Clothes on display in her wardrobe were embroidered in unique folkloric patterns and in every colour of the spectrum. On the top floor was a child's bed with a photo of composite of the faces of Engels, Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao. In her bedroom was another photo of Mao and another of Lenin giving a speech. She certainly was a woman of the time. Unfortunately, her personal life was a tragic one, being confined to a wheelchair most of her life, and she died shortly after her one and only public exhibition.

I left the museum felling exhilarated. Two museums down, one to go. I headed to the main square of Coyoacán, a suburb steeped in both modern and medieval history. At the time of the Conquest, it was the gateway to the Aztec kingdom. This is where the Tepanecs met Cortés and offered their allegiance to the Spaniards against Montezuma. Cortés tortured Cuauhtémoc here and lived in a house (that Alberto and I were not allowed to enter because it is now a private residence) with both the traitoress La Malinche and his Spanish wife, Catalina Xuarez, whom he later strangled. I bumped into Alberto again. We quickly had a look inside the Museo de Arte Popular, but it paled in comparison to Frida's museum, still fresh in out minds. As we walked away, a lady driving a car screeched to a halt in front of us and alighted with a tape recorder and an anxious smile.

"Do you speak English?" she asked, feverishly.

"Yes, we do" answered Alberto.

She explained that she was nearing the end of an advanced course in conversational English, and had to submit an authentic interview with native English speakers. I felt privileged to oblige. Among the questions were 'Where do you come from'?, 'What do you do?' and 'Do you like Mexico?' I said yes to the final question, not mentioning my double robbery on the metro, since without exception every Mexican I had met face-to-face was exceedingly friendly. She asked me if I liked mole, the chocolate sauce Mexicans put on everything from chicken to fish, and finished the interview with:

"Do you think Mexican women are beautiful?"

Alberto and I laughed, but she seemed very satisfied when we said, yes, some of them are very beautiful.

Back in Room 13 I heard a knock at the door. A gregarious Swede called Ari introduced himself to me as the occupant of Room 12. He had just arrived in Mexico. He struck me as a little strange, a suspicion which grew and then receded several times during the course of our discussion. He launched into an oration that lasted over an hour, telling me his life story - jailed in Sweden and Germany for kidnapping, assault, drug snuggling and firearm offences, son of a prominent Swedish conservative politician, follower of the Ananda Marga sect, vegetarian and devout nature-lover, he was here to visit an old girlfriend and to see if he could help the Chiapas Indians in their armed struggle for autonomy. He was financing his trip with a Swedish government pension, because he had a doctor's certifcation that he was mentally ill.
When I asked Ari the particulars of his amazing biography, he had a harmless explanation for all his past misdeeds. He was a victim of circumstance for most of his criminal convictions, in part because of the company he kept, and partly because he was victimised by the police because he was a politician's son. He admitted the assaults were his fault:
"Its my temper and sugar" he explained, enigmatically, in a very strong accent.
"What do you mean, temper and sugar?" I asked.
"They don't mix. When I take sugar, I get hyperactive and sometimes lose my temper and bash people, and don't stop till I'm tired. The doctor gave up trying to treat me, gave me a certificate to claim a pension, and said that Ananda Marga might be worth a try. Their meditation and way of life was the only thing that worked."
Now I understood. Ari was criminally, violently and certifiably, insane. But that was not the end of his story. He said he had been in Mexico several years ago and had had girlfriend whom he hoped to marry, but her ex-boyfriend, a mafioso jailed for murder, was released after only three days in prison and was said to be looking for him. So he fled back to Sweden for both his girlfriend's and his own safety. He had been planning his return for several years.
"Cecilia hid from him after she got death threats from his enemies. She has a child to him, but now lives with a srink."
"A what?"
"A srink, you know, a psychoanalyst."
"Oh, you mean a shrink." I guess a guy like Ari would know a lot about srinks.
"Yeah, but now she knows that I'm back, she wants to be with me."
Ari asked me if I would like to accompany him to meet her brother, Jose Miguel, but I told him I was busy, I had to go and do some emailing, and told Ari about my encounter with a Mexican pickpocket.
"If they try to rob me, they will get this!"exclaimed Ari, brandishing what appeared to be a Parker pen. But it wasn't a pen, it was a concealed weapon. He pulled the top off, and withdrew a slender four-inch blade.
"Even when I was in prison in Germany, I had this pen, and nobody messed with me."
He had a crazy look in his eyes, and seemed proud of his James Bond gadget. Yet although he had a troubled past, I was not very wary of Ari. He was no worse than some of my former workmates in the tunelling industry. You just had to remember not to make him angry, especially if he just had some sugar.

from Chapter 5, page 98:

At a rest stop, I told Ari how much I was enjoying the holiday, despite how little planning I had invested in it, when he trumped me: he had decided to go to Mexico only two weeks before he went, the minimum required to obtain a discounted ticket. He told me he left Mexico City because he was starting to view any Mexicans who were staring at him as potential muggers, and was enjoying it, saying he hoped they would try and rob him:
"I was thinking, yeah, come on, I am ready for you, I want to fight you, you are nothing, just street punks. I will beat you, because I have experience in jail fights. But then, when I looked again, I saw they were just two boys looking at me because I was different, a gringo. My psychologist back in Sweden has an explanation for these thoughts."
"What explanation?" I asked.
"He calls them LSD flashbacks."
Oh dear. I hope he doesn't have one of these flashback things after having too much sugar in his tea. In some ways I was glad I would not be spending too much more time with Ari. Something about him, apart from his stories, made me feel uneasy. He had a penchant for the funny cigarettes, lighting them up in public places, and always carried a stash of them around on his person. If I was with him should he be searched, we could both be locked in prison. But on the other hand, I knew Ari was a true friend, one who would not hesitate to stand and fight should danger come my way.