The Mapmaker's Opera

by Bea Gonzalez

  “Bueno, tía, is that all then?” Sofia had asked, biting her bottom lip to keep from bursting into laughter at what was obviously a very serious attempt to instruct her on what she already knew, what she had known since she was old enough to promenade with family and friends along the Plaza Mayor, circling and then circling again around that square with its tufted laurel trees where the dance of the eyebrow was played out every Sunday night among Mérida’s young women and men and the not-so-young as well.

  Sofia had listened quietly out of respect for her aunt, who, although a little odd, a little antiquated in her ways, had a good heart, was full of noble intentions even if they often missed their mark. The poor woman was, in any case, usually not allowed to say much of anything in the company of the other women who ruled the house and Sofia was eager to let her talk. Compared to her mother and to her grandmother, especially, her aunt was a diamond in the rough. A bit teary, a bit superstitious, a bit sad, her life left largely unlived, condemned to be of service to a married sister who was much flightier, far less deserving of a fine husband and children than she herself was. And to be saddled with her sister’s mother-in-law to boot. Well! Yes, Sofia thinks, that alone could make the woman a saint! But then one cannot choose one’s destiny, one cannot rearrange the world to one’s taste. And even if Aunt Marta must suffer the company of Doña Laura, Sofia and the boys make the whole experience worthwhile for her in the end.

  Later, inside the safety of her bedroom, Sofia had shared the story with her friend Patricia, imitating her aunt with her knitting needles and her shawl, delivering the same speech complete with the emphatic admonitions, the pleas for decorum, the dance of the eyes. But Patricia was more interested in hearing about the Spaniard that had precipitated this lecture, wanted to know from Sofia just who he was and what her intentions with respect to him were.

  “My intentions? My intentions?” Sofia laughed. “Why, to hate him with all of my heart. Yes, to hate him because of his great good luck. Just think, he will be allowed to travel about the region with Mr. Nelson, observing birds while I remain here, stuck in Mérida with only my books to console me and those three women to drive me slowly and irremediably mad. Yes, I shall dislike him on principle although, to be sure,” she stopped then, winked broadly at Patricia, adopted a saucy smile, “the canijo Spaniard does have lovely eyes.”

  Patricia shrieked, shook her hands up and down. She was all excitement for her friend until she suddenly remembered something, stopped her joyful shaking and adopted a more sober note.

  “What about Carlos Blanco Torres, amiga? What are you going to do about him?”

  Sofia screwed her face up in displeasure, brought her finger to her lips, “Shush, Patricia, shush. You know that I don’t want to hear about that fool!” She covered her ears with her hands like she used to do when they were both children and she wanted to block out the world. “It is not my fault that ostrich wants something with me. I did not invite his hairy eye my way; I never wanted it at all. I have not once responded to that intense gaze of his, his habit of bursting into song. Ugh! I can only hope he tires of it all soon before the three madwomen of Mérida learn of it and force that fool upon me, arias, moustache and all.”

  “Bueno, Sofia,” Patricia said, sniffing loudly as if she felt suddenly aggrieved. “He is the eldest son of one of the most esteemed families in the region. Imagine the life you would have as his wife. Trips to Europe, the best box at the theatre, more diamonds than you have fingers, the French modistes at your beck and call.”

  “Por Dios, Patricia!” Sofia exclaimed. “The man is delirious with love for only himself. Look at the way he preens before everyone at the square.” Here she got up, walked up and down the room stiffly, held her nose high in the air, imitating the hapless young man. “ARGGGGHHH!” she screamed, then pushed both Patricia and herself onto the bed, where they both exploded into a fit of laughter. Oh, how good life was sometimes, how easy it was to put worries aside in the company of a good friend.

  “Bueno, bueno,” Patricia, said, still laughing as they continued to lie there, side by side on the bed. “But we’re not exactly young anymore you know. Girls are getting married all around us and here we are, not even a pretendiente but your Carlos in sight.”

  “Maybe,” Sofia answered, “but I am sure I will never marry Carlos Blanco Torres no matter how old or how desperate I become. Even if I had sores up and down my body and smelled like an old mare I would not marry him. Even if I knew that marrying him would guarantee the very existence of the world. No, no, never, never, never! ARGGGGHHHHH!” she screamed again, rolling herself and her friend now onto the floor, where they both exploded into a fit of laughter once more.

  “Niñas?” a gruff voice called from outside, bringing their laughter to an abrupt end. Sofia covered Patricia’s mouth with her hands, whispered to her to be quiet as she rose from the floor by the bed.

  “Niñas? What is going on in there, niñas?” The gruff voice demanded once again.

  “Nothing, Abuelita, nothing,” Sofia replied, running to stand behind the closed door. “We were laughing about something we saw earlier today. I am so sorry to have disturbed you. We will try to be more quiet, Abuela, I swear.”

  Harrumph came the reply and then Sofia waited, listened immobile to the shuffling of her grandmother’s feet as she slowly walked away.

  “I bet she was standing there by the door the whole time listening to us talk—the old cow!” Sofia whispered to her friend. She knew her grandmother was not above spying by the doors, listening to private conversations, trying to butt in where she was not needed or required, trying to dig up information to be used at a later point in time.

  Sofia thinks now of her own hiding place beneath the window of her room, the spot from which she spies on the three women as they chatter and sew, but does not feel a hint of remorse. That is different, she quickly tells herself, a very different kettle of fish indeed. After all, it is Sofia they are trying to marry off to some godforsaken fool, Sofia they want to sacrifice at the matrimonial altar and she must be prepared, must be watchful in order to ward off each coming assault.

  SCENE TWO

  Two birds

  Less than a kilometre away from Mérida a meeting is getting underway between the chief researcher of the Biological Survey of the United States Department of Agriculture, Edward Nelson, and one Victor Blanco, at one time the governor of the Yucatán, back in the days before the region had been split in two to make way for the southern state of Quintana Roo. Though his days as governor now lie in the past, Don Victor still possesses one of the largest henequen plantations in the whole of the Yucatán—over five thousand hectares of land with almost two thousand men, women and children under his command. With its own railway tracks, a chapel, a guesthouse that can accommodate more than fifty people at a time and the cultivated gardens that have given the hacienda the nickname of La pequeña Versailles, the plantation is almost a city in itself—a city, what is more, that boasts the latest inventions available in the grandest cities in the world: electric lights, washrooms with running water, large telephones that are used to call those on the other side of the vast hacienda or to conduct business with the henequen buyers up North. Whatever Don Victor desires he orders from all corners of the globe: tapestries from the Middle East, pianos from Germany, fine china from Limoges, the purest azafrán from La Mancha to use generously in the paellas that are cooked up in honour of his Spanish past.

  Yes, Don Victor has only one worry of any serious note: Carlos, his eldest son, a young man who has shown little aptitude for anything but an obsession with the opera, a love that has often taken him to London and New York in search of a production of the latest work by a favourite composer or the opportunity to see and hear a beloved tenor or soprano in the flesh. Yes, the boy seems intent on only one other thing aside from this—thwarting any number of fine marriages his mother has suggested and he has vigorously opposed. What a disappointment the young man was! A pelele, a clown,
with no clear direction, no ambitions, no plans of any kind. No interest in the henequen business either, no time for anything, in fact, that is not music and balls and being measured for those fussy English suits that are hideously unsuited to the tropics and which make him sweat in the most unbecoming of ways.

  But today he will think no more of this disappointment of a son who is, in any case, back in their house in Mérida, a mansion with marble walls, gold fixtures and a grand ballroom to entertain the very best Mexican families with multicourse meals and dancing until dawn. The house that has placed him fully inside the ranks of the Divine Caste, those five or six families who reign over every aspect of Yucatecan life, and to which all others bow in respect.

  Yes, for the moment he will put all thoughts of his miserable son to one side as he receives this Mr. Nelson, a naturalist, he has been told, a man who had spent more than a decade traversing the whole of Mexico classifying mammals and birds. The meeting had been requested months ago, but Don Victor is an extremely busy man, so much to do, so many matters before him and he has never, in any case, been above making others wait for his time. So much the better if that man is a gringo, and better yet, perfecto in fact, if it is a gringo with no power in the henequen trade.

  But first things first. This is Mexico and in Mexico business is always preceded by a bit of walk and talk, a drink or two, an entire meal if the visit demands it though no meal has been offered here because this Mr. Nelson does not merit such attention even if he is the chief researcher of the United States Biological this-and-that. The American will have to content himself with an offer of tea or a cold drink, some pastries at most, after which—so sorry, Mr. Nelson, but so many things to do, so many people to see—he will be politely shown the door.

  They take a tour of the grounds of the hacienda first—through the carefully polished gardens maintained by a team of Korean gardeners who spend their days pruning plants and trees into marvellous shapes. Inside the immense central house itself they walk through parlour after parlour—the music room with its grand piano, the billiards and games room, the library resplendent with row upon row of leather-bound books, formal sitting rooms of various sizes and shapes, a dining room with a table that seats more than fifty people, the office where Don Victor discusses matters of importance and that features a glass window from Tiffany’s in the shape of a magnificent Scarlet Macaw. “Astounding,” Edward Nelson declares, when faced with the resplendent glass bird, “astounding, to be sure.” But not, he thinks matter-of-factly as he turns away, nearly as astounding as those parrots of flesh and blood.

  The tour is capped by a visit to the adjoining factory where the henequen is processed by the latest steam-powered machines—motors made in Germany but the machine designed here by one of our own—and then a walk to the warehouse where the fibre is stored and transported to the coast on the train tracks that begin right there by the building’s back doors.

  It is an impressive operation, and Nelson is seeing only an infinitesimal part of the whole. “You understand, the grounds are too large for us to cover much in just one day, let alone in one short hour,” Don Victor explains apologetically because he has, throughout the course of the tour, begun to take a liking to this gentle, unassuming man.

  Nelson nods, nods as he has nodded during their journey through rooms full of Italian furniture, beautiful oriental rugs, fine oil paintings and marble statues of every size. Nods as he did when Don Victor stopped to point out his sizeable collection of antique guns from the days of Maximilian and further back even, guns from the days when Mexico was still New Spain. Nelson nods as he has nodded absent-mindedly through all of it, attempting to show the right amount of appreciation for things that do not, in truth, impress him at all.

  Don Victor is reassured by the American’s polite veneer, by his absent-mindedness, by the way in which he focuses on Don Victor’s every word, his manner reassuring his host that he has not made a mistake in allowing him in. For these are not the best of times to be traipsing about the hacienda with a curious foreigner in tow. Talk of revolution has been floating around in Mexico City and just two short months ago a group of insurgents had been thwarted right there in Mérida, caught with thirty-three sticks of dynamite and an ill-conceived plan and sent off to prison to rot for the rest of their lives. Yes, it pays to be careful these days especially around the Americans, forever passing judgment on the Mexicans, forever looking down at them with their hawkish eyes, ready to pounce on their southern neighbours in the name of liberty, democracy and many other such useless, self-serving words.

  But this man is different, Don Victor thinks. He is all gentleness, all grace. The American has the ability to make a man like Don Victor think himself an authority on things that are foreign to his understanding, like the natural world that is Nelson’s own area of concern.

  Don Victor now brings the tour to a halt. “A cup of tea, Señor Nelson?” Don Victor asks and then, noting the way the American is dabbing at the sweat on his forehead with a handkerchief, adds, “A cold drink, perhaps?”

  The handkerchief, Don Victor notes, is clean and pressed. It has to be admitted, this Nelson is quite elegant in his way, his appearance nothing like what Don Victor imagined of a man who spends his days roaming through forests and wading through streams.

  They sit down inside Don Victor’s luxurious office, where a team of servants mills about them with tea, hot chocolate, cold drinks of various kinds and European pastries made by the hacienda’s very own French chef, an ill-humoured man by the name of Monsieur Jacques who is forever casting aspersions on the quality of the local materials he is given to perform his very important work.

  “Cigar?” Don Victor asks, opening an engraved silver cigar box he has on his desk and offering it to the American, who shakes his head politely as he downs a glass of limonada instead.

  Perhaps he is not yet used to the heat, Don Victor thinks. Had he not heard the man had spent years in the frigid Arctic? The Yucatán would seem like hell itself in comparison to the temperatures in such a northern climate. But then again, what in the demonios did one do in a place like the Arctic? Only the English and the Americans seem determined to head to such northern latitudes. And good riddance too, Don Victor, thinks. With the American attention turned northwards, perhaps they would for once leave Mexico to her own devices.

  “This is not the most salubrious of climates, Mr. Nelson,” Don Victor says. “Many a person finds it hard to accustom himself to this whorish heat. But have you not lived here for many years now?”

  “Yes, I have,” Mr. Nelson responds, his Spanish soft, his voice as gentle as a bubbling stream. “Yes, I have,” he says again. “But my health is sometimes not the best and today is one of those days, I am afraid.” He brings the handkerchief up then and gently wipes the sweat from his face.

  “More limonada?” Don Victor asks, motioning to a young girl who appears immediately and quietly fills Nelson’s glass.

  A momentary silence follows as Don Victor smokes his cigar and Nelson drinks another glass of the limonada, hoping to calm the furious beating of his heart. From outside, the various sounds of the hacienda filter in—the humming of a thousand insects, the tink, tink of piano keys, the sharp voice of a music teacher, and, in the distance, the ever-present rumblings of the machinery that processes the henequen uninterrupted from morning until night.

  How to proceed? Nelson has had time to think about this, has plotted his approach carefully, but now that he has the man before him, he knows no amount of flattery (which he is no good at anyway) and no arguments in the name of science may suffice. If the rumours Nelson has heard are true, Don Victor is in possession of one of the most valuable things in the world, but can they really be true? Even now, sitting so close to the man, having been given a small tour of the massive wealth that is under his command, Nelson finds it hard to believe. And because he is no good at small talk, has never bothered to learn the rules that govern high society, does not know how to engage this m
an on his own turf, Nelson jumps in now and begins to laud the area’s birds—the motmots, the ibises, the hummingbirds, the owls and the terns. “So many precious birds,” Nelson says. “Do your people know how truly lucky they are to live under this extraordinary piece of the sky?”

  Don Victor nods in reply. Though he has only a passing interest in the area’s birds himself, he is most pleased at a foreigner travelling from so far to admire the beauty of his region of the earth.

  Nelson now asks him about his own collection, “I have heard, Don Victor, that you have one of the most splendid private aviaries in the whole of Mexico.”

  “Well, yes, one could say so, I suppose. But I am sure that a man who has spent his life studying birds in the wild could hardly be interested in whatever birds I may have locked up in a cage in the back, no?”

  “On the contrary, Don Victor. I am interested in birds of all types and in all situations—in cages, in treetops, out in the open sky.”

  “Very well then, Mr. Nelson. Come to think of it, I would be very interested in your opinion of my collection, in fact.”

  They walk in silence past the cultured gardens to the aviary at the back that does indeed contain a collection of spectacular birds—a variety of toucans, macaws, hummingbirds, kingfishers, finches and even some species native to Africa that Nelson has never seen, such as a pair each of Lilac-Breasted Rollers and Bronze-Winged Manikins.

  “Astounding,” he says, staring up as the birds fly and swoop and land, and Don Victor is struck by how the naturalist’s eyes have suddenly ignited, how he has stopped sweating, how he seems lost suddenly in a state of reverie, much like a mystic standing in the presence of God. Is this how passion infects the body, invades the heart? Don Victor thinks, for he has never felt captive to such a strong emotion himself. He has seen his share of dramas and disappointments, to be sure, but he does not have a consuming life obsession, feels some envy suddenly for this unassuming man who stands before him, his eyes searching the room in delight.