The Uncomfortable Dead

by Paco Ignacio Taibo II

  Honor and Justice Commission

  So I left for the Moisés Gandhi community, where I was met by the Tzots Choj Good Governance Board. Soon as I got to Morelia, which is where the caracol is, I got together with the autonomous authorities of the Ernesto Che Guevara and Olga Isabel ZARCs (Zapatista Autonomous Rebel Communities).

  They reported that on the day of the murder, they arrested two people who had quarreled with the deceased, and that the quarrels were about a parcel of land, a coffee plantation, and firewood. That the quarrels had started long before. That the two individuals arrested, the alleged perpetrators, were named Sebastián Pérez Moreno and Fausto Pérez Gómez. That those were the names the deceased had shouted when he wasn’t yet deceased. That they claimed it wasn’t them, that is, that the arrested alleged perpetrators claimed it wasn’t them that were the killers of the deceased. That they had gone to work in their coffee plantation on their own property. That they were carrying hunting weapons in case they ran across some animal. That they saw a woodpecker out in the bush. That they fired four shots at it and missed. That later they went home because of the heat. That it was there they found out about the deceased.

  I asked them to take me to the place where everything happened. They took me, but it was already late so we just had some coffee and bread. They put me up in the community school. The next day, real early, we went to the place. I looked around where the deceased was killed—that is, I examined the terrain. Just bush on one side and pasture on the other. There were a few hills and tall trees close to the coffee plantations. I followed the steps of the deceased to the place where he finally died. I also checked out the whole way where the alleged perpetrators claim they walked.

  Something wasn’t right and I couldn’t find what I was looking for, so I kept on looking without really knowing what I was looking for, but thinking that when I did find it, I’d know. We had some pozol when it was getting late. I asked the guys with me if on the day of the tragedy it rained. Yeah, they said, it rained a whole lot, the whole damn day, matter of fact, didn’t stop till night. I stood there thinking it over for a long time. Then I saw that I was not going to find what it was I was looking for—that is, that I was looking not to find what I was looking for. The other guys said my head wasn’t right just then, and I said they got that right.

  So we headed back. I went to see the authorities and told them that I didn’t find what I went to find and that’s why the alleged perpetrators wasn’t alleged no more, cause they did it. The authorities also said my head wasn’t quite right. Bout that time I was figgering I should get myself a bunch of cards saying, You got that right, so I wouldn’t have to be saying it all the time. But since I didn’t have the cards saying You got that right, I told the authorities that they got that right, but that the thing was, I didn’t find the woodpecker. And so what? says the authorities. It probably went deceased like the deceased. So I told them that the woodpecker was a dummy who went out pecking when it was raining, in an acahual where there was no trees to peck at, and it just hung around when they fired four shots at it—or maybe there wasn’t no woodpecker. So how about there wasn’t no woodpecker? the authorities say. So how about that? I says. So without any real knowledge of the fact, but sposing there was no woodpecker, then what were they shooting at? So I says that’s what I says, but without that lawyer talk, and it’s real clear that they was telling a lie, I said again. So how about there’s someone else in this business? I says again. So they says they’re gonna check it out, and I says I’m going for a swim in the river because I picked up a bunch of burrs in the acahual. Goddamn burrs get into everything, I thought, but didn’t say it out loud. So I went to the co-op store for some cigarettes. What kind? the guy says. Gratos, I says. Ya want them with menthol? he says. Do I look like I want candy? I says. And later that night, they came to tell me that the authorities arrested another suspect by the name of Pascual Pérez Silvano, sixteen years of age, single, living with his family. That he came clean on the facts. That they were already taking the statement from the accused. And later they brought me the …

  PRELIMINARY PUBLIC STATEMENT

  Pascual Pérez Silvano states clearly that his actions were done together with the other perpetrators. At the crossroads he ran into Fausto and Sebastián, who were carrying .22 caliber weapons and a 16-gauge pump action, and he was invited to go hunting but didn’t accept because he had to pick up some corn.

  “In the end I agreed to go with them and we took the road to Corostik, then the road to Mustaja, and down to Xaxajatik, and I was already tired and we hadn’t found anything. I told them I couldn’t go on walking and Sebastián told me I’m not a man if I can’t keep walking, so we kept walking until we got to a place where there were no roads, and I decided to stay there and he started telling me that if you say something ahead of time I’ll shoot you. I just stayed back about fifteen meters and they reached the road to the milpa, and I didn’t see where they went and started firing their weapons. I ran off cause I was afraid and I didn’t know what they were gonna do. There was a few shots—if they had told me I wouldn’t a gone with them. Then I ran off alone back down the same path we found, but I didn’t see Fausto and Sebastián. I had to search around awhile to find the path that goes to my milpa to pick the corn, but I was so scared I couldn’t fill my sack, and I came home as soon as I could, and I didn’t tell my family. After a while, when they began talking about how somebody got killed on the road and that it was Señor Francisco Hernández Solís, I got to thinking that it was them that did the shooting on the road, cause I didn’t know nothing about it, I didn’t even see what they shot at. So people started getting ready to go see him, and far as I know he didn’t do anything.”

  Fausto and Sebastián couldn’t say nothing, they were just looking in their friend’s eye because of the statement Pascual Pérez Silvano had given. And finally they admitted that it was them that were responsible for the murder of Francisco Hernández Solís.

  THERE BEING NO OTHER BUSINESS, THE PRESENT PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION REPORT IS CONCLUDED.

  Pedro Sántis Estrada

  Honor and Justice Commission

  The next day they told me I was going back to La Realidad. They thanked me and gave me travel money, some toast, and pozol to eat along the way.

  It was raining. The cigarettes got all wet. Right there in Cuxuljá I caught a ride to Altamirano and from there to Las Margaritas. I got to La Realidad real late, it was night already. At Max’s house they had tamales, coffee, and plantains. Max gave me some more cigarettes. And then it rained again. I holed up at a store called Don Durito. I couldn’t sleep much. I was full of burrs everywhere.

  Elías and the Broken Calendar Club

  Okay, now I can tell you how it was that Elías met the Broken Calendar Club.

  One night there was a small riot in the hut where the campamentistas were staying. What happened was that Juin Hélène, the French woman, has trouble sleeping, and from her hammock she saw something moving in the thatch. She lit her lamp up and it turned out to be a snake. Of course she started screaming and of course we all woke up, and then there was generalized panic, but disguised as a cross between an ecological debate and group therapy. The first thing we discussed was if we should kill it or not. The snake, not Juin Hélène. Danna May made a naturalistic case against killing it, calling attention to the danger of altering biodiversity; Vittorio Francesco Augusto Luiggi argued to kill it for culinary reasons, extolling the gastronomical benefits of snake meat—and he had read in a communiqué from El Sup how roast snake tastes like fish. Juin Hélène was in favor of altering the biological balance by killing it, and I don’t much like fish, so the overwhelming majority of the jury came back with the verdict of a death sentence.

  Course, the first problem was getting it down out of the thatch, and the second problem was killing it. Danna May said we should find a chair and that Vittorio Francesco Augusto Luiggi should climb up there and knock it down with a soup ladle. With a perfe
ct Mexican accent, he answered by asking if she was out of her freakin mind.

  So that was the state of things when Elías walked in, got quickly informed on the situation, went out, and came back with a long pole that he used to knock the snake on the floor, then whipped out his machete and sliced its head off.

  “It was a nauyaca,” he explained, and he took both pieces and carried them off somewhere.

  Awhile later he came back and asked if we were going to go out and when. We said that we were and that it would be on Sunday. Danna May had to withdraw money from the bank, Juin Hélène was returning to France, Vittorio Francesco Augusto Luiggi had to buy a few things, and I had to renew my tourist visa.

  We all had to go into Mexico City. Elías asked if he could come with us. We said yeah, sure, of course, that we would be honored, and so on.

  “That’s real nice of you.”

  We asked where he was heading and what for.

  “I’m going into Mexico City to buy some medicine, but don’t go publishing it,” he answered, fading into the shadows of the night.

  After the nauyaca scare nobody could sleep, so we convened a special meeting of the Broken Calendar Club. Subject? Elías’s trip.

  June Outlaw said that Elías was not going in for medicine at all; that he was going to buy tickets for the jazz festival in Mexico City and that El Sup was going disguised as a saxophone, and after that he was going to do some table-dancing at a “girls only” club to raise money for the cause. May Clandestine alleged that it was something else, that Elías was going to find the address of a hospital where they do gender-reassignment surgery because El Sup was a lesbian, which means he likes women, but the women don’t pay him any mind so he was going to become a woman so that they would.

  Me, July Secret, I figured that Elías was going to find out when the Gay Pride Parade was being held so that El Sup could participate and come out of the jungle and the closet in one fell swoop. Forbidden August was just listening quietly, and when we had all finished arguing, he spoke. “You don’t know a damn thing,” he said disdainfully. “El Sup is as macho as Pedro Infante and Lando Buzzanca rolled into one, and he listens to music like the son and the huapango. Besides, if you read the papers you would know that Elías is going to see about that Wal-Mart thing in Teotihuacán.”

  We just stared at him, not understanding a thing, until finally he sighed and stooped to explain: “Wal-Mart opened a store in Teotihuacan so they could steal the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon. They’re going to steal them stone by stone. For every stone they take away they’re gonna substitute a fake one, but made out of sheetrock. The genuine stones get packed in the used cardboard cartons. That’s why if you’re moving or doing something like storing books, records, clothing, or humanitarian aid, and you go ask them for some cartons, they always say they don’t have any. The first one they’re going to take is the Pyramid of the Moon, so that on March 21 the original Pyramid of the Sun will still be there and they’ll have a whole year to dismantle it without anyone finding out.”

  We just went on staring at him and still couldn’t understand what the hell he was talking about. June Outlaw asked why Wal-Mart would want to steal the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon from Teotihuacan.

  August Forbidden answered in his most polished elementary, my dear Watson tone: “So the good extraterrestrials won’t be able to find the place to land. The good extraterrestrials are waiting for the Zapatistas to extend their territory and organize a caracol in Teotihuacan. Then they’re going to land on the pyramids and wham! No more McDonald’s and no more Pizza Huts. But if the pyramids are not really the pyramids, then the good extraterrestrials won’t land and then we’ll really be stuck forever with Bush, Blair, Berlusconi, Aznar, and the IMF. Ci siamo capiti?”

  May Clandestine asked where Wal-Mart was going to take the Teotihuacan pyramids. July Secret—me, that is—joined in on the question. June Outlaw had already fallen asleep.

  “That’s what Elías is going to investigate,” Forbidden August answered.

  We all came to the conclusion that we’d had enough of nauyacas, pyramids, fast-food joints, and extraterrestrials, and that we needed some sleep.

  In the hammock, as I was dozing off, everything started to get confused. Because the thing is, as opposed to every other month in our Broken Calendar, I had already read the first chapter of this book, The Uncomfortable Dead, and although there was a lot missing, I already knew why Elías was going into Mexico City.

  And I was afraid, very afraid.

  But it wasn’t the fear of the unknown. No, it was something more rational. It was the fear of the known. Fear of the long history of defeats. Fear of becoming resigned and getting used to those accounts where we’re always on the minus and divide sides and never on the plus and multiply sides. I was afraid that Belascoarán and Elías would lose, that we would all lose together along with them. Because it is a known fact that the murderer always returns to the scene of the crime. But just suppose that Elías and Belascoarán are going after a murderer, after THE murderer. And if it’s who I think it is, THE murderer is not going to return to the scene of the crime, simply because the murderer is the scene of the crime. The murderer is the system. Yes! The system. When there’s a crime, you have to go looking for the culprit upstairs, not downstairs. The Evil is the system, and the Bad are those that serve the system.

  But the Evil is not an entity, a perverse and malevolent demon looking for bodies to possess and turn into instruments for creating more evil, crimes, murders, economic programs, frauds, concentration camps, holy wars, laws, courts, crematoriums, television channels.

  No, the Evil is a relationship, it’s one position against the other. It’s also an election. The Evil is to choose the Evil. To choose to be the Bad unto the other. To transform yourself, of your own free will, into the executioner. And to transform the other into the victim.

  We’re screwed. Campamenteros should not enter into metaphysical considerations. Campamentistas are supposed to count battle tanks and soldiers, they’re supposed to get sick from the food, they should fight among themselves over nothing, they should play soccer, they should lose to the Zapatistas, they should help with the projects, they should listen to Radio Insurgente, they should criticize El Sup for not being or doing what they think he should be and do, they should plan how they’re going to export Zapataism to their own countries, they’re supposed to be bored most of the time. All those things and many others—but they should definitely not enter into metaphysical considerations. Neither should they wetback their way (no one has asked the Broken Calendar members for passports yet) into mystery novels, especially those that are written by four hands, twenty fingers, two heads, many worlds.

  These damn Zapatistas fight against a monster with the help of a detective and a Chinese guy. It won’t be long before some Russian shows up. Yeah, and the Chinese one will turn out to be a Trotskyite and the Russian a Maoist. Sonovabitch! Fuck Wal-Mart! Fuck the nauyaca! Fuck the fucking pyramids! Fuck fast food! Yes, and fuck me, because just as there are good extraterrestrials and bad extraterrestrials, there’s also good fruit and bad fruit, and I’m one of the good fruits. I’m one of the good ones because I chose not to be one of the bad ones. Fuck this hammock! We’re screwed … and I can’t fucking sleep … and I’ll be fucked if I ever have pozol and beans for dinner again. And about then I fell asleep.

  Elías and Customs and Mores

  Just let me have a cigarette and I’ll go on telling you about the things that happened before I met up with Belascoarán at the Monument to the Revolution, over there in Mexico City. Me, I smoke Gratos. Or Alas. That’s all there was around here to smoke, so I got used to them. What I mean is that even if there’s the other kind, I smoke Ingrates or Scorpions, which is what we over here call em when we wanna be funny. So then, let me tell you about the days before I went into the city to pick up city ways. I went over to Headquarters so El Sup could give me a few things and I could head to the city. I went
off with Major Moses and after passing the guard post we ran into a bunch of insurgents. Captain Noah was sitting there with a guitar singing a song to the tune of “The Little Roe,” the one that goes, I’m just a poor little roe, living in the mountains, but the words to this one were a lot different:

  I’m just a poor captain, who has no one to talk to.

  I’m just a poor captain, who has no one to talk to.

  And I may be married, but I ain’t been fixed,

  and that’s why I want you, little light of my eyes.

  How I’d like to be your blouse to be close to you always,

  to brush up against your breasts and circle your waist,

  the two for being so firm and the other for being so yielding.

  Well, El Sup was not in the office but over by the side of the barracks. He was with Comandante Tacho, in a shack with walls but no roof and a half-built frame. We said hello and they said it back.

  “Lookit here, Elías,” El Sup said, “we have this argument going with Tacho. We’re building this sanitation shack and he says it has to have a cross bar or something like this,” and El Sup waved his arm at the roof that wasn’t a roof yet, just a bunch of sticks.

  Then El Sup pulled out his pipe, lit it, and went on: “So then I ask Tacho why it has to have that cross bar. I mean, whether it’s something scientific or something that has to do with customs and mores, cause if it’s something scientific, then there’s a reason to put up the cross bar, so I ask him what the reason is and he answers that he doesn’t know, that this is the way they taught him and otherwise the whole thing would cave in.”

  By that time, Comandante Tacho was doubled over. And Major Moses joined in the laughter. You could tell they’d had the argument a lot of times.

  El Sup went on talking as he climbed up the roof frame. “I’m gonna apply the scientific method to see whether the cross bar has to go here or not. I am going to proceed by trial and error, which means that you do it one way and if it doesn’t work, it’s wrong, and if it does work, then it’s right. So if I climb up onto this beam and the frame caves in, it means that it isn’t going to hold the weight of the roof on its own.”