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it has been shot in black and white, retouched with the hues and shades of Mexico—the scarlet serapes of the Indians, their wide-lipped, camel-colored sombreros, the brown of burros crossing a small brook, the milk-blue water in the foreground of the otherwise craggy terrain. The terrain consists of boulders, a dirt road veering upward through coffee trees, trees of willow and ash, and lush green ferns bowed beneath the weight of orange orchids. The boy will like it, he thinks. He’ll drop the postcard after. It could be the last he’ll need to send.
    The empty streets, the ease of the city in the early morning meets his hopeful frame of mind—perhaps it could be different; this year could be different, he’s thinking. A sudden, swift crack of a window breaks his thoughts. He sees the flash of it opening, the pane of glass reflecting the sky in first a shimmer of white cloud, then blue. The street settles into calm again and he steps back onto the sidewalk, turning down Avenida Sonora, where he can take a camion to Paseo de la Reforma.
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    T H E LIMESTONE SIDEWALK WINKS with flecks of mica. He takes the stairs two at a time. He walks to the entrance beneath the wide, shaded portico. The glass doors before him are rimmed in silver chrome. Inside, his footsteps echo down corridors. There is a resigned, empty air to these hallways—spacious and wide, still enough to inhale the scent of dust, feel the coolness of marble. Both senses spur in him the old, familiar tightness—first in his stomach, then traveling up to his chest. He is early, but the lines already come halfway down the corridor. He can hear the requests for birth certificates, applications. Next, demands for identification. An address. A sponsor name. From above comes the boom of weighted doors slamming closed.
    He reaches the head of the line. A man in a blue uniform gives him a number. It grows clammy in his hand. Up ahead the waiting room is full and appears to breathe from the collective inhalations and exhalations of uncertain men and women. Glances. Judgments. He walks down the center aisle; in the periphery the benches sit like book spines. Over the years, he’s come to know the room well—its scalloped moldings, marble floors of gray and black swirls, the rows of floor-to-ceiling windows like tall glasses of water. He knows too the way the room is awash in worry: in the faces of men who sit staring into a middle distance; in the women’s hands as they attend to their handmade laces; in others reading, eyes rising over the edge of a newspaper.
    He settles into a place on a bench at the back of the room, taps his feet and looks at the worn tips. He hopes that they will not notice his shoes, that no one will look too closely and think him useless. That morning he tried his best to polish away the scuffs and had even taken a brown pencil to color in a bit of the tips. To his surprise, it worked quite well and he wondered why he had not thought of such a trick before. It may have worked in his favor, because well, from afar, do they now not look like a brand-new pair of shoes, shined and polished? He takes in the room. There is something about the entire building that threatens an impending scolding, as if, at any moment, he will be called out, “You there, come with me.”
    One hour creeps into two. The rustle of turning newspapers, footsteps coming close and fading away, whispered exchanges. His eyes grow heavy, closing for, he tells himself, just a moment.
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    â€œ
F
IFTY-TWO .
A
USTIN
V
ORONKOV. ”
    He feels his shoes slide out from under him. There is a bolt of cold to his throat. He is not quite sure if he is standing. He feels a little surge of blood from his lip where he’s bit down. He is before the glass partition, staring at the clerk. He has not encountered this one before. The clerk has a long, thin nose. Fine light hair. Not