14
After Ewart died, many hours passed during which it never occurred to anyone to imagine that he wasn’t alive, and many more hours went by before his family and friends learned that some time ago by then he had said his final farewell to the world beyond the ocean, perhaps without realizing it or even saying it to himself, not even in his mind. I don’t know why the 31st of December and 1922 are given as the date and year of his death, when there were no witnesses — not even the person who killed him was a witness, and had no certainty of having killed — and he could well have died during the first hour or first minute of January 1, who knows, and therefore in 1923. It’s frightening to think of the hours — soon distant and forgotten, yet so slow and negligible while they’re going by — during which our friends and relatives think we’re alive when in fact we are dead, and they sleep peacefully, dreaming their primitive dreams, or watch television or laugh or curse or fuck instead of dropping everything and running belatedly to meet us and make phone calls and attend to formalities and not believe it, and grieve and despair, to whatever degree. This fear isn’t for the dead, for their imagined solitude and abandonment, but for the living who will later have to reconstruct those hours — the actual passage of which is now unusable and annulled, and which are even slower and more negligible in memory — that they lived through unaware their world had changed, easy and indifferent or with a happiness now improper, or maybe even speaking ill of the one now dead. “Put out the light, and then put out the light,” perhaps that’s why — to make it entirely certain — it has to be said twice, once for the event, once for the telling. And, too, as I said at the beginning, remembering and telling can become not only homage but affront.
Wilfrid Ewart’s dead body was not found until nearly noon on New Year’s Day, so almost twelve hours had passed without anyone realizing that this was what he was now, a dead body, and no longer one of us, if saying “us” makes any sense. According to the Mexican newspaper Excelsior, of Wednesday January 3, 1923, which both González Rodríguez and Muñoz Saldaña consulted and cited for me verbatim, respecting both its incorrect punctuation and its typographical errors:
Quien primero tuvo conocimiento del suceso fue la señora Angelina Trejo de Estrevelt, quien presta sus servicios en calidad de camarera en el Hotel Isabel. La señora de Estrevelt, como de costumbre se dirigió ayer en la mañana, ya cerca del medio día a las habitaciones superiores con el fin de hacer el aseo de las mismas. Al llegar al cuarto número 53 miró por la cerradura y le extrañó ver que la luz artificial estaba encendida. Llamó a la puerta varias veces y no obtuvo contestación alguna. Temerosa de que algo hubiera occurrido al pasajero, penetró a la habitación, encontrando las ropas de la cama en perfecto orden. Poco después y dirigiendo la vista al balcón con vista a la calle, que se encontraba abierto, vio el cadáver del señor Etwart, en medio de un charco de sangre ya coagulada.
(The first to take cognizance of the event was Señora Angelina Trejo de Estrevelt, who lends her services to the Hotel Isabel in the capacity of chambermaid. Señora de Estrevelt, as is her custom made her way yesterday morning, already close to noon to the upper rooms in the aim of ensuring the hygiene of same. On reaching room number 53, she looked through the keyhole and found it strange that the electric light was on. [“Put out the light, and then put out the light,” that again.] She knocked several times, and obtained no response whatsoever. Fearful that something might have happened to the transient occupant, she went into the room, finding the bedclothes in perfect order. Shortly after that, directing her gaze to the balcony overlooking the street, which was open, she saw the corpse of Señor Etwart, in a puddle of already coagulated blood.)
At this point, we might well ask ourselves why the chambermaid looked through the keyhole first, before taking any other step, and the corresponding news article from the English-language section of the same newspaper does not clear up this mystery, though it does call Ewart Ewart and not Etwart, and specifies that
… a chambermaid coming to clean his room found the door locked [my italics] and peering through the keyhole saw that the light was still burning. After calling several times she became alarmed, and entering the room noticed that the bed had not been slept in. Proceeding toward the balcony of the window she discovered the body lying in a puddle of clotted blood.…
The fact that the door was locked seems in no way surprising and is not sufficient reason to peep through the keyhole and only then knock several times on the door, rather than knocking first, before doing anything else. Perhaps it was the waste of electricity that alarmed Doña Angelina Trejo de Estrevelt and her desire to put out the superfluous light and make the night cease entirely that prompted her to decide to use her key.
Immediately [the article written in Spanish goes on] she gave notice of this funereal discovery to the boy in charge of the elevator, so that he in his turn, could give notice to the administrator of the hotel, Señor Manuel Olvera. He went precipitately up to the fifth floor and, upon reaching room 53, did indeed find the inanimate body of Señor Etwart. [It would have been quite miraculous if that had not been the case, or perhaps the article was hinting that chamber-maids can be fatalistic and prone to absurd fancies and you can never tell what they’ll come up with.] Immediately he gave notice to the police, the personnel of the fifth precinct presenting themselves moments later, proceeding to raise the corpse. It was in a dorsally prone position and bore signs of a death that was not recent. When the body was examined, it was seen to have a wound from a firearm in the left eye, without exit orifice. It was ordered that the corpse be taken to the Hospital Juárez for the legally mandated autopsy.
The police commissioner, Señor Mellado, made an inspection of the clothing of the deceased finding documents and papers, cash money, a check that had yet to be cashed and a book of blank checks. He also found a receipt from the Banco Montreal where Señor Etwart had deposited on the day of his arrival a goodly sum of money. Señor Mellado drew up an orderly inventory of all this so that the judicial authorities could take cognizance of the case.
Before going on, we need to go back to the beginning of the article, which was published under the following headlines and subheads: “English Subject Dies of a Gunshot,” “Barbaric Habit of Firing into the Air, Had an Outcome,” “Fatal Curiosity,” “Killed When Listening to Popular Rejoicing from Hotel Balcony.” The article begins like this:
From within room number 53 of the Hotel Isabel yesterday, police personnel of the fifth precinct retrieved the corpse of Señor Wilfrid Herbert Gore Etwart, of English nationality and which presented a wound caused by a projectile from a firearm, with an entry orifice in the left eye, the bullet remaining lodged in the skull.
Señor Gore Etwart had arrived the previous night in this capital city proceeding from the United States and on a business trip. From the investigations of the police it is presumed that Señor Etwart died as a consequence of a stray bullet among the many that were fired on New Year’s Eve by one of the numerous troglodytes who cannot express enthusiasm without shooting off firearms.
(It’s been eons since I’ve read or heard the word “troglodyte,” which has become antediluvian, but perhaps in 1923 it was a novelty and struck the anonymous reporter as precise and perfect for this none-too-objective paragraph remonstrating with his compatriots.)
The corpse of the English subject was found on the balcony of room number 53, located on the fifth floor of the Hotel Isabel on Avenida República del Salvador and could be identified owing to the passport contained in one of the pockets of the jacket.