The Almanac of the Dead

by Leslie Marmon Silko

  All the thick hairs on Menardo’s stomach and chest have turned white. He will be fifty in the spring. He wants to wear the bulletproof vest to the ambassador’s party. But he can not decide if an undershirt should be worn to prevent chafing.

  “I don’t want to be in the middle of dinner and have it pinch my ribs.”

  “There’s no chance of that happening unless you mean pinching the layer of fat hiding your ribs.” Alegría is angry because Menardo scolded her for the new shoes and purse to match.

  “Reptile, aren’t they.” He frowns. “You know how I dislike snakes.”

  She laughs and he turns suddenly from the silver box containing his cuff links. She realizes then he is serious. He has never been so angry with her before. She stands motionless and stares at him like the little doe blinded in the headlights of their Mercedes the night before. She is selfish and thoughtless but she knows it. All the shoes and dresses with his money are intentional. Why else is she married to him?

  Menardo turns back to the mirror and fumbles with the thin metal inserts that slip into pocket panels sewn in the front and back of the vest. The insert that belongs in the pocket over his heart does not lie flat. He had read the instructions that came in the box. The vest is the finest body armor made. The vest is sold only to the U.S. military and U.S. police forces. The instructions must be followed or the maximum protection will not be obtained.

  “Is everything all right?” The sight of the vest makes Alegría uneasy. Lately there is an unidentified dread that shadows her.

  “Of course. Don’t be silly.” Menardo says, taking a silk shirt from the closet. “We are going to be late.” Alegría feels the tears. She had not thought of tears, but there they are in her eyes.

  The scene is a replay of her afternoon with Bartolomeo, who complains he can’t even tease her anymore.

  “You will look good as a widow,” Bartolomeo had told Alegría as she was dressing. She was wearing a black silk slip.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just that you look ravishing in black.”

  “You know something else—tell me!” But Bartolomeo rolls over on his side and laughs. He tells her paranoia comes from guilt, but she had been frightened. Had spies seen her with Bartolomeo? Bartolomeo teases her after they make love; he calls her “the double agent.”

  “On whose side?” Alegría says, though she knows it is dangerous either way.

  Tears get nowhere with Bartolomeo, but fortunately Menardo is different. Menardo refuses nothing to her tears. She removes the black lizard shoes and carefully wraps them in the white tissue paper. She wipes the back of her arm across her face like a child. He is right. They are all right. About her. She’s selfish. She lives for herself. She knows this but can not stop. There is no other use for her. She knew this even while she was in school. The others at the university sneered at her drawings full of delicate lines.

  “Whom are those buildings for? What meaning do they have for any of us?”

  She laughed nervously and pretended to erase a smudge. “When you take power, you will want big buildings too,” she teases, but the hostility from them is always there even though she uses her key to get into the architecture building late at night to mimeograph leaflets for them. She loved making the drawings—floor plans of vast rooms, interiors flooded with light from high windows and domes, the pearly-yellow light framed on white walls. She wanted the gardens to penetrate the rooms. The only criticism of the drawings for her final project had been that they contained no human figures. The professor of the design class finds the figures of little dogs, parrots, and monkeys too whimsical. She does not tell him the human figures she draws spoil everything. They always look like police or men in dark suits, and they are always too large. She cleverly drew little dogs on the stairway. A monkey played in the orchids of the hanging garden, and she drew a scarlet macaw on a perch.

  In the backseat of the Mercedes, Menardo pats Alegría’s hands absentmindedly; ahead of them are two bodyguards in a truck, and two more guards follow in a white jeep. The vest causes Menardo to hold himself straight. He moves stiffly when he turns to take a second look at an armored personnel carrier parked outside the Governor’s Palace. Mexico is almost bankrupt and the country is about to explode, that is what her mother and father write to her each week. “Come home to Caracas,” they plead.

  “You are upset about something,” Alegría says to Menardo, who has a sour look on his face. He tugs at the corners of his small, neatly trimmed mustache. “It’s nothing you need to worry about, darling.”

  “But it is,” Alegría answers.

  At the party he watches her dance with each of the host’s four handsome sons. Alegría is the only woman dressed in black. She is the most beautiful. He had not meant to scold her about the shoes. But somehow black reptile skin is part of the nightmare he has from time to time. He struggles to remember the dream, but knows only somewhere in the dream there is scaly, black, reptilian skin. He had been startled that Alegría had found shoes and a purse identical to the reptile skin in the nightmare. She could not have known about the reptile skin because he told no one his dreams except Tacho, his driver, who came from a village near a Mayan temple ruin. In Tacho’s village they were all trained to decipher dreams. Menardo paid Tacho twice the going rate to ensure strict confidentiality. Enemies could use your dreams to destroy you, that’s what Tacho had told Menardo in the beginning. Right then Menardo knew he must double the Indian’s salary or tell Tacho nothing about his dreams.

  Menardo talks to Tacho about other delicate matters. He asks Tacho who these Indians are who join up with the guerrillas in the hills. Tacho turns and flashes a big smile into the backseat of the Mercedes.

  “They are the brothers of the soldiers who guard the Palace,” Tacho says, and pretends he is serious. Menardo likes a servant with a sense of humor. Sullenness upsets him. He had been relieved when Alegría had changed out of the black lizard shoes without pouting. Gardeners, servants, and the Indians had become more sullen since guerrilla forces had made regular strikes across the border. Guatemala had too many educated Indians. It was the fault of the Church. From the very beginning priests treated them like human beings.

  “Nowadays you educate an Indian and he becomes a Marxist,” the former ambassador says. The governor signals for the expensive champagne. Although they have been discussing the guerrillas, and before that the upcoming elections, Menardo’s attention wanders. It is probably due to lost sleep from the nightmare. He watches Alegría dance with an investment broker from São Paulo. She smiles up into the man’s face. It occurs to Menardo he could ask Tacho if Alegría had ever been unfaithful. Indians could detect such things. The governor jokes this is the last of his French champagne, now that the socialists had spoiled everything in France. Someone jokes about the Americans with money frozen in Mexican bank accounts. It isn’t a mistake any wealthy Mexican would have made. Menardo allows the dark-skinned servant to refill his glass again. He is getting drunk, but he wants to. Alegría is dancing with the host’s youngest son. They stop. The boy gestures with both hands.

  “It’s not just the Indians, really.” Someone behind him is talking about guerrillas. “A few come from the best of families.” Menardo takes a big swallow of champagne. He wants to dance with his wife. The boy sees him and bows away graciously. Alegría looks surprised. “Are you all right?” she asks.

  “Can’t a man dance with his wife?” Menardo answers, laughing from the governor’s good champagne.

  Alegría can feel the vest under his tuxedo. It is unyielding. He draws her closer to him, and with her eyes closed his steel-padded chest might belong to someone else. Alegría’s breasts are small, but they press the edge of the bulletproof panel into his chest. The pressure of the padded steel against his ribs is reassuring. He waltzes with his eyes closed. With champagne on the inside and the vest on the outside and his beautiful wife in his arms, Menardo forgets about the terrorist bombs and reports of new unrest. H
ow nice it is to forget. But Alegría twists away from Menardo before the waltz has ended.

  “That vest of yours is crushing me!”

  “Ssh! It’s no good if you tell everyone!”

  She laughs and replies, “So serious!” But she glides away to the ladies’ room downstairs. Menardo watches her until she disappears. Perhaps he was taking a risk to marry a woman so young, so full of modern attitudes. He smooths his shirt under the tuxedo jacket, feeling the padding and the steel of the vest. Iliana would never have complained about the vest. How often she had urged him to buy the bulletproof Mercedes. Before that, Iliana had worried about traffic accidents and insisted on big cars. It was good Iliana had not lived to see the world now where terrorists routinely attached bombs to cars. In his nightmare Menardo is riding in the Plymouth from years ago. He can not see who is driving. It appears to be early afternoon because the streets are empty. Here Menardo is puzzled because the empty streets of the dream frighten him. This is not a dream in which brown tarantulas swarm over his bed or blood-drinking bats attack him. Such dreams had awakened him but had not left him soaked in sweat. In the nightmare, he knows somehow the month is August. The empty streets of the nightmare are hot and bright from the sun. There are no spiders or monsters, only the empty street where Menardo is driven in the Plymouth.

  Somehow the dream awakens him stiff with terror, and with the bed sheets soaked in sweat. Menardo always awakens before the car passes the Governor’s Palace. Tacho can not explain why this dream leaves him shaking and dreams about spiders, bats, or big jungle cats do not. Tacho claims this dream can not be read until the car proceeds around the plaza past the Palace. Tacho urges him to stay in the dream long enough to reach the Palace.

  Alegría returns with her fur stole and beaded purse. “These shoes hurt my feet,” she says, and Menardo regrets scolding about the black lizard shoes. Other guests follow them. Outside, a three-quarter moon is dropping over the edge of the horizon. The breeze is surprisingly cool for late July. On the drive home, Alegría dozes with her hand in his hand. He leans over carefully and pulls a bottle of brandy from the backseat compartment. He suffers more often from a nervous stomach. Old age, Dr. Gris tells him, and laughs. But Menardo knows the nausea arrived that night with the nightmare.

  READER OF DREAMS

  TACHO SUSPECTS HE IS FORGETTING important details from this dream. Tonight Menardo understands this. Though he can not say why, the dream takes place in early August. It is just this sort of detail Tacho claims he needs in order to interpret the dream. Menardo remembered the black serpent skin. He is irritated that Tacho can’t interpret its meaning without knowing more. It is not a snake or lizard itself in the dream. Maybe it is around the corner, once you pass the Governor’s Palace. Tacho, like all the Indians, finds it easy to make jokes about the problems of others. They could care less about their own situations. No wonder they were such a poor and ignorant lot, although Tacho could at least interpret dreams—or could until the same dream came night after night. Before, when Menardo still had ordinary dreams, Tacho had told Menardo what numbers were associated with which dreams. For a share, Tacho offered to instruct the boss how to use dreams for the lottery. Tacho’s boldness in asking for 10 percent had been a little shocking. Still, for an Indian, Tacho knew a lot about percentages and odds. They had won each day he had placed a bet. Tacho was firm about the amount of money that could be placed on a number. Tacho claimed that if one got greedy and bet more than the prescribed amount, then the number would not pay. Working together they had won over 20 million pesos. Not bad, not bad. The work with the dreams had brought him closer to a servant than he had been since his childhood. His own father had always advised against it.

  Tacho is slouched in the front seat. In the darkness the red ash of his cigarette stares like the eye of a ghost. Tacho has the car door open for them before Alegría reaches the driveway. Brandy on top of the champagne makes Menardo talkative. He doesn’t care if Alegría hears him ask Tacho about his dream. But tonight Tacho only grunts. Nothing more. The silence of Indians is maddening. Menardo understands why his ancestors found it necessary to kill a few. But then Tacho turns to the backseat and whispers, “Tonight stay until your car has passed the Palace.”

  Alegría has gone to her own bedroom. The cigarette smoke has given her a headache, she says. Menardo postpones turning out the light. He makes a list of important phone calls for tomorrow. He wants to reassure Mr. B. that he knew nothing of General J.’s plan to resell the merchandise to an air force colonel in Honduras.

  He gets up abruptly and goes over to the massive black-walnut chest where the bulletproof vest is lying. He removes the inserts and lays it tenderly into the box. The guarantee and other printed materials are scattered on the bed. Menardo plans to read himself to sleep. But just to be sure, he pours another brandy. The advertising brochure is printed on expensive, slick paper. The pages are filled with color photographs of police officers—a few in uniform—but most bare-chested. They pointed at marks left by the impact of the bullet against the vest. The bruises ranged from purplish black to scarlet and fading yellowish brown. With each photograph there was a brief description of the encounter and the weapons used. The clock by the bed shows three-thirty. Menardo has read each of the accounts in the magazine carefully. He is pleased the vest repels knife attacks as well as bullets. Menardo feels happier than he has felt in many months. Perhaps the danger was becoming a strain. But the stakes were even higher now with General J. and their new air force. Now there was Sonny Blue, who worked for Mr. B. Menardo felt drowsy from the brandy, but after the light was out, thoughts continued to dart and flit through like nighthawks. The magazine had many details concerning ballistics. The metal inserts for his vest have STOPS .357 AND 9MM printed on them in large black letters. Of course a .38 slug was no problem. Menardo was curious about the blade of a knife. According to the brochure, cheap switchblades or butcher knives would break off in the vest. Menardo imagined an attack on him by masked assailants. The first attacker would fire a .38-caliber revolver at Menardo’s chest while the second would lunge with a big knife for his belly, but the knife would skid off the steel insert. Stunned by their failure, they would stand helplessly as Menardo pulled out his 9mm automatic, and the faithful Tacho opened fire with the Uzi he kept beside him on the car seat. The scenario was exhilarating. The bodies of the two guerrillas lay crumpled on the steps behind Menardo as he strode into the club for his afternoon meal. The scene soothed him to sleep.

  When he woke, Menardo heard a bird singing in the wisteria outside the window. He felt more refreshed than he had in many weeks. The vest had kept away the nightmare. Despite the brandy and the governor’s French champagne, his head was clear. He felt alert. He whistled while he bathed. He smiled at the maid who brought in his white silk suit. However, he waited until the maid left the room before he took the bulletproof vest from its box. He examined it carefully, running his finger over each seam, each nylon stitch. The knock at the bedroom door annoyed him. He pushed the vest back into the white tissue paper on top of the two inserts. But it was only Alegría.

  “Still fondling your vest,” she teased. She had only come to go through her special closet where she kept her most expensive dresses. She paused to choose between a pale yellow suit of raw silk and a white linen dress. Although she was in a bubbly mood and seemed to have forgotten the incident the evening before with the lizard-skin shoes, Menardo felt a distance between them. He was glad when Alegría gave a little wave and darted out the door again. He wanted to be alone with the vest to read all of the technical information in the new owner’s manual. The vest must not be allowed to become oily or soiled and was less effective when wet. The nylon covers on the steel inserts could be washed gently by hand in a mild detergent without the steel inserts. The vest itself was guaranteed effective against knives and .22 and .38 calibers. Steel inserts were necessary for protection from larger calibers. Of course the inserts were less comfortable than the vest
alone, but except for dancing with his wife, Menardo had not found the inserts to be annoying. The unyielding panels felt reassuring. He decided he would always wear the steel inserts. That way he could be certain.

  Tacho had been relaxing behind the steering wheel as if he were ready to hear about the nightmare. But Menardo had slept without dreams that night as he preferred. A man of his stature and financial success should not be confiding his dreams to a servant. Without intending to raise the subject, Menardo told Tacho the problem of the dream had been solved. He told Tacho no more than that. Nothing about the vest, although the vest had done the job. No one must know he wore a bulletproof vest.

  Night after night Alegría refuses sex with Menardo. Her quarrels with Bartolomeo leave her too angry for sex with her husband. “Fat red monkey” is the name the Indian guerrillas in the hills call Menardo, Bartolomeo delightedly reports. Finally Alegría agrees to sex with Menardo to avoid suspicion. She lies to Menardo and says she must go to her private bathroom for birth control. Away from him, Alegría sits on the closed lid of the toilet and stares out the window. The sky is full of stars. Alegría wonders what will become of herself six months from now. She tries to remember the names of some of the constellations. Where would she be tonight if she were not here? With whom would she be having sex right now? Sonny Blue in Tucson? Bartolomeo claimed the uprisings and strikes all over Mexico were only the beginning. In six months the war would spread from the South. The Indians talked to sacred macaws. Bartolomeo gave up. The Indians were hopeless. Bartolomeo was returning to Mexico City. He asked Alegría to accompany him. Menardo wouldn’t last long once the Indians got started. All this time the Indians had been misleading Bartolomeo and the others. The Indians couldn’t care less about international Marxism; all they wanted was to retake their land from the white man.