But it was early yet in the afternoon. Only a few children darted among the graves, and they ran away crying, “El Moro!” at the sight of January’s black face.
The tallest tomb in the center of the churchyard had been decorated lavishly with banners of fancifully-cut paper and rich profusions of flowers. Many of its marble slabs had been effaced by time: the earliest date January could read was 1577. Rinaldo de Avila de Saragosse y Merced, born in Barcelona in 1532. The remains of his wife were there as well.
The newest slab bore four names: Maria-Ursulina 1821–1830; Cicero 1823–1826; Maria-Proserpina 1826–1834; Porferio 1830–1833. Above them a smaller slab bore the name Orlando Iglesio, 1805–1818.
“Maria-Exaltación’s child?” asked Rose, and January said, “It has to be. It makes sense if Don Anastasio is a friend of the family. . . .”
“How DARE you come into this place?” gasped a voice behind them, and turning, startled, January found himself face-to-face with a young man in a priest’s black robe: thin, bespectacled, his well-born European features rigid with outrage. “I don’t care who your patron is, I told you never to return—”
He broke off, blinked, stepped closer, and removed his spectacles to squint. January saw they were very thick and very old, the gold rims having been mended many times.
“I’m so sorry.” The priest rubbed his eyes and replaced the framework of metal and glass on his beaky nose. “I took you for . . . I thought you were someone else.”
“You thought I was my cousin, in fact,” said January quietly, and assumed an expression of profoundest sorrow and shame.
The priest nodded, and there was no question, to judge by the pinched righteous anger of his expression, that it was El Moro he had thought to see.
“And that said,” continued January in his best and most educated Spanish, “I beg you, Father, speak to no one of my presence here. My cousin would not appreciate hearing I was near-by.”
“No,” said the priest, “of course not. But I warn you, the Padrón who owns this land will return this evening, and he has employed your cousin—paid him off—to do jobs for him in the past. The Padrón may tell him of your presence.”
“Oho.” January raised his brows. “He rides high with the gentry now, does he?”
Spite and anger narrowed the young man’s pale eyes. “Don Anastasio is an atheist and a heretic,” he said, his voice soft but nearly spitting the words. “An unbeliever who tries to corrupt all the souls under my care with his books and his ‘science’ and his ‘logic.’ And they follow him, because he has learned medicine and can cure their ills, as he cured your cousin’s and your cousin’s followers. A brujo—a sorcerer—who has sold his soul to Satan.”
Rose touched the grave-slab of the dead children and said gently, “From the dates on these slabs it seems to me that he has paid at least some of his debt.”
“Rather, his poor wife has paid.” The young priest sighed. “A lady of great kindness to all. It is only through her generosity and gifts that this village has been able to maintain a church living at all. Matla, the mayordomo here, tells me that Don Anastasio believed that he could save his children by watching and writing down every morsel of food that they ate, by withholding food from them—now meat, now fish, now fruit—as if he, and not All-Merciful God, holds the lives of los niños in his hands.”
Rose said in precisely the voice she had used to exclaim over Señora Lorcha’s accusations of Don Prospero’s cook, “What an extraordinary delusion!”
The priest assumed an expression of somewhat peevish self-righteousness, like Hamlet’s friends reveling in their secret knowledge: We could, and if we would . . .
“They tell me in the village that Don Anastasio has been thus—like a form of madness—for many years, since the death of a young gentleman who was raised in his household,” said the priest. “Blas—the old scoundrel who ran the pulqueria in the village—had his establishment closed down because the young gentleman died there: choked, and turned blue, and perished in convulsions, as if invisible hands were closed around his throat. I am told—I have served here in Saragosse only this year and last—that the Don blamed his poor wife when their own children died, cursing her and saying she had poisoned them. But what harm is there in giving sugared peanuts to a child?”
January’s glance crossed Rose’s, and he said, “What harm indeed?”
“Do you think it was Don Anastasio who paid El Moro to attack Werther in town?”
“Someone did.” January stripped the saddle off the black gelding in the curing-shed’s slanting shade, rubbed the animal’s back with a bunched handful of weed-stems. It was the time of siesta—the washer-women had abandoned the stream, and the gentle noises of the village street, dimly audible even at a mile distant beyond the screens of cactus and trees, had lulled. “The only other person who might have utilized the bandit’s services would be Don Prospero himself—and Don Prospero wouldn’t care if Werther knew the contents of his will. I only hope Ylario is able to protect the boy in prison, and that von Winterfeldt can get him out of the country. He’s had a narrow escape.”
“And Hannibal’s going to have a narrower one.” Rose settled on the edge of one of the great stone oil-presses that filled all of one end of the shed. The incandescent afternoon sunlight picked brassy splinters in her loosened hair and fragments of fire in her spectacles. “If we can get him out of there at all. He’ll be at the churchyard at Mictlán tonight, playing for the ghosts of los niños. . . .”
“And Don Prospero will be watching him like a hawk,” January reminded her. “Tonight is our only chance to hear whatever Valentina has to tell—I think we need to take it. I have an idea of how to convince Don Prospero of Hannibal’s innocence.”
“If you can explain to Don Prospero not only that morbid sensitivities exist, but that his son was poisoned with a handful of peanuts,” said Rose, “I take my hat off to you, sir. I can’t imagine even how I’d try.”
January smiled. “That’s because you don’t have a voodooienne for a sister,” he said. “It’s all in how one puts things; and I think I know how to make Don Prospero hear.”
The sun sank, and coolness seemed to rise from the earth like the breath of a sleeper, to bless the parched world. When January went out to water the horses again, he could see lights in the village, gold and amber jewels on the dove-colored velvet evening, and heard music from the churchyard, sweet and gay. He saddled the horses and he and Rose rode around to the churchyard, tying them out of sight among the willows by its wall. The gate of the cemetery glowed from the bonfires within, like a cheerful Hell-mouth, and the warm bright torchflame dyed the cinnabar tilework of the church-tower until it stood out like a column of fiery flowers against the darkening sky.
Lilies, marigolds, poppies, and coxcomb garlanded the tall gateposts, made ropes and swags around the necks of the statues on the little church’s façade. January was amused to note that the Archangels Michael and Gabriel wore feathers in their hair, the mark of an Indian warrior, and held, not swords, but the obsidian-edged clubs of Quetzalcoatl and Huitzilopochtli: In righteousness he judges and makes war.
Under the gaze of those Aztec angels, the churchyard was a fairyland of blossom. Every tomb was now lush with the offerings of the living: baskets of tamales, brilliantly glazed pottery bowls of chicken and mole, little plates of cigars, bottles of pulque and wine. Golden oranges glowed in heaps, pan de muerto sparkled. Skulls wrought of sugar grinned cheerfully on all sides.
And among them the laces, the gloves, the tortoiseshell combs, and simple tools of those who had gone on to other worlds. In a green pottery dish, a necklace of amber beads: whose? A wooden model of a boat, with ADRIAN on its prow. A little owl wrought of lead. Music wove the gold-laced darkness. Men greeted one another with embraces, women with kisses. Children dashed about in sticky-handed excitement, brandishing pralines and stripped stalks of sugar-cane.
Candles flowed into the churchyard like a river, villager
s bearing baskets of food and flowers, calling out to their friends. Indians and mestizos, villagers and the rancheros from the surrounding settlements, vaqueros and the rough muleteers who returned to their home villages on this night, to be with their families, living and dead. The women laughed together, dressed in their best: two-colored skirts stiffened out in approximation of wide petticoats, short-sleeved chemises, satin vests and sashes jingling with ornaments. The warm night gave back the scent of copal, from where, just out of the disapproving young priest’s sight, a leathery old man in a peasant’s white clothing was smoke-blessing men and women; the priest stayed by the doors of his church, greeting all who came to him.
Someone—probably the mayordomo and other acomodados—had laid offerings on the big family tomb, but it was clear by their sparseness that Don Anastasio had not yet arrived. Among the candy skulls and baskets of mangos was a bowl of sugared peanuts; January knelt and turned the pale, smooth legumes with his huge fingers, smelling the irresistible sweet-saltiness of honey and pepper and wondering if Anastasio would order them taken away.
From childhood he’d loved them—ground-nuts, they were called on Bellefleur Plantation, or monkey-nuts. When his mother had gotten a white protector and moved to New Orleans as a free woman, she wouldn’t have them in the house. He’d had to sneak out and buy them from the old man on the corner.
“It has to have been peanuts, doesn’t it?” asked Rose.
“I think so. Doña Maria-Exaltación died of eating ‘poisoned candy’—it could easily have been a praline. And in a pulqueria, it’s what young Orlando would have eaten the first time he slipped away at the age of fourteen to drink with the men and prove himself a man. Anastasio’s one of the few people who could come and go from Guillenormand’s kitchen without comment—it would be easy for him to carry a handful of powdered nuts wrapped in paper and dump them into the strongest-tasting dish he could find. If they didn’t kill Fernando outright, they would certainly incapacitate him to the point that, if necessary, Don Anastasio could go into the study and hold a pillow over his face until the job was done.”
Rose, usually so calmly logical, grimaced. “But . . . why?”
January shook his head and stood up again. “It doesn’t matter why,” he said. “Maybe he did want to elope with Natividad Lorcha. Or he’d conceived a chivalrous passion for Natividad and couldn’t bear the thought of Fernando laying a hand on her. Myself, I think there was something in that will that touched Don Anastasio, something we don’t know about—and probably never will know about, since Anastasio was one of the first people into the study after Fernando’s death.”
“You’re probably right,” she agreed. Somewhere a child shrieked joyfully, and the band struck up a wistful barcarole. “Still . . . How on earth are we going to prove it?”
“We aren’t,” said January grimly. “We can’t. All we can do—all we need to do—is . . .”
“Doña Isabella!” called out a voice, and January drew Rose aside, into the shadows of the gorgeously-decorated tombs. Three women in black made their way among the crowds, stopping to embrace this woman or that, their dark silks somber against the gay skirts, the embroidered blouses and aprons of the poblanas, the flower-stitched Indian huipils.
It was the closest he’d seen Doña Isabella, who bore a strong resemblance to the several portraits of her deceased brother that January had seen. But her narrow face, with its close-set hazel eyes, was pleasant and good-natured within the frame of her black point-lace veils. She bent to hug this child or that, laughing and kissing their mothers, almost like a sister. . . .
Or like the lady from the Big House, thought January, going down to visit the quarters at Christmas.
Santa Anna had boasted on a number of occasions that there was no slavery in Mexico. But January had seen in the city—and saw here now more clearly—the subtler enslavement of a land in chaos, where the weak must become slaves of the strong in order to feed their children. And unless that was secured, he thought, the legal right not to be bought and sold meant very little.
Valentina walked behind her half-sister, clothed like her in a black silk dress of European cut, kissing and greeting and clasping hands as Isabella did. Her mother’s sapphire earrings glinted under the smoke of her mantilla. But the girl was clearly distracted, scanning the darkness beyond the light of the cressets and candles, her whole body stiff, as if beneath her corsets she could barely breathe from excitement.
Waiting for her moment, thought January. Watching for the instant when everyone’s back is turned, to casually wander away into the shadows . . .
“Doña Gertrudis!” called out one of the village women, surging forward in a tinkle of silver ornaments, and the third black-clothed woman embraced her, and another, and another. . . . “So good to see you home, eh? So good to see you back!”
January’s eyes met Rose’s, startled. The third woman, with Isabella and Valentina, was definitely Consuela’s duenna, the disapproving Doña Gertrudis, her lined, sour face now wreathed in smiles: “Auntie ’Stanza!” she greeted an old Indian woman who came up to them from the crowd. And to another, “Yolie, I’ve missed you! How are the little ones now, eh?”
“Oh, my dearest child,” effused a stout, white-haired woman who looked old enough to have been Doña Gertrudis’s nurse, “how I think about you, there in the city, in such a place! Whenever ’Stasio comes here, I ask after you—what kind of man doesn’t go to see his own sister? I pray you are well.” And they embraced.
It all depends on family, Consuela had said. It all depends on whom you’re related to.
Now my brother is a penniless bankrupt: our lands are gone. . . .
And Doña Isabella: Your sister has been prosing on about how dreadful her lot in life is. . . .
January blinked, shocked, wondering why he hadn’t seen it before. In the way Don Prospero treated Anastasio, exactly as he treated Rafael and his family: He’ll do as he’s bid.
Cultivate pears for me, bring me spinach or cattle or horses as I order. . . .
Of course Don Prospero would buy up the debts of his daughter’s husband—or would seal their purchase with such a marriage. He would have let them keep their town house, keep the management of the hacienda that had once been theirs.
He drew a deep breath, and let it out.
“Don Anastasio,” said the young priest, rigidly correct, advancing from the church door to greet the hacendado, dapper-looking in his suit of embroidered black velvet. The next moment the Don turned and embraced Doña Gertrudis in a way that left January without the slightest doubt that they were, in fact, brother and sister, both ruined alike by the misfortunes of the past twenty-five years. Both pensioners, in whatever positions Don Prospero had chosen to put them.
We keep better count of money in Germany—in Germany we hire business managers. . . .
Managers who didn’t spend their money and efforts on a hopeless campaign to get the criollo grandees of the town to eat indio foods, anyway.
A flicker of black among the firelight and marigolds.
Valentina, slipping away.
At the touch of January’s hand, Rose followed him deeper into the shadows. Around the north side of the church the darkness was thicker, the few graves to be found there unkempt and nameless: strangers passing through the land like the poor old valet Da Ponte, vaqueros who had no family, dead from bandit skirmishes and the government armies that had suppressed them. Pepper-trees overhung the graves, forcing apart the bricks of some of the tombs, and from the shadows January watched Valentina making for the heavily-sheltered north door of the church.
From a thick clump of laurel, Rose and January watched as the girl went straight to the statue of St. Paul that stood among the hoary trees, and took something from behind its crumbling pedestal. Then she crossed to the deep embrasure of the church door, disappearing into its dense shadows as if she’d dived into the lightless cenote in Mictlantecuhtli’s pyramid. Beneath the soaring brassy notes of a Mozart co
ntradanse, January heard the silvery rustle of taffeta in the darkness, caught a glimpse of white emerging from the mourning black like a moth from a chrysalis, then heard the clink of steel buttons brushing the tile that framed the door.
When Valentina reemerged, she was dressed in the china poblana, the bright-hued costume of the women of the people, complete down to her white satin shoes. A striped silk reboso covered her fair hair. She stopped to tie her long silk sash with its tinkling ornaments, and while she was thus occupied, January led Rose to the north churchyard gate. He pressed his ear to it for a moment to make sure the street beyond was empty; everyone was in the churchyard, laughing with family and friends. Slipping the latch, he stepped out into a dark street splashed with squares of lamplight in windows left unshuttered, the marigold petals seeming to glow where they crossed the golden beams of open doors. The night was redolent with cooking, with incense, with the beneficent whispers of the returning dead.
Miles away at the churchyard in Mictlán, it seemed to him he could hear the echoes as Hannibal played the violin for the spirits, like Compair Lapin, summoning the dead to dance.
Leaving Rose to follow on the other side of the street, he slipped across to where an alley gave shadow as dense as that in the churchyard door that had concealed Valentina’s change of costume. In a few moments the gate opened again and a small figure in a bright pink skirt, a yellow apron, a white blouse trimmed with lace emerged, a carpetbag in her hand. Dress and petticoats, thought January. She can’t let those be found too soon.
Days of the Dead Page 32
