Message from Carlos

Translated by Derekk Ross 

After my suicide, the first person I met was Carlos. Yes, it was Carlos, and not my grandmother - which was the person I would have expected to have met had I known that you could meet people after death. But that's life - I am always wrong, and I began my new life badly, by being wrong. And so instead of my grandmother, or Manola, it was Carlos who turned up.  

God didn't show up either. It could be that God was too busy welcoming other newcomers, or that he was just busy enjoying his day off, doing... God knows what he does in his free time, I don´t. Well what I do know is that he has no time for suicidal lads - well, not me at least, although that could just be because he has it in for me. 

I didn't even see the Devil. What a relief, as I, being the good atheist, wasn't expecting to meet him either - even less a bunch of saints. Nothing religious. Not even some famous and important people - though that would have been interesting. I don't know, being Venezuelan, maybe one could have hoped to have had a quick chat with Bolivar - poor guy - whose occasional appearance now and then would only, however, be bestowed upon the Chavistas, to give them a few smacks about the head, and if that were the case then hopefully Chavez himself would have a head covered in bumps and bruises. None of that though. No one of importance. Not even anyone from my family nor any ancestors, not even my grandmother - la nonna - who had spent so much time with me, telling me stories. 

As I've already said, it was just Carlos who appeared. But that's not to say he was a stranger, or some functionary from the hereafter, no: Carlos was a mate from my most recent times here in England - the final phase of my life. I'd originally got to know him when he turned up as a client at the Refugee Council where I was working as an advisor and advocate - which meant that I sat in a little booth without a counter - really was just a desk, which was all there was to separate me from the clients' frustration and anger. And here I gave out advice to the unfortunate refugees, about what to do to escape from the mess they found themselves in - which was generally a worse mess than I myself was in (and mine wasn't insignificant, because I always end up in a mess - and not only the kind of mess that life tends to deliver generously but also the kind of mess that I create for myself - which again isn't insignificant either). 

My role was to help the refugees, who were waiting for the results of the British state burocratic machine (which could last up to ten years or more) and who, during this far from short period of waiting, needed the government to deign to treat them humanely. This task was made particularly difficult by the civil servants who worked for the so called NASS (National Assylum Support Service), assigned to the feared Home Office, internationally renowned, since the Brexit vote, for its blind malevolence. And these civil servants, the NASS ones, it's difficult to forget them even in the afterlife, because they were firmly convinced that their mission in life was to make the life of refugees, during the waiting period, as miserable, gloomy, constricted and as cold as they possible could. And one of these refugees, who they loved in their sadistic kind of manner, was the unfortunate Carlos. 

The day I met him was the day I realized how incapable of understanding refugees my colleagues from the Refugee Council actually were. It's true that I wasn't a normal refugee myself - in fact, as the law defined it I'd never even been one in the first place. In effect, my Italian ancestors provided me with a citizenship that allowed me to pass through any border in the world; my mama charged herself with only ever speaking to me in Italian - always correcting my ‘Spanishness’; and my Italian grandmother recited stories to me every, well almost every, night of my childhood, even when I was living in other cities, because the stories used to arrive on tape - the kind that came before cassettes. 

Anyway, although all my colleagues knew that my ancestors were Italians, they also knew that I had left Venezuela under fire, during Chavez's regime - before he showed his mask to the world - but all the same they considered me to be a refugee even though I really wasn't, at least legally speaking anyway. So that, in a supportive tone a colleague would say to me: "Look Fabrizio, a Venezuelan. You wanna meet him!" Or, "Hey Fab, someone from your country", from the guy on reception. Or, "Hey Fab, here's someone from your country - you'll want to see him!" - this time the security guard, in his typical Pakistani Bradford accent, speaking as fast as a machine gun. 

But why would I have wanted to meet with a Venezuelan after I'd left Venezuela fed up with its mediocrity and its 'Chavismo'? He wouldn't have wanted to meet me either: both of us would be avoiding Venezuelans, and for the same principal reason, the most important reason of all: neither of us wanted to bump into a Chavista, especially not an undercover Chavista. Of course in this cold and dark land one misses our tasty hallaca, our delicious arepa and our cheeses - like the queso de mano. Above all one misses all the tropical noises in the background, with their Colombian and Venezuelan-Caribbean zing. And the cumbia, merengue, joropo, even salsa dancing. I miss the fiesta, miss the jokes, miss the hugs and kisses... but no homesickness is strong enough to make me want to bump into someone who was responsible for so much regression in the country. 

And of course how would either of us know whether or not this was the government sending out spies to track us down? Somewhere the Venezuelan government has spent all their money, they can´t steal it all. Maybe some was spent in spies to make our life miserable also abroad. No, no, I don´t want to meet that Carlos, I thought. And I wondered: how is it possible that my English colleagues can't see this; how many times do I have to tell them that Chávez is a complete farce, a nothing?  

Well, in the end I did end up meeting him, this Venezuelan. We became friends, going against all the rules of the Refugee Council, of the country, of the British culture, of everything. We became friends despite spending very little time together - the brief moments we did manage to share being quality time that we enjoyed, in an intimate Venezuelan kind of way, sharing arepas de reina pepiada and improvised tequeños, and many memories of Juan Griego and Guacuco beach and Guacuco soup. 

In short, Carlos was a friend, but only for a short while, because both of us were busy with the commitments of our lives in this country. And as I said, hardly had I opened my eyes after death (and clearly, opening one’s eyes is just a metaphor for saying what I could see in this world of the afterlife) - I had hardly opened them and there, looking really calm and relaxed, was Carlos. What a crazy life! No, I mean what crazy lives! - both the one before my death, and the one after. And Carlos was looking at me extremely calmly as though he was thinking just that same thing, and he smiled. There was a moment's silence. 

"Sorry Carlos, but I don't understand. I'm confused..." I said. 

"Don't worry, we're all confused after we die", he told me, and I felt really perplexed about the somehow coherent but absurd logic of this confusing situation.  

It was then that I thought it better to ask him an intelligent question as I couldn't start this new life with as many errors as I'd committed before; I wasn't going to let it happen that in this 'life after life' I was going to do everything badly again - that would be the limit. But then things got worse. Carlos sat down in an armchair - yes, there are armchairs and everything - and as if it meant nothing, he said to me: 

"We on the committee decided that I should be the first one to come and talk to you" 

"Ah" 

Carlos's explanation was so far from what you'd expect, to be honest, that although I hadn't believed in the afterlife, this still felt like a gunshot. But anyway, even if I had believed in something so absurd I would have imagined something completely different to this first informative sentence that I was hearing. What madness. And whilst I was taking in this crazy reality, all the ideas, observations and surprises mounted up in my head - like the one about 'after life there's more life, another chance even'.  I, that had been an atheist all my previous life, would have said that this was all an illusion but look, there are other people... and at least one of them is Carlos, luckily! But this 'luck' suddenly seemed to turn sour, just like in the other life, because these survivors of the other life have...committees! How awful! The thing you'd least expect to find in the next life is a bureaucracy, even less an authority established by committees. Committees my arse! I didn't die just to end up in an office.  

All these things went through my head, my mind jumped from one thought to another, just like in the other life, and I noticed that the armchair where Carlos was sitting was red and very comfortable looking, but why would you bother to sit down if you didn't have a body, only the image of a body, because images don't weigh anything, my God, how absurd, yes I can say 'my God' now because in one of these lives he might well appear, riding by on a bicycle or eating a fried chicken, who knows? In short, my mind was flying about all over the place, and here, for once, flying is actually a thing, but then I landed with a bump when Carlos said to me: 

"Ok, Fabrizio, in the committee we do not agree that you killed yourself." 

So, I was already a failure: I had only just begun my new life as a dead person and here I was, already infringing the rules - with no chance of starting over with a clean slate. I was already an offender. Or worse. They had found me out, and to top it all off they were coming to reprimand me. This new world had already started badly. If you die through suicide they should at least have the decency to let you die in peace, and if you are going to live afterwards, fuck it, the last thing you wanna hear is a judgement on whether or not you killed yourself for the right reasons. And so began my new life as a dissident, forever seeing things differently from how everyone else sees them. Well, fuck their committee. The 'hereafter' was rapidly becoming very similar to the 'therebefore'. What a drag. 

After death, I found my survival instinct was tending to push me a little bit towards hesitation and caution before I expressed any dissension (whereas in my previous life I had always expressed my opinions impulsively and fearlessly, or, to put it another way, I was a bit of a big-mouth and it had always ended badly). Anyway, I reckoned it might be a good thing to wait until I understood a little better the politics and modes of operation of this new life. I was starting to think something along the lines of: "I can't go on with this shitshow of being a fucking misfit in every single life that comes along". So I got a grip of myself and told myself to make the best of the fact that I had a friend on this committee of the dead that was coming to judge me. Carlos could be my ally, my leverage here in the life beyond. I wanted to somehow get him on my side, initiating, in this way, a political process in this new world touched by the old world. And so I said, interrupting him: 

"Listen Carlos, are you going to tell me that you killed yourself for the right reasons, whereas I didn't?" 

But on hearing my own words I realized that maybe I wasn't being very diplomatic - it might well have been an ok thing to say in the old life but who knows how it would go down in this one? But as soon as he replied I realized that at least one thing remained the same here: friendship.  

"Look, we know everything here", he said, extremely calmly and then he continued justifying his own suicide, “I was haunted by those horrible memories of when the collective supported by Serra, the bastards, tried to drown me in the city sewage and made me eat shit. I couldn't take any more”.  

I was finding it difficult to keep my head straight. Of course I recognised the frankness of his reply as something belonging to our friendship in the previous life, but the bewilderment that this situation was causing me now took control and it was difficult for me to follow his thread, and even harder to articulate my own reply. When he said to me "we know everything here", the horror dawned on me that in this new world there was no privacy, and it's not that I have much to hide, but this, along with other things, prompted a thousand questions, like what kind of place was this new world in which they even had committees that had the gall to decide whether or not someone had committed suicide for the correct reasons. But as the idea of friendship and sincerity seemed to be the same in this new world, I said to him; 

"Don't play dumb, cos you had loads of friends in England, you started a new life there and you even joined a rock band, unbelievably. And then you go and kill yourself like an arsehole." 

And he started to laugh as I was speaking and he made gestures as if to say "Carry on! Carry on! You don't know anything!" But I kept going: 

"Even the police arrived to investigate whether or not it was murder", I said, trying to make him feel uncomfortable. And he made a gesture as if to say ‘big deal’. But I carried on in spite of his sarcasm, and with some effort I informed him, in a lowered voice: 

"And at your funeral, you would have seen-" But, with a brusque gesture, he cut me off short and left me hanging with my thoughts still in full flow. I remained silent for a few seconds too, as the reminders of his funeral all began to crowd into my memory. 

His funeral had been the most beautiful funeral I had ever experienced - if it's possible to describe a funeral as beautiful, as funerals, to me, are always macabre. I don't know, suddenly everyone feels under pressure to say how much they loved you, including those that probably didn't even say hello to you if they saw you in the supermarket, and suddenly they are saying how important you were in their lives. Typical Brit. 

I wanted to tell him about the friends who gathered there, but he repeated the gesture indicating that he was going to say something. I waited longer and recalled that we had all gathered there, his friends and myself, the only Venezuelan, all of us bewildered to hear he had got hold of some insulin without being a diabetic and had injected himself with enough of it to kill a horse. I don't know why but all his English friends were there, inconsolable, some of them sitting on the sofa, some on the floor. One of them, who was wearing a purple scarf and wasn't wearing any socks suddenly took the initiative and said something amazing about Carlos: I don't remember exactly what, but something to do with his passion for electric guitars, and she asked that he be remembered for this. Then after a long silence another of his friends, also barefoot but wearing one pink sock and one green started to share a lovely memory of the day Carlos prepared some arepas, which Carlos thought tasted awful, and this was followed by some joke which I didn't understand, and I was the only one there who didn't get it. 

I wanted to tell Carlos that he would not have killed himself if he knew how much he was loved, “how dare you, Carlos, they loved you so much”, I wanted to tell him, but he had a gesture of “I-am-going-to-tell-you-now-something-you-don't-know". 

I was really wanted to tell him that when Lou spoke, I was deeply interested because I knew they adored each other and she recalled the day they met, in Caracas, when Carlos was still a Chavista and she was writing her postgraduate thesis on the Venezuelan government's food program - which of course was full of enthusiasm for Venezuela's revolutionary process. Howver I couldn’t speak because he interrupted me again with this abrupt gesture and said: 

"Yes, I saw my funeral, the three that I had", he said, and laughed a little sarcastically but with some affection. 

"You dick, you saw your funeral?", I said, surprised but growing accustomed to being surprised in this new world of the dead, and I didn't get to ask him why three if there was only one, maybe two - one informal on the day he died, the other a few days later when the police brought back his body.  

"Yes, of course! A funeral is the best day of your life in England. It's a pity that you're dead. Suddenly everyone loves you like mad. And my Venezuelan mates were even jealous when I showed them my funeral on cinetrip. 

"Oh", I said, as if it was clear what is the cinetrip but trying to maintain the light hearted air of the conversation I added:  

“If only I had known. Let's organise our funerals before we die so that at least we're invited. Tell me when I can go see the cinetrip." 

"You haven't changed", he went on, "You are always mucking around." 

"Well, you don't get to die all the time. You've got to make the most of the opportunity. If only we'd known, in Venezuela we would put on better rumbas and less macabre funerals." 

With a little touch of humour, always present between me and Carlos, I was already beginning to forget the committees thing, or at least the particular committee that wasn't happy with my suicide; nor was I even interested in asking about the cinetrip, because I was beginning to think this whole thing could actually be quite entertaining - although I didn't know yet if I would miss my mobile phone and all that other pre-death stuff. But then all of a sudden I was caught by the worry that I still might have all the mess of the life before death, and I wanted to ask Carlos what life was like here, but he suddenly became serious and reminded me: 

"Well, my friend, on behalf of the committee I repeat that we are not in agreement with your suicide." 

"So what? Are they going to come and tell me I have to pay a penalty? And you - did you kill yourself for the right reasons? You saw your funeral-" 

"Look, Lou did say that at my funeral, and it's true we were very close and I love her very much; she let me live in her house, had her family treat me like their son. But she never wanted to help me with Venezuelan issues. And her thesis was used to argue in favour of Venezuela's food policies. Even the FAO was taken in. Yeah, right. That hurts. It still hurts me." 

While hearing this, I was aware that Lou was slow to accept our denunciation of what was happening in Venezuela, even after the newspapers printed that Carlos had suffered from post-traumatic disorder and he had committed suicide because he could no longer bear the memories of his torture. In the end though, I have to admit - for reasons of intellectual honesty - she did stop defending the Bolivarian revolution - fortunately. But Lou didn't want to face the reality that she had discovered at first hand - that is, that the Bolivarian authorities are a fraud, they are corrupt, they are torturers. It went in one ear and out the other when they told her the socialists should take on the lessons of the control of power as characterised by liberal democracies. Seeing all that Venezuelan reality disorientated Lou - who was on the Left of the Labour Party where one had to be in agreement with Chavez or else be labelled a Blairite, a sellout, etc. All of this went through my head as Carlos continued with his tale: 

"Lou always gave me great solidarity on a personal level. I was excited by everything that she did, and besides, I think she did more on my behalf than I had done on hers" 

But I stopped following his discourse - I knew only too well from where it derived. In England nobody wanted to believe me about what was going on with Chavez, but they had heard it from Lou, at least inside her circle of friends, friends of friends, a few colleagues and maybe more beyond that. She blamed Serra's abuses on a single case of corruption within the system, although it was linked to Diosdado, that son of a bitch. It was always just a case of ‘corrupt personalities’ with Lou, of failures of the system, never that the system itself was a mistake, a big lie, a huge farce. A bulwark for the military for the setting up of a new oligarchy - the Bolibourgeoisie  

"Watch it, watch it”, I told him, “ I'm not of the British Left, you can forget that. And I know very well who Diosdado and his crowd are." 

"But you too betrayed me!" he said. 

"Me? How?" 

"To start with, you never turned up at my university meetings on Venezuela." 

"There was no point, you know that. The English always think they know more than we do. 

"Look, they wouldn't even discuss it with someone like me. They hear what I say then go off and give money to Hands Off Venezuela" (that movement created by the embassy as a kind of self-protection; along with the idiot followers of the mayor, whatever his name is). "Even some of those who came to your funeral were doing it. There's no answer for that." 

"But you also betrayed me in a bigger way, and that's more terrible." 

"Another way? How?" 

"Well, at my funeral you promised me you were going to write a novel about Sofia, remember? And promises made to suicide victims should be kept. Not to do so is a terrible wrong. Terrible. So terrible that up here, it's a crime. And the committee is united on that.." 

This was a shock. I had almost forgotten I was in the kingdom of the afterlife, that I had committed suicide and that that was what had sent me off to the life beyond; suddenly, I realized the mess I was in. A crime in the hereafter. A crime. And even worse: against a friend. 

"Fucking hell Carlos, I'm sorry, I didn't want to betray you. When I made that promise I made it sincerely, but things got really difficult..." 

"Writers in difficult circumstances write better than those who haven't really lived - those who only read books." And I replied: 

"Yes that's true, I'm sure. But I was fired from all my jobs." 

"But the novel - why did you give it up? You couldn't... You promised me! And I believed your promise, and you can't imagine the hope that that gave me." 

And I interrupted him to continue with what I wanted to say, but he wouldn't let me. 

"Fabrizio, you have to understand, that in this new world of we that have died, we are all waiting, and what we learn is to be patient. Patience is a grand virtue. Patience. And you need to learn this too. It was impatience that led you to suicide, and that shouldn't be. You wanted to live, you wanted to write and you were going to find the means but you killed yourself.  

And I wanted to tell him that it wasn't impatience but the need to live, the impossibility of living; that I wanted to live but I couldn't. I couldn't go on cutting grapes. It wasn't just impatience. 

"Patience, Fabrizio, learn- 

"But let me tell you Carl- 

"Patience for fuck's sake, listen!!!... 

"Fuck patience! It's you who is shouting at me!" 

And I could see that this new world was actually just like the old one. 

"Fabrizio, listen. We aren't going to allow you to die." 

"Ah no! Friend! What do I have to do? Everyone who ever died stayed dead but now you're gonna make me - me! - what kind of cunt are you - make me be the first dead person to be sent back? I'm going to scare the shit out of everyone! They're gonna take me for a ghost! Resurrection? Screw that!" 

And Carlos laughed: "Yes, but so long as no one knows then yes we can send you back." 

"No mate, please! I couldn't bear any more of that life, don't let them do that to me, take me to this fucking committee, let me talk to them! I want to remain dead in that life, I'm sure I can start afresh here, I can help them, I'll be useful!" 

"Even after death you're still just as stubborn as you always were. And you're the only dead person I know that ever wanted to find work - ah Fabrizio, how funny is that! But we can't accept you, I'm sorry." 

"How sorry are you? Not at all." 

"Yes, we are sorry, and we're going to help you with the novel." 

Aha, that was different. Because after all is said and done I could actually come back to this new life because I'm not going to be the only person in the world who's going to be alive forever - the pinnacle of bad luck for someone who commits suicide. Ok, I told myself - and I got ready to hear carefully the details of my return to normal life. 

"The dead who come back to life don't remember anything," ('This isn't starting well', I thought), "but we're going to make an exception for you because seriously you have to get on with the novel as it was funny. You're going to go back, and you're going to have to look for the funding (I spent ages doing that, I thought) - you're going to find them." (This sounds all very well as long as it doesn't take twenty years, I thought) "and we're going to give you some hints as to where you can find them. Watch your phone and your computer. That's all." 

"No! It’s not as easy as that! They have to tell me what I'm going to live on!" 

And it was there that I woke up. Indeed I was in the land of the living - I recognised it by its solid materialistic quality. I looked at my bedside table and the medicines of which I'd taken the overdose were all still there. Fuck me! If I take them all again they'll put me back there and I'll never die, ever... 

I got off the bed, opened the curtains and there I was again, in England, with its marvellous climate of clouds and more clouds. Rain and more rain. Too bad I couldn't watch the video of my funeral nor see my grandmother and my dearest friends. I felt I wasted my time while I was dead. If I knew how it was, I would have made the best of it. 

I looked at the phone: all the apps. Nothing. Nada. I looked at the computer. Nothing. I looked more carefully at it and only saw that the novel was gone, because I had deleted it before I had killed myself as I didn't want it published before it had been properly edited. There were only the short stories, and they were only still there because they were online. Fucking great, thanks, all you dead people in the dead people's committee! Well, fuck it then. I went out to seek help to fix the laptop. 

Because I'd sold the car, I got the bus, and then I noticed that I had a message. It was Arthur, my banker friend. He had been in business all his life, became a Chavista and made a fortune through his connections with the Bolivarian government. But he fell into disgrace and was jailed for some minor offences. And the last time we spoke he was complaining about all the millions he'd lost during the crisis. He sent me a WhatsApp message. 

‘Hi Fabrizio, are you there? I'm about to hit sixty and I don't know what to do. What kind of project would you launch yourself into if you were in my situation?’ 

I sent him a voice message. In Spanish of course. And while I was speaking a lady watched me, with irritation, and her husband was with her, also looking at me as if I was some kind of criminal. 

"Now we have won the elections, we will have Brexit. You have to speak English." 

And I replied: 

"Whilst my taxes are paying for your pension I shall speak any damn language that I like."  

And everyone on the bus applauded. A sign that not everything in this country was lost. Yes. 

And then Carlos appeared. 

“Carlos, what are you doing here? 

“I came to tell you that we made a mistake. Arturo is not going to help you” 

“Who is going to help me? 

“Nobody”. 

“What can I do?” 

“ I don´t know. Try to tell the tale about how hard it is to write a novel about Sofia.