too clean, not too dirty. He talks to a Spanish friend of Guillermo’s, but he doesn’t talk to him much, because the table is long and narrow and Guillermo is surrounded by friends. He understands Spanish but doesn’t speak much. He knows that they’re going to sleep together and the closer it gets to midnight, the more he wants to tell him: I’m going, I’m tired. Or: take some notice of me, I’ve crossed the ocean to be here. Instead it’s Guillermo who gets up, kneels down next to him and says: listen, I want to be honest, but I don’t know if I feel I can. Alessandro nods, saying: no problem. They sleep in the same bed but each on his own side, as stiffly as strangers. The next day, when Guillermo slipped off to work, he made plans. He books a hotel, close to the Holiday Inn where he stayed with his parents. He calls a taxi, asks to be taken there after washing with cold water. He checks in, gets back in the taxi and asks to be taken to Teotihuacán. The Pyramid of the Sun is as just impressive as the first time round. He remembers the excitement he’d felt, that he’d imagined aliens at work building it, Aztecs and spacecraft all united in that feat. But he doesn’t hang around: instead, he goes round the smaller temples and feels in his trouser pocket for the stone he’s brought from home, to find the place where he’d found it more than twenty years before. This is a purpose too, perhaps a more important one than Guillermo. It doesn’t seem to work: the rock doesn’t fit, it’s nothing like the same. Then he enters a sort of courtyard, he listens to a German guide who says: Palacio de Quetzal… He doesn’t catch the whole word. It’s like a eureka moment: memories come together, and he sees himself again between those columns, a child, picking up the fragment of rock. He spends an hour and a half searching the columns for the right niche for his piece to fit into. It’s brick-coloured, and the columns look the same. And then what would he do? Nothing, he tells himself, it’s just to put a piece in its place. After all those years, after thousands of miles, after all those memories. He can’t find it. It’s roasting hot and there are tourists all dressed in white, singing and playing tambourines and climbing the Pyramid of the Sun. He’s got to give up.
In the hotel, the pillows are huge, cooler than he thinks he’s ever found before and so soft you sink into them. As he falls asleep, he thinks that probably in those twenty years they’ve replaced the chipped piece of rock, because he hasn’t lost it, the shard is there, in his hand, and it comes from Teotihuacán. Perhaps, he thinks one last time, memories are living beings with a life of their own, living inside us like parasites. Like the bacteria in our stomach that allow us to digest what we eat, breaking it down, memories feed on what we experience, and nibble at it, and digest it, and what is left of it can then be different from how we experienced it the first time. He falls asleep without further going down that convoluted line of reasoning.
In the morning he orders breakfast in his room. He spends an hour filling a notebook with dates, itineraries, flights. He consults the New York Times and Vogue México websites and dozens of blogs extolling out-of-the-way itineraries, finally booking a flight to Oaxaca. He writes to Guillermo: I’m leaving. He doesn’t reply.
In Oaxaca all the restaurants are obsessed with mole. He tries to avoid it, but ends up forcing it down, filling his mouth and his taste buds can’t get used to it. He takes a taxi and asks to be taken to some mezcaleros to the north of the city. He drinks a lot that afternoon, feels the smokiness of the liquid filling his mouth and drowning his tongue and for the first time since he got there he feels really good. In Oaxaca, that time with his parents, he had lunch in a luxury hotel, eating pechuga de pollo empanizada and throwing it all up almost immediately because the air conditioning was too strong, too cold. He has an inkling of brightly coloured houses and sun-drenched churches, but he can’t bring back anything from his memories, which makes him uncomfortable. So he takes a hire car and drives to a place he’d never seen, in the south, towards Puerto Escondido, the town in that film by Gabriele Salvatores.
But the place stinks: it’s full of boorish Italians dreaming of Mexico and cocaine, ugly hotels and bars with music belting out. A bartender advises him to go further down, to a town called Mazunte. He gets back in the car, there are some dangerous humps on the road, tall and square, they call them topes, and they say that some are put there on purpose by the bars along the carretera or by mechanics to wreck your suspension and force you to stop. In Mazunte there are fewer people, big waves, lots of surfers, a load of naked people with their arses and dicks out. At this point Alessandro goes with the flow. Guillermo seems to belong to another life. Mexico City too, with its volcanic sand, modernist architecture and hellish traffic. A girl comes over to him at the bar while he’s eating a salad. She’s American. She says: there’s a party near here tonight. He stops her: he hasn’t looked for a hotel yet. She tells him not to worry, they’ll find somewhere. Her name is Laura and her car is round the back. The party starts early, because the sun sets early. A message from Guillermo lights up the screen of his mobile phone, he says: sorry, I’ve been a shit. An hour later, Alessandro is on the veranda of this cute little hotel overlooking one of the most beautiful bays he’s ever seen. Now Laura’s with a group of six people, some are European, and this, stupidly, makes him feel at ease. She hands him a thick, ragged piece of paper, holding it on one finger. She says: eat it.
Taking a swim a few hours later, he’s frightened by a black spot in the water. He thinks it’s a shark, but then he sees the others shouting with joy, jumping and splashing. The hump is the mahogany-coloured shell of a turtle: it’s enormous. They all look out of it, and to him too the sea starts to look brighter, the palms moving drowsily, his hands in slow motion. The people’s enthusiasm quickly dies down, because the turtle is drifting, dying. Its beak is as big as its face, it looks like an ancient monster, and it lets itself be carried away by the current. Twenty people, perhaps all on acid, try to turn it around and push it out to sea, but there’s nothing doing. Alessandro puts a hand on its head, it’s worn like an old statue. The turtle suddenly jerks. But it’s a jerk of death, and after that it lets itself be dragged towards the shoreline. When Alessandro gets out, his head is spinning, he can’t stand up, and he has to lie down on the sand, out of the way, near the palm trees and rocks poking out from the bushes. Laura is nowhere to be seen. He opens his eyes again when the sky is purple from the dusk, he feels his head tingling. Now there are ten people huddled in a circle at one point on the beach as if they were in a meeting. He manages to get up, to go over there. It all seems permissible, possible to him, all foreign and familiar at the same time.
He pokes his head into the circle when the spectacle has already begun, and everyone watches in spectral silence. Out of a pile of half-buried eggs come hundreds of microscopic turtles running like mad towards the sea. Some go the wrong way, towards the jungle, towards the stones. Right there, right then, he realizes that he doesn’t know where his clothes are, with his car keys, phone and ID, but in that instant it’s the old temple fragment that he’s most worried about. He feels a cold chill making its way from the nape of his neck towards the hollow of his shoulders. He tries to set off back to the hotel veranda, but he finds it difficult to walk, he’s afraid of squashing the turtles and the acid makes him as uncoordinated as a newborn baby. He stops. A hand strokes him on his back, between his shoulder blades, like a shiver. Laura doesn’t seem to be with it either as she says: it’s a miracle.
