Aglow Page 9
“You didn’t grow up speaking it?”
“No. But there are still entire towns in Mexico where it’s the main language. I went to a pueblo in the mountains to learn it over several summers. That’s something else my papá arranged for me… right before he passed away.” My voice was catching.
“Oh, Marisol. Lamento muito. I’m so sorry,” Zé said.
“Yeah. He had cancer. He was… only 53…” I took a deep breath, focusing on what I was saying. “I miss him a lot. I think of him a lot. And I was motivated to continue what he and I had talked about, by studying classical Nahuatl at the university to be able to read old sources.”
“Like the Sun Prince narrative.”
“Exactly! Little did I know what I would end up translating, huh? I wonder what my papá would think.”
Zé nodded thoughtfully. “Little… did we know. But we are learning so much already! It is a marvelous legacy of your papá.”
I shuddered in the water. “Don’t you see?! It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I do want to study the codex. I do want to translate the narrative. I even want to do these things with you. I just… I would have preferred not to have been kidnapped.”
“I’m sorry, again,” Zé said softly, and it sounded to me like his voice had a hard time getting out of his throat.
“And my mamá…” I hesitated just a second. “Zé, I’ve been texting with my mamá, and she thinks… we’ve eloped.”
“Does that mean what I think it means?”
“Probably. You know, when a couple runs off to get married without getting permission or even telling anyone what they’re doing. I mean, I didn’t tell her that. It’s the conclusion that she reached on her own.”
Zé looked up at the sky so suddenly that I did too, only to realize there was no shooting star or full moon or any other arresting sight. But he kept looking at the stars for a minute or so, as if trying to read from the constellations what to do.
“I am sorry… if what I am going to say sounds shallow, but… it may not be so bad that she thinks that. At least, for now. It gives us a little more time.”
I looked at him, and I wanted to throttle him… and I also wanted to kiss him… and other things I wanted to do both good and bad besides. But I was beginning to feel cold standing still in the water, and I needed the bathroom. Maybe that was what distilled my very complicated emotions into a concise response. “You’ve got twenty-four hours.”
And that answer made me feel like I really was in charge, that I really did have complete freedom, and so I turned around and climbed the steps out of the pool, leaving him there, not caring what he might or might not see of my body.
I returned to my room, where I carefully placed the beautiful frog amulet on the bedside dresser, took another quick shower, dried off, and fell asleep in bed completely uncovered.
Chapter 10: Breath not Blood
March 26, 2012
Dallas, USA
Pancakes… I smelled them while I was still dreaming. Then I heard a knock on the door. I looked at the bedside clock—it was late. Scrambling to wipe the drool off my cheek and cover myself with the sheet, I sat up.
“Come in,” I croaked.
I saw a breakfast tray edging around the door before I saw the person carrying it. It was Pedrinho, dressed stiffly in a shirt and pants. He threw a vague “good morning” to the wall, set the tray on the table, and turned to leave.
“Wait! Pedrinho…” I was still regaining my voice. “Good morning. Why are you dressed?”
He had stopped and was looking at me, but gave no answer.
I decided to try some Portuguese. “Por que você está vestido?”
He looked at the wall and said, in perfect English, “I got dressed to come in here. Can I go now? I want to take these off.”
I frowned, and I trembled a bit, too, to be causing him any distress. “It’s okay. I’m just not used to it yet. Do you know what I mean?”
Pedrinho shrugged.
“Where’s your uncle?”
“He went with Jota. Into town. Be back later, he said to tell you.”
I smiled. “Muito… obrigado.”
He pointed at me and giggled. “You’re a woman. You’re supposed to say ‘obrigada.’”
I blushed. “Oops!” But I was glad to see him laugh. He laughed a lot, in fact, as in, it would have been cruel if it had been a different context. I felt silly making such a basic mistake, but then again in Spanish when we say gracias, we don’t have to match it to the gender of the person speaking.
I remembered seeing him setting up a zoo with his plastic animal toys. “Hey,” I interrupted his guffaws, “when I finish my breakfast can I visit your zoo?”
Suddenly he was serious. “OK, but you can’t wear clothes. The animals don’t, so the people can’t either.”
“Oh! Good to know, thanks. I’ll think about it.”
Pedrinho walked out quickly without looking at me, and left the door open. He undressed immediately, right outside the door, where I could see him clearly, although I don’t think he was aware of that, or even cared. Then he disappeared down the hall.
I ate my pancakes, dressed, and stopped by the kitchen for more coffee. Pedrinho sat at the table, eating not pancakes but cereal, with his toy animals and people encircling the bowl again. Once more, he was pushing gently against the back of one of the toy people, sending waves through the milk splashing over the corn-nugget cereal.
I watched him a moment, reflecting on his visit to my room and wishing I knew more about autism, because I was guessing Pedrinho’s behavior might be somewhere on the spectrum.
Coffee in hand, I went to Zé’s library to get to work.
There was a full moon on the night of 4-Flint Knife, 1-Eagle, 10-Reed [July 29, 1515] when Pilli and a dozen of his friends and followers gathered in the ruins of an ancient city near Papantla. An older woman, a widow of independent means, went with them. Her name was Macuilpapalotl, Five Butterflies. For their refreshment she had prepared some frothy chocolate of the kind to drink only on special occasions.
As they stood in the ruined plaza, she pointed to an abandoned temple, saying, “This is the calendar temple of our ancestors.”
“That is why I wish you to remove all your clothing here,” said Pilli. Then he led them up the temple, clambering from niche to niche while he repeated, “Breath not blood, skin not bones, life not death.”
When Bark Shield asked him why he was doing this, Pilli stopped and had them all repeat with him, “Breath not blood, skin not bones, life not death.”
Then he said, “We are consecrating this temple as we do our bodies. We are bathing it with our living flesh and our living voices, purifying it of the ill-spilt blood that has drenched it in the past.”
When they reached the summit they sat observing the stars and listening to the night creatures. After a while they shared chocolate and song in joy, and some of them shared sexual secretions in joy.
Later, Pilli played some melodies on his ocarina. Around the time when the moon was at its zenith, an older man asked of Pilli, “Will we all make it to the sky? Are there flowers, there? Is there friendship, there?”
And Pilli answered, “Only for a short while are we here in this life. Only for a short while do we stroll at home among the flowers and the hummingbirds. No one knows what lies beyond the garden of life. We share joy amongst ourselves while we yet breathe, because in this way we give joy to the Divine Spirit.”
The man continued, saying, “The priests tell us of Tamoanchan, the beautiful garden of life beyond death. They tell us of the fountain of youth, and the tree of life.”
Pilli answered, “If you want Tamoanchan to be your home, then you must transform your home into Tamoanchan. I tell you, brothers and sisters, that Tamoanchan is nothing if not our desire to live the fullest, most beautiful life we can live.”
Five Butterflies said, “I want to hear you tell us how to live the most beautiful life we can live.”
Pilli asked
of her, “What did you mix into the chocolate?”
Five Butterflies laughed and replied, “It has the usual ingredients: cacao, ground corn, water, honey, chili, vanilla, and a bit of hallucinogenic mushroom.”
Pilli asked, “Are you sure you are not forgetting an ingredient?”
“Oh! A bit of poppy seed, too,” said Five Butterflies.
Pilli smiled and said, “And what, dear woman, of love? Did you not prepare the drink with love, in anticipation of how we would share it tonight? Were not the cacao, the chili, the vanilla, the corn sown and harvested with love? Were not the water and the honey, the mushrooms and the poppy seeds, gathered with love? You say you want to hear me tell you how to live the most beautiful life you can live, and I say that the answer is love. Speak with love. Eat with love. Dance with love. Die with love. Live your life with love in your heart, and you will find Tamoanchan blooming in your home, throbbing within your body such that those who are close to you, unclothed with you, can feel it. This—right here, right now—this is Tamoanchan.”
While he spoke there was a shooting star, and one there was among them who said this was an omen that Pilli would soon leave them. To this Pilli said, “Even as we gather here, there are those who crouch and cower around us. They feel danger, they feel a threat to the habits they have sewn from fear, the habits they would have us all wear. They would dress life with death, they would animate death in all its guises, cloaking themselves in the unyielding power of the finality of death.
“But it is life that wraps the seed of death, and this is why we bare ourselves to life, we bare ourselves down to the root, down to the truth, because the inevitable death within us makes each moment we are alive more precious than the jade that will break, the gold that will crumble, the quetzal feather that will rip. Only for a short while are we here in this life. Only for a short while do we stroll at home among the flowers and the hummingbirds.”
Pilli’s companions recognized the popular refrain of these last phrases and repeated with him, “Only for a short while are we here in this life. Only for a short while do we stroll at home among the flowers and the hummingbirds.”
When I read this through the first time, I caught my breath. I needed to sit back and just breathe deeply for a few minutes. This was one of my ancestors speaking to me, and through me to all of us. Such a precious, precious voice that had somehow survived the scourge of the church to prove once again that deep philosophical thought can flourish in all areas of the world, not just the ancient Mediterranean. And when I was translating the refrain that Sun Prince and the others repeated, I recognized it as similar to one attributed to the fifteenth-century philosopher-king of Texcoco, Nezahualcóyotl, a much-admired figure in Mexican history. The more I translated, the more I realized that this document’s publication would fundamentally enrich, and even transform, the knowledge we had about any alternative to the Mexica state-sponsored dogma of blood sacrifice.
Somewhere around the time I was stuck on the word that I finally realized means “poppy seeds”—another hallucinogen—I received a visitor.
“Marisol?” I heard her calling, and turned to see Dora enter the library, wearing only a pareo and jewelry, as usual.
“I brought you a lunch. Aren’t you hungry?”
“Oh, thank you, yes. I was lost in translation!”
Dora saw me chuckle at my own joke, but she didn’t get it. Instead of laughing, she studied me a moment—my face, my body. It appeared to disappoint her that I was still wearing clothes. I had dressed that morning in the outfit that had been washed, the one I had worn the day I arrived.
“Did you really not bring any clothes? You know, you don’t need them. It’s perfectly fine not to wear any.”
“Thanks. I’m just not used to it.”
She gave me a quick nod. “Well in that respect you are very different from my Zé. Growing up, he never wanted to keep his clothes on! And he ended up convincing me to give mine up, too. He’s very stubborn. And that’s how you are also very like him—you are very stubborn.”
I didn’t know what to think. “That’s, uh… interesting.”
But Dora kept going. “I think being stubborn is like being stingy—it is a lack of generosity. Stubborn people do not extend tolerance for others’ ideas or preferences.”
This was becoming insufferable. Did she really not know anything about the circumstances behind my presence at her son’s house? “So you’re saying Zé does not tolerate my ideas?”
She smiled. “Yes, I guess that’s right. Nor do you tolerate his. And yet that’s the paradox of how you are similar.”
“If you must know, he convinced me to swim without a bathing suit last night.”
Dora clasped her hands enthusiastically. “Did you like it?”
“I did. I did like it, very much. Muito.”
She immediately frowned. “Then why are you so buttoned up? The air, it is like the water. Let the air cover you completely, like the water did.”
It was my turn to study her, and try as I might, I couldn’t find any trace of a false note. She seemed sincere. “I appreciate your patience. Being naked in the water, at night, is more… more private than being naked in the air during the daytime. I’m not quite sure I know Zé well enough yet to go naked around the house all day long. I need to get to a place where I can imagine a professional relationship, as co-researchers, where we could function just fine while naked.”
Dora wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know why you say you need to get to a place. You’re at that place right now.”
As if to emphasize there could be no argument to her point, she left. I saw where her son got his stubbornness, though Dora would deny it. But I smiled and ate the hot turkey sandwich with cheese, and the bowl of French onion soup, and the fresh vegetables with honey-lime sauce. And then... I actually did unclasp my bra, and got back to work.
It was a large group of followers who accompanied Pilli on 13-Deer, 1-Eagle, 10-Reed [August 7, 1515] to the waterfall that the people call Texolo. Only a few of this great number wore clothing of any kind. Bark Shield, Jade Flower, and Five Butterflies brought baskets of tamales and fresh fruits and amaranth cakes to share among them all. They gathered at a spot not too far from the waterfall, but not too close, lest Pilli’s words go lost in the roar of the water.
As they expected, Pilli began to speak to them, saying, “Children of the earth and sky, people who are bodies who are temples who are homes: we are here in the living moment to celebrate our bodies. Think not of sacrificing your precious body in bloodletting. Think rather of the uses of your precious body while it still has blood in it. Did not the trees offer their fruits for you, yet they live on to make more? So we should give also, but it is not for us to give blood in the temples. What purpose, this? It is rather of your sweat that you should give, and of your song, so that your work be your enjoyment, so that the fruits of your labors be many, of all the shapes and sizes of the land. And give as well of the secretions of your sexes, but with the commitment and resources to honor what new life may come, that the willows may continue to sway and the waterfalls continue their cascade.”
One who was of the priests who had followed the group called out, saying, “You would have us disobey the divine thirst? We give our blood to honor the sacrifice of the sun god, who only through the shedding of his own blood brought the world into being.”
And Pilli replied, “There are those who believe as you say. But I ask, what have you seen to be born from the shedding of blood? Only death, only destruction. It was the wind that set the world in motion, not blood. Let your breath, your words, be the element of creation, of growth. What good is a heart wrenched from the chest? There is no more breath in it. Do not waste the plundered hearts of youth in the temples. It is the beating heart that stirs with the throbbing of the world, that sings and thrums in the rhythms of life. The heart sings and thrums until the arrival of death, which has more than enough of its own ways to come. Breath not blood, skin not b
ones, life not death.”
From a pocket of his cape Pilli produced his ocarina and began to play a melody. Then he passed it to Bark Shield, for him to play, as Pilli called out, “Breath! The breath of life! We breathe, we live! Now, stake the claim of your homes! Beat out the rhythms of your life, of your heart, on the skin of your living drums!” And with this he began to pound his chest and slap his arms and buttocks and thighs, and soon he was accompanied by those in the group who stomped and stamped, whooping and dancing as they spun and hopped near the waterfall.
As they all danced and whirled and beat and whistled, Pilli and Jade Flower began to spread over the bodies of the dancers a honey-nectar mixture. This was a mixture that Jade Flower had learned to prepare in just the right proportions to attract butterflies. One by one the followers of Pilli stopped spinning and stood still to spread their arms and legs and be painted with the mixture.
It was not long before the butterflies flocked to them: large blue butterflies and small white ones, medium-sized yellow and orange butterflies, spectacular black and pink ones. Soon the dancers appeared to palpitate and glitter like living rainbows, with the opening and closing of hundreds of butterfly wings all over their bodies. Even when the dancers spun and leapt, the butterflies would hover temporarily and then return to their skin. Last of all, Jade Flower anointed Pilli himself.
The dancers were no longer beating out rhythms, but they hummed and vocalized as they danced. It was a most wondrous sound to behold, and a fantastical sight, as if a vivid dream.
Pilli began to dance closer and closer to the waterfall. As he approached it he sang out, “Let your bodies be your instruments! Play your part fully in the joyous music of the earth! Give of your dance unto the shower of life!”
After repeating these last words, Pilli eased backward into the waterfall, at which the butterflies that were covering his skin all began to take flight. They beat their wings, spiraling up over the plume of water, until the last of them rose, and the Sun Prince had vanished completely behind the curtain of water.