by Mark Fishman
And Luz Elena, it’d be great if life didn’t make us old, we’re heading somewhere, you and I, and what I’m telling you is less of an invention than I thought it’d be, so with respect to the Legend of the Suns, and the words I’ve got to say, this myth begins and ends with darkness, even though it’s solar in character, night encloses the light and is its inevitable shell, since you know the story, you know the Fifth Sun will finally be stolen by Tezcatlipoca, the day 1 Death in the Aztecs’ augury table’s dedicated to him, Tezcatlipoca, and his home was everywhere, in the land of the dead, on earth, in heaven, he’s a trickster god, a sorcerer, a seer, a shapeshifter, whose favorite outward appearance was a jaguar, an animal known to be an evil omen, associated with nighttime and sudden death—it’s like the darkness surrounding Coyuco, dead or alive, and it’s fallen soundly on the heads of his parents, too—yes, this myth begins and ends with darkness, Luz Elena pulling her chair close to the table, facing her brother, taking a sip from her glass, wetting her whistle, and Luz Elena, the gods got together and held a meeting, it wasn’t natural that Nanahuatl, as the sun-to-be, wasn’t moving, he didn’t budge, and right away, Tlahuizcalpanteuctli, Lord at the Time of Dawn, the personification of Venus, the Morning Star, overcome with anger, that’s just the way he was, a quick temper, ready to bite, Tlahuizcalpanteuctli, I’ll shoot him, he can’t just stand still, not moving, not after choosing him over the others, not with the ritual we’ve gone through—just like Popeye, that’s all I can stands, I can’t stands no more—so the Lord at the Time of Dawn, the personification of Venus, acting in his capacity as the god of ice, in the splendor of his rising as a doomed star, Tlahuizcalpanteuctli, really angry, shooting arrows at Nanahuatl, trying to hit him, look out! duck! and Nanahuatl, who wasn’t moving a muscle, didn’t flinch, motionless as a lead weight in the sky, the Lord of Dawn, Tlahuizcalpanteuctli, missing his target, not a very good shot, I guess, or the other was a lot stronger than he was, because, before you know it, the sun-to-be, Nanahuatl, succeeded in hitting the Lord of Dawn, the personification of Venus, the Morning Star, Nanahuatl’s arrows striking him with shafts of flame, and the nine layers, the Place of Duality, which is how the sky is arranged, you can count them on your fingers, the nine layers covered Tlahuizcalpanteuctli’s face, and that was it, the Lord of Dawn was the frost, finished, that’s how I see it, Tlahuizcalpanteuctli was kaput—with respect to the books I’ve read, I’ll nod my head in recognition, as many times as my neck will allow, there’s arthritis up there, or a painful inflammation at the cervical, or a pinched nerve, a little tingling in my fingers, no, not that, I can’t take anything as serious as that, but it’s playing with Avelina and Perla, at their age, and mine, it isn’t easy, not Cirilo, he’s a cinch, a snap, so let’s hope he grows up like his namesake, a musician in the family—and the gods, without Tlahuizcalpanteuctli, came together again, a few words passing between them, or they didn’t use words at all, but a big decision to make, the gods getting together, Titlacahuan, or Tezcatlipoca, known as Smoking Mirror, The Prince of this World, and Huitzilopochtli, Blue Hummingbird of the Left, or of the South, and the women, too, Xochiquetzal, Flower Quetzal, goddess of the flowering and fruitful surface of the earth—she’s worshipped on the Day of the Dead by offerings of marigolds—and Yapalliicue, Black-Her-Skirt, and Nochpalliicue, Red-Her-Skirt, or Her Skirt is Prickly Pears, their decision, all together, with or without words, their duty, really, Titlacahuan, Huitzilopochtli, Xochiquetzal, Yapalliicue, Nochpalliicue, they were going to die a sacrificial death—no other choice, that’s the way it goes—a sacrificial death in Teotihuacan, a city in a sub-valley of the Valley of Mexico, the only way the sun would go into the sky, the big leap, and at last, at their death, Nanahuatl went into the sky, starting to move, 4 Movement, it was something he’d been waiting for, Nanahuatl, the sacrifices of the others behind him, the birth of the Fifth Sun out of the ashes of the god Nanahuatl, and the sun was in the sky where it was supposed to be, the moon following him, on its way, not too fast, taking his time, hesitating, the moon that wasn’t burned in the fire but had fallen into the ashes, and now Papaztac, el enervado, a god of drunkenness, one of the Centzontotochtin, or four hundred divine rabbits, Papaztac watching the moon, and when the moon got to the edge of the sky, Papaztac, hitting him in the face with a rabbit—that explains what we see when we look at the face of the moon!—dimming his light, and the moon moving on, slowly slowly, like it wasn’t a good day for the moon, trying to ignore what Papaztac had done, breaking his face with a rabbit so he couldn’t be a second sun, and when the moon was at the crossroads, he met tzitzimime, large round-eyed figures with disheveled hair, skeletal heads and limbs, each a protruding tongue in the form of a sacrificial knife, a snake dangling between their legs, or blood instead of a knife coming out of their mouths, the blood pouring onto the ground in front of their outspread legs, tzitzimime, the coleltin, star spirits, frightening things, but of which sex? it’s not like we can tell, Luz Elena finishing her glass of homemade hibiscus drink, Rubén Arenal shrugging his shoulders, and Rocket, it doesn’t really matter, some say male, others female, according to their dress, and Luz Elena, they could be spirits of women who died in childbirth, anyway, they’re dangerous as a miserable death, the tzitzimime, the coleltin—we’re almost at the end of my story, invention or reality, who can say—and tzitzimime, I don’t know how many there were but it wasn’t just one, tzitzimime calling the moon, waving at him, shouting, come here! come here! terrifying the moon by showing their fleshless faces in a fixed or vacant look, and holding him up, interfering with him, keeping him for a long time, dressing him all in rags, while the sun of 4 Movement, Movement Sun, appeared in the sky, and maize was grown for the first time, fire was domesticated, nightfall was established, octli was brewed—did you ever taste it? not as good as my homemade hibiscus drink—4 Movement, the Fifth Sun, and it’s our sun, we who live today, and at that time, too, it was their sun, we’re standing each day under the same sun as our ancestors, waiting for the end of it, and the earthquakes, at the hand of the god of ill omen, Tezcatlipoca, nestling in the interior of the earth, wielding sacrificial knives, the end of time’s within his dark power, the black Tezcatlipoca, and the collapse occurring on a day 4 Movement, according to another codex, Telleriano-Remensis, pictures and text—I’ve got a copy if you want to look at it, a genuine photographic color facsimile, but it weighs a ton—Tezcatlipoca, stealing the sun away, earthquakes swallowing all things, shaking stars down from the sky, plunging us into eternal night, but that’s as far as I can go, it’s time to get the girls in from playing outside, they’ll have to wash themselves, then there’s reading to do, school-work, Rubén Arenal, at once, reaching for his sister’s arms, laying his open palms on them firmly but gently, nodding and smiling as if he couldn’t speak, emotions wrapped within him unfolding and presenting themselves as a curious brightness in his eyes.
Ernesto rolling into Iguala, Rubén Arenal’s Ford Lobo bringing him safely into the city, population more than one hundred twenty thousand, Ernesto wondering if that number included Coyuco, alive, or his son, already buried, not in a cemetery, but charred to blackened remains, dumped somewhere with dozens of other bodies, or what was left of them, who knows where, Ernesto switching off the engine after parking the Lobo, between Calle Ignacio Manuel Altamirano and Calle Hermenegildo Galeana, farther away, not so obvious, or on Calle Melchor Ocampo, making sure the doors were locked and nothing was left in the bed of the truck, but Ernesto walking along Ignacio Manuel Altamirano, past Abarrotes Carol, a grocery store, and crossing Las Margaritas, walking slowly toward a car wash, lavado y engrasado, the sun stretching itself with a yawn in a lower corner of the sky, Ernesto trying to find the courage to walk to Bandera Nacional No. 83, the bus station, Estrella de Oro, and Ernesto Cisneros, but there isn’t a golden star taking me there, no guiding light, not now, anyway, in the land between the waters, Anahuac, and it’s dark and the sun’s still out, that’s my mood, what do you expect, and it�
�s the same for the parents of the others, forty-three victims, plus mine, the world’s spinning away from us, heading straight for a reflecting wall, a giant mirror, where it can see its reflection, but it can’t stop, heading straight for its end, and that’s where we are, all of us, the mirror-wall weeping with blood for tears—wipe your face and your snotty nose, I can’t stand looking at you—that’s what they’ll say, and you want to bet it’s their words, the army, the 27th Battalion, the Policía Federal, the mayor and his wife, words like that belong to the stupid, so I bet more than I’ve got and it’s my future I’m counting on, ¡cabrones! it’s just like the saying, “Better to die on your feet than live on your knees,” they think they’ve got honor, but they don’t have shit, that’s the world for you, ¡hijos de la chingada! it’s our blood, nuestros hermanos, and they’re students, are they dead or alive? and Lupita, all she does is cry and sleep, worse than a bad day, it’s the end of our life, and Coyuco’s, too, our son, Lupita’s and mine, my son and Lupita’s, Coyuco dragged away, beaten, it could’ve been on Boulevard Vicente Guerrero, named after a revolutionary general of the war of independence, a stand-up guy, Vicente Ramón Guerrero Saldaña, born in Tixtla, his father a mestizo, his mother an African slave, Vicente Guerrero, militant and leader of the insurgency, it was the period of resistance, and the second president, in 1829, of our Mexico, and Mi Patria es primero, the motto of this state, in his honor, so what happened on Boulevard Vicente Guerrero, like I said, whatever it was it wasn’t an honor, and the municipal police, the federal police, the soldiers of the 27th Battalion, drug gangs, fat fingers wearing the same pair of gloves, you can’t tell one pair of hands from another, then Ernesto, without realizing where he was going, walking away from Calle Melchor Ocampo, approaching Café Morelos on Reforma, right next to Florería Lupita, he’d been walking with his head down, now lifting his eyes, worried and tired with circles under both of them, lifting his eyes from the sidewalk, the last rays of the sun stretched out in front of him, and Ernesto Cisneros, rays that’re leading me God knows where, or it was after sunset, a kind of murkiness, a false, absurd, or distorted representation of whatever light remained in the air of Iguala de la Independencia, around sixty-seven miles from Chilpancingo, the capital city of the state of Guerrero, the travesty of light, measured along with a burden weighing a ton, together, crushing his lungs, dragging his chin to his chest, Ernesto raising his head with difficulty, up down down up, the weight of the world, walking into Café Morelos, Reforma 16-D, standing at the S-shaped bar, ordering a coffee, but something cold to snap him out of the doldrums, a double espresso from the machine, a Sanremo Verona, sugar and a little water, no milk, blending the ingredients, adding ice cubes and cold water, Ernesto reaching for the glass, a straw sticking up out of it, a really cold glass, his fingertips dancing, then sitting himself down at a small round red table, a chair with a red seat, his back to the reddish-brown patterned wall and a television mounted between two framed pictures, a couple of young men wearing glasses, they looked like brothers, playing chess at a table beneath the TV that wasn’t on, a teenager sitting alone reading a book, Caballo de Troya, two young girls whispering, a living world, a kind of sanctuary, free from tension and anxiety, but Ernesto, not part of it, seeing only Coyuco’s face, a missing son, taking the straw between his fingers, drinking his iced coffee, and he was wondering what his wife was doing right now if she hadn’t thrown herself on the mattress like a rag doll, folded up, lying in the foetal position, their darkened bedroom, shoulders jerking up and down, sobbing, crying without making a sound.
The ice cubes clinked at the bottom of the glass as Ernesto shook it gently, freeing coffee and sugar, no milk, from the unmelted ice and mixing together what was left of the iced coffee, putting the glass to his lips, tilting his head back, and Ernesto Cisneros, good to the last drop, that’s what they say, an icy freshness in his brain, cells beginning to send word to other cells, wake up wake up, faster and faster, Ernesto was ready to go out into the world he no longer related to except as a sort of detective of the missing and dead, a very sad one, shuffling his feet, but he didn’t have time to waste shuffling anything, not cards, papers or feet, and definitely not shuffling off responsibility, in this case, Coyuco, his son, Guadalupe’s son, their-boy-now-a-young-man, a student, or a former student, at the Raúl Isidro Burgos Normal Rural School of Ayotzinapa in Tixtla, and Ernesto Cisneros, how do I start, but I just want to sleep, I haven’t got what it takes to get me going, what envy to know what you want, but who am I fooling, I know exactly what I want and why I came here, Iguala de la Independencia, I’ll use your formal name, you, Iguala, we aren’t on familiar terms if what happened to Coyuco really happened here, in this city, I don’t care if it isn’t your fault, fucking city, fucking everything, now that’s the way to get things going, anger’ll do the trick, ce, ome, yei, nahui, counting in Nahuatl, Ernesto pushing his chair back as he got up from the table, rubbing his hands together, feeling the cold moisture from the glass of iced coffee, Ernesto, on his way out the door of Café Morelos, not a glance at the game of chess, but goodbye to the young man and woman behind the bar, a nod not a wave, but making the effort to give them a smile, and Ernesto Cisneros, human after all, I wouldn’t have guessed I had a drop of it left in me, pissed away with my tears, that’s what I thought, and the tears of my wife, Lupita, a crying machine—we’re no longer human, or we’re too human—and I don’t know how to help her switch it off, I can’t afford to cry because there’s just one way I’m going to help and that way, the way to help her, both of us, whether I like it or not, is to make an investigation of my own, no matter who or what gets in my way, and the result, it’ll be a real tragedy, because I’m not optimistic, not now, probably never again, I’m going to try my best, I’ve got to find Coyuco no matter what condition he’s in, but what am I going to find, a burned ankle in a blackened shoe, skin and bone black as charcoal, or his teeth set in the lower jaw bone, ¡Madre de Dios! and ¡Dios mío! don’t think about it, wait and see, por el amor de Dios y todo lo que es Santo, yes, for the love of God and all that’s holy, I’ll need a lot of help, all the help I can get, maybe El Santo, Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta, El Enmascarado de Plata, he was born in 1917 in Tulancingo de Bravo in the state of Hidalgo, the most famous of wrestlers in Mexico, the masked Mexican luchador, a folk hero, symbol of justice, and my hero, dying in 1984 and buried in Mexico City, Mausoleo María del Ángel, that’s where you can find him, but his spirit lives on in all of us, you think I’m crazy but what else is there for any of us who’ve suffered this tragedy of a mass killing—I’m getting ahead of myself—than to rely on the power of being out of our minds in a world that’s already lost its own, and El Santo, from his first movie in 1958, playing El Enmascarado in Santo contra cerebro del mal, or later, in another movie, Santo contra las bestias del terror, 1972, with Santo and Blue Demon—his real name was Alejandro Muñoz Moreno, like my wife’s apellido paterno—not wrestling each other, but in a couple of arena matches, nothing out of this world, but the story, it isn’t bad, working with Tony, a private detective, helping Tony escape from Sandro, a former professional wrestler who’s now a crook, and his thugs—César del Campo’s playing Tony, I remember them all like it was yesterday—so El Santo and Blue Demon, together, and an investigation, solving crime, and El Santo and Blue Demon defeating villainy and corruption, I need all the help I can get, a pair of wrestlers at my side, and Santo vs. la invasión de los marcianos, wrestling with Wolf Ruvinskis as Argos, leader of the Martians—it doesn’t matter who’s in it as long as El Santo’s in it, or El Santo in El mundo de los muertos, again with Blue Demon, an inspiring movie right now, in the world of the dead, and El Santo, a move like the Pescado, a slingshot plancha from inside the ring, a flying plancha, or a hold called A Caballo, meaning “on horseback,” invented by Gory Guerrero, a kind of chinlock, or Blue Demon’s own finishing move, El Pulpo, the octopus hold, but I’ll need more than that, this isn’t a game or a movie or a comic book, it’s Coyu
co’s life, our son, and gone gone gone, so thrown together it adds up to an ugly picture, Ernesto crossing the street without looking left or right, almost hit by a 1981 bright orange two-door Dodge Magnum, the sounding horn making him jump like a frightened cat, a real Mexican Mopar, it had a 5.9 liter 360ci V8 engine with a Carter Thermoquad four-barrel carburetor rated in 300 hp, a muscle car with an A833 four-speed manual transmission, but that’s all Ernesto put together in his mind, there wasn’t a lot of time, he’d hurried to the other side of the street, his heart pumping blood like jet fuel, the Magnum taking off and making the nearest corner, a hard right, and Ernesto Cisneros, my memory’s as clear as if the angels had washed it this morning, thanks to an iced coffee and how I inhaled with joy that delicious smell of burned rubber tires and exhaust, my memory rising to the occasion, here it goes, I see his face, Coyuco, the baby’s face that changed slowly, becoming another, and I see his mother’s face, Guadalupe’s, a young woman in a library reading a book whose title I couldn’t see no matter how hard I concentrated in the dim light from where I was sitting at the other side of one of many long tables for students, studying students—the books we read, the books we forget—breathing students, half-awake or daydreaming, pencils and notebooks, and the on-the-ball students with faces determined to solve the mystery before them, scribbling, underlining, scratching their heads through strands of greasy unwashed hair, the waste gasses or air expelled from an engine, turbine, or other machine in the course of its operation, and the stink of a tough elastic polymeric substance made from the latex of a tropical plant, that’s what’s reminded me, and Lupita, wanting to squeeze her until she burst, flooding my arms, her wetness seeping into my skin, ever since that first time in the library, until now, this moment even, while she’s crying, but now it’s her tears I want to swallow, along with my own, and our son, Coyuco, a baby’s face growing into a man, a young man, but here, look for yourself, I’ve got a snapshot in my wallet, see? but who am I talking to except to myself, that’s it, no one’s listening, you can almost hear a pin drop, only pockets of listening, of course there’re ears that hear it, the crying, but before you know it, something else will replace it, another nightmare taking it’s place, but not now, not while I’m still breathing, walking away from Café Morelos, Reforma 16-D, then almost flattened by a 1981 bright orange two-door Dodge Magnum, a real Mexican Mopar, it had a 5.9 liter 360ci V8 engine, nearly killed before I started, what a pity, a tragedy you could’ve added to a long list of tragedies, my country’s full of them, but I’m still here, Lupita, too, and Irma, Rubén Arenal, Luz Elena, and don’t forget Ignacio, a second father to me, his father’s first apellido the same as the former editor-in-chief of Política, so Rubén Arenal, Luz Elena, Ignacio, to name three, and me and Lupita, but the other parents, worried sick, the parents and families of Álvarez Nava, Sánchez García, Gómez Molina, Castro Abarca, Rosas Rosas, Gaspar de la Cruz, known as Pilas, “the pillar,” he was calm, intelligent, reliable, and the thirty-eight other families, not including ours, so better make it forty-three souls and our Coyuco, that’s the total, a lot of tears, add it up, and more if you figure what it means, because it isn’t just the forty-three, and our Coyuco, a voice for the voiceless and a fact, it’s every death and disappearance from the beginning of time, more than thousands, stadiums full, not just forty-three, that’s only here and now, okay, that’s a mouthful, but don’t you think it’s true? and I can hear my voice echoing, it’s a big empty world, a vacuum, like I said, who’s listening? but one thing comes after another, and each life counts.