The Mapmaker's Opera

by Bea Gonzalez

  And then, just moments later, the doors did open suddenly, willed by his mother from the grave, Diego thought in the confusion of the moment as he watched a man emerge—the other Diego as it turned out—he of the short neck and the weak chin, who stopped only to give the young man a dismissive look, ignorant of the fact that they were related by blood.

  “Excuse me,” Diego said, bowing his head towards his half-brother ever so slightly, scurrying away quickly before further words could be exchanged.

  Seven days passed and it was Great-uncle Alfonso’s turn to leave the worm-worn, blasted earth, the misery of existence, the wretched farce of having to act like life mattered and how could it matter when you were like him, stuck in an attic, with no hope of getting down, no hope of watching life unfold. It was only fitting that he should last one more week, it seemed to him—one week more of life than la Señorita Mónica and it was in fact her death that armed him with the anger needed to continue living seven days more than his fill.

  “You had to get there first. Always getting the upper hand on things. Always getting your way,” he said to the wall, his voice a whisper, his words marred by bitterness and regret.

  And so it was that at the age of twenty-five, Diego Clemente found himself completely alone in the world, save for the man who had been lingering in the shadows, emerging only to guide the young Diego towards his greater destiny, a destiny where nothing was certain yet, neither the ground that he would walk on nor the direction he would turn.

  It was now el Señor Raleigh’s turn to take center stage. Almost eighty but still vibrant, a bass blessed with the timbre of God himself, a man with the demeanor of a wizard, the evidence of a life well lived on his face, he urged Diego to take a seat. He was about to sing of important things—he would tell of the Age of Discovery and of oceans traversed, those conscious and those as yet unlit. He would speak in metaphors, with mysterious words, his passion igniting the exposition until it would be impossible for Diego to tear his eyes from the older man’s face. He would sing of the future. “Diego, sí, the future, your future, for when one door closes another one opens, when one fire dies another one ignites close by,” and to prove this point completely, the old man now unfurled the map he held in his hands.

  “Here, my friend, lies an opportunity the likes of which you have never seen.” He traced a line that began at the banks of the Guadalquivir, crossed an ocean and stopped at the tail of a great and wondrous beast. “America,” he said, “the Mondo Novus, the great behemoth, that breathtaking, unpredictable New World.

  “Sit, sit,” he insisted. “I am about to speak of a beautiful part of this world, a region of Mexico known as the Yucatán, the southeastern point of this vast and varied nation that once was known as New Spain.”

  Together they traced with their fingers the outline of this land, mythical, mysterious, a still-uncharted dot on Diego’s personal map. Here he learned its true dimensions for the first time, traced its contours, imbibed its borders and in his mind inhaled the air that lay waiting on the other side. The tail of North America, a limestone shelf, the dwelling of the ancient Maya who built pyramids that today awe us still. A mythical land, let us not forget this, for it is entirely possible that something can exist in reality and still assume a very different shape in our minds. And the birds, ah the birds, Diego—look here, el Señor Raleigh had clearly saved the best for last.

  “The birds, Diego, how can I possibly hope to describe the birds? Birds with tails that will bewitch you, birds of a thousand colours and beaks of every shape and mien. Birds the likes of which you have never seen before and which will thrill you to the core of your being.”

  And once he had finished describing the area’s wonders, once he had filled Diego’s mind with a thirst he had not recognized was his but which now seemed unquenchable, el Señor Raleigh moved in for the kill.

  “There is an American, Diego, a very clever man, a man full of passion, a dear friend who has been living in the region attempting to catalogue the area’s birds for the American Biological Survey—a man by the name of Edward Nelson, who is in need of an assistant, as it turns out. I have written to him about you, told him of your talent with paint and brush and he is eager, Diego, that you should join him in that region to help him with his monumental task.”

  It would take some months before Diego could set out, armed with a modest sum of money he derived from the sale of the house and store, armed with the enthusiasm of those who have traversed the ocean before—immigrants of all shapes and beliefs, eager to leave their memories, their disappointments behind.

  He would learn all that he could in Seville about the land that was to become his home but there was much he could not hope to know. He learned, for example, about the dimensions of the Yucatán Peninsula, could see the land delineated clearly on one of his beloved maps, found himself tracing the shoreline of the peninsula with an eager finger, from the edge that bordered the dull aquamarine of the Gulf of Mexico on the west and north, to the sparkling blue Caribbean Sea to the east. He tried to imagine the porous limestone that covered the peninsula, and the underground rivers and natural wells that provided water for this scorched region of the earth. He found himself planning his every move before leaving Spanish shores, found himself envisioning how the whole of his life would unfold, weighing this possibility and that without having first had the decency to crouch down and kiss Mexican soil.

  But then it is the curse of the immigrant, is it not? To forever be placing a foot on land unseen, forging a life’s path from faraway, guided by dreams of what will be, ignorant still of the power of what will soon be left behind.

  Yes, Diego was hungry for the land that had now rooted itself in his dreams and he ventured forward towards his fate with determination and few regrets.

  So it is that we turn our gaze westward now, across an ocean, towards the doorstep of Mexico, on the eve of 1909, as eager as Diego to open the door and walk in.

  ACT TWO

  SCENE ONE

  In a Mérida square

  Let us now take a moment to revisit the map.

  Inside an imposing monastery cradled by the verdant mountains near Madrid, an aging Spanish king is attempting to chart a future for the empire he holds firmly under his command. It is 1588 and Philip II is just moments away from launching the ill-fated Armada against the English and their Protestant God. But on this day the king is thinking not of his future conquests, or of the military strategies that are to be adopted in the coming naval assault. Seated in the library of the El Escorial monastery, beneath a ceiling covered in the sumptuous frescoes painted by Zuccaro, Tibaldi and Cambiaso, surrounded by the finest collection of Arabic writing in the world, King Philip is at this moment thinking not of future wars, but of his desire to know the dimension of his realm.

  Is an empire real if you cannot see it? This is the question that torments him most. He has read the exploits of the conquistadores, has heard the stories of those men who had ventured forth into the New World, but what are its dimensions, how does it feel, look and smell? He wants, needs to unearth all the nooks and corners that belong to Spain, to make his realm visible to himself and to the world. Almost a century earlier, his own great-grandparents, Ferdinand and Isabella, had travelled through their fragmented realm with the intent of claiming with their presence what rightfully belonged to them. But things are no longer the same. The Spanish realm is no longer confined to a land traversable by horse and carriage. Now it is an empire stretching across an ocean that takes upwards of three months to cross and embracing the Low Countries, with France in between, as hostile a barrier as any midnight ocean ever was.

  Philip thinks once more of summoning his cartographers to his side to demand they explain why it is they cannot unearth the dimensions of this new land. The king does not wish to hear of the difficulties they have encountered in undertaking such a task. None of his cartographers have set foot on these distant shores; none of them have witnessed for themselves the colour an
d feel of the land, the sound the waves make as they crash into these coasts. Instead, they have sent questionnaires with sailors and merchants, hoping to amass the information they need from these men who travel to the New World and back.

  So far, the questionnaires have yielded little information that could be put to use in the creation of a master map. The local officials who fill them out rely on the native population to help them navigate the intricacies of the local space—indios who speak only Otomi, Cuicatec and Nahuatl. Moreover, these men have their own understanding of physical space, have found their own ways to map their surroundings, one that does not use the Euclidian or Albertian projections of the Europeans to make sense of space.

  And so the king waits in vain. The years pass, one cartographer dies, another is put in charge of the master map upon the first’s death. Information trickles in, bit by excruciating bit—descriptions of the flora and fauna, sketches of hills and valleys, innumerable and often exotic symbols that confuse those who try to make sense of them back in Spain. Sadly, Philip’s eyes will never feast on an accurate drawing of the vastness of his realm. Instead, he will be a witness to the disaster that is about to befall him. The Armada. The beginning of the end for the most vast empire the world had yet seen.

  And now we turn our eyes towards another map, the one drawn more than three hundred years later by Diego Clemente—the score to this opera, which begins anew on the other side of the world. Tracing a line with a finger we begin where Diego embarked and then move slowly west—from the Old World to the New—across the once-indomitable Atlantic Ocean until we arrive at the spectacular Mexican city of Veracruz. We note the symbol that marks the spot on the map, marvel at how different everything already looks. In Veracruz the muted yellows and pinks of Diego’s native Spain have become ardent oranges and reds: the colour of tropical fruit—the spiky green grooves of the guanábana, the yellow flesh of the black zapote, the vibrant red of the pitaya fruit. What was once lively is more vibrant still; the strokes of Diego’s brush are bolder, proof of how the New World has intoxicated him with colour and sound and, as we shall soon see, with his first glimpse of true love.

  Although he would stay only a day, it was here, on the seductive shores of Veracruz, that Mexico first entered Diego’s body, weaving its way through until it had thoroughly saturated liver, stomach and heart, until it reduced him to a pitiful wreck, an awe-struck boy all drool and nerves trembling at the sight of this astounding land, a land that had existed only in his imagination but which seemed infinitely more magnificent in the flesh.

  Though it would eventually drive him to his knees, the truth of the matter was that the country first entered Diego Clemente’s unsuspecting body by way of his nose. For the rest of his days he would insist on this, swear that he had smelled the country before he had ever placed a foot on her soil. That in the steamship, with the outline of land still blurry and his eyes tightly closed, a melody of scents led by mango, vanilla and red rose had drifted over him, beckoning him irresistibly forward towards his new home.

  Those who heard his claim called him a fantasioso—a weaver of fantasies—because vamos hombre, they guffawed, do you not know that the city of Jalapa is too far from the port of Veracruz to have provided you with its floral scent, that mangoes do not grow by the side of the sea, nor do vanilla beans sprout from musty wharves? But Diego Clemente would insist on his fragrant memories, like all madmen insist on their skewed perceptions of things. Later, he would add to these first memories only a single heartfelt lament, and that was that he had not encountered one of those mermaids who had once lured his ancestors to the New World—men bent on conquests of gold, yes, but equally bent on seducing those wondrous beings, said to possess green hair and large eyes and capable of stripping men of their souls with just one note of their singular songs. There had been no mermaids waiting on the coasts of Veracruz, he would admit and, admitting it, would lose himself inside one of the stories told by el Señor Raleigh. This time, it was the one about Martin Behaim’s Erdapfel, the world’s oldest existing terrestrial globe where the only mermaids to be found appeared near the Cape Verde Islands, far from the then-as-yet-undiscovered Mexican shores. No, there were no mermaids, he would say shaking his head, but he would insist—just as improbably—on having been greeted by that melody of mango, vanilla and red rose.

  But it is time now to move from the program notes and onto the stage, time to abandon the reminiscing about kings long dead, for the curtain is rising and the tempo of the music is slowing, signalling to all that the action is to commence once again.

  Applaud now, señores, applaud, for we have arrived in the Yucatán Peninsula, the eastern point of the Mexican tail, bounded to the east by the azure waters of the Caribbean Sea and to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, shores that once witnessed the arrival of Hernán Cortés, the first Spanish conquistador. A land of limestone and cenotes, of hidden jungle cities fashioned from engraved rock, a world of windmills and cacti and birds of every hue and call. Magnificent, in a word, and to prove it, just look, for before us now lies Mérida’s Plaza Mayor, the city’s main square, polished and spectacular as if time has not weathered the sacred rock of the cathedral nor the enormous ceiba trees that provide much-needed shade during the hottest hours of the day.

  We feast on the contrast of colours—the resplendent white of the stone, the brilliant blue of the sky, the intense green of the tufted laurel trees that stand erect in the windless, midday sun. We watch mesmerized as the women, dressed in their pastel muslin dresses and their English hats trimmed with Belgian lace, promenade counterclockwise around the square, stealing furtive looks at the young men who promenade in the opposite direction, laughing as they inspect the young women with open, confident stares.

  On the outside benches of the square sit the town’s officials—on the west side, the mayor in his white suit and Panama hat and, sitting next to him, the judge and the chief politicians discussing the day’s events and the news that travels to their city, belatedly, they complain, from Mexico City and abroad. Across from them, on the other side of the square, sit the local hacendados, the henequen barons who have transformed this once sleepy city into one of the most astounding in the whole of the world. Keep moving now, for as you make your way farther, into the centre, the light changes and so does the colour of the faces that have congregated there on this glorious Sunday in December 1909. On the first inside ring are the mestizos, those who can claim both Mayan and Spanish blood; respectable, yes, but men and women who can boast of few of the privileges accorded to those with the white faces who encircle them on the square. Move into the centre itself and you will find those who can boast of even less, the pure-blood Mayans, the women dressed in their beautiful huipils, the men dignified in their guayaberas and matching white pants.

  Notice now the cleanliness of the square, how everything shines, the stately street lamps that will be lit at sunset, the elegance of the calesas, the horse-drawn carriages that wait nearby.

  And the sounds! What is Mexico without music, without mariachis and rancheras and even the waltzes and polkas borrowed from other cultures, which take on an added effervescence here, becoming not so much music of palaces but of longing and of life? On the east side of the square, a band is playing such music to scattered applause. Talk and laughter fill the air as well, a din punctuated by the occasional poom of a firecracker that is set off by a young child to the delight of his friends and the censorious look of an unmarried aunt, tight-lipped, who watches out of the corner of her eye.

  Now look more closely still, for there are other things you should notice as well. Those things that will have grave consequences for how this story will play out in the end. Like over there, stage left, for instance—notice those young men dressed in black with the look of romantic poets, their frames emaciated, their faces pale, intellectuals oblivious to the revelry and the celebration that is taking place all around them as they discuss sotto voce the sorry state of the country under the shade of
a generous palm. Remember them, keep them ready in a corner of your mind, for they are not as much “fifth business” as harbingers of the change that is in the air already, waiting, suspended, for the explosion that will take place in Mexico City almost a year from this day.

  But for now all is perfection: the heat which has not yet reached the opprobrious levels that will make breathing difficult in two or three months’ time; the beauty of the women, which has not wilted in the midday sun; the confidence with which the portly men inhale the smoke from their fine Cuban cigars; the cigars that arrive in those cedar boxes that the less-privileged sons of the region, those who toil in the fields from dawn until dark, find and hoard—the perfect toy that opens and closes and retains for years the perfume of the wood and the tobacco it once sheltered inside. Yes, for now, things could not be better, for it is a Sunday and the Mass has just been heard and the midday meal of four courses will follow and then a game of billiards for the men, an afternoon of gossip for the women, who will sit in the splendid gardens of their haciendas arranging the marriages between their various daughters and sons.

  Into this idyllic scene strolls our hero, Diego Clemente, traipsing about the square as if lost in a dream. Can you believe it, he is asking himself, can you believe you have finally arrived? It is true—he has to pinch himself now and then, incredulous at his own good fortune, at the feast that lies before his eyes, this magnificent square, this perfect day, the astounding beauty of the many birds that grace the sky.