I think the African safari hats I’m wearing are useless, because they’re not authentic. It’s because we bought them in a gift shop and not a hat shop. All because of Yolcaut’s paranoia. If he’d let me bring my detective hats we would’ve definitely found the Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses by now.
The worst thing is that when we’re not on safari we’re totally bored. We spend the whole time shut up in the Mamba Point Hotel, because in Monrovia there’s nothing nice to look at. We’re so bored Franklin Gómez is teaching me all the card games that exist. It would have been better if we’d gone to the empire of Japan. Over there we would have looked for Japanese mutes in the daytime and in cities. But we came to Liberia to look for the Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses, which look like they’ve gone extinct. Winston López says that to play cards we’d have been better off going to Las Vegas. Fucking shit-hole of a country Liberia.
Franklin Gómez says Martin Luther King Taylor has the name of a man from the country of the United States who was also shot dead. It seems the Liberians really like naming themselves after murdered corpses.
* * *
The rum from the country of Liberia comes in these dark bottles, as if it were poison, but it’s really good because it stops things being boring. If you drink one glass you feel like laughing and if you drink more you start telling jokes. In the Mamba Point Hotel you can order bottles of rum from the country of Liberia over the phone at any time of day. Even if it’s four o’clock in the morning. Today when we got back from looking for the Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses we ordered two bottles.
We still haven’t found the Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses, today all we saw were packs of wild dogs. Winston López says if we’d wanted to see stray dogs we could have stayed in Mexico. He started shooting them in sheer rage. The dogs tried to run away but Yolcaut has really good aim. He would’ve killed them all if Mazatzin hadn’t persuaded him to stop shooting, to remember we weren’t supposed to be calling attention to ourselves.
The truth is, by now we’re sick of looking for the Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses and not finding them. That’s why we ordered two bottles of rum from the country of Liberia. Really it was Winston López and Franklin Gómez who ordered them, but they let me come to their party. You drink rum from the country of Liberia with Coca-Cola and ice. This is called a Cuba Libre. You put ice in a glass, and you fill half with rum from the country of Liberia and the other half with Coca-Cola. Franklin Gómez prefers to drink it warm, without ice. He says the ice from the Mamba Point Hotel might have Monrovia’s devastating diseases in it. Winston López would rather get ill than drink warm Cuba Libres that taste like shit without ice.
Winston López’s jokes are about Spaniards, who are really ridiculous people: it takes three Spaniards to change a lightbulb. The Spaniards nearly always get muddled up and come to strange conclusions. Then there are the jokes about countries that all start the same: there was a Mexican, a Gringo, and a Russian. The Russian might change, sometimes it’s a Spaniard, or a Frenchman, or a German. When there was a Russian in the joke, Franklin Gómez said that the joke was old, because the Russians aren’t Communists anymore. Winston López just said:
“Franklin, don’t be an asshole.”
The good thing is that later he stopped being such an asshole. At least that’s what Winston López says, that when Franklin Gómez gets drunk he stops being such an asshole.
The joke I liked best was the one about some Mexican policemen who made a hippopotamus confess it was a rabbit. It wasn’t a Liberian pygmy hippopotamus, just a normal hippopotamus. The joke was about a competition between the policemen in the FBI from the country of the United States, the KGB from the country of Russia, and the Mexican police, to see who would be the first to find a pink rabbit in the forest. In the end the Mexican policemen turned up with a hippopotamus painted pink saying:
“I’m a rabbit, I’m a rabbit.”
This was funny, but it was also a little bit true. That’s why I liked this joke so much: because it wasn’t really a joke. Everyone knows pink rabbits don’t really exist.
* * *
The good thing about the edge of extinction is that it’s not extinction yet. Today we finally found the Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses. And I wasn’t even wearing a hat. My head was bare and I was taking the cold like a man. There were two Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses and their ears were just how I imagined them: minuscule like the bullets from a tiny little gun. When we saw them they were in a muddy swamp eating the weeds. They were such nice animals to look at, as if they were the children of a pig and a walrus. Or a pig and a manatee. John Kennedy Johnson shot them with a special rifle with sleeping bullets. The bullets from this rifle are injections with a poisonous substance that puts animals to sleep so you can capture them. The injection got one of the Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses in the back. It got the other one in the neck. After a few seconds the Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses lay down on their sides and fell asleep. John Kennedy Johnson, Martin Luther King Taylor, Franklin Gómez, and Winston López lifted them into the cages in the back of the pickup truck. Even though they’re pygmies they weigh lots of kilograms, easily more than 1,000, which is a tonne. Then we bounced all the way back to the Mamba Point Hotel in the jeep. Our pygmy hippopotamuses were taken to the port of Monrovia to be put on a pirate ship to go to Mexico. But they’ll take a long time to get there, four months or more. Because you can’t go straight from the port of Monrovia to the port of Veracruz. You have to stop in lots of cities before you get to Mexico.
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.