It clambers out, drunken sailor, up the rocks. Breath, laughter—
Penny-echoes in a well.
Jacinto Ek Cruz, I have seen, I have heard. And felt.
I will remember. Now, I can write her death.
THE RED LAND, THE BLACK
[3 Mar. 1995]
THE BUS FROM CHETUMAL passes in less than an hour, or a lot more. The only one today. One A.M. It is never early, you can be sure. If he sees people, he will slow down. If we leave now, we can walk in plenty of time. You have so little, would you like to leave something behind?
Sweet lover, sweet friend …
As you say, I have so little.
I am becoming a little transparent no?
I’ll be back—I promise. Now you have to learn.
Learn?
To trust me.
The dress looks very nice. My cousin did a good job with the hem. A few little scorches. Is it practical to travel … in a dress?
For peeing at the roadside or crouched on a toilet seat. Very.
Ah, I did not know.
Something else for you.
You see, you can teach after all. Here, I would like you to take my jacket. It is a light cotton but better than nothing. For the air conditioning on the bus. For the nights….
Yes you are becoming transparent.
We walk north along the shore. A warm mid-night of cricket anthems, lightning far out to sea. We turn left to the lights of the little town. One main street, four streetlights, four storms of moths … blindness spirals down.
We wait here.
You’re not angry anymore?
I am calm now. What does one say to someone who wants to leave.
I don’t—
Who cannot see why she should stay, then. I have had a month to find the words. What does one say, ¿quién sabe? Now I have said all I can. I have let the land speak for me….
Jacinto … I have seen I have heard.
So not angry, calm. Sad, a little. As your friend, I should have done better. I have failed to understand you. There is some thing I am not quite seeing.
There are things I haven’t said. About being responsible, about work.
But if we forget all this, even good work is a prison. And if it is service, I think our service goes nowhere if it does not lead … back here.
Sweet man, I want so badly for you to understand. I’ll learn. I’ll find the time in now. I’ll fight for it, I promise. But first I need three weeks of soon.
Jacinto, there’s something … I can finish now. This thing of five years, yo tambien he andado buscando palabras. And then I’ll be back. But now I need you to trust me. Can you?
You can teach me.
I’ll write.
Write if you want but come back…. ah, the bus.
With stops, five hours to Cancún. The road hugs the coast. Remember, the eight A.M. to Chichén Itzá. It arrives just as the tourists start to check out of their hotels. Close to the equinox the prices—
Go sky high, I know.
Driver, un momento. So what do you do?
Go to Valladolid and bargain a long term rate. I have your friend’s name at the ruins.
No, Beulah, no more kissing until you come back to me. And no adioses. Hasta luego, is all.
I’ll see you, Jacinto. Hasta la vista, hasta muy pronto, hasta la proxima vez. ¿Ves …?
Jacinto—wait.
Yes?
I’ll bring you back your jacket.
Queridísimo Jacinto,
I promised I’d write I am writing now, before the lights of the town die out. Four lighthouses, beacons back to you. We’ll make a space together for this, the hardest thing in the world: to speak the simple truth to one another. And to speak of this greatness that runs in us, trapped in too few notes. Too many promises, too little hope. I’ll learn, I’ll try with you, to stop the engine in my head, let it run into the world like a child.
But for now I can write, that much I know how to do. Tell a complicated truth, begin with this. I will tell you about this work, for the sceptics who won’t ask, for the believers who just can’t anymore, for the others who won’t let us. Who make forests into parks, while the sceptics build deserts for cynics to golf in. But how will I find words for you?
I’ll start with what you’ve shown me. What can we hope for a people who every year sees fewer and fewer stars, less night in the sky? Each year more light, the combustion of what was. Ancient life forms turned to burning tar, light from younger stars. Each year bigger telescopes to show us still more of what once was. A sky of old news—out-dated by millions of years. The zeroes, we’ll count them together from now on. Smudges in our heads—whole galaxies, Jacinto, not just Time. Little smudges of once and soon. We see stars die, like old home movies.
So why not a planet, a people, a language, a species—thirty thousand a year? Too many to name. And what’s in a name but another kind of bias, of local perception. Of local affection. When a serial number would do. An order number in a star catalogue. Nothing really is anything else—no that would be a metaphor—admit one and the whole world starts sprouting tails and wings and horns. Again. Even numbers we make into trinities and pentecosts, octaves and hexes, the days of creation and the three names of serial killers. But all things are number, and number the first metaphor. We are the meaning machines, Jacinto, we make belief.
But more than that, through us, Being means—believes—and even doubts, who knows? Was our greatest invention ever and always our soul?
When we make these things meaningless—confuse myth with untruth—we sever the dragon twins and set them loose like storms, like only-children fighting over the world. Orphan twins riven at the ankle—dragons of rage and indifference, wonder and cynicism, Typhon and Apophis. Storming over the land while we sleep, swallowing the world, devouring us while we dream of certainties and shearing sheep.
But how do I explain? About the souldeath of accidie and these hands of accident? How do I explain that Phoenix and Phaëthon were twins? lone stars of dusk and dawn. How do I make a place in the world to speak of all this? Of the myths that are consuming us, even as we starve on transcendent unbelief. In an age of doubt, what is radical scepticism—the kind that asks the hardest questions over and over and will never stop—if not a kind of faith?
But how to make this into speech? I begin with what I’ve seen with you, and heard.
I have seen this beauty of the world with the Eye Restored, the eye that eats, to see through its swallowed adversary. And sees a world made still more beautiful through the knowledge of each new thing forever to be lost to us.
And I have seen your people. I’ve watched them bundle their lives into the streets. Like turtles. Seen this beauty of animals in their faces—the flashing black eyes and smiles. And I have seen them dying. I see them now at each stop. Climbing on, stepping off—the heavy bundles, the steps so tall. We ride together and rest a while. Look … the children, the ancients, the separate ones. Boys burning for the city, girls leaving home who hardly dare hope but, a little, do. I have loved them like you, and felt their courtesy. And I have seen how, quietly, they die each time we break a temple stone.24
Jacinto I know there is a life for me. Here and now. A place to be loved to be whole to be filled. With you, by you. For a time at least. You have shown me how, how almost belonging can be enough. I have seen our impossible love and loved it too. Hopelessly. Little turtle with the head of a hawk with eyes that see into me, I have seen into you, into your art of breaking hearts, so artlessly….
With you I’ve heard the silence of the world between the heaves of breath. I’ve felt your breath of hazel on my neck—felt my heart quicken, felt the bellows in your soft chest / sough beneath my cheek.
I close my eyes. I go into you. With you, in you, I glimpse zero time, see the Great Year stop. Time lying on its side, lying down with us. Together we watch it turn on its green axle, spin to spin, irreducible paradox, spilling open now, spilling out…. spilling its
bright child.
This holy terror, this stranger in the dark we’ve known all along.
Jacinto though I still worry and doubt—you’re right, who knows what can happen in a month?—I can ask you to wait a little while. And then we’ll tend our small fire. We’ll plant and name, we’ll remember and predict. We’ll be determined. We’ll have conviction.
There’s no need to go alone. You’ve shown me now. The serpent writhing down the temple steps, this is not a one-way trip. Three weeks—how long is too much soon? Is that so long, to write this end, this death, and let the serpent into the rivers that flow under us.
One Maya month. To call the great holocaust by its secret name—four species that die for each minute of sun at the equinox. For the magic of that naming, for the magic that loves the hungry, is this too much to sacrifice?25
Three weeks of soon I dedicate to you, these journals, each day that remains….
Dearest Jacinto, how did this get so grave?
The old man in front opens a window. Lets the warm night in. It rushes past my ears … The same night you hear now in the Hotel Laguna, Room 22.
You taught me a kind of laughter, too. And there is so much more to tell you. About the sweet bus driver who looked sadly at me as I left you. About his heart’s complicity. About how hard I wish all the lovers in the world might find it all around them, this complicit heart. Co-conspirators—in bus drivers and flowersellers, in bakers and waitresses, in editors and executioners, in teachers and chicken vendors. In all the villages called San Andrés, in all the places that begin with Xs and Ks.
In all the dictionaries! As in excite, exalt, exhilarate exclamation, exquisite exhaustion—as in excursus, excuses, extenuating circumstances, ecstatic exhibitionists. But I can tell you all this tomorrow. I’ll write every day—sweet nothings, sweet friend, you’ve taught me to sleep again, to laugh. Taught me too well…. I’m so drowsy now.
But wait … little turtle, world on his back, my flying portage … if you can’t sleep yet, I send you a nursery rhyme, to hold and keep thee this night. These berceuse verses of our Time’s great poet, Willy silly like this only very rarely. Could you make him for this one night an honorary Maya?
… So they lov’d, as love in twain
Had the essence but in one;
two distincts, division none :
Number there in love was slain …
Hearts remote yet not asunder;
Distance, and no space was seen
‘Twixt the turtle and his queen :
But in them it were a wonder …
… Reason in itself confounded,
Saw division grow together;
To themselves yet either-neither
Simple were so well compounded …26
Good-night, sweet scribe. Enough for now. I throw you pennies down a well….
Your Science Queen.
I thought it was a dream. At first. A bad dream. I start, awake—the bus empty. It is pulled over to the side, tilted. I am alone. Same seat, driver’s side, third from the back. The old man in front is gone. The burning boy, hopeful girl are gone. No lights, no town, no voices. The bus’s emptiness. Headlights, passing slow now … a cruising suspicion—skews a slow ladder of light across the ceiling, the overhead rack, empty. Notebook in my lap—your jacket over me, your scent—my bag is gone. I come to my feet, to the front of the bus crank the handle, pitch down into the dark. All the passengers are herded into a little clutch, huddled in bus shadow and down into the black ditch. Beyond, two helmets, two machine-gun barrels gleam in the moon. The luggage bays are open, bags in the gravel. Two more soldiers, straightening up, the driver. Rushes over.
What is this?
Señorita, I …
My bag—you let them take it—search it?
I am sorry.
Why didn’t you wake me? Why didn’t anybody?
I was afraid the soldiers did not want me—
Did they pay you?
I was afraid.
The soldiers start forward, another calls from ahead. Wordless they walk past, climb into a Jeep. Another Jeep pulls from the rear. Both drive off. The driver scrambles up, turns on the interior lights—jaundicespill of light into the ditch, the brush, over a dirt track.
If anything is missing, señorita, I will pay.
This is not a dream. It is the same dusty driver. Faded old photograph of a young man, his universal driver uniform, dusty greys, blue knit polyester vest, polyester tie. Little strip of moustache just along the lip. This is not a dream, Jacinto. I don’t dream of polyester. You need to know this about me too, I dream in silks. The passengers mill, human luggage carousel replacing bags in the bays. I find mine, open still. The CD player, the music we listened to in the Hotel Laguna. Jane Siberry, Annie Lennox, Jann Arden. McLachlan, Morissette. Gone, all my beautiful lyricists. But not the laptop at the bottom.
If you were here now, you’d tell me these things are replaceable, son cosas que pasan. If you were here now.
Something is missing, señorita? Sinceramente se lo pago el costo—
No … No señor, olvídalo. Let it go.
But wait, where are you going?
For a swim.
But you can’t—
How far?
Not far but it is not safe.
And this is?
There are patrols on the beach. We are near Cancún.
For the first time I’ve been robbed in Mexico, had something taken from me—for the first time. On your bus, señor. Co-conspirador. I’ll take my chances out there….
Soon it will be light. I follow my moonshadow up the dirt path. Yellowing moon at my back. Almost full. I am not alone, I am not afraid. I have the moon, and you.
Bonepale track I follow through dark scrub. One constellation emerges from this darkness that glows like black glass. Orion. We all know this one, frail in the moon. Long trudge, weary pony … finally my scrub blinders curl open to the sea—night sprawls above a deeper, liquid dark. I hook the straps of my sandals through two finger crooks, start the walk north. The sand is damp with dewfall. Under my soles it crunches like new snow.
North, Cancún’s smudge and smoulder, east, the cool grey ash of dawn.
I stop here, there are so few stars, fewer with each step to Cancún. I sit on a log under Orion, tend its small fire, ours, wait for daylight to come. The coral sand still glows a little under me. I dig my toes in. My subway penlight a firefly winking off, winking on when I think of something to say to you…. Fading night that roars with crickets and stars. It’s still our last night, Jacinto, the same moon, the same dark that held us both. Scents of sweet wild dill, if I close my eyes the faintest waft of cinnamon. You’re not so very far….
The moon sets a deep orange, its western edge of nibbled cheddar … dark orange of additives, mousetrap cheese …
After the moonset the stars flare, sharpen. Orion grows stronger in his hooded cage, straps on his sword. So softly in, the needles go, Jacinto, when we’re not so alone. This too is beauty’s harbour. The little bay, this glimmer of sand that curves east, out toward a low headland. Still not a breath of wind. Sea of still black oil, not the smallest wave laps the shore.
Slow Venus shakes herself free now of ash, bright pearl in a shell of cinders, in a char of coal and indigo. The last frail stars melt out, ice shavings on a comal … Each minute ticks a notch on the spectrum … from royal purple to lavender to rawest pink … her soft, bruised blush to the dawn.
She wades now in a surf of faint pink foam. The tip of the headland is the gondola that has stopped for her swim….
No, Jacinto, now there is a boat at the headland. A long rowboat pulled up on the sand. Its black silhouette curves under a bristle of oar handles, sharp under a sky gone furious crimson, the red of elements. The horizon as filament—tong-red Venus, soles roasting in the fire we tend.
The whole sea north to south is a pan of scarlet oil.
Now a slivering of sun splits the horizon—a new island a v
olcano a red continent nosing up from the seabed! Molten mass that will not hold, flares out a little skirt—a gather of glass tearing free of the sea—its lower edge stretches, a membrane, a winding sheet of taffy.
Behind the headland another sun reflects—iron-red, in the hull of a patrol boat at anchor. Little mast of thin sticks, that withers in this sun of pomegranate.
Closer in, a smaller sun wavers, cherry-red, the window of a beach house, a car … Oh, Jacinto I wish you could be here to see, this sky, this sea. Venus a hard red ruby now. Just as the sun pulls free—synchronized perfectly!—the first wavelet breaks on the shore, stirring a breeze….
Today there will be wind. I get to feel the tradewinds—after how many weeks on this coast? I’M ON THE SHORE OF THE CARIBBEAN SEA! Morning star of my own movie.
A soft wind is blowing. The cherry sun is now two, unequal halves—so a beach house, not a car—wavering. Two dancers of fire. Jacinto did you ever stop in Cholula on your way to Mexico, see the pulque dancers, a temple mural? Intact from 2000 years ago. Have you seen them? Surrealism two millennia before Dali—wavering figurines … a liquid dance of drunkard reds and ochres. Let’s go some time, together.
There are three red suns now, one large two small. Three copper figures from the mystical East, dancing out of a dream of fire. Guardians of the dawn’s red palaces….
Now four. One large three small. They have come from the valleys of Hinnom and Red Henna, where the fires are never quenched, where the wind flutes through the thighbones of children. They have come out of the Valley of Alders and Amber. Out of Phoenicia.
Jacinto, why have they come?
There are five red suns … in a wedge, sun glinting off their visors, their high-tech bucklers and targes that taper like kites. They march under a waving human banner—red sun glaring from heads of gold, arms of silver, bellies of brass. Beachcomber welders in splints, butchers and bakers widow makers—
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