The Jaguar's Children (21 page)

“‘I asked in three pueblos and she was known and much respected in all of them.'

“‘Nothing's happening,' said the professor.

“‘I asked her how long it takes, but she would only make a circle from west to east.'

“‘All night?' The professor wasn't happy about this.

“‘I think that was for the journey,' I said.

“After three more cigarettes the professor was impatient. ‘Six isn't enough. You people are so small and look at me.'

“‘No,' I said. ‘Please do as she says.'

“The professor got up, went outside, came back and sat down again. ‘I don't feel a damned thing,' he said. ‘I'm not even lightheaded.'

“And before I could stop him, he ate the other six. All at once he did this. Then, after another drink of water, he sat down cross-legged on the ground. He was reaching into his coat for his cigarettes when he stopped, doubled over and vomited between his shoes. When he came up again his eyes were big like a mono, and he looked about him as if he could see through the walls of the tent. He no longer recognized me or, I think, even himself. I went outside quickly and got a shovelful of dirt to cover his mess and then, through the copal smoke, I watched the professor seeing things I could not see. After some time, he began to lean so I helped him to lie down on his side and I put a folded blanket under his head. His eyes were still open, only staring now, and his mouth moved, but there were no words. The moon was setting when he closed his eyes, but I did not sleep.

“It was still dark when he opened his eyes again. ‘Water,' he said.

“I helped him to sit up and gave him some water from the gourd. ‘I saw it,' he said. ‘I saw it in the stone. I saw it being carved, and with every cut of the tool there was blood running.'”

Whenever he came from D.F., the professor brought new books for my abuelo to read—
Don Quixote
and
Great Expectations
, also
The True History of the
Conquest of New Spain
by Bernal Díaz. They were in Spanish and Abuelo kept them always on a shelf in his house under the altarcito Abuela made for Juquila. It was from these books that Abuelo taught me to read after we were deported and my father left us in the pueblo. He tried to teach my father when he was young, but Papá could never do it, could never make the letters stay together in his mind. I have seen him try and his eyes are devils playing tricks, every word a shell game. To be like this and to live with a man like Abuelo who was reading all the time, and then to have a son like me who learns so easy and is so little like him—maybe you can imagine how it is for a proud man. In el centro, or far away in el Norte, he could stand it because no one at home would see anything but the money, but in the pueblo, in front of his own people, it was too much for him. One time Abuelo said to me, “These days, the Mexican man is a baby.” I didn't understand what he meant until later.

 

In that summer before the American war with Japan, the professor wrote to Abuelo telling of his plans and asking him to come a week early to help organize the obreros and set up the camp. He said also that there was a new cook coming from Latuxí and he would bring her to the camp himself. The cooking was always done at a stone fireplace under a palapa made of sticks and petates, but in his letter the professor asked Abuelo to build a new cocina from adobe and bamboo with a pine needle roof. “Make it nice for her,” he said.

Abuelo built the cocina and when the professor arrived at the camp with the new cook, he understood why. Her name was Zeferina and she was pretty—Zapoteca, por supuesto. But she wasn't just another campesina. There was something about this girl, the way she looked and held herself—como una princesa. “She looked like a painting I saw in one of the professor's magazines,” Abuelo told me. “Those big eyes turned almost like a cat's, the mouth a bit crooked, but full in a way that only makes you want to open it. Understand? To taste the juice inside.” Abuelo was ninety-six years old telling me these things, but still he liked to smoke and drink a little and he offered these to me also. I'm telling you, with your mind buzzing from all that, it was something for a young man to hear.

Professor Payne was married with some little children up in el Norte, but Abuelo knew it only from a picture on the professor's worktable. The professor never spoke of them and he always came to Latuxí alone. Often he made drawings of the artifacts they found and he taught Abuelo to do this also, but in that last season the professor was making more drawings of Zeferina than of artifacts. They would do this in the afternoon during the siesta, and sometimes they didn't come out of his tent for a long time. “One evening,” said Abuelo, “when I was in the tent helping the professor to clean some things we found that day, I saw one of those drawings behind the worktable. The professor was a good artist and many times at night, and even in the day when I was working, I would think about that picture.”

Of course Zeferina did not spend the night with the professor, ever. Always she walked back to her parents in the pueblo before sunset, coming back early in the morning to start the fire and cook for the men. It was a long walk from Latuxí, and one morning Abuelo surprised Zeferina by making the fire himself and the coffee too. “I will do this every morning,” he said to her, “and then you can sleep longer.”

She refused this and said the professor was paying her to do the cooking, but Abuelo didn't listen and kept getting up early to make the fire and the coffee, and when he did this he thought about the things he was touching that she would touch later and at least it was something. One morning, after maybe ten days, Zeferina came late, but everything was ready so all she needed to do was pat out the cornmeal for the tortillas and fry the eggs. Even the beans were warming in the shoe pot, buried in the ground by the fire. “So, you accept my offer?” said Abuelo, and that was the first time she looked him in the eye—and smiled—both at the same time. Always after that she came a bit later.

“Ooni'ya, I was her prisoner then!” Abuelo told me. “I decided I must marry that girl. You know, m'hijo, I was married one time already, but there were problems and it was hard to have the child. We saw the curandera and finally she was with the child, but when it came time for the baby I lost them both. I was there in the house with the curandera and my tía helping when this happened and it was terrible—there was blood enough for three. After that, I had no heart to be with a woman again.

“Zeferina was the first one who reminded me what that feeling is, that wanting. But it caused problems for me—it was harder to look the professor in the eye. Something about him was changing also, no longer would he talk with me in the evenings as he had before. And it wasn't just me and the professor noticing Zeferina, it was every man in camp, even the professor's students. The obreros were not allowed near the cocina or the professor's tent, but even from the excavation you could see her walking, bending over, and I must tell you it was something how she moved. Even when she wasn't there that girl was vibrating in the air como una chicharra. It was the first time in five years of knowing the professor that I counted the days until he was gone. But how could I know then what was going to happen?

“I don't know if it was because of Zeferina or other troubles in his mind, but the professor spent more and more time in his tent and left me in charge of the digging. Of all the men, I had been there the longest and I was the only one who could read, or draw the artifacts as they truly looked. In November, after we all came back from celebrating el Día de los Muertos, the professor made me a kind of jefe and now it was me telling the other men where and how to dig, making sure they were doing it correctly and not stealing anything. I was proud the professor trusted me this way, and of course I was glad for the extra money. He paid me in gold that year—forty American dollars. I will never forget the beautiful weight of those coins.

 

“Never again,” said Abuelo, “did we find anything as fine as the Jaguar Man. But the professor could not forget that one—he even wrote about it for a magazine. He showed this to me, and seeing those photographs was like seeing an old friend. I studied them carefully and I also studied the words, but the name of him who found it was not there. It was in that last season that the professor told me he was going to write a book about the Jaguar Man because now, after years of studying, he believed he knew who had made it, and it wasn't a Zapotec. He believed it was Olmec. The Olmec came before us, from the Gulf coast of Veracruz, but no one in the Sierra remembers those people. They were great artists like us and it was them who made the clay statues with babies' faces and those giant stone heads in the jungle, but it wasn't until we found the Jaguar Man and the professor studied him that anyone understood that all of these things were made by the same people, or even who those people were. Back then the Olmec didn't even have a name. It was Professor Payne who made the connection, and he made it through the Jaguar Man.

“I asked the professor if I could keep the magazine and he said I could. He also told me it was the mushrooms that showed him, that allowed him to see beyond the faces and past the lines that made them, all the way to the tools and the hands that pushed them through the stone. ‘Once I saw this,' he said, ‘I understood it wasn't a question of design. It is the method that unites them.'

“It was then,” said Abuelo, “the professor told me some important news—to prove this idea for his book he needed to leave Latuxí and find a new site on the border with Veracruz. He asked me to go with him, and do you know the first thing I thought? That it will take me away from Zeferina. Everyone knew she was the professor's mistress so it was not a good situation for me, but for some reason I was hopeful. She was in me somehow, and I hoped I was in her. The professor said this new excavation was a special chance for me—maybe I could come to Nueva York and work in the museum there. It was a big door opening, and that strange feeling I told you about from holding the Jaguar Man? I remembered this and wondered if it was a premonition—maybe I would travel across the mountains and meet the Jaguar Man again. So I said to the professor, ‘Yes, I want to go with you.'

“But secretly in my mind I was thinking, ‘Only if Zeferina refuses me.'”

 

“This is how it was when the professor left in the beginning of December to return to his family and the museum. When we were packing up the camp, Zeferina would look only at the ground because seeing faces made her cry. I don't know what the professor told her, but I can only guess it was goodbye—forever—because of course her parents would not let her leave Latuxí alone. On her last day I was too busy packing artifacts in the professor's tent and I never saw her leave. My heart was sick that day and I wondered would I ever see her again. My pueblo was a day's walking from Latuxí and I didn't even know her family name. I'm telling you, Héctor, in those days it could be hard to meet the chicas. I told myself maybe, if I'm lucky, I will see her in Tlacolula at a fiesta.

“The next day, we were loading everything onto the burros and walking out to the road where the professor had hired a truck for the long drive to D.F. I was in charge of the burros and I was praying—sí, mi joven, it takes la conchita to make this viejo pray!—I was praying I would see Zeferina somewhere in the village. But I did not. When I said goodbye to Professor Payne there were shadows around his eyes and he looked like his mind had left already, but he shook my hand and said again that he wanted me to work with him next year, and he would write to me in the spring.”

 

“In the new year of 1942, America was fighting in the war with Japan. For a campesino like me there were not many changes to the life. We were far from everything and we had no radio, but there was a bus driver I knew in Tlacolula who brought newspapers from el centro. I was thinking about Zeferina all these months—so much that my mother thought I was sick and my brothers who were all married a long time were making rude jokes to me in the milpa. Also, there was no letter coming from the professor, and this made things harder. Finally, I could not stand it anymore. After the first corn harvest in June, I waited for the moon to grow to half so I could see my way through the mountains, and then I walked again to Latuxí. All night I did this so I would have the greatest chance of seeing Zeferina in the day. Maybe she was married already, but I had to see her. I had to know. Ooni'ya, there were two big surprises waiting for me there.

“I arrived after sunrise and the first person I see to speak to is the padre who is on his way to the village office. He knew the professor and he had visited the excavation, but he was surprised to see me at this time in the year. When he understood that it was me, he said, ‘M'hijo, I have sad news.'

“Well, the first thing I think of is that something has happened to Zeferina. It shows you how out of my mind I was because there is no way the padre could know my feelings about this. Then he looked in my eyes and said, ‘I am so sorry to tell you—el profesor está muerto. May God rest his soul.'

“I could not breathe for a moment. I had been thinking only of Zeferina and I was so shocked I didn't know what to do or say. The padre put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Forgive me for surprising you like this,' he said. ‘It is a terrible loss. We learned only last week in a letter from the museum to the mayordomo. They wrote to say the funding for Latuxí is finished.'

“‘How did it happen?'

“‘They say only that it was a tragic accident. There are no details.'

“I was staring around like a blind man. I didn't know what to do with myself. ‘Padre,' I said, ‘is the church open?'

“‘Of course,' he said. ‘Always.'

“So, I go into the church. It is dark and cool in there and I sit down on my heels against the back wall. I did not know until then how much hope for my life I had attached to Professor Payne, how in a moment it could be finished—just like that. So many doors closing at once. For some time I sit there feeling sick in my soul before I understand I am not the only person in that church. Up in the front, kneeling at the rail, is another, a woman. I was in a bad condition, but I would know that calabazo anywhere and I cannot believe it. I am so tired from walking all night and so sideways from the padre's news that I wonder if I am seeing things. To be sure, I go up to the altar very quietly—I have no shoes—but she doesn't move and she doesn't disappear. I kneel down at the rail some distance from her and I see two things then—one, that she is crying into her hands, and two, that she is with the child.