Hunger's Brides (169 page)

After all you have offered me, let me show your children this … all black agleam their widening eyes watch me flap and flail out robes and angel wings, then they see they understand and we are all a choir a host—an angelus tolling out our backstroked script in angel dust.

Now all around us as we sit up / barks then panicked bleat of hounded goats—neck-deep slow-motion chase—slow lunge to ford the flood of white, their prow-throats ploughing out a mole-berm maze, their wake dawnflanked in a crumble of pink.

Another moment of grace, stay of peace.

Vats bubble over low fires gouting char and steam as the tentcity denizens pause to watch their angels fall.

What magic is this?—northwitch craft—

  this tropical snow

    this sunrise without sun

      these falls of weightlessness …

Sunshred lasts of cloud … rainbow veils slowrent from the pass up towards the still-shroud tops. Slowfade of roseate mist burled and dissipate, up to a white-shouldered day…. Glow to gleam to slow flare of light—blinding brilliant the world in snow renewed!—a beyond all etched in clarity.

I stand blinking stunned in this air … then feel the river of cedar friendbreath / his tobacco baritone warm my ear.

Good morning,
hijita
. You see La Malinche now over Puebla City of Angels as though we were standing on her slopes? Sixty kilometres, easily! And that cone farther to the east? You see the detail, the folds, ravines, the soot like the velvet on a boy's lip, yes? You are thinking it does not seem so far. This is
el pico de Orizaba
almost at the Gulf of México though we are standing in the centre of our nation. You understand, but maybe even better through numbers this is at least
180 kilometres away …
yet as if just beyond the stretch here of my hand. The span of an old man's arm, a hundred and twenty of your miles.

Look long, look carefully. Though you are young we may never—neither of us—have eyes like this again.

Feel the sun hot off the snow, melting everywhere now at a furious pace, can't tear my eyes away, gorged on scans of distance, spans of light…
.

Up here we have seen this before, this transparency of the air returned to us. I myself once or twice, but the old ones maybe half a dozen times. I wonder if it is not more beautiful than even when Cortés looked on it. Now that we are so close to losing it altogether.

Maybe this beauty of the world—so much, all the time, would be too much for us, what do you think?

Maybe we would all go blind with it.
Maybe we already have, cedar man. Tell all the truth but tell it slant…
.

Yes daughter—
todos acegados
, you may be right about the blindness. Come, there is a spot not far from here where we can see the capital, as Cortés first did.

Mexico City 30 k. away through this air's transparency as sharp and clear as a quarry's steamshovelled floor. Street grids under snow like a gallet strand—like the rubble it will be again—raked sandbox of summer dun under a freak of winter, out of season, out of time and tune.

Soft featherfall now, of ash across the newfallen snow.

Here are my eyes of wonder restored to me! Here is the beauty of a world that is lost. The eye restored to beauty is not just awake to loss but
accepts …
finds loss itself heartbreaking in its beauty. Welcome it, this heartbreak!—and choose, let's all choose to make the last loss beautiful, together. A little dispensation, oh yes call it
a
finesse
.

See it—see it with the Eye Restored!
Love loss
, love its beauty—its contingency.

Without the slightest hope of a return.

Look, child, there at last is WhiteLady, after so many days! Me I have always thought her more beautiful than Popo lying there asleep—see her hip, her breast, her knees? We know all great mountains as gods but everyone comes here for El Popo. She is not quite as high but the WhiteLady is also more than 5,000 metres. High enough for anyone, or should be. But you know?—I never climbed her either, not even as a boy. So many little peaks up there you can't be sure when you are on top … I should not be saying all this, next you will be climbing her.

No? but you surprise me now—why not?

Because I can see her from here
. With you
, Raúl.

I am glad, little daughter, because those heights are not for us. We cannot breathe up there. You are right we can see enough of their beauty from here—as much as we can bear, and maybe a little more. Down here there is life for us, yes, and too much work—but friends and loved ones,
¿sí o no?

Dear sweet friend with the laughing eyes dancing hands. I never had a friend like you, how do I repay all this tenderness? I'll always remember, you. To my last breath's faltering draw.

I'm ready to go down.

This makes me happy to hear—

Take me down, Raúl … you are a very handsome man very very irresistible.

Yes I know and you, child, are very delirious. I will take you
a dondequiera
—but maybe first you will let me take you to a doctor for that infection in your hand. You can leave for the capital first thing in the morning if you like. I will talk to the caretakers at Sor Juana's hacienda and you can stay with them. No—I would ask you to stay with me where I rent a room but with my wife at our home in Chimalhuacán it would not be proper, you understand.

It hurts you that I say this. No it is not because of what you just said. Please we are friends you must not be ashamed you have a fever. Do not be hurt it is only that you are too beautiful for the neighbours not to wonder. No—
Dios!
I see now I have hurt you more with a stupidity—in Mexico beautiful is not a dirty word I do not mean it as an insult now you must try to understand me. Please do not look at me with those big green eyes. To us beauty is a gift. Part of it is very temporary and many people have this. The other part, a few—you, will have always.

Understand that this is for my wife's honour not mine. It is not your fault there were indiscretions in the past. A very long time ago. She is well respected here. With many friends. There is a sadness in her life I can do nothing for … except not increase it. And it would hurt our friends and hers to have to wonder about me again. Even for a minute.

Tell me you understand. The caretakers at the hacienda of Sor Juana are good people. They have a daughter who is your age. Quiet people, please stay the night with them. You can leave once you have seen the doctor who is also a good man.

Please I did not mean to hurt you.

I've been climbing the wrong mountain all the time. Am always. Why can't I get it right? Cortesian error mine the same mistake as the stout stoat Cortés—sunblind on gold and transcendence—blind to the enchantment of the fallen world, to the Conquest as clash of geometries—cavalries of the ascending line that crush the helix's infantry.

But the sublime and the transcendent
were never the same
. This is our old mistake. Sublime—sub/liminus—
under
the threshold. Threshhold we can imagine but never live beyond. Not up there in that breathlessness.
Down here
, find the sacred down here—in the high passes yes, but
under
the threshold of impasse.

So take communion—with the earth as host! Tongue with firecleft tongues the wafer'd / earth. Trace the faultless fall of chariots, to ground zero, down.

Make
this
the ceremony of immanence! Eat god—
not the other way round—
our vice is in the versa—in eating the godseed we make the cycle sacred, lend the daysun flight / through our return to earth each night. Here are my eyes of wonder. It was here all along—this wide world under the
night
sun now, so bright so various so new.

This was the greatest magic of Isis—the life that was in her mouth, the magic that returns god to the cycle of the Nile.

So make ready the night sun's ceremony. Prepare the sublime rites of the fall.

On this sorrow's morrow of a busride back to the capital, in this optic of antibiotic calm, Raúl there is something I didn't say to you I'm sorry. Yes cedar man with the laughing eyes dancing hands you hurt my heart—
nada grave nada nuevo
without ever wanting to. But you also saved my life … just long enough to show my eyes such
miracles
.

And now it's too late to tell you….

You never asked my name, Raúl.

My name is Beulah.