The Zigzag Way

by Anita Desai

  “Yes,” he acknowledged. What was he, after all? Perhaps that. If she wanted, then yes, he was.

  “Hmm, I like them, the americanos,” she said thoughtfully, and Eric shifted uneasily, deciding to move. He made an ostentatious show of groaning as he got to his feet and dusted off the seat of his pants, then began to sidle toward the chapel looming overhead, telling her, “It’s time I went in there.”

  She shrugged, and as he left her, he heard her say, in a rasping voice, “The last time, you hear? Now I can turn my back on your cursed town, and don’t expect to see me again.”

  When Eric glanced covertly back, she was standing up, holding aloft the bottle with an unusual blatancy for a woman. “So, take one good look, eh, at your puta, your whore. She made good!” Her voice rose and now she was scattering drops from the bottle over the grave and over herself as well. It was hard to say if she was laughing or crying, her voice was so hoarse and certainly she was very drunk.

  A band of children, running among the tombstones and crosses on the hillside, themselves intoxicated with the night, stopped to watch her antics and burst out laughing. “La borracha!” they screamed, “la borracha!” This gave them away to their mothers who called to them, sharply, and they scattered like the last of the sparrows before darkness swallows them.

  Around the grave at the foot of the stairs to the chapel, a group sat as if composed by a painter: at its head the matriarch wrapped in a shawl and her face lowered to the rosary she told incessantly while the candles on the gravestone, thick with trickling wax, flung their shadows over her seamed face; around her the family, obediently reverent, seated for what would be a long night. The wax ran and hissed among the pots of flowers and copal set out. The Latin words of the rosary trickled and hissed along with them, keeping pace.

  Slipping around and past them—uncertain, somewhat, that they were of solid flesh and blood and not just skeletons dressed up—he went up the broken stone steps, white in the darkness, to the chapel. It was empty, and though there was no source of light to be seen, somehow the frescoes painted inside the dome were clearly visible, depicting the saints in robes of blue and russet, wandering through gardens where lilies bloomed among cypresses and angels drifted through rose-tinted clouds. Where had these visions come from, Eric wondered, which artist had seen these cinquecento figures and radiant landscapes? His paintbrush had created a serene and formal Eden from another world.

  Walking up the central aisle, Eric passed the scenes of the Stations of the Cross on either side and then thought that if the artist could imagine such agonies, such wounds, such suffering, then yes, of course he could also imagine the promise of heaven that made it bearable.

  Walking slowly and as soundlessly as possible, Eric tried to read the inscriptions and names on the stones under his feet. Many of them bore the same name, and it was the name of the family into which Doña Vera had been married. He bent to peer at one and as he wiped the dust from it to see better, he became aware of someone seated in the front pew, sprawled as if drunk or exhausted after a long ride. He did not appear to be one of the villagers crowding the cemetery; none of them would have sat in this fashion in church, it would have been beyond them to do other than bow their heads and crouch.

  Sliding into a pew on the other side of the aisle, the flowers across his knees, Eric studied him as unobtrusively as possible. His first impression, that this was a visitor from elsewhere, was borne out by a closer inspection, for the figure was dressed in expensive and finely tailored clothes, including a vest and a silk necktie around his neck. His legs were sprawled out and Eric saw the quality of his leather boots, polished to a high shine; how had he maintained that if he had walked up the dusty road with the others? In spite of his casual attitude, he did not seem comfortable, twitching frequently, crossing and recrossing his legs and fingering first his necktie and then his trousers; probably they were too tight.

  The man must have become aware that he was being scrutinized because eventually he turned to Eric with a sigh, and now Eric could see his swarthy, heavy-jowled face, the eyebrows growing like an animal’s fur across his forehead, and the mouth downturned in what was unmistakably a belligerent scowl.

  “So, someone has been sent up from the hacienda to bring me something after all,” he said in a voice that resembled a wagon full of ore lumbering through a tunnel to reach Eric.

  “I’m sorry, I’m not—not sure what you mean,” Eric stammered.

  The man raised an eyebrow and the small red eye under it gave him a hostile look. “Have you not come from the Hacienda de la Soledad?”

  “I have, but how did you know that?”

  The man gave the approximation of a laugh and twisted his fingers inside his collar in that obsessive attempt to loosen it. “What do I have to do but watch what goes on?” he said. “Do you think she does not know that?”

  “Doña Vera, you mean?” Eric asked, quite unnecessarily.

  Removing his fingers from the collar, the man waved them in a gesture of contempt and derision. “The one and only,” he said. “Still playing the queen there, I’m sure. The Queen of the Sierra! What a farce.”

  Eric held his breath, uncertain whether to agree or not and resolving to say nothing, give nothing away that might get back to that terrifying lady.

  “I could tell you some things about that,” the man went on. “The queen of exactly what, I could tell you. The bars and theaters where she made her living! They were not so pretty and I should know since that is where I found her.”

  “Where—?” Eric could not stop himself from asking.

  “In Wien!” the man exploded. “Österreich! I arrived there just when it was finished—terminado! She was happy enough to come away. She was a clever one and knew when it was time to leave. I should have been suspicious.”

  Eric held still, saying nothing.

  “The war! Hitler! How long could her luck have lasted? Do you think she could have survived? No, no, I saved her. But did she thank me for that—for her freedom, her escape? Not once. Tell her, please, from me, Roderigo demands that she come and thank him. Will you?”

  Eric was about to tell him that he did not intend to return to the Hacienda de la Soledad but the man was not waiting for an answer. He went on loudly, demanding further: “And ask her also if she remembers what day it is today. Has she forgotten? Has she no memory? In all these years, she has not remembered once!” Then he lowered his voice and asked, less rhetorically, almost with shame, “Or did she send you with that—that bunch—”

  Eric clutched at the flowers. “No, no,” he cried and was inexplicably afraid, chilled to the bone with fear—or perhaps it was just the chill of the stone chapel in which the darkness was intensifying, making it difficult to see across the aisle, let alone the frescoes or the dome. “I brought them for—”

  The man sighed heavily. “Yes, I should have seen that. It is not her style,” and saying that, his head slumped to his shoulders as if sleep had overtaken him. His heavy breathing might have included the vibrato of a snore.

  Eric decided to make an escape before he stirred, and rising to his feet, proceeded to do so as silently as he could manage on that stone floor. But he must have disturbed the man’s sleep for he heard a voice booming out at his departing back, “And those poor intoxicated indios she keeps—tell her, tell her, if she wants to be queen, she should have chosen better subjects!” A shout of laughter followed the derisive words, laughter that echoed back and forth, back and forth sacrilegiously in that still chamber. Eric, scandalized, stopped with his fingers to his lips to suppress it but the voice continued. “Tell her, ask her,” it pursued him, “when the time comes, where does she think they will bring her? It will be here, with me beside her—and around us all the indios she could wish!”

  Then the figure of Don Roderigo began to expand. It became huge. It spat out malice and vengeance. It came storming along after Eric, shouting, “And she had El Duque shot! You know that? When I was no longer there to
protect him, she had my faithful El Duque destroyed! Is that the behavior of a queen?”

  The voice and the figure rose to such proportions that they took up the entire chapel and Eric found himself propelled through the door and out into the open with more haste than he would have liked anyone to observe.

  Something seated in a bush below gave a croak of alarm and flapped away into the dark.

  THE DARKNESS had intensified because the candles had now burned low or even gone out. The wind was still blowing and even though there were no leaves or grasses through which it could be heard to pass, there was a rustling and a stirring all around. The praying and singing and murmuring by the graves was rising to a crescendo and the fragrance of flowers and copal and candles combined in a smothering odor.

  Eric felt the need to be by himself, alone. He knew he would not find the grave he had searched for here. Coming down the steps from the chapel, he went around to the back to see if there was an enclosure for the alien, separate and isolated from the rest.

  Of course here too there was uneven ground, mounds of earth, crosses askew upon them—their threatening, admonishing shapes barely visible in the night—and thorns, stones, rubble.

  The long night, the increasing chill, the effort of staying awake and alert, all became overwhelming. It would only make sense to leave, turn back and return to the inn and the comfort of a warm bed, knowing he had made the effort and failed.

  Glancing up, however, he saw what must be the first light of dawn, because now he could make out the outline of the mountain: the sky must have, so imperceptibly and secretly, paled. A cross was mounted on the summit as if it, too, were a gigantic grave. The slope of the mountain was still shadowy with night, but as he walked toward the whitewashed wall that marked the periphery of the cemetery, he could make out a path winding up between rocks and cacti.

  A young woman was descending it, with such ease and speed it was as if she did not notice the stones in her way; they were not impediments to her. She was preceded by a fragrance that was as fresh as the breeze that was blowing freely, not the heavy perfume of copal, tallow candles, and funeral flowers but a much lighter, more natural one, of herbs like lavender, rosemary, and thyme, mountain herbs that seemed unlikely to be growing in that hostile rubble and stoniness but perhaps were since their essence was clearly present.

  Seeing Eric standing by the low wall that ringed the cemetery, she lifted her hand, holding a small bunch of gray leaves and pale flowers, and to his amazement, waved to him. He could not imagine why she acknowledged him or who she might be or why she was there, but his mind had ceased to pose questions, they were all obliterated by the wave of her hand and the pure scent of the flowers.

  “I found them by the path,” she said lightly, conversationally, as if continuing a dialogue that they had already begun. “All growing wild. I wonder the goats don’t eat them.”

  She came right up to the wall so that she was standing on one side of it, he on the other. In the opalescent light of dawn, he saw that her hair was so bright, it was like the petals of newly opened zempasúchil flowers all over her head.

  He stammered, “You—you’re like a flower yourself.”

  She gave him a look out of the corner of her eyes, not so much coquettishly as simply amused. “And you—you’re Paul, aren’t you? I thought you might come.” She sat herself down on the wall, ready for his response.

  “No,” he told her sadly, “I’m not. Paul is my father. I’m Eric, his son.”

  She gave no indication she had heard or understood. Stroking the silvery gray leaves of the nosegay in her hand, she said, almost shyly, “You are just as I thought you would be. Dark, like Davey, and all the men in Davey’s family. They say the Cornish aren’t English at all, that they come from somewhere else. Have you heard that?”

  “Yes,” Eric admitted, but anything he had ever heard or read on the subject went clear out of his mind in her presence. “I think, I think they may have come from Spain—or somewhere.”

  She was not too concerned with accuracy. “Everyone comes from somewhere else,” she said, nodding toward the shifting, moving shapes and shadows behind the chapel, and added, “Like Mexicans. They say they came from Asia, across the—the—”

  “The Bering Strait,” Eric put in, relieved to remember something, to know that his mind was intact and had not been swallowed up by the eeriness of the night on the dark hill.

  The name clearly meant little or nothing to her. She went on picking at the leaves in her hand and at the thread of her thoughts while Eric watched and listened, scarcely breathing. The thread she picked at seemed to waver and wander. “Like us, from Cornwall. Such a long way to come.” Her eyes widened and Eric could see their gray, transparent glaze.

  “Quite a journey,” he agreed, trying to encourage her to say more.

  But she had come to the end of that thread. “And ending here,” she said, tapping the wall she sat on so lightly.

  “I couldn’t find—” Eric began, then stopped short: it would be tactless, tasteless to mention the cemetery to her, and graves; how could he?

  She, on the other hand, had no hesitation in doing so. “Our graves?” she asked, quite blandly, and pointed to the hill she had descended. “We’re there. D’you know what they call it? Jews’ Hill,” she told him with a laugh. “It was the place where they buried everyone not of their faith.”

  “Were there many?” Eric ventured, hesitantly.

  “Oh,” she said, tilting her head and counting. “Tough Tansy’s little sister who came to help her with all the babies, and died of the cholera. Miss Lily and Miss Minnie’s brother who died falling down a shaft, his foot missed its hold. Then, when the troubles began, many more. Mr. Ashworth from La Malinche was shot, and Mr. MacDuff died in the fire when they burned down the warehouse, he was hiding in it, and lots more—” She broke off. “That made people leave. Davey—?” she ventured, looking up at Eric as if in search of a resemblance, and reassurance.

  “He returned to Cornwall, to be with Paul,” Eric tried to explain the abandonment to her. Perhaps she came here every year, on this night, in the hope of seeing him. The thought was painful.

  Clearly she was still hurt. Determined, too, not to dwell on it or show it.

  “And you’ve come back,” she said, choosing to misunderstand. “I knew you would.”

  Eric wanted to ask her what he could bring her. He thought of everything the Mexican families came equipped with to provide los muertitos for the afterlife—tequila for the drunkards, cards for the gamblers, guitars for the musical, sugar lambs and chicks for los angelitos. He suddenly felt the limpness of the flowers he was still clutching and awkwardly proffered them. “I brought you flowers,” he mumbled shamefacedly: they did not seem at all the right ones for this young girl in her dress of pale blue tulle with its hem of pink roses—rather torn and tattered, he now noticed in the increasing pallid dawn light.

  She took them but seemed to agree with him about their unsuitability, giving a small formal smile like one who is accustomed to the obtuseness of men. Putting them down on the wall beside her, she went on, “Sometimes the Indians come, you know. They are pilgrims. They climb the mountain to pick the peyote cactus. It’s very special, they say. It grows only here,” she motioned at the mountain at her back, “so it’s sacred.”

  “I’ve heard of it—of the pilgrimage.”

  “And one crazy old woman—not Indian, from elsewhere—she comes, too.”

  “I know. I met her.”

  Again she appeared to take no notice of this news from the present world. “But the peyote gives her bad dreams, very bad. She doesn’t come anymore.”

  “But she talks about it a lot, the pilgrimage.”

  “Yes, and the Indians still come. They spend the night on the mountain. They collect peyote and eat it; it makes them dream.”

  “I’d like to try.”

  She gave him a slightly mocking look. “Then come,” she said, “come,” and rising
from the wall, turned and began to walk up the path, which was now a gray stream pouring through the dark volcanic rubble in that early light.

  Eric tried to follow. The wall stood between them. He intended to climb over and follow, but as he looked down for a foothold in order to do so, she disappeared. When he looked up to call and ask her to wait, he saw that she was gone. Although there was more light now than there had been before, he could see her nowhere on that barren hillside. She had left behind the chrysanthemums and they lay limp on the wall, devoid now of fragrance.

  There was only the melancholy tinkling of bells and a movement of the speckled stones that proved to be young goats that had come to graze. A shepherd boy, appearing among them, gave a long sharp whistle, which made them skip and skitter on their little hoofs.

  Below, in the town, the church bells began to ring. They rang and rang insistently, calling the dead back to their graves. The light grew brighter, the sun appeared, and everyone went streaming back to where they had come from.

  Acknowledgments

  THE AUTHOR IS GRATEFUL FOR TRAVEL GRANTS FROM THE Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and for hospitality from two writers’ retreats in Italy, the Santa Maddalena Foundation in Donnini (Firenze) and the Centro Studi Ligure in Bogliasco (Genova).

  Thanks are also due to the following publications for epigraph quotations.

  [>]: Charles Macomb Flandreu, Viva Mexico!, D. Appleton & Co., 1908 and 1937. University of Illinois Press, Urbana, © 1964 by the Board of Trustees, University of Urbana.

  [>]: Interview with Andre Breton by Rafael Heliodoro Valle in Universidad, no. 29, June 1938. Reprinted in Mexico en el Arte, 1986, and in a foreword by Susan Kismaric to a catalog of Manuel Alvarez’s photographs in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1997.

  [>], [>], [>]: Carl Sartorius, Mexico and the Mexicans, Darmstadt, London, New York, 1859, and F. A. Brockhaus Komm., Stuttgart, 1961.