The Jaguar's Children

by John Vaillant

  “‘I don’t remember,’ I said, which was a lie.

  “He leaned toward me like he was sharing a secret. ‘I was seven and I was not the first to wear them. Now I wear Magnanni. And look at you, a doctor of science, working at UNAM in a biogenetics lab with students of your own. It’s incredible, no? In one generation your family has progressed from the Middle Ages to this. I can only imagine how proud your father must be. You can help us improve the native corn just as quickly. Transgénicos are the future,’ he says, stepping toward me and pointing out the window, ‘and Mexico is going to be a leader. You know as well as me that Mexico is the mother of the corn—for the whole world. And science is the father. Together we are making a better corn that will grow more, grow anywhere with no more lost crops, no more dead fathers and broken mothers. You know how hard it is so why do you, of all people, want to threaten the future of Mexico? This is a revolution, not only for the corn but for the people. Don’t you understand what this means for us? For our families?’

  “His eyes are wet and it makes the two colors in them even more different. He is asking like it’s a question, but I can tell that for him it’s answered already. I know this subject like my own hand, but I am scared and angry and there is something about his eyes. I’m having so much trouble collecting my thoughts. Finally, I get control of myself and I say to him, ‘Señor, do you understand the risk you’re taking? Nobody knows what transgénicos will do to the native crop over time, the science is too young. But what I do know’—and I’m pointing at my data now, stabbing at it—‘is that I found Kortez400 in the Sierra Juárez, in four separate locations. Everyone in our lab knows there’s a global ban on terminators, and everyone working on Kortez knows it’s volatile. So what in the name of God is it doing in Oaxaca?’

  “The man is standing two meters from me now and he sighs, looks at his watch and then over my shoulder at Raúl. ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘You call yourself a scientist and yet you have no faith in science to perform the miracle it is already performing in crops all over the world. It is a contradiction. It is bad for Mexico and, if you’re not willing to hear me, it will be bad for you.’ He walks back over to the spool, picks up his Coke, takes a sip and puts it back down. ‘Listen to me now and I will tell you what this is.’ He picks up my data and holds it in front of me. ‘This is a dirty bomb. If you activate it as you are trying to do, you could do serious damage to millions of people and to a young industry that will bring Mexico wealth and respect in the twenty-first century. If you cause this to happen you will no longer be a scientist in our eyes, you will be a terrorist—an enemy, not just of Mexico but of our ally and partner the United States, and these are dangerous enemies to have.’ He drops my data back onto the spool, but he keeps talking.

  “‘I can see you have a passion for this work, a gift even, and I’m willing to believe that you think you’re doing the right thing. Now, Dr. Ramírez, with respect, I want to invite you to do exactly that—to be part of this green revolution that will transform Mexico. Already it is happening. Not only do we have the science, we have the support of NAFTA, the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, your Governor Odiseo and several multinational companies, including SantaMaize. But it will help the cause to have an indigenous scientist working with us, someone who can represent that population and give them confidence in the mission, to let them know we aren’t taking anything away, we’re simply harmonizing science with tradition. It will be a victory for you, for your people, for all Mexicanos. I can also say that if you join us you will be paid very, very well. I know for a fact that UNAM has secured funding for a new position on their faculty of sciences, a chair for a plant geneticist of native blood. Dr. Ramírez, you could be the first—the Benito Juárez of biotech.’

  “The man is smiling now, like a patrón. ‘It’s the opportunity of a lifetime, but in order for it to happen’—he rests his hand on my data—‘this must go away. As you know, we’re in touch with your friend at the Ministry and we have his computer. We will need your computer now and we will replace it with the model of your choice. Maybe you need a new phone also. If there are other copies, in any form, you will need to find them. If this data or any part of it enters the environment—if it is reproduced anywhere at all—you will be held responsible and I cannot control what happens then. It’s safe to say, at the very least, that your career at UNAM will be finished. But you’re an ambitious and intelligent young man and I see another path for you.’

  “He nods to Raúl who steps forward holding out a lighter. Again I am surprised by the size of his hand. The man takes the lighter and he looks at me, his face is open, almost beaming. ‘It will be like planting time in the milpa,’ he says. ‘From the ashes, a new beginning.’

  “Then he places the lighter on top of my data.

  “I understand then what I am in this man’s story. Already he knows what’s coming next, and I am acting it out like some kind of puppet. More than anything I want to be gone from this place, but the lighter is one more thing I’m not expecting. I’m thinking this chingado can suck my dick if he thinks I’ll burn my own work. This is the kind of thing they do to political dissidents and spies—not to scientists. Not to me. But I was still learning then.

  “‘You want me to burn this,’ I say.

  “‘It’s up to you,’ he says. He is smiling like a cat and his different-colored eyes grow wider. I can’t move. I am still trying to get this new idea into my head and it is just too big, too wrong. He sees me like this and says, ‘Of course, if you need more time we can go up to the roof and see the milpa.’

  “I know there is no milpa. I know the only thing up there is a long way down. And now I know that when you’re afraid for your life you will do anything to save it. So I move myself and it is a robot doing this. I go to the spool and pick up my data and the lighter. The man stands back with his head down and his hands in front of him as if he is honoring a moment of silence. Raúl and the taxista put away their phones.

  “I’m holding my data in one hand and the lighter in the other. The only way I can bring them together is to divide myself in two. There is the physical body with the data and the lighter, and there is everything else I am and believe floating overhead by the dangling wires. From there I witness my hand lighting the lighter and putting the flame to the pages. Like this I see the fire catch on the bottom corner and climb along the edges first, then race up the back, as if to burn is what those pages have always wanted to do. My hand drops them to the cement floor where the fire grows and the paper curls in on itself and then breaks apart, black and smoking. After a minute, the fire dies down, but there is some paper left, still showing some text.

  “‘All of it,’ says the man softly, tapping his fingertips together.

  “The body kneels and picks up the last part by the clip. The body lights it again and turns it in its fingers, feeding the paper to the flame until there is a smell of more than just paper. When it is all gone but the smoke and a few dark lines of text in the ash, the man nods to Raúl. Then he picks up his phone and the bottle of Coke. Raúl comes over and steps on the ashes, kicking them here and there. He picks up the clip and the lighter and puts them in his pocket. After that, he folds the beach chair and puts it under his arm. The man in the pink shirt looks down at what he thinks is me, still on my knees. ‘Bueno,’ he says. ‘Ándale.’

  “He draws his hand across his thin hair and moves toward the door with the taxista leading the way. With a wave of his hand, Raúl tells my body to come and it rises and walks out with him close behind. I am following overhead like a balloon on a string. Down the stairs we go with no one hurrying. Somewhere around the fourth floor, in the rhythm and echo of all those shoes and steps, in the shame and relief of being alive, I find my way back into my body. We come to the entrance hall and through the door to the parking lot. Before going to his car, the man turns to look at me. ‘What we discussed,’ he says, ‘you’ll take care of that today. Either way, I’
ll see you soon.’

  “Raúl opens the door of the taxi for me and, once I’m in, he closes it, puts the beach chair in the trunk and gets in on the other side. The taxista starts the motor and as we pass through the gate the doors lock themselves again. The taxi is driving and there is nothing I can do. I am numb except for the blisters growing on my finger and thumb. I have never felt so weak. Never before have I had the life taken from me like that.

  “‘Café Verde,’ says Raúl to the taxista like he is reminding him.

  “‘I don’t want to go there,’ I say.

  “‘It just opened,’ says Raúl. ‘The coffee’s fantastic. And this waitress—my god.’

  “He turns and looks out the window. I am looking too, and for a moment El Popo is visible between some buildings, snow running down from the cone in long blades, the ancient, endless smoke trailing away in the opposite direction from where we are going. Moctezuma saw that volcano, and so did Cortés, and I know for certain now they were seeing different things.”

  25

  Lupo’s head appears around the corner of the garage and says, “One hour,” and I realize I’ve forgotten where we are. César doesn’t even look up. His eyes are way out in the desert past the floodlights shining on this parking lot that looks now like a prison yard. A sick sad feeling comes into my stomach when I think of what’s coming. But I never knew anyone in such a situation before and I can’t help myself—I ask César what happened next and this is what he told me, más o menos.

  “We were in the taxi for a long time,” he said, “and no one says anything. I’m not sure where we are going and I wonder if I will have the strength to walk when we get there. When finally we pull over and stop, it is in front of Café Verde. It is a real place. The doors unlock and the taxista gets out and walks around to open my door. I look at Raúl to see if he’s going to do anything, but he doesn’t except for raising one of his giant fingers. ‘That man we visited today,’ he says. ‘You saw his eyes? They are very good at finding lost things.’ Then he nods toward the café and winks. ‘Suerte.’

  “I get out and walk away from the taxi in such a stupor it takes me a minute to realize that I am in Coyoacán, an expensive neighborhood by the university with shade trees and brightly painted houses. I feel dizzy like I have just given blood and I wonder if I’m being followed. I want to go home, but maybe someone’s in my apartment already. Maybe I will get there and it will be torn apart, or I will be taken again. I go to a pay phone and call my girlfriend at her office and I can’t tell you my relief when she answers. I ask her to meet me for coffee near the university. I don’t usually do this and she asks me if everything’s OK. ‘Something came up,’ I say.

  “We meet at a student cafeteria on Churubusco where the kind of person who works for BioSeguridad will stand out. She is worried and asking me, but I make her wait until I’ve studied everyone and it looks OK. We get our coffee, sit down, me facing the door, and I tell her like I told you. Then I say I’m leaving the city and that she must fly home immediately. She is a stubborn güera and says she can’t leave, that she’s committed to her program and that giving in to fear is like justifying evil. I tell her that she is being arrogant and naïve, that Mexico isn’t America, that this BioSeguridad guy is a very scary man who knows all about me and it won’t help anyone if she is kidnapped and used for blackmail. I ask her where her passport is and she says it’s in her backpack because she needed it for the bank that day. I ask her where her computer is and she says it’s at her office. I tell her to go there, pick it up and go directly to the airport—to get out of Mexico and not come back until she hears from me.

  “She’s crying and I am saying how sorry I am, but I beg her to do this and promise I will contact her when I know more. Then this funny look comes over her face and she asks me if I’ve met someone else. I can’t believe she’s saying this, that she thinks I would make up such a story, so I take her hands in mine and lean in very close and I say, ‘You’re fucking right I met someone else. He wears pink shirts and has two different eyes and he scares the living shit out of me.’ It was the only funny part of that entire afternoon. ‘Mi corazón,’ I said to her, ‘you must believe me—and believe this.’ I kissed her then and wondered when I would again.

  “I never went back to my apartment and I never went back to the lab. I will not describe for you our goodbye, but letting go of her hand at the metro—that is when I became an exile in my own country. It was Orpheus who went down those stairs. I could feel her eyes on me, but I was afraid to turn around. At the bottom was a subway map covered in glass, and in spite of myself I looked at the reflection. All I could see behind me was a dark shadow against the sky.

  “I took the metro to Centro Médico, withdrew my maximum from a bank machine, got a cash advance on my credit card and rode all the way out to La Paz. From there I took local buses to Puebla and then a Red Star overnight to Oaxaca. I knew a place I could hide safely, but every time the bus stopped I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown—that Raúl would be there waiting, with his enormous hands. I was praying, but it had been a long time—I’d been so caught up in the work, and Juquila was far away. I was hoping she would be closer in Oaxaca, and I needed time to make a plan.”

  “The sun was coming up when the bus arrived at the second-class station and I took a taxi straight to my friend who lives alone near Abastos market and owns a taxi himself. He was home, thank God, and when he opened the door I started to cry. He hugged me, slapped my face like a brother and offered me a shot of mezcal. It was good to be back in Oaxaca. He made eggs and tlayudas and I tried to tell him. He was the right person, he had been active in the strike and it wasn’t his first time hiding people. I didn’t go outside for two weeks. I prayed a lot, especially to Juquila, and I apologized for neglecting her.

  “In this time I grew a mustache and a small beard and made a plan to leave the country. I never wanted to leave, you know. I didn’t know what else to do unless I wanted to work for those madres at BioSeguridad, but they wouldn’t trust me now and UNAM would never take me back. My passport was in D.F. and I was sure they had it so I knew I must cross with a coyote. It was a big step—I wasn’t sure I had enough money and that is how I came to drive the taxi. It is something I did in university and after two weeks in hiding I knew they would have searched my pueblo and found nothing. I hadn’t been in el centro for five years and I believed I could be safe there if I was careful. My friend offered me the night and sixty percent minus gas. ‘Just don’t speed,’ he said. ‘And don’t crash.’

  “I thought I would make enough money in a month, but it took longer and all that time I didn’t use my phone or my bankcard. I didn’t go out in the daytime and I didn’t try to contact my family or my girlfriend. It was a hard rule for me to live with, but I couldn’t take the chance. I spent a lot of time working on an article to go with my data and researching the border on my friend’s computer, but I would clear it every time. I left nothing with my friend and I put nothing in the cloud. I wanted no trace that might lead back to him or to Oaxaca. Always I kept my data and my money on me because I needed to be ready to run at any time. I had a thumb drive on my keychain, but the federales got that. Now the phone is all I have left. And my friend—I’m afraid I destroyed everything for him. My only hope is he can convince the federales that his taxi was stolen. Fuck. I can’t think about that now.”

  César leaned his head back against the wall of the garage and groaned. “Since that day in D.F., my data and the dream of seeing my girlfriend again kept me going.” César looked at me then and it was not a friendly look. “I was so fucking careful. For two months nobody recognized me. Then I have you in the taxi for two minutes.” He took a sip of his beer that was more like a bite. “I never saw that truck coming.”

  “Cheche,” I said, “if I had known—”

  But he waved my words away. How can you argue with Fate?

  26

  Sat Apr 7—20:13

  I was so s
ure we would be found by now, that César would go to the hospital, that the bars would come back—something better or different than this. But to carry this for César—that is the bargain I made when I took his water. All his data is in here with his article in English—“Evidence of transgenic DNA and V-GURTs in native maize fields in Oaxaca, Mexico.” Maybe it is the only copy that exists now. I tried to send it already, but it is waiting with everything else.

  There is something else, AnniMac, and I only found it now—a pdf called VueloJetBlue. It is an itinerary for a flight from New York to Phoenix and the date has passed two days ago. But it was not this that sent the lightning through my body, it was the name. It is you—Anne Macaulay.

  All this time.

  You are in Phoenix now? Waiting? Looking for César? Pobre César. I believe it was you who kept him careful for so long. He did this for you and for the corn, and still he lives. I will tell him that you’re close.

  If you ever get these messages, please know I made it last as long as I could—his battery, his water, everything, but I’m afraid it’s not enough and I cannot help him anymore. He was right—I should not have followed him. I should have left him in Abastos and gone back to my pueblo. If I had done that, he would not have gone to Lupo. But both of us wanted it to be true—that Don Serafín would help us, that things would be better if only we could get over the line. And there is something about César—he is a magnet, and such people can be dangerous.