The Lacuna Read online

  The third diary runs from June 1930 until November 12, 1931. He took more faith with dating the entries after enrolling in school. That one he kept in a hardbound tablet of a type used by schoolchildren of the time, purchased in a Mexico City bookshop.

  The rest follow in order, many notebooks in all, an odd lot for shape and size but all one gloss within. No man ever set a greater store in words, his own or others. I have taken pains to do the same. His penmanship was fair to good, and I was no stranger to his hand. I believe these texts to be loyal and stanch to his, apart from some small favors to a boy's spelling and grammars. And small is the need, for a boy that took his lessons from The Mysterious Affair at Styles and so forth. I took some reliable help with translating the Spanish, which he used now and again, probably without full understanding of the difference when young. He spoke both languages as a routine. English with the mother, Spanish with most others until his return to the United States. But sometimes he twixed the two, and I've had to guess on some.

  The common custom is to place a note such as this at a book's beginning. Instead, I let his own Chapter One stand to the fore. He plainly meant it to be the start of a book. I stand behind the man, with ample reason in this instance. I had good years to learn the wisdom of it. My small explanations here are meant to introduce the remainder. I have set upon the whole of it certain headings, for organizing purposes. These I marked with my initials. My only hope is to be of use.

  --VB

  Private journal Mexico North America

  Do not read this. El delito acusa.

  2 November, Dead People's Day

  Leandro is at the cemetery to put flowers on his dead people: his mother and father, grandmothers, a baby son that died when it was one minute old, and his brother who died last year. Leandro said it's wrong to say you don't have a family. Even if they are dead, you still have them. That isn't nice to think about, ghost people standing in rows outside the windows, waiting to get acquainted.

  Leandro, wife, and dead people are having their party at the graveyard behind the rock beach on the other side. Tamales in banana leaves, atole, and pollo pipian. Leandro said those are the only foods that could attract his brother away from a lady. He meant Lady of the Dead, who is called Mictec-something--Leandro couldn't spell it. He can't read. He didn't cook the tamales this time. At his house, the wife is Captain of Tortillas, and the sergentes are his nieces. When he leaves here, he goes home to a mud thatch house and women who cook for him. Maybe he sits in a chair and complains about us. No one comes to take off his boots. None to take off.

  All the maids went off also for Dia de los Muertos, and Mother had to warm the caldo for lunch herself. She complained about Mexican servants running off for every excuse. In Washington, D.C., who ever heard of the kitchen help having to go throw marigolds on a grave? She says the indios have so many gods they have an excuse to stilt out of work every day of the year. These Mexican girls. But Mother is one herself. A good thing to remind her, if you want a slap on the kisser.

  This morning she said, I am no mestizo, mister, and don't you forget it. Don Enrique is proud of no indios mixed up in his blood, Pure Spanish only, so now Mother is proud of that too. But she has nothing to celebrate, because of no Indian gods. Not even the God of Pure Spaniards, she doesn't like him either. She said chingado when she burned her hand after the maids went to their party. Pinche, malinche. Mother is a museum of bad words.

  Don Enrique brought back the accounts books from a shop in Veracruz so we can keep track of the truth around here. He told Mother, Desconfia de tu mejor amigo como de tu peor enemigo. Trust your loved ones as you trust your worst enemy. Write. Everything. Down. He slapped the little books on her dressing table, making her jump and the sleeves of her dressing gown tremble. He calls them Truth Books.

  Here is the truth. One booklet was pinched by the household thief. Mother was finished with it anyway. She started, but then Cruz took over the job of writing down which days Mother pays them. Otherwise Mother says she paid but really didn't, because she was juiced. Don Enrique told Cruz to keep tabs whilst he is away in the Huasteca. He says money runs out of this house like blood from a wound.

  7 November

  Seventy-two seconds, longest time ever. If Mother could hold her breath that long she could be divorced. But that time does not really count, it is on land only. On a bed cercado de tierra, locked by land. Kneeling by the pillow with a pinched nose, holding the watch up to the candle to see the seconds. It's harder to go that long in the water, because of cold. One way is to breathe a lot first, very fast, then take in one large breath and hold it. Leandro says in the name of God don't try that when you're diving, it's a good way to faint and drown. Leandro used to dive for lobster and sponge for his living, before he was a cooking boy.

  That is some slide down the stairs, from a soldier's life out there diving to a galopino. Cookie! That's as dangerous as sucking on a nurse's tit! It was a very rude thing to say this morning to Leandro, who isn't allowed to be angry. He came back from the Day of the Dead with his hair tied in a special way, the horse-tail in back wound with henequen string. Probably his wife did that.

  Leandro said his brother who made the diving goggle was drowned last year whilst diving for sponge. He was thirteen, younger than you and already supporting his mother. Leandro said that without looking up, hitting the knife hard against the board, chopping onions.

  Natividad came in then with the tomatoes and epazote from market, so there was no chance to say No lo supe. Usually there is something terrible you don't know.

  Or for Leandro to say, You don't know anything.

  From the exciting life of diving, his brother got to be dead. That is the truth about soldiering, in case you want to know something, Leandro said. Cooking won't kill you.

  This morning low tide was early. The village boys collecting oysters came into the cove and said this beach belonged to them. They screamed Vete rubio, go away blond boy, scramble away like a crab over the coral rocks. The path by the lagoon makes a dark tunnel through mangrove trees to the other side of the point. The beach over there is only a thin strip of rocks, and disappears when the tide comes up. This morning the tide was lowest ever. Knobs of the reef cropped out of the water, like heads of sea animals watching. That side is too rocky for boats. No one goes there. No oyster boys to scream at a rubio who is not rubio, with hair as Mexican black as Mother's. When they look, do they see anything at all?

  Floating on the sea is like flying: looking down on the city of fishes, watching them do their shopping. Flying away como el pez volador. Like a flying fish. The bottom falls, and in deep water you can soar, slipping away from the crowded coral-head shallows to the quiet dark blue. Shadows of hunters move along the bottom.

  At the back of the cove on that side, a rock ledge rises up from the water. You can see that cliff from the ferry. It has long white stripes of guano, banners marking the roost holes where seabirds think they are hiding. At the base of that cliff, something lay under the water that can't be seen from a boat. A dark something, or really a dark nothing, a great deep hole in the rock. It was a cave, big enough to dive down and crawl into. Or feel around the edges and go a little way inside. It was very deep. A water-path tunneling into the rock, like the path through the mangroves.

  An unexpected visit from Mr. Produce the Cash. Mother was in a mood when he left. His fancy shoes must have pinched her also. She started a spat with Don Enrique.

  24 November

  Today the cave was gone. Saturday last, it was there. Searching the whole rock face below the cliff did not turn it up. Then the tide came higher and waves crashed too hard to keep looking. How could a tunnel open in the rock, then close again? The tide must have been much higher today, and put it too far below the surface to find. Leandro says the tides are complicated and the rocks on that side are dangerous, to stay over here in the shallow reef. He wasn't pleased to hear about the cave. He already knew about it, it is called something already, la la
cuna. So, not a true discovery.

  Laguna? The lagoon?

  No, lacuna. He said it means a different thing from lagoon. Not a cave exactly but an opening, like a mouth, that swallows things. He opened his mouth to show. It goes into the belly of the world. He says Isla Pixol is full of them. In ancient times God made the rocks melt and flow like water.

  It wasn't God, it was volcanoes. Don Enrique has a book on them.

  Leandro said some of the holes are so deep they go to the center of the earth and you'll see the devil at the bottom. But some only go through the island to the other side.

  How can you know which is which?

  It doesn't matter, because either one can drown a boy who thinks he knows more than God because he reads books. Leandro was very angry. He said stay away from that place, or God will show you who made those holes.

  The Tragic Tale of Senor Pez

  Once there was a small yellow fish with a blue stripe down his back, Senor Pez by name, who lived in the reef. One unfortunate day he was caught by the bare hands of a monstrous boy, the God of Land. Sr. Pez wanted to eat the tortilla offered by the Hands of God, and so the beggar earns his fate. He was carried to the house in a diving goggle and put in a brandy glass of seawater on the windowsill in the Bedchamber of God. For two days Sr. Pez circled the glass with trembling fins, grieving for the sea.

  One night Senor Pez wished himself dead. In the morning his wish was granted.

  He was to be given a Christian burial under the mango at the end of the garden, but the plan was spoilt by the cleaning girl. The maid Mother hired this time is named Cruz, which means Cross, which she is, most of the time. She came into the Bedchamber of God to pick up the God's Foul Stockings whilst he was outside reading. She must have found the floating body, and decided to throw him out. God returned to his room to find no corpse, no brandy glass, and Senor Pez gone to the garbage jar with the kitchen scraps for the pigs. Leandro said it was true. He saw Cruz throw it in there.

  Leandro helped dig through the scraps to find Senor Pez. The Boy God had to hold his nose for the stink, and felt stupid and flutie because he almost cried when they couldn't find it. Thirteen years old, crying for a dead fish. Not for that really, but its being buried in a slop of onion peels and slimy seeds of a calabaza. Our meals are made from the other part of these rotten things. The food inside us must also rot in the same way, and nothing is truly good or stays here because every living thing goes to rot. A stupid reason for crying.

  But Leandro said, There now, no te preocupes, we know Senor Pez is in here somewhere. Then he had an idea that was very good: why don't we dig a big hole in the garden and bury everything together? And they did. Together the two friends made a noble burial as in times of old for the Azteca kings, the slop bowl providing the departed Senor Pez with everything needed for his journey into the second world, and a little more.

  25 December

  The village wakes up in a hurry, whilst the sun seems to struggle with the job as Mother does. Last night was the party for Christmas Eve. Today she will sleep until noon, then wake up with one hand across her forehead, the frilled elbows of her dressing gown shuddering. Her voice like a Browning machine rifle sending the house girls running for her headache powders. And everyone else out of the house.

  On the road walking to the village for Christmas mass, a lot of people passed by, nuggets of family in brown shells. A man leading his pregnant wife on a burro, like Joseph and Mary. Three long-legged girls in dresses straddling one gray mare, their legs hanging down like a giant insect. A peevish rooster that ought to have been in a better mood, because look here my friend: at the roadside butcher stand, all your comrades hang upside-down ready for roasting. Sausages also were slung over the line like stockings, and a whole white pig skin just hanging, as if the pig went off and left his overcoat. His wife the sow was alive, tied to a papaya tree in the yard with her piglets rooting all round. They could be free to run away, but don't, because of their mother chained on the spot.

  The little church in the village has no bell, only copal-tree incense floating out the open windows to mix with the fish-rot smell of ocean. Leandro was there with his family, resting one hand on each of his children's heads, like grapefruits. Later at the fiesta he didn't ever say Feliz Navidad or Hello friend I come to your house every day. He only clapped together his small son's hands for the pinata strung from the fig tree. There were firecrackers for the holy babe snapping blue smoke in the road, and amongst all the nut-brown families, one invisible boy.

  1 January 1930: First day of the year and decade.

  Every cabeza in the house is full of headache powders. Shattered glasses in twinkling pools on the terraza. No word is heard from the turkey that chased children from the yard all December. He greets the New Year from the kitchen, a carcass of bones attended by his audience of flies.

  A fine day to go out looking for a tunnel to another world. Perhaps to meet the devil. Mother called out Callete malinche dios mio don't slam the door! Not even the usual warning about sharks, let them have boy-flesh if they want. Clear sky, empty beach, and the water like a cool pair of hands, begging. Even the reef fishes didn't speak today.

  The lacuna was there again, a dark mouth in the rock. This time the opening was deeper below the surface, but it was still possible to dive down and feel between the lips of rock into a gullet that broadened in darkness. It was the last day of the world then, time to swim inside, thinking of Leandro's dead brother. Stroking through cold water, counting the pounding heartbeats: thirty, forty, forty-five, one half of ninety. Waiting that long before turning around, feeling the way back toward the entrance, swimming with aching lungs back to the light.

  Sun and air. Breathing. Alive, after all. The hand of the watch returned to the top for one more year of life, stolen back.

  5 January

  Tomorrow is Feast of the Kings. Only here it will be the Feast of Don Enrique's Sisters and Mother, who came over on the ferry. Leandro has to cook for them all. Cruz and the others went to their villages for the fiesta, but Mother is determined to have a feast for the guests, with or without servants. She pretends she and Don Enrique are married, and the senora is to be called abuela. The so-called grandmother in her chic frock lights a cigarette, crosses her legs, blows smoke out the window.

  Mother wants green and red chalupas, and scrambled egg torta with sugar. Leandro would like to be with his family. He's put out with Mother for making him stay, so he made fun of the senora. A scandal. But he knows he won't be caught. The capitan and his sergente have a conspiracy.

  The rosca de reyes is hardest to make: the cake called Ring of the Kings, using white-flour dough, the same as for Baby's Crupper tortillas. A blob of dough fit for a king, rolled out on the table, as long and fat as a sea slug. Como pene. Poking it and laughing: Como bato. Leandro is normally much more pious.

  Weiner! Jaker!

  Pachango!

  Thing! Thing of the King!

  Leandro had tears in his eyes and said Mother would kill us. He crossed himself and prayed for both souls. He made the cake into a ring by putting the thing-of-the-king in a circle and pressing the ends together. The token goes inside, a small clay baby Jesus that looks like a pig. Leandro said really it's not even Jesus, it's the boy-god Pilzintecutli. He dies when the days grow dark in December, then rises again on February 2, which is Candlemas. The ancients were concerned with light and darkness. We are in the dark days now, he said. Whoever finds the token in the cake will have good luck, when the light returns.

  All the rest of the year, the clay token sits in a jar in the cabinet waiting to go into this cake. Leandro took the little pig Jesus out of the jar and kissed it before putting it in the rosca. Round jellied fruits go on top, but he put a square piece where the token was inside, his secret way of marking it. Reach for that one, he said, when the dish of cake is passed around.

  Is it still lucky if you cheat, instead of getting the token by chance?

  Mi'jo, Lean
dro said. Your mother can't even remember the day she gave you birth. If an orphan boy is going to have any luck, he will have to make it himself.

  What kind of orphan has two living parents? You said everyone has family even if they are ghosts. Or forget your cumpleanos.

  Leandro took the orphan's cheeks in his hands and kissed him on the mouth, and then spanked his crupper like a child, not a boy as tall as a man. A boy with terrible thoughts of kissing a man as a man. Leandro meant nothing by it. A beso for a child.

  Leandro went home after the feast. All servants have fled, leaving kitchen scraps, bad moods, and dust. What is the use of good luck in an empty house?

  2 February, Candlemas

  Leandro was gone nineteen days, now back. He has to make a hundred tamales for Candlemas, without his sergente. It's better to hide in the amate tree all day reading, a book won't run off to its family any time it wants. Leandro can't even read. Let him make tamales all day.

  Today begins a year of perfect luck protected by Pilzintecutli, the clay-pig Jesus.

  13 February

  Today the lacuna appeared, a little below the surface. It's near the center of the cliff below a knob where a hummock of grass grows out. It should be easy to find again but best to look early, with sun just up and the tide low. Inside the tunnel it was very cold and dark again. But a blue light showed up faintly like a fogged window, farther back. It must be the other end, no devil back there but a place to come up on the other side, a passage. But too far to swim, and too frightening.

  One day Pilzintecutli will say, Go ahead lucky boy. Vete, rubio, swim toward that light. Go find the other side of the world where you belong.

  The strangest thing. Mother believes in magic. She went back to the village of the giant stone head. After sending Natividad away with the carriage, she said, "This time we both go." She took off her shoes again to cross the footbridge, then followed a path through the forest right around the edge of a lake. Yellow-winged jacanas flapped up from the water and an alligator rested at the edge, covered with waterweed up to its bulging eyes. Then back into the jungle, under giant trees. We were going to see a brujo, she said finally, because someone has put a bad eye on us both, and that's why she can't get another baby. Probably it was Don Enrique's mother.