I.C.U

Chapter 31

What killed Trotsky was not Ramon Mercader's ice axe. What killed Trotsky was a shot of tequila. A girl from Bolivia invited me to a bar to participate in a tequila contest. People screamed euphorically every time someone fell from a platform. I was not afraid of falling or getting drunk. A homeless man told me: there is no drunkenness that lasts a hundred falls. I was afraid of smiles. The freckled girl always asked me: Why don't you ever smile? I answered: because I'm afraid of smiles. I mixed all the drinks: whiskey, vodka, beer, wine, rum, gin. But I couldn't with tequila. Once at a party, a buddy of mine mixed tequila with orange juice and it disintegrated his stomach. The doctors said that the acid from the orange in combination with the tequila had caused a combustion, which mixed with the stomach acid generated an eruption that made my buddy's stomach disappear. I went up to the stage with the Bolivian girl. We were announced over the loudspeakers. She was "she". I was "he". At least that was what appeared on the screen below our faces. The first drink passed and nothing. Then the second and nothing. The third killed me. The voices got low pitched and moved backwards. I fell off the stage to the floor. I woke up in the tent of an indigenous village. I pulled back the sheets and part of my stomach was no longer there. I could see some of the vertebrae in my spine. I shed a couple of tears remembering my buddy and the doctors. A beautiful indigenous woman came into my tent, said something to me in a dialect I didn't understand, dried my tears and let me touch her breasts. I touched her breasts and her nipples. At first they were soft but then they hardened. She moved toward me and put her nipple in my mouth. I sucked on it. And I fell asleep. I woke up one night and there I was still, alone and without a stomach. Trotsky came into the tent, sat on the bed and told me that the tequila had killed him and that he would probably do the same to me. He telephoned and talked to a woman. I heard what the woman was saying because she spoke in Spanish.I came out of the tent and saw in the distance in the desert, out there where the sun goes down, a woman painting a mountain. She pointed her brush at something behind me. It was the same woman painting another mountain. I gave Trotsky a bottle of tequila so he could die at once. He thanked me. I held hands with the Bolivian girl and we jumped into the Devil's Throat.