It seemed that the motel builder and owner was a very rich doctor. Very rich because he ran the best abortion clinic in Mexico City, solely for the Yanquis. But his services were not expensive in American terms. The clients would be met at the Mexico City airport and would be escorted to one of the first-class hotels in the city. He had a modern clinic and was a skilled surgeon. Everyone was quite happy with the arrangement and the dollars rolled in. But like all good capitalists he was always on the lookout for investments.
He had seen an opportunity to increase his wealth with a shrewd move when it was made known to him that the highway that ended in Cuautla was going to be improved. It was to be paved and extended on to Oaxaca. To widen the road they would have to bypass the town center and use this now unpaved and very rugged road. Here was an opportunity. The land was cheap, the opportunity golden, and the motel was built.
We learned later that Mexico is a land of harsh realities and wild fantasy. The new road proved to be more wishful thinking than truth. The highway was indeed paved and extended to Oaxaca. But it was not moved; that part of the plan was abandoned—if it had ever existed.
So here, many blocks from the highway, sealed off by unpaved streets and unseen by cars on the distant highway, the motel stood in solitary, empty splendor. On national holidays there would be a few other Mexican customers, who came to Cuautla for the sulfurous stink and supposed healing powers of the thermal baths there: Agua Hedionda.
All of this may have been a setback for the good doctor, but it was surely a boon for us, since we had the entire establishment to ourselves about 99 percent of the time: manager, gardeners, guard dog, night watchman, and day manager, the lot.
Besides being rich, the good doctor was also quite eccentric. He had designed the construction of the units himself and they were a marvel of modern utility. Upstairs in each there was a large bedroom with a tiny screened balcony. Next to it was an immense bathroom complete with shower, toilet, sink, and bidet, since hygiene in the tropics was most important. Downstairs was a kitchen, as well as an architectural novelty that I had never seen before—or since, with good reason, for the doctor had invented what every weary traveler needs in a motel: a combination garage and living room.
That is exactly what it was. The front of the structure was filled by a large garage door, the only entrance. Open it and you had a place for the car. Drive out and close the door, put in some furniture, and it became a living room. The concept took the breath away. We looked at the oil stains on the concrete floor, the bare room and walls, and decided that we preferred the living room configuration. There was a nice selection of furniture that could be moved in; the Anglia lived outside under the banana trees.
We settled in happily. I appropriated the balcony, which was just wide enough for a tiny table and chair. Since Cuautla has the most ideal climate in the world I could work outside all year long. I caught up with my men’s adventure assignments and thought about the novel. Thinking was easy, for time moved at a very tranquil pace here. The sky was always blue and cloudless, the gardens in front of the building bursting with the most colorful of tropical foliage—and always empty of visitors. Just beyond the screened balcony were the green fronds of a banana tree. The only movement that I was aware of, if it can be called movement, was the slow growth of this banana tree. I discovered that I could live—and hopefully create—with this kind of wild excitement.
In the year that I lived in Mexico, and I wrote on this balcony, the green trunk of the banana tree reached slowly up toward me, putting out immense flat green leaves as it grew. When it had reached its desired height, just before my balcony, it ceased growing leaves and produced an immense purple, fruiting flower instead. Gravity tugged at this purple spheroid until it hung down toward the grounds. One by one its petals fell off—and from each petal’s truncated stem a single banana grew. It must also be admitted that there was darkness behind this beauty. The flower slowly dripped acidic juice down onto our car, parked below. I had to move the car, but not before this corrosive sap ate a hole through the Anglia’s many layers of paint.
As the weeks passed the bananas slowly changed from green to yellow. Then a pair of jewel-feathered hummingbirds came and inspected the bananas just before they ripened. Satisfied, they made a nest in their upstretched bowl. Soon after this the female laid a clutch of infinitesimal eggs. In the course of time, as I typed out my stories, I watched life unfold before me. The green bananas slowly turned yellow. The eggs broke open and hatched into three very tiny fledglings. Their parents dutifully fed them and they grew quickly. In the end they all hummed mightily, then flew away. The bananas were now ripe. One day the gardener came and the tree was chopped down, the fruit carried off to market. A new tree would grow from the stump and the entire cycle would be repeated. New York was becoming just a bad memory.
I had the time and opportunity to enjoy my work. Joan had settled in quite happily in what was, to us, most spacious accommodation. She had a full-time maid to help her, not really a luxury at $3.75 a month. Since the only time we talked English was in the house, our Spanish was coming along quite well. Survival is the mother of linguistic skill. If we wanted to eat bread we had better learn how to pronounce pan. Not to mention carne, leche, cerveza, and all the rest. Early morning was the time to shop, when the Indians from nearby villages brought in the fresh produce. The bread was freshly baked—as were the tortillas. Mexican food was wonderful.
We also had a satisfactory amount of a social life, seeing and being visited by the handful of resident Americans. And there was all of the surrounding countryside to explore on weekends. We were well off, comfortable, and happy. I had found safe haven for my family. For the first time in my life I had the time and peace, financial security and lack of pressure, to start on my first novel. I was thirty-one years old and I felt that I had better get cracking.
My ambition at this time was to bring some life, color, and action back into science fiction. This may sound ludicrous today in our age of atomic guns and exploding skulls, all of the pornography-of-war SF as well as all of the empty violence of crap TV SF and unspeakable SF films. But in the 1950s, science fiction existed for the most part in the magazines. I had them sent from the States and I read them all. I had the feeling then that the better stories were getting cerebral and slow. Fantasy & Science Fiction published too much fantasy for my liking—though Tony Boucher had brought on a stable of impressive new writers. Horace Gold at Galaxy had done the same. Even Astounding was featuring molasses-like plots and tedious think-pieces. My years of churning out men’s adventures had taught me that, with some effort, action and thought could be combined. I would apply what I had learned and write an SF novel in the classic tradition. A serious theme carried forward by an action-filled plot.
What I wanted to do was to deal with the myth of the superman. Not the comic book one; I had had enough of comics. I wanted to deal with the German so-called supermen, who had fought and lost the recent war. My ambition was to pit cerebral man against purely physical man, to see which one came out ahead. So in my novel I designed a race of real, living, realistic physical supermen—and superwomen—then turned around and asked the important question. If there actually were this physical superrace—what would they really be like? I typed a cover page for Deathworld, put in a fresh sheet of paper, and started on chapter one.
The work was going well and Cuautla was fun for all three of us. Todd had the house and the garden to crawl in and explore. It was all very secure since a high wall ran all around the grounds. It was topped with broken bottles and separated us from the road and the world outside. Our watchdog was an immense and ferocious mixed-breed bitch, with great white fangs and pendant dugs, who guarded the gate. She had been taught to hate Indians and would savage any that tried to come in. But she would also drool with pleasure when she saw us; Todd was her special favorite. Her name was Villiana, villainess, and that she certainly was.
Life was comfortable and incredibly inexpens
ive. Which meant that one sale of an article, two or three days’ work, would pay for a month’s living. Our rent was about thirty-five dollars a month, including electricity and gas for cooking. The Coca-Cola truck brought ice and bottled water—and fine Mexican Carta Blanca beer at five cents a bottle. The delivery men—who were Indian of course—carried clubs to beat Villiana away with, so they could drive in and unload without being savaged.
The class structure soon became quite clear to us. Indians, Aztecs, were on the very bottom, although they must have comprised 95 percent of the population here in the state of Morelos. Then there were the mixed breeds, next step up in the pecking order. On top were those individuals with white, or near-white skin, the descendants of the Spaniards who had conquered the country. After five hundred years they were still right at the top of this society. We soon discovered that it was our skin color that determined our place in the society around us. We were getting our first education, very much firsthand, about life in a very different society from the one that we had grown up in.
Since there were no tourists or strangers in this part of Mexico at this time, everyone seemed to accept us as linguistically handicapped Mexicans, not foreigners. Gringos and other strangers were what you saw in films, never in the flesh. The only outsiders who came to Cuautla were also Mexican. So, necessarily, we were as well.
It was an unusual experience to be accepted as part of a totally new and different culture. Fascinating and educational, though fraught with small and large stumbling blocks, which we had to discover as we went along.
Speaking Spanish came easily; most of the locals spoke the Aztec language Nahuatl first, then learned Spanish as a second language, as did we. However there were little traps everywhere. The Spanish word for eggs is huevos. That’s what the dictionary said, even our Mexican dictionary. Then why the strange looks and giggles when Joan bought them in the grocery? Some comprehension came when she heard another woman ordering blanquillo, literally “little whites.” It took quite a while for us to discover that huevos was slang for testicles.
Cultural traps. We soon found out that Mexico was a land where no hay reglas fijas was the rule, not the exception. It was true in every walk of life. There were no fixed rules. Meaning that the mordida, the little bite, a bribe, was what represented the real culture. The more you could bribe, the more you could do. The poor man could do nothing; the rich man anything. He could get away with murder. Actually he really could. In a discussion one evening the subject of pistoleros came up.
“These are gunmen you can hire quite cheaply,” Don Carlos said. “But most of them die young—my gardener, Pedro, is one of the very few I know who have reached advanced age. Listen to him and you will understand why. Pedro.” The gardener looked up from the border he was trimming. “Tell us of your life.” Pedro had gray hair and the dark skin of the local Indians and was of indeterminate age. He held his hat respectfully across his chest and spoke quietly and without any emotion, since these matters were about things long past.
“When I was a young man there was fire in my blood. I was very hotheaded and I drank in the cantinas. We all drank, and perhaps we were all hotheaded. There were arguments and sometimes we were carried away, becoming impetuous, insulting even. Of course when another man insulted you in public it meant that he was insulting your manhood, your honor. It could not stop there. I saw this happen many times, and always with the same result. The men would draw their pistols and fire at each other. One would be faster, or a better shot, or more lucky, and the other man would die. I also noticed that after someone had killed a few men he would begin to think very well of himself, put on airs and look for fights. If you were very good, why then you were accepted as a pistolero and others walked quietly in your presence. I saw this and envied these men. But I also saw how dangerous this work could be.
“When I grew older, and bought my first gun, I had my first difference of opinion in a bar. Since I wanted very much to live I had determined that I would wave my left hand in the air as I drew my gun with my right. I was pleased to see the other man’s eyes move automatically toward my left hand as I shot him.
“After this my reputation grew and I was a well-known pistolero. I have killed many men, how many I am not sure. It was a good life and I had much respect.”
He hesitated and looked down and I noticed, for the first time, that he was holding his straw sombrero in his right hand. Now he withdrew his unseen left hand and held it up.
“But this life was very hard on my left hand.”
His story might have been true, or a very pleasant and entertaining lie. Perhaps as a gardener he had caught his left hand in a lawn mower. In any case, he only had stumps for fingers, as though they had all been shot away.
Don Carlos dismissed him and nodded in agreement. “That is the sort of man you must deal with. If you have an enemy you want killed they will be happy to do it for sixty pesos [about five dollars]. Which sounds a bargain at first. Until some time later when the pistolero gets drunk and comes around for more money. If you are foolish enough to pay him he will keep coming back. So in the end you must hire another one to kill him and on it goes. Very expensive in the long run. Far better to go to the alcalde, the mayor here in Cuautla. I’ll introduce you to him, a fine man. You simply pay him twelve hundred pesos [one hundred dollars] and he will give you an official death certificate for the man you want to dispose of. Dated the next day—with cause of death listed as an accident. Then you can shoot the man down anywhere yourself, and it doesn’t matter who sees you. Simple and clean.”
Simple and clean. At this time Mexico led the world in deaths by violence. And Morelos, the state Cuautla was in—also Zapata’s home state—led all the other states in deaths by violence. But it was really quite safe as long as you knew the rules. As you can well imagine, we learned the rules very quickly.
• Never go out at night without a gun.
• Lock your gate at sunset and see that the top of your garden walls have broken bottles stuck into them. If anyone ignored all this and broke in you were expected to shoot him and no questions would be asked. The penalty for murder was five years in jail. But killing an intruder was seen as a normal and respectful act and would certainly not be prosecuted.
• Stay away from low bars at night. Probably a good bit of advice for any country in the world.
Our maid was still not too much of an excessive expenditure, even though we had raised her salary and it now came to $3.87 a month. Plus she had her perks of all our empty tin cans, which she sold in the mercado for a few centavos each. And she was happy to cook some of the local dishes for us: Joan was learning an entirely new cuisine, since true Mexican cooking has no resemblance to the Tex-Mex restaurants in the north. Taquitos, guacamole, homemade frijoles refritos, and many other dishes. We ate very well indeed. We did not dare try the highly attractive food in the market stalls, since amoebiasis and other gut infections were endemic in this part of the world. But there was one very good and clean restaurant in town, the Green Lantern, Lanterna Verde, which we went to as often as we could. They had a special fish dish called pescado Veracruzana that we have never found in a Mexican cookbook. Joan re-created it by taste and it became a staple in our diet. Not only in our home, for the recipe passed on to those of many friends who have dined on it at our table.
We were learning the language and settling in. Learning the culture as well, and enjoying every moment of it. Well, some bits, like the outdoor butchers, were really not that enjoyable. There was a row of butcher stalls in the mercado; none of them had refrigeration. The cattle that would be that day’s meat supplies were driven to the nearby abattoir before dawn and slaughtered in a singularly brutal manner. By the time we went shopping, the thatched butcher’s stalls would be displaying their selected pieces of carcass. Joan fought her way through the linguistic barrier, as well as the fact that not only all the cuts of meat had strange names, but they were also butchered in a totally different manner from in the S
tates. Through trial and error—and we chewed some very tough errors—she found a cut of meat that could be carved into small but tasty steaks.
But you can’t really cook and eat meat that was walking around just twelve hours before. We had an icebox that wasn’t too efficient. Meat would go off long before it aged. So Joan followed the local practice of slicing the meat thinly and putting it into the icebox between slices of fresh papaya. This fruit contains papain, a natural enzyme that is processed and sold as meat tenderizer. By dinnertime the meat would be aged enough to be cooked quickly in the pan: in, over, and out.
We also learned that you only ate vegetables raw that you could peel or cook. Night soil was used as fertilizer by the local farmers, thereby assuring that all the parasites and bugs were kept in constant recycle. Joan would impale tomatoes on a fork and peel the skin off over the gas burner on the stove. Then peel the cucumbers and onions, boil the potatoes. Lettuce was very much out of our diet. Mexico was still a bit of an adventure—but a good one. We were settling in.
7
It was the rainy season in Cuautla, which meant that it rained twice a day: at four in the morning and four in the afternoon. Not precisely to the second, but if you were out walking in the afternoon and four o’clock was approaching—you looked around for a doorway. The rain began suddenly, a drenching tropical downpour that usually lasted about five minutes. People stood patiently under shelter until the rain stopped, then left and walked carefully around the puddles that were steaming and vanishing in the warm sun.
You knew that winter was there by looking up at Popo (Popocatépetl)—not at the calendar. There would be snow on the volcano’s summit, which looked even more dramatic when trails of smoke would rise up from the crater there. Our first Christmas in Mexico was almost upon us now and there were plenty of navidad activities. All of the northern Christmas props looked very much out of place here in the sun, where the occasional ratty cardboard Santa, or shining shreds of tinsel, were placed in the store windows. But these were alien imports borrowed from the cold country to the north. The Mexican celebration centered around the piñata. These were gaily decorated pottery bulls or pigs—cheap pottery because they were slated for destruction. They would be filled with small gifts and hung from a rope that had been passed through a hook in the ceiling. At the Christmas celebration children would be blindfolded, then would take turns trying to break the piñata with a stick. This would be made more difficult by an old uncle who would pull on the rope and lift the thing up out of the way of the wild swings. We decided that we had to get a piñata for ourselves; not to break, but just for a decoration.
Harry Harrison! Harry Harrison! Page 10
