The Jaguar's Children (20 page)

When finally we arrive at the altar, Mamá makes the sign of the cross with the seventeen touches, finishing with a kiss on her thumb. Then she does something she has not done since I was small. She turns me toward Soledad who is floating there above the altar in her big glass box. Somehow the rays are in there too, falling on her perfect white hands so they seem to glow and almost move even though it is dark all around her. Hanging in the shadows above her is Jesus bleeding and over Him is God Himself in a red cape flying. Like Superman, I used to think, only older and with a beard.

I can hear Mamá behind me whispering the blessing—“mi cariñito, mi angelito, mi vida, niño doradito”—such tender things, over and over, trying not to cry, but it is no use because Soledad is her virgin and the Virgin is alone because she has lost her only son and soon my mother will lose hers and how can she not feel the Virgin's same sadness, especially with Easter so close? And how can I not cry also in the face of all this? It is too much so now it is both of us there with the tears coming down and in my mother's hand are roses and herbs like we use in the pueblo for the temazcal ceremony, for making the body and spirit clean—yerba santa, chamizo, albahaca, ajenjo—too many to name, and with these she is stroking my body, caressing me like she did when I was born—the top of my head and then my cheeks, across my shoulders, down my spine, and her crying and praying all at the same time so that I am glad she is behind me because I cannot bear to see her face, but when I look at Soledad it is as if this sadness is everywhere around us, and I remember how I felt as a boy in Señora Ellen's arms in el Norte—those bony white hands, and how much she is not like my mother and never can be and how empty and hopeless such a feeling is—even as that sad church air comes suddenly alive with the smell of flowers and herbs all the way from the pueblo—the very breath of that place filling my nose and lungs—as Mamá brushes the leaves and petals down my bare arms and hands, across my backside and then the front and down my legs, making circles there around my feet to protect me from some harm in the future that she fears but cannot know.

Fri Apr 6—23:02

 

I can hear someone gagging and I know it's from drinking urine. I have heard this sound many times today. And someone else saying, “Porfiz, porfiz,” like a child begging. But they are strangers to me now. If I knew them I would go mad. Many times I watched my mother pray and it was like she was leaving her body. I thought she was giving herself away, and I couldn't understand why she would want to. But now I think I do—it is only in the effort of telling, of calling up the story, that I can escape, and it is such a shock to come back. I am so tired. So cold.

I am rubbing César's hands to warm them but also mine. Then, carefully, quietly, I put my finger into César's water bottle and drip some in between his lips. Still he lives and there must be a reason for it. When I take a sip and hold it in my mouth, I swear I can feel my cells swelling with it, and there is in this a kind of grace.

 

When I speak of my abuelo it is almost like he is here with me. And if he lives—even if it is only in these words—I can also.

Professor Payne always took a special interest in my abuelo, and not only because he found the Jaguar Man. He could see that Abuelo was strong and intelligent so he taught him to read in Spanish. It was hard for him, but Abuelo saw the professor and his life and listened when he told him that books were a door into other worlds that you can visit from anywhere—D.F. or New York or even Latuxí. He told Abuelo that it was because of books he came to Mexico, and so because of books they met and the Jaguar Man was found. For Abuelo this was a powerful idea and he told the professor he would like to read also, to see what was on the other side of all those doors.

The first book the professor gave to Abuelo once he could make the words himself was
Los de abajo
—
The Underdogs—
by Mariano Azuela. In a year or two he was reading whatever he could find. The first time Abuelo told me
The Underdogs
was a good book, I asked him why and he said, “Because it is short—much shorter than the Bible—and more true.” Abuelo knew many men who fought in la Revolución. He was too young for it by just a few years and that was hard for him. When he was younger he believed if he had been there he could have helped his father and maybe then he would have lived. But that book let him see for himself that if he was there or not, it was ending all the same. What could anyone do against those German guns, cutting men down like cane in the field?

 

For many nights after he found the jade Jaguar Man, Abuelo saw the shadow of the professor in his tent, bent over in the lamplight like he was studying something. Abuelo had an idea what it was and one night he crept up to the tent where there was a hole for looking through. The professor was there in his folding canvas chair and in his hand was the Jaguar Man. But the professor wasn't studying it. No, his eyes were closed and tears were streaming down his face. Abuelo said when he saw that, he turned away quickly and was ashamed as if he had surprised his parents in their nakedness. He went back to the tree where he'd been sitting, pulled his serape around him and wondered to himself what was in that piece of jade to make such an important man from so far away so sad. The Jaguar Man was a very old and powerful thing—so old and powerful that the professor took it with him back to New York.

In the end, Abuelo got to hold the Jaguar Man for only a few moments because the professor cleaned it himself and kept it in a special place. But he could never get it out of his mind. It was the first time he ever came close to that kind of power in a man-made thing. When my abuelo found it, he could barely write his name, but pulling the Jaguar Man from the earth like that—with his own hands, and being the first man to touch it in who knows how many lifetimes—there was something wonderful to him in this, in holding a thing so ancient and fine that carried so much inside it. He said that for a moment he was raised up out of himself like in the stories and was able to see across the mountains. I don't think he knew what he was seeing exactly, but he hoped I would and this is why he told me of it. Last November, when Abuelo was near to dying, he said to me, “M'hijo, if you ever go back to el Norte, go to the museum in Nueva York. Find that thing. Hold it if you can.”

 

The professor was a gringo and a scholar, but most of the people he talked about were Mexicanos and artists, people like Rufino Tamayo, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. He told Abuelo that Rivera was one of the bravest men he knew because he was not afraid to shout when other men would only whisper. With his great murals he looked Henry Ford and Nelson Rockefeller in the eyes and told them the truth about themselves. And they paid him to do it. Abuelo never saw those murals and he didn't agree. He said Diego Rivera was too rich to be a man of the people and too fat to be a real Communist. He called him un rábano—a radish—red on the outside but white on the inside. Abuelo told me that the professor and Rivera would smoke together sometimes, and not only cigars. It is something, no? The great Diego Rivera got that güero high.

This is a world Abuelo never saw himself because no campesino did, but it was interesting for him and in the evenings he would sometimes bring the professor some yerba rolled in a corn husk, or mezcal in a gourd. The professor would talk then, and he told my abuelo many stories from his life. I think he must have been lonely out there so far from home, and why not? What kind of man would do such a thing—leave his home and family to dig in the hard dirt of a foreign land?

It is a trick question. The answer is Mexicanos. All the time. By the millions, but not back then.

 

At the start of their third season in Latuxí, the professor was still talking about the Jaguar Man. “It was an obsession for him,” said Abuelo. “There was something about it that troubled him, and one night the professor said to me, ‘I've asked everyone at all the museums, and no one has seen anything like it—not from here or anywhere else in Mexico. Tamayo wants to buy it from me.'

“That time,” said Abuelo, “we were leaning against a big avocado tree on the edge of the clearing, smoking and watching the stars. ‘It's so small,' I said to him. ‘It could have been carried from far away, from anywhere.'

“‘You think it was a gift?' said the professor. ‘I had a dream about it, you know.'

“I rolled some more yerba on an old metate and passed it to the professor who lit it with his silver lighter. ‘I didn't see it exactly,' said the professor. ‘I felt it—the texture, as if my fingers were dreaming.'

“‘Sometimes ten eyes are better than two,' I said.

“The professor laughed at this. ‘You think I was carving it in my dream?'

“‘No one knows it as well as him who made it.'

“‘I am sure there are other memories at work besides the memory of man,' he said. ‘I am sure there is memory in the earth, the stones, the clay. This is what I am trying to recover. And those trees with their roots deep inside the temple—what do they know? What are they seeing? If a jaguar could talk, what would it say?'

“‘There are plants,' I said to him, ‘mushrooms and herbs that can help you to see these things, to understand this language. They can even speak to you themselves. I have been told the mushroom can find lost things and answer questions that have no answers otherwise.'

“Of course the professor wanted to know more, because he wanted to know everything. He was a man greedy for knowledge. ‘What are they called?' he asked.

“‘
Teonanacatl
,' I said. ‘Flesh of the gods.'”

Abuelo laughed. “You should have seen that gringo going for his notebook.

“‘There are many names for them,' I told the professor. ‘In the rainy season they grow all over the place, especially in cowshit.'

“‘How can I get some?' he asked.

“‘I do not eat them myself,' I said. ‘It's not in our tradition. But I know you can't use them just anytime, like yerba or aguardiente. They are a sacrament, for seeing and healing and cleansing. There is a ceremony for it.'

“‘Who leads the ceremony?'

“‘A curandera,' I said. ‘One who is called to it. But you will not find such a one in Latuxí or in my pueblo. For this you must go into la Mazateca—three days walking to the northeast.'

“‘I don't have time for that,' he said. ‘Can you bring me some?'

“‘Professor,' I said, ‘it's not safe to take them alone, not without a guide.'

“‘Sit with me then, will you, Hilario? You can keep me safe.'

“‘Maybe from what's outside, but not from what's inside. It is another country there and I can't follow. Besides, it's too dry for mushrooms now.'

“But the professor was a stubborn man and early in the next September, after the rainy season, he sent me across the mountains into la Mazateca where they spoke no Zapotec and little Spanish. It took me a week, but I found a curandera who knew the right ones and she tried to give me some instructions in her language. On the night I returned, after all the obreros had gone to sleep, I set up a small three-legged quemador on the dirt floor of the professor's tent and I lit some copal. The professor sat down with me in front of the quemador and he opened the curandera's medicine bundle. It was made of bark paper tied with a vine and inside, wrapped in herbs and grass, were twelve fresh mushrooms with long thin stems and brown caps. This much I understood from the curandera and I told it to the professor—‘Before you eat these, you must know why you are doing it. It is dangerous to go to that place without a guide, but even more dangerous to go without a reason.'

“‘I am going,' he said, ‘to see who made the Jaguar Man.'

“I was afraid for him, and I took his hand then. ‘Bueno,' I said. ‘But you must promise to come back.'

“The professor laughed at me and I did not like that, but he promised to come back. ‘You eat six at one time,' I said. ‘The curandera was very clear about this, but maybe since you are new to it you should have only three.'

“The professor smiled at me like I was some worrying old woman. ‘They are small,' he said, ‘and look at me.'

“The curandera had tried to tell me the right words to say, but I could not understand any of it except two words of Spanish, ‘holy children,' so I said this and some words of my own in a prayer—

 

These Holy Children are yours,

given us by the Launching Woman who sends

   her people on the journey,

by the Sky Woman who flies in every form,

   by the Water Woman who swims in light and darkness both,

by the Reading Woman who knows all pages of the great book,

and by the Landmark Woman who guides us home again.

To you and to them we say, We are humble men

   who live by the law as we are able.

Please receive this prayer and find us worthy

   of your sight and protection.

 

“Then I sprinkled some yerba and tobacco on the burning copal until it flared and crackled, and I poured some mezcal so it sizzled and spat. ‘There,' I said, ‘I hope it is enough.'

“The professor ate the mushrooms then—first one, then two, and the last three together. He was a strong man who did not shrink from chiles or mezcal and the only way to tell how badly these mushrooms tasted behind his mustache was by the motion of his nose. He drank some water from a gourd and lit a cigarette, and we waited. After some time, he leaned back against the leg of his worktable and closed his eyes. ‘You are sure about these?' he said. ‘The curandera was trustworthy?'