Death in Veracruz (36 page)

“No.”

“Then are you asking me to stay in Mexico?”

“I'm not asking you to stay in Mexico.”

“Don't you want me in Mexico?”

“I've wanted nothing else since the 20th of November, 1976, remember?”

“I fell asleep when you thought you'd scored, right?”

“And you snored.”

“You overdid the Chablis. If you get all your girlfriends that drunk, you must sleep with rag dolls who don't remember a thing in the morning.”

“They all remember,” I said.

“I know. And they go looking for you in the newsroom
at your paper because they want a mention in your column. A one-night stand is never enough, they're insatiable.”

“And they all act insulted and leave.”

“If that includes me, let me remind you I just offered you my personal fortune.”

“And I'm asking you not to forget that I just declined.”

“You mean you just want to get flushed down the toilet because you're a loser.”

“Because I'm a shit.”

“You're not up to providing long-term service?”

“Medium or long term, no”

“Neither one,” Anabela said. The tone of her voice changed, and she curled herself back into a ball. “You don't have it in you.”

“When are you leaving?”

“As soon as I make the arrangements.”

“What arrangements?”

“I'm getting permission to take Rojano's coffin out of Mexico. I want it transferred to Los Angeles.”

“You want to get Rojano's coffin out of Mexico?”

“Yes.” Anabela sat up straight. “I don't want to leave Ro's body here.”

“Are you serious?”

“Completely serious. I need permits from the Ministry of Health and the embassy. I already have one from the City of Los Angeles.”

“You're going to bury Rojano in Los Angeles.”

“I already bought a plot for him.”

“So he'll be right there for you the way Pizarro is for Little Darling?”

“Yes. Why does it upset you so? Do you think it's strange?”

She supported herself on her elbow while arguing with me. Her mascara had run, and some of her eyelashes were
crooked. Though disheveled and short on sleep, she looked radiant and inspired by her decision. From the depths of time, I felt the simple power that arose to confront me when trespassing on territory long since conquered and colonized by Rojano, the history that had bound Anabela to Rojano since her teens. Its bright and tender glow still showed through in her smile and restored the youth and vibrance remaining in the deepening hollows of her eyes. I pulled her to me, rearranged the blankets to cover her back, and put my arms around her.

“I asked if it seems strange to you,” Anabela persisted.

“No,” I told her. “With you and Rojano it seems perfectly normal.”

It took another week to make all the arrangements. I called the Health Ministry myself and smoothed the way for her with the press attaché at the embassy. Shortly before the end of May, all the paperwork was in order. On May 22, Anabela flew to Los Angeles to work out the final details for the burial. To avoid issues of preservation and any other obstacles that might crop up Rojano needed to be disinterred in Mexico, taken to the plane, shipped to Los Angeles, and re-buried the same day.

I returned to my work routine and spent a week in Tampico doing the agreed upon interviews with leaders of the oil workers' union. One after the other, in each of the four interviews, I asked as if in passing about the causes of Pizarro's demise. The unhesitating answer in each instance was cancer of the pancreas. With Pizarro gone, his position as head of the union fell to Loya, the mayor of Poza Rica, and Roibal was his aide now. I interviewed him in an ice cream parlor on the plaza in front of the Hotel Inglaterra in Tampico, a few meters from where Pizarro had used the metaphor of a river to explain to me his ideas about power.

“What did Lázaro Pizarro die of?” I asked Loya half way through a dish of guanábana ice cream.

“Cancer of the pancreas,” he replied mechanically and with no hesitation. Roibal sat next to him with his eye patch and a glass of milk.

“Unless you happen to know of another version,” Roibal said drily, ripping a tear in the fabric of the interview. It seemed to discomfit Loya.

“There's talk about a settling of scores within the ranks of the oil workers,” I said, purposely trying to annoy him.

“There's talk from where, my friend?” Loya replied haughtily. “Who says that?

“Rumors in Mexico City,” I said.

“Malicious rumors, unfounded,” Loya said.

“What more do the rumors say?” Roibal asked.

“That Quinta Bermúdez was attacked by gunmen in December of last year,” I said, “and that Pizarro died as a result of serious injuries suffered in the encounter.”

“False,” Loya said. “Pure fantasy.”

“And who could have carried out this attack?” Roibal said.

“I'm telling you it's false,” Loya shouted. “Even talking about such a thing is offensive.”

“The motherfucker capable of overrunning Quinta Bermúdez has never been born,” Roibal said with somber pride.

“Edilberto Chanes?”

Roibal smiled. “That's old news.”

“Lies, lies!” Loya overreacted, violently cutting off the banter for a second time. “Let's get to the point, to reality. You're a journalist not a storyteller. Stick to the facts, sir.”

He was a far cry from the obsequious driver who ferried us around “La Mesopotamia” in March, 1977. Brimming
with self-assurance, he had more than enough energy and vigor to cool the heated exchange Roibal was spoiling for. He brooked no interference with his lecture about union gardens and cattle ranching operations, union successes, and how the union resisted management's proclivity for handing top jobs to people from outside the oil industry. He boasted of the union's ability to censor the governor of Veracruz and dictate the contents of a message to the President of the Republic. His bizarre and disjointed ramblings were faithfully transcribed and reproduced in the series of interviews published two weeks later.

Roibal said nothing more, but he came looking for me that night in the hotel. We took our seats, and he proceeded without further ado.

“Pay no attention to those rumors,” he said. “They're false. Nobody attacked anybody at Quinta Bermúdez, least of all Edilberto Chanes. He caught us off guard one night in Mexico City, that's all. Then he went around saying he'd stormed Poza Rica.”

“Loya was fuming this morning,” I said. “Did he order you to come and see me?”

Roibal nodded. I watched his good eye jump up and down in its socket.

“You're telling me all this on his orders?”

“It's the truth.” Roibal looked away from me.

“The truth has no need for messengers,” I said.

“I'm being disciplined,” Roibal said glumly. “He wants to humiliate me, to make me cower and bow down before him and his henchmen. Loya's the new boss, and he's trying to break me. That's why I'm here.”

“How did Pizarro die?” I said.

“Cancer of the pancreas,” Roibal answered without a second's pause, but once again he looked away. “And where did you lose your eye?”

He squirmed nervously in his chair and folded his arms as if retreating into his shell.

“On a mission,” he said, “but that's none of your business.”

“Defending Quinta Bermúdez?”

“No.” Roibal sounded withdrawn. “I already told you. Quinta Bermúdez couldn't be overrun, not by anybody.”

“But it could be attacked.”

“He never saw the dawn of another day,” Roibal said.

“Are you referring to Edilberto Chanes?”

“I'm referring to anyone you like,” Roibal said. He got up to leave, but, adjusting the patch over his eye, he added, “I want you to know it was a good fight. Chicontepec, I mean. Even though nobody won.”

“I'm asking you one last time.” I got to my feet and looked him straight in his good eye. “What killed Pizarro?”

“And I'm telling you for the last time…,” He smiled as if now it was his turn to mock me. “…it was his pancreas, and that's the truth. And if Loya should ask, you tell him mission accomplished.”

Anabela returned to Mexico City on June 4 with the tickets and paperwork necessary to put Rojano's sealed coffin on Mexicana's noon flight to Los Angeles. At 9:00 in the morning of June 6, Anabela, Doña Lila, and I arrived at the French Cemetery with a hearse. Followed by groundskeepers, we made our way along the paths lined with willows and eucalyptus to the plot where Rojano's mortal remains lay buried. Though the spot was at the cemetery's edge four years ago, now it was well within the rows of graves creeping ever nearer the high outer wall that enclosed the place's eternal occupants. By way of preparation, the marble headstone had already been removed, exposing hard, freshly turned earth. The groundskeepers started digging, and Anabela
clung to Doña Lila, who was dressed in black with a hat and a spotted veil. In short order the sweating workers reached the cement slabs separating the coffin from the surrounding earth and began hammering at the mortar that had sealed the slabs. There was a pale sun overhead, and a chill breeze blew through the trees and raised small puffs of dust on the ground.

“I want you to check the headstone,” Anabela told me without loosening her grip on Doña Lila. “I want to be sure it's Rojano.”

The headstone had been shoved aside face down. I turned it over and placed it where Anabela could see. It said Francisco
Rojano Gutiérrez, Mayor of Chicontepec. Remembered by his children, Francisco and Mercedes, and his widow, Anabela Guillaumín.

“This isn't where I remember the grave,” Anabela said. “It was nearer the wall.”

“Others came afterwards,” I said, pointing to the new rows.

“If it's not him, he's playing games with us,” Doña Lila chimed in to support me. “If anyone came to give me the ride this man's getting, I'd make it a party even if there were nothing left but my bones.”

It took a lot longer to break through the slabs than to remove the earth, but the final chunk was finally tossed out. We looked down into the hole and saw the black coffin covered in dirt and weeds, engraved by the vegetation that stayed stubbornly alive in spite of slabs and headstones.

“Clean it first,” Anabela said. “I want to see the color.”

Using masons' trowels, the groundskeepers removed the white clay and the weeds that snaked across the top of the casket like climbing plants. Little by little, its iron gray finish became visible together with its raised and totally rusted crucifix.

They cleared the remaining weeds away. Around the edges of the grave they laid out the gear normally used to lower coffins into the ground: a rectangular frame of nickel-plated iron bars attached by green strapping to a set of pulleys that would now work in reverse. The groundskeepers hooked the straps to the handles on the coffin and began to raise it. The machinery squawked and wobbled as the bands tightened, straining to hoist so much dead weight. The coffin rose a few centimeters, then dropped back into its bed.

“Something's holding it down from underneath,” the lift operator said. First he dug around the base of the coffin with a trowel, then he took a crowbar to the weeds rooting it in place. He reattached the straps, and the machinery started squawking again. But this time the pulleys continued to crank unimpeded. With every turn they let out another groan as Rojano's remains arose from their eternal dwelling for the second time. When the coffin reached the surface Anabela grew pale and stepped falteringly towards it, gripping Doña Lila's arm for support.

“I want to see him.” Anabela said haltingly. She lost control her voice, and it cracked as she struggled to get the words out.

“Quiet, girl,” Doña Lila said with loving firmness. “You must neither offend God or desecrate the work of His hand.”

The groundskeepers took the coffin by its handles and carried it to the gurney on the path nearby. Anabela put a hand on the crucifix, then removed the few sods stuck to the skirting at the coffin's base. We followed the path and one of the cemetery's inner avenues to the waiting hearse. Once the coffin was loaded, I tipped the groundskeepers, and then we were alone with the driver biding his time behind the wheel.

I took Anabela's arm, and we walked towards the exit where our car was parked next to the administration building. Anabela's pulse beat unevenly as she signed the final papers,
and her normally cold hands were even colder than usual. We walked to the car with Doña Lila beside us, and I opened the front door for Anabela to get in. Several meters away, the hearse idled at the entrance to the cemetery.

“I want to go with him,” Anabela said, pulling away from the car and towards the hearse.

“Doña Ana,” Doña Lila said sorrowfully, “he's not there any more.”

“I'm going with the coffin.” Anabela corrected her coldly.

And she did. She got in the front seat next to the driver. Doña Lila and I rode in my car, making a truncated cortege en route to the airport.

“For a few minutes she brought him back to life,” Doña Lila said. “You should have felt the way she trembled.”

I saw her tremble one more time while signing the forms required for the hearse to gain special access to the airport. We spent the hour before boarding in the bar, silent or nearly silent in a pungent cloud of Doña Lila's perfume. At one point she excused herself and left, rooting through her handbag as she walked towards the airport's main corridor.

“You've got everything arranged?” I asked.

“Yes.”

She was dressed in white with black piping just as she'd been for Pizarro's burial. Her hair was tucked beneath a cap that lengthened and enhanced her face.