by Bea Gonzalez
And there he is now—inside the great Mérida cathedral attending a Mass in the name of the Virgen of Guadalupe, the great heroine of the people, carried from Spain by Cortés himself, and adopted by the Mexicans, who promptly gave her dark skin and cast her in a central role as the nation’s very own patron saint. Inside the cathedral on this December twelfth of 1910, while in a distant capital city a dictator lives out the last days of his regime, the people have come together for this most sacred affair—a celebration unlike any other. Dozens of priests are in attendance, a bishop, two governors and all the illustrious families of the region dressed in the sumptuous finery recently ordered from the couturiers of Paris. There, too, scattered throughout the less hallowed places of the cavernous cathedral nave, are all the players in the story that has brought us here on this day.
On the left stands a bespectacled Mr. Nelson. He is flanked on one side by a jovial Very Useful, dressed in his usual attire of bright oranges and greens, and on the other by Diego Clemente, groomed to perfection on this day though his hair remains unfashionably long and he has not yet adopted the moustache that is all the rage with the dandies of the town. As a chorus sings its heavenly music in the background, Diego furiously scans the crowd.
Who is he looking for? Surely you need not ask! It is of course Sofia, that rare bird who at this moment lies hidden from sight, lost amidst the throngs that have packed this cathedral today, from the splendid altar to the imposing doors.
Well ahead, in the pews reserved for the most glorious of the glorious, sit some of the members of the more illustrious families—Don Victor Blanco for one, boredom in his eyes, and next to him his long-nosed, phlegmatic wife, Doña Alicia, sitting stiffly, bedecked from head to toes in diamonds and silk. Next to her, their son Carlos, dressed in one of his impeccable English suits, his bowler hat placed respectfully beside him, his eyes closed as he listens enchanted to the chorus singing from above. Scattered all around them are the other members of Mérida’s upper crust—the Medinas, Villarreales, Peniches, Molinas, and de la Cruzes.
On the other side of the cathedral, seated well back from the dignitaries, are Roberto Duarte and his wife, Gabriela, sons Bernardo and Juan, who are seated between them, and in the pew behind the four are Aunt Marta, Doña Laura and Sofia. She is dressed in an elegant pale blue dress, a dress that will be abandoned later as she dons a more spectacular gown, a gown that has caused a furor in the Duarte household of a kind usually reserved for more serious affairs. Doña Laura is at this moment poking at her granddaughter, trying to iron her dress with the back of her palm, ignoring the frowns that greet her every pull and tug, defiant in the face of Sofia’s obvious distress.
Every so often the young woman looks about the cathedral, tries to spot Mr. Nelson and his assistants, only to be repeatedly thwarted in her quest. The people are packed chin to chin on this day, they are like leaves on a laurel tree, thick, crowded, obscuring all manner of treasures from view.
Defeated in her attempts, Sofia thinks now of how things have changed over the past year. From boredom to triumph. Where once she had nothing to look forward to but the morning hours spent at a bookstore, dreaming of all the possibilities that were denied to her, now she can look forward to outings in the field, as a valued contributor to Mr. Nelson’s last project in the Yucatán.
There has been much arguing in the household about Sofia’s participation in the venture since it had been suggested during the first visit Diego Clemente had made to their hacienda. It had been Doña Laura who, predictably, opposed it with the most vehemence, challenging her son as she had never done before, convinced that an already suspect reputation would now be ruined for good.
“What are the people of Mérida to think about a decent girl traipsing about the mud with a group of badly dressed lunatics in tow?” she had asked, despair in her words. Her son tried to reason with her, but there would be no convincing her, no way to make her see the importance of their work.
To Doña Laura’s dismay, her son had held his ground. He had made a promise to a friend and was determined to keep it, no matter how vehemently it was opposed by the others in his house. It is true, his wife had expressed her own doubts about Sofia’s participation in the project, had voiced opinions similar to those of his mother but she had at least acquiesced once assurances were given that the girl would never be left alone. Eventually, a compromise had been struck. Sofia would participate only if accompanied by her Aunt Marta, who thought privately that nothing was less appealing than the prospect of spending the early evenings wandering about in the wilds full of crocodiles and bloodthirsty insects, just so she could keep an eye on her niece’s virtue. And would not the girl’s father be there with her in any case? But, no, Doña Laura argued, no man, not even her son, could be trusted to notice the truly important things. And so Aunt Marta had consented in the end, reasoning that it would be a small price to ensure that peace reigned in the house.
Sofia’s contributions are indeed proving fruitful to the creation of the bird guide. Not only does she spend the time in the field with the group, she also often works well into the night sketching the specimens they observe and photograph during their excursions into the field.
Las Aves del Yucatán, she whispers to herself, sounding out the title of the proposed guide much as if it were the words to the Our Father itself, reverentially, with awe. In all of her life she has not felt such contentment, such peace. It is as if someone has opened the doors to heaven and, for once, has let her wander in.
Seated at the cathedral next to her grandmother and her aunt, she thinks now of Diego Clemente, the man who has so thoroughly insinuated his way into her heart. It is true, no words of love have been exchanged between them—they have merely shared tips, stories, ideas on how to approach a particular drawing of a bird. But there is a current that courses between them, an electrical charge. She thinks of their equal devotion to the bird guide, to Mr. Nelson himself, to his ideas on conservation that are slowly but surely making them both see the world through a very different lens. A bird guide is one way to ensure the safety of the birds of the area, Mr. Nelson often says to them, passion in his words, determination in his stride. We are here to defend them, to make people admire them, to make them come alive in their minds. A camera and not a shotgun, he proclaims. A photograph and not a mounted bird.
Sofia feels her grandmother pulling at her skirt now, watches, irritated, as the old woman reaches over and irons the folds with her hands. Ah, but there are storm clouds hovering, Sofia thinks, feeling the anxiety suddenly surging in her chest. Not all has unfolded perfectly in the last six months. Some things have grown more complicated, more difficult to manage than her participation in the creation of the bird guide.
The bookstore, for one. Carlos Blanco has not, as she had hoped, exited from her life. She no longer promenades with her friends on Sundays—too much to do, too much to think of, she tells them—uninterested as she now is in participating in the ritual of walk and talk. She had hoped Carlos Blanco would understand that a message was being conveyed. That she was not interested in his attentions, did not want his notes filled with the titles of arias, the names of operas, allusions to the leading artists of the day that she is supposed to decipher, as if embedded in these names and titles is the very meaning of life itself.
Instead of being dissuaded, the fool seems more determined than ever to pursue the dance. He has begun appearing at the bookstore almost daily, asking for increasingly obscure titles, staying for up to an hour at a time as she hides in the back, hoping that he will take his leave quickly so that she can emerge into the light.
Sofia is determined to keep her grandmother from learning of the young man’s interest in her. Sofia does not doubt for one moment what the old lady’s reaction would be to even the tiniest possibility of a marriage between her granddaughter and the son of one of the wealthiest hacendados in the land. She is obsessed with marrying her off, the sooner the better; the minutes are ticking, the days
and months are passing by. Soon, she tells the women during their afternoon sewing circle in the courtyard, Sofia will be of little interest to even the most desperate of men.
“And a woman is meant for marriage,” Doña Laura has declared to Sofia’s mother more than once. “Whatever else is she to do with her life? Look at Marta—lost in her world of foolish remedies with nothing to live for but her needlework and her deck of cards.”
And then, suddenly, disaster struck Sofia hard. One afternoon in early November, arriving home from the bookstore, Sofia found the women of the house in an uproar, her mother and aunt screaming at each other in delight, words spilling furiously from their mouths, their sewing momentarily put aside. Even her grandmother had abandoned her usually sour demeanour and was sporting a wide, almost maniacal grin.
Good God, Sofia thought, whatever has happened must be astounding indeed if my grandmother has actually allowed a smile to creep in.
“What, what?” Sofia asked impatiently, excited already by whatever it was that had the women beside themselves on this day.
Aunt Marta rushed in, determined to be the first to deliver the magnificent news. “We have been invited to a ball, mi niña.”
“And not just any ball, hijita,” her mother jumped in, elbowing her sister to one side, “but a ball given by none other than the Blanco Torres family. Can you imagine anything more splendid than the Blanco Torres family including us in one of their affairs? No, I can hardly believe it. I can hardly take it all in.”
Before Sofia had time to respond, her mother planted in her hand the invitation, a thick envelope with their family name printed in gold where inside, Doña Alicia Torres de Blanco requested the pleasure of their company at the family’s annual Virgin de Guadalupe Ball.
And then Gabriela was off—reminding herself aloud of all the French terms that belonged to the dance—those terms that had once rolled so easily off her tongue, once, so long ago it seemed to her now, when as a young girl she had been invited to almost all of the city’s grandest affairs.
Balancez, glissade, traversez, vis-à-vis, quatre en ligne, chaine des dames, le moulinet.
The commotion in the house had not subsided for the next three weeks. Among the women, it was silently agreed that this was more than a ball, it was an opportunity, a chance to secure a husband of substance for Sofia, and opportunities like these, they told each other, were meant to be seized by the neck.
“The girl seems to be growing less interested in the business of marriage with each passing day,” Gabriela said to her sister.
“Growing stranger too,” added Doña Laura, who could not forgive Sofia for being prey to such ridiculous interests, for desiring to partake in things as unfeminine as a walk in the fields. Oh yes, a ball was just what the girl needed, a glimpse into a more feminine world. It might knock some sense into her, pry her away from inside the covers of a book, wipe that smile of victory from her face, the one she had been sporting since being allowed to join the men in their trivial bird-loving pursuits.
“Por favor! She is not strange, Doña Laura. She just has her own particular style, her own way of doing things, if you like.” Gabriela hurried to her daughter’s defence, because although tensions in the house had diminished of late, not even this great event, this opportunity, could possibly erase all the damage from the war that had been going on between them for so long. Indeed, her mother-in-law’s opinions continued to irritate Gabriela right to the tip of her toes.
“What she means, hermana,” Aunt Marta said, in that special tone of hers, a tone she usually reserved for people she considered simpletons at best, “is that Sofia is different from the rest of the girls her age. Mira, all of her friends are interested in dances and such things. But Sofia, bueno, there can be no denying that there is a touch of the eccentric in our dear girl …”
“Can we just concentrate on having the most divine dress made for her, please?” Gabriela interrupted, irked by her sister’s siding with the old woman and even more annoyed that, deep down, she agreed with them both. If they were to achieve their aims, however, if they were to make use of this opportunity, it was best to put aside their differences for now. The time, she knew, was not right for internecine wars.
Sofia herself could not be less excited. Trepidation accompanied her through the long days and all the talk of the ball merely made her retreat further into her work, where she at least found consolation cataloguing and sketching her beloved birds.
It was in this spirit that she tried on the dress—a golden gown, shimmering and loose, embroidered with sequins of faceted crystals that caught the light whenever she moved. “An exact copy of a design by no less than Callot Soeurs,” her mother hurried to tell her, congratulating herself on her luck in having found a picture of it in an issue of Harper’s Bazaar that had arrived at the store and having found a dressmaker talented enough to copy it stitch by stitch.
It was beautiful indeed—even if the colour was all wrong, or at least according to Doña Laura, who, having been left out of the decision, eagerly pounced on the deficiencies of the gown, who complained about it unendingly as if it meant the opportunity itself had been frittered away. “Anyone with taste,” she told whoever would listen, “anyone would have known that a girl like Sofia, with her dark hair and her white skin, would be favoured not by yellows but reds.”
And now the grand day had finally arrived and despite all the commotion, the mad scramble to get everyone properly attired for the event, Sofia’s dejection had not been lost on her grandmother, who had a sharp eye for detecting all that did not accord with her own worldview.
“What is the matter with the girl?” Dõna Laura had asked Aunt Marta that morning as they all hurried to dress for the morning Mass. “Because I can assure you that with that attitude Sofia is unlikely to attract the eye of any of the fine young men who will be in attendance this evening, fine young men wishing to dance with gay young ladies and not a sour-faced fish. And they especially won’t look at one dressed in yellow, a colour that lights up a face inappropriately, which manages only to enhance that sullen, bitter look.”
“Bueno, Doña Laura,” Aunt Marta hurried to assure her, “the girl is nervous, that is all. And who can blame her? She may have been invited to other affairs but nothing on the scale of a Blanco Torres ball. She will be fine once we have arrived and she has had time to adjust to it all.”
Seated in the cathedral now in her simple morning dress, stiff as a board and bored stiff by the incessant droning of the priests, Sofia is already feeling much better about things. She has overheard a conversation that took place between her father and Mr. Nelson outside the cathedral doors, has learned that the scientist has somehow secured an invitation for himself and his assistants to attend the Virgen de Guadalupe Ball. To what end, she does not know. Sofia is quite certain that Mr. Nelson has no interest in society affairs, knows that if he has accepted an invitation it is for more important reasons than dancing until dawn. She is certain something else is afoot. For days now she has watched as Diego and Very Useful exchanged pointed looks, has noticed how they often grow quiet when she appears before them unannounced, has caught them red-faced and nervous as they were interrupted discussing God-only-knows-what. She has affected ignorance, has played the innocent while keeping her ears primed, her senses sharp. She has stood behind doors, strained to listen to whispered conversations, has even resorted to sifting through Diego’s notes, but she has uncovered nothing that reveals a secret plot. She was beginning to think that she had been imagining things until this—Mr. Nelson’s revelation that he and his assistants would be in attendance that night at the ball.
On the other side of the cathedral, far from his beloved’s eyes, Diego Clemente is occupying his time not with prayer but with trying to get the rhythm of a waltz right. One, two, three; one, two, three. Forward, side, close; back, side, close. He stops. Is it not forward, side, close; back, forward, close? No, no, he thinks. Back to first principles! Count, Diego, count. O
ne, two, three; one, two, three; one, two, three.
Such madness this is, he thinks, exhausted by all the counting, the trying to remember the differences between a polka, a mazurka and a waltz. To what end? He feels foolish now for having allowed himself to be convinced by Very Useful that the Blanco Torres ball would be his one chance to declare himself to his one true love.
That he was attending in the first place seemed impossible to believe. Just two weeks earlier Mr. Nelson had broached the subject while the three men were busy cleaning the lenses of their reflecting cameras, putting the equipment away after an early-morning shoot.
“Señores,” he had said, his voice expressionless, “prepare yourselves. We have been invited to a ball that will be held at the home of Don Victor Blanco.”
“A ball?” Very Useful had asked, his eyes opened wide. “We are invited to a ball? Inside the home of Don Victor Blanco?” He glanced over at Diego, who had stopped cleaning and was looking up at Mr. Nelson in stunned surprise.
“And what are we supposed to do at a ball, Mr. Nelson?” Diego asked.
“Why, dance, Diego, what else but dance?” Mr. Nelson had replied and he had turned around then, putting the equipment in his pack, making it clear nothing more would be discussed.
That evening, after much conjecture, much mulling over the reasons for the invitation, the reason their patrón had for including them in such an affair, Very Useful had abruptly changed course and had declared the reasons to be irrelevant, that the important thing was that Sofia would be there as well.
“An opportunity has presented itself, my boy! A door has opened, a tunnel has appeared through which to crawl. Don’t you see? You must seize the moment, grab the iguana by the nose.”
