Heavens on Earth

by Carmen Boullosa

  She was usually quiet and looked toward some undefined point while she combed her hair. I do not know what she was thinking about, whether she was thinking of my father or her family. Only occasionally would she say a few words to me, and it was always the same thing: that someone like me, of noble blood, would not live among the macehuales because the gods would not permit it, because sooner or later they would have to reestablish order in our land. Other times she would sing, she would repeat the melodies her mother used to sing to her. I adored the songs she would sing in a very low voice, scarcely moving her lips. But I could not bear what followed, what always came after the singing. If she sang for me, she would always cry afterward. Her songs always ended in tears. Then I would cry too, I would stroke her hair and would say to her in our language: “Mamita, do not cry, your son begs you. Mama, my lady, I promise that when I grow up and am as big as my father was, you will have everything you want, and you will not live isolated in this house, without dignity, because I will bring justice to your name and return you to the place you were born to. I promise, mother dear.”

  I did not intend to lie, I had confidence that my dagger could remove all obstacles and with it I could avoid any complications. One day, she told me between sobs: “It is not things or honor that I cry about. Everyone is dead. Everything has disappeared, my city, my men, my brothers, my army, the reasons for glory and happiness, everything is gone. That is something nobody can ever bring back to me. No one. No one.”

  I did not quite understand at the time. Now that I do understand, and if I had long hair to brush and her sweet voice, I too would sing the songs she heard as a child, and then burst into tears with the same intensity and for the same reasons. Like her, I too am a survivor. Everyone in my life has died as well and the dream I shared with the others—that of the greatness of the Colegio de la Santa Cruz (that I still have not managed to talk about)—has also died. Everything has died, everything has disappeared.

  I think my legs refuse to carry me because they know where the soles of my feet want to go: to where the bones of my dead are hidden underneath a thin, soft layer of mud. My dead are so many that we cannot even take one step, my feet and I, without trampling on the bones of one of our own. Snap, each one I step on will make a sound because the bones will crack under our weight; snap, Fray Bernardino’s rib; snap, Miguel’s mandible; snap, one of my mother’s little bones; snap, Fray Andrés de Olmos’ knee. Snap, snap…And now that we are speaking of breaking the bones of the dead, what can I say about those of the children I never had? In some part of the underworld they must be wandering about and it could be that they come at the smell of my feet. Snap, I graze their skulls with my steps. Snap. I graze them with each step! This is why I cannot walk! My legs are wise…But I do not really have any reason to laugh. Beneath the soles of my feet, the flames of my dead burn furiously, the cold flame that dances at night, far away from me where I cannot see it, mocking me because it knows that during the day I will not move my weight over it. What am I? The survivor. What is that? One who has only half a life, or what is left of a real life. I have not lost only my faith. The others died because they loved maize and could not live on corncobs and dry leaves. There in the underworld, where there is only pure grain, they play with the night maize.

  But we were talking about her, about Mama. When I woke up, Mama was always already up, standing by, watching over my dreams, hoping I would remember. That was when she would talk nonstop, explaining to me what life was like before I was born, what her childhood was like, what my father was like, what my grandparents and my uncles were like, what our lineage was, which noble lords came from our family, which were dead, what they had lost, and explaining in full detail everything we used to have and what we should have again. All of this while she washed my face, dressed me, and fed me breakfast. She did not stop talking in the mornings, but this is also true: she spoke only to me. As soon as I left the house, she was silent. The other women who lived with us, told me: “Don’t leave your Mama alone, when you’re gone she doesn’t say a word. As soon as you leave here, she is as silent as a stone.”

  Mama was very beautiful. I do not know how she managed to keep herself from someone who wanted to have her for himself. She must have been too foolish for anyone to want to have her, or too foolish to resist the offers, because she did not have anyone to protect her; she did not have parents or brothers, everyone was dead. A son was neither defense nor excuse, because the mothers of my friends often took up with men in order to have a house and food, or to provide their husbands with land and profitable alliances. I do not know how she managed to remain single. The fact is that this did not do her any good, she ended up losing everything, and not recovering even the tiniest corner of her dreams. Mama was not interested in anyone except her son, maybe it was due to this passion that she did not know how to make use of, or derive any benefit from, her beauty and become friendly with any of the Indian nobles.

  For my part, and even though I was unfaithful to her by spending all my time with my friends, nothing made any sense without her. I was no fool. She was the prettiest woman on Earth, the one who lavished me with infinite care and affection, the one who brought light to my days with her chatting and cuddling.

  When I was living apart from her, far away from Tezcoco where she lived, nothing was fun or easy. The friars did not have even the slightest idea of everything they had taken from me. The truth is that they did not make up for what I lost by not having my tongue pierced with the spine of the nopal cactus and then having the twig stuck through the open wound, which intensified the pain. I so feared those twigs from the earliest years of my childhood that I confess (though it might not be nice) that more than once I did not lament the absence of my father or the fall of my people, but instead I was happy, and thus exchanged, with infantile blindness, a father and a kingdom for the lack of a few small twigs stuck through open wounds in my tongue.

  Some of my friends experienced the twigs through the tongue, like Nicolás, who described the tremendous torture with a terrifying intensity while he showed us his pierced tongue, still bleeding, that I was more than just afraid of them, I was terrified of them. Because Nicolás had a father who lived with him, I believed that, not having one, I would not suffer the torture. I was thankful then, as I said, not to have a father. Moreover, not having one, I was the only one among my friends who slept glued to his mother like a macehual and I would not have wanted to change that for any honor, land, or riches. For the child I was, there was no wealth comparable to sleeping next to her.

  Having lost my wealth, although I would not experience the twig stuck through my pierced tongue or any other kind of wickedness because the Franciscan friars were extremely generous with me, my sadness isolated me, leaving me alone with my dagger and my fantasies. I did not make any effort at all to win my companions over, I was not pleasant to them, I did not make eye contact with them, or exchange even the minimum number of the words we were allowed. Separated from Mama, I was stuck inside myself.

  One day, they assigned Agustín (the vengeful boy taken in by the friars when he lost his family because he had denounced them) to serve us our food in the refectory. It was like any other day, one student read, three others served, and we all ate in silence. Agustín put a big empty spoon above my bowl, off which nothing came, not even a drop of stew. He looked me in the eyes with a mocking expression that seemed to say, “I know you won’t do anything, you chicken,” and then he continued on to the next boy, serving him his portion, as he had done with all the others. He counted on the acceptance of the other students and was not at all worried that they had seen him deny me food, because I was not one of them, nor were my parents affluent or noble, nor my cousins their cousins, nor did my wealth (which was, in reality, nonexistent) compare to theirs, and he counted on the fact that the friars would not stop the reading for this lack and that my reticent nature would keep me from uttering even a peep, condemning me to not even the crumbs that the Franciscans
had accustomed us to.

  But I did do something because, even though we were not noble or rich, my mother had taught me to be proud of my family. Moreover, I had my dagger. Thus, brandishing it with a burning rage, I pushed back the bench on which we were sitting, almost tipping over my companions, and threw myself at Agustín, holding back none of my meager strength, which of course I did not need since I had the dagger (though nobody could have seen it except me because my dagger only materialized for my eyes).

  The friars immediately separated me from him, asking me (in Latin, because we were only allowed to speak in Latin) what had happened. I told them the reason, though I could only do so poorly because my rage prevented me from speaking well (“He no serve Hernando food”). I uttered a clumsy, poorly strung together sentence that had not a single trace of elegance. I had to listen to quite a long sermon about the little importance of food, about the baseness of fighting for it, about the wrongfulness of trying to hurt a companion. Agustín also got their attention, but much more of it was focused on me because I had not only fallen to a lack of charity, but also to rage and violence.

  You will remember that the cruel Agustín who denied me my plate of food, the one who left my plate empty, was one of those fearsome, vengeful boys, whose story I have already told. He was neither wise nor persuasive because he came not to spread the true faith and the word of Christ, but rather to punish his people. He scarcely comprehended even a trace of Christian wisdom and in all his actions he left a mark of vengeance that, for some reason unknown to me, he wanted to exercise against everything. Instead of the diaphanous light of the illuminated, of one inflamed by faith, he wore the dark cloak of the executioner.

  Taunts and anger sang in his spirit daily. The harmonious song of the rooster did not wake him, but instead he awoke to the dark light of wrath.

  My empty bowl was nothing compared to his infernal temperament.

  Slosos keston de Hernando

  17The paragraph was illegible in the manuscript. I’ve taken it from Zurita’s Breve Sumaria y Relación, but I had to change it around quite a bit because it was practically incomprehensible. Estela’s note.

  18These last two lines are Hernando’s (though they are identical to Zurita’s). The Spanish text of the original ends here. Estela’s note.

  EKFLOROS KESTON DE ESTELINO

  As teenagers during the first two years of the heavenly seventies, we dreamt of sexual equality; we believed in the Cuban dream; we scribbled slogans against racism, our unconditional adoration for Martin Luther King, and abhorrence of the KKK on our school notebooks; and we wore scandalous miniskirts and took the contraceptive pill. The Indians were present for us at that time because their arts and crafts became part of our world, dressing us and decorating our rooms. We wore Oaxacan blouses from various regions, fabulous clothing embroidered in Chiapas, and necklaces and other things that our grandmas (and our moms who were devotees of Chanel, if their pocketbooks allowed) would never have imagined would be worn by young ladies of our social class. Instead of high-heeled shoes, it was more chic to wear plastic-soled huaraches (which were almost as uncomfortable as those spiked heels), and we were even brazen enough to wear the bright taffeta of the Mazahuan Indians instead of silk blouses. But the “Indian issue” wasn’t a real concern, or at least not like the “Black issue” was—it was “Black is beautiful,” but not “Lo indio es lo bello.”

  A lot of embroidered blouses, a lot of dreams of sexual liberation, much reading of One Hundred Years of Solitude (which was the bible of our generation and a supreme outrage for our fathers), much Angela Davis and much Susan Sontag, and even more of the Boom—the Donoso Era, the Puig Era, the Fuentes Era…But I’ll back up. I was fifteen when I read One Hundred Years of Solitude in my school for young ladies from good families run by the Ursuline nuns. This was when and where the unholy airs began to blow, before the outbreak of the storm that brought the Jesuits and the Cuban dream, and that led to the unveiling of more than one nun and the drawing of more than one student off to incredible adventures…My best friend ended up as a guerrilla fighter in two different countries and two different wars before death took her from us forever, not to mention the adventures of other friends and those who went to live in the Colonia Martín Carrera (whose name we heard for the first time around then), or who spent some time with the Tarahumara Indians…One Hundred Years of Solitude—the fabric of the dreams of my generation—was part of this breath of fresh air, of these winds. I remember that a month before we read One Hundred Years, they forced Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo on us. I didn’t dislike it, but I don’t think I completely understood the power of the text (I did recognize the power of the printed word, but I wasn’t captivated by the small-mindedness of the catchphrases). I saw in it the image of the parochial Catholic world whose sickly light made me nauseous. Little Pedrito Páramo sitting there by himself in the privy dreaming about Susana San Juan, hearing his mother’s warnings: “a snake’s going to bite you,” “it’s dangerous to spend so much time on the toilet.” It seemed to me that he was the pet victim of Marian devotion. The mother, the grandmother, and the prayers built walls around the boy to protect him from his own body, from the development of his sexual, adult body.

  As I’ve said, the miniskirt and the pill had arrived and we moved away from the veils and the mantillas that we wore to mass when we were little girls. Pedro Páramo represented a world we despised in our desire for liberation, despite the fact that it certainly represented freedom in literature. One Hundred Years of Solitude was something else. It wasn’t just the way it was written, but rather what it had to say that made it representative (and I would go further and say: a banner) of the death of the repressive and oppressive provincial traditions. The Garcíamarquezian realm was our liberation from the Lópezvelardesque traditions. My reading of One Hundred Years was not a literary reading. I read Pedro Páramo, but One Hundred Years was inscribed on our skin. It’s not that García Márquez wasn’t a real writer, his novel No One Writes to the Colonel was a real book. But One Hundred Years of Solitude was the intimate wear and fancy carnival costume we wore to combat the Virgin Mary who we were afraid was trying to turn us into prudes. And at the same time, it was a chronicle and a condemnation, as well as a celebration, of an unusual freedom in tradition-bound Mexico. The south also brought us fresh, liberating air. Angela Davis was not the only one who opened the door for women to a world without mantillas and shawls; García Márquez’ characters—lusty, naked, sensual—did as well.

  We read the book in 1970, and we were unrestrainedly enthusiastic. Our fathers scheduled a special meeting to complain about the selection of school material because, in their opinion, that book should not be read by young girls from good families. And why was it a scandal, if the Mexican bourgeoisie tended to simply ignore books? Why did they place so much “importance” on one book? As part of our homework for our reading of One Hundred Years of Solitude, we made a fun little Super-Eight film that was the last straw for our fathers. It got all kinds of reactions. One father (a lawyer with Woodrich Euzkadi in Mexico, if I remember correctly)—undoubtedly a “sleight of hand lawyer,” like the ones in Macondo who demonstrated “that the demands lacked all validity,” and proclaimed that “the workers did not exist,”—invited us to his library to watch a professionally made film of him shooting a white bear (the same one he kept stuffed in his study). “This is what is important,” he told us, “you all are wasting your time.” His lecture was really more like a conversation among the deaf, because I never got the connection between our Super-Eight of One Hundred Years and the film of him shooting of the bear. (Of course, our little film participated in the same conversation among the deaf in that it didn’t have anything to do with the novel either because it was basically a sequence of completely random “illustrations” of some brief passages of the novel.)

  What was it about One Hundred Years of Solitude that made the hair of “good manners,” of the “establishment,” stand on end? Th
e death of Rulfo’s ghosts, dead through bodily desertion, prayers and scolding? The anger of the Fernanda del Carpios (“I married a sister of charity”). Were they offended? “Thifisif…isfisif onefos ofosif thofosif whosufu cantantant statantand thefesef smufumellu ofosif therisir owfisown shifisifit.” The Fernanda del Carpios and the sleight of hand lawyers were not so wrong to be afraid of One Hundred Years of Solitude, given that it was inseparable from the dreams of my generation.

  What scared the Fernanda del Carpios, the “goddaughters of the Duque of Alba”? (“A lady of such lineage that she made the liver of presidents’ wives quiver, a noble dame of fine blood like her, who could claim eleven peninsular names…a lady in a palace or a pigsty, at the table or in bed, a lady of breeding, God-fearing, obeying His laws and submissive to His wishes…”). What scared them? The portrayal of Antilópezvelardianism? The Antirulfo-Sanmatean world in the lusty flesh “shamelessly” depicted in Macondo?

  The world—as written in One Hundred Years of Solitude—was reborn for us. This was the new Caribbean and Latin American genesis, rewritten by García Márquez. In rewriting it, he improved it: evil was put in its place, in its proper place, and not in the flesh, not in the body, as it was protrayed very biblically in Pedro Páramo. Evil is not the snake that will appear in the bathroom, invoked by desire; instead it appears when a Buendía has public funds at his disposal: yes—that will be the shame of the family.