The Mapmaker's Opera

by Bea Gonzalez

  And there they are now, the three women, huddled together in the courtyard like three bees on a flower, dreaming up, no doubt, yet another one of their improbable plans. Yes, there is her mother seated on the far left, buzzing away as usual, with that vacant look in her eyes. And seated next to her, Our Lady of Bitterness herself, Sofia’s grandmother, her lips pursed as tight as a miser’s fist. Finally, as always, seated next to fu and fa, is her Aunt Marta, a pair of crochet hooks in her hands.

  It was Aunt Marta who usually defended Sofia against Doña Laura’s tirades, who tried to offer up excuses for the girl’s refusal to consider any men the older women suggest. “Bueno, Doña Laura,” she would say, “the girl has not descended into the lower registers yet. She is still young, still vibrant, can and does attract the eye of many a man in town. But just look at the men who are wandering about! It is not her fault that they are a collection of ostriches, strutting and preening, seeking to find only their own reflections in a young girl’s eye.”

  “What nonsense you speak, Marta, what bobadas indeed!” Doña Laura would reply, “There are men of all kinds in Mérida, as there are everywhere else in the world. The fault lies not with the men but with Sofia herself.” And then the old lady would embark upon a litany of Sofia’s faults—disrespectful, proud, combative, picky to a fault—a litany interrupted more often than not by Gabriela, who had not been listening to a single word of their exchange and who would launch, incomprehensibly, into a detailed account of all the happenings in the house of Doña this or Doña that, what their children were up to and what their servants had been saying around town—and “Have I told you of the purchase they made just yesterday? A ham the size of a boulder—a boulder, sister, I do not exaggerate at all” and on and on she would go, chit-chat, chitchat, chugging like a freight train, ignoring her mother-in-law’s irritation, her sister’s raised eyebrows, until she ran clean out of steam and came abruptly to a stop.

  Yes, there they all are now, together in spite of how poorly they get along, complaining and sewing their way through another long hot afternoon. Thankfully, Mr. Nelson and his two assistants arrive just then, stopping to pay their respects to the women as the servants attend to their baggage and then guide the men to the office where Don Roberto is waiting for them.

  Ah, freedom has arrived, Sofia thinks. Freedom and something else—excitement perhaps? No, she erases this thought quickly from her mind. Of course I am happy to see Mr. Nelson, she tells herself, he is a most prized teacher, and Very Useful is a most entertaining man. As for Diego Clemente—she will be watching the usurper carefully this time, gauging what kind of man has been lucky enough to assume the position she so wants for herself. For now, she is content to dwell on the opportunities that will present themselves during the visit from these men—opportunities to learn, to discuss, to wander into nature with field glasses and paints, opportunities to escape the boredom of the long afternoons with the three older women of the house, of being forced to play the warped piano as all good Mexican young ladies do, with decorum, with restraint, ever mindful that the mastery of music and embroidery are a vital route to a young man’s heart.

  *

  Inside the hacienda’s study, two old friends are taking turns discussing the afflictions that are accosting them with each passing year. Edward William Nelson, distinguished naturalist, noted ethnologist, known to the Bering Sea Eskimo as “the man who buys good-for-nothing things” because he had purchased from them as many of the bits and pieces of their lives as he could—boat hooks, ceremonial masks, ptarmigan snare sticks, fish traps, grass socks—over ten thousand pieces in all, each lovingly packaged and sent back to the Smithsonian Institution to be conserved there for all time. Edward Nelson, once vigour-filled, imbued with an almost superhuman strength, is of late feeling as if bits of himself are slowly drifting away. He thinks back wistfully to his days in the Arctic, the energy he had back then, the little thought he had given to making his way by dogsled and bidarka across the barren ice shelves into the Yukon Delta and the interior of Alaska, camping in often inhospitable territory in order to study any number of things—fish, butterflies, the breeding habits of the magnificent emperor goose. But those had been very different days indeed. Yes, back then Nelson had basked in the luxury of youth, could still boast good health, had been armed with the certainty that what he was doing would prove of lasting value to the world.

  These days nothing is imbued with certainty anymore. Time has changed all things and now he feels battered, weathered, exhausted beyond his years. Right and wrong have blurred into one, the shadows he had once easily ignored have been illuminated, there are no clear lines of demarcation to be found anymore. The earth has melded into the ocean; all the lines on the map have blurred. What a curse to be burdened with memories; how difficult it was to feel so weighed down with uncertainty when he could still so easily remember his younger more buoyant days.

  “Imagine,” Nelson says to his friend, “it feels as if it was only yesterday that I was approaching the coast of western Alaska for the first time, glimpsing a bit of heaven in the gorgeous colours of the night-sea sky. Along the northern horizon, as the sun crept just out of sight, lay a bank of broken clouds tinged fiery red and edged with golden and purple light. In all my subsequent years in the Arctic I would never see such a beautiful sky again, and now I ask myself—was it really that beautiful or did I perceive it as such because I had come upon it innocently for the very first time?”

  Duarte smiles. “Is that not the question we all ask ourselves, my dear friend? Is this not what makes each passing year a torture, the realization that we are trapped inside an aging vessel but think ourselves young boys still, no matter the evidence to the contrary, no matter the silly figures we cut? Yes, old age is a curse, my friend, a curse as wicked as those uttered by a witch’s mouth.”

  “I have begun of late to wonder, Roberto,” Nelson confesses after a pause, “whether I will be able to complete the work on the bird guide. It seemed a worthy idea at the time but I am now sinking in a sea of doubt. There is much to do back in my own country, so much research to catalogue, so many worthy projects to embark upon. And my revisiting Mexico four years after my work for the Biological Survey was completed seems foolish to me now. An attempt to relive experiences from another time.” He drifts into silence then, lowers his eyes, inhales deeply as if he were trying with that breath to erase each of his doubts.

  “A man cannot be blamed for wishing to relive his youth in some shape or form, Edward,” Duarte hurries to assure him, “after all, we are older, yes, but still not hovering over the precipice of death itself. Ánimo, mi amigo, ánimo! Perhaps what you are experiencing is nothing more than a momentary slump.”

  “I fear it is not, Roberto. I fear this is something quite different indeed. A bend in the road. My own dark night of the soul.”

  The men fall silent for a moment. Outside, they can hear the voices of Don Roberto’s two youngest sons, arguing over a game of cards.

  “And then there is the issue of those two birds,” Nelson says.

  “Two birds? What two birds do you mean?”

  “A pair of Passenger Pigeons, Roberto, a pair held captive right here in the Yucatán.”

  “Surely you jest, Edward! Who could possibly have those birds on their hands?”

  “A man by the name of Victor Blanco.”

  “Victor Blanco?” Duarte repeats, surprise in his voice. Later, alone in the privacy of his bedroom, he will chastise himself for having expressed even a hint of surprise. Of course it was Victor Blanco, who else could it be? A man who has everything, who lives in a state of constant restlessness, forever in search of a way to quell his acquisitive thirst—art, land, jewels and now, it seems, even a pair of endangered birds.

  He thinks then of what his friend Edward Nelson does not know about his life, the things that pertain to the hacienda, for example, to all matters relating to the cultivation and sale of the henequen. The two men share a love of natur
e, have travelled through the region together on many occasions in search of a trogon, a man-akin, a weasel or a bat. They have compared notes, gloried in scenes of spectacular beauty, but they have never, during the eighteen years they have known each other, discussed any details of Roberto Duarte’s life.

  Would it surprise Nelson to learn then that there is a rope that binds Roberto to this Victor Blanco? Would he be surprised to hear the extent to which Roberto is so penuriously in Don Victor’s debt? Edward has arrived in the Yucatán to document the wildlife of the region, to produce a written testament to the natural riches of this blessedly beautiful area. He knows much about animals, about plants, can recite the scientific properties of the Agave fourcroydes in his sleep, but he knows little of how this plant makes its way from the Yucatán to the plains of the American South.

  He does not know, for example, that a few men control all aspects of the henequen trade in the region, Don Victor Blanco being one of them. He does not know that it is these men who own the export houses, it is these men who make the deals with the buyers, it is these men who channel the capital loaned to them by the Americans to the small hacendados, such as Roberto Duarte, but only on their terms and always at usurious rates.

  Five years later, these larger landowners will be referred to derisively by the Revolution’s General Alvarado as the “divine caste,” ever intent on consolidating their landholdings, consolidating their wealth. And how easy the lesser landowners make their task for them, assuming increasingly greater debt just so they can own the trappings of power exhibited by the members of this almost superior race—the jewellery, the houses designed by European architects, the automobiles and the yachts. One by one, the smaller landowners collapse tinder the weight of their debts, are left with no option but to surrender their henequen haciendas to the likes of Don Victor Blanco, who show no mercy in calling in their loans.

  Every fourth Saturday, Roberto Duarte appears at the company of this Don Victor Blanco and sells his henequen for a half or even a quarter of the going rate. It was Don Victor who had advanced him the funds to convert his hacienda to the cultivation of henequen back in 1891 and Don Victor who advanced him capital to keep his Mérida bookstore afloat as well. So it is that as the henequen magnates in the Yucatán reap the extraordinary benefits of the furious demand for rope, as they bask in the profits of a plant growing dearer with each passing day, Roberto Duarte sinks evermore into a morass of his own making, humiliating himself at the doorsteps of Don Victor’s company, trying to unload his fibre in an effort to pay his own accumulating debts.

  “Sorry, my friends, we already have more than we can use,” Don Victor’s men tell those who line up there on Saturdays, those who, like Roberto, find themselves indebted up to their very ears and who can find no way out of their predicament except to come here to peddle their wares.

  Ah, but he is a generous man, this Don Victor, and after much shaking of heads, and many jovial apologies, “No, really, we cannot buy any more. Sorry, really sorry we are,” inevitably, there is a change of heart. “Because how can I not help you, my friends, my compadres, each and every one of you, and friends are here for each other, no?” Don Victor himself will say, appearing before them now in his white linen suit, a cigar hanging from his lips. “Perhaps we can unload the fibre in the next shipment. Yes, yes, I will see that it is done. But it will prove impossible to unload it at your prices, eh? No, señores, you too have to give a little back. To unload this much fibre we need you to cooperate as well,” he says and then proceeds to offer to take their henequen off their hands for a fraction of what it is worth. Many families have already lost their haciendas, have been unable to hang on after a bad harvest, have succumbed to their own indebtedness, their own inability to live within their means.

  Roberto Duarte has miraculously found a way to hang on. In some ways, Roberto’s fortunes parallel those of Mexico herself. Consider the nation’s capital, Mexico City, for a moment and you will see what we mean. In 1803 no less a man than Alexander von Humboldt could already declare it the most beautiful city founded by the Europeans in any hemisphere, but beauty does not feed mouths or cure the sick. Consider the city’s location, over two thousand metres above the sea, caged in by mountains and volcanoes, prone to earthquakes, sinking evermore into the moist subsoil on which it sits. This city is not a city, it is a catastrophe waiting to unleash.

  And yet.

  Two hundred years after von Humboldt inhaled the air, untarnished as of yet by pollution and waste, the city stands grander than ever, the beauty still there, the disasters kept mostly at bay.

  Consider then the Yucatán itself, a limestone ledge with its poor soil, its few forests, no hills and little rain. Consider its location, miles and miles from the centre of things. Consider the difficulties encountered in even the simple act of growing beans and maize.

  And yet.

  It is this limestone rock that the Maya used to build their spectacular jungle cities, a source of awe still to those who travel from all corners of the globe to admire these miracles of stone. And it is on this arid piece of the earth too that a plant worth its weight in gold not only thrived, it transformed a region into a haven for some of the most spectacular fortunes in the world.

  Yes, so far Roberto Duarte has managed to avoid losing his hacienda, has managed to hang on by a tenuous thread. But times are changing, his luck is fading, things will soon be coming to a head.

  It is true, he thinks to himself, as Edward Nelson, with anguish in his heart, speaks of those two birds, there is a lot my friend does not know about my life. Roberto Duarte considers the possibility that perhaps his friend prefers to remain in the dark. After all, there are many who abhor the system of slavery that allows the region to reap the extraordinary profits from the henequen. Roberto himself does not venture to think much about the issue. Things are as they are, he thinks, they are as they have been for centuries now. Since time immemorial there have been masters and those who live tinder their protection and command. Thinking too deeply about such things will not prove useful in the least, not when the world is full of much more interesting things—his birds, his books, the many interests he has in all manner of things—bells, metallurgy, French literature and, lately, a new interest—the Eskimo of the Bering Sea.

  Yes, he thinks, looking at his friend’s crumbling gait, the exhaustion that is stamped across his face, it would be better to keep his own relationship to Victor Blanco to himself. There is much in life to speak of, to share—why sully it with a moment of darkness, a reminder of all the rot that lies beneath the surface, always threatening to rise up.

  *

  On the other side of the house, inside the parlour with the distended piano, a dead great-aunt’s armoire, mismatched tables and chairs and dozens of potted plants—reed palms, jasmine, scented geraniums, red ivy, lilac, narcissus and hyacinths, all tended to by the voluble Gabriela, with a tenderness her children have rarely been privy to—in this parlour of shabby furniture and luxuriant plants, seated upon badly upholstered chairs, are Very Useful, Diego, Sofia and Aunt Marta. Crochet hooks as always in hand, she is there as chaperone for the young man and woman who are engaged at this moment in a most curious exchange of words.

  “A congregation of plovers,” Sofia is saying, a spark in her eye.

  “A cover of coots,” the young man replies.

  “A dole of doves!”

  “A fall of woodcocks.”

  ‘A murder of crows!”

  “Bueno, bueno,” Aunt Marta jumps in, putting crochet needles aside, mouth twisted, perplexed eyes opened wide. “What is this nonsense you two are speaking about?”

  “A peep of chickens!” Sofia says, laughing heartily, ignoring her aunt.

  “A siege of pigeons,” Diego replies, smiling wide.

  ‘A parliament of owls!”

  “A muster of storks.”

  “Stop, niños, stop!” Aunt Marta cries out. “I am asking you again to tell me what in God’s earth all th
is talk is about.”

  “Allow me to explain, Doña Marta,” Very Useful jumps in, wiping some juice from the mango he has been feasting on from his chin. “The young people are engaging in one of Mr. Nelson’s favourite pastimes. My patrón, you see, has a genuine fondness for language and likes nothing more than to unearth improbable words used for a particular group of birds.”

  “Aaaahhh,” Aunt Marta replies, head cocked, curiosity now sufficiently quenched. Then, not knowing what else to say, she returns to her crocheting, dismissing the affair entirely with a quick shake of the head.

  “A wedge of swans!” Sofia continues.

  “An unkindness of ravens,” Diego retorts.

  “A wisp of snipe!”

  “A murmuration of jays.”

  “Aha!” Sofia screams out. “It is not, Señor Diego, a murmuration of jays as you say but rather a murmuration of starlings instead.”

  Diego brings his hand up to his forehead, slaps it loudly, shakes his head back and forth. “Of course. A murmuration of starlings, of course! You win, Señorita Sofia, but you must admit that you have had an enormous head start. I have been learning these terms for only three months while you have been learning them all your life.”

  “I will grant you that, Señor Diego, though only grudgingly. I hope you understand.”

  A silence follows as the young people lower their eyes and Very Useful fixes his own on the basket of tropical fruit that rests nearby “Tamarinds, plums, guavas, mameys,” he exclaims, “what a wonderful assortment of our region’s riches we have here today.” He offers the basket to the others, each of whom declines in turn.

  “Mr. Nelson tells me you are a very talented artist, Señorita Sofia,” Diego says.

  “He does?” Sofia answers eagerly, too eagerly she immediately thinks, as a blush creeps up her face. She quickly adds, “Mr. Nelson is very kind,” in a tone that indicates she does not for a moment believe the older man’s words.