Almanac of the Dead

  Dinners at the Governor’s Palace were business affairs, Menardo reminded Iliana. However gay or social they might seem to her, she should be careful not to interrupt or join in conversations with him and the men, although the former ambassador’s wife often did. The governor’s wife used to remain so the former ambassador’s wife, an American woman, would not be alone with the men. The American woman did not speak or understand Spanish well, and the other women had devoted part of the evening to a discussion of the lack of refinement in certain women who slipped into places and occasions where they had no business. Iliana leaped upon the subject tonight with a special appetite because the woman architect had begun to worry her. Iliana was anxious to have the other women agree with her because Menardo seemed so determined to leave their dream house in the hands of Miss Martinez-Soto.

  The judge’s wife said that she had recently read a magazine article that concluded that work outside the home caused infertility and sterility in women. The police chief’s wife cleared her throat, and the judge’s wife appeared flustered for a moment. The women had an understanding: they avoided topics and names, and even words that might in any way connect one of themselves with an upsetting incident or circumstance. Iliana had been trying for years to carry a child to term. How many times had each of them carried bouquets of gardenias and miniature roses to the hospital bed where Iliana sat clutching the bed sheet to her belly, tears streaming out of her eyes, without a sound. But Iliana took no notice of the reference to barrenness, perhaps because Menardo had stopped sleeping with her. It had been kind of the judge’s wife, really, to mention the effects of careers on women such as Miss Martinez-Soto. Iliana felt better. That other woman was no threat.

  Menardo could hardly concentrate on the conversation after dinner because he was rehearsing imaginary conversations between himself and Miss Martinez-Soto. This was very unlike Menardo, who had learned it pays to listen closely to the conversations of men such as the judge and the police chief. In this district, the judge and the police chief had certain powers that rivaled those of the governor and even the former ambassador. The ambassador had retired from his post in Washington, D.C., to manage business affairs for a wealthy American with vast holdings in Guatemala and Colombia. The women informed their husbands the former ambassador’s wife had complained he traveled far more now than he ever had. The wives did not expect to know what importance, if any, might be attached to all this travel. They reported the information so their husbands would praise them. The former ambassador’s wife complained in public and sometimes even argued with him. The wives were encouraged to report gossip and incidents out of the ordinary so they would be useful to their husbands not simply as wives and the mothers of their sons, but as patriots.

  VIDEO SURVEILLANCE

  POWER CENTERED IN THE INVESTIGATIONS the chief of police might authorize independent of any other agency or bureau. The southern border was particularly vulnerable to secret agents and rabble-rousers, sewage that had seeped out of Guatemala to pollute “the pure springs of Mexican democracy.” The chief of police had often requested secret meetings with the governor and the judge and former ambassador to brief them on the current investigations or to ask for emergency funds, since over half of the manpower and physical resources of the State Police were committed to the “protection” of state security. The difficulty, the governor had often complained in bitter tones, was that the Federal District did not appreciate what a poor state Chiapas was, and how little money the state had. “None of them understand that we are the ones responsible for protecting our border. They don’t know the dangers we face daily.” The police chief did not like to hear the governor use the word we when clearly the governor did nothing all day but doze in his red leather desk chair and scribble his signature on the piles of papers his secretary brought him. The secretary had been a runner-up in an International Teenage Miss competition only a few years earlier, and the police chief took advantage of the governor’s conspicuous absences at their golf games to complain to the judge and to the former ambassador.

  “She is as thin and flat as a young boy. She is a mere child. How can that old pig mount her without tearing her open, without ruining her insides?” The police chief was careful to wait until they had finished nine holes and had retired to the shade of their big white umbrella before he mentioned Miss Teenage Chiapas. The manager of the country club had set up a white wrought-iron table and umbrella especially for them on the far side of the ninth hole. The steep slope of the back side of the ninth hole made a perfect backstop for bullets, and it had become their habit to play nine holes, refresh themselves with a few pitchers of margaritas, and then fire a few rounds with their handguns. The police chief had ruined golf games before by allowing himself to become upset over the shocking sexual appetite of the governor. Each had an idea about what the police chief was feeling during those moments when the tequila was whispering in his ears, and he would yell and reach for his service revolver if anyone disturbed him. Menardo thought the police chief must be imagining the governor and the girl together, in the small conference room off the governor’s main office, the long, thin legs spread open and skirts pushed up high.

  The judge knew the police chief had called the governor’s young secretary into his office after midnight for a confidential security check. The judge thought the police chief must be remembering how easily the white silk panties had slid down her long, thin legs as he began what he termed “a body search,” which was perhaps a bit uncomfortable, but all a part of official procedure in the line of security duty. The judge thought the chief must be remembering how the girl and governor appeared on the secret video cameras that had recently been installed in the governor’s office while he was away at a national conference in the Federal District.

  The chief of police could not remember the girl’s face, much less her dark buds of breasts or her small, thin buttocks, which he had seen on the video screen. What he could not forget, what remained in his thoughts, had been something far more horrible, something that he had not expected to see but that the video camera had revealed. It was the long, thick erect organ of the governor; in low light it might be mistaken for a loaf of bread. He had of course been with the governor many times in the locker room of the country club after a shower or in the sauna room. But even standing beside the governor at the marble urinal in the Governor’s Palace in the capital had not prepared the chief for when the governor first took down his trousers and boxer shorts.

  On the videotape, as the governor ran his fingertips over the girl’s breasts and belly, his organ would increase its girth but the length remained the same, and most strangely of all, the organ did not twitch or jerk or move as the governor pushed his finger in and out of the dark bush area between the girl’s legs. Even at the instant the governor knelt astraddle the former junior miss, the organ hung down with its own weight and had to be lifted and then guided to the threshold with both the governor’s hands, a maneuver that reminded the police chief of a mortar crewman loading a shell.

  Even if the girl knew how to type and was past sixteen, the legal age for such carnality, the police chief could not help but think that such conduct left their administration, and the entire government party, wide open to charges of scandal the filthy communists relished. At a time when the unrest and turmoil to the south were in a ferment, the police chief felt the governor should not take these weekly golf games lightly. They needed the solidarity and brotherhood more than ever. It was not fitting for this serious business of men to play second fiddle to the flower-pink cunt that already suffered bruised petals, if security’s new color-video camera was telling the truth.

  As their car pulls out of the governor’s private driveway, the former ambassador’s wife tells him that Iliana could do nothing but talk and brag about the huge new mansion she and Menardo were having built. “Oh, where?” the former ambassador asks, pretending he is interested when he had hoped for a nap on the ride home. She is a clever bitch and immediate
ly takes offense at his languid response.

  “Don’t you think that is interesting?” she demands. “Don’t you wonder how all the money goes to that monkey-face who passes himself off as a white man?” Here the former ambassador is struck by the difficulty in balancing one interest with another. Her information comes in handy now that he is working for the American company. But it is not necessary for her to know anything, and yet the former ambassador hears in her badgering tone signs she is attempting to construct possible links and plots. The former ambassador clamps a hand to his forehead and apologizes, saying he feels one of his terrible headaches coming on. That quiets her immediately because the severity of his headaches necessitates days of bed rest in total darkness with high dosages of morphine. What the former ambassador does not tell his wife is he knows exactly where Menardo is getting the money to build the big new house.

  • • •

  Menardo rises before daylight and nervously showers twice, once upon rising, but then again before it is time to leave for the airport because he feels oily from the humidity and his own sweat. Iliana insists on coming along to the building site with Miss Martinez-Soto. Menardo has always known Iliana would have to participate in the planning and the design. But since the senior partner had put their project in the young architect’s hands, Menardo’s previous expectations and plans have also changed. Had a senior architect done the designs and blueprints, Menardo might have felt at ease about leaving Iliana to work alone with her. Old man Portillo was a proven master architect and he would know how to sidestep graciously any of Iliana’s stupid ideas. But this young woman, though she had been a prize winner and top graduate from Madrid, might lack the experience needed to deal with the likes of Iliana, who could talk of nothing but greenhouses and conservatories and orchid-raising as her new hobby.

  Everything about Iliana irritated him this morning. He wanted to bash in her rouged cheeks and eyes ringed in turquoise. She kept asking why he wanted to leave for the airport an hour earlier than necessary, when everyone knew the plane from the Federal District always ran two hours late. He ignored the questions the first two times she asked, but the third time he had slammed down his briefcase so hard that the downstairs maid and the cook scurried out the back door. Iliana stood with the expression she assumed when her feelings were hurt. She went back upstairs, and a few minutes later, when Menardo yelled for her to come, that Tacho had brought the car around, she appeared at the head of the stairs in her pink satin kimono and said she did not feel well enough to go. Menardo felt small and helpless clinging to the briefcase, which felt heavier and heavier in his hand as he stood looking up at Iliana. He did not want Iliana along on the day he hoped to spend exclusively with Miss Martinez-Soto.

  Iliana was the kind who picked up the telephone and spoke with the husband or father of any woman she had suspected with Menardo. This had caused Menardo a great deal of embarrassment. Menardo believed it went back to the status of his family versus the status of hers. Had he been from origins equal or higher than hers, like other husbands he knew, Iliana would not dare make her poisonous telephone calls and send hate-filled, unsigned letters. Menardo had given her as much money than any husband of the upper class ever could have. Iliana’s own family would never have afforded an expenditure the size of which the new house was going to require. Menardo was proud his wife had large sums of cash to spend. Iliana’s own sisters and brothers remarked how much money she spent. Everyone knew how expensive Iliana’s collections were. She had begun collecting antique perfume bottles after the first miscarriage; Iliana’s deep sorrow over the loss had necessitated some diversion. Menardo had tried to dissuade Iliana, citing the costliness of these perfume bottles, but he had not fought very hard. After the antique perfume flasks had come enameled pillboxes, odd demitasse spoons, rosary beads of precious stones, pearls, and gold.

  Menardo left Iliana, arranging to drive by later after the visit to the building site so Miss Martinez-Soto could meet Iliana. They would discuss color charts and features Iliana wanted in the mansion. Menardo had calculated this move to calm any worries Iliana might have had about his intentions toward Miss Martinez-Soto.

  ADULTERY

  TACHO ROLLED PEBBLES of different colors on the ground near the airstrip and small terminal building. Menardo sat in the front seat straining his eyes, almost blinding himself even with the dark glasses as he peered into the bright sunlight searching for signs of the flight from Mexico City. Tacho was tossing the pebbles in the old Indian game that Menardo remembered seeing his grandfather play, when Menardo was a small child and his grandfather still had enough eyesight to see the little stones. Menardo had known it was a gambler’s game, but today Tacho told him it was a fortune-telling device too. Menardo had been pretending to read the newspaper between glances at the blinding sky, but he stopped long enough to make a guttural sound expressing his impatience with Indian superstition.

  “The pebbles can’t tell you any more than I already know,” Menardo said crossly. “The plane is two hours late from Mexico City, and my guest will be exhausted and half-sick by the time she arrives. She will regret she ever heard the name of Tuxtla Gutiérrez.” Tacho was kneeling beside the driver’s door, rolling the pebbles while Menardo made his dismissive remarks. “Oh, I wouldn’t worry boss,” Tacho said without raising his head. “I asked the pebbles. They say she will like it here, sir.” Menardo said nothing to this. He hated the way Indians tried to please you, telling you whatever they thought you wanted to hear so you would be tricked and believe their stupid superstitions or at least be manipulated to give them a bonus on payday. Still, Menardo had heard the cook and the downstairs maid quarreling over hot tips they had purchased from Tacho, hot tips on numbers for the lottery. Tacho had not asked them to pay in cash, which Tacho never lacked. He had required them to accompany him to the garage where he kept a hammock handy for naps and such transactions as these. The women had been fighting over the numbers he had given them. The cook had the little maid in tears. The cook maintained Tacho preferred older, bigger women and therefore had not given the maid as many winning numbers as he’d given the cook. Sometime later Menardo learned the cook had been right. Tacho had given the skinny girl only one winning number while the cook with the big fanny had won with five numbers.

  Miss Martinez-Soto was escorted off the aircraft by a fair-skinned man in a captain’s hat and uniform coat. The captain was apologizing profusely, and Menardo realized Miss Martinez-Soto was wearing an airline galley smock. The captain tipped his hat to Menardo and apologized for the delay and moreover for the “terrible inconvenience” Miss Martinez-Soto had suffered and for which the airline would pay. Menardo took Miss Martinez-Soto’s hand and got a faint whiff of vomit. She seemed so much younger and far less formal outside the big city. She laughed and ran her hands down the sides of the smock.

  “A man in the seat behind me stood up to go to the lavatory. Just then he got airsick. I am lucky he missed my hair. But he got my dress.” Menardo was enchanted. She was talking to him as if they had always known one another.

  Alegría did not like the sullen Indian chauffeur. Negroes made better drivers. She did not like the way the Indian looked at her. He seemed to know already. She decided the Indian chauffeur must be Menardo’s way of keeping in touch with his humble origins. That ass, the senior partner Mr. Portillo, had insisted on taking her for a long lunch to discuss Menardo, their prospective client. This man was “self-made,” as Mr. Portillo put it delicately, which meant here was a man of darker skin and lower class who had managed to amass a large fortune. Alegría hated the way Portillo bit into the olives skewed to the martinis he kept slinging back. Portillo was the only one of the partners who had not tried to seduce her. Portillo drooped in his chair, suddenly giving way to the weight of the martinis.

  The courses of the meal seemed to wash in and out relentlessly; Alegría played with her spoon and imagined the plates and bowls were garbage washing onto a beach. When he saw Alegría did not
care for the soup, he cut short his lecture on the holy man Bartolomé de Las Casas. He turned to Menardo and the mansion Alegría would be designing. It would be her first solo commission, and he naturally wanted to give her the benefit of all the knowledge his years in the profession had accumulated. Alegría did not tell him so, but Portillo would have nothing to worry about with this commission. The Señor was head over heels for her after one look. No, there would be no offenses, no ruffled feathers. If the wife wanted Gothic vaulted ceilings in the closets, Alegría was prepared to give them to her, and to concern herself only with structural stability.

  That night, Alegría had had a bitter argument with Bartolomeo. She told him she had to fly to Tuxtla Gutiérrez the following week. Bartolomeo had been angry at the length of the lunch she had had with Mr. Portillo. Bartolomeo was furious at the time her firm spent with the rich, “petting their swollen little egos!” Bartolomeo had shouted at Alegría, “And then you! You they keep there to pet the swelling trousers of the rich!” Alegría did it instinctively. When Bartolomeo got upset, she groomed her fingernails. The steady motion of the nail file was soothing. Stroking on the bright-colored nail enamel somehow distanced his words. Once when she teased him about New World being the terminology of the exploiter, Bartolomeo had slapped her across the face. Staggering back from the blow, tears blinding her, Alegría’s hand had brushed the electric coffeemaker. But instead of recoiling from the burn she had seized the handle and slammed the coffeepot into Bartolomeo’s chest, scalding him. Alegría had found that a manicure prevented such incidents.