* * *
Today Miztli and Chichilkuali did mysterious things, like filling a truck with crates they took out of one of the empty rooms we don’t use. When they left I put on a detective hat and discovered one of Yolcaut’s enigmas. The empty rooms we don’t use are always locked, but today one was left open. And it turns out we don’t have five empty rooms we don’t use, only four, or none: one of the empty rooms we don’t use is really the gun and rifle room.
The guns are hidden in drawers and the rifles are hidden inside a cupboard. I didn’t have time to count them, because I didn’t want Yolcaut to find me, but we must have at least about 1,000 guns and about 500 rifles. We’ve got all different sizes, we even have a rifle with gigantic bullets. That’s when I realized Yolcaut and I are playing the bullet game wrong: with a bullet from that rifle you’d definitely turn into a corpse, it wouldn’t matter where it got you, apart from the hair, which is already dead. We should play the bullet game saying the number of bullets, the part of the body, and the size of the bullet. A little orifice, where it would take five days for all the blood to come out, isn’t the same as an enormous orifice, where it’d take five seconds. I also found a tiny little pistol with some bullets so minuscule that even if it shot you seventy times in the heart you still wouldn’t be a corpse.
If I’d known what I was going to find in the gun and rifle room I wouldn’t have put on a detective hat. I would have put on the highest top hat from my hat collection, one you could fit about six or seven rabbits in. I would have liked to hide the rifle with gigantic bullets under my hat, but all I could take was the tiny little pistol with the minuscule bullets. Disastrous. But the most disastrous thing of all was finding out Yolcaut is telling me lies, like saying we have empty rooms when they’re really rooms with guns and rifles in them. Gangs are not about lies. Gangs are about solidarity, protection, and not hiding the truth from each other. At least that’s what Yolcaut says, but he’s a liar. I don’t think I’m even going to get a Liberian pygmy hippopotamus. Or go to the country of Liberia. They must be more of Yolcaut’s lies.
* * *
When I can’t bear the pain in my tummy, like today, Cinteotl makes me a cup of chamomile tea. Sometimes I get such bad pains I even start crying. Normally they’re like cramps, although the worst ones feel like a hole that keeps growing and growing and it’s as if my tummy’s going to explode. I always cry when I get these pains, but I’m not a faggot. Being ill is different from being a faggot. If you’re ill it’s all right to cry, Yolcaut told me.
Cinteotl has a drawer full of herbs for curing illnesses. She’s got chamomile for the stomach, linden flowers for nerves, orange leaves for dieting, passionflower for nerves, orange blossom for digestion, valerian for nerves, and a load of other herbs, lots of them for nerves. Yolcaut doesn’t like tea, he says it’s a coward’s drink.
Yolcaut used to prefer Miztli to get the doctor when my tummy hurt a lot. The doctor was quite an old man and when Yolcaut wasn’t looking he used to slip me tamarind sweets. And I’m not even allowed to eat tamarind. Or chili. According to the doctor, there was something wrong with my psychology, not my tummy.
The best thing about the doctor was he told some really funny stories about aliens. Once aliens came to León in their spaceship. They landed in a field of corn to collect plants and animals. In the place where the spaceship landed they left a burned patch where no plants have ever grown again, not even grass. And this was many years ago, more than four, I think. Another time the aliens came to abduct a little girl. And another time they were hovering above Aguascalientes for an hour.
The doctor doesn’t come anymore because Yolcaut got annoyed with him. Once, according to Miztli, the doctor told Yolcaut it wasn’t really my stomach making me ill, but that the pains came from not having a mummy, and what I needed was a psychology doctor. Supposedly this is what’s called a psychosomatic illness, which means the illness is in the mind. But my mind isn’t ill, my brain has never hurt.
* * *
There’s a scandal on the TV because they showed a photo of the policeman’s severed head. But it’s not because of his hairstyle. This is the scandaclass="underline" Some people think they shouldn’t show pictures of severed heads on the TV. Or corpses. Other people think they should, that everyone has a right to see the truth. Yolcaut laughs at this scandal and says that this is the bullshit people amuse themselves with. I don’t say anything. But I don’t think it’s bullshit. Yolcaut thinks it’s bullshit because he doesn’t care about truth and lies. I was about to tell him that gangs are about telling the truth too, but I kept quiet. What happened is I became a mute. And I also stopped being called Tochtli. Now I’m called Usagi and I’m a Japanese mute.
It’s been barely seven hours since I became a mute and already I’m an enigma and a mystery. Everyone wants to know why I’m not speaking and to stop me being mute. Cinteotl made me a cup of tea with some foul-tasting herbs, supposedly to cure my throat. Yolcaut thinks I’m mute because he hasn’t got me the Liberian pygmy hippopotamus and spends all his time telling me I must be patient. But I didn’t become mute because of that, it was Yolcaut’s lies.
I can’t explain why I’m mute to anyone now. Mutes don’t give explanations. Or they give them with their hands. I don’t know the hand language mutes use, so I’m a mute squared. Mazatzin asked me if we could speak by writing. Then I decided to be deaf, and mute with writing, too. To be deaf what you have to do is remember a snatch of a song and repeat it over and over in your head. I picked a little bit from “The King,” where it says Cryyy and cryyy, cryyy and cryyy, cryyy and cryyy, cryyy and cryyy. The writing bit is easier, you just have to be illiterate: instead of writing words you do drawings or rather squiggles. And so now I’m deaf and mute cubed.
Today I’m wearing a Japanese samurai hat. Inside I’m carrying my tiny little pistol with the minuscule bullets. Shhhh …
We rabbits do poos like pellets.
Perfect little round pellets, like the ammunition for pistols.
We rabbits shoot poo bullets with pistols.
TWO
On the plane on the way to Paris, Franklin Gómez pointed out the French people. The French are like us and don’t have two heads or anything like that. That’s why they’re advanced: because they’re like us and even so they invented the guillotine. Whereas we use machetes to cut off heads. The difference between the guillotine and the machete is that the guillotine is devastating. With a guillotine, you can cut off a head in just one slice. Whereas with a machete you have to do lots more slices, at least four. And with the guillotine you can make immaculate cuts, you don’t even splatter blood around. By the way, Franklin Gómez started being Franklin Gómez yesterday in the airport. That’s what his passport from the country of Honduras says: Franklin Gómez. There were problems because Franklin Gómez didn’t want to be Franklin Gómez. Until Winston López convinced him. Franklin Gómez thought this name was suspicious and he wouldn’t be allowed to travel. Then Winston López showed him the sports section in the newspaper. The day before, Mexico and the country of Honduras had played a football match. In order to convince Franklin Gómez to become Franklin Gómez, Winston López read him out the lineup for Honduras: Astor Henríquez, Maynor Figueroa, Junior Izaguirre, Wilson Palacios, Eddy Vega, Wilmer Velásquez, Milton Núñez … Franklin Gómez still wasn’t sure, saying that a group of Hondurans traveling to Monrovia would be very suspicious. Then Winston López asked him who in the world gives a fuck about Honduras or Liberia and everything was sorted out.