THE NATURAL STRANGER :: BOOK 2, "MAD DOG in a SILVER FOG" :: CHAPTER 7, EPISODE 7

Costazul's Constitution, before Arcilla, was an amalgam of the Mexican and the American. Presidents were permitted only one term of six years, but could seek office again after an interregnum... so Senior maintained his grip through interstitial surrogates. The one in office since '69, Becquer... dark little dude with big bug glasses (sort of a Papa Doc Duvalier but incapable of menace) known popularly as el becerro, the calf... became, when Arcilla took the government away from him, la novilla, the heifer. Dissent tended to lag four or five years behind that in the States, three years behind Mexico... which meant, at the time we went down to poke monkeys, that it was still in its literary and poetic stage. (Hard to believe, now, but Humberto Nan cut quite a swath in what passed for Bohemia in those days... La Prensa, under his father, sometimes spoke out for monarchies.) Manuel Escalente was carving out his own career in crime... "if your tontos don't arrange to kill themselves, bring me to Miel... I can supply anything that they wish. This rockiroller... maybe he'd like to meet some groupees or is, you know... chiquitos..." and waggled his wrist. Manny comes by often, I even invite him along to the country, but the monkey ranch had a deservedly bad reputation in Salamanca.

After Arcilla, Doug Wolf and his team set their blinded charges free and fled to Minnesota, where good, cold doctors enlisted them in studies measuring death and decay of aconic memories. This, in healthy cortical and retinal units, takes a sixty to seventy millisecond period, variable by color, although irregularities arise earlier... red and green flashes, for example, are perceived as yellow. Human or monkey eyes break images down to light/dark blips transmitted through optic nerves to the thalamus and then the visual cortex... "a neural map room", Doug explained, during one of those interminable Mount Buzzard elevator rides, "which admits single impulses through gates called synapses that break the image down into digital transmission media." Such images may then be processed in order of importance (drawing back data from the higher cortices), redigitalized and sent outward over axon fibers connecting to muscles.

"Did he ever complete his studies," Jeff is curious.

"Makes one wonder what Alice would do if Ralph was cut off or Ralph would do if Alice died..." Jeff probes. "Since they're not forcibly shut down until the Gran Xutan... God or your Max willing... I guess we'll have a chance to see."

"Health willing. Probably wouldn't have much impact since both should have been running under Max for at least a decade." This is true. "We've done tests but the two of them easily detected the test nature of the test; Ralph mocked us actually. If you got memories kid, he says, that keeps you young. It's a shame youth has to be wasted on young people."

"I'd interpret that statement somewhat menacingly were I Max... or someone concerned for him," Jeff says, aiming a knob of stale bread into the ratpile.

After we lost Brendan and Doug Wolf invited Jeff and I to leave, we'd hitched to Salamanca with some Mexican attorneys hired to defend one of the nuevecitos... a dim, violent lad thoroughly guilty of the rapes for which he'd been charged. Consequently, they conspired to present a novel defense.

"Ytz," said one, Roberto, "is soul force, like mana of the Pacific Islanders... more than machismo, it's vitality that can be enhanced by deeds of bravery or stolen from another." In this case, where the youth had violated not only maids and daughters of campesinos on his father's finca but daughters of three other families of wealth and influence, "we shall prove that rejection without retaliation, so believed our Pablecito, would cause his soul to be utterly, wholly devoured."

"Ytz is expressed here, as in Mexico, in flowing things: volcanic magma, wax from candles, incense gum and certain fluids," smirked Roberto's partner, Oscar, "...blood and semen of course. Its mat is the Maya day sign of Cab'an, related to honey, another thick, flowing substance and preceding the sign of Ez'nab... the flint, or stabbing knife." (Pablecito had cut two victims, though they'd survived.) The attorneys had found ytz spoken of with benevolence in Yucatan and through the Caribbean, but negatively in Guatemala where Uay aspects are believed sinister. So they'd had the trial moved to Salamanca, hoping to empanel a jury of English-speaking blacks and mixtos hostile to Guatemalan influence (and, presumably, without Padre Leopoldo's help).

"Ytz is bestowed by the Itzam bird, killed by the hero twins of the Guatemalan Popol Vuh who pretended to be dentists repairing her broken jaw. Also by tigers, whom all sorcerers revere," Roberto added. "To our jury of ytz I shall read the American essays of Norman Mailer." He'd spent four years of the fifties in New York and California, reminiscing until we reached the outskirts of Salamanca's colonias where we rammed a stalled Army truck. Half a dozen pistols tumbled from the glove compartment and Jeff snatched up our packs.

"Nice meeting you guys, good luck on that case!" he waved and we faded into the barrio, waiting to board a crowded bus for downtown and the Casa Miel.

"That other comes around, bumming showers," says Nestor, referring to Brendan... holed up, I learn, in a ten peso (eighty three cent) posada without running water. "The further south, the cheaper the gringo... but he did have good dope. Brazilian," Nestor smacked his lips. Both the turistas and worst Canadians and hippies gone, Casa Miel's back to Casa Mellow; Junior invites us out to the Zamora villa. Senior offers Jeff Cuban cigars, telling us one should never be ashamed of wealth... only that misused or squandered. The old man hoped... in vain... that his dear friend T. David Stone would see his way to Costazul but that would never occur... it was T. who extended hospitality by putting the old man up awhile after Arcilla kicked him out.

The following day a messenger from the church brings to Nestor a letter to convey to us... Jeff has won the lottery car.

"See?" Junior determines. "One adopts positive modes of thinking, associates with others who think positively also, and favorable coincidences follow that are not coincidental at all."

- Norman Mailer, "The White Negro"