The Uncomfortable Dead (5 page)

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.”

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.