The Uncomfortable Dead

by Paco Ignacio Taibo II

  “We have a common acquaintance working in the office of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas; his name’s Mario Marrufo Larrea. I told him I had some really weird things going on and he said you specialized in weird things.”

  “Well, I ain’t the only one in Mexico.”

  And they celebrated by downing a couple of Cokes, Belascoarán’s with no ice.

  It’s already becoming a cliché, this notion of being tied to the city by an umbilical cord, trapped in a love-hate relationship. The sleepless Belascoarán was looking out his window on the neon night and reviewing his own words. He was feeling like the last of the Mohicans. He averred, confirmed: There is no hatred. Just an immense, infinite sensation of love for this ever-changing city that he lives in and that lives in him, that he dreams of and that dreams of him. A determination to love that goes beyond all the rage, possession, and sex, and dissolves into tenderness. It must be the demonstrations, the golden hue of the light at the Zócalo, the book stands, the meat tacos, the currents of deep solidarity, the friends at the gas station across the way who always say hello when he passes. It might be that marvelous winter moon. It might be.

  Héctor sat in a rocker to smoke. He spent the night smoking and listening to the sounds of the street. For no apparent reason, the image of Héctor Monteverde’s limping dog came to mind. It was dawn when he fell asleep.

  CHAPTER 3

  WHICH IS A LITTLE LONG

  … cause all of a sudden it tells about the Broken Calendar Club; it explains how Elías solved the case of the woodpecker; it addresses the dangers of ignoring customs and mores; it warns that the dead have no company; and it relates how Elías traveled and arrived in Mexico City, with all the marvelous adventures that befell him, besides reflecting on the Bad and the Evil.

  I’m not the murderer— A match burned, lighting up a cigarette and the face surrounding it: haircut like a skinhead, face with shining eyes, silver rings, unshaven cheeks. I think I should explain this right now to avoid confusion.

  Neither am I the butler. I suppose I should say this right at the beginning, because, you know, in mystery stories the murderer is the butler … or the other way around. I’ve never been a housekeeper, but I have been a goalkeeper, and I sometimes played that position in the soccer games at the local government in La Garrucha. In the beginning I didn’t know what was going on, but every Sunday, after praying at church, there was a big noise among the children and a lot of talking in Tzeltal among the adults. I only understood the part about “Zapatista campamenteros,” and then everyone went out on the playing field. Though it’s not really a playing field. From Monday through Friday it’s the paddock, but on Sundays it’s the soccer field. As if they knew it was Sunday, the cows would move to the neighboring field, leaving us a minefield of cow shit. Then some people from the town would come carrying pews from the church and benches from the school and improvise the grandstands. The field we used is on the side of a hill so one goal is higher than the other, which is an obvious advantage for the team that plays on the high side. However, in the second half they change goals and everything evens out. Or so they say. Then the teams are organized; a town person, always someone in authority, is referee. I was saying that sometimes I was a goalkeeper for the “campamenteros” team, as the town people say, or the “campamentistas team,” as we say. Basically, men and women from different parts of the world were in a peace camp—we joined together in a soccer team and we played against the Zapatista towns. When I played we almost always lost. But don’t you believe that it was because the Zapatistas were so good, no. It was a breakdown in communication. We used to shout at each other (cause the team was always mixed, men and women) in French, Euskera, Italian, English, German, Turkish, Danish, Swedish, and Aymara. Nobody understood nothing and, like they say around here, it was an unholy mess and the ball always went where it shouldn’t.

  In that soccer thing I learned what those Zapatistas call “the resistance.” At least I think I did. What happened was that in one of the games our side had two huge Danes, about six-foot-six and terribly good at soccer. Their height, plus their extra-long strides, left the Zapatistas far behind, cause they’re smaller and have shorter legs. Within the first few minutes it was obvious that our patent superiority would soon be reflected on the scoreboard. And fact of the matter is, after about ten minutes we were ahead two to zero. It was then that it happened. I saw it because I was the goalkeeper and because, furthermore, around here I learned to pay a lot of attention to things beyond the obvious. There was no indication from anyone, no meeting, no conversations, signals, or looks among the Zapatistas. And yet I think they had a way of communicating, because after our second score all the Zapatistas moved back to defend their goal. They left the whole field to our huge Danes, who were happily rushing back and forth. But with all those people on the Zapatista side, the field became a mudhole. The ball would stick, like in cement, and you needed several internationalist kicks to even make it roll.

  They’re going to stall, I thought, so they don’t get stomped, and I sat back to watch the game, which was on the far side the whole time. A few minutes went by and then what happened, happened. Our team, which was doing all the running around, began to show signs of fatigue. In the second half it was evident that we were getting bogged down. Our Danish stars were gasping for air, stopping to breathe every two or three steps. And then—again without any overt signal—wham, the whole Zapatista team hit me. They scored seven goals in twenty minutes and the spectators went wild, cause you know they were all rooting for the local team. The game ended seven to two, and half of our team took an hour to recover and three weeks before they could walk right.

  So I been a goalkeeper but I’m not the doorkeeper and I’m not the murderer. As you probably guessed, I’m a campamentista, and I’m from another country. I’ve been in peace camps in five autonomous municipalities, even before they were called caracoles, and in a few other communities that suffered militarization or paramilitarization. You might be asking me what exactly a foreign campamentista is doing in this mystery novel. Actually, that’s what I keep asking myself, I can’t really help you out with that. While we check out what’s going on, I can tell you a bit about myself. Maybe that way we can, together, figure out what the hell I’m doing in this book.

  The Broken Calendar Club

  I’m a Filipino and my name is Juli@ and my last name is Isileko. Somebody once told me that Isileko means secret in Euskera. I’m a mechanic and I work in an auto repair shop in Barcelona. I write my name with an @: Juli@. I write it that way because …. Do I really have to say I’m gay? Okay, yes, I’m gay, homosexual, queer, fruit, queen, faggot, or however it is you call us in your own world. But actually, I don’t think I should mention it because then they associate homosexual with criminal. So. Maybe we should leave out sexual preference altogether and stick with the fact that I’m from the Philippines, that I have a Basque name, that I’m a mechanic in Barcelona, Spain, and amateur goalkeeper in Chiapas, Mexico … And in my home town they call me Julio.

  For more information, I got a skinhead haircut and a few tattoos. On my back, between my shoulder blades, I have a notice tattooed in gothic letters that says, THIS SIDE BACK, and one on my chest that says, THIS SIDE FORWARD. That’s just in case they cut me up in pieces. I have another one somewhat below my belly button that says, HANDLE WITH CARE, with an arrow pointing to my dick. I have another on my butt saying, NO RETURNS. I’m also a ringer, which means I have piercings and I wear earrings, but not too many: one on my left eyebrow, two in my right ear, three in my left ear, one in my nose, one each on my nipples, and … that’s it.

  I came to Zapatista country because I got tired of reading communiqués. Yes, I began to get interested in the Zapatista movement because I read about it in a book by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán. It’s not as if I was personally acquainted with the author, it’s just that once I was working on a car and I found this book in the backseat. After reading it, I asked one of my buddies in the shop i
f he knew anything about the Zapatistas in Chiapas. He said he didn’t, but that there was this café near his house where some young guys used to get together, some of the ringers like me, to try to raise support for those Zapatistas. So I went; I got some books and some website addresses where I could find the communiqués, and I read all of them, until I finally came over to Chiapas. I got tired of reading because I could tell that they were only fragments of a bigger story, as if they only gave me a few pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and hid others, the most important ones. Yes, I got angry at El Sup without actually knowing him. I began to ask myself why they mentioned certain things and not others. What right did that guy in the ski mask have to only show me some things and hide the rest? I had to go over there, I thought.

  So I quit going to the professional soccer matches—Barcelona wasn’t doing so hot, anyway. That’s how I got a few dollars together. So I came over. I was right and I was wrong. I learned that the Zapatista messages do tell certain things and hide others—the biggest, the most terrible, the most marvelous. I learned that they are not trying to fool people, but rather to invite them …

  Just a moment. Give me a second here …

  Okay, I’ve just been informed that I’m not in this novel, so it’s probably just an unfortunate mistake that the newspaper or the publishing house will have to sort out, or so I’m told. Since its likely that this is going to take awhile, I’ll use the time to tell you about some people I met at La Realidad Peace Camp, and about how I met Elías.

  Another flame lights another cigarette.

  Want one? You don’t smoke? In this novel everybody smokes. Belascoarán smokes, Elías smokes, I smoke, El Sup, well, what can I tell you? They should attach a fire extinguisher to each copy and announce on the cover: Tobacco may be harmful to your health, or, Smoking during pregnancy may increase the risk of premature delivery and low birth weight, or any of those things they write on the cigarette packages that nobody reads. That way, even if the book doesn’t win a literary award, at least it will get one from the Society of Active Nonsmokers, if there is any such society.

  So then. In the camps I’ve met people from many countries, although not many from Mexico. Some stay only a short time and others stay for years. Of course, there are those that come and go, like that Juanita Dot Com who comes from I don’t know what country or even if his name is what he says it is, the only certain thing being that he has a website. Every time that guy comes, he brings a stack of magazines and newspapers and leaves carrying no more than a smile. So what I’m saying is that although we’re from different countries with different languages and most of us differ on our take on Zapataism, all of us campamentistas develop close, more or less stable bonds of camaraderie. In fact, I had a close fraternal relationship with three campamentistas. Together we founded what we called the Broken Calendar Club, which might have been a good name for a mystery novel or a secret esoteric society, or for a group of unemployed Playboy bunnies, but it was a group of people who called ourselves this for reasons I will now explain.

  The Broken Calendar Club includes a German woman who worked for a pizza joint delivering food on a motorcycle to raise the money to make the trip over here. I don’t think it’s necessary to mention that she’s a lesbian, for the same reason I gave earlier, but what I can tell you is that her name is Danna May and her last name is Bí Mát, which is a Vietnamese name that means clandestine. Danna May plays defense on our soccer team and she came to Zapatista lands on something like a honeymoon with her friend, a woman with a doctorate in mathematics, who is not here right now because she went back to Berlin to raise more money to prolong their stay here in Chiapas. In town they call Danna May “May.”

  There’s also a French woman, a school teacher from Toulouse, whose name is Juin Hélène and whose last name is Protuzakonitost, which means outlaw in Serbo-Croatian. Juin Hélène loves jazz; she says her life is like a piece by Miles Davis, and she came, she says, to learn about this autonomy thing, because on her return to France she intends to get together with her pupils and start an autonomous rebel municipality and name it after Charlie Parker. Juin’s job on our team is to be a deterrent, because of her precise kicks—not at the ball, but at the other team’s ankles. In town she’s known as Blondie or Frenchie.

  Our fourth element is an Italian, a cook by trade, whose name is Vittorio Francesco Augusto Luiggi and whose last name’s Nidalote, which in Albanian means forbidden. He’s a firm believer in extraterrestrials, and according to what he told us one night in the forests of Chiapas, there are good extraterrestrials and bad extraterrestrials. The bad ones already landed a long time ago in Washington, London, Rome, Madrid, Moscow, and Mexico, and they took over everything and started the fast-food craze. The good ones, well, the good ones haven’t arrived yet, but if there’s any place where they are going to land, it will be on Zapatista soil. And they won’t be coming to conquer us or teach us their high technology, but how to defeat the bad ones. Vittorio Francesco Augusto Luiggi figures that the good extraterrestrials are going to need a cook, and that’s why he’s here. Vittorio Francesco Augusto Luiggi plays left end on our team because he says you have to be consistent with your political positions, even in sports. In town they call him Panchito, something for which he, and all of us, are thankful.

  So that’s it. We’re what you might call an original group, and if we Zapatify our names you get: May Clandestine, June Outlaw, July Secret, and August Forbidden. So we have perfect names for characters in a porn novel, or a spy novel, or a porn-spy novel, but not a mystery novel. And even if we add the April from the first chapter, the calendar is still incomplete, broken.

  Don’t pay me too much mind now. Maybe El Sup put us in the novel like a random sampling of people—because the Zapatistas, you know, maintain that the world is not unique, that there are multiple worlds, and that’s why they’re sticking the book with a gay Filipino mechanic, a German pizza-delivering bike dyke, a jazz-loving French teacher, and an Italian cook who believes in extraterrestrials. So it’s not just men and women, and it’s possible that later on we might even get a few more odd characters.

  Although, actually, I think the Italian cook is only in the book because in mystery novels the detective usually winds up having culinary adventures. The other day, for example, I found Vittorio Francesco Augusto Luiggi (August Forbidden in our broken calendar) trying out a recipe that he said El Sup had given him. It was called Marcos’s Special and he did it up just the way they told him: mince and fry one ration of beef; add a small can of Mexican salsa and cheese; mix thoroughly and serve hot.

  When August Forbidden finished his concoction, I told him, “It looks like dog barf.”

  Then he tasted it himself and added, “It tastes the same as it looks.”

  But August is one of those people who believes the Zapatistas are never wrong, so he claimed the problem was that the salsa brand he used was Herdez and “El Sup actually told me it had to be La Costeña.”

  In any case, begging the pardon of Pepe Carvalho and Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, the fare in this novel is not going to be all that good. And now that I have discussed eating, give me a second so I can go to the john.

  Elías and the Case of the Woodpecker

  A dummy, because aside from being a woodpecker, the bird was a dummy, like you’re gonna see from what I’m gonna tell you.

  Okay, the thing is, they sent me on an Investigation Commission to the Morelia caracol (you remember that’s what they call the autonomous municipalities) in the Tzots Choj region, and the thing, or rather the case, was a man who had been deceased by some guys who said they weren’t the ones who deceased him. The Good Governance Board from those parts had sent a request for assistance to the EZLN Staff Headquarters. El Sup wasn’t there but they told him over the radio, and then they told me that he told them to send me. The local officer in charge at La Realidad gave me some money for the trip, some toast, a ball of pozol, and some papers. I read one of them:

  WRIT OF REMOVAL<
br />
  Nich Teel Community, Olga Isabel Autonomous Zapatista Rebel Municipality, Chiapas, June 25, 2004.

  I, Pedro Sántis Estrada, Autonomous Municipal Honor and Justice Commission, 9:25 p.m., do hereby submit the following description of the removal of the body:

  1. That the deceased is Francisco Hernández Solís, thirty-eight years of age, joined in common law marriage, father of nine.

  2. That on the 25th day of June of 2004, the deceased left home to work at his milpa at 6 a.m. in the so-called Ba Wits, at a distance of five kilometers from his home.

  3. That at 13:00 hours (1:00 in the afternoon) he was returning, together with his younger brother Santiago Hernández Solís, twenty-one years of age, accompanied by his son Pedro Hernández, ten years of age, and when he was 300 meters from his milpa, Francisco Hernández Solís was ambushed and shot from a distance of two meters, four shots having been fired from a .22 caliber automatic weapon.

  4. That two of the shots entered the same hole on the right side of his chest, another more to the center, and yet another in the right buttock.

  5. That from the place where he was ambushed he ran forty-eight meters, shouting the names of the ones who shot him, and he was able to show his comrade the places in his body where the bullets had entered, and there he dropped dead: on his back, facing south, his eyes open, with his right hand on his chest and his left hand and his feet stiff.

  Personal Information: The deceased, Francisco Hernández Solís, was carrying half a sack of corn, a machete, a sharpening file in his belt, a backpack, and wearing a white-striped shirt, white denim pants, black belt, and rubber boots; he had straight black hair, thick eyebrows, dark eyes, large nose, black mustache, round face with a dark complexion, large ears, and he was 1.6 meters tall.

  THIS WRIT OF REMOVAL IS HEREBY CLOSED ON THE AFOREMENTIONED DATE.

  Pedro Sántis Estrada