A cloaked figure shut the front door slowly while sitting on the easy chair in the shadows.
Spooked, Bellacosa exclaimed, “Quien fregados está aquí,” in the most menacing way he could, holding the bottle of red wine like a weapon.
The figure stood up and Bellacosa saw its balding silhouette with patches of thin, disheveled hair in front of the blue windowpane. Bellacosa felt that he’d been transported to a place more like a graveyard than his shack, as the boiling pot gurgled in the kitchen, and the bloody smell of flesh torn apart by machines pulled at his nerves.
The balding figure said, “Soy yo, hermano. Oswaldo. Don’t turn on the lights, please. Not that.” The voice carried a noticeable speech impediment.
Bellacosa swiftly set the bottle of wine on the kitchen counter. Oswaldo appeared unstable and deranged, but grounded in his composure. He wore a brown trench coat, a style Bellacosa hadn’t seen in years. In the darkness, Bellacosa felt his brother was looking at him yet not, and he couldn’t directly make out his eyes.
He hugged his brother, whose death he’d already lamentably come to terms with in his own grieving manner.
“Oswaldo,” Bellacosa said. “Oswaldo, what happened to you, my brother?”
“Look what they did to me,” he wheezed. “I haven’t looked in a mirror. A mirror is too bright for me. What does it matter? Ya está hecho. It is done. I’m finally becoming accustomed again to talking, see? You wouldn’t believe. You wouldn’t believe how a huarango thorn burns when it pierces your flesh. Imagine. Imagine them all over your mouth. Like this. They were going to shrink my head. They were going to shrink my head yet didn’t. I saw them. I saw them do it to a lot of others. Women, too. Young. Kids. All ages with dark skin. It’s hard to believe, brother. I can’t repeat those things again to another human. It went through my mind that one day … I should go to mass to confess and tell a priest now, now that I’m not what I was, a shrunken head to be. Sorry, sorry. I can’t feel myself talk and it comes out too fast not making sense at times. There’s somebody trying to become the new kingpin out there. Men were moving a group of us to another, to a different location. But there was an accident. And I remember running. I remember the river. There was smoke going up like this, like this, in little pieces like confetti. Don’t remember how until a man found me. A Border Protector, of all people. Who is secretly part of the Phantom Recruits. He took me to a woman who was something like an angel, and I thanked God that I was still alive. Strange, because I had begged Him to kill me, before. To end it all rather than keep seeing them do it, to cut the head off another person and to suffer. And to be fated the same fate.”
Bellacosa brought the broth down to a low boil, and Oswaldo sat in the easy chair by the door, next to the shrine of candles for his wife, Lupita, his daughter, Yadira, and the dead. There was also the picture of Oswaldo as a young boy, which he’d recently added. When Bellacosa sat down on a stool and faced Oswaldo, he tried to really find his eyes in the dark living room. Bellacosa asked why he couldn’t turn on the lights, and Oswaldo replied because he no longer had his old eyes.
“Como?” Bellacosa asked, slightly afraid, feeling a deep dread for his brother that was, like the broth, slowly boiling.
“Yes. The headhunters in Sindicato Unidos. They were going to shrink my head and sell it. Doing it the way they suppose the Aranañas did. The Aranaña doctor working for them started the process, the process with me, and my soul, and I’m sensitive to all light now. The doctor inserted the spirit called altalumbre, and sewed all our mouths shut. To keep our real spirits inside our skulls, our holy ghost forever fighting, never here nor there. Get it? The Aranaña Indians. They knew this about people, about our souls. People think the Aranaña used actual souls as currency. That this was their sustainability as a race for a long time, this untouchable fabric which makes us human, our souls. See? Even though in their core people make them out to be idiots, and are discriminated against by us, by all the people. Aranaña descendants have the most demanding, degrading jobs and are discouraged from education, through—through political influences. It’s all a disguise. Una máscara, it’s a mask the Aranaña have to wear, just like other people. Brother, I am not myself anymore. Bright lights make me blind, and only in the nighttime do I have energy. I don’t know why I was made to survive, you see, you see? I survived, I am here. Right, brother? I am here with you.”
“Yes, yes you are, Oswaldo.”
“I am here but I am not here. This is my new mask, the one I am made to wear now. Like the Aranaña. I used your kitchen. I can’t eat and hope you are not, not hungry. Perdón. The thing is that I have a worm growing. A worm that is always inside me, always growing. Every day. The only way to get it out is with a broth, or it gets bigger. And when it’s out, a new one starts over, and time to cook another broth. The thing is, also, that I’m here and I am not here.”
In a fit of desperation Bellacosa said, “I tried to find you. Remember Manolo, from when we were boys? He’s the head detective they got in Reinahermosa now. He’s been helping me out.”
Devoid of emotion, Oswaldo interrupted: “That’s who did it. Manolo, from the neighborhood. Se lo va llevar el diablo. It was that perro.”
“No,” Bellacosa said. “That can’t be.”
Oswaldo’s body lightly trembled, then he grabbed ahold of the side of the chair and lifted himself up.
“Yes. Somebody figured out I owned a couple abandoned buildings. They started using them for their dirty business. When I reported them to the police they came and got me. But with the kingpin Pacheco dead there’s a new war on the rise. Listen. I listen to myself saying these things and my mouth stings. So much. When I speak. But it’s not really me, brother, can you see this, too, that it’s not me? My eyes can’t adjust to the bright light of day, tell me what now if I can’t do that? Is my mouth sealed shut again? My mouth was shut. With the huarango thorns, my mouth was shut, and my soul was trapped to fight the spirit altalumbre too long, too long. I’m shaken up inside. We’re not really here, but we are. Past, present, and future. Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost. Every Aranaña is all three, brother. Brother, you. You and all the others are only sons. We can live only in one world. But the Aranaña live in all three. You understand me, right? Each of them is a trinity, and sons are only a part of that trinity. We are stuck in the present, and they are perpetual. Sons can gain enlightenment by learning the Father and the Holy Ghost through many, many lifetimes. The Aranaña don’t need lifetimes. They are lifetimes. Understand, brother? The place I am in now is a difficult place, where are the birds, where are the stars? I am no longer a son. No longer anything, can you see that? I can’t achieve enlightenment, happiness. Or love. I don’t have a soul in me, or the one that was there is lost. Shaken up. So I’ve contacted my sons, Luis and Ricardito. And sent my ex-wife a note, too. I hope I can see my boys one last time. As a father I think I’ve done good to them, though I know they resent me. My sons are old enough to be their own men, as you know. In the divorce they took their mother’s side.”
Oswaldo had moved into the kitchen and Bellacosa stood up and followed him. Before the stove, Bellacosa watched his brother’s features. A nerve on the right side of Oswaldo’s face was twitching, and for the first time Bellacosa saw the wounds where the huarango thorns had been sewn around his mouth. They looked like tiny mouths themselves, as if God decided more were needed to attain true silence. They’d been bleeding and it was unclear to Bellacosa whether they were healing or infected. Oswaldo was mumbling something about the broth and Bellacosa placed his hand on his brother’s shoulder as he stirred the pot with a wooden spoon.
Bellacosa said, “I’m very sorry about everything, Oswaldo. Tell me what I can do.”
“I no longer know what sorry means, Esteban. Don’t feel sorry. I can’t feel anything, just the sound of the words. There are a lot of things impossible to me now. Look at me. Who am I? Am I a ghost? I think that I am. But something about me is still human, can still yearn
. It burns out more and more every moment, but there’s still a yearning in there, in here. I was made to live this whole time for something. The Border Protector that found me, he’s in with the Phantom Recruits. I’m helping him. I’m helping him with the little I can remember. This big thing is happening, a great big voice in the deep night tells me. I listen to the shadows, they know the evil hiding in their crevices. The viejita he took me to, she’s a descendant of Aranaña, and still in touch with the old, true culture. She can get me to the other side now. I just have to go to her and she can finish it. Finish the process. But the only way to finish it is by death. If I die. This, how you see me now. This is the only way I can keep living if I live. She warned me the longer I lived with this the more tormenting it all becomes. With the worm, the worm inside of me, always growing, always needing to get it out. But I need to say goodbye to my sons. To my family. I wasn’t thinking of saving myself.”
Oswaldo carried the pot to the living room and set it on the tiled floor.
“I wanted to see you, too, brother. You were always the gifted one of the two of us. I can see that now. I was never there for you or your family. I was never there for Mother. I held things about our childhood against all people, and against you. But I never considered that we were both only boys. And Mother and Father, they were only kids, too, when they had us. But we were all affected, affected deeply after Father died and we were left all alone. Mother couldn’t even read. And I carried only the bad things that happened with me into old age. And those are my sins. I never gave you the money you needed. For you when your daughter died. Or when Lupita passed away, this is true. My sons, I know that both my sons are evil-spirited young men. That’s what they are, and I know now the reason is because they took, they took from me. And what do I have now? I was made to survive for something, and what I can do I will do, from now until my true end. Manolo, they’re getting Manolo, the Phantom Recruits know all about him. Rest assured of that. He’s getting tied in with crooked Americans with money. But not for long. This big thing is happening, you’ll see. In this soup, you know what’s in here? It’s real coyote bones. The only way to get rid of this worm inside me.”
Bellacosa was on his feet when his brother grabbed the handles of the pot as if they were the ears of the coyote itself.
Oswaldo said, “Talking tires me. I can’t talk anymore. You don’t have to be here to watch me do this.”
He was on his knees before the pot, like a drunk about to hurl into the toilet, and with his mouth wide open breathed in the steam of the coyote bones and vegetable broth. He did it in grinding heaves, like it was painful to his body.
Bellacosa watched his brother retch a couple of times, then his body began to shake wildly, his face turning red then purple. Suddenly, with an obscene, shocking grace, a pearly worm an inch and a half thick slid out of his throat and his mouth and into the hot broth. Oswaldo’s throat gurgled and the length of the tapeworm seemed interminable. He heaved and heaved and finally the pale tail of the tapeworm showed and the ordeal was over. Oswaldo gasped for air and his complexion turned pallid again. He made quick arrangements to his composure and began excusing himself excessively, almost sobbing, and insisted he had to leave before it got too close to the light of dawn.
“Nonsense. Where do you have to go?” Bellacosa exclaimed, and urged him to stay.
Oswaldo took deep breaths and with the help of Bellacosa propped himself on the easy chair and passed out. Bellacosa ran his hand over his brother’s head and in the darkness his eyes began to tear up.
Bellacosa locked the front door. He walked to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water, downed it, and poured another. He went to the restroom, finished, and walked back to the living room to find Oswaldo gone and the front door wide open.
Bellacosa cursed, ran outside, looked all around and, strangely, up toward the sky in search of him. He got in the old Jeep, but quickly saw his efforts were in vain. Oswaldo had fled into the night, with the shadows of the trees as his wings. Back inside the shack, Bellacosa sat exhausted and defeated in his living room and stared into the coyote broth with the tapeworm swimming around for a really long time before flushing it down the toilet, bones and all, and threw the pot away. He drank another glass from the bottle of Bordeaux, listening to his favorite Bach string quartets, and when he passed out he did so on the easy chair Oswaldo had used in the tiny living room.
PART
2
ELEVEN
Something big went down south of the border. The foreign press dubbed it the most elaborate art heist in history, and in Mexico it was felt as the worst blow to the nation and roots of its culture since the taking of Texas: Thirteen Olmec heads from across the country were stolen in armed robberies. Thieves had successfully made off with twelve Olmec heads from Veracruz, as well as the head on the Reinahermosa-MacArthur International Bridge. Each head weighed between 8 and 41.87 metric tons.
In San Lorenzo, Veracruz, two eighteen-wheelers with cooler units and ten pickup trucks filled with armed men reportedly took over Las Ruinas Nuestro Palacio and, using Gargantua forklifts, stole monuments 5, 15, 17, 53, 61, 66, 89, 23, 24, and 42, with mild gunfire and three deaths.
In La Venta, Tabasco, at the touristy Parque Museo, the armed security guards were old-timers, and had been sipping on a communal bottle of Presidente whiskey on their night shift. They defended the five Olmec heads filled with liquid courage against fourteen sober traffickers, and somehow came out unscathed, their adrenaline pumping high while surrounded by bodies as the police and ambulances arrived. The guards were lauded as heroes, defenders of La Patria, and photographs of them posing by the saved Olmec heads, along with old mug shots of the assailants, were published rampantly in the media.
At the locations of Olmec head monuments A and Q in Tres Zapotes, Veracruz, it was only one eighteen-wheeler and a flatbed with a crew of no more than eleven men, and all the security guards were paid off. There was no conflict or even mild resistance.
The heist of Olmec head L, which stood alone on the Texas-Mexico border and weighed 16.3 metric tons, was pulled off in a similar fashion. Security cameras there didn’t register any footage, and no witnesses came forward reporting foul play. Neither the American Border Protectors nor the Customs Military of Mexico knew which direction the thieves even ran, north or south. What took the Olmec civilization hundreds of years to build and transport, this syndicate, in what appeared to be a carefully planned military-style operation, made vanish overnight. Outrage befell the country, people took to the streets, blocked highways, set fire to vehicles; universities and museums went on strike to organize and attend public demonstrations. No syndicate came forward to admit responsibility, which was far from their modus operandi. The Mexican Marines had soldiers stationed at the remaining five heads at Parque Museo La Venta, in Tabasco. The Reinahermosa-MacArthur International Bridge was closed off for a full investigation and life along the border grew stranger yet again.
Out of precaution, the British Army was temporarily stationed at Stonehenge, and a trained team from the UN was deployed to monitor all activity on Easter Island. Tourists couldn’t help but catch an air of fear blowing over their shoulders at the ruins of Rome and Pompeii, and even at the Louvre and Statue of Liberty security was beefed up.
Though immediately no motives were known, it was rumored among the people that the Olmec heads had been bought off in a private, underground auction held in the western hills, hosted by an elite Scandinavian impresario. Others said the heist was instigated as a competitive bet between rival syndicates. The most daring still whispered that the thieves were actually the government itself, that those elected into power had sold the Olmec heads in a clandestine business deal to fuel their own private accounts. Candles and handwritten notes were placed by natives and tourists at the site of El Angel de la Independencia; offerings and handmade sculptures of the heads were placed at Tres Zapotes, an act denounced as deeply offensive by the right-wing newspaper El Sureño
, confusing many and enraging some. Besides the twenty-one missing young biology students from Universidad la Reforma who’d been found decapitated in a mass grave, no singular criminal act had ever provoked as vehement an outburst from the Mexican people.
* * *
WHILE THE WORLD MASTICATED over these revelations, Bellacosa, in the days after the dinner, was closed off from it all. He allowed himself to sleep in, and after stretching, he walked over to El Carretón Taco Million, picked up two tacos to go with potatoes, eggs, and refried beans on freshly made corn tortillas with tomatillo salsa, and ate them sitting barefoot at the counter dividing his kitchen and living room.
Remembering his unfinished business, Bellacosa told himself there was no avoiding it anymore. He dialed his client Don Villaseñor’s number, which went straight to voice mail. He thought it over, pinched through the crevices in his wallet, and found the slip of paper with Don Villaseñor’s second office phone number and dialed.
“Bueno,” a male voice he didn’t recognize on the other end answered, crawling out the speaker like a black, hairy spider.
Bellacosa was about to say something, then hesitated. It was quiet in the background, which was unusual for a weekday at Don Villaseñor’s office. The man on the other end was chewing on something that didn’t sound edible, like the end of a stapler or a pool cue.
He hung up the phone feeling suspicious of everybody, and began thinking about his brother, then about that hijo de la chingada Manolo, whom he’d been paying off for information and who had been Oswaldo’s captor and torturer all along. The tomatillo salsa from breakfast had been spicy and Bellacosa was filled with rage. He didn’t remember the last time he felt this way, and he stood in front of the sink drinking glass after glass of water. He breathed in profoundly and forced into his mind the spiritual side of the equation: that the Fates had a say in everything and that Manolo would get what was his in the end; and so would Oswaldo; and so would he, Bellacosa.
Tears of the Trufflepig: A Novel Page 11
