The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel (90 page)

Alegría felt a strange tingling all over her body; she thought she might faint; her mouth had gone dry and her palms were cold and wet. That bastard Bartolomeo had betrayed all of them; he wanted to destroy her and the Indians in the mountains as well. Alegría had not felt hatred so violently, with such purity, before. Maybe the despised Cuban worked for the CIA after all. Alegría wanted to kill him slowly, to feel him dying under her hands, his flesh quivering and clammy; she would breathe deeply, breathe exultantly, the stench of his blood and shit, the sweet aroma of his terror. That was how liars such as Bartolomeo died.

The handbills had been scattered all over Tuxtla; the police chief and General J. had returned and began asking Alegría questions. They searched the garage where Tacho had slept but found nothing. The Indian had removed all his things and swept the floor clean. Alegría searched the high limbs of the big tree, but saw no scarlet macaws. The Indian and his blue and yellow
wacahs
were gone.

Tacho had been stunned by Menardo’s death; he felt embarrassed too. Because Tacho realized he had actually believed in the bulletproof vest too, maybe not as much as Menardo had, but still this made Tacho a fool with the rest of them. Tacho had not wanted to take the pistol from Menardo’s hand, vest or no vest; he had been afraid he might not hit the vest, but miss and shoot the boss in the face or in the knee. That had been the reason Tacho had stepped closer, over the line Menardo had marked in the dirt with the heel of his shoe. Tacho had been concerned about accuracy even if Menardo had been too dumb to see the dangers. As Menardo had eagerly watched the approach of his fellow shooting-club members, Tacho had moved closer. The cars and escort vehicles had formed a small procession. They were afraid and believed strength lay in numbers.

Tacho had not wanted to fire because he knew white men did not like to see an Indian shoot a mestizo unless
they
had given the order; otherwise Indians might get ideas and move from mestizos to shoot at whites. Tacho had sat patiently behind the wheel in the Mercedes while ambulance attendants and more police and curious golfers crowded around Menardo’s body. Tacho felt relaxed and calm; how odd when he had just killed his longtime employer. Menardo had requested that Tacho shoot him; that was the testimony Tacho had given the police. All eyewitnesses agreed; Menardo had commanded the chauffeur more than once to fire.

Later, after the police had completed their investigation, Tacho took the long route home in the Mercedes, just as he and the boss had planned earlier that morning; now the boss was dead; they had planned safe routes downtown for the last time. For the last time, the boss had kissed his treacherous wife good-bye and pulled the front door shut on his mansion. One last time Menardo had looked up at the sky, just as he died.

For the last time, Tacho drove the Mercedes slowly past the obscure alleys and downtown street corners Menardo had seen in his nightmares, which had alternated jeep loads of assassins sent by the general with truckloads of assassins sent by the police chief or leftist terrorists. Tacho had to laugh. Menardo had not been able to trust any of them, and he should never have trusted his new wife. Tacho thought it really was funny: he, Tacho, had been in his way the most loyal, and yet, look what had happened. Nothing could have saved Menardo.

Tacho recalled the arguments people in villages had had over the eventual disappearance of the white man. Old prophets were adamant; the disappearance would not be caused by military action, necessarily, or by military action alone. The white man would someday disappear all by himself. The disappearance had already begun at the spiritual level.

The forces were harsh. A great many people would suffer and die. All ideas and beliefs of the Europeans would gradually wither and drop away. A great many fools like Menardo would die pretending they were white men; only the strongest would survive. The rest would die by the thousands along with the others; the disappearance would take place over hundreds of years and would include massive human migrations from continent to continent.

Tacho had parked the Mercedes in the driveway and left the keys with the cook; he told her he was leaving. He did not bother to warn her about talking to the police because they would torture her if she refused. Tacho packed his clothes. As he prepared the canvas for the bedroll on the floor, he knelt in something wet and cool on the floor. Blood was oozing from the center of his bedroll where he kept the spirit bundle. Tacho felt he might lose consciousness, but outside the door hanging in the tree upside down, the big macaws were shrieking. The he-macaw told Tacho certain wild forces controlled all the Americas, and the saints and spirits and the gods of the Europeans were powerless on American soil.

Tacho had been chosen by the macaws’ and the opal’s spirits; for
better or for worse, he had to take the spirits with him, like wives. Tacho had soaked up some of the blood with a handkerchief to show his brother. In the mountains, El Feo or some of the others initiated by the old priests might know more about a bundle such as this. All the spirits ate blood that was offered to them. But where had the blood that leaked from the bundle come from?

The unborn baby drank the mother’s blood; unborn chicks grew from delicate halos of blood inside the egg. The spirits of the mountains had to have their share; if people did not sacrifice to the mountains willingly, then the mountains trembled and shook with hurt and anger. The dead bodies strewn across winding mountain roads after head-on collisions provided blood to calm angry mountain spirits. Particular curves on the mountain roads not only had shrines and altars, but special feast days to pacify the spirits who inhabited the curves or crossroads.

Blood: even the bulletproof vest wanted a little blood. Knives, guns, even automobiles, possessed “energies” that craved blood from time to time. Tacho had heard dozens of stories that good Christians were not supposed to believe. Stories about people beaten, sometimes even killed, by their own brooms or pots and pans. Wise homemakers “fed” goat or pig blood to knives, scissors, and other sharp or dangerous household objects. Even fire had to be fed the first bit of dough or fat; otherwise, sooner or later, the fire would burn the cook or flare up and catch the kitchen on fire. Airplanes, jets, and rockets were already malfunctioning, crashing and exploding. Electricity no longer obeyed the white man. The macaw spirits said the great serpent was in charge of electricity. The macaws were in charge of fire.

EL FEO AND ANGELITA had moved permanently from the village to El Feo’s camp high in the mountains, out of the reach of federal police and army patrols for illegal refugees from El Salvador and Guatemala and points south. The Mexican president had declared a state
of emergency as thousands and thousands of war refugees from the South were spilling over Mexico’s southern boundaries. The United States demanded that Mexico stop the refugees. Rumors circulated about desert-camouflaged U.S. tanks deployed along the entire U.S. border; other rumors accused the Mexican president and his cabinet of being U.S. CIA agents since kindergarten. The fair-haired sons of Mexico’s elite had been given Ivy League educations in the U.S. to prepare the puppets for their jobs. The rumors spread unrest like wind spread wildfire. The U.S. president would offer the Mexican president military aid when rioters shot police protecting U.S.-owned factories in Juárez and Tijuana. The Mexican president would not accept U.S. military aid until the rebels had dynamited high-voltage lines, blacking out all of Guadalajara, and much of the Federal District.

El Feo laughed whenever he saw newspapers or satellite television because the government thought the saboteurs, rioters, and looters were part of a single group or organization. The government wanted groups because they hoped for leaders to crush or to buy off. But this time the story was going to be different because the people no longer believed in leaders. People had begun to gather spontaneously and moved as a mob or swarm follows instinct, then suddenly disperses. The masses of people in Asia and in Africa, and the Americas too, no longer believed in so-called “elected” leaders; they were listening to strange voices inside themselves. Although few would admit this, the voices they heard were voices out of the past, voices of their earliest memories, voices of nightmares and voices of sweet dreams, voices of the ancestors.

All across earth there were those listening and waiting, isolated and lonely, despised outcasts of the earth. First the lights would go out—dynamite or earthquake, it did not matter. All sources of electrical power generation would be destroyed. Darkness was the ally of the poor. One uprising would spark another and another. El Feo did not believe in political parties, ideology, or rules. El Feo believed in the land. With the return of Indian land would come the return of justice, followed by peace. El Feo left the politics to Angelita, who enjoyed the intrigues and rivalries between their so-called friends. All that mattered was obtaining the weapons and supplies the people needed to retake the land; so Angelita had lied to all of them—the U.S., Cuba, Germany, and Japan. But to their African friends they were truthful. They didn’t lie because Africans were tribal people who had taken back a continent from the Europeans. Always they were poor, struggling Indians fighting for their way of life. If Angelita was talking to the Germans or Hollywood activists,
she said the Indians were fighting multinational corporations who killed rain forests; if she was talking to the Japanese or U.S. military, then the Indians were fighting communism. Whatever their “friends” needed to hear, that was their motto. The Indians’ worst enemies were missionaries, who sent Bibles instead of guns and who preached blessed are the meek. Missionaries were stooges and spies for the government. Missionaries warned the village people against the evils of revolution and communism. They warned the people not to talk or to listen to spirit beings.

Bartolomeo had complained about the absence of study groups and evening classes for adult instruction. Bartolomeo had a number of complaints that he termed “serious.” Beside their failure to organize Marxist instruction and study sessions, there were more disturbing issues. Bartolomeo had been doing his own investigating throughout the entire region. He had talked to some
good Indians
for a change, not to
treacherous tribalists.
Angelita pretended not to notice his choice of words. Bartolomeo had been snooping through their files and logbooks since his arrival earlier in the week. He had insisted on following El Feo on his rounds in the remote villages. When Bartolomeo and El Feo had returned from the trips, Angelita sensed trouble from El Feo’s stiff posture. El Feo refused even to look at Bartolomeo. El Feo was furious. Whatever had happened, Bartolomeo was involved.

Bartolomeo considered himself a policy expert now. One more big ideological victory here, and Bartolomeo was certain the central committee in Havana would reward him with promotions and a post in Mexico City. Bartolomeo was tired of the remote Indian camps; he was even more sick of bourgeois Tuxtla, of the phony rich bitches who sat on their bony butts—such as Alegría, that great whore! Bartolomeo knew he was destined for higher positions; Bartolomeo was nearly ready for his triumphant return to the capital.

Bartolomeo bossed everyone who came within range of his loud, Cuban mouth. Orders! Orders! But these village people had gathered because they were finished with big bosses and orders. Bartolomeo had never understood Indians. A squad of village women had told Commander Bartolomeo to shove his orders up his ass. Bartolomeo had then called in the disciplinary committee to punish the offenders.

Punish these warrior women? Angelita laughed. This Cuban should return to Cuba; from there, Europeans should return to the lands of their ancestors.

“This army belongs to the people, remember?” she said to Bartolomeo;
she enjoyed watching Bartolomeo’s temper heat up. Bartolomeo motioned for her and El Feo to follow him inside the tent that served as their office. Inside, El Feo handed Angelita a pink handbill he had pulled from inside his T-shirt.

“These were scattered all over Tuxtla last night.” The handbill was a dark, smeared copy of the newspaper photograph of Menardo’s corpse.

“You know what this does to Tacho,” Angelita said in a low, angry whisper.

Bartolomeo waved his hand as if to brush aside her words. They had already ruled Menardo’s death accidental. “Tacho needed to get out anyway. He was about to lose his cover.”

“How do you know? Who told you?” El Feo was furious. Bartolomeo did not bother to look up; he had been leafing through a stack of blank squad reports that squad leaders El Feo and Angelita had refused to complete.

Bartolomeo droned on and on. The committee in Mexico City had sent warnings before. Blah, blah, blah! Unless Angelita and El Feo and the others completed reports on their activities, Bartolomeo would have no choice but to report them again. Other tribes obeyed committee directives concerning reports. Another negative report would cause an automatic cutoff of valuable Cuban aid; worse yet, the word would get around to all the other “friends of Indians” and they’d halt support. “I have suspected something all along,” Bartolomeo continued. Angelita thought to herself, “This is it. Adiós, Bartolomeo, you are one dead Cuban,” and while he blabbered on, Angelita made plans. Bartolomeo would be tried before a people’s assembly for crimes against the revolution, specifically for crimes against Native American history; the crimes were the denial and attempted annihilation of tribal histories. Bartolomeo continued with his recitation of suspicions and accusations. The Cubans had received unconfirmed reports that these mountain villages were hotbeds of tribalism and native religion. Marxism did
not
tolerate these primitive bugaboos!