The Lacuna

by Barbara Kingsolver

  Today Senor Alva came down from the scaffold as fast as a monkey to fight with one of the guards. They are rude about the paintings. Four boys in tejano hats came in and said they would throw tar on the wall after the Painter goes home, to defend Mexico and save her national symbols from insult. Senor Alva shouted at the guards to keep those boys away. But the Painter seems not to care what they say. He keeps painting.

  10 November

  Senor Rivera is gone. And the wall only half painted. Indians and horsemen ride above white air. The mountains have no ground beneath them. The coal sketches on the rough white wall remain half alive, waiting. This can't be the end, but Senor Alva says for sure he's gone. To San Francisco to paint for the gringos. The only work now is to take apart the scaffold and clean the splatters of plaster off the floor. That's it, boys, he said. The pesos have gone to San Francisco too.

  18 January 1931, Feast of San Antonio

  The priest did the blessing of animals. The society ladies brought parrots and canaries to church, clutching the cages against brocaded bosoms, baby-speaking to their birds with bird-pursed lips. Or holding cats that wriggled violently, hopeful of eating a parrot. Or hairless escuincles that watched with big disapproving eyes popping out of their dog skulls. At the back of the church, villagers waited with goats and burros on ropes. After dogs and parrots were satisfactorily blessed, the farm women were allowed to lead their beasts down the aisle, all eyes upon the burro blessings dropped on the floor.

  One old man brought a sack of dirt over his shoulder that was crawling with ants and caterpillars. When he marched to the altar, all the women in smart hats leaned away from the aisle, their long strands of pearls all swaying to one side as if the deck of a ship listed beneath them. The priest in his clean hems backed away from the altar as the farmer heaved his sack onto it and black ants swarmed all over. "Go on, make these pests into Christians!" the farmer shouted. "I'll take them home to convert the others, so they'll stop chewing on my crops and leave me a living."

  Cienfuegos came with Manjar Blanco on his leash. The ladies did not know how to pray for a Christian lizard. Their little dogs are probably still barking about it.

  31 March

  School or a job is the only choice, Mother says. So it's school again, murderous. Today there was a body! Draped in black cloth, lying across four wooden chairs lined up side by side in the administrator's office. The administrator was still out having his lunch when the Penitent was sent in for a minor infraction involving spittle, and had to wait there a long time, examining The Body. Its feet stuck out from beneath the drape, plainly the feet of a dead person. Man or woman, it was impossible to tell, but nothing was breathing under that cloth. No scent of corpse gas either. Detective novels often mention that. But perhaps it was recently dead and hadn't had time to decay. Or perhaps there was corpse gas, the whole school smelled of piss, and it might be similar. The hour passed horribly, measured in held breaths.

  Twenty minutes. It couldn't be Senora Bartolome under that black drape. Too slim. And not the administrator--everyone saw him leave for his lunch. What kind of school punishes boys by making them sit in a room with a corpse?

  Fifty minutes. Outside in the sun the Holy Mother stood on her pedestal in the garden, sorry but unsympathetic. The usual position of mothers.

  Fifty-eight minutes: the administrator returned in a high mood, smelling a little of pulque. At the sight of the Penitent he fell into his chair, abruptly depressed. Lately he can summon little courage for the beatings. "Oh, it's Shepherd, our troublesome foreigner. What is it today?"

  "Reading in the class again, sir. And participating in a contest of sorts."

  "Of what sort?"

  "Of spitting to hit a mark on the floor, sir."

  "Anything that might improve your character? The reading, I mean."

  "No, sir. Booth Tarkington."

  The administrator leaned so far back in his chair, it appeared he might fall out of it, or else begin a nap. He made no mention of the draped form. Who could it be? It seemed taller than the stunted type of boy inclined to this school. But hard to judge, lying down.

  "Sir. Is it possible to ask, has any of the teachers been ill?"

  Sitting near enough the body that he could reach over to box its ears, the administrator replied, "All as hale as can be expected for women of their age and temperament." He sighed. "Which is to say, probably immortal. Why do you ask?"

  "One of the students, then? Has any boy turned up, well, dead?"

  The administrator now seemed unlikely to nap. "Dead?"

  "Perhaps subjected to an overly long punishment by accident, and perished?"

  The administrator now sat up. "You are an imaginative boy. Are you also a suspicious one?"

  A glance at the feet that poked from under that drape. "No, sir."

  "You should write stories, boy. You have the disposition for a romantic novelist."

  "Sir, is that a good or bad disposition to have?"

  The administrator smiled and looked sad, both at once. "I am not certain. But I'm sure of one thing, you don't belong in this school."

  "No, sir. That seems certain to me also."

  "I've spoken of it to Senora Bartolome. She says your competence at learning the Latin lessons has surpassed her competence to teach them. It isn't fair to the others, for her to teach so much. They struggle with conjugating their shoes and stockings."

  A long pause.

  "We discussed a transfer to the Preparatoria next year."

  "Sir, the entrance examinations are murder. At least, for anyone who's missed learning everything they teach after the sixth-grade primary."

  "Indeed. How did that happen to you?"

  "A drastic home life, sir. Something like a novel."

  "Well, then. One can only hope you are writing it all down."

  "No, sir, only some of it. On the interesting days. On most of the days it's along the lines of a bad novel with no character learning any moral."

  The administrator placed his elbows on the desk and touched his fingers together, making his hands into a flower bud. The unanswered question of the corpse still lay beside him. This was more of an interesting day.

  "Back to the classroom with you then, young Shepherd," he said, finally. "I will tell Senora Bartolome you have my permission to read adventure novels as much as you like, in preparation for your writing career. But I'll advise you to pay attention during the maths. They could turn out more useful than they seem."

  "Yes, sir."

  "One thing more. We are aware your attendance is casual."

  "I had a bit of work, sir. But lost it again."

  "Well, I expect there is little I can do about keeping you here. But please come on Friday. Before we dismiss for Easter week, our school will be leading the processional down the street to St. Agnes. We need six of our older boys for carrying the Santo Cristo. You may be the only one who can remember which way to walk."

  "For carrying the what?"

  The administrator leaned out from his desk and yanked the silk drape from the corpse, exposing a bloody head and naked shoulders. "Our crucifixion figure. We've just had it cleaned and varnished, ready to carry into the chapel."

  "Oh. Indeed sir, corpus Deum. He lives."

  School is closed for Holy Week, but Mother is in an unholy frame of mind, due to the predicted collapse of the Mexican oil industry. According to P. T., production has fallen to less than a quarter what it was when the Americans first came in. They thought they were tapping a deeper vein, he said.

  "So did I," Mother says.

  In a jam, she asked the doctor's wife for guidance. As usual, it was suggested that God might provide, so Palm Sunday mass at the cathedral is part of the plan. The place was a forest of palm leaves standing upright, swaying in the windless air, held up by villagers with pleading eyes and hungry children. Mrs. Doctor was dressed up in a silver fox stole like Dolores del Rio. She pulled Mother toward the front pews, away from the odors of poverty. The
kneeling lasted hours, but Mother wrestled through.

  The streets outside afterward were like a festival. People pouring in from the provinces, maybe some even from Isla Pixol. All eyes turn to the Virgin as she is conveyed about town in many different processions, dressed in her jeweled diadem and many new frocks at once.

  Uninteresting days without number. A National Geographic pinched from the bookshop. It had a photograph of a Hindu with six hundred pins inserted in his body. Two skewers through his abdomen, one through the tongue. Dressing each morning takes him one hour and a half. For overcoming life's catastrophes, he walks through fire.

  8 May

  The administrator called Mother in for a talk before school ends. She would sooner walk through fire, yet she put on her worst dress and went. The administrator told Mother it was in the boy's interest that he should attend a different school next year. There were choices--technical, professional--but his advice was the Preparatoria. He lectured Mother using many conjugations of the verb "to prepare." Preparation for Preparatoria. But Mother prepares for nothing. She informed him it was none of his business, but her son was going to the United States to live with his father, and she was certain the schools there were of higher caliber.

  Is it true? On the angry walk home, she refused to say.

  10 June

  The angel servant girl of the birdcage reappeared at the Melchor market. This time she was without the birdcage, but again followed hastily behind the Azteca queen, accepting every form of purchase that dark little woman could shove in her arms. Clay bowls, sacks of beans, a devil's head made of papier-mache. The mistress limped slightly but otherwise was exactly the same, snapping her fingers at the servant girl and everyone else as she moved down the rows. Measuring every object with fearsome black eyes.

  La Perla recognized them too: That scandal, the painter's wife, she called her. "They went away, but see, they're back, probably kicked out by the gringos. It will be in the newspapers. The Communists always make trouble so they can get in the papers."

  24 June, St. John's Day

  The lepers bathe again.

  La Perla was right, the Painter is in the newspapers. The president wants him to finish what he started on the Palacio stair wall. All the top-level men want this Painter now, Ambassador Morrow hired him to paint his palace in Cuernavaca. Mother claims she saw it when she was there, and the ambassador also, who is now a senator of the United States. She says she spoke to him on the street, and why not, they're acquainted. Ambassador Morrow came to visit Don Enrique, it was the time she made P. T. Cash dance with her in his black-and-white shoes. Now she thinks Morrow would have been the better bet.

  6 July, cumpleanos. Fifteen years of age.

  No birthday fiesta, but Mother said to take some extra coins from her purse and buy some carne asada or something nice at the market. Only, no coins.

  The Painter's wife was there today buying buckets of food, getting ready for a fiesta at her house from the looks of it. But no servant! The little queen looked like a burro under all her baskets. Two bananas fell on the street behind her as she walked. Down at the end of the market, men were unloading a wagon of green-tamale corn in the husk, stacking the ears in tall pyramids. The queen pointed through her bundles, making a man fill a big sack for her.

  La Perla said, "Stop staring, guapo. Just because it's your birthday, you don't get any girl you want. Your eyes will roll in the street behind her like those bananas."

  "How is she going to carry that corn? She'll collapse for sure."

  "So, go talk to her. Tell her for ten pesos you'll carry it. She'll pay you, she's rich. Go on, go." La Perla pushed with her little hands like knives. Crossing the street was like walking through water.

  Senora Rivera. Would you like some help carrying something?

  She set down her two baskets, picked up the great bulging sack, and handed it over with a thump. "Go ahead. Anybody has the right to make a kite from his pants."

  There was no further discussion. Following behind her was a whole conversation by itself: her swirling skirts, her short legs walking as fast as a little dog's, her proud head crowned with its circle of braids. Make way for the queen, pulling a boy behind like a kite on a string. Her house was down four streets and over one, on Londres at the corner of Allende. She walked through the tall front door without saying "Follow" or "Stop here" or anything, sweeping past an old woman with her apron bunched up in one hand, who took the sack of corn and went away. But the Queen stood where she was, framed in the entry by bright sunlight beyond. The high wall enclosed a beautiful courtyard inside, with the rooms of the house all around it.

  It was impossible to turn away from the sight of her strange little figure there, the palms and fig trees waving behind her like fans. The courtyard was a dream. Birds in cages, fountains, plants sprawling from their pots, vines climbing the trunks of the trees. And in that jungle, the Painter! Sprawled in a chair in the sun, wearing the wrecked clothes of a beggar and the glasses of a professor. He was smoking a cigar and reading a newspaper.

  "Oh! Good morning, sir."

  "Who is it?" He barely glanced up. His wife gave a warning look.

  "Sir, the nation rejoices in your return."

  "The nation considers me to be worth approximately two peanuts, at most."

  "Nevertheless, sir. Do you need a plaster mixer?"

  Now the paper dropped onto the round belly and he looked up, taking off his glasses, his bulging eyes like two boiled eggs in that enormous head. He glared for a moment, then brightened: "Sweet Buns! How I've missed you. Those other boys are hopeless."

  The Queen stood staring with such a fierce frown, her dark eyebrows joined in a handshake over the bridge of her nose. But her mouth remained amused as she watched her husband get up to clap this strange boy on the back, hiring him on the spot.

  The great mural grows down the staircase day by day, like a root into the ground. Presidents and soldiers and Indians, all coming alive. The sun opens its eyes, a landscape grows like grass, and today fire came out of the volcano. Senor Alva says the Painter is working his way toward the beginning of time, at the mural's center, where the eagle will sit on a cactus and eat the serpent, home at last.

  Senor Rivera makes charcoal sketches over the wall, and every day begins a new section. He frames the scene with long lines sloping to a point on the distant horizon, the Vanishing Point. Then holds the picture in his head as he works to paint in shadows, then color, finishing a panel as fast as we can mix plaster for the next one. The slake-lime paste burns our hands, white marble dust becomes the air we breathe. Today he scolded the pigmentist because the blue paste was too blue. But the plaster was perfect.

  14 October

  Ambassador Senator Morrow died in his sleep while his wife was playing golf. All the newspapers are about him, Best friend of Mexico. His daughter's husband is Charles Lindbergh, so he only has to wave his cap at the crowd and everyone cheers, or mourns. Mother says she had that ambassador pegged from the start: the type to love his wife and die young. She's sore because P. T. did not produce the cash after all.

  26 October, luna de octubre

  Some of the boys at work say the Painter is going away again. Senor Alva says they want to make a big show of his paintings in a museum in New York. But his paintings are on the walls of Mexico. How could they leave here?

  12 November

  He's gone. He took Senor Alva with him. In the forgotten white land at the bottom of our wall, the eagle has no cactus, no snake for his lunch, he can't find home. The story of Mexico waits for its beginning.

  PART 2

  Washington, D.C.

  1932-1934

  (VB)

  1 January 1932

  For a son on the wrong track, Mother has found a different set of rails and packed him off on them. Lock, stock, and barrel, she said with a raised glass. Describing a firearm in its entirety.

  This train runs north from the city. At the little struggling desert towns, chil
dren run alongside, reaching toward the windows. Then come the rocky flatlands where the towns give up altogether. Spiked maguey plants reach out of the ground like hands. A great clawed creature trapped underground. At evening, the light drained and the land went from brown to umber, then dried blood, then ink. In the morning the pigments reversed, the same colors rising out of a broad, flat land that looks like a mural.

  This compartment has one other person, an American named Green who got on at Huichapan. Not old, but he stares out the window like an old person, rocking in rhythm with the suitcases over his head and water in a glass in his hand. He sips a little every hour, as if it's the last water on earth. Overnight some flames appeared in the distance, each standing alone like a candle. Oil wells, burning to remove the gases.

  Last night the conductor came through to say we were three hours from the border and it was twelve o'clock; his privilege was to wish us a prosperous New Year. He moved down the car repeating the same news and the same privileged wish.

  Happy new year, Mr. Green.

  Just before the border were pecan orchards, dark blocks of trees with their boughs half bright and half shadowed, lit by the electric lights of the shelleries. People working there in the dead of night, New Year's morning. The train sighed and stopped at the border, waiting for the customs agents to arrive at their offices. The whitening sky showed a thin stretch of river with dogs skulking along its shores, their up-curved tails reflected on the gray surface. The riverbank is a dumping ground: planks and metal, flaps of tarred paper. At daybreak children began walking from the scrap piles, not a dumping ground after all but a terrible kind of city. Women came out of the shacks too, and last the men, straightening to unfold themselves, placing both hands against their backs, shifting their trousers and pissing in the ditches. Squatting to splash their faces at the river's edge.