chapter twenty-four

chronicle of a death foretold

The night after his last big bender and Braulio’s arrogant phone call about the Monday morning pickup, Miguel calls Guillermo and says he needs to talk to him immediately.

“In private.”

“Here I am.”

“No phones. I’ll pick you up at six at your apartment and we’ll go to the usual watering hole downtown.”

* * *

They chitchat on the drive along Las Américas Boulevard and Reforma to Zone 1. The streets are empty of people and cars, not surprising for a Sunday night.

“What’s on your mind?” Guillermo asks as soon as they are seated at Café Europa.

“I want to know how you are.”

“To be honest, I wish I were dead.” He confesses to Miguel that he has thought long and hard about it and wants to take his life: he simply doesn’t want to live anymore. He knows that the cocktail of antidepressants, mood stabilizers, and sleeping pills, plus all the booze, are not helping him to think clearly, but he has nothing to keep him alive. Not even his children—the birthday call was, after all, an exception.

“My life is over,” Guillermo says, without much emotion. He has just downed three straight shots of Flor de Caña rum. When his eyes meet the waiter’s, he orders two more shots.

Miguel is sipping Ron Zacapa, to give his friend company. It is his first and only drink of the night. “But you must consider your children—”

“They would be better off without me.”

“How can you say that?”

“I know. They are doing well in Mexico City. Rosa Esther is a marvelous mother. When I call to talk to them, I get the feeling that I am pulling them away from something they would rather be doing.”

“But this is natural. They are angry at you.” Miguel is not only a self-proclaimed facilitator and the head of his own private spying network, but also a bit of a psychologist. “They would never recover if you were to simply kill yourself.”

Guillermo nods. He remembers their voices on his birthday. Sweet. They were concerned. He looks back at Miguel and nearly forgets why they are there. “I don’t know anything about you. Are you married? Do you have children?”

“None of that matters. You know you can trust me.”

Guillermo answers this comment with a blink.

Miguel pats him on the shoulders. “My private life is so boring. I’ve been married to Inés Argueta for thirty-eight years. We have four children, all in their thirties. Two of them, the girls, are living in the States, married. The boys are in Europe. One is studying theater and working part-time in a restaurant in Seville. The other works for a Scottish bank in London.”

The waiter arrives with more drinks and a basket of potato chips. He looks at Miguel before putting them down. Miguel nods, making Guillermo laugh.

“And to think that I have someone I don’t really know, a father of four children, watching over me,” he says, gulping down more rum.

“You’re drinking a lot these days. I wonder if the depression you feel is related to it. You should cut down on your alcohol intake, if you don’t mind me saying.”

Guillermo runs his hand through his hair. Drinking is the least of his problems. He needs to sleep peacefully, but his mind has become a feeding trough for nightmares and sudden fears. “And what would you have me do? Drink milk? Become a choir boy? Study for the priesthood?”

“You can’t let your life deteriorate like this. You need to sober up a bit. You have to get control of yourself. The liquor is poisoning your system.”

Guillermo has read such poppycock in popular magazines. As befuddled as he is, he is not brain-dead just yet. You can’t control your life as if it were a steering wheel. He knows why he doesn’t want to sober up. “So what do you advise, Mr. Freud?”

“Well, if you want to die, make sure your death has meaning.”

“Make sure my death . . .” he says absentmindedly. He takes his glass, swirls the golden liquid, and drinks it down. The rawness makes him wince, as if he were drinking grain alcohol. He can’t stop thinking about himself with a morose self-pity. This is the source of his inertia: his inability to rouse his soul.

Through the fog, he hears Miguel declare: “Well, if you want to kill yourself, then at least make it worthwhile. Meaningful. You can help bring the government down like a house of cards, for example.”

“Say what?”

“Let your death count for something. Make it meaningful. To your family, to the country you love so much. Look,” Miguel says, grabbing Guillermo’s hand and moving it away from the rum, “I am very fond of you. The last thing I would want is for you to kill yourself. At the same time, I cannot judge the depth of your depression. Your wife has abandoned you, your kids are living in another country. Your law practice is in disarray. A friend and client has been killed and so has the love of your life. If I had suffered all those blows, perhaps I too would be as lost as you are. But you can’t continue to indulge yourself like this. What I do know is that no matter what you decide to do, it should have some sort of meaning beyond yourself. And that meaning can create a positive outcome that will be useful to others, maybe even to society. You should consider that.”

Guillermo picks up a new glass. He has no idea where Miguel is going, but the train of thought has sobered him up: he wants to hear more. He sounds like a priest with a direct line to God, and the message he is delivering is not garbled, though it is in a code Guillermo has not yet deciphered. “All this sounds like some kind of variation of your theory of actionable information,” he finally slurs.

“Not at all,” says Miguel. He is clearly bothered by how Guillermo is muddling things up. “My actionable information theory is related to producing something tangible: making money based on truths that you and no one else has, or creating a positive situation based on the destruction of something rotten. Right now I am talking about something incredibly powerful: sacrificing your own personal desire for the greater good. True love of country.”

“You sound like a Marxist.”

Miguel shakes his head. “It is quite the opposite. I’m not arguing for you to usher in the dictatorship of the proletariat, but for you to execute a patriotic act,” he says triumphantly. “Guillermo, I know that you love Guatemala.”

“I do. The quaint Indians, the majestic volcanoes, Lake Atitlán,” Guillermo responds, citing some banal tourist-brochure claptrap. What he wants to say is that he has dedicated his whole life to making Guatemala a better place to live for his children and grandchildren—who will now spend the rest of their days in Mexico.

“Did you ever read Camus’s The Stranger?”

“I read it in French in high school. L’étranger—in Madame Raccah’s class. She was our French teacher from Tunisia. She later tutored Rosa Esther. All my classmates thought the novel was a superb piece of fiction.”

“Well, I think it is totally stupid.”

“I only remember that it takes place in Algeria or somewhere in Northern Africa. And that it is terribly hot.”

“Exactly,” Miguel says. “The protagonist is a guy who kills an Arab simply because the sun is driving him crazy and he discovers that someone has placed a gun in his hands. I personally can’t imagine a motivation so stupid. The French protagonist kills an Arab—a bad Arab for sure, a troublemaker—but for no real reason. It’s a murder that has no effect on anything other than his own death by hanging. Can you imagine anything so foolish? To kill someone because you can’t stand the heat? His death has no repercussions in society beyond the act itself! How insipid is that?”

“Well, if I could kill Samir I would be extremely happy.”

“But what would killing him actually accomplish? It would be an act of malice with no benefit to the greater society. Maybe if things were switched: if killing him would bring Maryam back to life: that would make you happy, and therefore return you to a position to benefit society. But to kill that old man—what would be gained? You would be arrested for murder and eventually sentenced to death. Even if Maryam were alive, the two of you would never be together. It would be something else if you killed Samir and you and Maryam were able to escape to live together somewhere, happily ever after—”

“In Paris! In Paris! That’s where we would go. But Maryam is dead.”

Miguel pauses to wet his lips on his drink. “Do you really want to die?”

“As things now stand, I do. My life tastes like shit. I wish I could find someone to kill me because I am too much of a coward to kill myself. I would pay him to do it.”

The bar is quiet; there are only a few clerk types drinking beer at the bar and watching the TV screen—Comunicaciones is playing soccer against its crosstown rival Municipal. Guillermo had no idea that local soccer games were now being transmitted on cable.

Miguel inches closer toward him. “I can help you kill yourself painlessly—but only if you take someone else down with you.”

Guillermo’s head is spinning. “I have a dear friend who read a shitty French novel and wants to help me commit suicide,” he says softly to himself. “What a wonderful friend.”

“Only if you want to.”

Guillermo doesn’t know what to say. His own departure from this planet has already become a given—according to Miguel Paredes. “Who do you want me to take down? Samir wouldn’t be enough. He may have wanted Ibrahim and Maryam dead, but I don’t believe he would actually have done it. I doubt that a suicide letter accusing him would change anything. It would be seen as the rantings of a madman consumed by grief.”

“You’re right. Accusing someone as unimportant as Samir wouldn’t make a difference. But there are others who make living a decent life in this country impossible. And both you and I have the evidence to prove it.”

Guillermo is confused. “Oh yes, I know who you mean. Mayor Aroz, for example. He is buying up this whole neighborhood so he can turn it into Disneyland.”

“I was thinking of someone higher up.”

“Óscar Berger? Who gives a shit about that useless ex-president? You are simply wasting my death.”

“What about going after the president himself? You yourself have said that Khalil had documents proving his financial shenanigans. I think we could create a scenario where we might force him to resign—in shame!”

Guillermo stares into his now-empty glass. “You’re crazy! No one would take my word over the president’s. Ibrahim Khalil believed he could bring him down—see where that got him? Killed, and he and his wife are still roaming around free. No thank you. I’d be dying in vain.”

“If we plan this thing correctly, we could bring down the government—the whole house of cards.”

“You’re dreaming, Miguel.”

There is a pause. For some weird reason Guillermo thinks of Carlos, who worked with his father at La Candelaria. He hasn’t thought of him in twenty years. But at this very moment Guillermo wonders if he is still alive. He was such a loyal employee—maybe he thought that one day he would inherit the lamp store and that’s why he was so devoted. Guillermo should try and contact him. When he awakes from his reverie, he sees Miguel looking dead at him.

“What?”

“What what?”

“Why are you staring at me in that way?”

“I want you to know something: what I am thinking is not a dream.”

“What would you have me do?”

“I’ll explain, but it requires bravery.”

Guillermo peers at Miguel through glassy eyes.