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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780743281867 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Atria Books |
| Publication date: | 02/20/2007 |
| Edition description: | Reprint |
| Pages: | 240 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.70(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Night Buffalo
A Novel I decided to visit Gregorio on a Saturday afternoon, three weeks after his most recent release from the hospital. It wasn't easy for me to seek him out. I thought it over for months. I was afraid of meeting him again, almost as if I were anticipating an ambush. That afternoon I walked around the block several times not daring to knock on his door. When I finally did, I was nervous, restless, and -- why not say it -- feeling a little cowardly.His mother opened the door. She greeted me affectionately and then led me straight into the living room, as if she'd been awaiting my return. She called her son. Gregorio emerged on the stairs. He slowly descended the steps. He stopped and leaned on the banister. He studied my face for a few seconds, smiled, and walked toward me to give me a hug. His vehemence intimidated me and I didn't know how to respond to his gesture. I didn't know if he had really forgiven me or if we'd forgiven each other.
His mother said something meaningless and excused herself to leave us alone. We went up to Gregorio's room like we used to. We walked in and he shut the lockless door. He lay on the bed. He looked relaxed, at ease. There was nothing in his face to make me suspect he was faking it. It looked as if he'd finally regained some peace.
I sat in the usual place --the director's chair Gregorio had at his desk -- and started the conversation in the stupidest and most obvious way possible:
"How do you feel?" I asked him.
Gregorio straightened up and arched his eyebrows.
"How do I look?"
"Fine."
Gregorio shrugged his shoulders.
"Well, then I'm fine."
We spoke for hours, small talk. We needed to get a sense of the territory again. Especially me: I didn't want to walk back to the edge of the abyss. Out of luck, respect, or maybe just mere courtesy, he didn't ask me about Tania, even though I'm sure we both thought of her in each of our silences.
We said good-bye well into the night. We gave each other a prolonged hug. We said we'd see each other soon, for lunch or a movie. I left the house. A cold wind was trailing a vague rumor of voices and the rumble of cars along with it. It smelled of burned garbage. A streetlight flickered, intermittently lighting the sidewalk. I closed my eyes. I couldn't walk away from Gregorio. His friendship was indispensable. Even when he threatened me and hurt me, I couldn't leave him.
Four days later the phone rang. I answered: mute breathing. I thought it might be a joke or one of the stupid girls who wanted to talk to my brother and were too shy to ask for him.
I was about to hang up when I heard Margarita's weak voice.
"Hello...Manuel?" she mumbled.
"Yeah."
"Manuel..." again, and was silent.
"What happened?"
"My brother..." she whispered. I heard her tense breathing again.
"Margarita, what happened?"
She said nothing else and hung up.
Margarita tried, but was unable to tell me the news that subsequent phone calls would confirm: Gregorio had shot himself in the head. They'd found him agonizing in a puddle of blood, with his left hand still gripping the revolver.
The boarded windows and iron bars, the lockless door, the patience, love, sedatives, shock therapy, all those months spent in mental hospitals, the pain. The pain. All useless.
Gregorio died on his mother's lap, stretched out on the backseat of the car his father feverishly drove to the hospital. He killed himself with the same gun we'd stolen years ago from a cop guarding the entrance to a convenience store. It was a rusty .38 Brazilian revolver; we'd doubted whether it worked at all until we decided to test it on a stray dog. On the first shot the mutt collapsed with its muzzle blasted to pieces. From then on until the day he died, Gregorio learned how to hide the gun in several places, avoiding the detailed searches carried out wherever he lived.
Gregorio wrapped the gun in a plastic bag -- loaded with six hollow-point bullets -- and buried it in a flowerpot with budding red geraniums. When we pieced the suicide together we deduced that he took the revolver out of its hiding place while pretending to tend to the plants in the garden -- an activity his doctors recommended for a speedier recovery. Gregorio took the gun, hid it under his shirt, and left his work in a hurry, leaving a trowel, a spade, and a bag of fertilizer behind.
Resolute, he went up to his room. He pushed the desk against the door and entered the bathroom. He cocked the revolver, looked at himself in the mirror, held the muzzle to his left eyebrow, and pulled the trigger.
The bullet crossed diagonally through his brain, bursting through arteries, neurons, desires, tenderness, hatred, bones. Gregorio collapsed on the tiles with two holes in his skull. He was about to turn twenty-three.
Joaquín, his younger brother, took care of everything related to the burial as well as the police department's interrogations and requirements. His mother, exhausted, fell asleep on the living room sofa without even changing her bloodstained blouse. His father holed up in his son's room in search of clues to help him understand what happened. Margarita, who first focused on informing family and friends, surrendered to her impotence and fled to the house of one of her cousins, where she sank into a rocking chair, drank Diet Coke, and stared at the TV.
I went with Joaquín to the funeral home. We both chose the coffin: the cheapest and simplest one. It was all the family savings could afford, drained by Gregorio's countless medical and psychiatric expenses.
The body arrived at the funeral home at three in the morning. Luckily, a distant uncle -- a somewhat prestigious lawyer -- dealt with the paperwork to avoid an autopsy and to expedite the body's release from the morgue.
An employee from the funeral home asked us to go identify the body. I offered to do it: Joaquín had gone through enough.
The man led me down some stairs to a basement. Halfway there I stopped, regretting my offer. How could I face Gregorio again? Especially, how could I face him in death? Dizzy, I brought my hand to my head. I had trouble breathing. Wasn't a brief description enough? The man took me by the arm and ushered me on. In an effort to console me, he said a quick glance would be enough to finish the procedure.
We walked into a windowless room lit by tubes of fluorescent light. Gregorio, or what once was Gregorio, lay on a metal table, a white sheet drawn up to his chest. Death had given his face a light, slender expression. There were no remnants of his cold, challenging demeanor. A bandage on his left brow covered the suicidal orifice. A purplish hematoma colored his forehead. His hair, smeared with blood, looked as if it'd been slicked back with gel. His unshaven beard gave him an air of exhaustion, a kind of tedium. I stared at him for a few minutes; he looked less intimidating dead than he had alive -- much less.
"It's him, right?" the man asked hesitantly upon seeing me engrossed.
I looked at Gregorio's body one last time. How to say good-bye? Say it, just like that, or squeeze him and cry beside him? How to explain to him that his death hurt and infuriated and humiliated me? How to say all this to a quiet, a stupidly quiet, corpse?
"Yes, that's Gregorio Valdés," I said, and turned to leave.
The wake was sparsely attended. Even once the news spread, few dared to give their condolences: The body of a suicide is always upsetting.
Gregorio's family wandered aimlessly through the chapel. His mother napped with her grief in isolated corners. His father digressed in the middle of his sentences, leaving them unfinished and sunk in exasperating silences. Margarita babbled nonsense and Joaquín, swollen with fatigue, clumsily tried to stay awake.
The parents endured everything: gossip, furtive glances, fake mourning. Though atheists, they allowed a priest (for whose services the funeral home opportunely charged under the pretext of a donation) to conduct mass. They even allowed in a cheap tabloid reporter who spent his time shamelessly snooping around.
At five o'clock in the afternoon, the funeral cortege set out. Only four cars followed the hearse to the graveyard. Thanks to a dispensation obtained by the lawyer uncle, Gregorio was cremated. I shuddered while watching the blue smoke surging from the crematory's chimney. Even in the small amphitheater I'd still felt Gregorio close to me: palpable, human. Now the smoke spirals signaled his definitive death.
I didn't wait for them the deliver the urn. Crying, I snuck out a side door to the cemetery. Since I didn't have any money for a taxi or a bus, I decided to go home on foot. I walked down the streets without noticing the countless stalls of street vendors, the tumult outside the metro station, the traffic, the car exhaust -- sometimes also blue.
I arrived home. My parents were waiting for me, worried about my being late. They'd only quickly stopped by the funeral home. They couldn't even take five minutes of the hopeless atmosphere.
We ate dinner in silence. When we finished my mother took my hand and kissed my forehead. I noticed her eyes were swollen.
I went up to my room. I grabbed the phone and called Tania. Her sister told me she was already asleep. Moody, she asked me if I wanted her to wake Tania up. I said no, that I'd call her later.
Tania neither wanted to go to the wake nor the cremation. For her, Gregorio wasn't dead just yet. She'd told me in the morning.
"He's still plotting something," she assured me. "Gregorio won't leave just like that."
She sounded anxious, agitated. I scolded her for being so childishly afraid of him.
"Don't forget he was the King Midas of destruction," she pronounced.
"Was," I pointed out.
"He always will be."
She said it wasn't a coincidence that Gregorio had committed suicide a few days after seeing me, or that he'd specifically chosen the twenty-second of February to blow his brains out.
"It's his way of getting his own, can't you see? The son of a bitch is smearing his blood on us."
I wasn't able to calm her down, much less convince her to come with me to the wake or burial. Her attitude seemed petty and unfair; the dead don't deserve to be left alone.
I tried to read for a while but couldn't concentrate. I turned off the light and lay down. Exhausted, I soon fell asleep. At midnight, I woke up with the feeling that an earwig had sprung from Gregorio's lifeless mouth and jumped on me to bury itself in one of my forearms. I leapt out of bed and rubbed my body desperately till I finally calmed down. I dreamt of an earwig again. I'd dreamt of earwigs dozens of times.
Sweating, I walked toward the window and opened it. The wind brought the night's breath: wailing sirens, barking, music in the distance. The cold air refreshed me. I went back to my bed and sat on the edge of the mattress. I remembered the body on the metal table. Gregorio had always wanted to murder someone, to touch the limits of death. Now he'd done it.
I turned on the bedside lamp. From the nightstand, I grabbed the frame with Tania's photograph in it. Dressed in a high school uniform, Tania looked at the camera smiling, her hair falling over her shoulders in layers. "I love you Manuel" was written in one of the corners of the portrait. Underneath was her signature and a blurred date: February twenty-second. Why did loving her have to hurt so much?
I put the picture back in its place and turned on the TV with the hope that some insipid nighttime programming would lull me to sleep.
I got up at dawn, ragged from insomnia. I went down to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of milk. No one else was awake yet. I started reading the previous day's newspaper and found nothing interesting. I left the paper on the table and halfheartedly drank the milk. Six in the morning and I couldn't find anything to do.
I decided to take a shower. As I undressed, I looked at the tiles. They were of a similar color and texture to the ones in Gregorio's bathroom. I saw him falling backward with his skull burst open. I could clearly hear the snap of his body bouncing off the towel rack, the bubbling of his blood, his hoarse panting. I turned on the shower and stuck my head under the freezing stream until the nape of my neck hurt. I abruptly pulled my head out. Hundreds of cold drops slid down my back. I sat on the floor and shivered. I grabbed a towel and wrapped myself in it, but I couldn't stop shaking for a long while.
I left the bathroom and lay down on the bed naked, with my hair still soaking wet. I closed my eyes and fell asleep.
I woke up four hours later, numb: I'd forgotten to close the window and the wind was circulating through the room. Without entirely waking up, I sat up to close it. I could hear the bustle of children playing in a nearby school and a song from a woman pinning up clothes on a neighboring rooftop. I spotted a note on the floor that my mother had slid under the door. Tania and Margarita had called.
I tried reaching Tania first, but no one answered at her house. I remembered it was Thursday and thought she and her sister were probably at school. I looked at the clock: twelve-thirty. In fifteen minutes, Tania would walk out of her Textile Design class and go have a cup of coffee and play dominoes with her friends. It pissed me off that Tania would go on with her daily life, as if the bullet that tore through that Tuesday afternoon weren't reason enough to stop it dead.
Then I dialed Gregorio's house (was it still his house? A dead man's house?). Margarita answered. She explained that her parents weren't there but that her mother had asked her to invite me to dinner.
"What for?" I asked.
"Well, to chat, I think," she answered, disconcerted.
I refused without even considering the possibility.
"I can't tonight."
She insisted, but I still declined. She remained silent for a few seconds.
"Can you come right now?" she inquired nervously.
"What for?"
Margarita sighed deeply.
"I need to see you," she said under her breath.
Her request seemed out of place. Margarita and I had had a fleeting, secret, purely sexual relationship, of which we soon got tired. We decided never to discuss it again and swore never to tell anyone.
"You don't need to see me," I said aggressively.
"It's not for what you're thinking," she snapped back angrily, "it's for something completely different."
"Oh yeah?"
"You're an asshole."
Margarita grew silent.
"I'm sorry," I said.
She kept quiet for a few more seconds, clicked her tongue, and started muttering.
"About a month ago...or three weeks...I can't remember, Gregorio asked me to keep a box for him...a small box...of chocolates..."
She stopped, gulped, and continued.
"He asked me to keep it safe and now..."
Her voice cracked, but she didn't cry.
"I can't find it, Manuel," she went on. "I can't find the fucking box."
"Where did you leave it? Think."
No, she couldn't remember. She couldn't even remember that she was the first one to walk into the bathroom after the shot, that she found her older brother gushing blood next to the sink, that she tried to stop the bleeding by stuffing the wounds with pieces of toilet paper, that she carried the limp body all the way to the car, and that she was left standing in the middle of the street without knowing what to do. No, Margarita couldn't remember anything.
"Help me look for it," she implored, "please."
I agreed to meet her at her house at seven o'clock that night, before her parents returned. I promised her that together we'd find the box, that she shouldn't worry. She sighed a good-bye and hung up. I wanted to kiss her again, to stroke her and make love to her.
Copyright © 2006 by Guillermo Arriaga
Translation © 2006 by Alan Page
Continues...
Excerpted from The Night Buffalo by Guillermo Arriaga Copyright © 2007 by Guillermo Arriaga. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Reading Group Guide
Reading Group Guide
The Night Buffalo
by Guillermo Arriaga
Description:
Acclaimed novelist and screenwriter of 21 Grams and Babel Guillermo Arriaga writes of love, friendship, passion, and betrayal in this haunting and remarkable novel. Set in Mexico City, The Night Buffalo is the story of Gregorio, a charismatic and mentally unstable young man, who is betrayed by his best friend Manuel and his girlfriend Tania when the two embark upon an affair. When Gregorio commits suicide, Manuel must face the truth about his own past as he struggles to make sense of the driving force behind Gregorio's madness.
Meanwhile, Tania disappears for days at a time, Gregorio's sister leaves cryptic phone messages for Manuel at all hours of the night, and a mysterious stranger hell-bent on avenging Gregorio's death vows to stop at nothing to get what he wants.
Arriaga's stark prose and deeply felt understanding of human nature make The Night Buffalo a harrowing, heartbreaking, and completely compelling read.
Reading Group Discussion:
- Jacinto Anaya is a character Manuel knows little about, yet he has a significant influence on Manuel's well-being. What do you think Jacinto's history is? What makes him so focused on avenging Gregorio's death? And why do you think it is so important to him to meet with Manuel in person?
- When Manuel finds a handwritten note from Tania to Gregorio he learns that, contrary to what he believed, the two never ended their relationship. Why did Tania stay involved with both men? Which man was Tania really in love with? Both? Neither? Jacinto describes Tania as "the string that held Gregorio," to which Manuel replies "that was the name of my string, too" (p. 221). What, other than romantic love, does Tania signify to both men?
- Discuss the novel's attitude toward parent/child relationships. Manuel's father seems more sympathetic to his son's problems while Manuel frequently butts heads with his mother. Manuel refers to all his friends' parents as "the mother" and "the father." How does Manuel view his parents? In general, how are adults portrayed in the novel?
- Arriaga employs a great deal of symbolism throughout the novel. Discuss some of his recurring symbols and motifs. Consider such things as earwigs, guns, the deaths of animals, handwritten notes, and tattoos. What is the effect of Arriaga's heavy use of symbolism?
- Manuel cheats on Tania with several different women throughout the course of their relationship, yet when he learns of her recent involvement with Gregorio he is furious. Even though he says "I had no choice but to forget . . . I wouldn't reproach her at all" (p. 136), he explodes at her during their confrontation at the zoo. How does this double standard reflect Manuel's general attitude toward women? Consider Manuel's interactions with Rebecca, Laura, Margarita, and his mother. What is significant about the way women are portrayed in the novel? Is there a common trait these women share or do they all reflect a different side of Manuel?
- Manuel says Tania "gave the impression of being a woman permanently trying to escape . . . Many confused this trait for betrayal, even me. But . . . Tania had a profound sense of loyalty" (pp. 56-57). How would you describe Tania? What do you think happens to her when she disappears at the end of the novel?
- The characters who are closest with one another lie, cheat, and steal from each other; they often seem to live by their own moral code: Manuel takes an acquaintance's car on a joyride, demands money from the neighborhood teenagers, and dates several women at a time; Gregorio kills animals and threatens to kill a boy; Commander Ramirez breaks Manuel's finger for seemingly no reason at all. Does anyone in the novel live according to society's more traditional rules and expectations? Which relationships in the novel do you feel are the most genuine — based solely on love or trust or respect? Which of the characters do you sympathize with?
- Why does Mr. Camarina give Manuel his gun? How would you describe Manuel's relationship with Mr. Camarina?
- Manuel's last message from Gregorio "consisted of an envelope with three earwigs in it and a white, bloodspattered card with the phrase: 'The night buffalo dreams of us.' I never found out who sent it" (p. 227). Who do you think sent this message to Manuel? The previous messages Manuel has received appear to have been sent by more than one person, although he believes Jacinto sent most of them. Who do you think sent the other messages? What reasons would the other various characters have for sending the messages?
- Although the novel is narrated by Manuel, the novel's events are almost all set into motion by Gregorio. What techniques does Arriaga use to make Gregorio such a resonant character, despite the fact that we only read a few scenes of him in flashback and that he is dead throughout most of the novel?
- Gregorio's first visit from the "night buffalo" is one of the early symptoms of his mental illness. "The night buffalo is going to dream of you," he tells Manuel, "[a]nd when the buffalo decides to attack, you'll wake up on the fields of death" (p. 44). At the very end of the novel Manuel is frequently dreaming about the night buffalo and concurs, "It's death, I know it" (p. 228). Why did Gregorio know that the buffalo would eventually haunt Manuel? What, other than death, does the buffalo symbolize?
- At his meeting with Manuel near the end of the novel Jacinto points to his head and tells Manuel, "you've never gotten lost in here." Manuel replies, "Don't be so sure" (p. 222). Do you think Manuel is "lost"? Mentally ill? The sanest character in the novel? How has his mental state changed over the course of the novel? Discuss the novel's attitude toward mental illness.
Enhance Your Book Club:
- Host a screening of one or all of Arriaga's films, which include Amores perros, 21 Grams, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, and Babel. Discuss the thematic similarities between these films and The Night Buffalo. Does Arriaga employ any trademark techniques? Consider his use of flashback and non-sequential narrative. Do you notice any recurring motifs? Read Arriaga's bio here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillermo_Arriaga.
- Learn more about Mexico City, where The Night Buffalo takes place, at http://www.lonelyplanet.com/worldguide/destinations/north-america/mexico/mexico-city/. Look at the maps and pictures of the city here or on other websites. Is this the city you picture when reading the book? What parts of the city are most vivid to you from Arriaga's descriptions?
Introduction
Reading Group Guide
The Night Buffalo
by Guillermo Arriaga
Description:
Acclaimed novelist and screenwriter of 21 Grams and Babel Guillermo Arriaga writes of love, friendship, passion, and betrayal in this haunting and remarkable novel. Set in Mexico City, The Night Buffalo is the story of Gregorio, a charismatic and mentally unstable young man, who is betrayed by his best friend Manuel and his girlfriend Tania when the two embark upon an affair. When Gregorio commits suicide, Manuel must face the truth about his own past as he struggles to make sense of the driving force behind Gregorio's madness.
Meanwhile, Tania disappears for days at a time, Gregorio's sister leaves cryptic phone messages for Manuel at all hours of the night, and a mysterious stranger hell-bent on avenging Gregorio's death vows to stop at nothing to get what he wants.
Arriaga's stark prose and deeply felt understanding of human nature make The Night Buffalo a harrowing, heartbreaking, and completely compelling read.
Reading Group Discussion:
- Jacinto Anaya is a character Manuel knows little about, yet he has a significant influence on Manuel's well-being. What do you think Jacinto's history is? What makes him so focused on avenging Gregorio's death? And why do you think it is so important to him to meet with Manuel in person?
- When Manuel finds a handwritten note from Tania to Gregorio he learns that, contrary to what he believed, the two never ended their relationship. Why did Tania stay involved with both men? Which man was Tania really in love with? Both? Neither? Jacintodescribes Tania as "the string that held Gregorio," to which Manuel replies "that was the name of my string, too" (p. 221). What, other than romantic love, does Tania signify to both men?
- Discuss the novel's attitude toward parent/child relationships. Manuel's father seems more sympathetic to his son's problems while Manuel frequently butts heads with his mother. Manuel refers to all his friends' parents as "the mother" and "the father." How does Manuel view his parents? In general, how are adults portrayed in the novel?
- Arriaga employs a great deal of symbolism throughout the novel. Discuss some of his recurring symbols and motifs. Consider such things as earwigs, guns, the deaths of animals, handwritten notes, and tattoos. What is the effect of Arriaga's heavy use of symbolism?
- Manuel cheats on Tania with several different women throughout the course of their relationship, yet when he learns of her recent involvement with Gregorio he is furious. Even though he says "I had no choice but to forget . . . I wouldn't reproach her at all" (p. 136), he explodes at her during their confrontation at the zoo. How does this double standard reflect Manuel's general attitude toward women? Consider Manuel's interactions with Rebecca, Laura, Margarita, and his mother. What is significant about the way women are portrayed in the novel? Is there a common trait these women share or do they all reflect a different side of Manuel?
- Manuel says Tania "gave the impression of being a woman permanently trying to escape . . . Many confused this trait for betrayal, even me. But . . . Tania had a profound sense of loyalty" (pp. 56-57). How would you describe Tania? What do you think happens to her when she disappears at the end of the novel?
- The characters who are closest with one another lie, cheat, and steal from each other; they often seem to live by their own moral code: Manuel takes an acquaintance's car on a joyride, demands money from the neighborhood teenagers, and dates several women at a time; Gregorio kills animals and threatens to kill a boy; Commander Ramirez breaks Manuel's finger for seemingly no reason at all. Does anyone in the novel live according to society's more traditional rules and expectations? Which relationships in the novel do you feel are the most genuine — based solely on love or trust or respect? Which of the characters do you sympathize with?
- Why does Mr. Camarina give Manuel his gun? How would you describe Manuel's relationship with Mr. Camarina?
- Manuel's last message from Gregorio "consisted of an envelope with three earwigs in it and a white, bloodspattered card with the phrase: 'The night buffalo dreams of us.' I never found out who sent it" (p. 227). Who do you think sent this message to Manuel? The previous messages Manuel has received appear to have been sent by more than one person, although he believes Jacinto sent most of them. Who do you think sent the other messages? What reasons would the other various characters have for sending the messages?
- Although the novel is narrated by Manuel, the novel's events are almost all set into motion by Gregorio. What techniques does Arriaga use to make Gregorio such a resonant character, despite the fact that we only read a few scenes of him in flashback and that he is dead throughout most of the novel?
- Gregorio's first visit from the "night buffalo" is one of the early symptoms of his mental illness. "The night buffalo is going to dream of you," he tells Manuel, "[a]nd when the buffalo decides to attack, you'll wake up on the fields of death" (p. 44). At the very end of the novel Manuel is frequently dreaming about the night buffalo and concurs, "It's death, I know it" (p. 228). Why did Gregorio know that the buffalo would eventually haunt Manuel? What, other than death, does the buffalo symbolize?
- At his meeting with Manuel near the end of the novel Jacinto points to his head and tells Manuel, "you've never gotten lost in here." Manuel replies, "Don't be so sure" (p. 222). Do you think Manuel is "lost"? Mentally ill? The sanest character in the novel? How has his mental state changed over the course of the novel? Discuss the novel's attitude toward mental illness.
Enhance Your Book Club:
- Host a screening of one or all of Arriaga's films, which include Amores perros, 21 Grams, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, and Babel. Discuss the thematic similarities between these films and The Night Buffalo. Does Arriaga employ any trademark techniques? Consider his use of flashback and non-sequential narrative. Do you notice any recurring motifs? Read Arriaga's bio here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillermo_Arriaga.
- Learn more about Mexico City, where The Night Buffalo takes place, at http://www.lonelyplanet.com/worldguide/destinations/north-america/mexico/mexico-city/. Look at the maps and pictures of the city here or on other websites. Is this the city you picture when reading the book? What parts of the city are most vivid to you from Arriaga's descriptions?