The Uncomfortable Dead

by Paco Ignacio Taibo II

  El Sup was already up and straddling the beam like it was a horse, and while he tried to keep his balance, he asked me, “So, Elías, what do you think? Is it scientific or is it customs and mores?”

  Bout then I got out from under the beam, and barely got out: “It’s on account of customs—” And there was a crack and the beam broke and El Sup was flat on his back and I finished, “—and mores.”

  Comandante Tacho was bent over with laughter. Major Moses couldn’t hardly talk he was laughing so hard. Captain Aurora came running up to El Sup and asked, a little concerned, “Did you fall, Comrade Subcomandante?”

  “No, this was just a dry run to see how long it would take the Zapatista sanitation services to arrive at the scene of an accident,” El Sup said, still flat on his back, and the captain walked away laughing.

  And El Sup was still there, looking for his pipe and lighter, when another insurgent woman arrived.

  “Comrade Insurgent Subcomandante Marcos!” she barked, snapping to attention and saluting.

  “Insurgent Comrade Erika,” answered El Sup, saluting back from the ground.

  “Comrade Subcomandante, may I speak …?” Erika said, twisting a paliacate in her hands.

  “You may speak, Comrade Erika,” El Sup answered, as he pulled over a piece of the broken beam to use as a pillow and lit up his pipe.

  “It’s just that I don’t know what you’re going to say, but Captain Noah keeps hitting me,” Erika said.

  El Sup inhaled the pipe smoke, coughed, and asked, “He whaaaat?”

  “He keeps hitting me, you know, he does this with his eye,” Erika said, winking.

  “Well, now,” El Sup said, breathing a little bit easier, “you don’t mean hitting you, like beating you, but hitting on you, like flirting, right? So do you want me to reprimand him?”

  “It’s not that,” Erika explained, “it’s that I don’t know if it’s allowed, cause if it’s allowed, well, that’s fine then, but if it ain’t allowed, well, then first he should see if it can be allowed and then he can hit me all he wants.”

  “Hit ON you, Erika, hit ON you,” El Sup drilled.

  “That’s it, whatever,” she said.

  “Very well. I’m going to look into that and I’ll let you know,” El Sup replied, still lying on the ground smoking.

  “That was all, Comrade Insurgent Subcomandante Marcos,” Erika said, then saluted and marched off.

  El Sup just lay there thinking and biting the stem of his pipe. Then there was a cracking noise and he rolled over, spitting pieces of pipe on the ground.

  “Sonovabitch! I think I’m getting too old for this job,” El Sup said, and you couldn’t tell if it was because of the broken beam or cause he fell and didn’t get up or cause the pipe kept going out or cause Erika said hitting instead of hitting on or cause he had just ruined another good pipe with his biting or because of the damn customs and mores.

  “So I’m heading out,” I said.

  “Did you get someone to go with you?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I did,” I said. “I’m traveling with some campamenteros who were going into Mexico City anyway, and—”

  “Into the Monster, remember that we call Mexico City the Monster,” El Sup corrected.

  “That’s it,” I said.

  What I didn’t say was that I had told the campamenteros that I was going into Mexi—into the Monster—to buy some medicine. I don’t rightly know if they believed me, but that’s what El Sup told me to say. He said that his granny used to tell him to invent a story when he wasn’t sposed to say what he was doing, the first story that popped into his head, and then tell it like it was some big secret. That way they’d believe you. That’s what El Sup said his granny told him, El Sup. Now who woulda thought that? I always figgered El Sup didn’t have no grandmother.

  “That’s good,” El Sup said. Looking at Major Moses, he went on, “Turn those envelopes with the letters over to Elías.”

  Then Major Moses gave me some envelopes and I stuck them in my backpack. It was already starting to rain again when I asked, “Say there, Sup, there anything you need?”

  “Yes,” El Sup answered, “there’s a few things. The first is that little nylon bag over there.”

  So I give El Sup the nylon bag—him still flat on the ground—so’s he could cover the pipe from the rain.

  “And the second thing is, I want you to bring me back one of those soft drinks from the Monster, the one called Chaparritas El Naranjo, the kind that tastes like grape. Oh, and there’s another thing. Tell Belascoarán that if he don’t manage to teach you how to play dominos, it’s because he’s an imbecile. No, not an imbecile; that’s too strong a word around those parts. Maybe you’d better say it’s cause he’s an asshole, which isn’t so offensive and he’ll get the drift of what I mean.”

  “So what’s that good for?” I asked El Sup, cause I didn’t know what that dominos was.

  “Except for demonstrations and earthquakes, couples dominos is the closest thing citizens have to working collectively. You learn and then come back and teach us, cause just maybe we’ll be needing it someday to keep us from getting stuck with the six, isn’t that right?” El Sup said, turning to Tacho and Mo, who were laughing again. Well, they seemed to know what he was talking about.

  “Dominos?” I asked. “Not chess?” Cause the thing is, I see people playing chess in the towns, even with the campamenteros.

  “Nope. That stuff about how military commanders and detectives play chess is bull. Military commanders play cards—solitaire, to be precise—and they do puzzles. Detectives play dominos. So you tell him to teach you, hear?” El Sup said, finally getting off the ground.

  “Okay by me,” I says.

  Major Moses bid me goodbye cause he was going somewhere else. He hugged me and said I should have a good trip. Then I hugged El Sup and Comandante Tacho, too. And they said the same thing about having a good trip and taking care of myself and all. El Sup reminded me that I shouldn’t forget what he told me; that through the communiqués he would let me know what to do.

  As I walked away, El Sup was climbing on the part of the roof frame that hadn’t caved in and telling Comandante Tacho, “Okay, Tachito, now we’re going to test the other beam. What method should we use? Scientific method or customs and mores?”

  When I passed the guard post, I could still hear Comandante Tacho laughing his ass off. I put the letters in a plastic bag so they’d stay dry.

  Elías’s Trip According to the Broken Calendar Club

  We left very early Sunday morning. The five of us climbed aboard a three-tonner: May, June, July, August, and Elías. We got there in time to catch the bus for Mexico City. June sat next to Elías and gave him the window in case he got bus-sick. I had May next to me and August sat behind us. When we got to La Ventosa, the bus stopped at the immigration checkpoint. An officer got aboard and walked by May and me with hardly a glance. August made believe he was asleep and snored. Then, on the way back, the officer stopped next to June and Elías, who was leafing through a French edition of Le Monde Diplomatique.

  “Identification, please,” he said.

  June reached for her passport.

  “Not you, madam, the gentleman,” he said, pointing to Elías.

  Elías never raised his eyes or broke concentration on his reading. “American citizen.”

  Although Elías had a wetback accent, the immigration officer hesitated. After a few seconds, which I suppose is long enough to keep the suspense high in a mystery novel, he did an about-face and walked off the bus. The driver got the bus on the way again and June, without a word, took the newspaper Elías was reading and turned it right-side up.

  “Right! Musta been why I couldn’t find the sports page,” Elías said, and promptly fell asleep.

  That night and during the whole trip, the Broken Calendar Club monopolized the bathroom in the back of the bus. Without ever consulting each other, we all blamed it on the pozol we’d had the evening before.
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  As we left the bus terminal, we said goodbye to Elías and took off in different directions.

  When I returned later to La Realidad, I passed the message Elías had given me to the person in charge of the caracol: The one with the big eye is already with the doctor.

  I asked El Sup the other day, when I ran into him by the stream, if he was going to use us as Elías’s team in the book. He said he wasn’t, that we were only going to be in one chapter. I asked why, and he answered, “Cause dead people don’t have teams.”

  So this is as far as we go. If we want to know what happens from now on, we have to wait to read the following chapters in the book. Sonovabitch! I don’t know about you, but me, I’ve had it with these mystery novels where all the characters are so intelligent and cultured and the only ignorant asshole is the reader. Well, I don’t know about being assholes, but we sure are ignorant, cause we’re always missing what’s missing.

  Elías’s Trip According to Elías

  So I did it: I went into the Monster. I woke up just as we were going down this very steep hill. The campamenteros were fast asleep. And then I saw the city. It was sitting there, it was still far away.

  And it’s true what Belascoarán says about there’s lots of antennas, like skinny little hairs growing on the heads of the houses. When we was close I saw that besides antennas there was people, lots of people, and I didn’t count em but I think there was more people than antennas, although there was about as many cars as antennas. How to find my way?

  Back home I could tell where a town was by looking at the trees. So I figgered the city people must find out where houses are by checking the antennas. Later I found out they don’t. What they have is streets with names and numbers. Then there’s also very tall houses, so tall you’d think they wanted to get up over the antennas, and they put numbers on those houses too.

  When I got to the station, there was Andrés and Marta. They were the city comrades that was sposed to wait for me, but they were alive, you see, not deceased like me. I saw them from far away and I said goodbye to the campamenteros real quick so’s they wouldn’t recognize Andrés and Marta. Those campamenteros were real pale and kinda didn’t have any color, but I think that’s the natural color people have back where they’re from.

  “Well, I’m here,” I said to Marta and Andrés.

  Andrés asked if I had a suitcase and I said I only had my backpack, and he said let’s go and I said let’s go. And we got on one of those metro things they’ve got.

  So, how did it go? Marta asked. No big deal, I said.

  Then Andrés told me that it was going to take about an hour to get there, depending on traffic, which depends on whether there’s a soccer match, and that his team used to be the UNAM Pumas, but when he heard how that Rosario Robles and a Televisa announcer also went for the Pumas, he decided to change teams and he quit the Pumas for the Chiapas Jaguars, but they have fruity uniforms. So what team did I go for? I said the Underdogs, and that ended the soccer talk.

  Finally we got to this house way up high in one of those buildings. I gave them the letter from El Sup and they read it. They asked how long I was gonna stay with them and I said about six months, learning how city people do things and maybe getting some jobs until El Sup’s communiqué comes out telling about the deceased Digna Ochoa and the deceased Pável González.

  “Ah, some more uncomfortable dead,” Andrés said.

  “Yes,” Marta said, “the downstairs dead are never quiet.”

  “You got that right,” I said.

  That was in July and August, I don’t rightly remember, but it was before the communiqués about the Good Governance Boards. We still hadn’t set out to find the biggest sonovabitch of all the sonovabitches in the world, including the bitch herself. I mean that sonovabitch Morales, who was like the Evil itself had married the Bad and they had an evil child who was that sonovabitch Morales. So a certain amount of time had gone by. I had forgotten until I got the letter from El Sup that closed with …

  From the mountains of Southeast Mexico,

  Insurgent Subcomandante Marcos

  December 2004

  CHAPTER 4

  SHEER FORCETFULNESS DWELLS

  The Black Palace of Lecumberri, the ancient prison of Mexico City, a pillar of the old city’s shadows, had been turned a few years earlier into the General Archives of the Nation. This political whitewash, this face-lift, had not succeeded in freeing the enormous building from its malignant aura, especially on one of those days at the onset of winter when the whole city becomes a kaleidoscope of grays. Thunderheads, smog, and a chill wind, somehow emanating from its past: The ominous building was crowned by clouds that were somehow blacker than the rest.

  He saw Fritz cross over from the main entrance of the palace, dodging cars, trying to keep from getting run over and lighting a cigarette at the same time. They sat in the park before the statue of Heberto Castillo.

  “Years, old buddy. It’s been years I haven’t heard from you. And something tells me I’m not going to learn anything about you now either. You’re undoubtedly going to ask me about some bullshit.”

  Belascoarán smiled. For historical, political, and personal reasons, Fritz Glockner had spent the last four years digging into the history of the Dirty War, combing through the records of the secret police agencies of the old regime. Records that chance had sent to the National Archives in the old prison. Chance had made a good turn, for once—after the collapse of the PRI era someone had gotten them confused with the records of the old Commission for the Development of Territorial Waters, or something like that.

  “What do you know about Jesús María Alvarado?”

  Fritz studied Belascoarán for a moment before answering. And that was logical, because in spite of the Austrian name, Fritz was a country boy and naturally suspicious.

  “He’s dead. They killed him in ’71, like they killed my father … a bullet in the back of the head.”

  A cold draft flowed between them. Héctor stared at the silhouette of the palace where Alvarado had spent the last days of his life. The building sprawled out in all directions, heavy and somber.

  “Why’d they kill him?”

  “Go figure. Those days, they shot first and asked questions later. Maybe they thought he was in contact with, or was the lynchpin of, one of the armed resistance groups that sprang up after ’68 … or that he ran a group that was dormant but would get back into the action as soon as he got out … That might have been it. Or maybe some kind of personal vendetta by the prison authorities, because he was one of the organizers of the hunger strike in ’69.”

  “Did you know him?”

  “I saw him a couple of times, from far away.”

  “Did he have children?”

  “When I used to visit my father, Alvarado used to get visits from this very big older woman and, yeah, she had a kid with her, a bit younger than me. If I’m forty-two now, the kid would be about thirty-eight, or something like that. But I don’t know if it was his son, I don’t remember seeing a young woman with the child. Maybe it was a nephew, or a younger brother. I do remember the kid because during the visit he would be hanging around the fountains in the inner courtyard fooling around with a yo-yo.”

  “During the investigations you guys have been doing, have you found out who killed him? Do any of the documents you’ve been reading mention his death in any way, or those responsible?”

  “Let me check around and ask some of the other bookworms digging into those records. If anything turns up, I’ll call you.”

  They embraced and Fritz repeated his suicidal ballet across the avenue. Suddenly, he stopped and turned around amidst the wildly honking cars.

  “Why don’t you look up the Chinaman? That was his cell mate.”

  “What Chinaman is that?”

  “Fuang Chu, the only Chinese member of the movement of ’68. It was just him and the Mao Tse-tung posters. I think he’s living in Guadalajara now.”

  Héctor Bela
scoarán Shayne had his office on Donato Guerra, near the corner of Bucareli, in the heart of hearts of Mexico City. And as it turns out, this was a heart, like in Juan Luis Guerra’s song, unaware of what it was, amassing little glory and making lots of noise. Mornings, the corners were overrun with newspaper distributors, making their bundles and their noises. Then the afternoons were taken over by the record shops and lunch counters.

  The elevator was out of order, so he limped up the three flights. This made his limp worse and the pain stuck to the bone.

  Bones hurt?

  Only when it’s cold, he answered himself.

  He ran into Carlos Vargas at the door.

  “You’ve got your progressive official in there, boss.”

  But it was Tobías the dog that welcomed him first. He was limping, of course, his leg still in the splint, but it was probably on account of the cold as much as the broken bone. He took one look at Héctor, reared up, and hit him with a foot of slobbery tongue that left the detective and his new cigarette drenched. Héctor tossed the wet cigarette to the dog, who swallowed it, and would have smiled if he could.

  “He likes them. He hates it when I smoke, but he likes to smoke himself, or at least to eat them,” Monteverde said.

  Now that he thought about it, both of them, dog and master (you figure which was which), had faces like Droopy.

  Héctor pointed to a black leather couch for the other Héctor to sit on, moved over to the safe, which was always open, and pulled out two Cokes and an automatic, which he placed on the table. He gestured to Monteverde to help himself to the cigarettes.

  “I’ve got two new messages on the machine,” Monteverde said, lighting up a counterfeit Ronson that was a bit too golden and had probably been bought from a street vendor.

  Héctor flipped the caps off the two Cokes using the sights of his automatic and handed one to his mysterious informant. He put the gun back in the safe and took a seat. Again he staged the Alec Guinness routine, but this time it was because he didn’t know what to say.