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stands, the meat tacos, the currents of deep solidarity, the friends at the gas station across the way who always say hello when he passes. It might be that marvelous winter moon. It might be.
    Héctor sat in a rocker to smoke. He spent the night smoking and listening to the sounds of the street. For no apparent reason, the image of Héctor Monteverde’s limping dog came to mind. It was dawn when he fell asleep.

CHAPTER 3
    WHICH IS A LITTLE LONG
    … cause all of a sudden it tells about the Broken Calendar Club; it explains how Elías solved the case of the woodpecker; it addresses the dangers of ignoring customs and mores; it warns that the dead have no company; and it relates how Elías traveled and arrived in Mexico City, with all the marvelous adventures that befell him, besides reflecting on the Bad and the Evil.
    I ’m not the murderer— A match burned, lighting up a cigarette and the face surrounding it: haircut like a skinhead, face with shining eyes, silver rings, unshaven cheeks. I think I should explain this right now to avoid confusion.
    Neither am I the butler. I suppose I should say this right at the beginning, because, you know, in mystery stories the murderer is the butler … or the other way around. I’ve never been a housekeeper, but I have been a goalkeeper, and I sometimes played that position in the soccer games at the local government in La Garrucha. In the beginning I didn’t know what was going on, but every Sunday, after praying at church, there was a big noise among the children and a lot of talking in Tzeltal among the adults. I only understood the part about “Zapatista campamenteros,” and then everyone went out on the playing field. Though it’s not really a playing field. From Monday through Friday it’s the paddock, but on Sundays it’s the soccer field. As if they knew it was Sunday, the cows would move to the neighboring field, leaving us a minefield of cow shit. Then some people from the town would come carrying pews from the church and benches from the school and improvise the grandstands. The field we used is on the side of a hill so one goal is higher than the other, which is an obvious advantage for the team that plays on the high side. However, in the second half they change goals and everything evens out. Or so they say. Then the teams are organized; a town person, always someone in authority, is referee. I was saying that sometimes I was a goalkeeper for the “campamenteros” team, as the town people say, or the “campamentistas team,” as we say. Basically, men and women from different parts of the world were in a peace camp—we joined together in a soccer team and we played against the Zapatista towns. When I played we almost always lost. But don’t you believe that it was because the Zapatistas were so good, no. It was a breakdown in communication. We used to shout at each other (cause the team was always mixed, men and women) in French, Euskera, Italian, English, German, Turkish, Danish, Swedish, and Aymara. Nobody understood nothing and, like they say around here, it was an unholy mess and the ball always went where it shouldn’t.
    In that soccer thing I learned what those Zapatistas call “the resistance.” At least I think I did. What happened was that in one of the games our side had two huge Danes, about six-foot-six and terribly good at soccer. Their height, plus their extra-long strides, left the Zapatistas far behind, cause they’re smaller and have shorter legs. Within the first few minutes it was obvious that our patent superiority would soon be reflected on the scoreboard. And fact of the matter is, after about ten minutes we were ahead two to zero. It was then that it happened. I saw it because I was the goalkeeper and because, furthermore, around here I learned to pay a lot of attention to things beyond the obvious. There was no indication from anyone, no meeting, no conversations, signals, or looks among the Zapatistas. And yet I think they had a