* * *
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 burned 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 colors. One’s gray, one’s olive green, one’s coffee-colored, 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 out 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 aluminum 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 anymore. 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 realized 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 were 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.