Hunger's Brides

by W. Paul Anderson

  The woods are full of his children, Coatepoztles, serpent children who tempt woodcutters into deadfalls and crevasses…. Ah do not be afraid to fall asleep, hijita. I can tell these stories in your sleep as I drive. You will find the air up here restful. You will see. Don’t be afraid, child, sleep…. There, that’s better.

  I will watch the road. I will watch out for us.

  Wake to the marble clatter of hail! tiny hailpeas leaping off the hood spittlegrilled. Ah, señorita, welcome back. We are at the chalet you can just see it through this mess. Let’s go in I know a way inside this noise is killing me this is why I never paint this truck. Will you not come inside? this cannot last fifteen minutes maximum but there will be much lightning leave your bag there is nobody—come let’s run together now.

  Inside the chalet a scaling up from hiss of rage to pebbleclash to roofroar the hail lancing down through the neardark sparked by flash on flash but no thunder the hail so loud feel it through the floor electric vibrant buzz of hail pounding leaves to pummel—flowers bees juice-extracted. Branches bared and bent to their knees.

  Thunder, fading thunder.

  Windblasts skittering wrinkles—breaking icy spindrift—across the parking lot….

  Quiet. Stormebb echoing behind the eyes.

  Ground a slush of grated coconut. Air a riot of scents, cutsap, brokenstalks, membranes burst to paste. Pine, cedar, wildflowers grasses—rich black earth! to see is to breathe is to taste this place. Dare Terram Deo.

  Fill my mouth with this guttered hail mulched with green and petal clips and in the teeth the clack and crunch from slush to swallowsluice. How long since I have eaten how long has it been? I turn he looks at me blinks then smiles and nods.

  It is just like carnival ices is it not? maybe I will try some too. Redbrown smiling eyes. Cedar eyes, laughing man, who sent you?

  [Cortés Pass]

  You do not think it looks like much right now. But there you can see it just the peak of Popo—see the smoke see how near? Do you want to know how high that is in metres and feet? No? Everyone wants to know this, people ask me all the time as though we can see better in numbers than through our eyes.

  5,452 metres. 17,887 feet.

  Little tibetan tent city of vendors waiting for tourbus Godot. Bedraggled soot-stained canvas flapping in the wind. Ground salted with hail. Sun hot through gaps in cloud.

  You will want to walk a little no? Be alone? Maybe visit the monument to Cortés over there—I never go, one day I will blow it up. They name this pass after him even when this is the way the god Quetzalcóatl came as he left us, promising to return. But no they name it after an imposter led by the nose by a traitor—Malinchista, then give that volcano there her name—can you see La Malinche hanging over Puebla just there through the smog?

  I will leave the taxi here for you and have an atole with my wife’s cousin. How long, mas o menos—no te preocupes, as long as you like. Just to have an idea so I can be ready for you. No no you pay only when we are back in town. Climb that? You think you can just climb like that, it is already after noon.

  No joven I cannot take your money now. Do not ruin a beautiful day together I cannot leave you up here like this.

  Pahaha—look at you gasping up here like a fish! You are not even above the trees you see it is not so easy or for me either I am getting old for this. Come down now little daughter it is almost dark. If you freeze up here who do you think will have to carry you down? It is a code of mountaineering. You see this is a joke. I see you like such jokes.

  Why do you want to climb this pico de la chingada anyway—because it is there? If you are serious about El Popo you must first get used to the altitude. It will take a day or two you will need a place to sleep. I can arrange it—you are not planning to sleep in the snow? When the tents are empty at night. Everyone walks back down to San Juan. It is about an hour on the other side. I can talk with my wife’s cousin. There are blankets, there is coal. It will be cold but you will be comfortable. Yes yes I know you can pay you are very rich. Come. I cannot go back to town unless I know.

  Just think for a minute of the sad silence in the cantina tonight if I am not there. This is bigger than us both. That’s better. We understand each other. There is no shame in finding me irresistible. We have already agreed on this.

  Laughing man. Cedar man, cedar man with the redbrown eyes and hands, why have you come to me? Are you to be my comic Virgil, are you here to guide and keep me … company?

  Then why have you come so late?

  THRESHOLD

  [18 Dec. 1994]

  CROUCHED STAND AT A DISTANCE trunked in trees. Watch the last of the tent people file back down the mountainside. Last to sink down the trail a ponchoed man with a car battery, shouldered. Beyond him the plain already dark, softglow of a city batterylit—Puebla, it must be. Raúl watches me from the jeep over on the turnabout. I enter the tent and only then does he ease away, switching the headlights on.

  How strange this world, not Tibet not Canada not quite Mexico. Strange liminal noplace. Threshold, of what. Mystery of highcold and tropical wind. Volcanoes thrown up on a broken plain.

  East, a smudge-sashed horizon skirted in dark. Evening starshimmer over Puebla’s ochre burn. Roselit cone, canvasframed in the tentdoor, sky of lastgasp light.

  Three greywool blankets stacked on a straw mat. Along one tentwall a palmwide shelf, waxspattered and low. Candles, like an altar and woven containers of tortillas, rice, beans. Clay cántaro of water. Papers and tobacco. Matches.

  Brazier heaped with coal / tequila bottle of gasoline. Advance a trembling match to the brazier, my subway penlight clamped in lightbitted teeth. The gas flares sootedged—scorch and quickfade to a sulkycoal glow.

  Windhowl and tentcreak … slowflag to silence and stars. Penhand cramped with cold.

  Yellowing light too dim to read. Just beyond the door a grey shadow blinks greeneyed into a stab of penlight, dissolves.

  Night without sleep.

  Dawngrey slopes.

  Blink into the smiling black eyes of a child. Day, fullday. Family smiling shyly from the doorway. Muy buenos dias. ¿Durmió bien, usted? Yesyes sleptswell—y ustedes, ¿amenecieron bien? Sí gracias, muy bien—will your Mercy stay and breakfast with us?

  Hasty retreat before they check the altarbaskets.

  Please you are welcome to sleep here tonight again….

  Another flock of stiff-legged strollers stilting down from the first tour-bus then over to Cortés’s sorry monument.

  My beaten retreat deeper into the trees. Down the course of a brook threading farther into the snowpatched wood. Back to my little haven out of the wind, through trees fleeced in something like lichen. Beards of Old Testament prophets carved by Michelangelo. With no more sound than the mice make.10

  Left turn at the omensign: Areas de Trabajo de Control de Plaga, my aegis my beacon my mission: plague control. A return to this sunsplashed meadow … tussocks of grass, daub and violet smear of mountain flower. Slip out of the wind into the bared roots of a pine, gloveclasp of spongy moss, soft needled.

  Notebook on one knee … somewhere a woodpecker taps taps its hesitant braille. Smoked light, sawshriek of a hawk, or falcon. Scribbler, scratch this note … son of Isis, Horus the Falcon, but why? if the male is a tercel and the falcon a female?

  And each afternoon he finds me. Cedar man, the tinder of his eyes tenderkindled to laughter, inflammable smile. River of baritone, dancing hands, the way he thumbs the shock of moustache smooth. Why have you been sent to me, handsome man with the redbrown eyes and hands?

  How do you find me each time—are you some kind of tracker too?

  There are not so many footprints out here, your feet are small there is enough snow. You see the coyote there watching us from the trees? I followed him here. You are lucky, it is a good omen. There are not so many left. But it is better not to get so close, some have a sickness. My presence is welcome?—but of course how could it be otherwise. I cannot stay long, this
will distress you I know—my clients have given themselves an hour—a hand’s breadth in the sky. They tell me this because I have no watch. Pah! My people know what time it is—both in the sky and in the earth there are clocks all around us.

  I have convinced my cousin to accept money so you must eat the food they leave. They would never ask money of a pilgrim, they thought you came for a sickness in your family, or some problem of the heart—to San Gregorio del Popo for a remedio. You are surprised I see you did not know they call the mountain that. Which Saint Gregory? If you ask them this they will not understand. This San Gregorio is the only one they care about. The volcano is very active now. Did I tell you they sacrificed lovers up there? I am not really so sure this is true.

  You know Cortés sent his men up for sulphur for his cannons? Moctezuma sent runners every day for ice. Maybe for margaritas, what do you think? Los pinches españoles were always more afraid of life than we ever were of death.

  Are you ready for your test after yesterday’s lesson? It is good you try to see this place through the Nahuatl tongue of my people. Coyotl?—coyote. But that one is too easy. Atl?—water. Good. Tepetl—stone. Coatl—serpent. Very good. There, butterfly—Papalotl.

  But I did not teach you that one … you see down there that cloud that looks like a serpent? Combine the words for cloud and serpent and get Mixcoatl—

  Father of Quetzalcoatl.

  But you know even this? it is good for me to meet a visitor like you. Ah look our friend coyotl is leaving without his dinner. Our talking has scared the mice. There he goes, Nezahualcoyotl, FastingCoyote. Do you know this poet of the Aztecs? In Mexico there are many great poets, but only two you must know and both of them from very near here. Once you could see both their houses from where we sit.

  A breathlessness, under this sky. And still the roaring of the wind in my ears will not quit.

  My love, my liege,

  listen a while to the weary lament

  I entrust to the wind …

  to join all the hopes it has taken from me …

  I am ready, I am willing, I am here. How long—two days or three? All this for what? Another morning of non-event in a rising wind. Another midday of cloud. Mountains—aren’t there mountains enough in Canada? Pointless tremontaine ramble, listless wandering. Back to here. To her. Reading rereading her. For what—something I’ve missed? What hope of finding it now … hope now sacrificed to hopeless love.

  I am fasted and clean. I am lightheaded and calm. And still you do not come to me. But you came up here, Juana, you must have once. Let me find what you found, see this place as you saw.

  See the laughing brook,

  gallant to every flower in the meadow,

  delighting in each, caressing each,

  sharing its affections intimately with all:

  then, let it coursing tell

  how the current of its laughter

  is wrung from my grief …

  I have stopped the engine in my head. Now day and night all I hear is the howling of the wind. Even here where there is shelter. I don’t hear her music anymore. I read her constantly now but I have lost it. I keep this journal still but I have stopped the chapters. No matter how I rifle this smashed jukebox for the nightingale’s fled melodies—Keats, Rilke, Eliot, Milton, Yeats—

  I have lost her music.

  Is this the price her tears paid? A roaring in the ears that swallows up the music? Did she sacrifice even this, the music in her mind? Would I—have I already? Is the price of penetrating her silence that the music dies in me? Can I sacrifice even this work of years so close to finishing?

  I have come so far. Can I follow her even across this last bridge? Or does it all end now and here? I have reached the heart of Mexico. Hear it?—beat so wildly as I hold it up. Hear it?—pounding in my ears. I have come for the Eye of Egypt, the silence of Horus. To solve the riddle of the Science Queen. I have come for my eyes of wonder.

  Where are my eyes?

  What do I still have to do—let me lift the veil, hear that silence, see with the power of the Eye Restored!

  Or haven’t I given enough?

  Ours is the eye unrestored, Apollo eye ascendent…. Don Juan eye that hungers, that consumes the world—shielded from the Gorgon / turns her into gold.11

  Eye that hungers, I that thirsts—give it vinegar, put it out it burns. But if I’m to be made deaf to you now, then I’ll hear you with my eyes.

  Hear me then with your eyes only,

  our ears being out of hearing’s utmost reach,

  since you cannot hear my croaking tune

  hear without sound, hear groans gone mute.12

  With eyes made to hear, fingertips to see. Through the lenses of the Science Queen, soothe pain’s most silent scream … with tongues of flame.

  Is Juana’s synthesis of the Science Queen a synaesthetics—a knitting of the senses for new metaphors? / a fitting of lenses for a new eden….

  And how bright there does a green grape blare? There, what hues hew to smooth?

  See that softest sadness of blue, cleave / where it trembles cleft and bruised….

  Up there. The answers are up there.

  Tomorrow I go up. Where I have not let myself look. To where the fire and ice and rose are one. To feel them dance together again in the still throb of this petalled palm, in its livid flame snaking up this arm.

  Tomorrow. I find out if I’m strong enough, care enough … find what’s left to give.

  ASCENT

  [19 Dec. 1994]

  3 A.M. ANOTHER NIGHT, dreams of dreamless sleep….

  One day at last not like the others. A day—one day—to break the four-year fast. I take the last breakfast of heroic champions: tortilla cardboard, corn in the crop / chewed to kidney paste the brickred beans. Pack the driedrice basket to strew my bright triumphal backpath. Pack up the last three books, the mangled notepads / pencils pens. Powerdown the Powerbook battery light blinking frantic frantic.

  Outside I stand planted in the still cold air under the malevolent four hundred stars. Hours yet to red daybreak. Set sail forewarned now four-armed under the ensign of the morning star. Lord/Lady Dawn who does battle with the sun.

  Into the gleam of this flagging penlight signs a green semaphore, my coyote-eyed escort. Follow the fasting coyote up. Up onto the near and far of ice and smoking stone. Fasting coyote what do you eat—only Apollonian rodentine plaguevector nectarines, replies the coyote/poet wolfish-grinned. So we’ll go together!, share rations, call our mission plague control.

  Dead ahead the mountain, a darker shade of night. Disaster’s nightshade steeps and stews.

  Pyramidal, funereal, earthborn shadow,

  vain obelisk, skyward thrust …

  Vain obelisk I will see you scaled and bated. Swordpoint fulcrum of states—liquid earth, glass supercooled, water superheated to steam. Sky that rains fire. And I am that rocking cradle vexed to a quintessence. They send for ice. I will bring down conflagration.

  Beware her red hair she eats air like men.

  Up and up into breathlessness. Up through mist and the last dwarf trees, hunchbacks bent in drifts.

  Up out of the cloud and into blinding day!

  This cone a soot-rimmed sear of white. This aspirate light that brands its taper to a gasping throat. Why was the sight / to such a tender ball as th’eye confined—LET ME SEE THROUGH EVERY PORE

  See through these tricks of light and distance. Shady lightbrakes—light that stills the eye. Carves and cuts—edges of light.

  Light that wedges and splits /

  wisps of It, from blocks of Nought.

  2 P.M….

  Horizonless distance of rustsmoked sky. How high how high … Windblown ash, swept slopes of slate and rock, faint trail hedged with cairns.

  Black ice and obsidian gleam—plunge to bludgeoned knees. Better I crawl—my snowy red crayonscrawl of humility.

  On humble Humboldt up and on! Gravelpockets of shrub—gentian this?—a field of tiny
cactus purpleflowered—gather a sample for the Beagle hold it close feel the thorns wake and warm and nettle these sleepyhead hands. Look see the ice and grit pouched under this talon-clutch of nails. Peel them back like petals of a rose.

  3:35 P.M….

  Earthquake in the sky! Grey sway of quaked earth underknee—rumble of rock, reek of eggshell rot, sulphur mist. TEMBLOR! What next now—avalanche?

  Glimpses of the peak no nearer … farther away then? Poor narcolept doublebent do you still know up from down? know seamonster from diving belle?

  Chestcrack gasp and lunge of lungs. Aspirate rasp, exhalate of ground glass.

  Sit awhile up here and rest. Time … a small smooth stone of word, wedged in the chest.

  Uptilt this face to hear the sear the sunbrass blare

  Tonguetrace the ripped blue streak of falcon screetch

  Answer it!

  I hear a cry … voice like mine.

  Above, the peak … adrift in a cloudsped sky. Closer now bends its soar of near and far.

  Dark cloud boiling up from below. Whirl of snow … a falling up. Stormcloud of unknowing climbs from my snowblind feet to muddled eyes. Whirl of wasp-paper wafers / a roar of iron on the tongue. On, hadji, on through this greyflake storm of ash and snow. Tempest fugit, crawled.

  Ahead a tiny redrock alpenhut allcomforts of home / little firehouse in the air is it real is it true? Cactus thornthrob behind one eye … realer, this pain than anything now. On, not far my volcano bungalow / my stormshelter squat and snug.