The Son, The Sudarium Trilogy - Book Two

by Leonard Foglia

  A knock at the door distracted her attention.

  “That you, Sally?”

  “It ain’t the Queen of England.” The Jamaican home care provider let out a lusty laugh. With one hand, she opened the door. In the other hand, she balanced a tray of lunch - hot soup, a sandwich and a gelatinous dessert. Sally came six days a week, courtesy of Home Nursing Inc., did a little cleaning, provided a little companionship and tried to see that the woman didn’t starve. Most of the time the woman just pushed the food around, waited until Sally had left and thrust the uneaten remains aside.

  “How you doin’, Miz O? Decide to sleep in today? Guess we musta had a nice rest.” Sally’s spirits, naturally buoyant, allowed her to overlook most contradictory evidence.

  “There is no rest for me. Not as long as evil lives. As long as I live.”

  “Oh dear,” Sally though to herself. It was going to be another one of those days, another day of what she called “Delusions of Badness.” She knew she shouldn’t make fun of the poor lady. But after work whenever her son asked her how old “Bad Ass” was doing, she had to admit it made her laugh,

  “I brought you some lunch. Want to sit up?”

  The old woman turned away her head and looked out the window. “You know you are in the presence of one of the greatest sinners in the world. Did I ever tell you that?”

  “Matter of fact, you have. But I haven’t seen much evidence of it, Miz O. So I guess I’ll just have to take your word for it.”

  “It’s evidence you want? Oh, I have evidence. I have all the evidence in the world. Some day I’ll show you. Some day you’ll know.” She pulled herself into a seated position, and watched Sally set out lunch on the rolling hospital serving tray the health service also provided the bedridden.

  Sally rolled the serving tray over to the bed and parked it in front of the woman. She wasn’t that old, really. Maybe 60. But the disease had ravaged her face, which was gaunt and drawn. What a fate! This awful wasting away of mind and body! Sally wouldn’t wish it on her worst enemy.

  And yet every now and then – Sally hated to admit it – she wondered just how sick the lady was. She had a grip of iron, when she chose. And though the rumpled covers made it hard to tell, the woman’s body was stronger than it appeared. Sally sometimes imagined that the woman was up and about the house all night long, chasing recklessly after her demons. Then at daybreak, spent and pale, she climbed into bed. That would certainly explain the mysterious welts and bruises that came and went on her body.

  But other times, the fright in the old woman’s eyes was so real that Sally put all suspicions aside and accused herself of lacking charity for a woman wracked with pain.

  Like now. The woman’s eyes were wide with terror. “You believe in Satan, Sally? Because Satan lives. He has worked through me. I know his ways. And I know how he works his will. Because I have seen it. With my own eyes. Seen it, as I am seeing you, this instant.”

  She reached up and grabbed Sally’s wrist and Sally was reminded again of the woman’s bursts of strength.

  “You are a good person, Sally. Tell me something. Do you think there can ever be forgiveness for a sinner like me?”

  “Of course, there is, Miz O. There is forgiveness for everyone. In fact, you don’t have to ask for it. God has already forgiven us before the sin has even been committed.”

  The old woman took that in. Then turned away and focused her gaze on the church steeple. “But what if the sin lives on?” She pushed away the tray and leaned back, as if she were trying to withdraw into the bed pillows.

  “You see, my sin lives. My sin walks the earth.”

  2:11

  At a hospital in Jalpán, he was kept overnight for observation. But the doctors could find nothing wrong with him and he was allowed to return to Querétaro with his parents the next morning. At a loss to explain how he survived three days under the mud, the doctors attributed it to youth and good luck. The popular view leaned toward the metaphysical. Outside the window of the hospital room where he’d spent the night, several residents improvised a shrine of candles and flowers.

  God, moribund in many parts of the planet, was not dead in Mexico. The Virgin appeared regularly – not just in lofty churches and majestic natural settings, either, but in windowpanes, cake pans and rumpled dishcloths, as well. Her munificence could not be discounted in what was a rich, not to say surrealistic, tradition of daily miracles.

  At first the neighbors in Querétaro treated him with ill-disguised awe, but he stayed to the garden that occupied the center of the house, resting, reading, trying to make sense of the strange experience he’d been through.

  Several reporters came by, enquiring for the whereabouts of “the miracle man”, but were politely turned away.

  Less easily discouraged were his siblings – Teresa, who looked just like her mother had at 17, and James, Jr., or Little Jimmy, who at 12 was on a collision course with adolescence. Little Jimmy was tireless with his questions.

  “Was it like drowning?”

  “No, it was like sleeping. Sleeping and waking at the same time.”

  “How can that be? You’re either asleep or you’re awake…Did you dream?”

  “Dream?” He hesitated. “No.”

  “Was it scary?”

  Hannah’s voice cut across the patio. “Little Jimmy, don’t bother your brother.”

  “Such a pest!” said Teresa, poking Little Jimmy in the ribs.

  “Boy, you can’t even ask a simple question around here,” Little Jimmy sputtered, stomping out of the garden.

  Things, reflected Hannah, were getting back to normal.

  The media fire eventually died down for lack of fuel, which is what Hannah and Jimmy had hoped for. They could go back to their quiet life as shopkeepers, selling native crafts from around the country.

  Their shop, a 19th century Colonial house on Cinco de Mayo, had not been an overnight success. Most wealthy Mexicans preferred not to be reminded of their native heritage and bought modern furniture imported from the States. But mail orders kept them afloat. They picked their merchandise carefully in the villages around Zacatecas, Patzcuaro and Oaxaca. Eventually, the shop had developed a reputation for quality, as Querétaro itself traded its image as a slightly rundown Colonial backwater for that of a Baroque jewel in the very heart of Mexico.

  It had seemed so safe, so remote, so sleepy, when they’d settled there twenty years ago. The city was off the tourist map - far, both geographically and spiritually, from the tequila parties on sandy beaches that constituted most people’s image of Mexico. Those who passed through Querétaro were usually businessmen heading north to the metropolis of Monterey, or the rare historian, who wanted to visit the hill where Emperor Maximiliano had met his death in the mid -19th century at the hands of a Mexican firing squad. That had been Querétaro’s one moment of international notoriety. Afterwards, it had become a bastion of conservatism, whose inhabitants minded their business, went to mass regularly and treated strangers with the chill of indifference. If Hannah and Jimmy had hoped for a more anonymous place in which to shield their family, they could not have done better.

  But change was afoot. Every day, it seemed to Hannah, the town shed a little more of its past and took on a few more trappings of the 21st century. The outskirts, which had once been corn and broccoli fields, were now parques industriales. More and more English was spoken in the streets. They had always known things wouldn’t stay sleepy forever, but change – the Oxxo convenience stores, the automatic tellers and, yes, the Wal-Marts - seemed to be coming faster with each passing year. The old guard fought to preserve the Colonial buildings with their opulent courtyards and their elegantly grilled windows. The new guard fought for more parking lots.

  For the first couple of weeks after the accident, the young man barely left the house. He was happy to stay in the garden, play with the dog, read some and sleep. He slept a lot. While he did, Hannah watched him protectively from the colonnade that surrounded the
garden. She and Jimmy had never told him of the unusual circumstances surrounding his birth. They had worked hard, in order that he might have an ordinary life. And now this!

  Then one day, nearly a month after the mudslide, he announced that he felt like going out for a walk. “I can’t stay closed up in the house forever.”

  He swung open the heavy door that gave on to the Avenida Venustiano Carranza. The knotted wood creaked, as it always did. Silhouetted by the blazing sunlight, he turned back and waved to his mother.

  Hannah watched him leave with a sinking feeling. He was going back out into the world again. But this time she could no longer pretend his anonymity protected him.

  2:12

  “Joven?!?”

  Two men were crossing Venustiano Carranza toward him, as he walked from the front door. Two more journalists, he thought, although they looked more like extras in a bad Hollywood movie about the barrio. At least the one did, with his crisply pressed beige suit, the highly polished shoes and a tie, the design of which evoked a Puerta Vallarta sunset. The other was dressed in denim jeans and a work shirt that strained to contain a pair of muscular arms and a powerful chest that obviously hadn’t come from writing articles.

  “May we speak with you for a minute?” asked the man in the suit. “We won’t occupy too much of your time.” Mexicans were usually not so direct. There was a whole series of “How are you?” “And the family?” “Things are well, too?” to be gone through before getting to the business at hand. But these two had dispensed with all the usual formalities and were standing squarely in his way. At the sound of voices, Hannah cracked the wooden door. Her son had been stopped again! Her first instinct was to rush to his side and put an end to the conversation, but she knew no young man wanted his mother meddling in his life. If they were more curiosity seekers, he would have to learn to deal with them by himself. Still, she left the door open wide enough so she could monitor what was happening without being seen.

  From his suit jacket pocket, the man took out a piece of identification encased in plastic, identifying him as Señor Rodriguez Muñez, adjunct of the presidente municipal in Jalpán.

  “What is it you want?”

  “First to congratulate you on your remarkable survival. The presidente municipal followed events closely in Mataxi. The church gone. The schoolhouse gone. The houses gone. Such a terrible price to pay. What happened there must never happen again”

  The young man shifted under the intensity of his stare. “No, it mustn’t.”

  “Young man, please understand what I am saying. What happened there must never happen again.” Despite the neatness of his apparel, there was something unruly and uncontrolled about the man.

  “It was a tragedy, I agree.”

  “So many people gathered in the schoolhouse! Ground up like…like corn! Perhaps if they had been elsewhere, they would have escaped this horrible fate.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “But they were there to hear you,” he snapped. “They were not in their houses or tending to the fields. The children were not playing in the rain as children like to do. They were in the schoolhouse to hear you speak.”

  “Yes, I was there to speak about——“

  “—-about things you have NO RIGHT to say,” the man shouted. A flush of blood shot through his face, making a small growth on his chin stand out. “You are an American. Americans have no right to participate in the politics of this country. You realize you could be deported immediately, if the authorities so chose.”

  “I have lived in Mexico all my life. I have never lived anywhere else.”

  “And your parents?”

  “They are Americans.”

  “And in the Oficina de Inmigracion, you are registered as an American, too, here at the sufferance of the Mexican government. Which brings us back to the problem. It is illegal for you to foment political dissent.”

  “I am just trying to educate people.”

  “Is that what it is?” said the man, whose burly companion allowed himself a chortle.

  Hannah strained to hear what was being said. It was evident from their manner that these men were not journalists. The country had a violent strain, despite the veneer of civility and the courtly manners that had somehow filtered down from the Spanish. People kissed one another on both cheeks upon meeting, European-style. Shopkeepers assured you their duty was “para servirle” - to serve you! But she had seen tempers explode, when one car accidentally scratched another or someone, lurching out of a cantina, bumped into a pedestrian on the sidewalk. The macho Mexican was a cliché, but it was also a reality.

  Señor Muñez took a linen handkerchief out of his pocket and carefully wiped his brow. “Let me show you a few things. Con permiso!” He handed his briefcase to his companion, who held it while he fished inside.

  “Ah, here it is,” he said, brandishing a yellow manila folder. “You have been speaking quite a bit.” Señor Muñez produced several shots of the young man in various native gatherings and flipped through them.

  “Wait, what is that one?”

  “Oh, this?” He slid out a photograph of Little Jimmy, playing soccer in the schoolyard three blocks away. Then another one, which showed Teresa seated on the edge of the fountain in the Plaza de Armas, eating an ice cream cone with her boyfriend. “And what do you think of this one? Your mother, I believe. How many Mexican women wouldn’t envy that beautiful blonde hair?”

  The young man could barely get the words out. “Are you threatening me? Why do you have pictures of my family? What are you saying?”

  “I am saying that we are aware of your work. The presidente municipal of Jalpán is aware of it, too. In fact, many people are aware of it, now that you are so famous. It would be unfortunate if another tragedy happened. We have already had enough tragedies, as it is.”

  Señor Rodriquez Muñoz smiled and gave a short bow from the waist. “And now we will be on our way. I think we understand each other, Señor de los Milagros. That is what they call you, isn’t it! Mr. Miracle Man.” It came out as a sneer.

  He had heard of this kind of intimidation. People in power would go to any lengths to protect that power. Polite threats were usually enough, but if they weren’t, there were plenty of anonymous hired hands to do the dirty work. He thought of his family and, glancing back at the house, caught his mother peeping out the door, anxiety written on her face. Not wanting to alarm her, he shrugged his shoulders as if he were shrugging off the men themselves and headed down the street toward the Plaza de Armas.

  2:13

  At one point or another in the day, everyone passed thought the Plaza de Armas. It was the most picturesque plaza in Querétaro, surrounded on all four sides by 18th century mansions that had long since been converted into government offices, but still managed to retain the dignity of their prior existence. Under the colonnade on the north side, a series of cafes served cappuccinos and rich pastries, a modern-day intrusion that was accepted because it allowed people to while away the time agreeably. Several outdoor restaurants enlivened the east side, each with its resident musician playing a repertoire of international pop tunes, not so loud as to drown out the other, but loud enough to establish a friendly musical rivalry.

  And there in the center, at the top of a circular stone fountain, surveying the comings and goings, was a statue of the Marquis de Villa del Vilar de Aguila, who had built the 18th century aqueduct (still standing) that first brought water to Querétaro from the surrounding hills. Not that many could identify him. Of far greater interest – to camera bugs, at least, and children - was the fact that the water was projected into the basin below from the mouths of four sausage-shaped dogs.

  Wandering into the Plaza de Armas, one could easily think that, through the mysteries of time travel, one had pierced an invisible veil and somehow ended up in southern Italy a hundred years ago. The heat, the animation, the cheap music all seemed more Neapolitan than Mexican. The temptation was great to sit on one of the wrought-iron benches un
der the luxuriant ficus trees and watch the parade of schoolchildren, businessmen, nuns, politicians, and peddlers, whose legs were all that protruded from the cluster of balloons that swarmed around their bodies like acrylic-painted bees.

  The encounter with the “officials” angered him, but he was determined to put it out of his mind. He entertained the thought that the men were bluffing, a pair of puffed up roosters strutting before the cockfight they had no intention of engaging in. If they weren’t, well, he’d stay alert. It was all part of his new celebrity and it would diminish with time.

  He ambled into the plaza, found a place to sit near the fountain. He loved this part of Queretaro with its diversity that suggested the Old World to him. He always brought a notebook with him. Usually, he jotted down his random thoughts, but some days he drew passing details - the curved back of the shoeshine man, the kiosk that sold newspapers and magazines or the gardener who regularly replanted the beds of flowers. He rarely tried to capture the whole plaza or the whole range of his feelings. Particulars were what made up the world. It was the only way he could understand things -in bits and pieces.

  The straw hat on the stony-faced woman who was seated in the cafe opposite him, for example, was enough to identify her as a bonafide tourist. She and the man next to her, equally stern, but not undignified with his thatch of gray hair, were obviously foreigners. Not that the couple wore the usual Bermuda shorts, leather sandals and white athletic socks that were the standard outfit of the tourist. They were dressed conservatively, talked quietly and would probably not have stood out, were it not for her wide-brimmed straw hat.