Clash of Star-Kings (2 page)

On this occasion she had in mind particularly to gather a great basketful of the tender leaves of the
cedron
tree, which, decocted into a tea, are excellent not only for the kidneys of older men but also for various feminine periodic infirmities which are not the affair of men of any age. She also wanted to find, if possible, some poppies and yellow daisies and violets, all of which make good preparations to wash the bodies of those afflicted with weaknesses and fears. These were her specific needs for the moment. Naturally she kept her keen eyes open for anything else which Providence might place in her path, such as roots and buds and barks useful in cases of irritations of the body, or mushrooms … half of which might be exchanged for butter enough to fry the other half.

Although she felt the trip to be necessary — otherwise she would not now be engaged upon it when she had much rather be back preparing decorations for the procession — and although she had made it hundreds of times before, Señora Josefa felt a measure of nonspecific uneasiness. For one thing, there were soldiers in town, and although the manners of soldiery had improved since the troubled days of the Revolution, still, well, soldiers…. Then there was talk about the Tlaloc; Señora Josefa was not worried about the Tlaloc, not in the least, she was a good Christian and her opinion about the Tlaloc was that he should be left totally undisturbed where and as he was. As for the mysterious lights said to have been seen on and around Popo, she did not doubt but that they were made by sulfur poachers, that was all, there was nothing more to it, and she wished they would go away. As for other things, there were no other things which could justify her feelings. Nothing major. But many things minor. And yet —

What difference did it make if some woman whose figure she had seen for years without noticing, or noticed for years without seeing, should suddenly lift her head and look Señora Josefa in the face boldly and almost threateningly? — she realizing, with a sort of shock, that she had never seen the woman’s face even once turned to her before. It meant nothing. Still … still, there was a certain change of atmosphere, subtle and intermittent, and it had bothered her. Well. Of nothing. To the work, without dawdling or dallying, then back in time to make the Stations of the Cross on Monte Sagrado and visit the Holy Hermit before he was carried through the town on his annual peregrination. She fell to, her strong fingers nimbly stripping the twigs of the desired leaves.

If one had asked her the meaning of the offerings hung upon the
chuehuete
trees between the Stations, she would have answered, mildly and gravely amused: “Things of the Indians, Señor — of nothing.” And if one had asked her what or whom she meant by Indians, her answer would have been, “Poor people, Señor, who cannot afford proper clothing.” And, consequently, when she saw what she saw, and her fingers grew frozen and still, she was neither perplexed nor confused: merely horrified.

• • •

Señora Mariana de Matteos was as short and round as her sister Josefa was tall and slender, but her thicker fingers moved, nonetheless, deftly now as they had been moving all day long … not alone in the usual tasks of the house, but in preparing for the feria or fiesta. Let no one be able to say that the Quinta de Matteos did not prepare itself properly for the passage of the procession of the Holy Hermit! Nimbly and skillfully those fingers had prepared chains and garlands of cunningly twisted colored “china” paper, had prepared and set up archways and banners and legends, had stripped the garden of both the front patio where she and her sister lived and the back patio where the Señores Clay lived, of almost all flowers and greenery. The petals had been plucked and dropped into baskets according to color and Señora Josefa had just finished sifting the last of them into a series of flower-petal pictures and patterns in the road in front of her house. She always did so. But none of them, she considered, as she regretfully turned her eyes away — equally ready to scowl if any passerby showed signs of walking in the road or to beam at any praise — none of them had ever done better than this. It was when she saw that the feet heedlessly trampling the floral designs belonged to her sister Josefa, that she realized something must be dreadfully wrong. She seized her arm and hurried her into the patio.

“Sister, what passes?”

“Oh, woe of me! Sister, what have I seen!”

“My God, Sister, what
passes?
What
have
you seen?”

Josefa dropped her basket, and fled into the tiny room which housed the family altar, pausing only to utter the single and scarifying word, “
Naguales!
” before falling on her knees before the huge framed picture of the two Virgins and the flickering votive lamps, and, crossing herself with her beads, began to pray aloud with sobs and tears and shuddering breaths. Mariana lifted her trembling hand to her gaping mouth, swayed, then, with heavy steps, followed her sister and knelt beside her. It was a while before she had recovered enough to think of anything beside prayers.

Finally the two of them went in the kitchen and, at the table, Josefa sipped a drop of ancient Spanish brandy bought during Señor Gomez’s last illness, and then sipped a cup of very potent black coffee. Mariana asked the inevitable question: “How do you know that they were
Naguales
?”

Josefa threw up her hands and rolled her eyes. “How do I know? First, I heard them. I said, ‘Coyotes here and in the daytime?’ Then I saw them, loping along, and I felt my heart grow weak, for whoever saw six coyotes one behind the other in a straight line? And then —
Cristo Milagroso!
— they rose to their feet and went upright and beneath the skins of the coyotes they had the arms and legs of men!”

Mariana crossed herself.
“Jesus-Maria!
Jesus-Maria!”

“So I knew that they were neither coyotes nor men, but Naguales. Sister — woe of me! Sorcerers and were-coyotes!
Brujas
and
brujos
, witches and warlocks! God alone knows what troubles and evils will come upon us now that they dare to show themselves again in the open!”

The sisters each took hold of one of the other’s hands and, as with their free hands they crossed themselves repeatedly, they chanted:

They gazed at one another in silence a moment. Already they were beginning to feel somewhat better, and a righteous and determined anger was beginning to replace the fear in their faces. “So,” said Señora Mariana, grimly, “they are up to their old tricks once more, are they? Worshippers of evil demons! And to pick this day! Oh, the malevolent ones! Oh, how the Naguales hate the Holy Hermit and his blessed catafalque! Oh, how they hate the priests! Aren’t the witches always trying to destroy the good Hermit? — and who knows that they might not have harmed him more than once if he did not trick them by slipping away in the night and vanishing off to Rome to serve mass there before daybreak! Well!” She rose to her feet and seized her scissors. “I’m not going to rest a minute, I’m cutting rue and rosemary, both so good against witches — and
cordones de San Francisco
: may it bind them hand and foot! And even the little rosebuds, like drops of blood from the Sacred Heart — we will dip them all in holy water and place them all around….”She paused a second at the doorway and looked back at her sister. “For Heaven’s sake, Josefa,” she cried, “don’t just sit there doing nothing:
Pray!
”

• • •

It was quite different keeping house in the United States, Sarah thought, for the manyeth time. There it was all so simple. There was hot and cold running water, O-cello sponge mops, detergents, Comet Cleanser, Campbell’s Soup … all the conveniences of modern science.
Here
there was nothing but a barrel of water so cold that it burned like fire and a sort of concrete sink without a pipe (there
was
a pipe, elsewhere in the patio, but it lacked a sink) and a fiber pad. You had to dip the dirty dish all greasy cold into the ice-cold water and scrub it with the pad and your fingers froze and then you put the dish, which looked no cleaner at all, in the sink and dipped some more melted snow out of the barrel and poured it out and it ran and splashed all over your legs — “
Ow!
” screamed Sarah. “OW — OW!” The dish slipped and shattered.

Sarah swore. If it weren’t for the few bits of flowers and herbiage still left in the patio she would have wept….

No use telling Jacob. Not him. That stinker. That bastard. Would he offer to light a fire and try to make hot water, let alone once
help
her? No. He wouldn’t. Not him. She knew his rotten, selfish moods … just let her put her head in the door of his workroom and
tell
him about mean, selfish, ungrateful Lupita and he would, without doubt,
yell
at her! As though it were
her
fault they had only five pesos left and he had to meet a deadline with the damned story he was working on.
He
wouldn’t care that tootsie little Evans had run away or been catnapped or something! And here she had thought Mexico was going to be such a
fun
thing, all loyal smiling hardworking native servant girls and lovely tropical beaches like Puerto Vallarte in that picture with Liz Taylor. Tropical! Here she stood, risking frostbite and only a few sprigs of herbs and a few stalks of little purple flowers and one bush with tiny-tiny rosebuds on it —

At which, in stomped Señora Mariana and, without so much as
looking
at Sarah, began to cut all the rest of the green stuff and the flowers! The grease congealed, Sarah’s fingers got stiffer and redder and colder. “All right for
you
, Richard Burton!” She wept….

Luis Lorenzo Santangel knew well the networks of little paths which led through the woods and rocks above even the highest pastures, led eventually to the small
milpas
where grew the life-sustaining corn of the Moxtomi Indians, who raised no cattle, not even so much as a goat. Milk, they held — and it seemed logical — was for infants; and if it came ever to pass that the small brown
tetas
of a Moxtomi mother had no milk for her infant, why, there was always the milky pulque, good for young and old alike. And, if despite this benevolent liquor made from the fermented nectar of the maguey cactus the infant died, why, how sad — only not very sad — it was
destinado
that the tiny soul become a tiny angel in Heaven.

The townspeople were, as a matter of course, scornful towards the Moxtomi, calling them
cerrados
— closed ones — because their minds were closed to all things modern and innovating. They laughed at the Moxtomi, so meek and so mild, at their bare feet and naked legs and blue-black serapes, their ignorance of proper Castilian speech and at their poverty and pagan ways. Townspeople had, over the course of centuries, alienated the greater part of the Moxtomí
ejido
, the communal tribal lands: no wonder the Moxtomí were so poor! Had the church done anything to prevent this? No. Small wonder, then, that these poor, good Indios were more than half pagan.

Most of all, perhaps, the townspeople scorned the Moxtomí because of their dark Indian skins, unlightened by a single drop of Spanish blood.

This was not the least of the reasons why Luis felt himself to be so close to these Indians and considered them his friends. Why — it was not a week ago that Don Eliseo, the unlicensed veterinarian, come to inject the cows of Luis’s father, had asked, “Is this your oldest son?” And Francisco Santangel had answered, grudgingly, hastily, “Yes…. But you can tell that he doesn’t take after
my
side of the family because he is so dark.” He always spoke like that of his son … his own son. And it was true that Luis was the darkest child of the family. He was the best behaved child at home, and the least favored. He was the brightest student at school, and the most neglected. Fathers and mothers did not favor him as a suitor for their daughters unless the daughters in question were themselves too dark or too poor or too old or ugly or of too ruinous a reputation to hope for a suitor of lighter complexion. Luis, nevertheless, had finished school and, moreover, had even taught himself English — and what might he hope for in the way of a career?

He might hope for the crumbs of the table, the jobs left over after the fairer applicants had been placed — regardless of their other qualifications in comparison to Luis. This was the ineradicable stain in the Mexican garment, the fatal inheritance of the Conquistadores and their Conquest, and he hated it. He even hated “La Conquistadora,” the Virgin de los Remedios, because she had come over with Cortez’s men and remained the patroness of the Spaniards. Other “true” Mexicans, dark as or darker than Luis, even though they might be less acutely sensitive, would tend to favor the Virgin of Guadalupe, who had no European origins, who had appeared shortly after the Conquest to the humble Indian convert Juan Diego: others might. Not Luis. He didn’t speak of it, but in his heart, deeply, he hated the Roman Catholic Church as much as he hated the Spaniards and his family.

For a while more he would still try to swim upstream and ignore the snubs. There was a faint possibility that he might be able, nonetheless, to make his way successfully in the modern world. And yet — still if he failed — what then? Would he be content to live as a failure in the world which had refused him success? No. No, never. Rather than that, he would defy them all and shame them forever. He would do what no one of Christian education and secular, modern training, of even partly Spanish blood, had ever done: leave this corrupt civilization behind forever. Burn his modern clothes. And put on the homespun and the blue-black serape of the Moxtomi, ask for a dark-skinned daughter of the pueblo and an allotment of the shrunken
ejido
land. Already he knew much of the Moxtomi language; he would perfect his knowledge; they would initiate him into the sacred secrets which the townsmen did not know and, indeed, scarcely knew existed. And he would dance the holy dances and perform the sacred ceremonies and sing the chants to the Great Old Ones….