The Son, The Sudarium Trilogy - Book Two

by Leonard Foglia

  The weather had not put him off his mission. He trudged tirelessly from village to village, some of them connected by little more than slippery mud paths, trying to rouse the peasants out of their lethargy. In the village plazas, some of the old people looked at him with suspicion, but the spark of awareness in the eyes of the young people encouraged him to push on. He wasn’t there to start a revolution, just to tell these people they had rights they didn’t know they had.

  Mataxi was no different from a dozen villages he’d already visited: A cement church, a general store that sold detergent, canned goods, sugar and rice, that two-room school house, and, at best, a couple dozen houses, most of them awaiting the addition of a second floor. Winding paths led out from the central plaza to the fields that dotted the mountains like leather patches on an old coat.

  He advanced through the rain, soaked to the bone. His long dark hair was plastered to the sides of his head, his wide-brimmed hat apparently having ceased to serve any useful purpose. Stepping into the schoolroom, he stamped his feet on the concrete floor, shook his body vigorously, rather like a dog emerging from a creek, and scanned the faces in the room. Not many, he thought, but more than in most villages, where apathy seemed built into the landscape. But there only needed to be a few interested souls, those who thought change was possible. He saw it as planting seeds and told himself that was how any movement began.

  The group looked him over, sizing him up. While he shared their swarthy skin, he was tall and lithe, as most Mexicans generally weren’t. And his eyes were such a profound blue they verged on black. He could have been from Sicily or Northern Africa. But then, too, the fineness of his features gave him a European look that suggested Southern France. At any rate, he didn’t seem one of theirs, until he opened his mouth; his Spanish accent was pure Mexican. That was a point in his favor.

  “Amigos, amigas,” he said, raising his voice above the din. “Now is a very important time in our country, and you are an important part of it. You live far from the big cities. Those who govern our country have forgotten you. Where, you ask, are the roads that have been promised you? When will they build the clinic? Why is there no running water,” he stopped and pointed out the window, “except that which is carrying away the soil of our fields?”

  His joke was met with indifference. Or incomprehension.

  The questions had been asked dozens of times. None of the peasants gathered in the schoolroom expected an answer. He realized that the challenge here, as it was in each village, was to rouse them from their apathy. It was a new century. There were new politicians, new parties, who had to listen. Voting was no longer the rubber stamp it was in the days, when the PRI, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, held the country in a stranglehold. “Now there are choices now to be made,” he said, urgency in his voice, “and you are the ones who can make them!”

  He could tell at a glance who was convinced, who wasn’t. And who didn’t care. For example, the withered man in the back row, who was staring out the window, shading his weary eyes with the rim of his battered sombrero. The roaring rain was of greater interest to him than any words this visitor had to say. The man got up from his seat and moved closer to the window, pressing his forehead against the pane. When he turned back, horror was stamped his face.

  “¡El lodo! ¡El lodo!” he shouted, flailing his arms uselessly. “The mud! The mud, it is coming!”

  Everyone knew instantly what was happening. The weeks of rain had saturated the hillsides beyond their capacity to absorb any more water. Little by little, trees and bushes had lost their foothold in the ground. Each day the earth lost a little more of its consistency. Now, no longer contained by the vegetation, a large slice of the earth had actually come loose and was sliding down toward the village.

  It was like a monstrous ocean wave, but one that came from above and gathered its momentum from the steep pitch of the mountainside. The roar it made drowned out the shrieks in the schoolroom as mothers grabbed their children, and everyone fought to reach the single door. Instinct propelled them all toward the outside, where there would be air to breath. Shunted aside, the old man, who had signaled the alert, fell to his knees, as if there were no other recourse but prayer.

  And then, like a runaway locomotive, the mudslide slammed into the schoolhouse, ripping it from its foundations and flipping it over several times, before moving on to engulf the plaza itself, topple the church tower and bury most of the flimsy houses in mounds of sludge. What had been a village instants before, was no more than an angry brown scar in the mountainside. A couple of stray dogs barked and somewhere, a baby cried. But otherwise, all signs of life had been erased from the landscape. Even the cemetery on the outskirts of the village lay under a thick shroud of mud. But that didn’t matter much. The village itself was one big tomb.

  It took rescue workers hours to make their way to the site. They combed the ruins as best they could; digging with picks and shovels wherever the wreckage of a building pierced the mud. The schoolhouse was located and the broken bodies of those few who had made it out the door were recovered. The remains of a young girl, still clutching her baby brother, were dragged from under the church tower. But the consensus was there were no survivors. Those who hadn’t been pummeled by the force of the mudslide had certainly suffocated for lack of air. The rescue efforts seemed futile. Workers were poking hopelessly at the earth, when the first cameramen from TV-Azteca arrived to film the devastation.

  The rescue frenzy continued on through the night by the sulfurous yellow light produced by a gasoline generator. Only three more bodies, partial ones at that, were recovered. Once it was established that nature had virtually obliterated the entire village and there were no survivors to interview, the reporters had to fall back on the observers, who had come from nearby towns, either because they had relatives and friends who lived in the village or simply because they wanted to see the destruction firsthand. Two policemen from Jalpán tried to contain the crowd, which trekked clumsily over the mud, looking for remnants of life, but they soon gave up. A woman, who said her older sister lived in the village, wept copiously for the cameras, and a priest announced dumbly that God’s ways were sometimes unfathomable.

  The initial reports that went out from Mataxi put the death toll at 50, as the cameras relayed around the world footage of a hellish mountainscape. Shots of natural disaster always played well on the airwaves.

  2:8

  Hannah and Jimmy saw the first images on television. Their oldest son was part of a political awareness group that had volunteered to work the Sierra Gorda backcountry that week. Was Mataxi one of the villages he had planned to visit? Hannah couldn’t remember now. Although he rarely kept in touch when he was away, they had gotten used to his quiet self-reliance. But this time she was sure that the phone would ring any minute and he’d come on the line and say he was safe. But the phone hadn’t rung and their anxiety had turned to foreboding. Each hour they waited for news to filter back to Querétaro stretched out like a day.

  On the third day, when the wait had finally proved intolerable, they jumped in the car and drove the narrow road that wound up the Sierra Gorda like the rattlesnakes that would sun themselves on the rocks, come summer. They parked the car in a clearing, where the highway briefly widened before plunging downward toward Jalpán. They would have to hike the final miles. The rain had abated, but the path was still slippery and Hannah clung to Jimmy for stability. Their first view of Mataxi made it hard for them to believe there had ever been a village on the spot. Trees flattened, buildings crushed, nothing remained, except a handful of journalists, in search of a surrealistic image, a corpse, or a remnant of drama to enliven the news broadcasts. But there was nothing but dismal…nothingness.

  What a horrible irony it would be, Jimmy thought, if after the unceasing caution they had taken for twenty years to raise their son in obscurity, his life were to end in a natural calamity thousands of miles from the very society they had fled. And an act of God at that
, some would say.

  “He may have gone on to another village before the mudslide?” he said, putting his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “He’s a resourceful young man. He knows the dangers of the rainy season.”

  “He would have contacted us!”

  “The phones don’t work in weather like this.”

  “He would have found a way.” Hannah turned away to hide the anguish in her face. “No, he is here. I feel it. Our son is here in Mataxi.”

  Jimmy contemplated the desolation and tried not to let hopelessness overwhelm him. If their son had been here, when the mudslide hit, then he was surely dead, sucked down somewhere deep in the mass of primal ooze, crushed, lost. Already, it appeared, the rescue team, wan from overwork, was gathering up its meager tools, while the few remaining cameramen, sensing a lack of newsworthy developments, were packing away their cameras. Bigger, fresher disasters would claim their attention in the days to come.

  The shout echoed across the void.

  “Es un milagro! It’s a miracle!”

  A young boy sprinted down the hillside toward the cameramen. “Come quick. Vive! El hombre vive! The man is alive!”

  It was all the cameramen needed to reassemble their gear and chase after the youth, who led them toward a mound behind what had once been the general store. One of the policemen stopped them; yelling that the earth had not settled and fresh mudslides were still a threat. But the reawakened curiosity of the onlookers proved too strong. Hannah and Jimmy joined the crowd, slogging through the mud that seemed to want to swallow them, too.

  “Mira! Look!” shouted the boy triumphantly, pointing at a hand that emerged from the earth. The fingers twitched ever so slightly, as if they were trying to grab hold of something solid. The crowd gathered round, amazed, as a couple of workers began to dig away the mud that imprisoned the body.

  “Cuidado,” cautioned the policemen, ordering the onlookers to keep their distance. The workers uncovered the hand, then an arm, and then, although only a few could see clearly, the forehead of a man. “Me escuchas? Do you hear me?” asked one of the workers. There was no response, but the survivor’s eyes briefly flickered open.

  The policeman had to push back the crowd, suddenly galvanized by the hope that the person might be one of their relatives.

  “What does he look like?” shouted a woman. “How old is he?” cried out another. “Ask him his name?”

  “It’s a young man, I think.” replied the first worker, carefully scraping away the mud until the head was exposed.

  Hannah’s knees went weak and she had to grab Jimmy to steady herself. Either she was hallucinating or the miraculous had indeed occurred. She approached the policeman and pulled at his sleeve. “Es mi hijo. He is our son. Let us see him, please.” The earnestness of her plea overcame his disbelief; he reluctantly let the couple pass. Hannah had to restrain herself not to run and fling herself beside her son. The unstable earth still held his body captive and could, at any moment, reclaim him. But she knew at first glance it was he.

  “May I touch him?” she asked so plaintively that the second worker paused in his efforts and lay down his shovel. “Cuidado! Be careful” is all he advised, stepping back. The crowd, sensing something unusual, fell into a hush, as the mother knelt at the side of the body, so slowly, so delicately, that the moment might have been unfolding in slow motion

  “Sí, it’s him!” Hannah whispered over her shoulder to Jimmy, who was crouched behind her. She gently brushed the dirt from her son’s eyes, which flickered again and seemed to smile at her. The stillness was broken only by the whoosh of the dying wind in the nearby pine trees. Several onlookers crossed themselves. Even the television cameramen seemed temporarily hypnotized by the very drama they had been hoping for all day long. Everyone was riveted by the mother, who slowly leaned forward and gently kissed the forehead of her son. Their faces reflected something chaste and otherworldly. Something timeless that negated the squalor and death all about them. For a second, the horror had been transcended.

  The earth, however, seemed alive and unwilling to let go of the young man. Twice, the painstaking excavation of the workers collapsed, dumping more mud on the body, until someone improvised temporary retaining walls out of some plywood panels pulled from the wreckage. It took nearly two hours to free the body. Then a stretcher was hurried up the hill to the side of the hole. But the young man shook his head no.

  Supported by his parents, he struggled to his feet and stood for a moment blinking in wonderment, as he took in a landscape he had not seen for three days.

  Then he took a step. His parents held on to him anxiously, but he didn’t appear to need their assistance. Determination etched in his eyes, he looked straight ahead and took another step.

  Side by side by side, the three made their way down the mountainside. At first, the crowd broke out in applause, but the clapping quickly died down, as a respectful hush took hold of one onlooker after another. The young man had been pulled from the very earth, and he was whole and unbroken.

  Silence blanketed the land.

  Toward the back of the crowd, a young woman, her blonde hair tucked under a straw hat, slowly raised a camera to her eyes. The movement was noticed by no one.

  Click.

  2:9

  The image of Hannah, kissing her son on the forehead, flashed around the world. It made the front page of newspapers everywhere and the cover of several weekly news magazines. Most television new programs used it as the final “feel good” segment of the broadcast heralding it as a “Miracle in Mexico.” The footage of the destroyed village was harsh and depressing, and it was not the first time that the world had seen evidence of natural disasters. Hurricanes, tornados, tsunamis – each week brought new proof of a planet that had seemingly gone amuck. However, the moving image spoke of a different world, one in which love still prevailed over carnage and parents could take their children home again.

  It ran without names. Mataxi, which few could pronounce correctly, was simply identified as a “remote village in the mountains of central Mexico.” What mattered was the flicker of recognition in the eyes of the son and the compassion in the face of the mother. And the dark mud that, for once had not triumphed over civilization.

  In Gothenburg, Sweden, thousands of miles away, Dr. Eric Johanson stared at the television screen in disbelief. He recognized Hannah first. She had hardly changed at all. Even at 39 she still had long blonde hair that fell to her shoulders, the high cheekbones, accentuated even more by time, and the soft, innocent eyes, although in the photograph they were brimming with tears. She remained youthfully slender. (How many times during her pregnancy had he examined that body, pore by pore?)

  He went out and bought a news magazine that featured the photo on the cover and studied it through a magnifying glass. He even thought he could detect the faint scar that bisected her left eyebrow, the aftermath, he seemed to remember, of a childhood bicycle accident. The text identified Hannah only as “a distraught Mexican mother,” which seemed curious, he reflected, given her all-American features. But there was no doubt in his mind it was she.

  Several pictures showed the blasted remains of the town. Pity, reflected Dr. Johanson, before his eyes settled on a small picture of the mother and father, helping their son down the mountainside. He studied the father through the magnifying glass. Middle-aged, handsome, still with a touch of the Irish in his features. He was certain it was Father Jimmy. Which meant that the young man in the middle was…

  He put down the magazine and dialed Judith Kowalski on another continent. The phone rang several times, before she picked it up.

  “Have you seen?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she replied. “It is a miracle. Just like they’ve been saying.”

  “God’s ways are wondrous, indeed.”

  “So our work will begin at long last?”

  There was a long pause on the other end of the line, as Dr. Johanson gathered his full strength. “Yes, Judith, now it begins.�
�� From the sobs, he knew she was crying with joy.

  “The others should be informed, if they are not already aware.”

  At once, phone calls began to crisscross the planet, linking people in countries near and far, some still blanketed in night, others awakening to the light of morning. Still, they shared one thing in common. They all knew that “Miracle in Mexico” was more than just a catchy headline, calculated to boost newsstand sales and viewer ratings.

  2:10

  The bedridden woman stared out the window as she did most days and nights. The bed was positioned in such a way that she could see straight down the tree-lined avenue in Lowell, Massachusetts, to the stone church a few blocks away. The trees were green this time of year, so their twisted and arthritic branches were less apparent. The church steeple, which was really all that was visible of the 19th century edifice, was heavy and sooty. There was nothing particularly uplifting about the view of a typical working-class New England neighborhood, but the woman studied it endlessly, as if it contained some message she could unravel, if only she looked hard and long enough.

  The church was a constant reminder of her sins. Especially, the steeple. Some nights she was sure the steeple was growing taller and that the cross at the top was going to spring off the structure and come shooting through her window and impale her to the bedsprings. So she kept a close eye on it for signs of movement. Whenever the wind rustled the trees along the avenue, she could tell the steeple was swaying, too. Sometimes she noticed that it swayed when there was no wind at all.

  Any moment whatsoever, the cross could come smashing though the window, pierce her body and the soiled mattress and nail her body to the floor. At least, that was what she yearned for. It was the ending she deserved, a far quicker ending than the one she was currently experiencing, a slow eating away of her brain. The doctors had told her it was nothing serious, just “one of the burdens of age,” but she knew better. It was God’s judgment for the sins she had committed.