The Uncomfortable Dead (16 page)

I was just getting there when this Belascoarán walked up with some drinking glasses and a loaf of bread and we said hello and went up where he works with those other three Christians who seem right enough and make a lot of noise. Belascoarán introduced me to the others and said something like, “Let me introduce Elías Contreras, he comes from Chiapas.” And they all applauded and asked what I did and all, and since I could see that Belascoarán trusted them, I said that I was an Investigation Commission. Belascoarán told them that I was a detective, but that in my own territory, which is the rebel territory for humanity and against neoliberalism, that’s what they call us: Investigation Commission. So then I told Belascoarán that we should go see that thing about that Morales. And he said that was what we were going to do—that is, that we were going to see the thing, or the case, depending, on that Morales. And that’s when Belascoarán explained that you don’t say
thing;
you have to say
case.
And I said, right, whatever, let’s go see the thing, or the case, depending, on that Morales. Then Belascoarán brought out the file I gave him the other day—actually, the other night—and there was the papers El Sup sent with the reports we had on that there Morales. But now Belascoarán had them all fixed together with some of his own reports and investigations, and it was kinda messy.

Thing is, Belascoarán organized it all to get some order and perspective. So I asked what
that perspective
thing is, and he explained that perspective is when you look at things, or cases, depending, from all sides at the same time and kinda from a little far away, so’s you can see how it all fits together. Then I figgered that this perspective thing is to look at things, or cases, in a group, cause you can tell that one person alone can’t look from all sides at the one thing (case?) all at once, but with a group you could. That’s when the gentleman called Gilberto Gómez Letras butted in.

“Don’t be a pain in the ass, boss, just tell him what it is so it’s clear, or Mr. Elías here is going to repeat what you told him and people over there are going to think we’re ignorant.”

Then the furniture gutter, that Carlos Vargas, spoke up: “You ever seen a goddamn plumber who knows what perspective is?”

And then the one who was sposed to be a goddamn plumber piped up, “Pay attention, Mr. Wilson, and you’ll find out why my second last name is Letras.”

So he went over to this really fat book called the
Dictionary of Modern Spanish
and started looking, till he found it, and what it means is, just a minute, what it means is … Let me look in my pad, cause I have it right here next to
aforementioned …
Here it is:

Perspective: The art of representing volumes and spatial relations on a flat surface; a work of art employing this technique; the aspect of an object seen by an observer from far away; a fallacious and apparent representation of things; a foreseeable contingency in a business deal.

Well, that’s what I wrote down in my pad about what it said in that book that Gómez Letras checked. Then the sofa gutter, Vargas, said, “Sonovabitch, if the cure ain’t worse than the disease.”

Belascoarán said that it would be better to stick to his, Belascoarán’s, definition of the word. So I asked if it was to see everything all together at once, and Belascoarán said that, yeah, it was something like that, and I got to thinking that my head was all mixed up, but with perspective, cause I always see everything at once all together. So Belascoarán’s thinking is in “ordered perspective,” and mine’s in “mixed-up perspective,” but then he’s a city detective and I’m a Zapatista Investigation Commission, so I think that’s the difference, and my kind of thinking is not his kind of thinking—Belascoarán’s, that is. Then he started explaining that you had to arrange investigations according to the way you see them, and figger out where they happened and how they happened so you could tell if they had anything to do with each other, or if they just happened and that’s all, and when you got that down, then you can see where you are in the investigation and where you’re going, or maybe you’re just staring into a hole in the ground. Anyway, Belascoarán told the others that they should hurry up and eat their donuts. Now, you see, donuts are like a roll with a hole in them—that is, they have part of them missing, but they charge you the same as if they were whole … I mean, without a hole.

So like I said, Belascoarán told them to hurry up with their donuts and coffees, and then either they could shut up or he, Belascoarán, would shut up. He said they had their own choice in “free democratic discipline,” that’s what he said. So they figgered that shutting up themselves was better and just sat there listening while Belascoarán and me looked over the thing, or the case, depends, about this Morales, but with perspective, Belascoarán’s ordered perspective together with my mixed-up perspective, cause we were working together on the investigation of the Bad and the Evil, in a collective, you see. Belascoarán, he layed out all the papers he had, plus the ones we gave him, and it took awhile and most of the flat spaces in the room, including on top of the Mr. Villareal’s coffee cup and on the gutted easy chairs, yeah, there was papers practically everywhere. When he had them all laid out, he began explaining how since we didn’t have people to talk to—that is, to ask questions at—then we had to ask the papers what we wanted to know. And how there was big questions and little questions, and I knew right off that it wasn’t that the papers were going to talk, but that it was what was written on the papers that was going to give us the answers, or maybe not, depends. Then the big questions would give big answers, and it was from the big answers that we would know what the little questions had to be.

About that time I was feeling real happy, cause this Belascoarán feller had his thinking all mixed up like mine and we were both starting to understand real well, and the others were just sitting there all hushed up, but I didn’t know if it was cause of free democratic discipline or cause they didn’t understand anything. So Belascoarán said it was time to ask the big questions, and I pulled out my pad and wrote everything down, cause you always have to be ready to learn things … Who knows, they might come in handy for the struggle, someday.

The first big question Belascoarán asked was, “Is there any connection between all these pieces of information?” Which means, if all those pieces of paper had anything to do with each other. But the thing is, Belascoarán just stood there waiting and the rest of them were still silent from before, and I got the idea that he was waiting for somebody to say something, so I said that they were, that all those little pieces of paper were connected. Well, Belascoarán leaned back and lit a cigarette and stared at me as he asked me why I said that, what connection I saw between all the papers.

And that’s when I said: “The dead.”

Well, everybody just kept real quiet, and not on account of free democratic discipline neither, but cause they were expecting me to go on explaining. So I started explaining that the investigations were being done cause the dead had started them. I mean, I didn’t tell them that I was already deceased or passed away or dead or nothing, cause I didn’t want none of them getting upset about it and maybe chucking up their coffee and hole-breads. Like I said, I explained how the deceased Manuel Vázquez Montalbán was the one who began the Zapatista investigation, and the investigation done by Belascoarán was started by the deceased Jesús María Alvarado, and how one of them wrote and the other talked on the telephone, but they were both deceased, which is dead. But they were dead people who weren’t just hanging around waiting for All Souls’ Day to come on out and have some coffee and
tamales
and
atole
made with
pozol
—no sir, they were speaking up, or out.

Belascoarán smiled and stared out the window. “Yes, they are … because they’re our uncomfortable dead.” And just when I was about to write the word
uncomfortable
in my pad, he turned around and said, “Very good, Elías Contreras.”

But he explained that it was not just the uncomfortable dead that were the connection between all those papers, no, it was that those papers were like the big fat book the plumber feller had—that is, the dictionary—cause those papers were like a dictionary of the shit, piss, and corruption in the system, which made them like a
perspective
of all the ways the system of the powerful fucked everybody else to benefit the rich and the bad governments. Then he said there was a little of everything: There was repression, murder, prison, persecution, disappearances, fraud, robbery, land grabbing, the sale of national sovereignty, high treason, corruption.

“In sum,” he said, “those at the top screw those at the bottom.”

Then I thought it over, lit one of my cigarettes, smiled, and said, “The Evil.”

I could tell that Belascoarán got a little happy, cause he went and got some sodas and opened them with the sights on his gun and gave one to each person.

Then the man called Villareal raised his hand and said, “May I take the floor?” But he didn’t wait for anyone to give him the floor, he just started right out talking, which isn’t really “free democratic discipline.” If this Villareal feller did that in one of the assemblies in my town, truth is, everybody would have stared him down, but this Villareal wasn’t in an assembly in my town, so he just asked, “What about this Morales person?”

Belascoarán and I looked at each other, we both did, that is, and we saw how we both at the same time were thinking the same thing, and that’s how we both said together: “The Bad.”

Then Belascoarán got to explaining again with the scramble of pieces of paper and the pictures of the alleged Morales that he had glued on a wall beside a lady that was real naked—I mean, she didn’t have no veils or flowers or hankies or nothing. And then he said: “What we have on this Morales doesn’t match: not the dates, not the places, not the ages, and,” pointing to the wall, “not the photos.”

Then Belascoarán could tell we was all looking at the lady on the wall with nothing on instead of the Morales feller. So that’s when he said how we shouldn’t be such dummies and how he was talking about the Bad, about Morales, not the lady, who was really pretty. Then he turns to me and asks: “Is there one Morales or are there several?”

We all started thinking, and finally I said, “The Evil is really big, so there have to be several Bad guys.”

Then we got to checking out how many Morales people there could be, whether there were several. And we decided that yes, there could be several Moraleses. And so Belascoarán said that we couldn’t investigate and grab them all, cause we were just a few, he said, and I said that what we had to do was we had to pick ourselves just one or two of them, cause we weren’t gonna be able to grab them all, not cause we didn’t want to, but cause we was shorthanded. Then Belascoarán said how one line of investigation was in the Monster, and that there was another line of investigation that led directly to Chiapas. So we could get together and both of us start off for Chiapas and grab the sonovabitch that was screwing people over there, which is over here, or we could both team up in Mexico City, the Monster, to grab the bastard that was doing his dirty business here, or over there. The other way was that each could take off in his own direction and operate in his own territory—that would be Belascoarán in the Monster and me in Chiapas—but helping each other with constant information exchanges.

So that’s what we agreed—that is, each one to his own thing—that is, Belascoarán in the Monster and me, Elías Contreras, in the mountains of Southeastern Mexico. Belascoarán gave me all the information he had that could help me in my investigation work up here in Chiapas, and I gave him all the information I had that could help him with his detectivating in the Monster. Well, right then we were all real happy and we did a lot of laughing with the jokes about the lady with no clothes.

I told Belascoarán how El Sup had asked me if there was enough time to ask him, Belascoarán, to teach me how to play the thing called dominos. And Belascoarán said, “The time is now,” which meant that he was going to teach me right there and then. Course, I don’t hardly remember the class or the game. Probably Belascoarán could tell you about it, but what I can tell you is that I have a felt marker in my backpack, just in case I need it, cause I remembered what the Russian told me about how you could put dots on the tiles if you needed to.

I got to saying how we were all on the same boat, and then Belascoarán said how you can’t say
on
the same boat but
in
the same boat, and I says how none of the boats I ever saw had anywhere to get
in
them and you couldn’t even hardly get
on
them. They all asked me why I was saying that, and I explained that the way I saw it, we did the kind of job where if you did it right, nobody noticed cause everything went smooth, but if we did it wrong, then we were sunk cause it would be a tragedy, and when you were sunk it didn’t matter if you were
in
or
on
the boat.

Then I said how since Mr. Gómez Letras was a plumber, he has to see to it that the water comes out where it ought to. If he does his job right—if the hot water comes out of the hot faucet and the cold out of the cold—then no one notices anything, and if you pull the lever and all the poop and pee goes south, then no one notices. But if Mr. Gómez Letras does his job wrong, well sir, then there’s all hell to pay, cause if someone turns on the faucet and he gets piss instead of hot water, well now, and even if he only gets hot water where there should be cold, people aren’t gonna be very happy and everybody’s gonna say,
Damn Gómez Letras didn’t do his job right.

Then I went on about Mr. Vargas, the upholsterer, the one who guts and fixes chairs and sofas so none of the stuffing shows and so nobody gets a loose spring into his privates, and so’s they’ll be soft and pretty. If he does his job right, nobody says anything cause they’re there real comfortable having some coffee or watching the game or something. But if he does it wrong, well, you can just imagine the feller sitting there and the home team is about to score, and all of a sudden,
boing,
old needle-dick pokes your boo-tocks, or you hear a
riiiip,
and they can’t get you out of there even with a plowhorse, or it’s so hard that after a few minutes you start looking to confess something, and then everybody says,
Damn Vargas didn’t do his job right.