Crystal shattered, wine spilled on the carpet, café de olla permanently spattered the guests’ clothing. Eleuterio was a madman, launching silverware, unsettling coffee cups, smashing the punch bowl, hacking away at the over-the-top floral arrangements, swinging at the crystal chandeliers as if they were piñatas. He did not stop until every dish, glass, and platter was broken, bent, or destroyed. And when he finally was through, with women sobbing and men outraged, Eleuterio stood there, a grizzled heap of flesh gasping and sputtering and foaming at the mouth, frightening the guests who had anticipated a nervous disorder, an epileptic fit, a heart seizure, anything but this …
Eleuterio spoke. All those months after his near-death words had twisted inside him, a stew of emotions without the means to say. And now, finally, he said something.
—We are not dogs! he said, looking directly at his astonished son, Narciso. Then he gathered the terrified Soledad out from under the table and pulled her to his side. —We are not dogs!
It was not much, but it was enough of a miracle, one he was never able to repeat. God had granted Eleuterio the ability to speak at the decisive moment, or perhaps God had spoken through Eleuterio. —We are not dogs! God said.
Until that moment, it was as if Narciso could not really see Soledad. She looked so pitifully absurd and small shivering next to Eleuterio, with her round panza and all. He regained his humanity at that moment and realized what his father was telling him. He was a Reyes, a Reyes, and los Reyes, although they were many things, were most certainly not dogs! Reminded of this, Narciso Reyes fulfilled his obligation as a gentleman.
It would be untrue to say everyone lived happily ever after, because ever after is very long and happiness rather on the short side. But church bells did ring exuberantly on the morning of Soledad and Narciso’s wedding, although only in the imagination, because church weddings were strictly prohibited in the years following the war due to the anti-Church provisions of the new Constitution. So let us imagine the bells, and imagine the mariachis, and imagine a beautiful reception that never happened, because to tell the truth, Soledad’s belly made Regina ashamed to look at her. No, she wasn’t the daughter-in-law she would’ve picked, but she had to accept her husband’s miraculous speech as God’s will. She had made a promise to la Virgen de Guadalupe to do whatever she commanded, if only she would keep Narciso safe during the war. And here he was, after all, delivered safe and sound.
And so this is how it came to pass that Narciso Reyes, who never left his home without a hat, a clean handkerchief, and a sharp crease in his trousers, took for his wife his cousin Soledad Reyes, she of the kingdom of kitchen.
37.
Esa Tal por Cual
Ay, Zandunga,
Zandunga, mamá, por Dios.
Zandunga, no seas ingrata,
cielo de mi corazón.
—“La Zandunga”
Exaltación Henestrosa, like Nohuichana the fish goddess, in all the isthmus of Tehuantepec there is no other. One gold-capped tooth with a cutout star, eyes dark and alive as the belly-button of the stormy mar, sea eyes tilted slightly and shaped like fish. A wide, lustrous face. Two gold coins dangling like drops of water from the shells of her ears. A conch-dyed purple skirt. Arms akimbo. Woven belt. Brown bare feet. Big bare sea breasts. A necklace of fish vertebrae. And wild sea of hair covered with a clean white square of cloth with caracol stripes, knotted at the nape like a pirate.
A woman of a woman. As big and splendid as a boat with full sails. Voluptuous. Graceful. Elegant. Voice ronca like the sea, a voice squeezed with lemon. Skirt knotted so as to allow a glimpse of that valley without a name between the globe of belly and bone curve of hip. Woman of smooth arms and smooth hips. Wide-waisted as the Tula tree Cortés is said to have slept under. With a luxury of thick hair “down there,” which in the isthmus is the same as saying—a woman ferocious.
She sold baskets of shrimp, fresh turtle eggs, sun-dried fish, iguanas, and embroidered cloths. These she traded for corn, bread, chocolate, fruit, and hen eggs. And since she was a good saleswoman and knew the merit of attracting attention, tied her stock of live iguanas together by the tail, and arranged them on her head like a headdress. This she wore as she walked the road to Tehuantepec, and this was how Narciso Reyes first saw her, resplendent in the season of rain, with her crown of iguanas and her banana-leaf umbrella, though she did not see him.
—That woman, the one with the hat of iguanas, he said asking one of the laborers, —ask where she is from. The answer given and brought back, —San Mateo del Mar Vivo, San Mateo of the Live Sea.
San Mateo. In that epoch, there was no road to San Mateo del Mar. To arrive one had to travel by oxcart, by horse, or on foot. But since Soledad, surrounded by mountains, was seasick with the unborn Inocencio, she stayed behind in Oaxaca, Oaxaca, with the green mountains undulating around the city like a sea of waves that made her dizzy just to step outdoors.
This was how it was Narciso Reyes found himself without Soledad in that season of rain, in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, 1922. The sky blue as happiness would suddenly turn pewter after the afternoon meal, the air heavy like the hand of God on your lungs. —You go on, Soledad said, panting and sweating like a perra. —I’ll be fine here. All the while the veins in her legs complaining.
Her refuge was a room across the zócalo Narciso had found for her in a colonial building that was once a convent and now a boardinghouse. It was the room above the store that sold popcorn, candy, gelatins, and fresh fruit drinks—horchata, chía, tamarindo, piña, jamaica. —This way you’ll never be lonely. You just lean out the balcony, he instructed, —and you have all the world to amuse you.
But on weekdays Soledad couldn’t bear the noise of the schoolchildren. —Go to hell, you changos. Worst of all were the lovers groping each other in the plaza, oblivious to all humanity, indecently happy. She tossed the water from her washstand down on them, —Show yourselves in front of your mother’s house, you sons without shame. She watched with disgust the widow walk to and from church in her lascivious black garments sashaying her fat cow’s behind. —Filthy queen mother of the goddess of whores! She wished she could boil a washtub of water to shower on them all and cleanse them from her sea of troubles.
¡Virgen Purísima! At all hours she was plagued by the corn man’s sad steam-whistle, the green banana man, the —¡Exquisitos carrotes! of the sweet potato vendor, the ixtle seller advertising ropes and fine hammocks and petates of all sizes and qualities, the dawn patrol of the street cleaners with their branch brooms scratch-scratching across the flagstones of the plaza, the woman with a voice like a crow shouting —¡Aquí hay atoleeeee!—the sombrero vendor wearing all his merchandise, the knife sharpener’s shrill two-note whistle, the blind beggar man bellowing —Bendita caridad. Heartless vultures of the kingdom of hell!
She was not well. She threw up everything she swallowed, including her own saliva. At night she suffered cold chills and then a fever, her tongue dry and her bones as sore as if a fat man had sat on her. The housekeeper announced “dengue” because a wind had entered her, or perhaps she’d eaten something hot when she should have eaten something cold. Or the other way around, she couldn’t remember. That on top of her pregnancy seasickness.
Soledad could neither bear the sweet smell of popcorn rising from downstairs nor the sweeter scent of gardenias that floated from across the zócalo. The girl who swept the rooms but always forgot to sweep under the bed brought her a fist of mauve flowers with petals so translucent they looked like … well, they looked like … Holy Mother of God! They looked just like the color of a man’s erect penis, but with thick hairy centers like the coarse hair that grows from men’s ears and nostrils or on the legs of flies. In her delirium she wound up tossing them against the armoire, vase and all.
—It’s the baby inside me, she explained. —Won’t let me rest, turns and twists all night, well, I’m afraid he will be born too early or too late.
The housekeeper’s grandmother gave thi
s prediction: —It’s that the child is destined to be a poet, only artists have souls like that.
But this did not calm the woman Soledad. She could not admit it was Narciso who turned and twisted in her heart those days and nights, the wide, sandy stretches of weeks like the lagoons where Narciso found himself without her. She dreamt a dream of red seagulls, red pelicans, red ducks, red deer, red goats, and red butterflies. She did not know she was dreaming the fingers of Exaltación Henestrosa embroidering with red thread the seagulls, pelicans, ducks, deer, goats, and butterflies on squares of white cotton she sold in the market of Tehuantepec.
Don’t you think we need a love scene here of Narciso and I together?
Why?
Just something in the story to show how happy we were?
Nobody wants to read about happiness.
All I’m asking for is one little love scene. At least something to remind people Narciso and I loved each other. Oh, please! We really only have that vulgar love scene overheard by Eleuterio. And isn’t it important to understand that Narciso and I were in love, really, I mean before he met the so-and-so? Especially after his fling with the little tramp in Chicago.
No! Now let me get on with the story. The world was filled with wind the day Narciso Reyes met Exaltación Henestrosa.
Ha! That shows what you know. The winds in Oaxaca arrive only in the winter.
Well, let’s pretend it’s winter.
But you just finished saying it was the rainy season. Really!
All right. Just for poetic purposes, we’ll allow the wind to arrive in this scene. It suits the story better.
The world was filled with wind the day Narciso Reyes met Exaltación Henestrosa, as if it wouldn’t be satisfied until it set everything upside down, put everything on its head. The palm trees swirled, the women’s skirts, the clouds were windswept, as if someone had run a comb through them. On this day when the sand stung one’s face and the children ran chasing after the palm-tree-like figures of women with baskets of fish on their heads, on this day with its howl of church bells and yelping dogs, this day of all topsy-turvy days, Narciso’s blindness was turned into vision.
He was suffering a terrible eye infection, my grandfather. By Thursday it was so bad, they had to lead him with his eyes shut to the home of a certain Exaltación. From a clay bowl she mixed dry white powder, spat on it till it was a paste, and this she rubbed on his inner eyelid.
—What is that?
—Better you don’t know. You’ll just complain.
—What do you take me for, a woman? Tell me.
—Iguana shit, she said.
But before he could protest, his eyes cleared themselves from their milky fog, and he saw before him the fish goddess Nohuichana. It was the woman of the iguana hat.
—Where did you come from? Land, sea, or heaven?
—From hell, she said. —From here, San Mateo del Mar Vivo.
As opposed to the sandy salt lagoons they call Mar Muerto.
—I mean from what half shell did you rise? Of all the creatures in all Tehuantepec, I swear, you are the most exquisite.
She gave a little shrug and sighed. —I know.
Some would say there was some witchcraft in that spit and iguana shit, because Exaltación was known as a crazy woman, that is, she knew of plants and herbs and other things which people did not like to say but said anyway, well, she could do things. But say what they say, it’s not true. Her magic was that she didn’t care to put a man at the center of her life, and this, for any man, is aphrodisiac enough.
—Well, now, what are you doing? Exaltación said. —Where do you think you’re going?
—Well, I suppose they still think I’m sick, said Narciso.
—Well, then, have some coffee with me. I’m afraid you’ll have to drink it cold, I can’t light a fire today, too much wind, too dangerous, she said, meaning the walls of dusty thatch.
He was a victim of the right time and place. And because she felt like it, she slept with him. Because she felt like it. And what of it?
Celaya, why are you so cruel with me? You love to make me suffer. You enjoy mortifying me, isn’t that so? Is that why you insist on showing everyone this … dirt, but refuse me one little love scene?
For crying out loud, Grandmother. If you can’t let me do my job and tell this story without your constant interruptions …
All I wanted was a little understanding, but I see I was asking for too much.
Just trust me, will you? Let me go on with the story without your comments. Please! Now, where was I?
You were telling cochinadas.
I was not being filthy. And to tell the truth, you’re getting in the way of my story.
Your story? I thought you were telling my story?
Your story is my story. Now please be quiet, Grandmother, or I’ll have to ask you to leave.
Ask me to leave? Really, you make me laugh! And what kind of story will you have without me? Answer me, eh?
Well, for one thing, a story with an ending. Now calm down a little, and let me go on with the story. We were in the home of Exaltación, remember?
Remember? After all these years, I’m still trying to forget.
The woman Exaltación had chosen the Grandfather as her plaything, but she wasn’t very satisfied.
—You shouldn’t begin what you can’t finish, Exaltación said. —The problem with you pretty men is you don’t know how to make love. All you’re good for is fucking.
—Teach me, then, said Narciso.
—¡Ay! my heaven, don’t be a fool. To make love one must use this, she said, tapping her heart —and that can’t be taught.
Love or not love, Exaltación Henestrosa lo salpicó. That is to say, his heart was left spattered with a million and one sand flies, like the sandy stretches of that land called San Mateo del Mar.
How was Soledad to know she held in her belly, in that being no bigger than an amaranth seed, the great love of her life. In turn, at that very same moment, Narciso held in his secret heart his own seed of love. Each beginning their furious fight for life.
38.
¡Pobre de Mí!
And then he fell in love with her.
I don’t know why people march into disasters of the heart so joyously. Somehow in the darkness before sleep, the truth must arrive with its sharp little teeth. It’s almost as if being the tragic hero is a poetic indulgence, a public penance, a luminous grief. Perhaps it was like this with Narciso Reyes and his nemesis Exaltación.
When Narciso was working in the isthmus,* he felt disconnected from all the world, as if he could run away and no one would ever find him again. It was a great relief to not have to be Narciso Reyes, to let go the world’s demands and expectations. And like the tropical plants that grow in excess there without anything stopping them, a lushness, an overabundance, a luxury, he allowed his passion to grow as well, unkempt and untamed, and he knew for the first time joy.
So it was that when Narciso Reyes came to have his infected eyes cured he saw before him the brilliance that was Exaltación Henestrosa, but he could not see inside her heart.
During the winter, a northern wind snaps in, swirling dust across the isthmus for miles. Wind bending the palm trees, wind blasting the blue sky clean, wind pumping the skirts of women, wind billowing across the skin of the curly sea, the sound of the wind in your ears for months and months.
And in the summer, no wind at all; a sticky airlessness that leaves everyone in a terrible mood with ganas to do nothing. A silence like the maw of sorrow. Until night, when the mosquitoes arrive.
It was the wind of desire that blew the circus toward San Mateo del Mar, a sight to sting the hearts of even the deadest citizens of that dead-sea muck of rotten fish, though it was an exaggeration to call them a circus; they were but defectors of other trades. The Circus Garibaldi consisted of a zebra-striped mule hauling an ancient oxcart overloaded with canvas backdrops of airplanes, madonnas, and invented Tibetan landscapes. The company
included a lady photographer, a Mayan family of acrobatic clowns, a gypsy accordionist/percussionist, a dancing raccoon that told fortunes, and the singer Pánfila Palafox. The day they arrived you could not speak without the melodramatic accompaniment of the wind.
How many months do you expect a woman to be with child? Your father was born in the summer, remember? And here you have the story shift to winter. You take such liberties!
Indulge me. I need the wind for this part of the story.
With a flourish of instruments from another age, shells, gongs, marimbas, bamboo flutes that smelled of smoke, and a drum made from a turtle shell, the Circus Garibaldi announced itself. The gypsy played a magnificent waltz while the raccoon clapped, Pánfila sang, the clowns dazzled the crowd with cartwheels and contortions, and the lady photographer passed out flyers announcing the next show as well as an advertisement for: Artistic Photography, the achievement of the century! ¡Un bonito recuerdo! Preserve a memory! A souvenir! Conserve your beauty, your strength. Allow your children to remember you in your glorious youth. Allow us to take your picture. We have splendid palaces, magnificent gardens, and modern airplanes that will serve you as background. Or select the sacred image of your patron saint if you so desire. President Obregón himself has declared our photographs “so real and lifelike they are astonishing!”
And though the Circus Garibaldi yelped and played with all their might, the wild air rushed about them rudely, swirling and swallowing them up like a frothy sea. The announcement flyers printed on cheap newsprint fluttered out of their hands, and in this way made their way over the town like a flock of pigeons. Dust devils whirled the flyers in dizzy circles in the square. Everywhere you walked you could not help but notice the circus flyers with a pyramid of clowns balanced on a magnificent painted elephant, though the Circus Garibaldi had no elephant.