Howling in the Dark: Lobo by Bibiana Camacho
Since 2007, there has been a substantial increase in the rates of violence and murder in Mexico (Shirk and Wallman 2015: 1353). In Bibiana Camacho’s Lobo, the beast is constructed as a metaphor to explain the deaths and disappearances of Mexican citizens during the past decade and a half, one of the country’s periods of greatest peacetime violence. In this novel, the figures of the wolf and the werewolf appear as ghostly figures that never fully materialize but are nonetheless a threatening presence. The narrative centers on Berenice, a young scholarship recipient who, to advance her academic career, decides to spend a season working for Felicia, a famous researcher in her field. Despite her fame, Felicia has been somewhat sidelined in the academic world and lives almost in seclusion with her husband and servants in a mansion in the middle of a Mexican mining town called El Lobo.
The prologue, which is actually the epilogue and frames the rest of the story, presents the narrator fleeing from an invisible threat. The novel will develop this threatening presence that never materializes based on clues that build the idea of a pack of ghostly wolves, werewolves, or simply, man as “wolf of man” in the form of drug traffickers who have taken control of the town of El Lobo. Despite the name and experiences that Berenice will have, all the inhabitants assure her that wolves have been extinct in that region for decades. But even so, the protagonist can hear them: “Un aullido de lobo se escucha de repente, soy incapaz de saber la dirección de la que proviene, no puedo concentrarme en ello, porque si me concentro en el miedo, me voy a desplomar” (Camacho 2017: 13). The urgency of escape in this opening and closing scene reaches its zenith: “Ahí están los lobos otra vez, los aullidos se escuchan cada vez más cerca, parece que casi nos pisan los talones, otras veces se escuchan a lo lejos. No sé si nos vienen cazando o cuidando, ni siquiera sé si son lobos, yo jamás los vi” (14).
In the same oblique way, without mentioning it explicitly and always questioning it, the narrative will build an atmosphere that allows the reader to decide on the explanation they want to give to the series of strange events recounted. In this sense, the novel is constructed as a Gothic narrative, resorting to some of the resources of the genre. We read Berenice’s arrival
1 Note also that the name of the protagonist is that of one of Edgar Allan Poe’s most famous Gothic tales about a woman who returns from the dead and whose cousin and fiancé is obsessed with her teeth. at Felicia’s house as the approach of the Gothic heroine to the ruined and decaying castle, a typical trope of the genre:
Todo me pareció inútil, los muros que rodeaban la propiedad eran pequeños, luego descubriría que el camino a las minas y a la huerta abandonada detrás de la casa no tenía protección, cualquiera podía entrar a la propiedad desde el patio trasero. La casona estaba medio destruida, había muros caídos, tabiques de adobe por un lado y otro y matorrales que crecían sin control. (Camacho 2017: 20)
From the moment Berenice arrives at the ruined house, the narrative will begin to show signs of a slight imbalance, of something that is not right but that is not said or expressed either, and in this way the clues that lead to the imaginary of werewolves will be interspersed. When Berenice meets Felicia and her husband, she notices that he: “tenía el rostro arañado y le faltaban mechones de cabello” (27). In the same incomplete and elliptical way, after a visit to the village, Berenice finds another suggestive scene on her return:
En los escalones de piedra que daban a la puerta principal noté gotas oscuras, como de sangre. Escuché sollozos y percibí un ambiente lúgubre. Encontré a Felicia en el comedor. Tenía medio cuerpo tumbado sobre la mesa, sollozaba. Una mujer que nunca había visto estaba a su lado, le acariciaba la espalda y le pedía a media voz que se tranquilizara … Felicia no nos escuchaba. Estaba aferrada a la mesa. Tenía la ropa rasgada y había pequeñas manchas de sangre por todos lados. (Camacho 2017: 40)
When Berenice asks for an explanation of what she has just seen, she is told that Felicia had a fight with her husband. But as Berenice is not a direct witness to the situation and since she is the narrator of the novel, the reader is left in doubt as to what might really have happened. At a later point, sitting on a bench in the plaza of El Lobo, she feels uncomfortable finding herself subjected to the gaze of some men:
Hombres sombrerudos y botudos. Pasaban de vez en cuando en camionetones con vidrios polarizados. Y sólo me di cuenta de mi indiscreción cuando las camionetas desaceleraban al pasar frente a mí y algunos hombres me miraban severos desde la cantina. Fingían platicar, pero no dejaban de voltear a donde yo me encontraba … De golpe me llegaron todas esas historias de masacres y de crimen que ya asolaban al país, pero que en la Ciudad de México todavía parecían relatos de terror ocurridos en tierras lejanas. (Camacho 2017: 64)
The description of sinister-looking men who travel in pickup trucks with tinted windows may or may not match that of drug traffickers or hitmen. They may be simple residents of the town who view with suspicion someone who comes from the Federal District and does not belong to El Lobo, but whom Berenice, in her paranoia created by the news about disappearances in the interior of the country, associates with drug traffickers.
Needing to know who these men are who disturbed her, Berenice asks one of Felicia’s servants, who answers in a way that does not clear up the ambiguity: “A saber y es mejor ni enterarse” (Camacho 2017: 65). For Berenice, immersed in this ambiguity and distrust, these men could well be werewolves, subjects who hide a bestial essence that fits with the stories of “terror” that reached her ears in Mexico City. As Andrea Torrano points out: “The werewolf is no longer found on the margins of the community of men, but is inside, inhabits the city … the man who becomes a wolf is none other than the internal enemy, who can affect the social order” (2013: 433). In this case the werewolf is present for Berenice in the suspicious people she feels are watching her. Because even if they are not drug traffickers or bloodthirsty hitmen, as she suspects, they are a latent threat.
Wolves in El Lobo are extinct, the narrator repeats, but she hears frequent howls and knows that something is not quite right in that place. A pair of old women who distil the wisdom of the town and at the same time its mythical folklore, feed her paranoid fantasies:
Por si fuera poco, las Belugas me habían contado que durante un tiempo (la mina abandonada del pueblo) se usó para hacer sacrificios rituales para un dios que nadie conoce. Me contaron que lo hacía gente de fuera, gente rara, con camionetotas sin placas y ropa cara … Los hombres, me decían las Belugas, solían pasar por el pueblo para robarse a las mujeres y saquear la tienda. (Camacho 2017: 69)
The association between pagan, satanic rituals and drug traffickers has a long history in contemporary Mexico that can be traced back to the infamous case of the “narcosatanicos”: a small-time criminal gang that got involved with a “curandero” and ended up performing human sacrifices. They were discovered after kidnapping, torturing, and killing a young American in Matamoros, in 1989. In the novel, this idea that associates human sacrifice with drug violence is taken up again in the form of these characters who drive around in expensive trucks, ravaging the town and allegedly kidnapping women for human sacrifice. Although Berenice keeps hearing the continuous howling of wolves, everyone assures her that they are extinct. The narrative will not give the answer, it will simply leave the question open in the same way that it will not end up confirming whether or not the men who frighten Berenice are drug traffickers or involved in the disappearances of women in the town.
The association between this danger and wolves is taken up by the narrator herself, who, after remembering what the old women of the village have warned her, reflects: “Qué imprudencia la mía. Exponerme así al clima, a esos sujetos, a los lobos.” The enumeration of “those characters” and “the wolves” unites both threats (Camacho 2017: 70). The narrator adds:
¿Cuáles lobos si los pobladores los habían extinguido? Pues ese que me estaba mirando fijamente a escasos dos o tres metros. Ese que no se movía, pero que pelaba los colmillos. Ese, justo ese lobo podría despedazarme si lo quisiera, yo estaba más débil que temerosa. Cerré los ojos un momento, sólo un momento y pensé, y cuando los abra seguramente el lobo ya se habrá ido o quizás no se vaya y aproveche para acercarse más; quizá cuando abra los ojos esté ahí frente a mí; podía hasta sentir su aliento cálido y hambriento. (Camacho 2017: 70)
If there are no more wolves in the town, but Berenice is being threatened by one and also by those strange men who travel in luxury pickup trucks and engage in esoteric rituals, it is up to the reader to put together the clues. Again, by not explicitly stating the threat, the narrative leaves open the interpretation that it is about wolves that have not gone extinct as the townspeople say, drug traffickers, or men who turn into wolves. After her encounter with this wolf and hearing increasingly frequent howls, acquaintances of hers begin to “disappear.” Again, the narrator refers to it elliptically, and the first reference is made when, after recounting a meeting with friends, she notes: “Quién iba a decir que meses después ellos serían la primera pareja de ‘desaparecidos’ conocidos” (Camacho 2017: 85). The casual way she mentions the event fits with a form of passive resignation that takes hold of her as well as the others: “A pesar de que no veía las noticias con frecuencia, la situación en todo el país cada vez estaba peor. Desaparecidos por todas partes, retenes de gente sospechosa, tiroteos en medio de las calles, secuestros, asaltos, asesinatos por las cosas más absurdas. Paulatinamente, sin embargo, ya nos habíamos acostumbrado” (98).
The way resignation and habituation make people stop perceiving violence as surprising or trying to change the situation echoes the way the mystery of El Lobo, with its supposedly extinct but still present wolf population and its mysterious men who make people disappear, is also accepted as something that is not talked about. The narrative is intent on pushing the vagueness about the mystery: another afternoon, while returning along an isolated path to Felicia’s house, Berenice again hears wolf howls closer than ever until she feels a hand touching her back. It is Simplicio, Felicia’s servant. Berenice explains what she heard, only for the man quickly to dismiss the idea by reminding her that wolves are extinct in the village. The association between animal and man appears here, once again, in a direct and at the same time elusive way. Berenice’s inability to discover what is really going on overlaps with her dissatisfaction with the direction of her academic career and her research, which also seem destined to lead to a dead end. Similarly, the government’s inability to account for the fate of the people who begin to disappear also operates in the same way: a mystery that no one can solve, a certainty that something is going on, but at the same time an inability to determine what, within a world of rumors and excuses, is making people disappear.
The situation in the country worsens at the same time as that of the town of El Lobo. Citizens disappear and those who still remain take precautions. Prudencia, one of Felicia’s employees, tells Berenice that “las cosas se estaban poniendo feas” (Camacho 2017: 181). And then:
Ya vienen.
¿Quién?
Lo mejor será cerrar la hacienda con o sin fumigación, todos deberíamos marcharnos.
Pero ¿quién viene, Prudencia? No entiendo nada.
Hay rumores de que se acercan y cuando vienen la cosa se pone fea, aunque no sé por qué andan por estos rumbos, si ya no hay nada, nada que les interese, no hay gente, no hay minas, no hay nada. (Camacho 2017: 181)
Prudencia does not make the threat explicit, and then Berenice reflects: “¡Todos están perdiendo la cabeza, parece epidemia!, pensé para tranquilizarme, pero era obvio que se refería a los narcos, quienes años atrás habían asolado la zona hasta que la gente huyó y dejó pueblos casi fantasmas. Pero, ¿por qué Prudencia no lo decía abiertamente? Acaso tendría miedo de nombrarlos” (Camacho 2017: 182).
It is clear that Prudencia’s elision leaves the interpretation open. The explanation she gives herself about the drug dealers reassures Berenice, who needs to rationalize the situation, but the reader still does not know what Prudencia is referring to and what the people of the town are fleeing from. Little by little, all the citizens of El Lobo disappear, are murdered, or commit suicide. Berenice realizes that she is no longer safe there and decides to flee, which brings the reader back to the prologue-epilogue that closes the framing of the novel. The threat is never made explicit, the only thing that remains is the fear and the presence of the absence of the disappeared, just like the supposedly extinct, but still present, wolves.