Juan Pablo Villalobos: Down the Rabbit Hole

Winston López told me about ten times that I had to learn the names and I couldn’t get it wrong. We are: Winston López, Franklin Gómez, and Junior López. If I get it wrong we won’t be able to get to Monrovia. But I’ve got a really good memory, we’ll definitely get there. I got to be Junior López, although Franklin Gómez calls me JR. Winston López told him to stop pissing around, but Franklin Gómez thinks that if we’re going to get to Monrovia we need to act naturally. You act naturally when you want to be good at lying and cheating. Yolcaut knows a lot about acting naturally: he acts naturally when he says the room with the guns and rifles is empty. But these are things that happened to Tochtli and Usagi, who are mutes, but not to Junior López.

After Paris we have to take two more planes to get to Monrovia. One plane that takes us from Europe to Africa and another that takes us from Africa to Monrovia. Winston López says traveling to Monrovia is as difficult as sailing to Lagos de Moreno. Lagos de Moreno is Miztli’s village and it doesn’t have lakes or charros. It has lots of priests and a tiny little stinking river that not even a motorboat can get down. Franklin Gómez says getting to Monrovia is as difficult as traveling from one third-world country to another third-world country.

Franklin Gómez has come to Monrovia with us because he can speak French and English. Monrovia is the capital of the country of Liberia where the Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses live and where the Monrovians speak English.

In the plane from Paris, Franklin Gómez spoke French to the French servant girls. And spent the whole journey drinking the French people’s champagne. Winston López told him to take advantage of being in first class, which isn’t for people dying of hunger like him. The French servant girls on the plane said their r ’s really strangely, as if they had a sore throat or the r was stuck in it. Pathetic. Maybe the French have sore throats because of cutting off their kings’ heads.

* * *

When we landed in Paris, Franklin Gómez got all excited and said we’d arrived in the land of liberty, fraternity, and equality. Apparently the reason you cut off kings’ heads is to have those things. Winston López just said:

“Franklin, don’t be an asshole.”

* * *

The first thing we did in Monrovia was to get a Monrovian guide. Our Monrovian guide is called John Kennedy Johnson and he speaks English to Franklin Gómez. A Monrovian guide is good for three things: so you don’t get lost in Monrovia, so you don’t get killed in Monrovia, and for finding Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses. That’s why he’s charging us a lot of money, millions of dollars I think. Because it turns out that finding Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses isn’t easy, even in Liberia. John Kennedy Johnson says that Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses are on the edge of extinction. Extinction is when everything dies and it’s not just for Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses. Extinction is for all living beings that can die, including Hondurans like us.

The good thing is that when you’re on the edge of extinction it’s not all of you who are dead, only the majority. But there are very few Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses still alive in Liberia, 1,000 or 2,000 at the most. And there’s another problem: they spend their whole lives hidden in the forests. And to top it off they don’t live in herds but are solitary and go about two by two or three by three. That’s what John Kennedy Johnson’s job is, to find animals that are hard to find. John Kennedy Johnson’s clients want to hunt the animals. John Kennedy Johnson takes them to where the animals are and the hunters shoot them dead. Then the hunters cut off the animals’ heads and take them back home so they can hang them over the mantelpiece in their house. And with the skin they make a mat to wipe their feet on. We don’t want to shoot the Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses dead. We just want to capture one or two and take them to live in our palace.

To make the safari go well John Kennedy Johnson advised us to switch around our sleeping patterns. He says it’s the best thing if we want to have enough energy to look for the Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses. Switching around your sleeping patterns means sleeping in the day and living at night. The thing is it’s easier to find Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses at night, when they come out of their hiding places to look for food. Switching around our sleeping patterns is easy for us, because it means going to sleep after breakfast time in Monrovia, which is the middle of the night in Mexico. And then waking up in the evening in Monrovia, which is the morning in Mexico.

When we wake up, the servants in our hotel, the Mamba Point Hotel, bring food up to our room. They bring: hamburgers, chips, some kind of tough meat, and lettuce salads we throw in the bin so we don’t get ill with Monrovia’s diseases. Lettuce is dangerous. At least that’s what Franklin Gómez says, that lettuce transmits diseases. It seems that lettuces are like pigeons, intimate friends of infection. You eat an infected lettuce leaf and you get a devastating disease. Now that I think about it, maybe Quecholli went mute from a disease in that lettuce she likes so much.

Franklin Gómez says John Kennedy Johnson has the name of a president of the United States who was shot dead in the head. President John Kennedy was driving around in a car with no roof and they shot him in the head. So guillotines are for kings and bullets for presidents.

* * *

The bad thing about being Junior López is that I can’t wear my hats. Winston López says it’s to do with not calling attention to ourselves while we’re in Monrovia. My hats stayed in our palace, stored in the hat room. It’s hot in Monrovia, but my head was cold, really cold. So Winston López bought me two African safari hats in the Mamba Point Hotel gift shop. They’re hats that look like aliens’ flying saucers. One is khaki and the other is olive green, which are camouflage colors for hiding yourself.

African safari hats are hats animal hunters wear and they’re good for looking for Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses. Actually they’re good for looking for any animal, a lion or even a rhinoceros. They’re like detective hats, which are good for doing investigations, but specialized in animals.

At ten o’clock at night in Monrovia, John Kennedy Johnson comes to pick us up from the Mamba Point Hotel in his jeep to go on safari. This is what a safari is: you get in a jeep and you go into the forest, the jungle, and the swamps to look for animals. There are safaris for killing animals and safaris for catching them. There are also safaris just for looking at animals. This is to avoid making them go extinct. Winston López says this is pathetic. As well as the jeep we also have to use a pickup truck with cages in it to keep the animals in. Driving the truck is John Kennedy Johnson’s partner, who’s called Martin Luther King Taylor. John Kennedy Johnson’s jeep bounces around a lot as we drive along the roads from Monrovia to the forests of Liberia. It bounces when we drive into a hole and bounces again when we get out. After that it gets worse, because in the forests of Liberia there aren’t even any roads. We drive into the trees and the jeep bounces around so much you can’t even feel it bouncing anymore. It’s like flying. John Kennedy Johnson has some special headlights to light up the forests of Liberia. We go out looking for the Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses with these headlights, but we can’t find them. So far we’ve seen: on the first day, antelopes, monkeys, and pigs. On the second day, antelopes, vipers, and even a leopard. And on the third day, antelopes and monkeys. But zero Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses, zero.

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.