Heavens on Earth

by Carmen Boullosa

  I was five years old and I remember that first visit perfectly. They fed us some awful breaded, cooked carrots that weren’t hot or cold or crisp or mushy. In fact, I was so fixated on those disgusting carrots that I can’t even remember the rest of the menu, except that there wasn’t any dessert and the lemonade wasn’t sweetened at all. It was so different from my other grandmother’s house, where every meal was a feast and her desserts were legendary. I’m not sure which one was my favorite—maybe the copa nevada, which was a type of custard (made with just eggs and sugar, not a single spoonful of flour, and time; and it had to be stirred continuously over low heat with a wooden spoon so that it wouldn’t stick and burn on the bottom of the pan, or it would have a smoky, burnt taste) that she served in little cups and topped with some nougat that she dropped by the spoonful into boiling water so that it would solidify and then on the top she sprinkled some cinnamon, which was ground at home because, as my grandmother used to say about the bottled stuff they sold in the supermarket, “who knows what kind of nasty things they put in it, and besides, it doesn’t have any flavor.”

  Anyway, to get back on track I’m going to recount how the manuscript fell into my hands. But in order to do that, I have to mention two more things about my life. One is that I know Latin very well. I not only read and write in Latin, but I can also converse in Latin. I know this is a bit strange in Mexico today, especially for a woman, but it’s because when I was a little girl, I told my father that when I grew up I wanted to be a priest. He explained to me that I couldn’t be a priest because I was a girl, to which I replied: “No problem, then when I grow up I want to be a man.” He laughed and told me that wasn’t going to happen, but the first thing I would have to do—in case the Church changed the rules—was to learn Latin. So, guess how I interpreted that? Ignoring, or not understanding, the real meaning of his laughter, I believed that I could be a man when I grew up. That’s certainly what I wanted. In fact, I imagined myself thousands of times giving mass as a mustached priest, adored by my parishioners. I saw myself as a bishop giving mass in the cathedral. I wasn’t interested in anything else that had to do with being a man; just the priest’s cassock, which is, to some degree, the representation of his “purity,” his virginization. As a little girl I simply wanted to wear a priest’s robes.

  Back to my dad (but not my mistaken interpretation), I know from some psychotherapy sessions and a few more in psychoanalysis (although I don’t think I ever talked specifically about it with any of my four therapists) that he arranged Latin lessons for me in order to help out a friend. This friend was a deacon who for some reason (which I suspect to be carnal) never managed to get himself ordained as a priest. The truth is I think my dad really used my Latin lessons as a pretext to keep his friend from starving to death. The deacon friend embraced us both: my father out of affection and for the few pesos that he earned for each class and me for my illusion that one day I would be able to consecrate the host dressed in gold in front of an altar. It wasn’t a bad dream—to wrap my body in glittered finery worked by the hands of the castas, and then use my own hands to conjure the mystery of the sacred. In other words, use the work of others (those who gave us the gift of beauty) to produce something that can’t be seen—the mystery—something that the erotic act invokes, emulates, and on rare occasions achieves, if you’re lucky. Although, truth be told, I write the latter without much conviction. Anyway, these days the mere thought of going to mass turns my stomach. And now I really could be a priest if I wanted to because the Anglican Church ordains women. But the truth is I’m not that crazy.

  So, when the manuscript came into my hands by way of a chair (it actually did come out of a chair)—ripping through the fabric of time—I could read it because I was a diligent student of Latin and because I had studied the paleography of colonial texts for two years.

  Unfortunately, the manuscript is in pretty bad shape. Some passages are illegible because of stains on the paper, while others have completely disappeared or fell apart in my hands as I tried to read them. I know I should have taken it to a restorer or conservator immediately, but I didn’t want to. I decided it was mine as soon as I considered working with it. So, I restored what was missing in my own way.

  I should probably explain how it came into my hands in the first place. Given that it’s a manuscript from the sixteenth century, it would make sense to assume that I found it in the Archives of the Franciscan Foundation housed in the Museum of the Institute of Anthropology where I work (I’ve been a researcher there for the past seventeen years. Currently my subject is Indian and Spanish women of the sixteenth century.) But that’s not how it happened.

  My parents and I (this is the second, and last, thing I’ll explain about myself) lived in an Indian pueblo for a year. My mom was pregnant for the second time with another child who would be stillborn (I was the only live birth). We went there as a “missionary family” to catechize the Indians of the pueblo. To be clear, the catechizing was pretty relative. I was seven years old and my job was to help show the short films. Every time the “ping” sounded on the Mambo: The Child Martyr record, I would turn the knob on the projector that changed the image; it was as easy as winding a clock. Fray Jacobo de Testera (or Tastera), the inventor of audiovisual catechism, could never have imagined that with the subtleties of modern technology his method would allow an ignorant little girl to catechize simply with the turn of a knob, without the help of an Indian translator or a human voice (even her own).

  There were always young people in the house who came to stay with us for a few weeks. One or another of them would be in charge of setting up the screen on which the illustrated drawings of the lives of the saints would be projected, another of turning on the record player and the speakers, and I was in charge of advancing the filmstrip at the sound of the “ping”—a little bell that rang at various points during the story—indicating when it was time to change the illustration. Dad drove a Jeep that more than once ended up stuck in an overflowing little arroyo. I clearly remember the time we spent the night halfway across a flooded creek, stranded in the middle of a stream that roared at our feet, or rather, below our tires, while we were plunged into utter darkness, surrounded by the impenetrable thicket of the forest. There was no way to get the Jeep out of the mud in the dark. I didn’t shut my eyes the entire night; I just stayed awake praying for daylight. There wasn’t a moon that night, and in the darkness I was terrified of the noises in the forest and the roaring arroyo. I was afraid the water level would rise and wash us away, I thought wild animals would come and eat us, or that scary men would come down from the hills and take everything we had. I imagined thousands of horrific endings. So, I waited for the first rays of dawn before I fell asleep. Working together, the adults—who, along with their children, had seen a couple of the little filmstrips about the lives of the saints, heard the words of the priest, and perhaps received some sort of vaccination or medicine (penicillin, for example, or a cough syrup, both of which were given out indiscriminately) that would cure them of one illness or another—quickly got us out of the predicament.

  Some of the children came from communities that were so remote and inaccessible that we would have to choose between showing the filmstrips, handing out dry goods, and giving vaccinations. Another of my responsibilities, as a member of a missionary family, was to delouse the Indians. Without asking their permission, we would shave their heads and apply Flit lice killer with a hand pump. This was a DDT pesticide that must have been harmful to their health in every way, but it would kill any lice that were alive or dormant once and for all. However, when a louse and his friends came to live in my long tresses, they didn’t shave my head, but instead took me to Mexico City. My grandmother made an appointment for me at a beauty salon and they applied a liquid that smelled to high heaven, but didn’t damage my hair or leave any nits or live bugs behind. Now that I think about it, we never used any masks when we were applying the Flit, so, if I suddenly die of some kind of cancer,
it’ll probably be because of that bug killer. If so, we could be martyrs too, in our own way.

  At that time the highway didn’t go to the place my parents chose for their Catholicizing work. The only way to get there was via a mud path or rough dirt track, which was impassable during the rainy season when it turned into a muddy river. At its worst, it became a full-blown river, and then it was impossible to identify the path of the road, let alone travel on it. The Indians of the pueblo spoke their native Otomí instead of Spanish, even in church, where the priest, who was the parish hero, gave the homily in the local language. When the Vatican decreed by sealed order that the mass had to be said in Latin, he took the benches out of the church and talked to them in Otomí. He was an honest man who had a fighting spirit and was devoted to his cause. It burns my tongue to say it—because time (and my education) has turned me into priest-burner—but he was, and still is, an exceptional man. He’s now the Archbishop of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. I respect and admire him so much that I would stick my hand in fire for him.

  It’s almost as if somehow that pueblo has moved closer to Mexico City because the distance that separates the two seems so much shorter now that you can get there on the highway. It’s no longer necessary to go Tampico first (even though in Mexico all roads lead to Tampico) and then travel the road for at least eight hours before you reach that impassable gap or pass, or get on the teeny-tiny plane that my parents somehow managed to acquire and kept on a ranch near Tampico. Since there was nothing remotely resembling an airport, that little plane used to land in empty fields surrounded by crops, frightening the few cows that were wandering around. The bare earth of the ranch that served as our landing strip constantly changed depending on which piece of land was fallow at any given time. The ranch had some mounds on it that, according to the owner, who was an engineer, were pyramids covered with earth. But, he always said, “don’t tell anybody, because if this gets out they’ll seize my ranch to excavate and not give me a single peso in exchange. And then, after they take my land, they won’t even excavate. ¡Gobierno Ratero!” If there were pyramids on his ranch the engineer could hardly have made them disappear. If he had the money, he should have built a mansion using the rocks from the pyramids. And if he had any aesthetic or historical sensibility, he would have left the pre-Hispanic carvings visible, like the architect Parra did with the houses he built from the ruins of colonial buildings. If, as I suspect, the engineer destroyed the pyramids to protect his ranch from the “gobierno ratero,” he would have kept alive a tradition in our country based on the belief that it’s better to self-depredate rather than to constantly fear being raided. Brilliant!

  This extraordinarily profound and exquisite concept of the government that routinely steals from its own citizens—our “gobierno ratero”—has come up more than once in my lifetime. When I was a little girl, nobody in my neighborhood voted, or nobody took voting seriously anyway, yet everyone complained about the lack of democracy. And although it makes sense that there would have been center-right panistas in my neighborhood, I don’t remember any. So, to the fact that I deloused the Indians, you can add this to my list of sins: I used to stick up blue and white decals touting the slogan “Christianity yes, Communism no.”

  I heard the following conversation more than once:

  —Who did you vote for?

  —Me? I voted for Cantinflas, everyone’s favorite comedian.

  Things have changed in Mexico in this regard as well. I remember very clearly my mom telling me about how her father, my grandfather, fought against ballot box theft during the 1946 elections (which of course seemed like ancient history when I was a kid). The story about my grandfather and the ballot boxes happened when Ezequiel Padilla was running for president. My grandfather knew Padilla through Doctor Demetrio Mayoral, who was the dean of the Military Medical School and my grandfather’s friend at Father Carlito’s school in Oaxaca. They had known each other forever and professed an enormous affection for each other. Their affection was so great that when my grandfather died, Doctor Mayoral was the first one to come to the house carrying an enormous bouquet of gladiolas, which he arranged in vases with his own hands while he wiped away his tears.

  When my parents married, Doctor Mayoral and his wife Celia were their padrinos de velación—they sponsored the young couple by paying for the ceremony and standing up for them in church. Doctor Mayoral walked my mother down the aisle and gave her away because my grandfather was already dead by then. My Uncle Gustavo told me that when my mom called to ask him to be her padrino, Doctor Mayoral asked, “What should I wear? I don’t have any elegant clothes, tell me what to wear,” to which she replied, “Wear whatever you like, Doctor. It doesn’t matter to me what you wear, I just want you to walk me down the aisle.” The doctor arrived wearing those pinstriped pants and a black double-breasted jacket that the older generation used to wear. He was quite refined and upright in the old-fashioned sense and, at the same time, very loving with his old friend’s family.

  Anyway, Doctor Mayoral introduced my grandfather to Ezequiel Padilla, who had been the public prosecutor at the trial of José de León Toral when the young religious militant was accused of assassinating president elect Álvaro Obregón on July 17, 1928. It was in his capacity as Secretary of Foreign Relations that Padilla attended the international conference in San Francisco, California where the United Nations was founded in 1945.

  The election of ’46 was not without irregularities, and there was certainly no such thing as an electoral register. As the story goes, my grandfather arrived at a polling station just as deputy Fernando Amilpa, a thug of PRI Senator Fidel Velázquez Sánchez, showed up to steal the ballot boxes. My grandfather lost his composure and—so that the Revolution would not have been in vain—pulled out his gun, stuck the pistol in Amilpa’s back, and said: “leave that, you hijo de la fregada, or you die. They might kill me for it, but you’ll go first.” Amilpa and his accomplices dropped the ballot boxes and left. PRI candidate Miguel Alemán won that election. The story they used to tell about Alemán, when I was a little girl, was that he ordered Lake Texcoco to be dredged so that he could look for Moctezuma’s Treasure. They didn’t find any treasure, but the outcome was the same in the end because his family made a huge fortune (one of the many fortunes of the Alemáns) when they partitioned and sold the lake land.

  Back to the Indian pueblo of my childhood where we lived as a missionary family. I won’t mention its name here because the place looks nothing like it used to. And it’s not really an Indian pueblo anymore, but is more a conglomeration of people crammed together, living in chaos, imitating the worst aspects of the Western lifestyle, and all the while maintaining the distance required and imposed by poverty. It’s changed so much in the last two decades that you could say it has vanished into the mist and that a phony pueblo of the same name has sprung up in its place.

  When I was a child living in that pueblo, the people of all the nearby villages used to come into town on Sundays to buy and sell merchandise, and then the modest weekday plaza would turn into a huge, bustling mercado. We lived in a big house at the foot of the mountain next to the three or four other non-Indian families who spoke Spanish, had money, and were trying to escape the gobierno ratero.

  When I dream of our time there—that is to say that when the muddy pueblo of my childhood enters my dream world—it has been transformed into a dusty Roman village where Catholics and Pagans fight violently over souls and temples. I’ve dreamt about it in so many ways and so much has happened in my imaginary village that it no longer has anything to do with my real childhood experience. Using the intangible substance dreams are made of, my dreamworld provides all the material necessary for the saga to continue. Once upon a time those dreams were connected to my childhood memories, but that ended a long time ago and now the saga follows its own story line.

  The protagonist of my dreams is Saint Adrian, or better yet, simply Adrian. He probably shouldn’t be called “Saint,” because in my
dreams he appears as a healthy young man from a wealthy family, long before his beatification. Adrian is a young army general who belongs to an old family from the area that has worshiped the gods since time immemorial. The gods themselves honor the lush, natural world that borders the town—the river and its rapids, the ravines exploding with green, the countryside with its trees and caves. In one of these caves—here Adrian’s Roman village coincides with a legend popular in the Indian pueblo where we lived that year—lives an enormous serpent who wears a magnificent crown on her head. Surrounded by her subjects (serpents like herself, but smaller in size), she guards a chest full of gold and emeralds that once belonged to the ancient kings. The coincidence is imaginary, of course, because I never saw the cave in the Indian village nor have I actually ever seen it in my dreams. Adrian betrays the family gods when he “hears” the call of the one God and fights in His name against tradition, provoking with his “illumination” a gut-wrenching conflict that ultimately destroys the pueblo.

  The saga has been running through my dreams for years. And though I might not dream about my Adrian for weeks at a time, he always returns, and always with new adventures, so to speak. They never repeat, and since they’re dreams they often contradict each other—contradiction is, of course, permitted in the dream world—and sometimes an adventure even contradicts itself. Adrian is the only constant. In the last dream-episode, or chapter, two eagles flew in circles above Adrian’s house. The entire pueblo crowded together to see the enormous birds. In this dream, I’m a little girl dressed in a long white gown that trails on the ground and I’m in love with Adrian, an unmarried young man who still lives with his parents.