Hypothermia

papers and books to avoid running into one of my students at the bus stop or, later, on the Metro. I never really know what to say when I do. I feel as though I’m going to end up sounding like a pervert, no matter what I say. Adjusting my glasses on the bridge of my nose every few moments, I pretended to be absorbed with my roster. I briefly looked over my notes again and then, with exaggerated care, packed everything into my briefcase. I left the building only when I was sure they’d all melted away into the sprawling campus.
    Outside it was odd to see no one sitting on the patio. Thanks to its comfortable tables in the shade right outside a building frequented by foreign exchange students, it’s usually populated by packs of smokers. A heavy, humid breeze, more appropriate to August than the end of September, was stirring the astonishing amount of sodden trash left by the storm in the corners of the patio and all around the legs of the chairs. Then I heard the sound of sirens in the distance, and realized how uneasy I was already feeling.
    Ever since the mournful days of the Mexico City earthquake in 1985, the sound of ambulances fills me with an anxiety that I’m always slow to identify. For the better part of two weeks, sirens provided the only soundtrack to our paralyzed lives. I’ll never forget the mornings I spent as part of a team of senior high school students hauling and delivering food in Tepito, a neighborhood that had been completely destroyed. This is what Mexico City will look like when the gringos declare war on us again, El Pollo said to me. He was hard at work playing the role of emergency driver in the improvised ambulance we’d made out of his truck, sticking giant crosses of red tape to its sides. Afterward—as with Darío and tradition—nothing in Mexico was ever the same: we flushed the toilet on sixty years of half-assed tyranny. Although the older generations have a hard time accepting it, we had ourselves a real revolution, a la Hemingway: by carrying stretchers.
    To get to the street that runs through the center of campus you have to traverse a long meadow bordered by oak trees. Normally this walk cheers me up when I’ve had enough of being an insignificant foreigner: teaching classes in Latin American literature at a gringo university is like cutting trees in a deserted forest with no one around to hear them fall. As I walked, I felt increasingly sure that something ominous was afoot: not a soul in sight on the paths, and the whining sirens were growing more intense as I approached the university’s main road. At that point I was still sufficiently unaware of events to be annoyed by the idea that, whatever had happened, the road would be clogged with terrible traffic and I’d end up taking forever to reach the Metro. I checked my pocket and made sure I had enough change to call my wife from a pay phone. I wanted to let her know that she should go ahead and give the kids dinner. I’d be home as soon as possible.
    Which turned out to be the last ordinary worry I’d have, that evening: I got to the main drag only to find it closed off and deserted. The bus stop was encircled by yellow police tape. The ambulances sounded farther away now. Seized by a ferocious dread, I walked toward the student commons where the cafeterias, bookstores, and post office were located. All deserted. I walked the hallways, climbing and descending staircases. Everything was closed and lonely. In the main dining room the tables were covered with dozens of abandoned meals: half-eaten hamburgers, full cups of soda, plastic spoons navigating melted sundaes. At the reception desk, I rang the visitors’ bell over and over in a sort of hysteria.
    Before going back outside and starting my long walk to the Metro station—I’d had to do the same thing once before, when a snowstorm shut down bus service while I was busy in the library—I stopped at a bank of pay phones to call my wife and ask her what was going on. The line was dead. Then I heard the unmistakable sound of a whole crowd of people walking together in silence.
    I ran upstairs and came face to face with a huge line of students shuffling along in a tight, orderly, disciplined column, following a volunteer wearing a florescent orange vest over his everyday clothes. In the crowd, I recognized a woman from Panama who was a former student of mine. I pulled her out of line and asked her what was going on. There was a tornado, she told me in a