Down the Rabbit Hole (5 page)

We’re going to leave soon, too. Winston López ordered Franklin Gómez to investigate what had happened in Mexico over the last few days, to look for some news about a man called El Amarillo. Franklin Gómez went to use the Mamba Point Hotel’s computer and when he came back he just said:

‘Uh-huh.’ And Winston López laughed in a really strange way.

I think this means we can leave now.

The most important thing now is that our Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses arrive safely in Mexico. That’s why we have to plan everything scrupulously and give detailed instructions. The bales of alfalfa our Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses will eat during the journey must be immaculate, with no infections. I calculate each hippo will eat a bale a day, or more. We’ve also given orders for them to be fed apples and grapes, which they really like. I made a list: twenty apples and thirty bunches of grapes a day. Per head. Mix up the alfalfa, apples and grapes to make gigantic salads.

Franklin Gómez translated the list of instructions into English and we gave it to John Kennedy Johnson so he can give it to the pirates. John Kennedy Johnson says we were really lucky, because we caught a male and a female. The list also says they should wash our Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses three times a week and clean their minuscule ears. Speaking of food, Azcatl’s going to be happy when he sees our Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses, because they’ll help him get rid of the weeds in the garden of our palace.

Franklin Gómez asked me if I’d thought of any names for our Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses yet. This was a secret I hadn’t told anyone, not even Miztli, who’s really good at keeping secrets. I thought if I told anyone it would be bad luck and I’d never have a Liberian pygmy hippopotamus. The problem was I’d only thought of one name. I hadn’t thought of two names, because I didn’t think I’d have two Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses. Now it wasn’t just about choosing another name. The two names had to sound good together. So I spent ages thinking, making combinations, and writing them all down in a list.

In the end I chose the names I still liked after repeating them 100 times. It’s a foolproof test. You repeat something 100 times and if you still like it it’s because it’s good. This doesn’t just work for names, it works for anything, food or people. Franklin Gómez thought they were really odd names to give Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses. Cinteotl says oddness is related to ugliness. But they’re not ugly names or odd ones, they’re names you don’t get tired of saying 100 times or more. Winston López is right. Educated people know a lot about books, but they don’t know anything about life. There’s no book that tells you how to choose names for Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses. Most books are about useless things that don’t matter to anyone.

Today we went to look around Monrovia. All because Winston López was in a good mood and hired a 4x4. It was the first time I saw the city in the daytime and I discovered that Liberia isn’t really a disastrous country. It’s a sordid country. It smelled of fried fish and burnt oil everywhere. And there were lots of people in the street, too, thousands of people or more. They were people who weren’t doing anything, they were just sitting around or talking and laughing. The houses were really ugly. Monrovia is not an immaculate city like Orlando, where we went on holiday once. Franklin Gómez says Monrovia looks like Poza Rica, but I don’t know if that’s true because I’ve never been to Poza Rica. I’d say it looks like La Chona.

As there wasn’t anything nice to see we started looking for bullet holes in the walls as we drove around. In the country of Liberia there was a war not very long ago. It seems incredible but it was fun: we invented a game, the game of seeing who could find the wall with the most bullet holes in it. Franklin Gómez found the wall of a shop with sixteen bullet holes in it. I found one on a house with loads more, twenty-three. In any case Winston López won, and he was driving. Winston López’s wall was on a school and it had ninety-eight bullet holes in it. We managed to count them one by one because we got out of the 4x4. Franklin Gómez started to take photos while giving a lecture about injustice. He talked about the rich and the poor, about Europe and Africa, about wars, hunger and diseases. And about whose fault it is: the French people’s, who like cutting off kings’ heads so much, and the Spanish, who don’t like cutting off kings’ heads, and the Portuguese, who love selling African people, and the English and the Gringos, who actually prefer to make corpses with bombs. Franklin Gómez went on and on with his lecture. Winston López took his camera away and said:

‘Don’t be an asshole, Franklin, we don’t do that.’ Then we went to buy souvenirs from Liberia. I bought five genuine African safari hats in a special safari shop. The hats are all the same shape, but they’re different colours. One’s grey, one’s olive green, one’s coffee-coloured, one’s white and one’s khaki. Winston López bought some figurines of African men from a local handicrafts shop and also two decorative masks to hang on the walls of our palace. And some African jewels that must be for Quecholli. We paid for all these things with our dollars and we could have bought loads more, because we have millions of dollars. But we didn’t buy more things because they wouldn’t fit in our suitcases. Unlike us Franklin Gómez bought souvenirs that don’t need to go in a suitcase: two years of school for four Liberian girls, ten vaccines for Liberian babies and twenty books for Monrovia’s public library. We had to go to an office to do all that. While Franklin Gómez was filling in a big pile of forms they’d given him, Winston López said something enigmatic to me. He said:

‘Look at him, he’s a saint.’

When we got back to the hotel Franklin Gómez had an expression like you couldn’t tell if he was laughing or about to cry. At least now he was really quiet, looking at some certificates he’d been given by the people in the office he bought his souvenirs from. Winston López just said:

‘Franklin, you really are a total asshole.’

This is the most disastrous day of my whole life. And nothing was supposed to have happened, because the only thing we were going to do was wait until tomorrow to go to the airport and fly home to Mexico. But in the afternoon John Kennedy Johnson turned up and started to talk about secret things with Franklin Gómez. Then we all went to the port of Monrovia to visit our Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses.

In the port of Monrovia we walked past cranes and gigantic crates until we got to an abandoned warehouse. Martin Luther King Taylor was standing in the doorway of the warehouse with a rifle. Before we went in Winston López told me there was a problem, that our Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses were ill. He tried to go into the warehouse on his own but I wouldn’t let him, I said that gangs are about not hiding things and about seeing the truth. Winston López ordered Franklin Gómez to stay and wait with me outside and not to let me in. So I kicked him three times and said he was a lousy lying piece of shit, and that I knew he was lying about the room with the guns and rifles. Winston López stroked my head with his ringless fingers and said it was all right, and we all went in together.

The warehouse stank. Franklin Gómez said it was because of the Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses’ shit. Inside it was quite dark, because there weren’t any windows and the only light came in through a gap between the walls and the aluminium roof. It was better that way. The walls were disgusting, with the paint peeling off in chunks, and wherever you walked you stepped in things that made a strange noise. Right at the end were the cages with our Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses. I asked which one was the male and which one the female and John Kennedy Johnson said the male was the one on the right, which was bigger than the one on the left. But this didn’t matter now, because they weren’t nice animals to look at any more. They were both lying down with their eyes closed and they weren’t even moving. They were really dirty and there was blood and shit everywhere. John Kennedy Johnson told us not to go near them or they’d get scared.

We were looking at our Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses when I realised that Itzcuauhtli should have come to Monrovia with us too. If Itzcuauhtli had come he would have given them the right medicine to make them better. Then Louis XVI started to writhe around and make horrible squealing sounds. It was a horrible sound because you heard it and you wanted to be dead so you wouldn’t have to hear it. He squealed really loudly, so loudly you couldn’t hear anything else, not even the noises from the port or the voices of everyone in the warehouse. When he was quiet at last, Franklin Gómez told us that John Kennedy Johnson said the best thing would be to put down our Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses, so they didn’t suffer.

Winston López took me aside and repeated what John Kennedy Johnson had just told us. He promised me we’d get some more Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses and he even forgot that I was Junior López and he was Winston López when he said:

‘Tochtli, remember: Yolcaut always finds a way.’

Then he asked me to go out of the warehouse with Franklin Gómez. I didn’t want to, because I’m a macho man, and macho men aren’t afraid. And anyway, gangs are about not hiding things and about seeing the truth. Then Winston López gave John Kennedy Johnson the order: to kill our Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses. Franklin Gómez tried to protest that I shouldn’t watch, he told Winston López not to be cruel, and said I was too young to see a thing like that. Winston López just ordered him to shut his fucking trap.

Martin Luther King Taylor went up to the cages armed with his rifle. First he went over to the cage on the right and held the weapon to Louis XVI’s heart. The sound of the bullet went bouncing around the walls of the warehouse together with the horrible squeals of the Liberian pygmy hippopotamus. But the one crying was Marie Antoinette of Austria, who was frightened by the noise. Louis XVI was already dead. My legs started to shake. We waited until Marie Antoinette stopped squealing and then Martin Luther King Taylor did the same with her. Except she didn’t die with one shot. She was moving around and the bullet didn’t hit her right in the heart. She didn’t stop moving until the fourth shot. Then it turned out I’m not macho after all and I started to cry like a faggot. I also wet my pants. I squealed horribly as if I was a Liberian pygmy hippopotamus who wanted the people listening to want to be dead so they didn’t have to hear me. I wanted them to put eight bullets in my prostate to make me into a corpse. And I wanted the whole world to be extinct. Franklin Gómez came over to give me a hug but Winston López shouted at him to leave me alone.

When I calmed down, I had a really strange feeling in my chest. It was hot and it didn’t hurt, but it made me think I was the most pathetic person in the whole universe.

We Japanese cut off heads with sabres, which are special swords that have the same devastating blade as guillotines. The advantage of sabres over guillotines is that with sabres you can also cut off arms, legs, noses, ears, hands or whatever you like. Also you can cut people in half. Whereas with guillotines you can only cut off heads. The truth is not all Japanese people use sabres. That would be like saying all Mexicans wear charro sombreros. It’s only Japanese samurai like me who use sabres.

The samurai in films do battle for honour and loyalty. We’d rather die than be faggots. Like in the film
The Fugitive Samurai
. It’s about a samurai who runs away to save another samurai’s honour. But he only runs away for a bit, because what he really wants is revenge. Samurai are like gangs, which are about solidarity and protection. Then one day the fugitive samurai stops being a fugitive because he goes back to the other samurai’s house by skiing down a snow-capped mountain. This is my favourite bit in the film. On his way the samurai who was once a fugitive meets all the enemies who wanted to kill him. And the samurai who was a fugitive chops them all up into little bits with his sword. Some he just cuts off an arm or a leg. Others he cuts off their head. And he cuts lots of them in half. All the snow is slowly stained with the enemies’ blood, as if it was a blackcurrant or strawberry Slush Puppie.

At the end of the film the samurai who was a fugitive discovers that the other samurai whose honour he wanted to save was already a corpse. The samurai who was a fugitive takes a knife and sticks it in himself so he becomes a corpse too. We Japanese don’t need happy endings in films. We’re not like the charros, who need women and love and always end up singing like they’re so happy. And such faggots.

To be a samurai you have to wear a dressing gown over your clothes and put on a samurai hat. Samurai hats are like giant upside down pozole bowls. You have to hide your sword in your dressing gown. I don’t have a samurai sword yet, but I’m going to ask Miztli for one. Yolcaut definitely won’t want him to buy me one. That’s why this time as well as the list of things I want I made a list of the secret things I want. Only Miztli and I will know about it. Miztli will understand. Yolcaut doesn’t understand anything, he hasn’t even realised I’m a samurai. He wants me to take off the dressing gown and says I can’t spend the whole day dressed like this, that I look like a little rich kid. And he thinks I’m mute because of what happened to our Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses. Cinteotl and Itzpapalotl don’t understand anything either. Whenever they see me they tell me to take off my pyjamas.

Mazatzin is the only one who’s happy and he’s giving me special classes about things from the empire of Japan. Today he told me about the Second World War. It was to do with two cities from the empire of Japan that were destroyed with atomic bombs. If someone fires an atomic bomb at you a samurai sword doesn’t do any good. As he told this story Mazatzin grew less and less happy and ended up giving one of his lectures. This one was about war, the economy and imperialists. And he kept saying:

‘The Gringos, Usagi, the lousy fucking Gringos.’

Today Paul Smith, who hasn’t been to our palace for a really long time, about three months, came round. I found out I actually know fifteen people and not fourteen or fifteen. The thing is I wasn’t sure if Paul Smith was still a person or if by now he was a corpse. I had my doubts because of one of Yolcaut’s enigmatic phrases, which he said when I asked him once why Paul Smith didn’t come round any more:

‘If he’s smart he’ll come back, if he’s an asshole he won’t.’

Paul Smith is Yolcaut’s partner in his business with the country of the United States and he’s got really strange hair. Actually the strange hair is the hair on his toupee, the rest of it is normal. But the hair on the toupee is disgusting. Yolcaut says Paul Smith has hair transplants because he’s going bald. He has to pay millions of dollars for every hair they put on his head. Paul Smith really is the most ridiculous person I know. Mazatzin doesn’t like Paul Smith either. Whenever he sees him he says:

‘Hey, Gringo, have you guys invaded a country in the last twenty minutes?’

And Paul Smith replies:

‘Your fucking mother, you naco, we invaded your fucking mother.’

Paul Smith pronounces his ‘r’s really strangely too, but not like the French, who sound as if their throats hurt from cutting off so many kings’ heads. Paul Smith says his ‘r’s as if he thinks he’s really important. It’s an arrogant man’s ‘r’ that echoes around inside his mouth. It’s to do with being a Gringo, arrogant people who think they own the world. At least that’s what Mazatzin says in his lectures.

As well as sorting out their business deals, there’s always a party when Paul Smith comes. At these parties Paul Smith goes to the bathroom a lot. At first I thought that Paul Smith must have a small bladder, but then Miztli told me a secret, he said it was so he could take cocaine. You take cocaine with your nose and in secret, in the bathroom or inside a cupboard. That’s why it’s such a good business, because it’s secret.

Paul Smith doesn’t understand anything about samurai either. He asked me if I was ill because I was walking around in a dressing gown. I’m not ill and what’s more: since I’ve been a samurai my tummy doesn’t hurt. Well, it does hurt, but I concentrate like the Japanese and it stops hurting. When Yolcaut told him I hadn’t said a thing for three days, Paul Smith started saying Let’s see if being mute is contagious. Paul Smith is an asshole. Since I’ve been mute there are more mysterious things. Is Paul Smith clever and is that why he came back? He can’t be, with his hair transplants and his ridiculous ideas Paul Smith can’t be clever. He’s definitely an asshole. But I can’t ask Yolcaut, no way. This enigma will remain unsolved. Mutes don’t ask for explanations or give explanations. Mutes are all about silence.

Since we came back from Monrovia severed heads have gone out of fashion. Now it’s more human remains they show on TV. Sometimes it’s a nose, other times it’s a windpipe or an intestine. Ears too. It can be anything apart from heads and hands. That’s what makes them human remains and not corpses. With corpses you can tell who the people were before they turned into corpses. While with human remains you can’t tell who the people were.

Human remains aren’t kept in baskets or crates of vintage brandy but in plastic bags from the supermarket, as if you could buy human remains in the supermarket. At the most you can buy cow, pig or chicken remains in the supermarket. I think if they sold severed heads in the supermarket people would use them to make pozole. But first you’d have to take off their hair, just like you take the feathers off chickens. Bald people like me would be more expensive, because we’d already be ready to go in the pozole.

Before I went to bed Yolcaut gave me a present. It was a Gringo cowboy hat, the kind they wear for lassoing cows. Then he said that cowboys don’t go around in dressing gowns. As I didn’t reply, not even a thank you, he shouted:

‘Speak, motherfucker, will you stop with this bullshit!’

I think he wanted to hit me, but he didn’t hit me, because Yolcaut’s never hit me. Instead of hitting me Yolcaut gives me presents. These are all the presents Yolcaut has given me to stop me being mute: the new Playstation, which is the Playstation 3, with six different games; some cowboy chaps, as if I liked chaps or cowboys; a cage with three hamsters; a fish tank with two turtles; food for the hamsters and food for the turtles; a wheel for the hamsters; some stones and a plastic palm tree for the turtles’ fish tank. Presents don’t stop me being mute, no way. And I won’t stop being a Japanese samurai just because Yolcaut wants me to be a cowboy like Paul Smith.

The most mysterious thing they’ve done to try to stop me being mute was in the morning, when Cinteotl and Itzpapalotl turned up for work. They weren’t alone, they had two little boys with them: a cousin of Cinteotl’s and a neighbour of Itzpapalotl’s. They both had awful haircuts, like soldiers, who have the worst haircuts in the universe. Yolcaut didn’t let the boys stay, as much as Cinteotl and Itzpapalotl kept saying I needed friends my own age, that it was to stop me being mute. They also said it wasn’t normal for me to be walking around in a dressing gown and wearing those odd hats I like so much. Yolcaut got fed up with them and just said:

‘You can shut up or clear off.’

And he ordered Miztli to take the boys back home. One of them, the one that was Itzpapalotl’s neighbour, came over to me before he left and gave me a toy he’d brought with him. Pathetic, although Itzpapalotl told him he was a very good boy. It was a Star Wars figure, but it wasn’t an original, it was a fake one from the market. It wasn’t even painted properly. The doll was supposed to have red clothes and flesh-coloured skin. Well, a bit of his right hand was actually painted red. And it wasn’t blood. It was just that the doll was cheap. When they’d left I threw it in the rubbish bin.

This really is mysterious: the minuscule bullets from the tiny little pistol do make corpses. Maybe not human corpses, and not corpses of big animals either, but corpses of small animals at least. I didn’t mean to kill the lovebird, I wanted to see what the birds would do when they heard the sound of the bullets. What happened was after the first shot all the parakeets and lovebirds started flying around as if they’d gone mad. They crashed into the walls of the cage and attacked each other as if one of them was doing the shooting. Coloured feathers started flying around everywhere. There were red ones, blue ones, green ones, yellow ones, white ones, black ones and grey ones. Then I shot twice more, aiming at the feathers. The problem was that inside the cage there was a lot of confusion. It was when the parakeets and lovebirds calmed down and went back into their houses and to their branches that I discovered the lovebird’s corpse on the ground. It was a sky-blue lovebird, although it wasn’t really a lovebird any more, because it was dead and the dead are not lovebirds. The minuscule bullet had made the blood come out of one of its wings.

Before anyone came I hid the tiny little pistol in the weeds in the garden. I threw it as far as I could into a part where the undergrowth is so high Azcatl doesn’t even bother cutting it back any more. Itzcuauhtli came over to the cage and started looking at the mess of feathers and the lovebird’s corpse. This was the most mysterious and enigmatic thing I’ve ever seen in my life. How did he hear the shots if he’s a deaf mute? Itzcuauhtli went into the cage and picked up the lovebird’s corpse from the floor. As he saw it was already dead he didn’t even go and get the medicine to make it better. The good thing is that since he’s a deaf mute and I’m a mute we stood there in silence and he didn’t ask me for an explanation. But that’s when Cinteotl and Itzpapalotl arrived and when they saw the corpse they started saying Oh my goodness, poor little thing, how could someone kill a lovebird that never hurt anyone and all it does is give kisses to other lovebirds. They also said that because of me one of the lovebirds had been left a widow and they’d have to find it another mate so it didn’t die of sadness. And they went to Yolcaut and told on me.

Yolcaut didn’t care about the lovebird’s life, because he didn’t make a fuss like Cinteotl and Itzpapalotl did. Lovebirds are faggots. Anyway we’ve still got lots of lovebirds left, seven. The thing Yolcaut cared about was knowing which gun I’d killed the lovebird with and where the gun was and where I’d got the gun from. But since I’m a mute and mutes don’t give explanations I didn’t tell him anything, I stayed quiet. Yolcaut locked himself up with Miztli in the room with the guns and rifles and I felt like asking them what they were planning on doing locked in an empty room. Later on Yolcaut and Miztli had an argument because they discovered there was a pistol missing, the tiny little pistol with the minuscule bullets. Yolcaut blamed Miztli for having left the room with the guns and rifles unlocked. Miztli said Yolcaut’s paranoia was to blame, because without Yolcaut’s paranoia it wouldn’t be necessary to keep the guns loaded. The truth is, it’s Miztli’s fault, because he hasn’t bought me a samurai sword.

Mazatzin also got annoyed with me, but he didn’t get annoyed because I made the lovebird into a corpse or because I stole the tiny little pistol. He got annoyed because in order to make a samurai sword you need a 1,000-year-old tradition and lots of patience. While to make pistols you only need the factories of the capitalists.

‘Who do you think you are,’ Mazatzin asked, ‘the Cowboy Mouse?’

But the Cowboy Mouse had two pistols. And my ears are bigger. My ears are so big they always get cut off in photos.

On the TV there’s a new theory about the human remains: before, they thought the human remains were from several corpses, and with the new theory they think they’re really only from one corpse. This is because they found several pieces of evidence and one clue. The evidence is that none of the body parts have turned up more than once, they’re always different. They’re doing some tests in the lab to find out whether it’s just one corpse. The clue is that they found a piece of flesh from the back. And the piece of flesh had a tattoo of a tiny blue unicorn. The truth is, you couldn’t see a unicorn on the TV at all, just a mark. Then something mysterious happened. Yolcaut sent for Miztli, even though it was night-time and it was Miztli’s turn to guard the palace. And when Miztli arrived, Yolcaut ordered him to go and get Quecholli. But Quecholli didn’t come, or if she came she left really soon, because when I woke up in the morning she wasn’t there.

Then what happened was that Mazatzin didn’t come to give me my lessons, and today isn’t even Saturday or Sunday. It got to nine o’clock, half past nine, ten, still no sign of him. He didn’t come. That’s never happened. Maybe Mazatzin doesn’t want to come any more because he’s disappointed I’m not a real samurai. This isn’t my fault, because I can’t be a real samurai without a sword. Yolcaut told me to go and get my books and study, as if Mazatzin was here. But I went and played on the Playstation 3, taking advantage of the fact that Yolcaut left the palace with Miztli and was out all day. Chichilkuali stayed to guard the palace, except instead of guarding the palace he guarded me. He followed me around really closely all day long, like Quecholli does with Yolcaut. He even stood outside waiting for me when I went to the toilet.