Valdez published this Malayerba in Ríodoce on 12 June 2016.
Diabetic
Javier Valdez Cárdenas (RIODOCE)
He didn’t want to go out. He was sad and trapped between the walls of diabetes and hypertension. He felt weak, sad. What would happen if it came out he had lost the lust for life, the sugar there is in fun, love and happiness? His diet was as strict as the order to stick to it: don’t get excited, don’t jump about, don’t dance, don’t scare yourself, and don’t get too happy or too sad.
But one afternoon his friends insisted so much he gave in. These friends were always looking for him. The partygoers, the all-nighters who got drunk and listened to music and sang, the ones he trusted and who supported each other. In the rainbow of relationships they were darlings. At the same time both the usual and the rare.
It’s okay. Let’s go, he said, behind a shy smile. The hosts were more the friends of his friends than his friends, but still he could have a good time. Don’t drink sodas or eat fatty food. Stay away from spicy things. No salt. No sodas. No alcohol. Not even an alcohol-free beer. Those were his hated orders. But he had to respect them. He had to. When he arrived the music was already at full throttle and they were passing around trays of sausage and cheese with salt, chile and lime. Regular potato chips in one corner and spicy ones in the other. Sodas everywhere and whiskey, beer and too much tequila. Shrimp ceviche in a big blue plastic bowl.
He couldn’t deny his mouth was watering. Fuck it, he thought. He stretched out his hand to grab some sausage then on to the spicy chips. He asked for an amber beer, then some Chivas, then back to the beer. He was a little drunk, excited and ablaze. Dude, they said, take it easy. He said nothing. Hey man, pace yourself. Remember you need to watch it. He kept smiling his crooked smile. He danced with his girlfriends then they split and he went back to his friends.
The owner’s girlfriend kept going past him. Her fine linen dress rising up as she moved like a wave in the sea: glistening, catwalk glamorous, revealing thighs and more besides, undergarments, loose folds, teasing. She passed him again. She saw his excitement. Her boyfriend was over there with guests, a glass of alcohol and ice in hand. She went right past him. He had his dipsomaniac head on and he couldn’t stop himself from reaching out to paw at her. She saw him and told her boyfriend who became upset. He almost managed to fuck him up but his friends got involved. They broke them up and he said You will pay.
When the party ended, he wanted to walk home. They offered him a ride but he did not want it. He was close. They shot him several times, in the dark and on their own, and he barely made it home. He didn’t make it to his front door. Back at the party they washed red from the floor of the patio and off the sidewalk.
Award winning Mexican journalist Javier Valdez Cárdenas was murdered on 15 May 2017 just after leaving Ríodoce, a newspaper he helped establish in Culiacán, Sinaloa. He was 50 years old. He published this Malayerba column on 12 June 2016. His most recent book (previously published in Spanish as Levantones), appears in English translation and with an introduction by Everard Meade as The Taken: True Stories of the Sinaloa Drug War, appeared earlier this year by University of Oklahoma Press.
Translator Patrick Timmons is a human rights investigator and lawyer, a journalist and translator. He collaborates with the Freedom of Expression Project at the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego. He is participating in #agendadeperiodistas, a group formed in 2017 by journalists to protect journalists. He lives in Mexico City.
Mexican Journalism Translation Project 