The Poet in Room 12

by Ted Morrissey

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​   The poet in Room 12—el poeta en la habitación doce—has not left his room since arriving. A pair of maids, criadas, were saying during a coffee break behind the stone chapel, where there was an excellent view, una excelente vista, of Popocatépetl, whose steam and ash rolled heavenward like the beautiful souls of sacrificial virgins, vírgenes sacrificadas. Was the poet ill? Is that why he hadn’t left his room? No, no estaba enfermo. Was he writing? Was he hypnotized, mesmerized by his muse, su musa? No sé. Tal vez. Maybe. The wait staff brings him one meal per day—una gran comida a las dos. Otherwise only coffee, in the morning, early, and late afternoon, a las cinco. Café expreso y crema. Perhaps he is in Room 12 composing his masterpiece, su obra maestra, like Ercilla at his Araucana. Sí, o Braschi en su Imperio de los Sueños. His Empire of Dreams. They finished their coffee, negro, sin crema, and went back to work, trabajar. Perhaps one took a last glance at magnificent El Popo, whose steam and ash sometimes formed pictures, imágenes, against the cloudless movie-screen of Mexican sky. La pantella de cine.


    The poet arrived at La Hacienda Santo Cristo very late, medianoche, or even later. Without a reservation, sin reserva. He summoned the night manager by pressing the buzzer. He was impatient. No, not impatient, just very tired. Muy, muy cansado. The driver had dropped him at the gate. There was a guardhouse but no guard, pero no hay guardia. The poet walked along the quiet path, beneath a big moon, between palm trees who themselves seemed asleep, like sailors gently swaying in their hammocks. Perhaps el poeta thought of writing a poem—un poema with a quiet path, a big moon and gently swaying palm trees, como marineros meciéndose en sus hamacas. Perhaps he thought he would title the poem “La Gran Luna.” The sleepy manager said there was only one vacant room, and it was the hacienda’s second-best room, 3,500 pesos por noche. La habitación doce. The poet responded with his AmEx card, or it may have been a Visa, a bit battered, close to expiring. Tired, fatigado, like el poeta himself. The manager offered to summon un niño, to carry the poet’s bags—he may have left them outside the office door, next to the buzzer, watched over by the big moon and the palm trees. No hay necesidad. The poet had only the one bag, which he carried lightly on his shoulder.


​   For identificacíon the poet had an American passport. No, era pasaporte mexicano. No, el era canadiense. He had both in his bag. All three. Habla español? Sí—but with an American accent. O canadiense. O Canada. Lol, jaja. No, no—he was from Mexico City, but a poor part. A derelict part. He had the dialect of someone who grew up poor. Hardscrabble. Muy dificil. Sí, Iztapalapa o Cuautémoc o Ciudad Nezahualcóyoti. He was anxious that the night manager return his pasaporte quickly. Rápidamente. Straight away he placed it—them—in the lockbox in his room. La Habitación 12. Sí, sí. He must have fallen asleep straight away, instantáneamente. Not a peep until the next day. Estas loca. He was up half the night, pacing, muttering, singing at times. Always sad songs, canciones tristes. Sí, las blues. Estas loca. No estaba cantado. The guy wasn’t singing. It was the radio. He had it on all night. Todos noche. The station out of Puebla. Other guests complained. Qué? That there was a corpse next door? Un cadáver. Silent as a vault? Estas loca!


    He is a well-known poet. Famous in fact. Destacado. His books are in all the best shops. Sí, en bibliotecas universitarias. People read them, people study them, people love them. La gente los adora. They quote from them at weddings and funerals. At graduations, at baptisms. Todas las ocasiones especiales. Well, not everyone, not anymore. Los críticos, sabe. Always infatuated with the new, the latest thing. Reputations mean nothing to those cutthroats. Esos asesinos. Washed up, they say, yesterday’s news. He is holed up in there, in Room 12, wallowing in his former glory, grieving his deceased status, su estado de fallecido. No, not at all. The poet is writing, creating, composing—working on a breakthrough, finding a new path for his poetry. For Poetry. Writ large. He needs his isolation, his silence, his austerity. Paz y tranquilidad. Calliope is a quiet muse, a cagey muse. Her whisperings are often lost in the everyday chaos. La vida ocupada. Her urgings usurped by the clamoring mundane. That is why the poet came here, a La Hacienda Santo Cristo. The monks and the priests are long gone, desaparecido hace mucho, but he must channel their monastic ways to recapture his former glory. No, no. It is the comfortable room, the amenities, the four-star food. La cama grande. And it is majestic El Popo, radiating inspiracíon as much as steam and ash. What poet, worth his salt, could not write beautifully in the violet shadow of the volcano? Sí, sí.


    In the night, the remainder of the poet’s bags arrived. The driver roused the night manager, much to his irritación. Aeroméxico had mistakenly sent them to Acapulco. O Cancún. O Puerto Vallarta. They were hard-edged suitcases, sturdy, robusto, designed for rough-and-tumble travel; and they were well-tested. The medium-size case was heavy, pesado, filled with books, a whole little library’s worth. Una pequeña biblioteca. Books by all the greatest Mexican poets. Octavio Paz, Rosario Castellanos, Jaime Sabines, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, José Emilio Pacheco, Pita Amor, Amado Nervo, Carmen Boulloso, Xavier Villaurrutia, Mónica Nepote, Alejandro Aura, Arturo Meza, Isabel Fraire, José Maria Pino Suárez. Y all the greatest Spanish poets. Frederico Garcia Lorca, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, León Felipe, Rafael Alberti, José Luis Giménez-Frontin, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Clara Janés. Not to mention the South Americans and the Cubans, and the American poets who wrote in Spanish, quien escibe en español. Sí, sí, es posible. But the luggage was designer: Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Tumi, Dior, Prada. Something like that. Muy caro. Very expensive. Y brand-new, espléndido.


    El poeta hardly seems old enough to have such a reputation—especially una reputación that has come and gone, and may come yet again. There is white in his beard, sí, hay blanca en su barba, but that means nothing, nada. It has come early, like hoarfrost en septiembre, a frost of wisdom formed from reading all those books: un manto de conocimiento. Sí, sí. A mantle of knowledge. Un manto blanco. Otherwise the poet is still strong, still vital. Todavía lleno de vida. But it can’t be good for him, to stay cooped up in Room 12 día y noche, like a hostage, a prisoner to his passions. His love of poetry, amor por la poesía. To the joy and burden of creating. Pero no un prisionero. Más como un vampiro. Afraid of daylight, afraid of the sun. Asustado del sol. He needs companionship, human fellowship, conversation. Conversacíon? Estas loca! El poeta necesita ser jodida. The poet needs to be fucked. Even Drácula had his brides, sus novias. Voluntariada, mi amiga? Jaja.


    According to the Aztecs, Popocatépetl continues to steam in lamentation of his lost love, Iztaccíhuatl, whose body lies dormant across the Valley of Mexico. Princess Iztaccíhuatl fell in love with Popocatépetl, one of her father’s warriors. No doubt he was good with his spear. Jaja. Her father, the emperor, sent Popocatépetl off to war, a la guerra, planning to never see him again. Being a real bastard, un verdadero bastardo, he told his daughter that Popocatépetl had died in battle. Poor Iztaccíhuatl was so distraught she died of grief. Ella murió con el corazón roto. But Popocatépetl returned, hot for his princess, muy caliente. When he learned what had happened, he was furious at the emperor’s deception. The gods, moved by their great love, su gran amor, turned them into mountains, and Popocatépetl rained fire in his mad fury. Llovió fuego terrible. El Popo longs still for his love who eternally sleeps across the valley under a death shroud of snow, un sudario de muerte de nieve. That’s a good story, una buena historia. Those aztecas. Jaja.


    The poet had given a reading in Mexico City. At a bookstore, libería. No, no, en una universidad. No, no, una biblioteca. No, no. It was at a cafe, a famous cafe, well known for poetry readings. Sí, Café La Habana, o Casa de los Azulejos, o Bar la Ópera, perhaps even Museo Casa de Leon Trotsky. The poet was eager to share his new work, sus experimentos con verso, but it was not well received. The audience wanted the classics, quería los clásicos, the poems on which he’d built his reputación. A bedrock of beloved verse. But the poet was stubborn, muy terco, and kept reading his newest, most radical material. The crowd began to hiss and jeer, like a pack of drunken cats, gatos barrachos. Se puso muy feo. Very, very ugly. The organizer of the reading feared a riot, bloodshed even, tal vez incluso pérdida de vidas. They whisked el poeta out a side door, where a car was waiting. He fled Ciudad de México in disgrace, sí, en el infamio.


    At night, when the other guests are asleep and the staff have gone home, el poeta comes out of Room 12 to gaze at the stars, las estrellas, except those hidden by the indigo silhouette of Popocatépetl. There is no rest for El Popo; he steams and fumes no matter the hour, no importa la hora. Through the languid Mexican day and through the mild Mexican night. The poet lies in a lounge-chair by the pool and looks for constellations he knows, constelaciones familiares. There are the Great Bear and Little Bear, claro que si, and Orion, and perro mayor y perro menor. The poet thinks he sees Gemini, and Cassiopeia, tal vez. Perhaps one or two others. In any event, the night sky of Atlixco es brillante compared to Mexico City, whose sky is drowning in smog and light, niebla tóxica y luz. His mind, too, was cluttered and confused in the city, his imaginación a chaos of worry, un caos de preocupación. Perhaps here, aquí, in this converted hacienda, beneath this bejeweled sky, at El Popo’s wide foot, pie ancho, he can find the clarity of mind to complete his work. Lines of poetry as diamond-edged as Orion’s sword, as acute as the delta of Cassiopeia. El epítome de la perfección.


    El Popo seeds the air with his steam and ash, and it rains nearly every day, for a few minutes, por unos minutos. Guests scurry to their rooms, or inside the restaurant or chapel or spa—to await the return of the breathtakingly blue sky and blazing Mexican sun, el lardiente sol mexico. El poeta, if he notices the unpredictable shower, will step outside Room 12, letting Popo’s rain dampen the shoulders of his shirt and drip from his brow like baptismal water, agua bautismal. Even then he is shielded from most guests’ view by the stone walls of the courtyard. Only another visitor to the hacienda, peeping out their small windows, would see the man who never leaves his habitación. That is the rumor around La Hacienda Santo Cristo: a recluse, un recluso, is among them (or, rather, not among them), a man who is hiding from el policía or los carteles or from the wreckage of his marriage, su matrimonio. Something awful and sad and riveting. Horrible y triste y fascinante. Is he dangerous? A criminal? A pervert? One of those tech billionaires, multimillonarios technológicos? Is he a magnet of bad luck, mala suerte, of natural disaster? Will his presence bring everyone to the brink of their own mortality? Will there be an earthquake, un terremito, or the outbreak of a ruthless virus, or will Popocatépetl erupt into violencia and turn sleepy Atlixco into another Pompeii? Should management ask el poeta en la habitación doce to leave? For the sake of other guests’ safety. Por favor.​


    The poet’s nombre had been raised regarding the Nobel Prize, en la literatura. No, estas loca. It’s happened before. Sí, el gran Octavio Paz Lozano—pero no el poeta en la habitación doce. Imposible. Once or twice, unofficially. At the time he was too young, too unaccomplished. His work must mature, su obra debe madurar. Now he has been diminished, his poetry ignored or crucified by the critics. In sum, his time has passed. Su tiempo ha pasado. Yet he soldiers on, his field of battle the blank page, la pagina en blanco. Es un heroe. As tenacious as a tiger shark. No, un idiota. Why bother? He should put down his pen, come out into the sun, drink a daiquiri, relax. Disfruta la vida! Stop wrestling with words, palabras indomables. Just stop. Solo detener.


    A man came looking for the poet, asking questions. Management respected the poet’s privacy and was tight-lipped. El silencio de los muertos. But the man seemed to mean business. He was big. Intimidante. His knuckles told the story of growing up on the streets, the mean streets, en las calles malas. His knuckles were ruthless, heartless, and as hard as El Popo’s snow-shrouded head. El hombre took a room, paid in cash: tres noches. He paid un niño to go to the store and bring back some toiletries. Y a bottle of tequila. Something cheap, muy barato. Corazón Blanco, o Lunazul Blanco, o Tres Amigos. He gave el chico 1,000 pesos. Then another 500 for his troubles, y por sus discrecíon. Should someone warn the poet? Tell him to keep his head down? To watch his back? Estas loca. Why get involved? Don’t we all have troubles of our own already? No todas tenemos suficientes problemas? Only the fool buys extra. Solo la tanta compra extra.


    Late, after the restaurante closes, one of the waitresses, Rosa, visits Room 12, and Rosa doesn’t leave until the rosy fingers of Dawn are about to make El Popo’s head blush beneath his crown of steam and ash, su corona de vapor y ceniza. Quién? Rosa. You know Rosa. Conoces la chica. Tall, skinny, her legs like a chicken’s wishbone, but pretty eyes. Ojos muy bonitos, marrón como chocolate. Sí, sí, Rosa. Rosa Flaca is sleeping with the poet? What do you think? Qué piensas? They play Scrabble until sunrise? Rosa is building her vocabulary? Aprendiendo nuevas palabras? Rosa Flaca is riding el poeta until his stanzas ache. Like she’s breaking a bull. Rompiendo el toro. Estas loca. Rosa Flaca would snap in half, like a wishbone, como una espoleta. Don’t underestimate the skinny ones. No subestimas las flacas—las flacas con ojos bonitos.


    There is a museum above the restaurante—el museo tells the history of la hacienda with artifacts and photos (fotografías of priests and monks and nuns, de sacerdotes y monjes y monjas). There are framed letters, too. Diaries and ledgers in glass cases, en vitrinas de vaso, scrapbooks with newspaper clippings, recortes de periódico. Manuscritos completes también. Crucifixes, candlesticks, statues and other likenesses of Christ, El Senhor Santo Cristo dos Milagres. Christ everywhere performing miracles. El poeta was given a private tour, very, very late one night. Rosa no doubt, taking a break from lovemaking, hacer el amor. Perhaps the museum would inspire the poet. Quizás el museo inspiraría al poeta. The poet found it all mildly interesting, but the item that caught his eye was the old typewriter, el máquina de escribir, el Olivetti Lettera 32. He borrowed the weighty metal beast, sin permiso, and carried it back to Room 12. The poet was enchanted by the idea of charting a new path with a machine from the past, a machine heavily possessed by the ghosts of poets past. Sí, los fantasmas de los poetas muertos. He felt certain. Optimista.


    You would think guests would complain: The poet in Room 12 punching the keys at all hours, a todas horas. The thwack thwack thwack of the metal letters striking the paper, el papel,the sound barely softened by the ribbon of ink in between, ink which was miraculously fresh given the age of the machine. Milagrosamente fresco. But no one complained. The stone walls were thick, gruesas, after all. Perhaps they barely heard the clack clack clack of his feverish imagination, su imaginación febril, the mighty flow of his creativity, as he pounded poemas nuevos, into the world, like Vulcan at his forge. A frenzied explosion of verse. No, they heard, they had to hear, stone walls or not, muros de piedra o no. Maybe they found the old sound—the sound from another time, el sonido de otro tiempo—comforting. Maybe they wrapped themselves in la nostalgia like blankets, like, well, comforters. No, no, that wasn’t it. They were simply relieved to hear any sound coming from Room 12. It was a sign of life, un signo de vida. The poet’s constant quiet was what disturbed his neighbors. It was strange, extraño, antinatural. It was, well, disquieting. Unless...the poet was possessed, poseído. The spirit of some dead writer had invaded his soul, su alma, and it was forcing him to type the one that got away, el libro he hadn’t been able to finish before Death came calling. La Parca.


    A young couple, un joven paraje, held their wedding and reception at la hacienda, in the pavilion. There were hundreds of guests, both Mexicans and Americans, tanto mexicanas como estadounidenses. Their colors were red and white, and bouquets of blood-red roses, rosas rojo sangre, adorned the tables. Vines of them curled around and clung to the pavilion’s posts and rafters. It rained in sheets toda la noche, providing the open-air pavilion walls of water, like waterfalls, cascadas, for which the bride’s father had paid extra. A Cuban band from Mexico City prevented the storm, la tormenta, from dampening the moods of the newlyweds and their families, los recién casados y sus familias. El poeta may have needed a break from his reclusive life and from his writing. He put on his best shirt and trousers, and crashed the recepción. There were so many people, nearly all of whom were drinking from the start, everyone would assume he was someone else’s guest. The poet drank cerveza y vino blanco. At one point he had shots of tequila with the groomsmen, los padrinos de boda, someone said. He asked the older women to dance—many were widows, viudas—y the younger women who had no dates because they were fat, gorda, or unappealing in some way, fea. He preferred the lonely Americans, las americanas solitarias, because he could recite his poetry to them as they danced, fast or slow (estas loca, who dances slow to a Cuban band?), and they imagined he was speaking of the weather or the young newlyweds or the beautiful wedding, la hermosa boda. He even danced with the bride, la novia, an American girl en blanco from head to toe. The poet, who was quite drunk by then, bastante barracho, told her the storm was a wedding message from El Popo: She and her new husband would have many difficult times, tiempos turbulentos, but they would always face them together, siempre juntos. The American bride only half understood. Sí, mainly la chica wondered how the man was related to her groom. Jaja.


    Rosa Flaca had warned her lover, su amante: there was a man at la hacienda, a man watching for him, a man waiting, un hambre esperando. The man sat on the patio of the restaurante sipping expreso doble and reading Periódico Central, La Opinión, y La Prensa. He would sit there all morning, toda la mañana, reading behind his dark glasses. Reading and watching. Leyendo y mirando, as patient as fate, as dedicated as destiny. El destino. Sitting in a shaded corner facing the main buildings—the guest rooms, the little chapel, la pequeña capilla, the spa—with purple Popocatépetl steaming and seeding like a grand theatrical backdrop, something iconic, designed for patriotic Rudolfo Usigli. Sí, sí, but if the man is a killer, un asesino, sent by a cartel or a Mexico City bookie, un corredor de apuestas, at least he is a well-informed one, a master of current affairs, un maestro de la actualidad. News, sports, business, entertainment, weather. The killer reads it all, every page, cada página. The poet should appreciate that—jaja—that at least his death will be at the hand of a well-read hitman, un sicario bien leído. Estas loca. The killer should be careful: Rosa Flaca may slip rat poison, raticida, into his espresso. Beware the skinny ones con ojos bonitos. Lol.


    Hurricane Vicente is gathering strength, fortaleza, soaking up warm water like a street bum sops up cheap tequila. He has his sights on Bajos de Chila, o Marquelia, tal vez Acapulco. Stumbling along the Pacific, el pacífico, as if a drunken bum, un vagabundo barracho. Then Vicente will sweep across Oaxaca, Guerrero, Puebla—who can say, quien puede decir?—pissing rain everywhere, by the bucketful, maybe as far as Atlixco, as far as Ciudad de México. His winds, sus vientos, still vicious, still deadly. Perhaps the poet will add Vicente to the great poem he must be typing, the keys like a machine gun, una ametralladora, for hours at a time, alongside la luna grande y las palmeras like sailors in their hammocks (sí, como marineros en sus hamacas) y wonderous El Popo. Popocatépetl maravilloso.


    Wait. Tu esperas. Isn’t the hitman, el sicario, named Vicente too? Sí, the ultimate critic, el último crítico. Jaja.


    Padre Guillermo came to say mass, misa, at the chapel, La Capilla de Santo Cristo. Sí, like always, como siempre, todos los domingos. El padre must have heard about the poet, el poeta en la habitación doce, and thought he may be in trouble, that his soul may be in peril, su alma puede estar en peligro. Y he went to numero doce y he heard the typing, typing, typing, escribiendo, escribiendo, escribiendo. The rumor was that the poet was possessed, poseído. Sí, by his muse, por su musa. No, by the spirit of some dead poet, el espíritu de algún poeta muerto. Tal vez todos los poetas muertos. All the dead poets. Estas loca! Padre Guillermo didn’t believe either. El no creyó. At first. Then he heard the mad typing, el loco escribiendo. El sacerdote felt a shiver, un escalofrío, run through him. He was used to drug addicts and wife beaters and petty thieves—drogadictos, golpeadores de esposas y pequeños ladrones—but nothing like this. Guillermo knocked lightly, suavemente, on the door before hurrying away, clutching his crucifix, agarrando su crucifijo. To get holy water, agua santa. No, solo lejos, just away. El padre was scared shitless, sin mierda. Jaja. Or maybe the hitman, el sicario, was finally tired of waiting and paid the priest to confirm that el poeta was in fact in la habitación doce. No—you’re too suspicious, demasiado sospechosa. You watch too many telenovelas. Jaja, tal vez.


    Vicente struck. With a terrible vengeance. Una terrible venganza. The bastard struck in the night. El bastardo atacó en la noche. Magnificando el horror. With the light of day we beheld the awful sight, el terrible espectáculo. Y el poeta was no more. El poeta ya no existía. Room 12 empty. La habitación doce vacía. Only the old typewriter remained. La vieja máquina de escribir. Y the manuscript, the great work, el manuscrito, el gran trabajo? Donde fue eso? Where is that? No sé. Vicente has moved on, vanished in the night too. Desapareció en la noche también. Has anyone seen Rosa Flaca? Rosa Flaca con los ojos bonitos? Yo no tengo. Tiene? Perhaps El Popo knows. High Popocatépetl sees all, alto Popocatépetl lo ve todo. Perhaps he will tell the tale in images of steam and ash. Sí, imágenes de vapor y ceniza, against the bewildering blue of the Mexican sky.
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Ted Morrissey's most recent books are the novel The Strophes of Job, and Delta of Cassiopeia: Collected Stories and Sonnets.