The Shadow of the Shadow Read Online Free PDF Page A

sun going down out toward Tacuba? Or
cotton-filled memories, like those clouds over there, nibbling away at the edge of a stubbornly blue sky? He flung his cigarette out
the window, partly because he was tired of listening to his own
thoughts, partly because he liked to watch the little white cylinder
tumble down the three stories to the street. The butt paused in
midair and then continued its descent, landing on the roof of
one of the aforementioned automobiles, from which, at that very
moment, a woman emerged. Tiny sparks scattered off the roof of
the car into the woman's hat. She turned to stare up; he smiled
with embarrassment and quickly pulled the window shut.

    Manterola took a step back, like a little boy caught doing
something bad, and then it occurred to him the face he'd just
glimpsed had been a very, very pretty one.
    He walked back to his desk and pulled a piece of paper from
his typewriter. Whistling a waltz, he sauntered over to where
Gonzaga nodded off at his drawing table, and shook him gently.
"Hey, artiste, wake up. It's time to go to work."
    "What's that, cheggidout...," muttered Gonzaga, not quite
sure who he was talking to.
    They said he smoked opium in the dens off Dolores Street,
that he regularly drank mezcal until he passed out with his old
Zapatista buddies in some dive out toward Tacubaya, and that he
would chain-smoke Veracruz cigars until he was on the brink of
nicotine intoxication. But be that as it may, he could draw faster
than anyone, and with both hands at once, like Leonardo da
Vinci.
    "Cheggidout. What you got?"
    "Tufiabla the Arab sneaks up on a squad car from behind, a
black Ford, license number 4087, and empties his revolver at the
two officers sitting in the back seat."
    "Is he dressed like an Arab?"
    "I suppose so, more or less. Like the Arabs in the market."
    "Cheggidout, cheggidout, one Arab coming right up," mumbled Gonzaga, starting to draw what would soon be the central
illustration on page one, section two of El Democrata.

    Pioquinto lit another cigarette and felt himself drawn back
toward the window. What had happened to that pretty face?
    Gonzaga sang Flor de Te as he drew, a fine pencil in his right
hand and a piece of charcoal in his left for sketching in the shadows.
Manterola let out a deep sigh and went back to contemplating
the blue of the sky out the open window. Suddenly something
caught his eye, and he looked over toward the third-story window
of the building across the street. He watched as the glass pane
shattered and a man fell through the air waving his arms wildly,
his screams reaching Manterola's ears seconds before he crashed
to the pavement. Manterola stared across into the broken window
and for a pair of seconds stood contemplating the terrified eyes
of the same woman he'd inadvertently thrown his cigarette at
only a few minutes before. He wouldn't exactly have said that
time stood still, but he might have said that time stretched out
while he looked from one to the other, from the woman's eyes in
the building across the street, to the broken body splayed out on
the pavement forty-five feet below. As he watched, the woman
retreated slowly and disappeared.
    Unable to believe his own eyes, the journalist leaned out the
window as if to confirm the fact there was actually a body lying
amidst the shards of glass on the street below. It was true, the body
was there, starting to attract the attention of passersby. Slow to
react for the first time in years, Manterola finally started to move
in the direction of the stairs.
    "Cheggidout, cheggidout, what's going on?" asked Gonzaga,
but Manterola was already out of sight, running down the stairs
to go stand in front of a dead man in the middle of Humboldt
Street.

    ALL DAY LONG HIS SWOLLEN HAND gave him trouble.
The foreman had already come around a couple of times to egg him
on and step up the pressure. Indalecio and Martin, the Chinaman's
coworkers, had tried to