Chapter
II
The
dependable mist insinuated itself into the small wattle and daub house cut into
a gentle slope, moistening all that was not near the firepit. The fog had scaled the cliffs on eastern side of the peak
the night before, light and transparent, bringing with it vagueness. It slowly
erased, one by one, the ragged exposed stone cliffs, a pantheon of sculpted
faces. The large crowned oaks, tubular ocotes, ayacahuites, liquidamber,
dogwood, hornbeam, white alder, and tormented Madroños, spilled into the valley
like a crowded herd of sheep. The mist
tumbled down from the peaks in slow motion, surrounding the little house, and
all corners of this small pueblo in a
buttermilk vapor. In the distance some nisparos stood upright
in their soil of grayish brume, and seemed like people on a beach dipping their
feet in the froth after a wave had delivered itself. A swarm of miniscule
droplets buoyed on the cool morning air found their way into the cracks of the
houses like a cold smoke released from a magic lantern. The only safe place was
to share a heavily covered bed with someone. Dogs tightly
curled themselves on hard packed damp earth in open sheds or under large eaves.
The rapid flup flup flup of a rooster's wings was followed by his call to arms
and a burro brayed as if already protesting what he would have to bear that
day.
Izauro
turned from his mother’s bed, more like a padded sack laid on the floor, and
pulled aside the yucca cloth door. He viewed the landscape, almost featureless
now negated by the fog. His face confronted the cool still morning air and
could see his own breath. I am not cold, I am alive he thought, and
now she can feel neither. He let the ixtle curtain
drop and just then the tuneless rue of a Tinamou cut the early morning
silence. Many years later, after he had voyaged far from Beja, and after seeing a
grander part of the world had combed his eyes, after time and new experiences
had sweetened and soured all memories, Izauro would recall this moment, the seeping sensation,,,,the calling,,to
begin again, when the Tinamou’s sad celebration had become a duet with Dido’s
Lament. “When I am laid in earth, laid in the earth may my wrongs create
no trouble no trouble in, thy breast remember me but ah forget my fate.”
The blanched morning light was
beginning to enter the room, with the promise of continued struggle. Izauro had set colored candles in three neat lines like graduated organ
pipes. His mother, Felipa lay on her bed.
The years had deeply engraved her once smooth bronze skin. He thought
how her hair had become
lusterless and ungraceful. Some of these stiff hairs caught the pale light
making them stand out like a raggedy crooked arrangement of tired
soldiers. Youth just seeps from
our bodies as if we were pichanchas. We were born to learn how to die,,,
a lesson rarely learned. Two long braids trailed down from her temples. She had
a length of black hair on the right side of her head that had refused to turn
with age and when it was entwined into the folds of the right braid it created
an alternating pattern of black and gray like a decorative lasso. Her arms lay
still at her side. Izauro noticed her short hands. The cracked skin, her
swollen, fingertips rounded and worn from work looked not unlike like those of
a leper.
In her last year I saw her shuffling
about this pueblo, her leathery skin draped loosely over her bones, barely
filling her white and red huipil and long black woolen sarong, bent and twisted
like an aged pirule, hobbling on stick like legs, relying heavily on her staff
and then finally me, each day drawing a little closer to the ground. Those who
knew her in her youth all told a tale of a beautiful woman. Her good looks,
though, had gradually traded places with wisdom. The years, had wrested the
beauty from her face and prodded it, little by little, inside her. She had been
our village shaman,,,, healing the sick, had grown herbs, tended a small flock
of sheep, the patch maíz, worked the coffee plantation, embroidered garments, and
performed spiritual alchemys. She greeted all with
respect yet with a cautious fixed face, like a suspicious parrot.
All the blows dealt by life in postrevolution
Chiapas had fostered a strong instinct for survival. She
had kept her manless house well for more than 25 years. Like an indissoluble seed she was, keeper of
an archive that had accumulated the
information of countless lifetimes, and she, like other shamans all over the
world held keys to their own ethnology. Her secrets were stored deep within
like the genetic history held in a kernal of corn, a vault per se containing
its humble beginning from some obscure piece of grass, and coaxed slowly into
its present form, serving as the footing for a sophisticated culture,, long
since obscured by persistent weeds. A
performer she was, of seasonal masquerades, of manners, that told of herself
and revealed a part of their own now tattered history. In this poor pueblo
nothing was really theirs,, not the land, their houses, their tortillas, their
beans, the place where their shit fell and even their names were owned by
someone else. The population was
composed of excruciatingly poor peasants who had been squeezed almost dry.
Felipa was one who represented something they did posess, their perseverence.
He remembered her then if she were a
faint image imbedded in milky stone, tending the fire behind the comal. Her head was wrapped in a dark tattered blue
rebozo, her face not visible. The sunlight sliced through long vertical cracks
in the crude wooden wall like blades from a knife, and she said without looking
up, “Fetch me some spearmint hijo so I may make a hot tea, and árnica for Doña
Melinda. She fell yesterday. We will see her after the breakfast.”
“Si Mama”, he mumbled aloud, engulfed in
the vision. He saw himself leave the house.
He gazed upwards onto the mountainsides where a cascade of fog flowing
from the other side surged up over the broad mountain’s edge, like water in
slow motion defying gravity, and lazily flowing down its steep side in pin
curls . He was hypnotized, and desired to be up there. He loved the mountain tops. Izauro, like most children
learned that the view from above gave them a sense of power. They learn at an
early age to love heights. Children have always surrendered their view, always
having to look up at everything, but from the lofty perch of a hillside, a
mountain, or a rock even they could pretend to dominate.
Hypnotized, he returned to his musing. He saw himself step forward on an uneven
surface, his eyes lowered, and he saw in the distance, on a field of silvery
moonlit river stones on the bank of the cañada, a woman, dressed in a white
tunic. He looked down to get his footing and when he raised his head again she
had vanished.
Survival pursued all in the village, like
a constant predator, maintaining all in a perpetual state of ripeness. Felipa
was quiet and at first meeting seemed introverted,,, until she spoke. She was
one,, they said, that could charm a
jaguar into a house cat. Many men had
had an eye for her and tried to find a way into her heart,, using honeyed
words, but she always felt the tight grasp of volatility in any pleasure. She
could not allow it. Pleasure would give voice to shame,,, and thus she had been
successful in warding off any serious advances from suitors in the village. She
preferred the solace that grew from denial. When a rape delivered to her a boy
all speculated who the father could be but she would invite none to bear her
part and none would dare ask. No man in a village of morenos offered
responsibility for Izauro was lighter skinned with green eyes. This only added
to the speculations. She concealed her embarrassment and anger in work and a clever
tongue. Only once the subject was breeched when she and Doña Fabiola, a long
time friend were searching pasture for their sheep. The the two of them were
ambling along the lower part of a rock cropped hillside. The day was clear and
caressingly warm. The bleating sheep moved as a tight group baulking now and
then at hollows in the terrain. The ewe in the lead would flinch at the edge of
a sag and the others would bunch up behind her causing an active traffic jam. This
caused some to spring up from the pack hurtling over the fissure to surge
forward. This upset the social order. Fabiola and Felipa frequently used their
staffs to align them again in order to concentrate on their destination.
“Ija ija, move it move on”, Fabiola said. They
found some fresher grasses and the sheep spread out more becoming engrossed in
foraging. Every now and then a head would bob upright the mouth laden with
pasture as they milled it to size. Fabiola spoke directly to Felipa, “And
Felipa we are good friends for many years and we must thank the good Lord for
that endurance, like old honey, hard but still good and sweet.”
“Ah, Son of God that is so Fabiola.” She
stopped for a moment counting the years in her head, and replied, “has it truly
been 50 years or maybe a little more?”
“Perhaps more. Dear Felipa, or it seems
more as my mind dwells on it.
There
was a long silence except for the occaisional bleating of sheep. The trees
whispered in the wind like a distant memory.
All at once Fabiola broke the silence, “I
have often wanted to ask you but I could never gather my courage for I fear
that courage many times is the cause of evil trespass,,, but we both have age
and we carry each other’s confidence in our morrales. Would you take offense at
a personal question.”
Felipa digested her prelude suspiciously,
and then said, “Go on”, already suspecting
what the question might be. “You may ask one,, and it is only because the day
is fine and we are close like a tortilla and beans,,, but then I ask by your
good graces that you must accept my response and ask no further.” The sun
warmed them both into comfort.
“Yes I will ask only one and accept your
answer” she promised and showing some emotion in her voice. I do not wish to
call up the gossips in the village as many as stones in the stream,, but if I
asked who is the father of Izauro, would you take offense? The father cannot be
one from Beja, for there is not one there with green eyes.”
Felipa was silent, and her eyes squinted, for
even though she knew the question of Fabiola in advance she was abruptly whisked
away to another place. A wind caught the dry grass with a whisssssh like the
sound of water. Some of the sheep bleated in response. She collected herself
then spoke resolutely in a serious tone, in such a way as to put an end to the
subject while leaving it cloaked in mystery. “His father is,,, Q’uq’umatz,, who appeared and joined with me once in the
forest.” Fabiola was silent. Sevral sheep bleated one after the other like a
disharmonious chorus.
Felipa was considered a valuable woman,, a
“worker”,, an honored curer, not given to changes in temperature, like a hot
day in July waiting for the evening storm. She was a woman with many different skills. However, she relished her independence and
the freedom of thought that came with it.
“A woman needs a man like a snake needs a
walking stick,” she often mused. “Men were full of themselves, but they can be
managed, in fact all can be maneuvered” she would often say.
Damaso Calixto, one of her last enduring
suitors, had always nurtured the idea that he might conquer her for his
own. He was a nearsighted widower,
interested in acquiring a companion,, and of course someone to wash his
clothes. The disheveled state of his womanless home however rendered him
transparent. One day, years before, when he encountered Felipa as she was
leaving her house, he tried to disrobe a portion of his sentiments but was
gracefully struck down.
“Good morning Felipa”, he said, the sun
kisses you this fine morning, gracias a Dios”.
“Thank you Señor Damaso, it kisses all
good people”, she replied firmly.
He
responded, “Is that your handsome dog there Felipa, next to the door”,,
pointing to the old flea bitten grizzled mongrel laying on the hard packed earth between sun
and shade and said “What is that fine dog’s name?”
“He is called bite your ass”, she promptly
retaliated.
He pointed to the mongrel not really
hearing her response. “Fine dog, and a fine name”, he replied as the dog raised
its eyes towards him, and then let them drop abruptly again.
By the time all the men in the pueblo
capable of sweetened indirectness had given up their tired suits she had
reached her late autumn.
Felipa had purchased her own shaft of
solitude with a sharp defiance that came from a never ending battle with impermanence.
Courteous finesse became her shield, her elegance. One could never encounter a
person who would say something disparaging about her, even those hopefuls who
had been elegantly rejected. She was an expert in phrasing masking abrupt
refusals in tonal blankets. Her rebuffs were always taken well. When one is accomplished in verbal
maneuvering, one is able to get what they want at the lowest social cost.
Hers was a life of memory, and myth. Her approach to living, an approach found in
almost all the people of Bejas was a fusion of the other worldly and the practical.
It was a world created by altitude and legend, solidified by codes and
etiquettes, interrupted at all times by the reality of survival and a narcotic
regularity. Folk tales lived an unbridled life and ceremony was applied to color
that which binds human endeavors.
Her role as a shaman had made her the
custodian of protocol. For her people,
honoring custom was to formally note the intersections of daily life and the
cycles of nature. Felipa was one of the pueblo’s human calendars honoring a
past for eons gathered on the mountain sides in bolsas de ixtle, as that past
confronted the endless seasons. This helped to reaffirm order. A shaman though
is more than just an agenda, for they tend the body and soul. She was a curer,
a priestess, and a counselor. Thus consigned to her a prominence in the
community. She cured a sick body and an
ailing soul and possesed the capacity to recapture the spirits of people
seduced by evil forces, cleanse them, and release them back into a person,
enlivening them once again. She
dispensed herbs for healing, set broken bones, delivered babies, and offered
advice for almost all human problems.
Felipa was successful negotiating the
periphery of the social politics in the town and this preserved her from malice,
as if she was intangible, untouched by spiteful grapples. Her death would unite
the entire village, for there were none there who were not affected by her. Her
funeral would be, an elaborate ritual and she would be interred in a special
place in the pantheon.
The aroma of copal and candle smoke filled
the room where his mother lay. Izauro
was preoccupied with the freshness of death and fled into a memory.
He went
into the woods in search of a centavo he thought he had lost the day before
while scouring the forest for early mushrooms.
It was a dubious quest at best, yet after all, it was a centavo and his
mother would have been angry with him. He needed to retrace his steps, but the
night’s wind had changed the surface of the forest floor. When he returned to the pueblo after ten
minutes, he was trembling, his light skin a little whiter. Some people gathered
there asked what had happened seeing him clearly shaken. He said he had just seen a large snake, a
cascabel. Izauro had always harbored great fear of snakes, ever since he was
filled with stories about his great uncle, Decio, who had died painfully from
the bite of a rattlesnake when more of these reptiles prospered in the region.
Izauro panicked at the sight of any snake. His eyes were forever sweeping the ground
before him as he walked. The rustle of a lagartija fleeing in the leafy
underbrush sent his eyes in the direction of the sound searching for the
expressionless face and menacing gaze of nature’s minimalist creation.
However Izauro’s distress on this day animated two persons, that he had
often tried to avoid, Narciso and Epitacio Parra, fixtures in the center of El
Remolino. The two were always disheveled and smelling strongly of sweat and
sweet posh. They held court in the center of the village about as often as they
could be found working. They were not vile creatures, it was only that their
attention was often directed towards others instead of their own families.
Narciso and Epitacio had become, through habit, inebriated knights errant,
ready to throw down their hoes and enter a battle wherever it might present
itself. As well as performing acts of chivalry,, they were a pair of living
archives, of parochial fables, keepers of the place where imagination crossed
nature. At the very moment they heard Izauro’s
story, they were awakened from their custom of “waiting” out the
afternoon heat, and were inspired to action, to rid this part of the world of
scoundrels in the form of serpents.
“For the children, who will soon be in the woods searching for mushrooms
and herbs” they said,,, ”we must do it for them.”
The brothers spent time in the pueblo with a few, like minded men. Those
of this meager group worked occasionally and the rest they left to their
greater family. Narciso was naturally
intelligent and seemed, a lost soul in El Remolino out of his true “noble”
element. He waited. That’s what he did, he waited. He waited for some worthy
assignment to float his way. He lived somewhere between necessity and
symbolism,,,, between shadow and light. It was a fact that in Chiapas just to
be born an indigenous male meant you would be born with a shortage of
dignity. Lowered expectations were
issued to a male baby along with his soul as he passed through the birth canal.
However, if one gave Narciso a machete, his sword of choice,,, or gave to him a
quest,, put him on the trail of mushrooms, herbs, or an armadillo for example,
or in fact handed him a snake, he immediately metamorphosed from undignified
peon to an accomplished knight in white linen, and became what he was intended
to be, a capable protector of all good pilgrims of the world.
After a short search, Narciso and Epitacio found the snake,, not a
rattler but a two foot long masacuate. They beat it senseless with sticks.
Narciso then cut two thin branches and manipulated them,, like chop sticks,
scooping up the still alive but addled serpent and walked back to town
triumphant, as if he had done this many times, with Epitacio, some of the other
ragged retinue, and a reluctant Izauro in tow.
Narciso was walking slightly bent, suddenly light footed, almost
dancing, all the while managing the coiling snake like an experienced juggler
and at the same time lecturing about the dangers of this breed of snake.
“They are able bite with their mouth and their tail as well”, he
declared with the assurance of a herpetologist.
This bold statement stimulated Epitacio’s memory and impulsed his pulque
soaked brain to testify.
“These snakes have the capacity to suck the milk from cows and human
women”, he added.
Martin Mendoza, also called El Quince because he could only count to
fifteen, another of the small band who often added his own skeptical humor,
asked in a high slurred tone,
“How do these animals manage to enter the blouse of a woman undetected,,
I would like to know that trick.”
Narciso then told of how when he was a baby, his father had killed a
Masacuate that had just stolen the milk from his own mother. Epitacio, the
older of the two confirmed that he had actually witnessed this event. He said
that a masacuate had startled his father as it slithered from the bed where his
wife was sleeping, that he had cut the serpent in two with a machete only to
see white milk pouring from the wound. This, he swore to the creator, was the
truth.
The group arrived in the town with their
prize. They dropped the boa onto the ground before the house of Felipa. Her
green parrot, Esmeralda, perched on a peg, cocked her little head to get a good
one-eyed trembling glance of the monster. They too are hard wired to fear long
scaly things. A crowd gathered as the snake writhed a bit and then moved
sluggishly toward the entrance of Felipa’s house.
Doña Mary, looked up from her weaving and screeched, “you have nothing
better to do with yourself? For the love of God, rid us of snakes and
slackers.”
The reptile, which clearly had been
vanquished, recoiled a little. The knights were on it in a flash with sticks,
even Martin who usually kept a safe distance but now was overwhelmed with
confidence faced with a larger audience. They beat it mercilessly until all
movement ceased, and clear liquid bubbled from its mouth.
Izauro had been watching from the front of his house. The snake had been
coiled in such a way that both its underbelly and its back were exposed, like a
subtle ribbon. He took notice of the coffee colored patterns on its back and
how it shown against the lighter browns and cream colored underbelly. The
patterns resembled the shapes of the glyphs in the book that Padre Vences had
lent him, he thought. It seemed both
beautiful and frightening.
Suddenly he felt self-conscious and then
just as the memory of this incident had come, it suddenly vanished, returning
him to the present, sodden with lamentation and his nostrils once again sensed
the smoke of copal, and candle smoke, and death.
Felipa had always tended Izauro with a
mixture of ambiguous affection and indifference. She had drawn him to her when
occasionally reweaving the webs of myth and poetry and humor of her people in Tzotzil,
the only language she knew. She felt she needed to tell him the secrets that
the timeless wind bore over the ancient mountaintops yet she had been
impassionate as her mother and father had been with her. Everything she said seemed
a scolding more than a passing. This emotional distance, though, created a
wanting in Izauro, and wanting can create a legitimate appetite.
How ironic it was to him that a short
while ago she spoke and now lay motionless after 70 years of unceasing
movement. Her last rasping breaths like the
raze of a clay pot over coarse sand had haunted the air for an interminable 24
hours,,, slowing and slowing, and then stopping. Just before she passed his
face was close to hers, almost touching, and he could smell her death for in
fact he thought she had died, and for many agonizing seconds there was nothing
in the air, save his momentary deafness and some new feeling, of irretrievable
loss, then suddenly she animated, her eyes like slats in a roof, her face calm
and resolved. He startled at the movement. She had finally released,,, given in
to it,,, and then she drew a last deep breath, a prolonged contented sigh, the
last worldly connection, that ended in an expulsive rattle and in the early
hours before the dawn her life had ended as it began, with difficulty in this
ancient realm of misty mountains that rose up and down and up and down like a
heavily creased cloth.
A few minutes later when the world was
able to touch his ears again he began to chant in doublets as was the custom in
that region,
“I am sending you along, sending you to
heaven,
I have prepared the eggs as you liked
them, as you preferred,
I am honoring your full life, your long life
of toil,
With offers of candles and sacred cane
liquor and poetry, fire, and melodious words.
El tepescuinitle muy sabroso, y el conejo,
the animals that helped sustain us, and las tuzas with their thousand
mischiefs, that plagued us with their endless destructions,
Y el puerco espin, whose comical walk,
whose comical gait,
which
was like a fat lady with unmanageable
hips, like a large heavy woman with untamed haunches ,
They who hindered, who impeded, helped,
and aided you,
And made you laugh, gave you problems,
These you will leave behind, these will
remain.
The Hial-k’op e’unun (the supernatural
hummingbird) will advise the Gods of your coming.
The spring that emanates from above our
home, the fountain which comes forth from the ground,
Both our life and our lullaby, our blood
and our cradle song,
Will easily satisfy your eternal thirst,,,
The toad (ramuc), el sapo will call for
your rain,, will part the heavens,,,
The sun and the sky will give you
confidence,,, will assure you,
El ocote, the resinous pine, the red
dahlia, (muk’ta ram cauk), y mirasol, the purple lace flower,
Will unburden your lofty soul, your
everlasting spirit,,,
And at last your humor and your stories
will serve you well,, your good character will accompany you and greet all
souls on your journey.”
He bent his head in contemplation and fell
into a dream.
The
stream issued from a deep saddle between two mountain tops appearing at the
lower end of a depression, like an enormous ladle, that first dampened a great semi
circle of earth, collecting at its lowest point where the the spout of the
imaginary dipper would be,, coming to the surface, always green, populated with
small round leafed plants. The smooth white calcium rocks were swirled with
gray, and pocked with graceful holes finely honed by a ancient greater flow of
water. At this point, it began, the
stream, yet in its infancy. There, on the shallow bank he crouched where the clear
water began to visibly flow and traced its downward course by following the
winding line of tall oaks, and cypress trees. Fresh wáter crabs scampered
sideways beneath the crystal clear wáter hiding among the dark rocks.
“Mama, come see here the big insect swimming in the water.”
She came and crouched beside him on
the bank shaded by large oaks and willows. Morning glories climbed the trunks
of one great oak, while prunella, virgin’s bower, wax mallow, bundleflower, and spearmint
crowded the moist streamside. The water gurgled like a child as she gazed into
the current.
“There”, he shouted, “There on the rocks that large reddish insect.”
“No hijo that is not an insect it is a crab, he is the happy fearless
dancer. Watch how he moves,,,, sideways. He teaches us that the indirect route
is the best one.”
He faced a shrine to Saint John, a small
idol who was fashioned of corn husks and stood sentinel before him dressed in a
tiny dark woolen tunic. Izauro repeated
again and again the same phrases in Tzotzil,,, he wetted his fingers with cane
liquor from a jícara and flicked a very fine spray over the candles which
answered him in staccato hisses. There
he had positioned himself on the dirt floor, knees folded beneath him. He was
suddenly taken hostage by emotion. A tear slid down from the corner of his eye that
changed into a torrent of heaving uncontrollable sadness which ended as
suddenly as it had begun.
“Vinicot” (you are a man, you are a man),
she had said to him over and over again during her last year.
“Avatoh hnaioh” (I have known it),, yaloh
anatoh (you have known it). “
His mother’s life as shaman had prepared
him well for her passing. He would know what to do. Izauro had accompanied her
on her village rounds, and had witnessed the curings and funereal rituals of
many, especially attentive in the last few years when her health was failing.
He knew her role well enough that he could have continued in her place, yet had
never been drawn to follow in the footsteps of his mother. He remained
detached,,, impermanent, a little restless from time to time, his thoughts
often circled like floating branchlets caught in a powerful eddy. At times he
found himself strangely part of and at the same time on the rim of all events,
“unfastened” from his harmony of phantoms, and demons, and the mysterious
iridescent earth. Izauro was a natural observer who viewed his familiar world
from a separate place, in alternate motion within another inertial system. It
is said a good observer is one who will go a step further than just noting
details,, they will take what they see into their mind, filtering and mixing
it,, for seeing is in the processing,, to be alert for the passing
experience. The process, however, was
not yet in his possession. Many years later, however in a place far from El
Remolino, Izauro’s grandchild would inherit this particular trait. He would
surpass his grandfather to master the mechanism after having becoming a
sympathetic bystander from an early age, a harvester of what is dislodged from
the spinning of action, word, and deed,,, one who would harvest the
ever-present congruencies in life, that floated upon the air like fine
haphazard loose threads, free for the taking, and then weave them into stories.
He
remembered the night when he had achieved 17 years and he asked his mother who
was his father, as he had done many times before only to be rebuffed by her
familiar utterance, “Your father is
Q’uq’umatz the god serpent.”
“No, who is my father, am I not old enough to bear the truth?”
“Do you think that I lie?”
“No Mama but you are not revealing all of the story. There is more I
know you.”
It was painful for her to revisit that day for truth and myth had become
blurred in her mind, so instead she insisted with a finality in her voice ,
“Your father was Q’uq’umatz,,,, and you are a prince.
It was light when Izauro went to see his
aunt Magali to inform her of the death of her older sister. To his surprise he
found Magali on the path heading in his direction. They both stopped a few feet
from one another. Magali instantly knew. Izauro spoke, “She has gone with the
Creator and God bless her soul.”
Magali came to him and they embraced.
Magali sobbed, holding her head down at first then moving it in back and forth
in negation. Her forearms were bent outwards swaying haphazardly. The fingers
of her hands were half curled. Grief mastered her awkward jerky movements as if
she were a marionette. She wiped her tears with the back of her left hand her
head cast downward as she spoke. “Oh my sister, my good sister she has
left me. May she reach the humble mountain and be with our ancestors. I will
reach you my dear sister by word, I will reach you by prayer. Last night in my
fitful sleep I felt a hand touch me that chilled my shoulder and back. I knew
she was leaving this world.” She paused feeling the lancet of death. “Were you
with her when she passed?”
“Yes until she shared the last breath with
this world”, replied Izauro.
“We shared much joy and laughter. I will
miss her wisdom. The awful stillness she has left behind will never leave me by
the grace of God.”
The news of Felipa’s death passed through
the town like a sudden gust of wind. Upon hearing the news they came,, another
shaman in the town, and the women, entrusted with effecting the rituals
associated with death. It was they who performed the preparations. As with all
events in the town a strict protocol was followed. For the Maya all living things in the world
possess a soul. These living entities
were first animated by the process of birth, as if when passing through the
birth canal they received a spiritual essence , a soul that gave the animus to
the flesh. For the Maya all living things are a buzz with an outer and inner
life, not unlike a beehive on a hot summer day. Some bees congregate on the
outside of the hive waiting their turn to enter, or fanning, perhaps guarding,,
but if one cuts into the hive and views the inside, another vast undulating
activity is discovered. For the Maya both the inner and outer worlds are to be
respected and to be constantly attended. Hence ritual, the tool that serviced
both worlds took on great importance. As a mind’s activity will diminish
without sustenance derived from challenge and involvement in the world, so too
the souls must receive reverence as their air supply.
Padre Vences often told Izauro that, “We
are not all that different, you and I. We have both used ceremony, to express
honor.”
The Maya also believe that inanimate
objects, like houses, and incense burners, clothing, food, animals, forests,
and fire pits can also be impregnated with spirit through specific ritual.
Purification, through cleaning, burning incense, lighting candles, pouring of
and drinking cane liquor, and animal sacrifice are employed as tools to
“enliven” inanimate objects. As all living entities are invigorated by
ceremony. It follows for the Maya that the souls of the living as well as those
of animated “objects” or “things” belonging to them must be de-animated through
other rituals, and the sacred part,, the soul,
put to rest. In the case of humans the soul must be separated from the
body with prayer and cleansing to begin its descent into pure spirit from
whence it came, and enter the afterlife at peace in order to protect the living
from the possibility of a pesky return.
The processes of kindling something or
someone and then retiring that given spark figure prominently in mayan rituals.
De-animation of the soul commenced with the ritual washing of the body.
Felipa’s head and feet were reverently washed with soap root and she was
dressed in a new sarong and huipil. The
old clothes were discarded. In her mouth they placed a kernel of corn and a
small amber stone. Felipa’s body was placed on some boards and reverently
wrapped in a wool blanket and then encased in a reed mat bound by two sashes at
her feet and head. Death was arranged like a proper gift. After the wrapping, a
jícara was placed on one side of her body for water, and a bag woven from
maguey fibers on the other containing some burnt tortillas. With the corn,
amber, jícara, and tortillas she would have food and payment for her journey.
For three days after her interment candles were situated near her bed and kept
lit for the mourning de-animation period. A fire was built and tended for the
duration.
Three grave diggers arrived and measured
her body with strips of bark from an Amate tree. Using this measurement they
were able to determine the size of the grave. Los Bucles was different than
some other communities in that the residents had been graced to choose a
specific plot in which to place their deceased, instead of placing them in the
ground near their own house. Prayers,
spoken in doublets, were pronounced over her body by another shaman, the
prayers often mentioning her by name.
“Listen
O Lord,
Take
heed O God,
Seated
on thy holy mountaintop,
Rooted
atop the mighty high altar,
Receive
the soul of Felipa Mendez Tzotzek,
Take
unto you her goodly spirit,
Holy
name of God Jesus Christ,
Son
of the Lord of holy heaven,
You
who inhabit the mountain,
Holy
God who sits above us,
Accept
our daughter, shaman,
Welcome
the pure spirit of Felipa Mendez,
At
your white cave entrance Felipa arrives,
At
the sacred gate she comes,
Here
will remain her worldly possessions,
Here
will remain her leaves of pine and curing herbs,
May
her soul not be frightened,
May
her spirit not become discouraged,
May
Felipa’s shadow be cleansed
May
her soul be purified.”
Padre Vences, the priest, was in
attendance, dressed in a dark brown cloak belted with a lasso of ixtle. He
raised himself up and solemnly said in Tzotzil, “To Izauro I offer my deepest
sorrow.” He looked towards Izauro who
was seated alongside the wrapped body, his face fatigued and expressionless.
“Let us pray”, and with a dignified tone this time in Spanish began, “In the
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
“Amen,” repeated the group. Even though
they did not speak Spanish they were familiar with the drill.
He began again in Tzotzil.
“Jesus says: Come to me, all you who labor
and are over burdened, and I will give you rest. Shoulder my yoke and learn
from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your
souls. Yes, with the love and help from the Savior, my yoke is easy and my
burden light."
The body was then sprinkled with holy
water.
He continued, now in Tzotzil, “The Lord
God lives in his holy temple and yet abides in our midst. Since in baptism
Felipa became God's temple and the Spirit of God lived in her, with reverence
we bless her mortal body. With God there is mercy and fullness of redemption;
let us pray as Jesus taught us:
Our Father, who art in
Heaven----------Jtotik ta vinajel
Ich'biluk
ta muk' ach'ul bi----------------
-----------li
buch'u oy smul ku'unkutike
mu
me xavak' xiyalkutik ta sujel yu'un mulil
xch'uk
koltaunkutik lok'el ta chopolal.
Jechuk-------------and
deliver us from evil. Amen
Into your hands, O Lord
we
humbly entrust our sister Felipa.
In
this life you embraced her with your tender love;
deliver
her now from every evil
and
bid her enter eternal rest.
The
old order has passed away:
welcome
her then into paradise,
where
there will be no sorrow, no weeping nor pain,
but
the fullness of peace and joy
with
your Son and the Holy Spirit
for
ever and ever.”
“Amen.”
He added, “She will rest atop the mountain
with the clouds and the sun and the moon. She is in the hands of God and of her
family and all that passed before her. May God take her unto him.”
Her house was filled with people, so many
that they spilled out into the narrow street.
It was a a gathering of contrasting colors. They wore black and white
sheep skin tunics, and long black skirts cut with red sashes, white and red
hupiles, some holding rosaries, the men wearing straw hats, the
women hatless, though some had woven ribbons into their braids. Some held
bouquets of wild flowers. All the houses had emptied. Almost the entire town
had come. Death’s small bundle, that lay
upon the boards like a gift, was lifted aloft by six men and made its way to
the front of the crowd. In advance of her some men carried coronas of wild
flowers. A ribbon of people marched towards the church. To Epitacio near the
rear it seemed her body’s package floated upon colorful stream. There was
music, a steady rythmn beaten on a skin drum and a plaintive lament played on
clay flutes soothing the air, alerting the mountain tops to her homecoming. As
they approached the small church two bells tolled, one small,, bing, bing,
bing, bing,,another large,, boonnnng, boonnng, booonnnnng. They entered the
small church where Padre Vences was waiting. The boards that held Felipa were
placed before the altar upon a floor covered in long fresh pine needles. The
air was thick with people and smoke from candles and incensors of copal obscuring
the catholicism. A lowering sun backlit
the sky of puffy clouds in sweeps of light gold and amethyst. The small
building was too small to harbor all inside so people ringed the entrance as
the familiar sound of the mass spilled out and reached them.
After the mass Felipa’s body was hoisted
aloft again on the shoulders of men, many who seemed to compete for the honor.
The final destination was their pantheon, but first the procession shuffled
through the small village,,, a courtesy call,,, the last touch of things in
their familiar form, passing the grand ceiba, the communal well, and her humble thatched roof home. It was a long walk, up a wide hard packed deeply
rutted dirt path, perhaps a kilometer, accompanied by the flutes and the drum
and the crunch of sandals upon gritty earth. They climbed gradually from the
town center finally arriving at the small pantheon, situated on a promontory
overlooking all that was south. The small terrace of land seemed to jut out
into the sky and within its borders sprang wooden crosses tilted haphazardly
with time, some deeply split and faded to gray planted in mounds of dirt upon
which were placed boards arranged like pitched roofs, offering a symbol of
shelter.
When they arrived and all were
accommodated about the grave set in the highest part of the cemetery, the
flutes ceased their playing. There were some more words spoken by Padre Vences
and the shaman, then Felipa was lowered into her grave. A shissssh shissssh
shissssh of shovels counted outloud a sober toll as men filled in the hole, and
each bail of earth it darkened a little more her clarity. Flowers were tossed
and mixed with the entering dirt as the flutes recommenced and the last of the
day ebbed. A light wind spoke softly through the ocotes,
“May her spirit dwell in peace, with her
ancestors, among the highest peaks.”
For three days after her interment many
attended a remembrance at Felipa’s house, a mixture of mayan ritual and
catholic rosary. Others arrived from the pueblo to pay their respects, drink,
eat, smoke, and speak of her life. Narciso and Epitacio arrived, like so many
others in the community who had been touched by Felipa’s curing or
counsel.
Xun Guemes, one of those present testified
about when she had cured him of a mysterious illness that had made him
listless. “I could not raise myself to work, my body heavy like an old man
tired of speaking and complaining. I needed great effort for the simplest
movement. I was without spirit, dead to thought and deed. It was Felipa,, she recaptured my escaped spirit giving me
life again.”
Itzel Perez recounted, “I remember 12
years ago, how she helped to give light to my baby, Diego. The tears of Chaahk
fell heavily upon us that year, for it never seemed it would cease raining. She
sat with me in my humble house while I began my labor. It was late night, and I was on my bed. It is the driest place in this humble home,
my old roof, a pichancha. It was raining that cold night, an inundation. At
first, naturally, we spoke of water and seasons past, we gossiped, then she
made a tea, her mixture of special herbs to help my pain. The contractions
arrived with force, for considerable time, and finally after great effort,
Diego, in the early morning,,, for he was crouched, off to one side, in an
uncomfortable position. After his birth in the earliest part of the new day, I
remember, the sun cut open the gray sky like a shovel parts the earth and
yellow light and heat poured down upon us. A few minutes later a light wind
sailed up over the north side as the air gave up some of its water creating a
patchy fog. She said the sun and the water and the fog were good signs. Yes, by
the grace of God, they were,, for my Diego now has 12 healthy years.”
Damaso Calixto, now a little ragged and
inebriated from some jarritas of cane liquor began a slurred speech. The hand
that tightly gripped his poorly rolled tortilla fell to his side in defeat and
the juice of chimol dripped from one end onto the floor like blood from a
wound.
“I once told her of my strange
dream.”
Most of the guests continued to eat and
smoke as he commenced his oratory. Smoke filled the room with haze. However, he
continued to speak not paying attention to his audience. It began as a
soliloquy but ended as a touching almost pitiful plea.
“I have had many strange dreams. Perhaps
it is the loneliness of my long nights, which will be lonelier still with the
knowledge that this good person, Felipa Mendez Tzotzek, will not be with the
living,,,, and not with me,,, at least near to me.” He paused realizing he had
captured the attention of some. His emotions began to bubble as he redoubled
the force of his voice. “For you, now, I
speak Felipa,,,,, do you hear me? I am opened now,,, like the carcass of a ram,
in this piece of night within the day,,,,,,
your Angel’s Flute,,, I will always be your moonlight garden, your
moonlight garden.”
He spoke on the verge of tears. Sometimes,
with the stress of situation, and the loosening performed by liquor, a man
finds his voice, and touches something that magnetizes the space about him all
in one or two well chosen expressions,, whereas for the better part of his life
his tongue was never able to inspire a cricket.
“I wish to thank you Felipa, for all our
words, good and bad,” and he added, selfishly, “I want you to know that I am
the one here whose heart will be the heaviest, the very heaviest.”
There was a long silence as his tortilla
continued to drip. He was focused and seemed to be reliving something. Everyone
was silent now waiting for what would come next. Suddenly he animated and
brought the tortilla to his mouth again taking a large bite, beginning to speak
at the same moment, his mouth still full of tortilla and salsa, spitting crumbs
into the air and onto his chin. “This precious fruit was out of my reach, I did
not have the height, I know, but this is the problem of men, all that is
precious is out of reach,,,,,, but let me tell you of my dream. His voice
narrowed. “ In my dream it was night, yet the sun was still visible on the
horizon and not in its proper place, for it was in the south. I was walking
down to the river’s edge when I noticed that it was not as it should be, now
completely dry the bottom and all the stones were exposed, round and smooth
like silver eggs. There were rabbits attempting to swim upon the stones where
the fish should have been. I saw my mother now long gone with the spirits of
the mountaintop, indistinct, like a shadow, yet with a bouquet of wild flowers.
I remember having much thirst and wanting water from the river although there
was none. My mother seemed to be
blocking my way. The dream disturbed me
because it seemed more real than reality. Felipa told me that the changes in
the river were symbols of death and of my doubts, but my doubts served to confirm
my trustworthiness,, and that because my mother held the flowers it was a
symbol of hope offered to me by her love. This calmed and comforted me.”
His head slumped at the last words and he
was silent. The candles near Felipa’s empty bed popped and the fire pit
cackled.
Martin Mendoza, also under the spell of
cane liquor, stood to speak.
“I am Martin Mendoza, all here already
know me as Martin Mendoza, El Quince. First I wish to extend my sorrow to
Izauro for his great loss. You know that she is in good hands.” He paused,
grasping his posh tightly as he stared at the floor pensively, then suddenly he
raised his head and literally spat out the words, “All that she was, she made
in you, Izauro. Her heart was your guide. She will always be watching you as my
mother is watching me”,,,, and here he paused again for a long moment, looking
bothered as he revised the memory, then he picked up the thread again
continuing, “Perhaps not as well as she should have. ”
Manuela Lopez interjected, “That is
because, El Quince, she is ignoring you for to have some rest.” Laughter was
shared as many smiles flashed.
He raised his head, defiantly cocked it
upward and said solemnly, “She, Felipa Mendoza was always there for us, and
this was more than enough.”
Martin then stopped his discourse and
viewed all with proud impenetrable indignant eyes, slowly curled the jicarita
of posh in his hand inward toward his breast as he bowed his head, and solemnly
sat once again.
Padre Vences led a rosary. Then they ate
and talked more.
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