Some of My Lives

by Rosamond Bernier

  My first real pet came into my life in Acapulco in 1938. My young husband and I (we were respectively twenty-one and twenty-three) were staying in a small hotel in the town while our house was being built. This was long before the painful tourist boom that defaced a once-tranquil little port.

  There was a knock on the door. An Indian boy, holding something, said to me, “Buy this, señora, and I will kill it and give you its skin.” It was a baby ocelot. I was horrified and without another thought said, “Don’t kill it. I’ll buy it.”

  So I found myself in a small hotel room with a little snarling, hissing creature. My husband was out at the time.

  By the next day, the ocelot was following me around and arching its neck to be petted. Not a snarl. It turned out that I was an animal tamer.

  When the house was finally built, there were also quarters for the various local animals I accumulated. (There was a large garden.) It got around that there was an American señora who would buy animals, so as time went by, I ruled over a large menagerie.

  The ocelot was a favorite, and I dignified it by calling it Tigre (Tiger). I used to brush it with Yardley’s brilliantine. It had its box—it was meticulous—in the spare bathroom next to my bedroom. When the door was opened in the morning, it would come bounding out across the room and leap onto my bed to reach me, licking and purring. The purr was louder than a cat’s. I found it very soothing when I had a migraine to use the ocelot as a pillow under my head.

  Although I tried to compensate for what might be lacking in its diet (raw meat) with limewater, the ocelot developed what I took to be a form of rickets. Its back paws were painful when it jumped onto my lap.

  There was no vet in Acapulco, so I took the ocelot to the one doctor in town who treated babies and presented my patient. The doctor was indignant. But I said to him, “Just treat him like a baby, weigh him, and give him the appropriate medication.” So he did. A first: an ocelot on the baby scales.

  I always took the favorite animal to Mexico City with me, where I had an apartment, although it was forbidden by the fledgling airline. I ignored this and rigged up a basket with a loose burlap covering the top for the ocelot. All went well until a sudden dip of the plane sent the ocelot springing through the burlap and out of its basket, to the terror of the other passengers. But in Mexico a discreet exchange of pesos arranges everything. I went right on transporting my favorites by air.

  At one point I had left Tigre in the Mexico City apartment under the care of my Indian maid while I made a trip to New York. At that time, 1940, the Museum of Modern Art was organizing a vast Mexican exhibition: Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art.

  I had become very friendly with the brilliant and combustible Mexican painter José Clemente Orozco. While Diego Rivera was a master of self-publicity and the center of spectacular news of one kind or another, José Clemente, although equally talented, was often overlooked. In fact, he was somewhat forgotten in his own country. He had a wife and several children and was very hard up. Seeing this, I hired a space, had my maid sweep it out, and put on the first Orozco exhibition in Mexico since 1916. We did quite well.

  So I was anxious that José Clemente get equal booking with the flamboyant Diego in New York. I went to see Nelson Rockefeller, who was president of the Museum of Modern Art at that time. I knew him slightly. He listened good-naturedly while I held forth on the importance of giving Orozco his proper position in the upcoming exhibition. He made me the following offer: if I could persuade Orozco to come to the museum and paint a panel in front of spectators, he would pay the expenses. José Clemente had no telephone, so I cabled him to come to my Mexico City apartment at a certain date and hour to receive an important call from me.

  Long-distance calls were a big deal in those days, so I went to Nelson’s office to telephone. I hadn’t realized that Nelson understood Spanish, but when I shouted down the telephone (Orozco was very deaf) that there was a very rich man—“un hombre muy rico”—who would pay for him to come to New York, I saw Nelson chuckling behind his desk.

  But Orozco immediately made objections: “Me parece un circo”—“It sounds like a circus to me.” “Además tu tigre me está molestando”—“What’s more, your tiger is bothering me.” My ocelot was apparently nipping at his ankles.

  In spite of this, Orozco did come up to New York and did paint the panels in the Museum of Modern Art called Dive Bomber and Tank, while some members of the public were allowed to watch, at a distance. It is still there.

  This was so long ago that when Nelson and his wife gave a party for the visiting Mexican artists, it was black-tie. We rented a suitable outfit for José Clemente, but then the problem arose of his black tie. I have failed to explain that Orozco had only one hand, having blown off the other in some chemical experiment. It is difficult to tie a bow on someone else frontally, so I stood on a chair behind José Clemente and reached around and tied the tie.

  Back to my menagerie. The most intelligent and crafty animals I ever knew were the coatimundis. They are furry creatures, perhaps related to the raccoon, with a pointed snout and a bushy tail like a Christmas tree. They scamper on all fours and can climb trees or, if visiting me in Mexico City, curtains.

  What distinguishes them from other animals, aside from their superior wits, is their love of perfume. Most animals have very limited tastes as to what smells agreeable, but the coatis went in trances when confronted by a vase of tuberoses or would delightedly sniff at my wrists if there was a trace of eau de cologne.

  They would keep an eye out for the bottle of Tabac Blond that was on my dressing table. I would observe them, glancing at me to see if I noticed, approaching warily, then pouncing on the bottle to try to push it over.

  They are shrewd. In Acapulco, there was a swinging screen door between the kitchen and the open-air dining room. They figured out how to push the door open and rush in before it closed.

  They would watch the kitchen to see if the cook might be out. If she was, they made a dash for it and made a meal of whatever was within reach, a bowl of raw eggs, for instance, munching them down, shells and all.

  In Mexico the coatimundi is called a tejón. As we might say of someone crafty that he or she is “foxy,” in Mexico they say such a person is muy tejón.

  Over the years I had a number of coatimundis. As was my habit, I would take the favorite up to Mexico City with me. The coatis live in tropical forests, and Mexico City is at a high altitude. The favored coati felt the cold and found the most comfortable spot was in my bed, next to me.

  At one point I had some minor ailment, and a Mexican doctor was called into service. He said, “Señora, I must examine you,” and pulled up the covers. He was astonished to find a coati in the American señora’s bed.

  Once an Indian brought me an anteater, not the most prepossessing of animals, but I added it to my menagerie. There were no spare cages or spaces for a new acquisition. My husband was away on a hunting trip, so I put the anteater on a temporary basis in his bathroom. Although limited in intelligence, the anteater, no fool, heaved itself into the cool depths of the toilet and with its little paws pulled down the lid on top of it.

  My husband rushed back from his hunting trip and headed for his bathroom. He was in such a hurry that I had no time to say to him, “Don’t look now, but there is an anteater in your toilet.”

  Monkeys were an important contingent in my menagerie. It started with a pair of long-legged and long-armed spider monkeys from Veracruz, named Canuto and Titina. Frida Kahlo had similar monkeys and took a lively interest in mine, asking if they were behaving well. In fact, I think it was because of my menagerie that Frida took to me, although she said most “North Americans,” as we are called south of the border, had faces like unbaked muffins.

  Like many pairs, Canuto and Titina did not get along. Canuto took to seizing her by one leg and flinging her away from him. So they had to be kept apart and had separate cage-residences.

  Titina was all affection, and we would go for walks
together, her tail around my waist, holding my hand. She was so well brought up that I could take her out to luncheon, where she would sit on my lap facing me and not touch any of the food until her own plate was placed on the floor.

  Then there was a minute wizened little monkey from Brazil, a marmoset, named by me Don Changuillo, because in spite of his small size he commanded respect. Don Changuillo accompanied me on my archaeological digs, perched on top of the turban I wore to protect myself from the dust of excavations. From that vantage point he could spot a grasshopper from a distance and with a flying leap capture it in one paw.

  The only trouble with the monkeys was that they had a great fondness for eating hibiscus flowers and plucked them with glee as if they were ice cream cones. Ruin for the garden.

  I had one problem animal, a kinkajou. It drank. It was nocturnal and spent its days in the darkened quarters I had provided for the night shift. At the cocktail hour, it would come swinging along the beams above the terrace bar by its long prehensile tail, drop onto the bar, to the dismay of the human customers, and grab a glass.

  I am not making this up: it would then head for town and find its way to the Siete Mares Bar. I would get an angry telephone call from the bar’s improbably named owner, Jorge Hardy, to please come and get it because it was annoying the customers.

  Like many drunks, it ended badly. It hurled itself out of a moving car. That did it.

  Then there were the birds. Most Mexican village houses had a few birdcages hanging from the porch rafters, with canaries and the like. I followed the custom, but my favorite was an inconspicuous little gray bird called a cenzontle. It had an uncanny ability to briefly follow a tune sung to it, before breaking out into its own cadenzas.

  One time in New York an aged and wealthy admirer took me to a concert of the NBC Symphony Orchestra led by Arturo Toscanini. It was a hot ticket. The excitement of the evening was the world premiere of Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony. It has a simple, repetitive opening theme.

  I was back in Mexico City the next day, and on to Acapulco. I sang the little theme to the cenzontle, which adopted it easily. When Carlos Chávez, conductor of the Sinfónica de México, came for lunch soon after this, he almost fell into his guacamole when he heard, for the first time, the Shostakovich theme trilled by a local bird.

  The stars of the bird collection were two brilliantly colored macaws. They perched in a palm tree just outside my dining terrace, their wings slightly clipped so they would not stray into the neighboring property. They had raucous voices, but this was forgiven because of their spectacular coloring.

  They had a great fondness for butter. When I came out on the terrace for my breakfast, they would sidle down the palm fronds in their pigeon-toed progress and perch, one on each of my shoulders, to be rewarded by nibbles of buttered toast.

  The most unexpected addition to my menagerie was a small penguin from Antarctica, brought to me by some sailors. I made it a little collar, attached a length of thin rope, and put it in my station wagon.

  I drove to a secluded beach (they still existed then) to avoid intrusive attention. My new acquisition took to the water, and seemed to take to me. The penguin became my favorite swimming companion.

  Unfortunately, my delightful new animal friend had arrived with what I thought to be a case of bronchitis. There was no one around who could advise me. In spite of my ministrations, I no longer had a penguin.

  Up, Up, and Away

  There was no plane service from Mexico City to Acapulco in those early days. I am talking about the late 1930s, early 1940s.

  To get to Acapulco from Mexico City, you had to take the winding, climbing, dipping main road—not yet an autoroute—down from Mexico City’s seventy-five hundred feet to balmy Cuernavaca at fifty-five hundred, on to Taxco, avoiding Bill Spratling’s silver shops, up again to the chilly peaks of Tres Marías—Lew thought it advisable to stop for a tequila for good luck—keep going through Chilpancingo and its fly-specked café, finally, several weary hours later, down to the tropical vegetation of Acapulco.

  There was a rudimentary airstrip, just a flat stretch of baked mud, and a tin shanty. There might be a few small planes parked there belonging to Chante Obregón Santacilla, who took people on excursions, or to Ángel Zárate, who was game—not always advisably—to take passengers on longer hops. Service was casual. Zárate asked me once if I would mind holding the door.

  We put ourselves in Zárate’s hands to get us to Morelia. There was one other passenger, an aged French miner. Somewhere between Acapulco and Morelia there was engine trouble, and we crash-landed in a cornfield.

  Somewhat shaken, I got out, not failing to take the book I was reading, Céline’s Voyage au Bout de la Nuit, and an unopened bottle of red wine.

  The three of us trudged toward a nearby village while Zárate fiddled with the engine. It was a small village, with just a few palm-thatched huts. The Indian ladies kindly offered me the hospitality of a hammock.

  It was getting late, and a chicken was brought out to be cooked on a charcoal brazier. On an impulse, to improve the flavor, I poured in a good slug of red wine. This provoked much surprise and merriment.

  The ladies huddled around me. I spoke very little Spanish then, but understood they wanted to know which one was my marido (husband): el viejo (the old French miner) or el joven (my husband). “El joven,” I answered.

  They seemed relieved. “How long have you been married?” they asked. “Two years,” I told them. “How many children do you have?” was the next question. “None,” I answered.

  This caused quite some agitation. They obviously talked it over and came back to me. “We want to know how you do it,” they asked me.

  My limited Spanish was not up to that one.

  I spent the night in the one hammock, and by the next day Ángel Zárate had fixed the crippled engine. Hoping for the best, we climbed back in and actually made it to Morelia.

  On another flight he crashed, badly, landing at Acapulco. We were not on that flight, but went out to the airstrip to try to help the wounded. We heard later that Zárate’s luck had run out. He had crashed again. This time was his last.

  We acquired our first plane; it was a little Piper Cub. Later, there was a larger Beechcraft. Chante Obregón gave Lew flying lessons and some sort of paper that purported to be a license. And Lew taught me.

  To this day I have a very poor sense of direction, but here I couldn’t go wrong. All I had to do was to follow the coastline until I came across an inviting uninhabited beach. We went on delightful flying and swimming picnics.

  One time we realized we were very short of petrol for the return. I remembered there was a naval station at Icacos, halfway back to Acapulco. We landed there; I climbed out in my bathing suit, brandishing a beach towel, and talked the astonished sailors into selling me a little gasolina. I filtered the gasoline through my beach towel, not being too confident of its purity.

  It had begun to get dark, and our friends were worrying about us. There were no lights on the landing strip, so they gathered their cars around it and put on their lights so that we could see to land.

  Landing there was always tricky; there was the bay on one side and a mountain range on the other. You had to sideslip in. We made it.

  Under the Volcano (pace Malcolm Lowry)

  I am the only white woman in the world who has witnessed the birth of a volcano. The only other woman who was there was the wife of a poor Tarascan farmer, Dionisio Pulido, who had a small cornfield in the village of Paricutín, in the state of Michoacán.

  Pulido was working his plot when there was a sudden fissure in the earth. He tried to cover it. It widened and let out a spout of sulfurous vapor. It opened up further with a great roar and a flinging skyward of a torrent of molten lava.

  Terrified, Pulido called out for his wife. They fled in frantic haste.

  I was living in Mexico at that time. The day of the eruption, February 20, 1943, a friend and I had decided we would try the famo
us hot water springs at the Balneario de Agua Blanca of San José Purúa, Michoacán. We left Mexico City and drove due west.

  Before we had a chance to test the curative powers of the vaunted hot springs, we picked up a whispered rumor that something extraordinary was happening at a hamlet called Paricutín.

  We decided to investigate. There was no road to Paricutín, only a mule track. So we rented mules and were off.

  Even before we arrived, the sky was livid with great gusts of flames. Once nearer, we saw a cone rising above rivers of molten rocks. It was dark by then and bitterly cold. A few Indians arrived wrapped in their serapes.

  We lay down on the ground, all close together like sardines, for warmth. We watched all night, overcome by the awesome spectacle and the noise. There were earth-shattering roars as the volcano shot up streams of flaming lava. As the molten rocks hit the cold earth, they split in furious explosions.

  We were there all night, small human beings in the face of a gigantic cataclysm. Nobody spoke. I had brought a bottle of tequila, and we passed it up and down the line until it was empty.

  By daylight, we saw that our faces were black from the falling ash. What trees had been there before were stripped bare of foliage—blackened trunks, twisted branches in a Dantean landscape.

  More Indians arrived to stare silently at the devastation. Then there were abrazos all around with our new friends from that extraordinary night, and we went our separate ways.

  Soon after this, the whole area was cordoned off; no one was allowed anywhere near the still-active volcano.

  We learned later that the eruption had completely wiped out Paricutín and the neighboring hamlet of Parangaricutiro. The inhabitants were relocated. The eruption continued until 1952, and the volcano grew to well over 1,345 feet aboveground.