The Lacuna Page 6

  Mr. P. T. Cash is to come on Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Mother could put a sign on her door like the bakery shop downstairs.

  They discuss The Boy's Future: P. T. says the Preparatoria in September, but Mother says no, he can't get in there. It's supposed to be difficult, with Latin, physics, and things of that kind. What will they make of a boy who has only attended the school of Jules Verne and the Three Musketeers for five years? Her idea is a little school organized by nuns, but P. T. Cash says she is a dreamer, the Revolution did away with those when the priests fled Mexico. If they know what's good for them, he said, those schoolteacher nuns got married. Mother insists she saw a school on Avenida Puig south of here. But Preparatoria is free, and a catolica school would cost money, if one could be found. We will see who wins: Mr. Produce the Cash or Miss No Cash Whatever.

  24 June

  St. John's Day, all the church bells ringing on a Tuesday. The maid says it's a signal for the lepers to bathe. Today is the only day of the year they are allowed to touch water. No wonder they smell as they do.

  On the way back from the Colonia Roma dress shop today, it started to rain like pitchforks, and we bought paper hats from the newspaper boys. When it rains, they give up on shouting about the New Bureaucratic Plan and fold it up into something useful. Then we lost the way home and Mother laughed, her hair stuck like little black ribbons to her face, for once happy. For no reason.

  Standing under an awning to hide from the rain, we noticed it was a shop of books, and went inside. It was fantastic, every sort of book including medical ones, the human eye drawn in cross-section and reproductive organs. Mother sighed for the slim chances of gaining entrance to the no-cost Preparatoria. She told the shopkeeper she needed something to put her boy on the Right Track, and he showed her the section of very old, worn-out ones. Then took pity on Mother and said if we brought them back later, he would return most of the price. Huzzah, something new to read. For your birthday, she said, because it passed almost a week ago and she was sorry for not celebrating. So pick out something for turning fourteen, she said. But still no adventure novels. Pick something serious, history for example. And no Pancho Villa, mister. According to her, if he hasn't been dead twenty years, he isn't history.

  The Azteca are dead for hundreds, so we got two books about them. One is all of the letters written by Hernan Cortes to Queen Juana of Spain, who sent him off to conquer Mexico. He sent back plenty of reports, starting each one with "Most Lofty Powerful and Very Catholic Empress." The other one is by a bishop who lived among the pagans and drew pictures of them, even naked.

  More rain, a good day for reading. The great pyramid under the cathedral was built by King Ahuitzotl. Luckily the Spaniards wrote buckets about the Azteca civilization before they blew it to buttons and used its stones for their churches. The pagans had priests and temple virgins and temples of limestone blocks ornamented on every face with stone serpents. They had gods for Water, Earth, Night, Fire, Death, Flowers, and Corn. Also many for War, their favorite enterprise. The war god Mejitli was born from a Holy Virgin who lived at the temple. The bishop wrote how curious it was that just like our Holy Virgin, when she turned up expecting a baby, the Azteca priests wanted to stone her but heard a voice saying: "Fear not Mother, thy honor is saved." Then the war god was born with green feathers on his head, and a blue face. The mother must have had quite a fright that day, all round.

  Because of all that, they gave her a temple with a garden for birds. And for her son, a temple for human sacrifice. Its door was a serpent's mouth, a lacuna leading deep into the temple where a surprise waited for visitors. Towers were built from all their skulls. The priests walked about with their bodies blackened with the ashes of burnt scorpions. If only Mother had brought us here five hundred years sooner.

  Every day it rains buckets, the alley is a river. Women do their washing in it. Then it dries up, flotsam everywhere. The maid says it's a law that everyone has to clean a section of the street, so we should pay her husband for that. Mother says no dice, if we have to huddle like pigeons upstairs we aren't paying any damn street cleaner.

  Mother's room has a tiny balcony facing outward to the alley, and this room is opposite, facing a courtyard inside the block of buildings. The family across keeps a garden there, hidden from the street. The grandfather wears white cotton trousers rolled to his knees, tending squash vines and his pigeon house, a round brick tower with cubbyholes around the top where his pigeons roost. The old man uses a broom to chase away parrots eating his flowers. When the moon is D como Dios, his pigeons cry all night.

  Cortes is an adventure story, better than the Three Musketeers. He was the first Spaniard to find this city, which was Tenochtitlan then, capital of the Azteca empire. Somehow it was in a lake at that time. They had causeways crossing the water, wide enough for Cortes and his horsemen to ride abreast. He heard of the great city and sent messages first so the Azteca wouldn't kill him the minute he arrived. A good plan. King Moteczuma met him with two hundred nobles all dressed in nice capes, and gave Cortes a necklace made of gold prawns. Then they sat down to discuss the circumstances. Moteczuma explained that long ago their ancient lord went back to his native land where the sun rises, so they were expecting one of his descendants to come back any time and subject the people as his rightful vassals. Cortes had sent messages about being sent hither by a great king, so they thought he must be their natural lord. That was good luck for Cortes, who rejoiced and took leisure from the fatigues of his journey. Moteczuma gave him more gold things, and one of his daughters.

  The Azteca in other cities were not so friendly to the Spaniards, and killed them. One was a big troublemaker, Qualpopoca. Cortes demanded him brought in for punishment, and to be safe decided to put Moteczuma in chains, but on a friendly basis. Qualpopoca arrived fuming, insisting he was a vassal of no Great King from anywhere, and hated all Spaniards. So he was burned alive in the public square.

  Mother is tired of hearing bits of the story. She says she is not the damned queen of Spain, put the candle out before it falls on the bed and burns you alive.

  She says we can't keep the book even if it is the best adventure ever. And a birthday present. It is too long to copy the whole story out, only the main parts. Cortes let Moteczuma go free again and they were still friends, which seems strange. He showed Cortes the buildings and marketplaces, fine as any in Spain, and stone temples higher than the great church of Seville. Inside some, the walls were covered with the blood of human sacrifice. But the people had great culture and politeness of manners, with good government everywhere maintained, and stone pipes to bring water down from the mountains. Moteczuma had a grand palace and lattice houses where he kept every manner of bird, waterfowl to eagle. It took three hundred men to look after them all.

  But really Cortes wanted a tour of the gold mines. Playing dumbdora, he told Moteczuma the land looked very fertile, so the Great King should like to have a farm there (over the gold mine). They fixed it up with maize fields, a big house for His Majesty, even a pond with ducks. Crafty Cortes.

  Next, the Governor of Honduras grew very jealous and sent eighty musketeers over to Mexico, declaring he had the true authority of Spain to conquer and suborn the natives. Just when Cortes was having such a grand time, he had to go with all haste back to the port of Veracruz to defend his position, then rush straight back to save the men he'd left at Tenochtitlan. For the people there finally got wise to Cortes, and his name was mud. The populace advanced upon his garrison, and they fought for their lives. King Moteczuma climbed a tower and shouted for everyone to stop, but he was struck in the head by a rock and died three days later. Cortes got out of that place by the skin of his neck. He had to leave behind almost all his golden shields, crests, and other such marvellous things as could not be described nor comprehended. That is what he wrote, but probably he was too embarrassed to describe or comprehend them because one-fifth share of the booty was supposed to go to her Extremely Catholic Majesty the Queen.<
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  Almost the whole night reading and copying, until the candle burned out. This morning Mother said stop being lazy and run to the market. We need coffee, corn meal, and fruit, but really cigarettes. Mother could go for one year without food, but not one day without her lip sticks.

  The Piedad market had no cigarettes. The old women there were smoking cigarettes but said they didn't have any because it's Friday. They said, Try the one south of here, the Melchor Ocampo market. Just walk south on Insurgentes to the next little town from here, Coyoacan. Take the lane called Francia. That market has everything.

  Mother is right about the city ending just south of where we live. It isn't South America, but the streets turn to dirt lanes and it's like a village, with families living in wattle huts around dirt courtyards, children squatting in the mud, mothers making fires to cook tortillas. Grandmothers sit on blankets weaving more blankets for other grandmothers to sit on. Between the houses, gardens of maize and beans. From the last bus stop after two maize fields is Coyoacan as the women said, a market with everything. Cigarettes, piles of squash blossoms, green chiles, sugarcane, beans. Green parrots in bamboo cages. A band of leprosos walking north toward the city for their morning begging, like skeletons with skin stretched over the bones, and tatters of clothes hanging like flags of surrender. Begging with whatever parts of hands they still had attached.

  The next thing to come along was an iguana as big as an alligator, strolling with a frown on its face and a collar on its neck. Attached to the collar a long rope, and holding the rope, a man with no teeth singing.

  Senor, is it for sale?

  What isn't, young friend? Even I could be yours, for a price.

  Your lizard. Is it food or a pet?

  Mas vale ser comida de rico que perro de pobre, he said. Better to be the food of a rich boy than the dog of a poor one. But today there was only enough money for fruit and cigarettes. Anyway the maid cries enough already, without having to cook a lizard for lunch. It took a long time to walk back, but Mother wasn't angry. She'd found a couple of dinchers in the pocket of her yellow dress.

  Sunday is the worst day. Everyone else has family and a place to go. Even the bells from the churches have a conversation, all ringing at once. Our house is like an empty cigarette packet, lying around reminding you what's not in it. The maid, gone to mass. Mr. Produce the Cash, to the wife and children. Mother rinses her girdles and step-ins, flings them on the rails of the balcony to dry, and finds herself with nothing left to live for. Sometimes when there isn't anything in the house to eat, she says, "Okay, kiddo, it's dincher dinner." That means sharing her cigarettes so we won't be hungry.

  Today she pinched the Cortes book and hid it because she was lonely. "You just read your books and go a hundred miles away. You ignore me."

  "Well, you ignore me whenever Produce the Cash is here. Go find him."

  The door to her bedroom slammed, rattling its glass panes. Then opened again, she can't stay cooped. "A person could go blind from reading so much."

  "Your eyes must be good, then."

  "You slaughter me, cheeky Charlie. And that notebook is giving me the heebie-jeebies. Stop it. Stop writing down everything I say."

  E-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g. S-h-e. S-a-y-s.

  Finally tonight she had to give up Cortes in exchange for the cigarettes, because she was going to die without them.

  The market in Coyoacan is not like the Zocalo downtown, where everything comes ready-made. The girls in blue shawls sit on blankets with stacks of maize they just broke from the field an hour before. While waiting for people to come, they shell off the kernels. If more time passes they soak the corn in lime water, then grind it into wet nixtamal and pat it out. By day's end, all the corn is tortillas. Nixtamal is the only kind of flour they use here. Even our maid doesn't know how to make white-flour bread.

  While the girls make tortillas, the boys cut bamboo from marshes by the road and weave it into birdcages. If no one comes to buy a cage, they will climb up trees and steal birds from their nests, to put in the cages. You have to come before ten in the morning if you want whole maize ears or an empty birdcage. By the end of the week they will have made a world. And on the seventh day rest, like God.

  The old lizard man comes every day. He and his creature look the same, with whitish scaly skin and wrinkled eyes. The man is called Cienfuegos, and his beast is named Manjar Blanco: creamed chicken.

  On the plaza near the Melchor market the palace of Cortes still stands. He ruled from there after conquering the Azteca. First it was the garrison where he gathered his musketeers and schemed to take over Tenochtitlan; a plaque on the square tells about it. This very place Cortes described in his third letter to the Queen. How strange to read of a place in a book, and then stand on it, listen to the birds sing, and spit on the cobbles if you want. Only it was on the shore of the lake then. The great city had dikes to hold back the waters, and sometimes the Aztecas removed stones from the dikes, causing floods to rush over Cortes and his men as they slept. They had to swim for their lives.

  21 July

  The question of school lurks. Exams for entering the Preparatoria are a few weeks away, tomorrow we will go back to the bookshop for more Improving Texts. The letters of Cortes will be traded for something else, and it's no use tearing a fit to keep it. Tonight is the last chance to finish and copy out the good bits.

  The last siege of Tenochtitlan: Cortes tried to block the causeways across the lake and starve them out. But the people threw maize cakes at him and said: We are in no want of food, and later, if we are, we shall eat you!

  He made his men build thirteen ships in the desert and dig a canal to move them to the lake, so he could attack both by land and water: the final assault. He bore his ship straight into a fleet of canoes hurling darts and arrows. "We chased them for three leagues, killing and drowning the enemy, the most extraordinary sight in the whole world," he told the Queen, and mentioned how it pleased God to raise up their spirits and weaken those of the enemy. Also the Spaniards had muskets.

  The people fought him as the bitterest of foes, including women. Cortes was dismayed by their refusal to submit. "I was at pains to think in what way I could terrify them so as to bring them to knowledge of their sins, and the damage we were in a position to do them." So he set fire to everything, even the wooden temples where Moteczuma kept his birds. He was much grieved to burn up the birds, he said. "But since it was still more grievous to them, I determined to do it."

  The people uttered such yells and shrieks that it seemed as if the world was coming to an end.

  22 July

  The new book is nowhere near as good: Geographical Atlas of Mexico. The City of Mexico is two and a half kilometers above sea level. In ancient times it was different islands built on stone foundations in a salt lake, connected by causeways. The Spaniards drained the lake with canals, but it is still a swamp, the old buildings all tilt. Some streets still run like canals when it rains. The motorcars are like ancient canoes, and the people flow from one island to another. And rulers still make grand buildings with paintings on the outside. The newspapers call them Temples of the Revolution. Modern people are just like ancient ones, only more numerous.

  4 August

  A victory for Mother: being seen in the daylight with Mr. P. T. Cash. He took us in his automobile to have lunch at Sanborn's, downtown near the cathedral in the Casa Azulejos. The grand lunch room at the center of the building has a glass ceiling so high that birds fluttered under it, indoors by accident. One wall was covered with a painting of a garden, peacocks and white columns. Mother said it portrayed Europe. Her cheeks were pink, because of meeting the important friends.

  Waitresses in long, striped skirts brought carts of rainbow-colored juices: pomegranate, pineapple, guayabana. The Important Friends paid no attention to the pretty juices, discussing the federal investment plan and why the Revolution will fail. Mother wore her smartest silk chiffon, a blue helmet hat, and ear drops. Her son wore a dress coat too
tight and short. Mr. P. T. Cash wore his Glenurquhart plaid suit and nervous expression, introducing Mother as his niece visiting for the year. The friends were oil men with oiled hair and one old doctor named Villasenor. His wife, a Rock of Ages in high lace collar and pince-nez. All gringos except the doctor and wife.

  The oil men said the sooner the Mexican oil industry collapses, the better, so they can take it over and make it run straight. One told his theory about why America is forward and Mexico is backward: when the English arrived in the New World, they saw no good use for Indians, and killed them. But the Spaniards discovered a native populace long accustomed to serving masters (Azteca), so the empire yoked these willing servants to its plows to create New Spain. He said that was their mistake, allowing native blood to mingle with their own to make a contaminated race. The doctor agreed, saying the mixed-race mestizos have made a mess of the government because they are smoldering cauldrons of conflicting heritages. "The mestizo is torn by his opposing racial impulses. His intellect dreams of high-minded social reforms, but his brute desires make him tear apart every advance his country manages to build. Do you understand this, young man?"

  Yes, only, which half of the mestizo brain is the selfish brute: the Indian or the Spanish?

  Mother said her son intends to be a lawyer, causing everyone to laugh.

  But it wasn't a joke. Cortes and the Governor of Honduras were tearing one another apart before they'd even got started. Cortes burned people and birds alive, to be terrifying. The Azteca priests smeared their churches with blood, also to be terrifying.