The Zigzag Way

by Anita Desai

  The groom, watching her ride out through the tall grass into the open, let out a sharp whistle. Then another, and another, just like a bird calling, at first tentatively, then confidently when it signals the passing of a storm.

  Consuela came out into the courtyard above, hurriedly, and looked around to see if anyone was watching before she ran down the path to the corral.

  Eric came out of his room, dragging his bag. “I have left the key inside,” he called to Consuela, making her halt a moment. “Adiós!” He waved, and suddenly felt lighthearted as he let himself out of the Hacienda de la Soledad into the dirt road that would take him to the crossing with the highway where he would flag down a bus or a truck.

  It was only a matter of going through the tunnel now and then he would be in the ghost town he had come to see on the other side of the mountain. He began to whistle.

  Thunderheads had risen above the horizon and were mounting with swift strides through the sky, casting a shadow across the mesa and the lake as if a fisherman had flung out a net over them that softly settled. All the grasses bent, with a long, hissing breath. The situí birds spun out into the air, crying, “Tuí, tuí.” But the clouds sailed on as if they had other, larger plans and could not stop.

  Eric gave up whistling as the weight of the bag and the sinking of his shoes into the dust began to tire him long before he reached the crossing. He could not help thinking how foolish a traveler he must appear to anyone who could see him—without auto, without burro, without spouse or partner. Not that there was anyone to see. He had been told there would be many making their way to the town for el Día de los Muertos, but the only figure he could make out was the one on the horse down below on the mesa, slowly breasting the reeds and the rushes around the flat lake, whose surface crinkled like a sheet of burned paper.

  He wondered at that figure, at the freedom it had won—of space, of movement—although from what, he had failed to discover. She had evidently sloughed off the past and emerged like some sly and secretive snake in its new skin, to continue on her way. That was what she had done, while here he was, struggling to do the reverse: retrace an old passage, and follow it to—well, what? That was yet to be discovered.

  Looking down at his bag, now dragging a trail through the dust, and his reddened fingers clasping the handle, he thought there were always those who walked away, and those who did not. This had been the unsatisfactory meeting of the two, he guessed wryly.

  The next time he glanced up the road, the bus appeared, juddering along over the skull shapes of the cobblestones of the highway, dragging itself over them as if drawn by a pulley it was trying to resist. He began to run; he did not want to be left here for another night under her roof.

  He heaved himself and his bag into the bus—it was second-class and therefore stopped for whoever hailed it. He bought a ticket and found a seat on a bench at the back between a woman with a basket full of indignant chickens and a man with a bottle of beer and a beatific smile. They made room for him and he settled in.

  The best way he knew to shut out the noise and the distraction of so many images and incidents of the journey was to close his eyes and think of Em. Where was she? Was she too on a journey at this moment? Of what kind? Surely much more certain and logical than his. Em knew why she was traveling and where to, whereas he seemed to be chasing a whim, perhaps even less, merely an instinct that he must follow the tracks. Until now, he had studied history and collected data without any sense that it was essential (Em had been right to question him, repeatedly and anxiously, about his intentions). What was it for, really? Simply to add his papers, make his contribution to what already existed? As pointless—and now he knew why he had worked so without any urgency—as adding one more grain of sand to a shore where the ocean washed up more with every wave. But now that he was following the trail of his own history, tunneling his way back into his ancestry, and the history of his ancestors, he felt for the first time the urgency—and the terror—of knowing. An urgency, and a terror, he could have shared at last with Em.

  So he listened to the roar of the engine as it thundered through the tunnel in the mountain, and waited for the moment when it would emerge and he would open his eyes—to what? Would this sight, this revelation accord him at last something that he could commit himself to? He remembered Em’s words to him, that he would, once he was alone, discover things he could not when he was with her. He had not believed her, but they seemed now to have the ring of truth.

  It was with that prospect that he emerged from the tunnel in the bus and dismounted—an explorer on the brink of discovery. Only it was dark and a cold wind rustled through the trees in the park and he had to ask the way to an inn.

  5

  We feared death, because we were men.

  —BERNAL DÍAZ, The Conquest of New Spain, 1568

  WHEN HE AWOKE THE NEXT MORNING, HE NOTICED first that the wind had stopped blowing, so that in the ringing clarity of air, whatever sound there was reverberated metallically. That was the cathedral bell, striking the hour. Befuddled with sleep, he lay listening to it, but not counting the rings of the bell bounding out over the roofs like an iron ball. A sliver of light made its way under the curtains cunningly as a sharp knife. He was enormously grateful for both, revived by them, as if he had passed through a storm and now realized that he had survived. This is how a traveler’s waking should be, he decided.

  Upstairs, the tables were laid for breakfast with bright checked cloths. From the kitchen came sounds of pans being struck and stirred and fat spattering, meat briskly sizzling. The two officials from the night before were already mopping up the last of their beans and eggs with tortillas. Coffee was brought in a pot battered with much service. Eric held out his mug and let the black liquid pour in with benign normality.

  Through the door that opened onto the side street, he could see a woman setting up her stall for the day’s customers, unpacking her baskets and bundles, emptying them out. A hen ran by squawking, pursued by a rooster. The woman threw a corncob at it, laughing.

  A basket of rolls arrived at his table, accompanied by butter and mermelada.

  The swinging door to the kitchen banged open again and André entered. Eric caught a glimpse of the child playing in the kitchen, under the feet of the maids in their frilled aprons. André himself looked washed, fresh, energetic, with perhaps a smear of grease at the corner of his mouth from his breakfast. He came to Eric’s table to inquire if he had slept well, if he had plans for the day. Eric asked if he would join him for a cup of coffee and was pleased that André accepted: he had not thought that he would want to continue the conversation of last night but André seemed eager to do so, as if to correct any misapprehensions.

  It was that kind of morning, fresh, new. Water was being sluiced on the street, pans were ringing like church bells, and a triumphant rooster was crowing.

  Lighting cigarettes for both of them, André looped an arm over his chair and began immediately. “Perhaps I gave to you the impression that I know much about Doña Vera. It is not true. I know a little and I guess a little.”

  “But she has lived here a long time?”

  “Yes, but she keeps to herself In the Hacienda de la Soledad. Well-named, is it not? Her family is well-known—you will see its name everywhere—but she herself, not much.”

  “Her family? She belongs here?”

  “No, no, no, the family she was married into. Her husband, a Creole, very wealthy, for many generations. They owned mines, houses, streets. When President Díaz visited, it was in their house he stayed. But they did not live here themselves. They lived in Mexico City, and Guanajuato, and Guadalajara. Doña Vera alone has chosen to live here, for many years now, you are right.”

  “To start her center for Huichol studies?”

  This time André did explode into laughter. “Who knows why? She is a person about whom many rumors go around. But yes, she did start the center. You came to see it?”

  Eric refuted any such intention
. “I had never heard of it, to tell you the truth. Nor about the Huichol. But I had learned of her connection to the mines here and my family had one as well.”

  “Oh, mein Gott!” André slapped his forehead with mock horror and ash scattered from his cigarette. “You did not tell her that? She will not have loved you if you did.”

  “It’s true, she did not love me at all.”

  “Of course! She hated her connection to that family—to Don Roderigo—and left him many years ago.”

  “But she was living on his property, and with his wealth. Weren’t they divorced?”

  “No, no, no. In such families that does not happen. There may be scandal about their business, their bank accounts, their dealings, but not about the family. That is not permitted. No scandal. And Doña Vera was already something of a scandal.”

  Eric watched over Andrés shoulder as his pretty wife came out of the kitchen with a pot of coffee and went around refilling cups, while her husband told tales to the visitor. André went on, “No one knew anything about her, you see. And in such families it is important to know. But she was just a young woman who had fled Europe when war broke out. Who was she? Why did she flee? No one knew.”

  “Many Europeans came at the time, didn’t they? Refugees?”

  “True.” André grew more grave, folding his hand around his coffee cup. “Refugees from many countries and many pasts. Politics of all kinds.”

  “So what were hers?”

  He shrugged. “One more mystery. Many more rumors. Some have said she was a collaborator who got out before it was too late. Some say the opposite—that she was in the resistance, about to be betrayed. That is the story she herself encourages, I am told. For that reason, I think it was the opposite.”

  Eric was surprised by Andre’s shrewdness; he had not expected it. But that did not mean it was to be trusted. “Is there proof?” he asked. “Evidence?”

  “Not here. She has hidden herself very well, has she not? Who will find her here? But they say there are archives in Europe—in Austria and in Germany—where there are letters, documents that could tell us something.”

  “Hasn’t anyone done research into them?”

  “No one over here. Perhaps in Europe—but in Europe they don’t know her Mexican life. I don’t think she was so important, only that she maybe knew people who were. You know? Her story has many chapters—European, Mexican, Huichol . . .”

  “And what do you think of that?” Eric asked, suddenly curious about Andre’s interest in this story.

  “Of–?”

  “Of walking away, leaving behind one chapter, starting another?”

  André did not reply at once. He drew on his cigarette, pursing his lips and releasing spirals of smoke. Watching them uncurl and disperse in the air, Eric wondered if that was his comment. Eventually, though, he crushed his cigarette in a saucer with the name of the inn painted in curlicues on a brown glaze, and clasped his hands on the tabletop. Eric could see that the question had made him uncomfortable. Perhaps he was thinking of his own story, and its different chapters. He might also be thinking of his country’s story. Certainly his face had taken on a melancholy look.

  “I think that, on one level or another, it is what we do,” he said finally. “People, countries. If we think about our sins, our guilt, it is a heavy baggage we carry.” He scratched his head. “It is why, over here, people go to church so happily—every day, many times a day, whenever they pass by one. They go in, make a sign of the cross, so, pray a little, light a candle, and come out—forgiven, ready to move on.”

  “And those of us who are not believers?”

  André shrugged. “Perhaps we must forgive ourselves.”

  “Do you believe one can?” Eric asked in surprise.

  “No. I think more is required, much more. Sacrifice, perhaps. Like in the old days—animal, material, even human.”

  They thought about that: everywhere in this country one saw the stains of sacrifice; blood was inextricable from history.

  “How do you know when you’ve sacrificed enough—goats, chickens, boys, virgins? Gold, silver, jewels? How much before you’re forgiven?”

  “Perhaps the priest tells you. Or you tell yourself. You forgive yourself. But that is not enough. It is others who must forgive you. You must earn it.”

  “Can there be forgiveness for killing, for taking life?”

  “No, I don’t believe that.”

  “I don’t either.”

  “So perhaps one must live a life of penance. Of service.”

  “Do you think Doña Vera’s life is that, of penance? By trying to serve the Huichol? An interesting idea. She does have them stay in her house.”

  André sat back, his posture relaxing as if a certain danger had passed. He even laughed. “A good trophy, eh? Something to show off with, no?” Eric suddenly found that he had placed his finger on something that had troubled him. “It is strange, but she never speaks to them, only of them to the foreigners who are present.”

  “You know why?” Andre’s eyes were twinkling. He seemed capable of a good deal of mischief. “I tell you why. I believe—I believe—she does not know the language! That is why. She has never learned the language! Such ‘experts’ are to be found here, in Mexico, you know. Difficult for her to keep up the pretense. Did you not find it so?”

  His laughter made his wife come over to them, with her coffeepot. “What stories are you telling our guest?” she asked him, and stood ruffling his hair with one hand, affectionately, leaning into his shoulder. “About the ghost who haunts our inn? Or the bandido who was running from the law and slept here one night, the federates in the next room? You see,” she told Eric, “André is our official storyteller.”

  “This is a story about a neighbor, Paola. The Queen of the Sierra down below. Eric spent a night at her place.”

  “Ohh,” she said dismissively. “I have seen that when two foreigners meet, they only want to talk about other foreigners. So much they like to hear gossip and tell gossip about themselves.”

  “True,” Eric had to admit; what else had they been doing after all?

  Her level, dark gaze made him feel somehow ashamed. She made him think of Em; Em would have shared her attitude. “Actually,” he said to change the subject, “it isn’t Doña Vera or her center I came to see. It was really the ghost town that interested me. It doesn’t look much like one,” he added, glancing out of the open door at the side street, where customers were beginning to cluster around the food stall and people were going up and down with their market bags.

  “Oh, today is a special day. At other times, it is empty. During the Revolution, you know, the mines collapsed and they were not revived. There is no living to be made. It is sad.”

  “But you came here to live,” Eric reminded them.

  “Because there was so much space, and it was free,” Paola explained. “My father, he came from a mining family but he could not find work himself. He did a little on his own, like so many of the people left here, but it didn’t bring in enough. So when he found this house empty, its owners gone, he moved in, and with my mother’s help, he started the inn.”

  “Do you have enough guests to stay?” Eric could not refrain from asking.

  “Unos pocos,” she replied. “A few. Pilgrims come for the feast of San Francisco. Also for el Día de los Muertos, as you see. And now, a few artists too—like André.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Oh yes,” she said, beaming. “He has his studio upstairs and he is painting there. You must come and see.”

  André, embarrassed by her suggestion, brushed it off. “Eric has come to see the mines, Paola. His father worked in them, can you imagine?”

  “My grandfather,” he said hastily. “It was many years ago. Those were bad times in England. People were looking for work. I thought I would look for the graves of those who died here.” They looked distressed now and André stood up, saying, “You did not tell me. That is a very different reason
for coming.”

  “Yes, well, I’m not sure if I shall find any sign of them.”

  Now both began to speak together. André wanted to draw him a map of the town on a paper napkin Paola had made available. “Here, the plaza. Here, the museo—”

  “Closed today because of the holiday.”

  “And here the cateiral. It is grand, built by the priest who found the first silver here. You must see it.”

  “Also the grand houses around the plaza where the managers and so on lived—”

  “Yes, some held banquets and balls when President Díaz visited—”

  Eric assured them his grandparents could not have lived grandly at all so André drew another road on his map, the one that led up to the mines where the Cornish miners had had their cottages. “They were called Jack, all of them—Jack. They made a football field, they played the first football in Mexico—”

  But, they admitted together, there was little left to see. The palenque, the plaza de toros, abandoned. “You see, it is a ghost town. In ruins.”

  That, Eric said, was what he had come to see.

  “Only today is a festival so it comes to life. You have never seen this festival of the dead?”

  “We do have one kind of like it at home,” Eric reluctantly divulged. “Halloween, the night before All Saints’ Day.”

  “You do? Ohh?”

  He tried to describe it to them, the pumpkins carved into lanterns, the children going up and down the street at night, dressed in costumes and masks to beg for candy—but gave up in the face of their incomprehension. “I was always frightened of it myself,” he confessed. “I used to hide, not go out.”

  “Oh, but here it is not like that. We scatter the petals of the zempasúchtl on our doorsteps, to help the dead find their way home, and put their photographs out so they can see they have come to the right house, and candles to see the way because if we do not, they will have to light their fingers and burn,” Paola explained. “Also copal, incense, and flowers with a strong scent.”