The warehouse emptied so rapidly Menardo imagined the rising wind was pushing the crates of washing machines and deep freezers out of the building like leaves. On the grassy, green hilltop near the shrine to Our Lady of Perpetual Hope, the women and children and their hastily gathered bundles were surrounded with crates of new appliances. Finally, as time began to run out, a lookout was appointed to fire a pistol from the hilltop so the crews emptying the warehouse would have time to escape. Once it was clear the contents of the warehouse would be saved, Menardo had sent ten workers, three pickups, and a dump truck to evacuate the hospital. Patients strapped on stretchers were transported to the hilltop where they, along with all the others, watched as the great wave approached with the roar of a freight train. A fierce wind rode the giant wave, tearing off hats and flapping hospital gowns. Menardo had glanced away for only a moment, to remove a speck of dust in his left eye, and when he looked again, the huge wave had toppled over itself like the stone seawalls the wave pushed ahead of itself. The crowd let out its breath in a sigh—an aahh so loud it almost sounded like a cheer. When Menardo looked again, the warehouses lay folded like squares of cloth at the foot of the hill.
The next day Menardo is famous all over Chiapas State and in the most remote villages and towns of southern Mexico. Newspapers proclaim that Universal Insurance makes good on its promises to protect clients from dangers of all kinds. Not a single new appliance has been lost, and the patients have been safely evacuated although the hospital is destroyed. The publicity from the tidal wave brings hundreds of letters and calls from prospective clients. Menardo can not allow the security of his great new enterprise to depend on the teenage boys and village farmers. Menardo sees then the necessity of a crack team of trouble-shooters. Also, a delicate matter has recently developed in a town farther south. A client reports that “agitators” have been talking to his field hands; in the night, vandals have come to destroy the coffee trees. The client, a white-haired gentleman, is a believer in the old order, and in the old ways. He pays Menardo in gold, not currency. “I am solid,” the old man says. “I wish to remain that way.”
ARMS AND MUNITIONS
MENARDO CARRIES GOLD sewn inside his underwear and socks, which he covers with another plain layer, in case of searches at the international border. In Tucson, he scans the yellow pages. He walks past gun shops, lingers near their doors, hoping to find someone he might approach about a special business deal. He wants his security men to have only the best. He wants an elite security force, one that the wealthy and the powerful will rent for special occasions—elections or funerals and even weddings—when the possibilities for violence proliferate. He prices the guns inside and settles for 9mm Lugers because many of his wealthy clients are Mexicans of German descent. He is a novice. The owners of the gun shops are all white men who wear guns and holsters in their shops. They unconsciously touch their holsters when Menardo walks in their doors. He knows they will call the police if he raises the subject. U.S. laws are strict regarding the sale of firearms to foreigners or citizens of other states. Menardo is once again self-conscious about his flat, thick nose; his skin looks darker in Tucson too.
Menardo sits back in the taxi and ignores the English words of the driver. The taxi stops at the army surplus store near the railroad tracks. Before he goes inside, Menardo checks his reflection in the plate glass. He fears his suit coat is wrinkling and spoiling his image. Menardo sees a man staring at him from the other side of the window. The man is short and slight and has a huge bundle of yellow nylon billowing in his arms. The man does not take his eyes off Menardo as he walks in the door. Menardo refuses to be stared down, but once inside, Menardo realizes he is staring at a man whose face is more than half covered with a reddish-purple birthmark. Menardo drops his eyes, and at the same time the strange little white man drops the parachute and steps over to the glass-front counter. Although the day is hot, the man is wearing tight black leather driving gloves. Menardo admires the parachute in halting English. He might find uses for those in his company. The man pulls nervously at the driving gloves and asks what the company sells. “Insurance and security,” Menardo answers, not sure he has used the correct English word for insurance. The man has a pistol strapped on his hip. He smooths the leather of his gloves compulsively; first, with the right hand, then the left. Greenlee sees Menardo staring at the pistol and smiles for the first time. The smile goes on and off like a light switch, as if the man does it only to relax his jaws. The man motions at the back of the warehouse crammed full with racks of surplus army jackets, used parachutes, and empty ammunition boxes. Menardo tries to see everything as he follows Greenlee, but every shelf and corner, every square foot of the floor, is piled with canteens, helmets, glass radio tubes, and spools of copper wire.
Menardo can hear someone hammering on hollow metal. Menardo can’t see. He removes his tinted eyeglasses, but it’s of little use. The back room of the warehouse is hot and smells like railroad ties and train diesel and crankcase oil. In the dimness he makes out the hood of a jeep. Leaning in a far corner, almost touching the fifteen-foot ceiling, are what appear to be some sort of antitank missiles. Menardo is new to all this, but he has every confidence a businessman of his brilliance and skill can arrange the purchases and delivery of certain high-quality American firearms. But just then Menardo turns to find Greenlee kneeling, pressing on a floorboard. It comes up with a pop! and Greenlee lets himself down into the hole in the floor. Menardo later wonders why he followed crazy Greenlee into the basement. Later, when Greenlee has renovated the warehouse basement, they both still laugh about that day. Menardo had followed Greenlee without hesitation. He stepped off the bottom rung of the ladder, and Greenlee flipped on the lights dramatically. For as far as Menardo could see, in the vast basement of the old warehouse, there were stacked boxes of rifles and ammunition. Later Menardo asked Greenlee why he had trusted Menardo, and Greenlee had laughed nervously, smoothed the leather of his gloves, and said he trusted no one. But with Menardo, Greenlee knew anyone stupid enough to just walk in like that and follow him into a hole in the floor could not have been any government’s agent.
Menardo had returned from Tucson with a full, satisfied feeling, not only from the big meal Greenlee had bought him at the airport before he left, but with the vision in his head of all those crates of rifles. The rifles with ammunition and delivery charges cost once again the amount of the gold coins Menardo had carried. But Greenlee had been happy to open Menardo a charge account. “This is only the beginning, my friend,” Greenlee had said, patting Menardo on the shoulder as Menardo stepped into line with other passengers bound for Mexico City and points south. It had been just the beginning because Greenlee refused to deal with the others—the hotshot colonels who bought “supplies” once or twice. There were other arms suppliers, of course; but Greenlee got the best even when “the best” was unavailable anywhere else. Even then, Menardo used to have fantasies about Iliana dying, and himself falling in love with a lovely young girl who would immediately give him the son he wanted, the son who would inherit the yearly percentages and all the rest. “All the rest” was what occupied Menardo. Selling insurance and security had been a good beginning. But it had not taken Menardo long to realize, as Greenlee hinted, the real future lay in insurance and security of a different sort.
ALEGRÍA
MENARDO HAD MADE AN APPOINTMENT with the most prestigious architectural firm in Mexico City. There, on three floors of a skyscraper, rows and rows of young engineers and architects toiled away, “designing the face of Mexico’s future,” as one of the senior partners of the firm told Menardo as they toured the premises. But when they reached the upper floor, where the offices of the senior partners and associates were located, the senior partner had led Menardo into a suite where a beautiful young woman sat working at a drafting table, her knees together and the high heels of her shoes hooked daintily on the rung of a high stool. When she turned and looked up at them, Menardo saw the lovely blue silk dr
ess she wore was protected by a starched, white smock that gave her appearance a certain authority. She was, the senior partner told Menardo, their most prized young associate. Menardo did not remember crossing the pearl-gray carpet with the senior partner. All Menardo knew was that he was breathing the odor of many gardenias and carnations blooming together as Señorita Alegría Martinez-Soto took his thick, damp paw in her delicate, dry hand. Menardo glanced down to look at his hand in hers and saw that despite her work with pencils, rulers, and compasses, Señorita Martinez-Soto kept her fingernails long and perfectly enameled. Later Menardo had felt like a bumpkin because after the senior partner had left them alone together, Menardo had been so flustered he had accidentally stumbled over the wastebasket next to Alegría’s desk. But instead of appearing disdainful or stiff, she had laughed at the wadded balls of paper scattered over the carpet. “Little paper rabbits,” Alegría had said, pointing and then smiling broadly at Menardo. He had fallen quickly to his knees to retrieve the crumpled paper, but again she laughed and waved a hand with the long, dazzling fingernails and told him the janitors were accustomed to finding far worse. She explained when she really got an idea in earnest and began to make headway with a design, she would lose all track of time; then pencils and pencil leads and wads of torn paper would fly all over her office. “Fortunately,” Alegría said, looking deep into Menardo’s eyes, “they aren’t paying me for being neat and clean or to keep this office orderly.” Just as Menardo thought he sensed a certain boldness on the part of the young woman, she indicated the chair across the desk from hers and invited him to sit down.
The first order of business, she told him, was to get a general idea of the client’s immediate needs. Menardo had been greatly relieved that Señorita Martinez-Soto was proceeding slowly and from the very beginning. For although Menardo had boldly ventured into many business arenas in previous years and had become a self-made “millionaire,” he was quite aware that many of the intricate customs and rituals of the upper classes were still unknown to him. He had never engaged an architect before. He had simply understood this was the practice when one wished to build the castle of one’s dreams. Menardo was aware of a feeling far stronger and more urgent than simple gratitude toward this young beauty who had spared him embarrassment or discomfort. She must be one of these “modern liberated women” who did not need to resort to bitchery to get what she wanted. While she talked on and on about the “options” and “alternatives,” Menardo’s eyes darted furtively over her body, ready to dart back to her eyes whenever she looked away from the big window where she stared as she spoke. She had a fast, breathy way of talking about her ideas and goals—the interplay of structure as sculptural form with light.
“Light?” Menardo had echoed. He had narrowly escaped her eyes catching his on her breasts. Light had been the lead-in topic to their fateful discussion, enthusiastic planning, splendid rolls of blueprints, and finally, the opulent marble staircase to the second level. Menardo had learned that day to speak of “levels” rather than “floors.” Before he knew it, the time was up, and Señorita Martinez-Soto was showing him to the door. Menardo saw that all of the other offices were dark, and all but a few of the cadres of draftsmen and typists had left for the day. It was seven P.M. and Menardo had been so entranced he had forgotten his promise to call Iliana at six P.M. Now all that seemed too far in the past to matter. The lights of the capital were blinking and blazing, and without weighing the considerations, Menardo asked Señorita Martinez-Soto if she would not like to accompany him to the tearoom of his hotel for refreshment. Menardo was very self-conscious. He thought “dinner” would have been too forward, and “cocktails” or “a drink” sounded too vulgar. He had only heard gossip or read about liberated women in popular magazines. He was not sure what he should do or what he should expect. But Señorita Martinez-Soto became very cool. She explained socializing was specifically forbidden by company policy unless both husband and wife could be present. Apparently something unfortunate had happened between a client and a junior partner, but it had been long before her arrival at the firm and she did not know the details. Certainly he understood, did he not? Menardo broke into a cold sweat of embarrassment. It was the sort of mistake he tried always to avoid because he knew what separated the social classes were these intricate and confusing rules of etiquette. As she showed him out of the suite to the elevators, she had smiled and told him he should discuss with his wife the points she had raised, and she would have the firm’s receptionist telephone the following week to schedule her visit to Tuxtla Gutiérrez. It would be impossible, she reminded him, to design any structure without first surveying the building site.
Menardo could not get her out of his mind. He speculated on her background. She could not have been of high birth or from great wealth. Menardo knew the daughters of those families would never have been allowed to take up a profession. Menardo was relieved she was not too far out of his class. He was not sure, but he thought in another year or two, as the bigger arms sales were made, the millions might raise him to her level and he and she might possibly be considered social equals.
ILIANA
BACK HOME, MENARDO FELT a little ashamed at the way the spell of the big city had overcome him. Iliana was happy and excited about the plans and the design of the new house. It was her chance to get even with sisters and brothers and in-laws who had been skeptical about the marriage. But Menardo had money, and her family had lost much of its wealth over the years. Still Iliana had been reminded, every day since she was three years old, that her great-great-grandfather on her mother’s side had descended from the conquistador De Oñate.
Menardo had been cautious about mentioning Señorita Martinez-Soto. He had even let Iliana go on calling the architect “he” until it was time to dress for the party at the Governor’s Palace. Then he had said:
“Oh, by the way, it is interesting, and I know you will like her—the architect who is doing the drawings is a woman.” Iliana had been intent on discovering whether Tacho, the sullen Indian chauffeur, had remembered to pick up the dry cleaning. She knew Menardo did not like to wear the brown suit to the Governor’s Palace where the governor and the general and the ambassador would all be in military regalia. Naturally Iliana understood the importance of these details. In the months of their engagement she had done all she could to give helpful hints to Menardo so her parents and relatives would find him more acceptable. The consequence of these months of exchanging brown shoes or tan shoes for the dignity of black had made Menardo prone to fits of temper just before leaving the house for society “functions” as he called them. But Tacho never forgot anything, and almost as if he knew what the Señora was thinking, he sent the cook from the kitchen to remind the Señora the dry cleaning was hanging in the hall closet. Tacho favored the Señora because she had permitted him to keep his pet macaws in a tree behind the old garage.
Iliana brought Menardo the black suit and ruffled white shirt. She asked Menardo if the senior partner was sure this woman had the necessary capabilities. Menardo could feel himself move within, away from excitement and anticipation he could not pin down, to irritation, then fury, with Iliana and her dumb questions. Iliana had spoiled the new feeling he had been enjoying as he bathed. She was always raising worries where none should be. Iliana was insisting on an expensive automobile, a bulletproof Mercedes, because she felt they had reached “that level,” the highest of society. Iliana had only attended the nun’s school through the seventh level because her parents believed further education only confused young women. Iliana had never been confused, but she had always been uneasy. She had been born into a family set on the brink of ruin by dirty, stupid Indians who had no understanding of how much they needed their patróns to keep the world running productively. Even after Menardo had loaned large sums of money to her father and three brothers, thus establishing himself, Iliana still was gnawed by the fear that disaster was stalking all of them. Sometimes the fear surged up in her stomach causing her to
have to excuse herself from her parents’ dinner table, or to have to leave the ballroom for the ladies’ lounge. Iliana had thought for a long time that a house that was slightly larger than the old family home would prove her husband to the rest of the family. Iliana did not want the design spoiled. She felt a little angry the architecture firm had put their dream house in the hands of a woman.
Iliana did not exactly argue. From their house to the Governor’s Palace she had listened as Menardo reeled off Miss Martinez-Soto’s academic honors and professional prizes. But when Menardo would look to see if that had satisfied her, Iliana would say, “I don’t know,” which prompted Menardo to launch into another description of the size of her office and its proximity to the offices of the junior associates and senior partners. The last time Iliana said “Well, I’m not so sure,” Menardo had taken his head in both hands as if to shake his brains around. All he could think of were the years they had been engaged in this ritual to prove he was worthy enough despite all the money her family had received from Menardo. Iliana shut up when she saw the violence with which he seized his own head. Menardo had never laid a hand on her, but he had often shouted at her and told her how stupid or how greedy she was.
The Almanac of the Dead Page 31
