The Almanac of the Dead

by Leslie Marmon Silko

  Grandmother of the Dawn

  Grandmother of the Day!

  They looked like humans

  They talked like humans

  They populated the earth

  They existed and multiplied

  They had daughters and they had sons.

  These wooden figures had no minds or souls.

  They did not remember their Creator.

  They walked on all fours aimlessly.

  They no longer remembered the Heart of Heaven and so

  They fell from grace.

  They were merely the first attempt at human beings.

  At first they spoke but their faces were blank.

  Their hands and feet had no strength

  They had no blood, no substance no moisture, no flesh.

  Their cheeks were dry, their hands and feet dry and their skin was yellow.

  Burning pine-pitch rains from the sky.

  Death Macaw gouges their eyes

  Death Jaguar devours their flesh

  Death Crocodile breaks and mangles their nerves and bones and crumbles them to dust.

  THE OPAL

  THE OPAL DID NOT appear to be a fake, wrapped up to fool rich society women. They both knew the danger of looking at the opal unless they were prepared; the eye of the opal might show them anything; the “eye” might take them anywhere. El Feo had glanced down for only an instant, but he had seen the Cuban, Bartolomeo, his hairy bare bottom bouncing on top of Angelita in Mexico City. That hadn’t been news to El Feo, but all the same, the opal might show anything, even the most trivial or embarrassing. El Feo said that was another reason Tacho should keep the bundle; the opal might show too much; a man might see the struggle and suffering to come and lose heart. Angelita with the Cuban wasn’t pretty, but it was necessary: to get back the land was everything.

  After El Feo had gone back to the mountains, Tacho had not been able to resist; the bundle was inviting him to take a look. All he had to do was to ask, and the eye would show him everything everywhere—all that had been, all that would be. All El Feo had done was glance down and he had seen more than he had bargained for; Tacho took the stone in the palm of his hand, and with his eyes closed he had exhaled to feed the opal’s spirit his own breath. When Tacho had opened his eyes, the unpolished surface of the opal appeared as thick layers of clouds high over the earth. Tacho peered down through the clouds and could see glittering sapphire blues and emerald greens of the Pacific Ocean, and the long coastline, longer than Tacho had ever imagined, the coastline of the Pacific all the way from Chile to Alaska. Then the clouds seemed to darken and thicken and there was fire; Tacho watched great cities burn; torches of ruby and garnet mushroomed hundreds of feet into the sky. Tacho had strained to see landmarks more clearly, but one city was larger than any Tacho had ever seen. Then he knew: he was watching Mexico City burn again, but this time the sacred macaws had watched as cages full of human cannibal-sorcerers went up in smoke.

  Before Tacho returned the bundle to its box, he tried to ask the opal to show him his own life, but all Tacho had been able to see was the unpolished gray surface of the stone. Carefully he rewrapped the opal and returned it to its box. The eye had closed for now.

  RIOTS WORLDWIDE

  MENARDO HAD WATCHED satellite television until dawn. Menardo sipped hot brandy and chocolate to soothe his nerves. At dawn a strange fatigue and sleepiness would overcome him; then Menardo would be able to sleep without dreams for a few hours. Recently though, Menardo had found the satellite television news irritating, even upsetting; images of the hordes of dirty rabble—the mobs shrieking and stampeding in front of police armored cars or military tanks did not calm his ragged nerves. All over the world, everywhere, the TV cameras showed civil wars. The video images brought back the university riots many years before in Mexico City. Menardo had had heavily insured businessmen in the Federal District, and he watched himself age ten years in one week as the rioting began to spread to involve other sectors of Mexico City. If the riots had not been stopped, Menardo’s losses might have run to billions of pesos, and Universal Insurance would have been ruined.

  For years Menardo had not had to worry about the “civil strife, strike, or insurrection” clause of his insurance policies. The long-haired, filthy communists had disappeared from television screens, and Menardo believed the days of mobs and riots had truly passed. Then suddenly one night Menardo had awakened to a loud buzzing sound. The screen of his television had been filled with what appeared to be larvae or insects swarming. When Menardo had raised the volume and looked closely, he saw the swarms were mobs of angry brown people swarming like bees from horizon to horizon. At first Menardo had thought he was seeing a rerun of videotapes taken at the Mexico City riots years before; then, looking more closely, he had seen the city was Miami, and the mobs, American. All over the world money was the glue that held societies together. Without money or jobs even the U.S. was suffering crippling strikes as well as riots and looting. Cities such as Philadelphia that were bankrupt had to appeal for the National Guard, but riots in Detroit, Washington, and New York City had also required federal troops. Menardo shook his head. He didn’t like the look of things in the United States. What a shame such a power as the U.S. had gone the same direction as England and Russia. Almost overnight, the people had discovered all their national treasuries were empty, and now everywhere there were riots.

  Menardo dozed off, only to suffer a bad dream. In the dream, Menardo had been running to find his security units in armored trucks; but when he reached the village square, the trucks were there, but his men were not. With the crowd advancing toward him, Menardo had frantically tried to fire upon the mob from a truck, but the mechanism in the machine gun had malfunctioned, and instead of exploding shells, all Menardo had heard was click-click, click-click. Then the armored truck with Menardo inside had been engulfed by the mob, who rolled the vehicle down the street ahead of them. The mob pushed the vehicle into the sea. As the dark, cold water had closed around Menardo to suffocate and crush him, he awoke sweating and panting with the bed sheet twisted partially around his neck. All the other bedding had been kicked on the floor.

  Menardo asked Tacho what the meaning of such a dream might be. Menardo had lied and said the dream was not his, but belonged “to a friend.” Tacho had asked if the “friend” was a white man or an Indian, but Menardo refused to say. Why should the meaning change for an Indian? Menardo had demanded to know. Tacho had only smiled faintly and did not answer.

  “If your friend is a white man, the dream is about his fear of being born. But if your friend is an Indian, the dream is about a sacrifice for close family members.” Tacho had watched Menardo’s expression in the rearview mirror. “Oh, oh, I see.” Menardo began nodding his head; he didn’t really “see” at all, but he was hoping the Indian would let it go at that because he had drunk too much brandy getting back to sleep after the nightmare.

  Menardo blamed television. Monkey see, monkey do. There was nothing wrong with television for entertainment, but the broadcasting of mobs and riots was precisely what the terrorists had wanted. All anyone had to do was look around. At the market, rival food vendors had rigged tiny Korean televisions with wires to car batteries to lure customers, who ate friend dough or tripe while their eyes never left the TV screen. Television showed everything—it showed too much. Menardo had to shudder whenever he recalled the videotapes the police chief had showed him and the others in their shooting club. Still the use of video to control criminals and terrorists was entirely a different matter.

  Menardo blamed television commercials designed to seduce and bewitch viewers who would never get any closer to the objects of desire than the television screen, or store windows, which looters smashed with bricks. That was the trouble! Television spoiled secrecy. What common people did not see, they did not covet. If you had a little money set aside, you had to hide it or your relatives and in-laws would borrow and steal you blind. How could storekeepers fill their shop windows wi
th televisions and not expect the ignorant rabble to steal them? The ignorant rabble did not understand the struggles of the small businessman; even Menardo, as successful as he had been, had to face competition from giant insurance companies with multinational holdings to cushion their losses. Looters saw window displays of tape and CD players, and to them, the merchant who owned the store appeared to be a millionaire. What did ignorant Indians know about conducting a successful business? All they wanted to do was waste money and time on village feast days, special “remembrances” for beloved relatives, and ailing clanspeople. Menardo could have been like the others—like his cousins who stayed up all night listening to old men talk about devils and ghosts. Menardo could have taken the easy way out like the others and lain back in a dirt-wall house playing with the babies and the children while his Indian wife supported them from sales of eggs and poultry at the market. In cities, the Indians behaved no differently. The men did nothing. Menardo hated to see them smoking and talking in twos and threes on street corners. Not only did the Indians not make anything of themselves, they had tried to unmake any of their own people who tried to succeed. Menardo had seen Tacho’s brother and the other village louts slinking in and out of Tacho’s quarters, no doubt to beg money or to sleep. Ordinarily, Menardo would have forbidden the visits, but Tacho was different from other Indians Menardo had employed; Tacho had special abilities to interpret dreams.

  SONNY BLUE AND ALEGRÍA

  JUST AS HIS FRIEND Sonny Blue had said, the world wasn’t such a pretty place these days. That had been the reason for the special gift of the vest. Menardo had examined the vest again and again, running his fingers along the reinforced nylon stitching that secured the “wonder fiber” panels in the vest. A modern miracle of high technology, the wonder fiber was neither bulky nor heavy but possessed a unique density that stopped knives and bullets, including .357-magnum slugs, the brochure said. The brochure also included color diagrams, and a number of actual photographs of test models who had been shot and stabbed in laboratory tests. The miracle fiber made the vest comfortable and inconspicuous.

  Menardo had adopted a policy of strict secrecy about the vest. He warned Alegría not to mention a word, nothing about body armor, without secrecy what good were the precautions? He had even asked Alegría to wash the vest by hand in the bathroom sink because Menardo did not trust the maids. No one but the two of them, and of course Sonny Blue, must know about the vest. Menardo had not told General J. or the police chief, though he had been tempted because he knew they would be envious. But since the flood of refugees from the South and the strikes and demonstrations in the northern cities of Guadalajara and Juárez, Menardo had noticed a change in his two friends.

  The chief usually laughed and talked when others were firing; but last week he had appeared startled when the governor took his turn on the firing range. The former ambassador, the doctor, and the others had joined in making a big joke out of the jumpy police chief. “An angry wife, a neglected mistress, a scolding father-in-law?” the former ambassador quipped. But Menardo had seen General J. was not laughing. The general had been traveling a great deal lately, and although Menardo believed in secrecy, he felt a seed of concern taking root in his lower intestines. After all, he and General J. were partners; in the years they had done business together, they had become more than partners, and yet the general had told Menardo nothing about these trips. Now the police chief’s edgy behavior had added to the tension.

  EMPEROR MAXIMILIAN AND CHARLOTTE

  ALEGRÍA HAD NOT had sex with Menardo since Sonny Blue brought the bulletproof vest, but the ugly surprise of Bartolomeo had made her worry about the spy, Tacho. She knew how much Menardo relied upon Tacho’s “dream-reading”; it would not be easy to get rid of the Indian. She might have to settle for Tacho’s “promotion,” perhaps to caretaker at the beach house. Sex with Menardo used to get Alegría almost anything, but she could hardly remember it seemed so long ago that Menardo had been her lover in the Rose Suite of the Royal Hotel. To endure sex with Menardo, Alegría had imagined she was making love with Sonny Blue in the honeymoon suite of a faraway hotel, perhaps in Singapore. One glimpse of Menardo cinched with the white webbing of the vest had been enough to fill her with loathing. The bulletproof vest felt unyielding, but this had aroused Alegría as long as she imagined Sonny Blue wore the vest, and not Menardo. Menardo had snorted and huffed away on top of Alegría, who had orgasm after orgasm, one wave following another in a great warm ocean. Once Bartolomeo had accused Alegría of engaging in mutual masturbation because she had admitted to him that fantasies were necessary to her pleasure. Menardo had labored a long time before he had finally come, and Alegría could feel what feeble, dry ejaculations they were. His University of Arizona fraternity brothers had taught Sonny Blue to be proud of the quantity of his ejaculation; he had even cautioned Alegría about the mess on the sheets. Whispering his confession seemed to excite Sonny even more.

  Sonny had asked Alegría why she stayed with Menardo, but she had refused to discuss her marriage. Sonny had heard rumors about the “other wife” and her strange accident on the marble stairs.

  “You don’t love him,” Sonny had said, trying to push her. “Why him?” But Alegría had just shaken her head. She did not want to talk or think about Menardo; she wanted to think about Sonny Blue and to imagine herself as the love of his life, pampered and protected. Sonny Blue had asked more questions about Menardo than he had asked about her; the whole time Sonny had been talking he had been stroking her breasts and flicking her nipples.

  Alegría had to talk fast before Menardo rolled over and fell asleep with his arms wrapped around himself and his vest. “I’m worried about the beach house, Menardo. The federal police are worse thieves than the Indians.”

  “Don’t worry now! Don’t worry at a time like this!” Menardo laughed wickedly, as if his sexual performance had been so astounding it had left Alegría panting for more.

  “We could send Tacho down to watch the house.”

  “I need Tacho here. The others can’t drive like he does. I’ll send security patrolmen.” Menardo’s breathing was slowing, and Alegría could feel his fingers gradually loosen from her breast as he drifted to sleep.

  “I don’t trust Tacho,” Alegría said, raising her voice slightly. “You worry,” she said, tugging at the edge of the bulletproof vest that pressed into Menardo’s soft flesh at the belly button. “You worry about assassin squads—”

  “I worry about sleep. Tacho isn’t one of them. Go to sleep.”

  Alegría had never liked the Indian chauffeur, but from the start Menardo had been stubborn about getting rid of Tacho. Alegría knew Tacho had got a hold over Menardo with all the baloney about dreams and numbers. “Menardo, listen to me. I lived in Mexico City. I know.”

  “Know what?” Menardo had almost dropped off to sleep.

  Alegría said nothing. She waited until Menardo began to snore, then she got out of bed and walked to the French doors that opened to the balcony.

  There was no moon and the jungle foliage seemed to absorb all light from the stars and even reflected light from the town. Alegría stared at the garage where the chauffeur slept; sometimes she was not able to sleep and had walked downstairs in the night only to see lights on in the garage, and sometimes a figure or figures moving past the small window. Alegría left Menardo’s room, but did not feel sleepy. She could feel the adrenaline pulse in her veins, left over from Bartolomeo’s visit. Something did not add up: Bartolomeo had been able to find her and her store too easily. Bartolomeo had been talking to his Indians—his puppets, his toys; he had got the information from them. Tacho was the link. Alegría had walked slowly down the polished marble stairs, aware of the gridwork of grooves that had been chiseled the length of each stair after Iliana’s tragic fall. Alegría seldom thought about Iliana, but she thought a great deal about the house. Alegría went to the lights and the switches of the alarm system to flick them off so she could walk outside to the pool.<
br />
  After the house air-conditioning, the night air felt steamy; the night cries of birds and small animals in the jungle were interrupted by the barking of dogs, big Alsatian shepherds that guarded a coffee-grower’s estate nearby. Universal Insurance had, of course, provided the coffee-grower’s security system. How would it look if the president of Universal Insurance and Security or his next-door neighbors were attacked by thieves or terrorists?

  The house, the gardens, and the pool had all been designed by Alegría, yet she felt indifferent about them the way she had felt indifferent about her apartment in Mexico City. Alegría blamed her father’s diplomatic corps assignments because they had always kept moving—Lisbon, Madrid, Mexico City, and finally, Caracas. Her father had transferred them deliberately so she might become a citizen of the world, not just Mexico. Sometimes her indifference frightened her, and she willed herself to feel something, even hatred. She had been attracted to Bartolomeo and other leftists because she could feel the hatred they had. She was fascinated by the intensity of their hatred; otherwise politics bored her.

  Her father claimed his family had descended from royalty—Emperor Maximilian’s cousins. On her fifteenth birthday, her father had presented her with “a history of the family,” a book about Emperor Maximilian and the empress, Charlotte. Her mother had disapproved of the book for a young girl; this opposition had made the book irresistible. In the evenings Alegría’s father had called her into his study and closed the door; but before her father quizzed her about the pages she had read, he would launch into his speech about diplomacy. The art of diplomacy. The Empress Charlotte had been lacking in the art.

  Her father had endlessly meditated on Maximilian’s fall; but for the fall, their family might have reigned as monarchs in Mexico; territories in the North would never have been lost to the gringos. Patiently her father had explained that when noble individuals fell from high positions, the correct term, the only word adequate, was tragedy. When he talked about what might have been, Alegría saw tears in his eyes. The sight of his tears had been strangely exhilarating. Alegría never forgot the story. Her father had researched and read obsessively about Maximilian’s fall. Heartless and craven, the European nations had turned their backs on one of their “own” while the wolves closed in on the palace.