The Son, The Sudarium Trilogy - Book Two (5 page)

2:12

“
Joven?!?”

Two men were crossing Venustiano Carranza toward him, as he walked from the front door. Two more journalists, he thought, although they looked more like extras in a bad Hollywood movie about the barrio. At least the one did, with his crisply pressed beige suit, the highly polished shoes and a tie, the design of which evoked a Puerta Vallarta sunset. The other was dressed in denim jeans and a work shirt that strained to contain a pair of muscular arms and a powerful chest that obviously hadn’t come from writing articles.

“May we speak with you for a minute?” asked the man in the suit. “We won’t occupy too much of your time.” Mexicans were usually not so direct. There was a whole series of “How are you?” “And the family?” “Things are well, too?” to be gone through before getting to the business at hand. But these two had dispensed with all the usual formalities and were standing squarely in his way. At the sound of voices, Hannah cracked the wooden door. Her son had been stopped again! Her first instinct was to rush to his side and put an end to the conversation, but she knew no young man wanted his mother meddling in his life. If they were more curiosity seekers, he would have to learn to deal with them by himself. Still, she left the door open wide enough so she could monitor what was happening without being seen.

From his suit jacket pocket, the man took out a piece of identification encased in plastic, identifying him as Señor Rodriguez Muñez, adjunct of the presidente municipal in Jalpán.

“What is it you want?”

“First to congratulate you on your remarkable survival. The presidente municipal followed events closely in Mataxi. The church gone. The schoolhouse gone. The houses gone. Such a terrible price to pay. What happened there must never happen again”

The young man shifted under the intensity of his stare. “No, it mustn’t.”

“Young man, please understand what I am saying. What happened there must
never
happen again.” Despite the neatness of his apparel, there was something unruly and uncontrolled about the man.

“It was a tragedy, I agree.”

“So many people gathered in the schoolhouse! Ground up like…like corn! Perhaps if they had been elsewhere, they would have escaped this horrible fate.”

“Perhaps.”

“But they were there to hear
you,”
he snapped. “They were not in their houses or tending to the fields. The children were not playing in the rain as children like to do. They were in the schoolhouse to hear you speak.”

“Yes, I was there to speak about——“

“—-about things you have NO RIGHT to say,” the man shouted. A flush of blood shot through his face, making a small growth on his chin stand out. “You are an American. Americans have no right to participate in the politics of this country. You realize you could be deported immediately, if the authorities so chose.”

“I have lived in Mexico all my life. I have never lived anywhere else.”

“And your parents?”

“They are Americans.”

“And in the Oficina de Inmigracion, you are registered as an American, too, here at the sufferance of the Mexican government. Which brings us back to the problem. It is illegal for you to foment political dissent.”

“I am just trying to educate people.”

“Is that what it is?” said the man, whose burly companion allowed himself a chortle.

Hannah strained to hear what was being said. It was evident from their manner that these men were not journalists. The country had a violent strain, despite the veneer of civility and the courtly manners that had somehow filtered down from the Spanish. People kissed one another on both cheeks upon meeting, European-style. Shopkeepers assured you their duty was “para servirle” - to serve you! But she had seen tempers explode, when one car accidentally scratched another or someone, lurching out of a cantina, bumped into a pedestrian on the sidewalk. The macho Mexican was a cliché, but it was also a reality.

Señor Muñez took a linen handkerchief out of his pocket and carefully wiped his brow. “Let me show you a few things.
Con permiso
!” He handed his briefcase to his companion, who held it while he fished inside.

“Ah, here it is,” he said, brandishing a yellow manila folder. “You have been speaking quite a bit.” Señor Muñez produced several shots of the young man in various native gatherings and flipped through them.

“Wait, what is that one?”

“Oh, this?” He slid out a photograph of Little Jimmy, playing soccer in the schoolyard three blocks away. Then another one, which showed Teresa seated on the edge of the fountain in the Plaza de Armas, eating an ice cream cone with her boyfriend. “And what do you think of this one? Your mother, I believe. How many Mexican women wouldn’t envy that beautiful blonde hair?”

The young man could barely get the words out. “Are you threatening me? Why do you have pictures of my family? What are you saying?”

“I am saying that we are aware of your
work
. The presidente municipal of Jalpán is aware of it, too. In fact, many people are aware of it, now that you are so famous. It would be unfortunate if another tragedy happened. We have already had enough tragedies, as it is.”

Señor Rodriquez Muñoz smiled and gave a short bow from the waist. “And now we will be on our way. I think we understand each other,
Señor de los Milagros
. That is what they call you, isn’t it! Mr. Miracle Man.” It came out as a sneer.

He had heard of this kind of intimidation. People in power would go to any lengths to protect that power. Polite threats were usually enough, but if they weren’t, there were plenty of anonymous hired hands to do the dirty work. He thought of his family and, glancing back at the house, caught his mother peeping out the door, anxiety written on her face. Not wanting to alarm her, he shrugged his shoulders as if he were shrugging off the men themselves and headed down the street toward the Plaza de Armas.

2:13

At one point or another in the day, everyone passed thought the Plaza de Armas. It was the most picturesque plaza in Querétaro, surrounded on all four sides by 18
^th
century mansions that had long since been converted into government offices, but still managed to retain the dignity of their prior existence. Under the colonnade on the north side, a series of cafes served cappuccinos and rich pastries, a modern-day intrusion that was accepted because it allowed people to while away the time agreeably. Several outdoor restaurants enlivened the east side, each with its resident musician playing a repertoire of international pop tunes, not so loud as to drown out the other, but loud enough to establish a friendly musical rivalry.

And there in the center, at the top of a circular stone fountain, surveying the comings and goings, was a statue of the Marquis de Villa del Vilar de Aguila, who had built the 18
^th
century aqueduct (still standing) that first brought water to Querétaro from the surrounding hills. Not that many could identify him. Of far greater interest – to camera bugs, at least, and children - was the fact that the water was projected into the basin below from the mouths of four sausage-shaped dogs.

Wandering into the Plaza de Armas, one could easily think that, through the mysteries of time travel, one had pierced an invisible veil and somehow ended up in southern Italy a hundred years ago. The heat, the animation, the cheap music all seemed more Neapolitan than Mexican. The temptation was great to sit on one of the wrought-iron benches under the luxuriant ficus trees and watch the parade of schoolchildren, businessmen, nuns, politicians, and peddlers, whose legs were all that protruded from the cluster of balloons that swarmed around their bodies like acrylic-painted bees.

The encounter with the “officials” angered him, but he was determined to put it out of his mind. He entertained the thought that the men were bluffing, a pair of puffed up roosters strutting before the cockfight they had no intention of engaging in. If they weren’t, well, he’d stay alert. It was all part of his new celebrity and it would diminish with time.

He ambled into the plaza, found a place to sit near the fountain. He loved this part of Queretaro with its diversity that suggested the Old World to him. He always brought a notebook with him. Usually, he jotted down his random thoughts, but some days he drew passing details - the curved back of the shoeshine man, the kiosk that sold newspapers and magazines or the gardener who regularly replanted the beds of flowers. He rarely tried to capture the whole plaza or the whole range of his feelings. Particulars were what made up the world. It was the only way he could understand things -in bits and pieces.

The straw hat on the stony-faced woman who was seated in the cafe opposite him, for example, was enough to identify her as a bonafide tourist. She and the man next to her, equally stern, but not undignified with his thatch of gray hair, were obviously foreigners. Not that the couple wore the usual Bermuda shorts, leather sandals and white athletic socks that were the standard outfit of the tourist. They were dressed conservatively, talked quietly and would probably not have stood out, were it not for her wide-brimmed straw hat.

So many foreigners, he thought, came to Mexico for the sun and then went to extravagant lengths to shield themselves from its rays. Those who didn’t were lobster red within hours - another mark of the tourist. The straw hat, decorated with a cloth hibiscus flower, just didn’t go with the woman’s hard-set features. There was nothing carefree about either of them, in fact. They almost appeared to be made of stone, like the good Marquis de Villar de Villa, who hovered above. What was it in life that turned some people into statues?

He brushed back a shock of black hair and jotted the idea down in his notebook.

“
Habla inglés
?”

He raised his head. The couple had approached his bench. Barely blinking, the woman with the straw hat stared appraisingly at him, as if she were evaluating a work of art or a prospective purchase.

“Yes, I do,” he answered. “Why? Is there something I can help you with?”

“Oh, my,” said the woman. “You speak perfectly. No accent at all.”

“My parents are American.”

“That would explain it.”

“You don’t look American,” said the man. The accent was faint, vaguely Scandinavian.

“No, you don’t,” agreed the woman.

He waited for them to say something more. But they seemed happy just to look at him. He would have to change places today, maybe go a few blocks to the Jardín Zenea. He closed his notebook. For the first time, worry replaced the rigor in the woman’s face.

“Oh, we’ve bothered you,” she apologized. “It’s just that——“

“You’re the one, aren’t you?” interrupted the man.

“The one?”

“The one from the mudslide. We recognized you from your picture in the papers.” He seemed to swell up with pride over his powers of observation. “My friend said to me, ‘That young man looks familiar.’ It came to us both right away. He’s the youth who survived the mudslide.”

The conversation had started to make him uncomfortable. He didn’t like people singling him out, making him into something he wasn’t. His mother had warned him this would happen. “I was just lucky,” he said.

“Why would you say that? Lucky?” said the woman with a puff of irritation. “You were the only one. All the others died. You were
saved.”

“Yes, well, perhaps. I prefer to think I was lucky?”

“Were you unconscious the whole the time?”

They were more persistent than Little Jimmy. It was what everyone always wanted to know: What was it like? His response was always the same. “I don’t really remember. It was all a blur.” But it wasn’t a blur and he recalled the details vividly. He lived and ate and slept with the memory. Not the memory of lying imprisoned in the earth for three days, but the memory of the dream that had filled his consciousness. He hesitated to call it a vision, but there was no other way to describe it, really, without sounding mad. The dream had no plot, but a series of intense feelings ran through him, as would boiling liquids. And yet he had not been in pain, but intoxicated rather by the sensation.

It was as if he - or his body - had become part of the earth, atoms intermingling with atoms, so that there was no distinction between flesh and rock, worm and thigh, mind and matter. Intense feelings of joy and sadness, elation and misery, passed through him. The bowels of the earth seemed to contain the full catalogue of human emotions and he, trapped in the earth’s embrace, was privy to them all. There was no specific experience attached to the various emotions. It was not the sadness of losing a loved one he had experienced, but sadness itself; not the elation that comes from contemplating a majestic sunset, but joy in its purest essence, devoid of its source, all the world’s joys, as it were, rolled into one all-embracing emotion. He felt part of something whole, larger and more comprehensive than the life he had hitherto led.

The only blot on the euphoria was a distant planet on the fringes of his vision. At least it appeared to be a planet. Black, it was approaching at lightening speed from a point deep in the cosmos, every second getting closer, more ominous, until it virtually threatened to slam into the earth. And yet it never did. It simply got bigger and nearer, the moment of impact eternally imminent and eternally delayed at the same time. He didn’t know how to explain this sensation of suspension to his parents and had not tried. He couldn’t put it into words and the sketches he’d done in his notebook only communicated confusion.

Yet, oddly, there had been nothing confusing about the experience itself. It seemed to clarify how he had felt most of his life. Both at one with people and apart from them. Aware of their grandeur and their squalor, as two sides of the same coin. He knew that the wailing baby would soon stop crying and forget what the tears had been all about. Just as he knew that lovers, strolling arm in arm, were experiencing the most ephemeral moments of their life. He knew that wars and conflicts would rage and subside. Today’s news would be quickly forgotten and only a few personalities would be transformed into myths. But somehow through it all the world would go on. The joy and anguish he’d known during his three days under the earth would endure, to be partaken momentarily by human beings whose lives, otherwise, had little consequence. How could he explain that he was more alive, more aware, under the ground than he had ever been above it?

He realized that the foreign couple was still standing there, observing him. Had his mind drifted off for an hour or a second? Nothing on their faces told him which.

“Look, was there something I could help you with?” he asked. “Directions or something?”

“No, thank you,” replied the man. “We just wanted to know if you were the one. Not many live to tell a story like yours, you know!”

“So they say. Well, it’s a pleasure meeting you.” He struggled to his feet.

The man automatically reached out to assist him.

“No, I’m okay. I’m fine. Nothing happened to me.”

“Not even a scratch?” asked the woman, incredulously.

“A few dirty fingernails is all,” he said, trying to make light of the situation.

The couple failed to laugh at his joke. Instead, the woman reached for his free hand. But instead of shaking it, as he expected, she proceeded to caress it, delicately, as she might an injured bird. Her features blurred and her breathing became heavy. “It is truly a miracle.”

“If you’ll excuse me, please.” The couple was not the first to approach him, but something about the forced intimacy they had displayed made him deeply uncomfortable. It was as if he belonged to them, and it was all because of newspapers and television. You lost something when the media talked about you. Not just privacy, either. Some part of your secret self went numb. He resolved to explore the idea in his notebook.

Click.

At the far end of the plaza, a photographer recorded the encounter. Even though the couple was too far away to hear the noise, the woman with the straw hat turned sharply and scanned the crowd, as if operating on a sixth sense.

“What was that?” she asked the man angrily.

The man turned to look, as well.

But the photographer had inserted herself into a group of tourists, busy shooting the historic buildings, thereby making herself invisible.