Aglow Page 3

Zé was pacing back and forth. “Yes, the friar is dead. He was a good man. But there is no urgency there. For the other hand, this matter of the codex is indeed urgent! Do you have a key to the library?”

  I narrowed my eyes in disbelief. “Why should I believe you about anything? You knocked out the professor, and you stole the codex!”

  “Stole?! I did not steal it, I rescued it, didn’t I? Look, maybe we are not starting off on the right leg, is that the expression? I need to explain you everything.”

  Flaring my nostrils, I tried to breathe deeply. “I don’t even know who you are. I did know Friar Francisco, que en paz descanse,” I said, crossing myself. “He was important to me.”

  Zé backed up a few steps and blew air out the sides of his mouth. “I apologize. Please, do what you need to do. Tell your loved ones you are OK. I will wait for you. But please, do not tell anyone that I have the codex. Not… yet. I will be studying it at the Posada, where my bodyguard will make sure it is safe.”

  I just nodded without saying anything further, even as I wondered why he needed a bodyguard.

  I went back to Gualberto, who told me that some of the other library employees had already gone to notify the bishop of the friar’s death… well, alleged death, since no one had breached the damaged building yet. I stayed in the street with the crowd while I placed a couple calls. My mamita was so glad I hadn’t been hurt, but devastated to learn about Friar Francisco.

  Maestra Filo was already on the bus back to Xalapa. She had not felt the earthquake but others around her were talking about it. When she heard my news and realized that she had been one of the last people to speak with the friar before his death, she started crying into the phone.

  “Ay, Marisol, figúrate, me dio una caja que habían encontrado… He gave me a box that they had found inside that basement wall. He told me there was something special in the box, that he wanted me to evaluate, but that I should not open it until I got back to my lab at the museum, something about keeping the contents safely packed. He told me…” she broke off with a wail, “that he wanted me to let him know as soon as I had an analysis. ¿Y ahora qué? Ay, now I can never tell him, Marisol…”

  My eyes were streaming and I kept choking back sobs. I wanted to tell my former teacher about the codex, even though Zé said not to… but when she told me about the box that I had seen the friar give her, some sort of instinct made me want to be a mediator in the situation: Zé did not know about the box, and Filo did not know about the codex. I would be able to decide on what, if anything, one had to do with the other. At least, that was what I hoped.

  So when I saw Zé again, still in the crowd outside the library, all I told him was that Filo was already out of town.

  And all he told me was to meet him back at the Palafox at four o'clock in the morning. “We have to find and rescue that book the friar said was so important to him.”

  “Rescue? You’re just trying to make me feel guilty. Yes, he told me to help the caballero. Is that really you? Are you a gentleman? Maybe he meant for me to help Dr. Gutiérrez.”

  “He told you, with his dying breath,” said Zé, “to help the gentleman find the light, yes? I am that gentleman.” Zé bowed like some Renaissance courtier. He gently took my hand and kissed it.

  “Oh, nice. I’m supposed to be convinced now?” I was trying to be serious but a nervous giggle betrayed me.

  “Do you live close to here?”

  “What does it matter to you, señor caballero, and why do we have to be here so early, anyway?”

  “I want to know if you can get here easily. We need time to look through the reading room before the earthquake recovery team arrives early in the morning. I made a deal with Gualberto to let us in even earlier.”

  “A deal?” I laughed. “Must have been a lot of pesos for such an early hour. But what about Friar Francisco?”

  “Gualberto told me that’s the only thing they’re going to do now, this evening—recover the friar and the professor. So, don’t worry. Go home and get some rest. See you in just a few hours.”

  I walked home in a daze through the flashing emergency vehicle lights, my feelings all at odds, con sentimientos encontrados. I felt grief for Friar Francisco, and pity for the professor—as much as he so thoroughly me disgustaba, I still felt bad for him… and for my ruined chances of getting into the grad program. I was worried about my friends and family! ¿Todos estaban bien? I was apprehensive about the library, about damage to the collection and about maybe even losing my job.

  And underlying everything else, there was Zé. What did I feel about him? Anger? Fear? Gratitude? Attraction? I couldn’t sort it out just yet.

  Chapter 3: Look for the Light

  March 24, 2012

  Puebla, Mexico

  It was a late night with mi mamá. She made some atole—a heavy corn gruel flavored with chocolate—and we accompanied that with some candied camotes that are a signature snack in Puebla, while we talked about the earthquake and cried about Friar Francisco, and the whole time the phone was ringing or we were calling to make sure family and friends were alright. And then we talked about my siblings: my teenage brother was a handful, and my older sister who had been married for a year was just starting to show her pregnancy bump. But my mamá was still very overprotective of me, treating me like a fourteen-year-old instead of like a young woman of 25, which is how old I was at the time all this happened. I can’t really fault her for that. I knew she loved me and wanted what was best for me. But that is why in all of our long plática I did not tell my mother about Zé the “caballero,” or the codex, or that I planned on waking up early.

  Finally I got to sleep. I had one of those ‘naked’ dreams where I was standing in the street with no clothes on, feeling vulnerable, and an eagle was swooping down at me. The huge bird passed right over my head, and when I turned around, I was on a beach looking into the sun.

  When I stumbled out of my house at a quarter to four, I did so as quietly as possible. And I have to say that I was not really surprised to see Zé waiting for me in the street, in the rain, even though I had resisted answering his questions about where I lived. Obviously he had looked me up, or greased some palms, or had me followed—whatever, but there he was. Was he just being a caballero? He did have a very romantic, dashing look about him in his fine clothes and trench coat, his strong stride, attempting to hold his large, dark umbrella over both of us as we navigated the skinny, slippery sidewalks along the six blocks to the library.

  When we arrived at the Palafoxiana, there was a man holding open a backdoor for us. Zé introduced him as Jota, his specially trained bodyguard and assistant. I couldn’t see him very well, or really see much of anything at all, because it was still dark, and Zé claimed Gualberto had insisted we couldn’t turn on the library lights or we would get him in trouble. So all we had were flashlights.

  “Look at this! What a mess,” Zé was saying as we entered the main reading room. “Only what, about half? About half of the bookcases are still intact.”

  “Be careful,” I said. “There’s broken glass everywhere.”

  Jota had trained his light on some shelves, and I heard a whisper from his direction. “What are we looking for?”

  I answered. “Friar Francisco said to look for the light. See if you can find a title that has the word luz in it.”

  “Or maybe lux, in Latin,” Zé said. “And keep your flashlight pointed low!”

  We all began searching the room, and that’s when I realized how difficult this was going to be. The cases that had not fallen over completely had still lost some of their books, spilled out on the floor around them amongst the debris, and even in the cases that were still intact, almost all of the volumes sat behind locked glass doors. And, of course, many of the books did not have titles along their spines. It was a lot like the way I used to imagine devastated libraries in my daydreams, but now, it was all too real. For a few moments I didn’t know where to start.

  But I snapped out of it
. “Well, at least I can go get the cabinet keys from the front desk.”

  “I’ve already opened the cases along this wall,” Jota said, “and I can open the others just as quickly.”

  “Like I said,” Zé spoke to me while pointing at Jota. “Specially trained.”

  I shrugged my shoulders, impressed.

  It was eerie working in silence, in the dark, for the next couple hours, the three of us gingerly pulling out ancient volumes one by one and perusing them with our flashlights. From time to time one of us would find a promising title, only to realize after a few pages that it did not pertain to the codex.

  I was scrutinizing a volume called Lux Aeterna when it happened again: the floor started shaking. My instinct was to dive under the nearest large piece of furniture—a heavy table. I couldn’t see Zé or Jota. They told me later they had braced themselves in an archway at the entrance to the reading room.

  Under the table, I covered my head. All I felt was shaking, for maybe fifteen seconds, less time than the day before. But when it was over, and I wanted to get out from underneath, I was trapped. From the vibrations, one of the heavy table legs had traveled a few centimeters onto my pants leg, pinning me down.

  Jota and Zé tried to move the sturdy table to no avail.

  Zé wiped his brow. “Could you just slip out of your pants?”

  “¡¿Qué?! No way! Are you crazy? You want me to get out of my pants? That’s just sick!”

  Zé regarded me dispassionately. “I don’t know what you are imagining. I am merely reminded of Friar Francisco. Did not the friar give us his example? He was unashamed of his bare body.”

  “He had a heart attack! He was dying! What does that...” and I couldn’t say anymore from the sobs that rolled through me.

  “It’s OK, Marisol. Não se esquente! We’ll get you out,” Zé was saying. In the meantime, Jota had managed to put himself horizontal, with his feet against the wall and his hands on the table edge. He used the force of his legs to move the table just enough to free me. My slacks were not even damaged.

  “Bem feito, Jota,” Zé said. “Well done.” He extended his hand to help me up.

  I made a point of standing up without his aid, and of thanking Jota profusely before angrily brushing off my pants. We resumed the search.

  By that time, it had stopped raining and the clouds were gone, which made us suddenly aware of the sun rising. Zé announced we’d have to leave, because we couldn’t be there when the morning shift guards came, and the earthquake damage inspectors would arrive soon after.

  “Keep looking,” I said. “I’m going to the front desk to get passes for us, just in case.”

  “Be careful,” said Zé.

  It was quick enough to do. The only difficult part was inventing a profile for Jota. I didn’t know the rest of his name, so I made it up. I stamped their visitor passes with that day’s date, and grabbed my own employee pass, too. Then as I walked back, stepping over and around the debris, I stopped to observe the architectural design of the reading room as it began to take on a new glow in the growing dawn—a friendlier atmosphere, one more welcoming to the illumination we sought.

  The light, of course.

  “¡Busca la luz!” I shouted. “Quick, help me watch where the sunlight hits first!”

  We all looked up to find the eastern windows, following the light. It was just beginning to push the shadows down the western wall. We could see that the rhombus shape of the central eastern window meant that the light would form an arrow down to the top row of the middle case along the western wall. It happened to be one of the cases that was still standing. Even as I watched, I understood that the light’s angle would vary throughout the year, but it was all I had to go on. We had to try.

  As the light descended, Jota opened the case and we started pulling the books out, quickly but gently, rifling through titles that evoked miracles, witches, revelations, and saints: Verdadera exposición de los milagros de San Jorge... De las nefandas brujerías de la comarca de la Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz… Razonamientos apocalípticos… Vida y obra de Santa Eulalia… Exégesis evangélica según la doctrina de San Agustín…

  None of it seemed right.

  Then we heard voices and keys jangling outside the main entrance. The guards had arrived. Quickly we began stuffing the books back on the shelf.

  “Wait—what’s that?” I spied a small, unmarked volume. “I don’t think we saw that one.”

  Zé reached it. “I don’t know. No title. It has a sealed cover.”

  “Sealed cover? You know that’s gotta be it! Let me see it,” I said, but Jota had intercepted the volume and quickly sliced open the wax seal with a pocketknife.

  Just as he placed it in my hands, the main entrance door opened and three guards walked in. I hung Zé’s and Jota’s passes over their necks, and the three of us ducked quickly behind the tables. The guards seemed none the wiser. Obviously, we were going to have to stay frozen in place for a while, but I couldn’t resist slipping the now-unsealed cover off the volume I was clutching. The front page declared the title:

  Luz y razón del apóstata nahua, Tonatiuhpilli,

  según el códice del escribano Chimallamatli

  I almost cried out in relief and joy. With a big smile and a thumbs up, I nodded as discreetly as possible at Zé, who was watching me from behind a different table.

  The guards had fanned out to their posts in different areas of the library. Zé noiselessly stood up, retrieved a volume from one of the opened shelves, and sat down at the table. Jota did the same. The two of them only pretended to scan their randomly chosen books, but I truly was reading mine, lingering over the opening sentences that I would later translate:

  Querido lector, si has descubierto este libro, es decir, si lo has sacado de su escondite y lo has desvestido de su casaca, entonces has seguido la guía, que es la luz del sol, hacia el claro entendimiento de las cosas de este mundo […] ¡Busca la luz!

  I was flipping through the book to get a sense of how much there was written, when one of the guards spotted us. I recognized him as one of the regular library security personnel. I held up my pass and pointed at Zé and Jota, indicating they were with me. But almost immediately the structural damage inspectors entered the reading room and told us we needed to leave. I was worried about having to hide the book on my person, yet its dimensions were so small that it gave the impression that whoever wrote it was used to hiding it in clothing or robes. When no one was looking, I rewrapped it carefully and slid it inside the rather spacious sweater I was wearing that day.

  By the time we left the building, Gualberto had arrived. We thanked him discreetly and I asked about their mission of the night before.

  “Me dio mucha pena,” he said. “It hurt hard to find Friar Francisco like that. The stairs had fallen over. We had to find a ladder to get down there, and then we rigged up a cot with ropes—it was hard work, but we lifted him up and out and took him to the Cathedral for his wake. The mass is going to be at five o’clock.”

  “What about the other man?” asked Zé.

  “That guy was still breathing, unconscious. I guess something heavy knocked him out. We thought it might have been the staircase, but that doesn’t explain how he got under the table, and he doesn’t remember. In fact, he doesn’t remember much of anything at all.”

  I gave Zé an accusatory glare.

  “Where is he now?” Zé pressed.

  “Hospital.”

  “Gracias,” I said. “I hope the inspection team can get through the mess in there.”

  “Right. And remember: you weren’t in there, you didn’t see anything, ¿me entienden?”

  “Entendemos,” said Zé. “We understand.”

  Zé invited me for a coffee at the nearby Arcos on the Zócalo—this was the main city plaza, with all its stately colonial charm. We sat down at an outdoors table under the arches. I wanted to show him the book, but when I started to pull it out of my sweater, he shook his head.

&
nbsp; “It is too risky to look at it here. People could see it. One of us could spill coffee on it. Just tell me, Marisol, because I trust you—do you think this is it? Is this the volume that explains the codex?”

  “I think it’s as good of a chance as any. The title says it’s about Tonatiuhpilli—Sun Prince—and that it’s based on a codex.”

  “Great. This is good news,” Zé said, even though he showed no emotion. “Big question—is it in Spanish?”

  “The first couple sections are in both Spanish and Nahuatl. But when I flipped through quickly, I saw that most of it is in Nahuatl only. Apparently the translator didn’t finish the job.”

  Zé hung his head and fell silent for a few moments. When he looked up, he was smiling. “Thanks, Marisol, for all your help so far.”

  As I was saying something about being glad to help, that it was my pleasure, or something like that, Zé pulled out his phone and sent a quick text. And suddenly there was the black car with tinted windows pulling up to the curb, like something I should have seen coming, and before I could register who was driving, what I saw was my own shocked face reflected in the driver’s sunglasses as Zé opened the door and pushed me in, pushed me across the back seat, and sat close to me, his arm behind me. I remember hearing a little popping sound in front of my face, and I waved my arms and started to say something like, “It smells funny in here.”

  ***

  When I came to, I realized from the sound of the motors that I was on a plane. “¡Pinche puto cabrón...!” My speech was slurred, but my vision was clear enough, and I had seen Zé across the aisle from me. I tried to move my hands to unbuckle my seatbelt, only to find that I was handcuffed to the seat.

  “¡¿Qué chingados?! ¡Suéltame! ¡Me las vas a pagar, pendejo!” I needed my native tongue to express such an intense combination of rage and deceit. “¿Dónde estoy? ¡¿Adónde rayos me llevas?!”

  “Tranquila,” Zé said, and I immediately hated him intensely for it. Never tell an enraged woman to calm down. Ever.