By Alejandro Bastidas

Illustrations by Kire Torres

What started as a trip to my grandmother’s basement ended in an interdimensional journey to an alternate version of New York City. Something tells me that Abuela Ophelia knew exactly what would happen as soon as I ventured into the darkness below her bungalow. That kind of humor preserved her youth despite her seventy-two years of age. My other theory is that salsa, both the dance and the sublime act of listening to it, made her move and act with more vitality than people my age.    

“Mijo,” she called from the kitchen.

“Yes?” I yelled from the other side of the bungalow. She didn’t answer. Instead, I had to walk across the bungalow to receive the next part of the message, and in my slow walk, I realized that my mother had the exact same habit. “Yes, Abuela?”

She studied me for a few moments, her small eyes reflecting the intensity of those who have lived more than they tell, and with her head tilted slightly as if to catch a better angle of me, she said:

“You’re not eating. Too skinny, Juanito. If you stay like that, you’ll fly away when the south winds blow in the winter. It happened to your cousin Omar.”

“Abuela, Omar was kidnapped,” I told her. “Remember? That’s why he never came back.”

Her smile faltered for a moment, the cold claws of remembrance digging back into her head.

“Sorry,” I told her. “Yeah, I’ll eat some more when I get back home.”

Her smile returned.

“Nonsense,” she said. “I’ll make you some pandebonos right now. In the meantime, can you go to the basement and bring me my magazines? I want to sew in the evening.”

“Of course,” I told her. I gave her one quick kiss on her head before I rushed down for her magazines.

Abuela Ophelia always stayed updated on the latest fashion trends but refused to go outside and purchase them at the mall, preferring to make everything herself, using a machine that was twice my age but still worked better than my own brain. She could work for hours without taking breaks or complaining about her leg, even though I knew it always hurt her. The only time she would stop was when a salsa song played on the radio. Then, she’d hop from her chair, clap her hands in excitement, close her eyes and let the music guide her legs while she sang to Celia Cruz.

That was Ophelia.

How she’d come to obtain an artifact capable of interdimensional travel will always be beyond me. No matter how many times I asked her, she would always dramatize a convincing case of ignorance and call me crazy.

The basement beneath her bungalow was a cemetery of memories about our family, our triumphs and losses, always in a constant battle to see which of the two amounted to a greater weight. For someone like Ophelia, whose memory was fractured by the inevitable side-effects of time, the basement also served as a sanctuary where she could touch events and faces that her mind had forgotten, holding on to the fragile pieces of the past that in other homes would have only accumulated dust. Ophelia kept the basement as neat as her own bedroom. The lavender perfume she sprayed over her clothes was also present in the wood and drywall and tapestries below.

Ophelia’s magazines were piled up in chronological order next to an icon of the Virgin of Guadalupe, a present from my Abuelo Tito after his trip to Mexico. Ophelia revered the Virgin as a connection to a holy figure but also the love of her life, taken from her too quickly, too viciously, by the natural occurrences in Cali that come in the shape of a bullet. In this city, that’s a natural form of death. Strokes are rare. Hitmen, on the other hand, are not.

Just as I selected two magazines, my eyes wandered across the basement and settled on her old record player, which would have seemed new to anyone for its immaculate golden glint. But the record covers beside it were torn well enough, and that made them precious, for it meant they had been held by loving hands. I browsed through the collection and recognized titles from Héctor Lavoe, el Joe Arroyo, Richie Ray & Bobby Cruz, Maelo Ruiz, Ismael Rivera, Grupo Niche and, at last, Rubén Blades.

The last record by Rubén Blades was signed with a blue marker that surpassed the test of time. It was “Pedro Navaja,” one of his greatest hits. Knowing that Abuela would forgive my tardiness, I played the record and closed my eyes. The steady rhythm of the introductory bongos carried me away. The song grew louder in my ears with every passing second, and I finally learned what people meant when they said some songs could absorb the audience into the melody. Because when I opened my eyes to check if the player had malfunctioned, I found myself far from Abuela Ophelia’s basement. Far from Colombia, my home.

I’d imagined him many times as a funny fellow, this Pedro Navaja that Rubén Blades had so masterfully described, but when he appeared before my eyes like a sinister apparition sent to punish infidels and saints alike, his feet in synch with the bongos blaring from the heavens above, I knew I was staring at the kind of man who had murdered Abuelo Tito. Pedro Navaja, meaning Pedro Switchblade, with his hands inside the pockets of his beige trench coat that shrouded his entire frame, advanced through the streets of New York City with a predatory confidence. Police sirens cried from afar while intermittent flashes of blue, red and white barreled into the faraway alleys where nothing could grow. Pedro studied the place. I knew he looked at the space where I stood but did not see me standing there. He grinned at the desolation, a single gold tooth glimmering in his crooked smile.

Rubén’s voice merged with the wind, as if he were an omniscient god narrating the violent hunt that was about to unfold, for Pedro Navaja was searching for someone whose death could satisfy the sadistic impulses that guided his meager life, and he found the victim at last, emerging from the corner ahead. The song told the story swiftly, the encounter of the two figures, Pedro and a young prostitute, who walked home after meeting a client and only wanted to be left in peace. But she knew, like I knew, that in New York and Cali alike, a late-night stroll comes with dangers. She had no one to count on except herself. Or perhaps she could have counted on me, the shocked spectator, appalled by the promise of violence. The coward, doing nothing about it.

The prostitute reached for a small Smith & Wesson from her thick fur coat and tucked it safely inside her black purse. She quickened her pace as she advanced into the darkness, unaware of the killer lurking behind. Her killer, lurking behind.

A tight fist formed under Pedro’s coat as he closed in on her.

“Mira pa’ un la’o, mira pal’ otro y no ve a nadie,” sang Rubén Blades from the heavens, narrating the calculated movements of the killer. “Y a la carrera, pero sin ruido, cruza la calle …”

“You! Stop!” I yelled at Pedro, but my voice was suffocated by the trumpets of the song. I wouldn’t save anyone standing there like an idiot. So I rushed over to the other side of the street.

But Pedro was faster. He pounced on her, jagged knife in hand, golden tooth in proud display as he chuckled. The blade entered the woman’s back, into her flesh. The woman gasped and her legs spasmed, but she was quick and stronger than she looked. Fur coat flew, she turned around, facing her assailant. Her hand was still inside the purse while she died, while she fought and claimed her vengeance. The trigger was pulled. The bullet blasted a hole through the purse and caught Pedro in the chest. His blood splashed my shirt just as the music devoured the world with its deafening blare, a joyous melody washing over the violence that had painted the streets red.

My screams went unheard, just like the gunshot, just like Pedro’s agonizing groans.

“Quien a hierro mata, a hierro termina,” sang Rubén Blades.

How many times had I danced to that song before? With how many people, at how many clubs I visited back then, while Pedro and the woman bled to death? I kept on smiling and singing the violent narrative. Partners moved their feet as if entranced by a spell stronger than their misfortunes, always. And I knew there were more salsa songs of that nature. Dark and severe, but camouflaged under layers of instruments and sweet melodies that people could dance to, so it was an endless tug, or rather an endless plot, between tragedy and fortune, joy and loss, that surrounded the dancers who weren’t all that different from the people in the songs.

A filthy drunkard paraded through the streets in that moment, his legs too confused to walk in a straight line, but he made it to the crime scene well enough. He smelled like roadkill and a lifetime of recycled needles. The man knelt beside the corpses and looted the woman’s purse, retrieving a humble twenty-dollar bill. From Pedro he took the golden tooth. The drunkard advanced in a steady dance that matched the song’s rhythm, and after whistling the melody, he turned around and looked at me. He saw me.

“La vida te da sorpresas… sorpresas te da la vida!” he sang, stretching each syllable like only a drunk man can do. “Ay, Dios!”

A mantle of darkness swallowed New York City. The next moment I was back in Ophelia’s basement, standing next to the record player, now frozen in place and silent as snow. There was no blood on my shirt and no corpses before me. But the drunkard’s stench followed me to the real word, and so did the image of the woman’s grey eyes after she died.

“You seem troubled, Juanito,” Ophelia said from the stairs.

“What — when did you get here? Abuela, I saw … no. Never mind,” I sighed. “What a horrible song, that ‘Pedro Navaja.’”

“A classic,” she answered and walked up to me. “A very honest song, if you ask me. It helped me get through your Abuelo Tito’s passing.”

“How? By hearing someone sing about death?”

“By hearing someone sing no matter what might have happened. Period. By hearing those trumpets and bongos, the clave and the cencerro,” she said and reached for another record from her collection. “Come dance with me, Juanito.” She smiled, as I hesitated. “It is the only thing we can do. The only thing we can control.”