The Zigzag Way (11 page)

Doña Vera, who was not and never had been affected by the heat, shouted out in triumph, “The
old
way, yes! What did I tell you? Was I not right?”

He sank back in his chair, his eyelids slipping like a turtle's over his eyes, and grumbled petulantly, “You are always right, daughter,
always
, are you not?”

Seeing she could no longer get a rise out of him, she got up briskly—what triumph did for her!—announcing, “And now it is time for me to go riding.”

“Ah, ah,” he groaned, failing to see how anyone could choose such activity. He had no option but to get to his feet and follow her into the hall, where he saw the maids setting out a blasphemous altar of paper and wire skeletons, who looked to be strumming guitars and drinking tequila, on a heap of bright marigolds and other ritual objects of their pagan celebration. “Tch, tch, tch,” he clicked his tongue, thickened with brandy, and lifting up his skirts, carefully stepped around and past it. They were too occupied and excited to notice his departure.

 

I
N THE LIBRARY
, the scholars at their tables looked up to see Doña Vera cross the courtyard, dressed now in khaki britches, her riding boots, a hat on her head, all old, all worn, so that now they could see that legendary character in action, the European woman who had gone into the field before any other. There had been evenings at the dining table when they had dared to ask, “What was it like then?” and “Is it still as it was?” only to hear her snap back, “Why not go and find out?” and then add, with a brittle laugh, “Ah, I see. You want a van, eh, air-con-dition-ed, and plas-tic bot-tles filled with water, and med-i-cine for every mos-qui-to bite you get. No, that is
not
how I went. Now you can only see the films and read the books about it. Easy, eh? That is what mat-ters.”

The books they read in the library, however, were not written by her. She had left it to others to write them. Her legend was not reduced and restricted to print and paper.

They did not guess—glancing at them through the window as she passed, she was certain they did not guess—that she had no education beyond elementary school, that she had not been to a university or acquired a degree (other than the honorary ones that had been conferred on her later) and feared to write so much as a monograph lest it give her away. Besides, which language could she have written in? Neither English nor Spanish, both spoken languages to her, not literary ones. The only one she could write with any ease was one she would never use: she had crushed it out of herself. No tracks, no tracks.

 

T
HE CRAFTSMEN
on the veranda looked up from the beads they were arranging, delicately and patiently, into deer, maize, and peyote symbols. They prepared to smile if she stopped to see what they were making—deer, maize, peyote . . .

She did not. Walking past, she only grimaced and waved. The craftsmen were perhaps the only people who saw that particular smile, an embarrassed, ingratiating smile no one else caused her to make.

She did turn her head and shout at the maids to bring them a carafe of
te de Jamaica
. So they smiled, bowed their heads in acknowledgment, and went back to the beads in colors of sea green, quetzal blue, gold, gray, and silver.

Perhaps another day they would broach the matter of a trip to the city—and escape.

She made her way down the cactus-lined path to the corral below, her boots sinking into the soft white wool of dust. She hummed to herself and switched the whip at her side to dispel the sense of guilt she felt in passing them without a word: she ought to be doing more for them, making more of an effort at marketing their wares. The truth was that few buyers ever came to the Hacienda de la Soledad. She would have to carry it all to the city to be sold, and the very thought of their wares spread out on pavements along with handbags and watches and tin toys and plastic sandals upset her, conjuring up the streets of her childhood, lined with the shops of butchers and bakers and greengrocers, with merchant fists and merchant faces inhabiting them. It was what she had struggled to escape. Roderigo was supposed to have rescued her from all that, but wasn't it what he too had been occupied in, if more grandly, as baron of silver?

She turned upon the pugs, threatening them with her whip. “Go back, go back,” she shouted, and for a brief moment a vision from last night rose up, surrounding and nearly suffocating her again. “You are not to fol-low, hear? Go back! Now! At once!” She slapped her whip against her thigh and when that made them cower but not turn, she kicked out her foot and caught one with the tip of her boot. It gave a squeal, the squeal of a pig facing slaughter, and that made them all turn, the curls in their tails coming undone and drooping, and flee back up the path.

Opening the gate to the corral and then shutting it carefully behind her, she saw the groom waiting with her horse, and waved, “Ho-la-a,” not with false joviality but with a genuine lifting and expanding of the heart and spirits at the thought of being free now and by herself again.

The groom, watching her ride out through the tall grass into the open, let out a sharp whistle. Then another, and another, just like a bird calling, at first tentatively, then confidently when it signals the passing of a storm.

Consuela came out into the courtyard above, hurriedly, and looked around to see if anyone was watching before she ran down the path to the corral.

Eric came out of his room, dragging his bag. “I have left the key inside,” he called to Consuela, making her halt a moment.
“Adiós!”
He waved, and suddenly felt lighthearted as he let himself out of the Hacienda de la Soledad into the dirt road that would take him to the crossing with the highway where he would flag down a bus or a truck.

It was only a matter of going through the tunnel now and then he would be in the ghost town he had come to see on the other side of the mountain. He began to whistle.

Thunderheads had risen above the horizon and were mounting with swift strides through the sky, casting a shadow across the mesa and the lake as if a fisherman had flung out a net over them that softly settled. All the grasses bent, with a long, hissing breath. The
situí
birds spun out into the air, crying,
“Tuí, tuí.”
But the clouds sailed on as if they had other, larger plans and could not stop.

Eric gave up whistling as the weight of the bag and the sinking of his shoes into the dust began to tire him long before he reached the crossing. He could not help thinking how foolish a traveler he must appear to anyone who could see him—without auto, without burro, without spouse or partner. Not that there was anyone to see. He had been told there would be many making their way to the town for el Día de los Muertos, but the only figure he could make out was the one on the horse down below on the mesa, slowly breasting the reeds and the rushes around the flat lake, whose surface crinkled like a sheet of burned paper.

He wondered at that figure, at the freedom it had won—of space, of movement—although from what, he had failed to discover. She had evidently sloughed off the past and emerged like some sly and secretive snake in its new skin, to continue on her way. That was what she had done, while here he was, struggling to do the reverse: retrace an old passage, and follow it to—well, what? That was yet to be discovered.

Looking down at his bag, now dragging a trail through the dust, and his reddened fingers clasping the handle, he thought there were always those who walked away, and those who did not. This had been the unsatisfactory meeting of the two, he guessed wryly.

The next time he glanced up the road, the bus appeared, juddering along over the skull shapes of the cobblestones of the highway, dragging itself over them as if drawn by a pulley it was trying to resist. He began to run; he did not want to be left here for another night under her roof.

He heaved himself and his bag into the bus—it was second-class and therefore stopped for whoever hailed it. He bought a ticket and found a seat on a bench at the back between a woman with a basket full of indignant chickens and a man with a bottle of beer and a beatific smile. They made room for him and he settled in.

The best way he knew to shut out the noise and the distraction of so many images and incidents of the journey was to close his eyes and think of Em. Where was she? Was she too on a journey at this moment? Of what kind? Surely much more certain and logical than his. Em knew why she was traveling and where to, whereas he seemed to be chasing a whim, perhaps even less, merely an instinct that he must follow the tracks. Until now, he had studied history and collected data without any sense that it was essential (Em had been right to question him, repeatedly and anxiously, about his intentions). What was it for, really? Simply to add his papers, make his contribution to what already existed? As pointless—and now he knew why he had worked so without any urgency—as adding one more grain of sand to a shore where the ocean washed up more with every wave. But now that he was following the trail of his own history, tunneling his way back into his ancestry, and the history of his ancestors, he felt for the first time the urgency—and the terror—of knowing. An urgency, and a terror, he could have shared at last with Em.

So he listened to the roar of the engine as it thundered through the tunnel in the mountain, and waited for the moment when it would emerge and he would open his eyes—to what? Would this sight, this revelation accord him at last something that he could commit himself to? He remembered Em's words to him, that he would, once he was alone, discover things he could not when he was with her. He had not believed her, but they seemed now to have the ring of truth.

It was with that prospect that he emerged from the tunnel in the bus and dismounted—an explorer on the brink of discovery. Only it was dark and a cold wind rustled through the trees in the park and he had to ask the way to an inn.

We feared death, because we were men.

—
BERNAL DÍAZ
,
The Conquest of New Spain
, 1568

 

W
HEN HE AWOKE THE NEXT MORNING, HE NOTICED
first that the wind had stopped blowing, so that in the ringing clarity of air, whatever sound there was reverberated metallically. That was the cathedral bell, striking the hour. Befuddled with sleep, he lay listening to it, but not counting the rings of the bell bounding out over the roofs like an iron ball. A sliver of light made its way under the curtains cunningly as a sharp knife. He was enormously grateful for both, revived by them, as if he had passed through a storm and now realized that he had survived. This is how a traveler's waking should be, he decided.

Upstairs, the tables were laid for breakfast with bright checked cloths. From the kitchen came sounds of pans being struck and stirred and fat spattering, meat briskly sizzling. The two officials from the night before were already mopping up the last of their beans and eggs with tortillas. Coffee was brought in a pot battered with much service. Eric held out his mug and let the black liquid pour in with benign normality.

Through the door that opened onto the side street, he could see a woman setting up her stall for the day's customers, unpacking her baskets and bundles, emptying them out. A hen ran by squawking, pursued by a rooster. The woman threw a corncob at it, laughing.

A basket of rolls arrived at his table, accompanied by butter and
mermelada
.

The swinging door to the kitchen banged open again and André entered. Eric caught a glimpse of the child playing in the kitchen, under the feet of the maids in their frilled aprons. André himself looked washed, fresh, energetic, with perhaps a smear of grease at the corner of his mouth from his breakfast. He came to Eric's table to inquire if he had slept well, if he had plans for the day. Eric asked if he would join him for a cup of coffee and was pleased that André accepted: he had not thought that he would want to continue the conversation of last night but André seemed eager to do so, as if to correct any misapprehensions.

It was that kind of morning, fresh, new. Water was being sluiced on the street, pans were ringing like church bells, and a triumphant rooster was crowing.

Lighting cigarettes for both of them, André looped an arm over his chair and began immediately. “Perhaps I gave to you the impression that I know much about Doña Vera. It is not true. I know a little and I guess a little.”

“But she has lived here a long time?”

“Yes, but she keeps to herself In the Hacienda de la Soledad. Well-named, is it not? Her family
is
well-known—you will see its name everywhere—but she herself, not much.”

“Her family? She belongs here?”

“No, no, no, the family she was married into. Her husband, a Creole, very wealthy, for many generations. They owned mines, houses, streets. When President Díaz visited, it was in their house he stayed. But they did not live here themselves. They lived in Mexico City, and Guanajuato, and Guadalajara. Doña Vera alone has chosen to live here, for many years now, you are right.”

“To start her center for Huichol studies?”

This time André did explode into laughter. “Who knows why? She is a person about whom many rumors go around. But yes, she did start the center. You came to see it?”

Eric refuted any such intention. “I had never heard of it, to tell you the truth. Nor about the Huichol. But I had learned of her connection to the mines here and my family had one as well.”

“Oh,
mein Gott!”
André slapped his forehead with mock horror and ash scattered from his cigarette. “You did not tell her
that?
She will not have loved you if you did.”

“It's true, she did not love me at all.”

“Of course! She hated her connection to that family—to Don Roderigo—and left him many years ago.”